Free Business Topics in Chicago

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SORT: MOST RECENT | A - Z

  • Millenial Onboarding

    Bette Lawrence-Water, Founder and Principal Consultant, Spectrum Strategic Solutions

    Onboarding new employees is a secure investment that will assist newly hired employees in developing their skills, knowledge, and value within the company. It will help match the technically skilled Millennial workforce with new and emerging needs of your company, which gives your company an advantage within the market. MORE >

    Millennial Onboarding is a specialized type of employee onboarding. With Millennials we are seeing a need to tweak the onboarding process to better suit the needs of the company and new hires. It will increase productivity and produce a happier and more skilled workforce. The new hire phase is a critical time for the employee and company and having a structured set of procedures will make this time run smoother and produce a greater chance of success.

    Presentation Objectives:
    • Define onboarding
    • Discuss the characteristics of Millennials
    • Create an onboarding process for Millennials
    • Start action plans for working with Millennials
    • Learn from introspection

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  • Master Networking for your business

    Dan Gelfond, Former Steven Spielberg Project Interviewers, Personal History Interviews

    Join Dan Gelfond, a master networker with 28+ years of experience building his business almost entirely through networking. As moderator of the Northbrook Chamber’s “First Friday” networking meeting for the past 25 years (averaging 110 attendees monthly), Dan brings proven, practical strategies you can use immediately.
    What you’ll learn:
    Clear, actionable do’s — and even more important don’ts — for effective networking
    How to craft and perfect a compelling elevator pitch MORE >

    Practical tips to maximize your ROI from every networking opportunity
    Format:
    Fun, interactive seminar tailored for companies or organizations with sales staffs.
    Hands-on exercises, real-world examples, and time for Q&A.

    For companies with sales staff in multiple locations, seminar can be conducted via Zoom.

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  • From zero to launch: A walk-through of the website process

    Lisa Ghisolf, President & Founder, Gizmo Creative Factory, Inc.

    I’ll share my step-by-step process (honed since the days of just HTML) for WordPress website creation or redesign. We’ll touch on content audits, theme selection (or should you go custom?), launch checklists, and post-launch care. Also freelancer or client management. MORE >

    Great for those who want to launch or relaunch their sites and those who work with clients.
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  • Mastering Modern Resumes with AI

    Rosie Zilinskas, Keynote Speaker, Certified High-Performance Coach, No Woman Left Behind

    Hiring managers spend 6 to 10 seconds scanning your resume. That is all the time you have to make an impression. This session covers what a modern resume looks like, what has changed in the current marketplace, and how to position your accomplishments around measurable results instead of task descriptions. You will also learn how to use AI to pull strategic keywords from job descriptions and tailor your resume for each role without starting from scratch. MORE >

    What attendees will walk away with:
    ~ A clear understanding of the five essential sections of a modern resume (header, summary, experience, education, skills) and when to include additional sections
    ~ How to write a professional summary that works like an elevator pitch
    ~ How to rewrite experience bullet points using measurable, results-oriented language
    ~ Practical tips for optimizing a resume for Applicant Tracking Systems so it does not get filtered out before a human sees it
    ~ A reusable resume structure and a simple system to keep it current

    Ideal for:
    ~ Job seekers who have not updated their resume in years
    ~ Mid-career professionals preparing for a new role or promotion
    ~ Career changers who need to reposition their experience
    ~ Anyone whose resume lists tasks instead of results
    ~ Libraries, workforce development programs, professional associations, and corporate learning events

    Presented by Rosie Zilinskas, a Certified High Performance Coach and former Executive Vice President with over 30 years of corporate leadership experience, including hiring, talent development, and learning and development at AIG Private Client Group.

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  • Millennials Are Uniquely Designed for Innovation. Now If I Could Just Understand Them!

    Pamela Bozeman-Evans, Founder & Senior Consultant, ProPlanProject

    Our 21st century problems are very complex and require our best and brightest to solve them. Millennials are uniquely prepared for the challenge. Their parents have positioned them for success and they will boldly transform our world. MORE >

    While this should be exciting news for the corporate and nonprofit community, today's multi-generational workplace struggles to find the sweet spot between Gen X experience and Gen Y exploration. Pamela Bozeman-Evans describes the myths and realities of multi-generational workplaces, and offers best management practices for the "new norm".
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  • Reliability That Lasts: Embedding Stability Into Daily Work

    John Casey, Founder and President, Shamrock Consultants

    Every plant wants reliability, but few achieve it in a way that lasts. Tools and systems help, but they don’t hold up without leadership discipline behind them. This talk explores how reliability is built, not through big initiatives, but through small, consistent behaviors that shape daily work. MORE >

    John shares how to create stability even when production demands spike, how to build systems that don’t rely on individual heroes, and how leadership habits can make reliability feel natural instead of forced. It’s a practical, real‑world guide to creating operations that run smoothly day after day.
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  • Power of Stories for Business

    Valerie Fuson, Author & Certified Speaking Coach, Empowered Speaking

    Whether you are a CEO, entrepreneur, sales professional or business expert, your story is the deciding factor of why people will do business with you. Valerie’s talk shows how to bring your stories to life to attract the ideal client and increase profits.

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  • The Power of Social Media For All Businesses

    Troy Sandidge, Keynote Speaker • Emcee • Fractional CMO • Podcaster • Author, Strategy Hackers

    Looking to grow your business primarily using social media? The undeniable truth is Social Media is a platform for real networking, growth, and engagement for any business irrespective of the industry. Social media marketing, when done right, allows you to amplify your content to a highly targeted audience with content that connects. MORE >

    This session will break down social media to key concepts and give the tools to expand your reach with social.

    ** This session can be customized for audience type and social media platforms you would like to put emphasis on.

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  • The 60-minute Strategic Plan

    Matt Kinnich, CEO, Roland, Ruth & Mitchell

    Technically, there is no such thing as a 60-minute strategic plan, but this session will provide the foundation, framework and next steps of building out your personal, team or organization’s strategies and plan. Participants will engage in the following: MORE >

    • Overview of Strategic Framework
    • What are your goals?
    • What is your purpose?
    • What does your environment look like?
    • What are my options?
    • What options are best?
    • Individual/Group questions
    • What actions am I willing to do next?
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  • Rearchitecting Work: POSSIBILITY PARTNERS UNLEASHING POTENTIAL

    Dianne M. Michels, HR Possibility Partner, Author, Rearchitecting Work Speaker, possibilitypartners.org

    A Blueprint for "Unlocking the Power of Human Resources to Unleash the Potential of Human Beings" . . . enabling organizations to set bold goals that can be achieved with more PREDICTABILITY, INNOVATION, and EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT! MORE >

    Learn about the key paradigm shifts that provide the foundation for the changes in conditions, relationships, cultural norms, and leadership approaches that can transform people's relationship to work from a burden to survive to a possibility to thrive . . . while producing results that meet or exceed revenue, profitability, and growth goals of the enterprise.

    You will be introduced to the 10 design principles that support the paradigm shifting changes in assumptions, beliefs, and behavioral practices that enable people to go beyond learning new skills to expanding their adaptability, flexibility, resiliency, and self-directedness in a world that is increasingly more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.

    The 10 design principles include:
    Ch. 1 Alignment between HR and the CEO
    Ch. 2 Unlocking the Power of HR to Unleash the Potential Within Your Workplace
    Ch. 3 The Power of Possibility - "There are no mistakes; only possibilities" Tina Fey
    Ch. 4 Leadership Beliefs and Behaviors that model mutual respect, trust, transparency . . .
    Ch. 5 Inspiring Ownership for Results vs. Holding People Accountable
    Ch. 6 Igniting Results: Expressing Our Value vs. Proving Our Worth
    Ch. 7 Participating, Contributing, Self-Expressing vs. Checking Off Our To Do Lists - "Only do what your heart tells you." Princess Diana
    Ch. 8 Celebrating Diversity as a Competitive Edge!
    Ch. 9 Recruiting: Creating Raving Fans - "Transforming often dreaded interview interrogations into life-affirming conversations.
    Ch. 10 Communications: Creating Psychological Safety so People can Speak Candidly With One Another Regardless of the Hierarchy -
    "Relationships determine the quality of our lives, and conversations determine the quality of our relationships."

    Can be presented virtually via ZOOM.

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