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Your Cheat Sheet for Biz 417's 2025 Think Summit
Biz 417’s 2025 Think Summit was packed with bold ideas, inspiring stories and useful business strategies. Read about some of the best moments from the day's talks.
by Katie Pollock Estes
Apr 2025
Biz 417’s 2025 Think Summit is a wrap. And dare we say it was the best one ever? The day was packed with excellent speakers sharing big ideas, all-day-long networking opportunities and more inspiration than ever before. Here is our top takeaway from each of the day’s talks—plus a link to purchase on-demand access to the presentations for anybody who missed the big event.
Community Starts with Contribution
All True Co-Owner Jesse Tyler set the tone for the day by reminding us all how much we love this place we call home—and how we can feed our sense of belonging through engaging with and contributing to our community. Place matters, he told us, and community is an ecosystem that needs care and cultivation to survive. Springfield won’t become the best place to live if we’re competing with and comparing ourselves to other cities. Instead, we need to build something that is uniquely Springfield. And on that note, we began the day with our hearts beating hard for the Ozarks as we dove into an event filled with inspiration.
Disagreeing Well is an Art Form
In one of the most tactical sessions of the day, City Utilities President/CEO Dwayne Fulk shared a step-by-step guide to resolving conflict by turning disagreements and negotiations into something that feels a lot more like collaboration. You need to watch his entire talk to learn all about it, but the tip that made the whole auditorium chuckle was this: Use your late-night FM DJ voice. He also told us to think like a hostage negotiator. Are these tips at odds with each other? You might be surprised to learn they are not. At the end of the day, he said, remember not to compromise: “Meeting in the middle is usually a bad deal, or worse than no deal.”
MSU Athletics Are About to Change Everything
Missouri State University’s recent move to Conference USA is going to have big impacts—not just on MSU fans and the school’s student athletes, but on the community as a whole. In fact, Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Patrick Ransdell and Head Football Coach Ryan Beard say the change means a whole lot more than just some new opponents on the schedule. It’s an opportunity for local businesses to gain widespread exposure thanks to the games’ planned national broadcasts on ESPN. The improved player experience will be an attractor when it comes to athlete recruitment, and the improved fan experience will be a big driver in Missouri State’s overall enrollment growth goals. As both speakers and moderator Callie Caroll-Swafford put it: This change is good for growth. The bigger and better MSU gets, the bigger and better the region gets. They grow together.
If You Don’t Entertain, You Might Disappear
Silver Dollar City’s Director of Content & PR Joey Thorsen taught us the brand-building connection between the heyday of Route 66, the fast-moving world of social media and a shark infestation. Yes, I said shark. A joke Thorsen shared on SDC’s socials in 2020 about sharks in Mystic River Falls exploded with engagement that is still part of the online conversation today, five years later. That’s because he’s cracked the code for staying true to your brand, connecting with your audience, and infusing social media with just the right amount of irreverence. What does that have to do with Route 66? Well, the historic highway’s quirky roadside attractions were how businesses got drivers to slow down and make a stop. Today, businesses aren’t stopping highway drivers, they are stopping Instagram scrollers—and, Thorsen says, you have to entertain them, or you’re yelling into the wind.
You Can Turn a Challenge into a Gift
Ashleigh Bentz, Certified Prosthetic/Orthotic Assistant at CoxHealth Prosthetics and Orthopedics, shared her personal story of how being an amputee gave her resilience, confidence and empathy. And if you are curious how inspired the audience was by her talk, you only need to know one thing: She got an instant standing ovation. Take it from us: You need to get Think Summit streaming access, so you can hear about her journey in her own words—from having her lower leg amputated as a toddler to growing into her current role helping other amputees as they face the challenges she knows so well.
A Sci-Fi Dream World is (Almost) Here
JMARK CEO Tom Douglas talked about how fast-moving technological change isn’t just inevitable, it’s happening right this minute. From economic outlooks to predictions about the future of the workforce, everything points back to AI automation, and Douglas urges leaders to adapt to the changing tech landscape, to make AI agents part of their org charts, and to onboard them like any other employee by teaching them company values and voice. Will this replace humans? Heck no. It’ll free up humans’ time, so we can do the work we want to do. And with all that in mind, we have to admit: The thing Douglas talked about that we simply can’t get out of our minds is the prospect of an in-home humanoid robot who’ll do our chores. (Hallelujah, right?) These are expected to hit the market within about 10 years, at roughly the cost of a new car.
Depression is Not a Weakness
Zach Troutman, founder of Follow the Leader, shared a deeply personal and vulnerable story about the loss of his best friend to suicide. While Troutman tried to be someone his friend could look up to—highlighting his successes and being an example of the American Dream—he hid his own struggles with mental health, seeing them as a weakness that wouldn’t help his friend succeed in life. He says, “I missed the chance to be real with him, to tell him I’m dealing with stuff too, I’m hurting.” His advice: Be transparent and vulnerable with your friends now. If you’re hurting, say something. Don’t struggle alone. Oh, and check in with your friends—even the ones who seem like they have it all together.
Who Sees You When They Look in the Mirror?
O’Reilly Auto Parts is known for its non-stop growth (it’s up to more than 6,000 stores!), great customer service and recognizable jingle. What you might not know unless you’ve seen the business from the inside: It has also built an incredibly and intentional company culture. Vice President of Corporate Services Julie Gray and Director of Communications and Recognition Kari Hamra shared some of the ways they work hard to lift team members up and help them grow, from meaningful recognition to a philosophy of promoting from within. But the quote that gutted us came when Gray recounted what a speaker at their annual conference said, “When you look in the mirror, you see people who influenced you. What’s more important is who looks in the mirror and sees you.”
The Windshield is What Matters
Nixa High School Head Football Coach John Perry is motivation in human form, whether he’s inspiring his team or speaking to an auditorium full of local businesspeople. His talk included a nailbiting story about leading a team to an unexpected championship victory, the importance of servant leadership and how reaching the difficult “edge” might be the beginning of something big. Our favorite piece of advice, though, was to think about the mirrors in your car when you decide what to focus your thoughts on. The rearview mirror? It’s important to know where you came from, but you can’t drive forward if that’s where you’re looking. Instead, look out the windshield. It’s bigger, it’s wider and it’s how you see what you need to do right now to get where you want to go.
Every Day You Have a Chance to Rebrand
When Jason Hynson, executive director of Victory Mission, stepped into his role, the organization had a reputation as “your grandma’s soup kitchen” and was struggling financially. He rebranded, creating entrepreneurial projects like Equip Coffee Company. But in rebranding the organization, he also realized that Victory Mission itself was in the business of rebranding the people it serves. Case in point, the young man who was taken from his high school in handcuffs and has now grown into his dream of being a chef, with help from Victory Mission’s life-changing services.
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Don’t Apologize for Taking the Break that Takes Care of You
CoxHealth Vice President of Human Resources Andy Hedgpeth, City Administrator of the City of Republic David Cameron and COO of Academy of Hair Design Linda Daugherty work in very different industries but all have something in common: They have added sabbaticals to the way they do business. They each had different reasons (succession planning and supporting employees’ mental health, for example) and different processes in place. It was inspiring to hear how a huge organization like CoxHealth and a small business like Academy of Hair Design could find ways to tailor sabbaticals to their needs and resources. And as Daugherty said, it was on sabbatical that she “learned how to breathe again.”
Listen To Your Customers
Silver Dollar City Company President Brad Thomas is the ultimate hype man, shouting out and supporting just about everybody—and that includes Silver Dollar City’s customers. Although SDC is a 65-year-old company with an 1880s theme, it doesn’t spend too much time looking backward. Instead, Thomas and his team engage in strategic 10-year planning and collect loads of data from customers to help shape how they will grow the company. Customer feedback guided their recreation of the beloved Fire in the Hole ride and told them they would soon need to enter the resort business. Our favorite tidbit: The video Thomas showed that demonstrated how the theme park’s focus on its mission (“We make memories worth repeating.”) and vision (“We bring families closer together.”) played out in the sweetest possible way. Trust us, you just have to watch it for yourself. It’s too good!
Oh, One More Thing!
The final session of the day was an all-speaker panel, featuring fast-paced bits of advice from all the Think Summit presenters. Our favorite moment was when Tom Douglas said his biggest takeaway from the day was to “be bold.” Boldly and bravely and unapologetically do whatever it is you’re committed to, whether that’s protecting mental health, planning for the future, embracing technology, building community or lifting others up. So there you have it! Get out there and do something big and bold.
Want More?
If your mind’s on fire, you don’t have to stop here. Purchase a Virtual Access Ticket to view all the Think Summit presentations.
