Dennis Sobotka is an expert in Category Management Best Practices, Strategic Business Planning and Store Design. Sobotka is a Managing Partner with a management consulting firm dedicated to helping retailers, wholesalers, and manufacturers realize the advantages of ECR and Category Management in today's competitive business climate. Sobotka's international and domestic retail consulting work includes major retail formats: Supermarket, Drug, Supercenters, MASS, and Hypermarkets.

His work involves the areas of Category Management Best Practices Implementation, Capability Assessment of Retail Organizations, Mission/Strategy Development, Consumer Decision Development, Organization Design, Category Management Training, Efficient Assortment, Strategic Category Role Development, Destination Category Store Presentation and Store Design and Layout.

Sobotka is the international leader in the development of Next Generation Store Design based on the principle of Category Management and Strategic Consumer Category Advantage. In addition, Sobotka is an international speaker and author on the subject known as "The Art of Living". He holds success seminars on "What Does it Take to be Successful in Life?", based on the subject of his book in progress, Life's Mentorship Cycles to Success.

Dennis Sobotka is a partner of The Partnering Group, Inc. (TPG based) in Cincinnati, OH. The Partnering Group is a management consulting firm dedicated to helping retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers realize the advantages of ECR and category Management in today's competitive business climate. TPG provides consulting services, training programs and decision support software to major consumer goods manufacturers, retailers and wholesalers in the U.S, Europe and the Pacific Rim. As an affiliate company of TPG, Retail Directions, Inc. (RDI) specializes in training retail organizations and their suppliers in the development and implementation of Category Management.

Prior to joining The Partnering Group, Mr. Sobotka spent over 17 years in management at TOPS Market. His experience at TOPS include:

• Designed and led successful implementation of all phases of Category Management at TOPS Markets in Buffalo, NY, considered one of the most successful retail implementations in the U.S.
• Experienced in all line retail functions - store operations, procurement and merchandising and logistics.
• Experienced in a wide range of ECR based initiatives, including the introduction of Electronic Data Interchange EDI) and Continuous Replenishment (CRP)/Quick Response and supplier multi-functional team collaboration.

Mr. Sobotka holds a B.A. degree from the State University College of Buffalo. He lives with his wife Patricia and three children in Buffalo.

BUSINESS TOPICS

1. Creating Strategic Competitive Advantage
2. Strategic Multi Retail Format Development
3. Strategy Development & Planning
4. Next Generation Store Design
5. Category Management (Strategic Business Planning)

MOTIVATIONAL TOPICS

1. Life & Career Success Planning
2. Goal Setting and Life Cycles
3. Personal Development: Mentorship & Role Models
4. The Power of Positive Visualization

GEOPOLITICAL TOPICS

1. Global Big Picture Summary
2. American Empire Peak / Decline
3. Understanding the New North American Union

FINANCIAL TOPICS

1. American Empire Crisis: Economic, Financial, Currency

Description of BUSINESS Topics

Creating Strategic Competitive Advantage (30 to 120 minutes)

1. Strategic direction provided to position retailers to achieve a strategic competitive advantage in the marketplace.

• To assist retailers in reinventing and redesigning the retail format to reflect consumer needs and strategic category roles.
• Link category strategies into format design and innovation.
• Planning of multi-category seasonal/event promotions and integrate into calendar.
• Develop and deploy vendor scorecards.
• Complete deployment and linkage of standard retail suite.
• Leverage standard retail suite with category planning, execution, and scorecard.

2. Strategic Multi Retail Format Development (30 to 120 minutes)

• Dennis has delivered significant results with multi-format retailers around the world.
• Dennis' work focuses on strategic vision/action plan, multi-format strategic positioning and Category Management business planning and implementation.
• Offers suppliers and retailers new creative strategic directions to design and build their categories and store design and layouts.
• This process assists retailers in reinventing and redesigning their retail format to reflect consumer needs and strategic category roles.
• This process positions suppliers for category leadership in executing Category Business Planning.
• Dennis's work is re-shaping the look of retail formats around the world.

3. Strategy Development and Planning (30 to 60 minutes)

• Development of Long, Medium, Short term strategy and planning for any business, organization or personal needs.
• Dennis uses a defined process that has proven business results.
• Dennis uses a series of cascading umbrellas to link a total organization together and focused for results.

4. Next Generation Store Design (60 to 120 minutes)

• Dennis is recognized for his work in spearheading the Next Generation Store Design process that offers retailers a strategic direction to design and build their next generation of store designs and layouts.
• This process assists retailers in reinventing and redesigning their retail format to reflect consumer needs, solution centers and strategic category roles.
• Retail Store Design formats Dennis has reinvented and redesigned includes Hypermarkets, Super Centers, Compact Super Centers, Supermarkets, Neighborhood Convenience Stores which included Clothing, Electronics, Home Improvement, Household, Pharmacy, General Merchandise and Grocery Departments/Categories.

5. Category Management (Strategic Business Planning) (1 to 4 hours)

• Dennis' 28 years experience both with retailers and suppliers, domestically and internationally, includes implementation of all aspects of Best Practices Category Management.
• Dennis' Category Management Implementation work includes many key areas: Corporate Mission/Strategy, Business Process/Category Roles Development, Organization Structure, Scorecard, Collaborative Relationships, Information Technology systems to support Best Practices Category Management.

Description of MOTIVATIONAL Topics

1. Life & Career Success Planning (1 to 8 hours)

• Caring Hands is a Mentorship Program that provides Success Seminars for individuals, groups, corporations and institutions.
• Dennis's success seminars focus on "Life & Career Success Planning" based on Dennis' business and mentorship experience.
• His workshops are designed to promote positive living and future based planning.
• The workshops include exercises in goal setting; worksheets on attitudes, disciplines, and life's cycles; and various tasks involving self-evaluation, visualization, and reflection.
• Ten years of Seminar Workshops across many organizations.

2. Goal Setting and Life Cycles (60 to 120 minutes)

• Establish realistic goals for short and long term planning.
• Learn to create a 10 year plan that will encourage the establishment of year to year goals.
• Recognize your life cycles that can influence the forecasting of your short and long term goals.

3. Personal Development: Mentorship and Role Models (30 to 60 minutes)

• Develop new disciplines and attitudes that will facilitate the success of reaching your desired goals.
• Identify your strengths and weaknesses in an effort to improve in some weak areas while nurturing your strengths.
• A real "How To" presentation.

4. The Power of Positive Visualization (30 to 60 minutes)

• Understand how to influence your daily situations through positive visualization.
• Training the mind to rehearse what outcome you are interested in achieving and then focusing through visualization of how to create those results.

Description of GEOPOLITICAL Topics

1. Global Big Picture Summary (1 to 4 hrs. or to 8 hours)

Index of the many, many subjects covered:

• Global: Global Warming
• Global: Peak Oil
• Global: World War III - Resource War
• Global: Globalization at all Levels
• Global: Peak Debt
• Global: American Empire Decline
• USA: New Canada - America - Mexico Region
• USA: Economic Crisis
• USA: Financial Crisis
• USA: Currency Crisis
• USA: Constitutional Crisis
• State: Shortages
• State: Property Taxes
• Individual: Paradigm Changes
• Individual: Health Protection
• Individual: Personal Finance
• Individual: Real Money
• Individual: Personal Actions

2. American Empire Peak / Decline (1 to 2 hours)

• Why understanding the American Empire Decline is important.
• Compare the American Empire Decline to three other past Empire Declines; Roman, British, and German.
• Comparing the OLD America (1776 to 1963) to the New American Empire (1963 to Today). This presentation was given in November 2006 at the New York Wealth Expo, sponsored by the Annex Learning Center with great audience response.
• This presentation has very timely given all the current worldwide events.
• American Constitution Crisis/Freedom to Fascism.
• This subject topic gives ISB an advantage over other speaking organizations.

3. Understanding the New North American Union

• Understanding the master plan for the New North American Union and the loss of USA Sovereignty.
• Understand the March 23, 2005 meeting in Waco, Texas between Mexico, Canada and USA.
• Understand President Bush's reluctance to enforce immigration laws due to the New North American Union.
• Understand the New NAFTA Super Highway from Mexico through USA to Canada.
• Understand the new currency, Amero, to be introduced shortly.

Description of FINANCIAL Topics

1. American Empire Crisis: Economic, Financial, Currency

• Understanding America's Financial Crisis involving Derivatives, Debt, Fraud, Money Supplies.
• Understanding America's Economic Crisis and the Kondratieff Wave.
• Why the USA Dollars lost purchasing power is so devastating to you and the citizens of America.
• Why Precious Metals are important to your investment portfolio.