Hosted by the Ankeny Young Professionals

COST IS $20 | PREMIUM BREAKFAST BUFFET INCLUDED WITH REGISTRATION

RSVP for this event at:  http://web.ankeny.org/events/AYP-Regional-Chamberwide-Breakfast-Featuring-Kyle-Sexton-2838/details

Topic: Why Loud is Losing

Speaker: Kyle Sexton

The customer isn’t always right, but they have a thousand friends and an iPhone. Learn how today’s businesses are finding fans, and where to find yours. Marketing strategist Kyle Sexton will inspire you with stories of remarkable businesses and strategies for attracting more of your ideal customers.

Kyle Sexton loves business. Kyle’s first business was selling dollar bills for two dollars each in sixth grade. By learning to fold a dollar bill into a ring that a person could wear, he discovered that people valued watching the transformation as much as owning the outcome.

While attending the University of Oregon – as other students preferred the party scene over studying – Kyle avoided both by reading and writing business plans. He landed a summer job as a real estate apprentice for a developer who was willing to teach him everything he knew about business.

Still in his teens, Kyle had 12 employees and a promising house-painting business. By aligning employee bonuses with perfect customer ratings and testimonials, he enjoyed springs and summers of great success, but his lack of leadership training ushered in falls of utter failure.

Broke and broken from two years of employer burnout, Kyle sold his business and retreated a hundred miles from home to a college where he could help coach men’s basketball and practice with the team for three seasons. He took advantage of every opportunity a smaller college offered, including running for student council and serving the college newspaper as photographer and sports editor.

Fully recharged, he traded his new skills in graphic design and layout to a local health club for a chance to sell memberships on commission and learn the membership business. A year later, he was bundling membership packages, running campaigns and training employees to sell value-based membership tiers.

Back in his hometown of Salem, Oregon, Kyle began looking for leadership opportunities. He found it working for Mike McLaran at the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce. It’s been said that great leaders give meaning to the work, and after a very short while working for a great leader, Kyle found the meaning in the work. This fueled many changes to the structure and model of the chamber, propelled by popular benefits and national acclaim.

The son of a teacher and coach, Kyle now coaches and teaches people who want to transform their organization’s marketing from boring to booming, from scattered to aligned, and from noisy to powerful.

Business and organizations are looking for answers to their questions about the future. Kyle Sexton brings fresh perspective on marketing strategy, membership development, social media and team leadership.