Small business conference set for next month

A Colorado Springs company that has been offering clinics for high school football coaches is expanding next month into offering conferences for small businesses on sales, marketing and human resources.

Glazier Clinics LLC is launching its Revenue North Small Business Growth Summit on Jan. 20-21 at the Antlers Hilton hotel in downtown Colorado Springs. The conference, which costs $99 for each participant or $299 for a five-person staff, will feature 40 local speakers at 66 sessions on topics ranging from lead generation and conversion to measuring systems for marketing and keys to effective hiring. (To register, go to www.revenuenorth.com )

Glazier CEO Chris Coughlin said he began developing plans for the conference in April after finding that it would cost him more than $1,000 each to send his staff to a marketing clinic. He plans a second Revenue North summit in the Denver area in May and may do one other elsewhere in the state later next year. He hopes to attract about 600 participants to the first summit in the Springs, but can accommodate up to 1,000 attendees.

“We hope to increase the speed of training for small businesses and increase their ability to keep up with and dominate their competition,” Coughlin said. “One head coach told me that it took five to 10 years for the West Coast offense to spread across the nation, and now it only takes five to 10 minutes to spread that knowledge. We hope to increase speed and transfer of knowledge to small businesses in the same way we have for football coaches.”

Speakers at the Revenue North summit in the Springs include BiggsKofford CEO Chris Blees, ValuSource CEO David Fein, Saligent CEO Laura McGuire and Colorado Springs Technology Incubator CEO Ric Denton. Ted Wright, CEO of Fizz Corp., a Georgia-based word-of-mouth marketing agency for beverage companies, is keynote speaker for the conference. The Colorado Small Business Development Center Network will provide free small-business counseling for attendees.

Coughlin started early as an entrepreneur in his northern Michigan hometown, at 7 years old taking mail from mailboxes to the doorstep of the recipient in hopes of a tip, but quickly found out from a police officer that doing that was a crime. He later attended Michigan State University before leaving to start seven companies and work for several other small businesses over the next 20 years.

Coughlin started MEGA Clinics in 1996 to train high school football coaches; he later acquired competitor Glazier Clinics and kept the company’s name. Glazier has trained more than 50,000 coaches a year for the past 30 years, operating 30 clinics annually across the nation in February and March that use top college and National Football League coaches as instructors.
—
Contact Wayne Heilman: 636-0234 Twitter @wayneheilman
Facebook Wayne Heilman