Club E Podcast

Club E will be joined by Neil Littman, Founder and CEO of Bioverge to discuss investing within the startup and private markets. 
Investing in the venture capital asset class is now more accessible than ever.  For the first time, retail investors can now invest in high-growth and high impact startups working to solve some of the world’s most challenging problems.  
Learning Objectives: 
• Learn about the benefits of diversifying your portfolio with alternative assets

• Learn about the latest innovations in the life science and biotech space

• Learn about how you can construct your portfolio with VC-style investments
About Neil: 
Neil Littman is the Founder, CEO and General Partner of Bioverge, a highly curated impact investment platform exclusively dedicated to healthcare. Previously, Neil was Vice President of Business Development at Notable Labs through the completion of the company’s $40M Series B.  Prior to that, Neil was a healthcare investment banker and worked on transactions totalling over $1 billion. Neil has a Master’s in Biotechnology from Johns Hopkins and an BA in Molecular Biology.

Club E will be joined by Pete Steege, Founder and President of B2B Clarity to discuss  the golden question - How much should you spend on marketing?
We willl cover tips and tricks for setting the right marketing spending level for your business. Pete will share a 3-step process to help you size your marketing to fit for your business, your budget and your goals. 

Get marketing spending benchmarks for businesses like yours.
 Learn a process to determine a rightsized marketing budget for your business. 

About Pete: 
Pete Steege is the Founder and President of B2B Clarity, helping B2B businesses without a marketing leader succeed. Pete has over 30 years of marketing experience with a wide range of B2B technology and manufacturing businesses. Pete is a proven B2B marketing strategist and industry-recognized content leader that can help you untangle your marketing effort and get it working to grow revenue.

Club E will be joined by Graham Riley, Founder of Social Strategies, LLC to discuss how you should be utilizing social media for B2B sales. 

In this session, we will take a look at why many businesses fail to maximize the potential of social media in their customer acquisition process.

For anyone responsible for growing revenues in their organization, you don’t need a “secret system”, but you do need common sense in your system.

Pulling from the lessons learned in 2020, we’ll review a process that’s as applicable for entrepreneurs as it is for national sales teams

Learning Objective: 
We will cover what do we need to STOP doing, what do we need to START doing and what should we KEEP doing to maximize revenue opportunities in 2021.

About Graham: 
Graham is a pioneer in the blending of Personal Branding, LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Content Marketing, and Lead Generation Campaigns as a managed service; empowering business owners and sales teams to have more meaningful conversations with potential clients and key influencers.

Club E will be joined by Jim Zuehlke, Founder of Cardinal Board Services and Mark Urdahl, CEO of Red Wing Shoes to discuss perspectives from being a CEO of a private company that reports to the board and also is a Director of a Private company board.

About Mark: 
Mark Urdahl is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Red Wing Shoe Company, Inc. In this role he is responsible for shaping a vision that honors the company’s values while creating opportunities for meaningful growth. Mark does this by bringing together a talented team of individuals working across Red Wing’s diverse portfolio of brands, product lines, and geographies.

Mark is passionate about Red Wing’s rich heritage, as well as its commitment to manufacture footwear in the United States. He also believes in providing meaningful employment opportunities for Red Wing employees in the United States and its subsidiaries throughout the world, while supporting the community of Red Wing, Minnesota, and all communities where Red Wing employees live and work.

Before joining Red Wing Shoe Company in 2005, Mark spent 20 years at Minneapolis-based General Mills, a $20 billion global manufacturer and marketer of consumer foods. During his tenure at General Mills, he held various roles in the Financial Operations, Marketing and Corporate Development areas of the company.

Mark’s education includes a bachelor’s degree in Economics from St. Olaf College, and an Executive MBA degree from Stanford University. He is married to his wife Cathy, and has two adult daughters. Mark supports the local Red Wing community by serving as a Red Wing YMCA trustee and board member for Every Hand Joined, an education-focused Red Wing organization. He lives in Excelsior, Minnesota, and his hobbies include running, biking and traveling.

Red Wing Shoes is a privately-held company based in Red Wing, Minnesota. The company manufactures products world-wide and sells through its wholesale and proprietary retail channels. The Company markets Red Wing, WORX, Vasque and Irish Setter brand footwear, as well as Red Wing brand workwear and accessories world-wide. The company also owns S.B. Foot Tanning Company and the St. James Hotel in Red Wing

About Jim: 
Jim is the founder of Cardinal Board Services (CBS) and works closely with companies that want to upgrade their Board of Directors.  Jim has been in the Executive Search for 25+ years starting Cardinal Mark and CBS.

Club E will be joined by Matt Bochnicek, CEO & Founder of Ascendex Consulting  to discuss how small and medium sized businesses can leverage technology to compete against the largest companies in the world. 
In the past, the latest technologies have only been available to the largest companies. Today, that is no longer the case. When small businesses combine their expertise and knowledge of their customers with the latest and greatest technology, there is nothing stopping them from being the David in a Goliath world. 
Learning Objectives: 
1) Technology can be an enabler and competitive differentiator when done correctly.

2) The latest and greatest digital technology is now available to and consumable by all.

3) Businesses should be both strategic and practical when deciding where to invest in new technologies. 

About Matt: 
Matt has over two decades of strategic growth, innovation, and enterprise technology leadership experience. Matt works with clients in the areas of business and technology strategy, technology centered innovation, process improvement, and change management. Prior to founding Ascendex, Matt was a consulting partner in one of the largest accounting and consulting firms in the U.S. where he built and led the firm's Twin Cities consulting practice, one of the largest in the Twin Cities. Matt has worked with hundreds of organizations in a variety of industries over his career, ranging from small businesses to some of the largest corporations in the world. Matt is a former Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal 40 Under 40 Honoree and is an adjunct faculty member at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. Matt received an MBA from the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, and a BA from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.

Club E will be joined by Renee Frey, Founder of TalentQ to discuss best practices around hiring key talent. 

When employees thrive...businesses thrive. 

There is a direct correlation between morale, productivity, and revenue and with today's reliance on technology and home offices, leaders are having to shift how they attract and interact with their employees.  

Join the conversation and learn how to: 
• Virtually engage with your employees in new, creative ways 
• Effectively hire and onboard in a virtual environment 
• Reassess your employment branding so you are competitive in the market
This Mastermind session will empower you to 
• Virtually engage with your employees in new, creative ways
• Effectively hire and onboard in a virtual environment
• Reassess your employment branding so you are competitive in the market

About Renee: 
As a recruiting expert, speaker, author, and podcast host, Renee Frey founded TalentQ, Inc., a nationwide recruiting firm to clear the noise in recruiting and improve the process for everyone involved.  Renee has over 17 years of recruiting experience in a Search Firm and Fortune 30 Company and is the author of, "I Hate Mondays: A Guide to Landing a Job That Makes You Jump Out of Bed."  Renee is sought out by industry leaders to speak and educate on topics related to the recruiting industry and the complexities of today’s employment market. TalentQ is proud to be certified by the Women’s Business Development Center as a Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE) and Women Owned Small Business (WOSB) and is revolutionizing the recruiting industry with their proven process backed by data analytics.

Club E will be joined by Björn Stansvik to discuss finding the right opportunities at the right time. 
We will be covering; seizing an opportunity window with appropriate or not appropriate timing, honing in on how we are riding the pandemic and post-pandemic waves as it relates to people, process and technology as well as trends.
Learning objective: Provide a framework or food for thought for pandemic and post-pandemic adaptations. 
About Björn:
As founder and CEO of global software design and development firm MentorMate, Björn Stansvik has steered the company’s vision from inception to 700 full-time employees, accelerating digital ideas with end-to-end technology services since 2001. Björn has worked in high-tech and strategic business development in Europe, Latin America, and the United States at leading companies including Procter & Gamble, Ericsson, and Arthur D. Little prior to founding MentorMate in 2001.
Björn remains a guiding force for MentorMate, constantly challenging the team to explore the boundaries of new technologies like AI and cloud computing and to pioneer digital innovation in healthcare as well as entering new geographic markets. Under his leadership, the company has grown its design and technical capabilities across multiple industries.
MentorMate was named a Top ICT Employer in Bulgaria, and the Star Tribune included MentorMate on its Top 150 Workplaces list. The newest of its seven offices opened in AstraZeneca’s BioVentureHub in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2016.
Björn holds a Master’s of Science in Business Administration from the Gothenburg School of Economics and has completed a Master’s thesis in Industrial Economics at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.
As a recognized technology innovator, Björn has won numerous distinctions and is a regular speaker to business groups on entrepreneurship, technology, and management. 

https://streamlabs.com/clubentrepreneur

Club E will be joined by Mark Klingsheim, Managing Partner of SIMA Partners LLC to discuss best practices for hiring. 
As an entrepreneur, business owner, some of the most important decisions you make are your choices regarding people. How can you make better decisions in hiring, and how to help people succeed faster.
About Mark: 
Mark Klingsheim has worked with top leaders for over two decades as an executive recruiter, having conducted hundreds of searches to help organizations find their next great leader. Mark is a Managing Partner of SIMA Partners, an executive search firm that conducts searches for corporate and non-profit clients. Mark has been a student of leadership for most of his life; he has always been fascinated with what makes great leaders successful. 
Motivated To Lead Podcast

Club E will be joined by Kurt Schmidt, President at Foundry and Host of Schmidt List to discuss strategies to keep your employees and clients engaged in a virtual environment. 

During this time while we work through a pandemic it’s become more and more important to engage with our staff, clients, and new prospects regularly. Let’s talk about what works and what doesn’t work.

Learning Objectives:
Take aways for how to attract new business and new employees
How to keep current employees engaged
How to keep top of mind and provide good customer service with clients

About Kurt: 
As Foundry’s President, Kurt leads the company’s strategic direction while also casting a wide net to meet with businesses in order to understand their challenges and evangelize how Foundry can help them through design and software development. Kurt joined The Nerdery in 2010 and helped them grow from 50-500 Nerds in less than six years. During that time, Kurt’s team delivered over $300M worth of custom software development to Fortune 500 companies. In 2016 Kurt joined Foundry as President where he took his 20+ years of agency experience and build a new kind of software design company. Since then, Foundry has more than quadrupled in size and now sits comfortably on the 2020 INC 5000 Fastest Growing Companies list. He also moonlights as a podcaster and YouTuber as host of The Schmidt List, with weekly interviews featuring movers and makers in technology and design.