Categories

2025 Agenda

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

12:00 P. M. – 1:00 P. M. 

Booth Setup

1:00 P. M. – 1:30 P. M. 

Welcome

1:30 P. M. – 2:15 P. M. 

First Breakout

Gain valuable insights into navigating the complexities of shipping products, whether it’s a single unit, a case or a pallet. With this session you’ll learn cost-effective strategies to streamline your shipping process. 

2:15 P. M. – 2:30 P. M. 

Break

2:30 P. M. – 3:15 P. M. 

Second Breakout Session

3:15 P. M. – 3:30 P. M. 

Break

3:30 P. M. – 4:15 P. M. 

Third Breakout Session

4:15 P. M. – 4:30 P. M. 

Break

4:30 P. M. – 5:15 P. M. 

B.A.I.L – Banker, Accountant, Insurance and Legal
Run By Nebraska Enterprise Fund

5:15 P. M. – 7:00 P. M.

VIP Reception

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

7:00 A. M. – 9:00 A. M. 

Registration | Younes Conference Center South
416 W Talmadge Road, Kearney, NE 68845

8:00 A. M.

Exhibitor Booths Open

8:00 A. M. – 9:00 A. M. 

Continental Breakfast and Networking

9:00 A. M. – 9:15 A. M. 

Conference Welcome

9:15 A. M. – 10:00 A. M. 

Keynote Speaker – Chelsea Peitz

10:00 A. M. – 10:15 A. M. 

Networking Break

10:15 A. M. – 11:00 A. M. 

Concurrent Sessions

Sales is a process and an intense and thoughtful focus on customer service is part of that process. The sale isn’t done simply because you closed or someone bought from you. The ongoing piece of sales is your follow up and continued service and value that you bring in addition to your product or service. Customer service is the bare minimum. It’s answering the phone, an email, a text. It’s providing an answer to a question.

Customer experience is doing all of those things, but always considering the impact of HOW you do those things will have on new and repeat business. We have opportunities every day to do what we should do vs. doing what we want to do. Business and customer service are no different.

We make mistakes, we unintentionally miss when it comes to expectations of our products or services, it’s when those things happen that we must do what we should do versus what we want to do. Ego and pride not only get in the way of making good business decisions they go one step further and make you believe that the decision being influenced by your ego and pride is the correct decision for you and your business.

Takeaways:

  1. How to develop a better process.
  2. The difference between customer service and customer experience.
  3. Doing what you should do vs. doing what you want to do.

Intro: Customer-Centric Content and CX Strategies Make All the Difference

  • Social media can seem vast and daunting, but it doesn’t have to be.
  • I’m going to show you cutting edge strategies for turning clicks into customers with real-life case studies to back them up
  • Learn how to:
    • Craft content that captivates your audience
    • Leverage social media platforms for maximum impact
    • Create unforgettable customer experiences
    • Build brand loyalty and drive sales

Compelling Content Fuels Sales

  • Targeted content can drive leads and conversions across diverse business segments.
    • Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
    • Rather than just pitching your products or services, content marketing helps potential customers see how you can solve their issues.
    • The true power of content is its ability to build relationships — relationships are built on trust and trust drives revenue.
    • Our industry is all about relationships and we try to reflect this in our social media strategy. Social media is a giant referral system and everything we do is geared toward building relationships and loyalty.
    • Working with influencers, whether they’re well-known or more niche, is a great way to build relationships more organically and connect with a broader audience.

Unboxing Experiences Ignite Engagement

  • Diving into the art of creating unforgettable brand interactions by using unboxing concepts.
    • Target influencers within our footprint to receive boxes with giveaways to engage their audiences and build our brand awareness with younger demographics.

TikTok and Social Engagement Boost Local Businesses

  • See how a “Be Kind” campaign used social media to create cost-effective, interactive experiences.
  • We leverage trending topics (Ex: Stanley Cups) to engage audiences
  • We use TikTok to show off and support our small business customers
  • We also use TikTok a recruitment tool (Ex: day in the life of an employee videos)

Turning Reviews into Raving Fans

  • Learn how responding to reviews builds brand trust and customer satisfaction.
    • Reputation management: it’s important to influence what and how people think of your brand.
    • Consistency is key: we listen to customer feedback, respond promptly and keep doing it.

Conclusion

  • Your marketing efforts will pack more of a punch when you find areas for personal connection.

When we think of a brand, we see a logo–a sleek design that represents a group of products or services. But how does that logo make us feel?

Trick question. It doesn’t make us feel much of anything. In order to invoke emotions and create meaningful connections with our audience, we need our brand to become more than just our logo. We need our brand to become US. Why?

Because people connect with stories, not logos. They remember emotions, not taglines. In this session, you’ll discover why integrating personal stories into your brand strategy is crucial for building trust, fostering connections, and creating a lasting impact. Plus, you’ll learn key strategies for uncovering your most valuable stories and telling them in a way that will capture your listeners.

  1. How authentic personal stories can impact consumer trust and help establish or grow your brand.
  2. A mindset shift away from “My stories aren’t important” and strategies for transforming everyday experiences into captivating stories that highlight your values, vision, and unique perspective.
  3. How you can leverage neuroscience, empathy, and context to hold your audience’s attention.

11:00 A. M. – 11:15 A. M. 

Networking Break

11:15 A. M. – 12:00 P. M. 

Concurrent Sessions

Join Nesha Brown, a seasoned Founder and Idea Strategist, as she shares her proven strategies for attracting and engaging key decision-makers. With extensive experience in grant writing, project management, and business development, Nesha has successfully navigated the business landscape, securing vital partnerships and funding. In this dynamic presentation, she will reveal the secrets to making your business irresistible to those who hold the keys to your success. Learn how to present your ideas compellingly, build influential networks, and create lasting impressions that drive your business forward. Don’t miss this opportunity to transform your approach and elevate your business!

What are the three main takeaways people will get from your sessions?

1. Craft a Compelling LinkedIn Profile**: Stand out from the crowd with a profile that captures attention.
2. Optimize for Maximum Visibility: Ensure you’re seen by the right people with smart SEO tactics.
3. Engaging Headlines & Summaries: Learn how to write content that hooks your audience.
4. Personal Branding Strategies: Position yourself as a thought leader in your industry.

Learn the execution of your core values and what that can look like day to day. 

Here are three takeaways on how you can incorporate core values as part of owning them more in the way you lead each day.

  1. Review your core values regularly. This process helps us to better know them, live them more naturally and act them when put into different situations.
  2. Be intentional with core values. Take one of your core values and make it an intention for the day and look at ways to enhance your own values
  3. Incorporate core values into your message. Look for examples and make notes with respect to performance reviews, providing feedback in e-mail or shared notes and showing gratitude and praise to others face-to-face.
In this session, we will explore how tangible, real-life actions can surprisingly enhance your SEO and other digital marketing efforts. Leveraging customer feedback to generate content ideas, sponsoring local events to build backlinks and demonstrate local authority, and engaging directly with customers to garner reviews, you can be well on your way to digital dominance without even touching a line of code!

Practical Integration Techniques: Attendees will learn how to effectively integrate real-world actions with their digital marketing strategies

Enhanced Customer Engagement: They will gain insights into the importance of direct customer interactions, including how to encourage and utilize customer reviews to build trust and credibility online.

Measurable Impact Strategies: Attendees will discover methods to measure the impact of their offline activities on their digital marketing performance, ensuring they can track and optimize their efforts for maximum success.

12:00 P. M. – 1:00 P. M. 

Lunch

12:15 P. M. – 12:30 P. M. 

Tourism Wow Presentation
John Ricks

12:30 P. M. – 12:45 P. M. 

Best Nebraska Local Product Award
GROW Nebraska

12:45 P. M. – 1:15 P. M. 

All Businesses Start Out Small – A Panel Discussion

1:15 P. M. – 1:45 P. M. 

Networking Break

1:45 P. M. – 2:30 P. M. 

Concurrent Sessions

Social media offers a mix of opportunities and challenges for businesses. In this workshop, v2 Graphics & Marketing will explore the sweet side of social media, including building connections, providing crucial insights and advertising directly to potential customers. The two will also cover the sour side, such as managing posting fatigue, protecting your page from scammers, and dealing with internet trolls. This session will equip you with practical insights to navigate the sweet and sour of social media.

Stories are the fabric of our being and how people relate to us and experiences around them.  We also hear time and time again that in order to connect and sell someone, you need to tell them a better story.
 
If we have naturally been telling stories for centuries and we all know we need to tell a better story about our company/product to succeed, why is it so hard to do so?
 
In this presentation, we pull back the curtain on what foundational pieces make up a good story when it comes to your business.  A story that connects with people and leaves them asking how they can work with you or buy your product.
 
We will break down the framework step-by-step on how to pull this together in your marketing to really cut through the noise and the clutter in the marketplace.

When we think of a brand, we see a logo–a sleek design that represents a group of products or services. But how does that logo make us feel?

Trick question. It doesn’t make us feel much of anything. In order to invoke emotions and create meaningful connections with our audience, we need our brand to become more than just our logo. We need our brand to become US. Why?

Because people connect with stories, not logos. They remember emotions, not taglines. In this session, you’ll discover why integrating personal stories into your brand strategy is crucial for building trust, fostering connections, and creating a lasting impact. Plus, you’ll learn key strategies for uncovering your most valuable stories and telling them in a way that will capture your listeners.

  1. How authentic personal stories can impact consumer trust and help establish or grow your brand.
  2. A mindset shift away from “My stories aren’t important” and strategies for transforming everyday experiences into captivating stories that highlight your values, vision, and unique perspective.
  3. How you can leverage neuroscience, empathy, and context to hold your audience’s attention.

2:30 P. M. – 2:45 P. M. 

Networking Break

2:45 P. M. – 3:30 P. M. 

Concurrent Sessions

In this session, we will explore how tangible, real-life actions can surprisingly enhance your SEO and other digital marketing efforts. Leveraging customer feedback to generate content ideas, sponsoring local events to build backlinks and demonstrate local authority, and engaging directly with customers to garner reviews, you can be well on your way to digital dominance without even touching a line of code!

Practical Integration Techniques: Attendees will learn how to effectively integrate real-world actions with their digital marketing strategies

Enhanced Customer Engagement: They will gain insights into the importance of direct customer interactions, including how to encourage and utilize customer reviews to build trust and credibility online.

Measurable Impact Strategies: Attendees will discover methods to measure the impact of their offline activities on their digital marketing performance, ensuring they can track and optimize their efforts for maximum success.

Building high-performing teams is essential; so is fostering managers who lead those teams. If you are in a supervisory role this session is for you; if you coach, teach or mentor others, this session is also for you. We will delve into how to hire the right people, but more importantly how to properly teach, coach, lead, and mentor those people to create successful teams. Attendees will learn strategies for recognizing who to invest into; how to develop staff and what effective delegation looks like. 

Nex-Tech, a telecommunications leader since 1951, boast a workforce of 315 professionals and annual revenues exceeding $72 million. Pioneering innovative solutions, we connect businesses through our broadband network. With a focus on personalized customer service, we offer premium Internet and enterprise IT solutions like “as a Service.” Renowned for our exceptional Technology as a Service (TaaS), we facilitate a seamless transition to modern IT infrastructure with proactive service and comprehensive software integration.
 
Every good relationship builds on trust, and at Nex-Tech, we thrive on building long-lasting relationships that set us and our customers up to succeed. 

Christine will talk about hiring and retaining reliable, motivated employees that will help your business grow. She will give tips on seeing through the interview facade to a candidate’s true nature and deciding which candidate will be the best fit for your business.

Join Nesha Brown, a seasoned Founder and Idea Strategist, as she shares her proven strategies for attracting and engaging key decision-makers. With extensive experience in grant writing, project management, and business development, Nesha has successfully navigated the business landscape, securing vital partnerships and funding. In this dynamic presentation, she will reveal the secrets to making your business irresistible to those who hold the keys to your success. Learn how to present your ideas compellingly, build influential networks, and create lasting impressions that drive your business forward. Don’t miss this opportunity to transform your approach and elevate your business!

What are the three main takeaways people will get from your sessions?

1. Craft a Compelling LinkedIn Profile**: Stand out from the crowd with a profile that captures attention.
2. Optimize for Maximum Visibility: Ensure you’re seen by the right people with smart SEO tactics.
3. Engaging Headlines & Summaries: Learn how to write content that hooks your audience.
4. Personal Branding Strategies: Position yourself as a thought leader in your industry.

3:30 P. M. – 4:00 P. M. 

Keynote Session

4:00 P. M. – 4:15 P. M. 

Closing Remarks

4:30 P. M. – 6:00 P. M. 

Networking Happy Hour
McCue’s Taproom
2008 A Avenue, Kearney, NE

Networking Happy Hour at McCue's Taproom
Feature Box Image