Cultivate Valuable In-Person Meetings and Events with Eric Rozenberg

There we go. Most meetings feel like big cost centers, big waste of money and time. You wonder why you're even doing it. Eric Rosenberg turns these big meetings where you all gather and fly in or do whatever you do, the hotel expense, everything else into something that actually impacts the business, that drives the strategy of the business. His why. First blueprint is what we're talking about today. Turn face to face meetings into something with actual measurable results, measurable momentum for your business. I don't know, I'm feeling a little groovy today. This is Bill Gallagher. This is the Scaling Up Business podcast. I guess I haven't been in studio for a little while making, recording a show for, I don't know, I've just been traveling so much the last little bit. It's nice to be home doing something. So we bring our show to you every week with a story, a lesson, an example from a business expert, a guru, an author, somebody in the world of scaling up, growing your business, leveling up. And we do that every week. There's more than 630 shows now. Wherever you're getting this right now. So like subscribe, turn on the notifications like that and you'll get them in your feeds. If you go to our website, you can also sign up for our newsletter. Join us for one of our monthly workshops on scaling or something to do with growth. We put on workshops every month, either virtual or in person and you can find all that and more@scalingcoach.com ScalingCoach.com is, oh, look at that long title there on the screen. But scalingcoach.com is the website to go to and that's where you find all that and more. Anyway, without further ado, let me introduce a newer friend, Eric Rosenberg. And Eric Jones is from Florida. Today he is the first European elected chair of the global board of mpi, the Meeting Professionals International. He is the host of the Business of Meetings podcast and they got lots of episodes on making great meetings. He's an entrepreneur and a two time best selling Amazon author. We're going to talk today about his work on the why of meetings and how to make meetings better. He he's also the founder, president of Event Business Formula and I don't know, lives in Florida with his wife but he's originally from Belgium. So Eric, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Bill. I hope you have the subtitle for people who don't get my accent. So.

Your accent's not too bad. There's. You've been in Florida long enough. Florida and Belgium is An interesting combination, that's for sure. Right?

Absolutely. I'm glad to be here. We're glad to be Americans with my wife, our three daughters, and to be working and living in this amazing country.

Yeah. So let's talk. Pardon me, a little something in my throat. Why don't you share with us first how you got your start in the. In the whole event business. Like, what drew you to events? How did you come to be so tied to that?

Thank you. Yeah. So I was student business in Belgium and a member of isec, which is international association all over the world. I was participating in meetings in Congress, helping organize them as well. And then when I graduate, all my friends were going to the large firms and being involved in the student organization. I was in touch with everyone recruiting at PNG and Elaine Ever and Andersen Consulting and everything. But I didn't want to work in a large firm. But I didn't know what I was going to do. And I met a guy at the barbecue who had a stockbroker company and I developed his entire marketing department. And after two years, everything was done. I was not passionate about the financial world. And I met a couple on holidays and they told me that they were doing incentive trips and said, what is that? They said, well, it's corporations creating unique programs to reward or their best salesperson or their customers. And it's basically something you cannot reproduce if you go with your friends and family on holidays. It was like, whoa, that's amazing. I didn't even know there was an industry doing that. So, long story short, got into partnership with them, didn't work out, and decided to start my own business. And my two first client happened to be Cordis from Johnson and Johnson. They do the standard. I had someone from the family working there introducing me. And the other one was a friend from ISEC who was the number three of Cafe de Colombia, Juan Valdez. And so got me into the meeting with the president. And then I did all the meetings, customer program for them for years. And that's really how I started. It's a fabulous industry. I know sometimes it's considered. People said, oh, you're wasting money on meetings. It's because they don't know that it can be used in an effective way. And it's part of the strategy. And just in terms of economic impact, in the US it's $1.4 trillion of economic impact. So it's a mega industry that's sometimes not very well known.

You know, I think we all have different kinds of meetings, like many of us Participate in trade shows, or we go to conferences, and then we have our own sales meetings. We. We have customer meetings, user meetings. We have different kinds of things like that. And then you might also go to meetings or participate in organizing meetings. You and I are both in the EO organization, and we have been involved in both organizing as well as participating in those meetings in different ways over the years. There's a tremendous amount of money that gets spent, and we've all seen it where it goes wrong, where you pick the wrong hotel the wrong time, you forget why you're doing the meeting. People get involved and they pick the program, and then they start to fill it with things. And after a while, I was at a meeting in the Middle east just a couple years ago, and so many of us walked out of the meeting, like, why this hotel? Why this city, this time of year? Who picked these speakers? Like, it was just awful. I mean, there were moments that were great. And I would say that meeting was mostly salvaged by a few. Like the. The actual human connections, not by the actual intended content, which is. Well, right. All. All the speakers were. Had been speaking before. They were all skilled at what they did. It was just like, slightly off. Like, the purpose of the meeting, the focus, the. The relatability of it was just a little bit off. And so the whole thing, like, tremendous amount of money that, you know, it's not no value, but a very limited value where it could have been different.

Absolutely. You know, I. I actually created a methodology with my business partner back in Belgium. But it started with the question I was always asking, especially sales director, why do you do sales meeting every year? And they went, oh, because we do it every year. And I'm thinking, like, oh, my God, how can they even go to their board afterwards and justify that? And the best example I can think of.

I'm sorry, I said, because we did it before, because we did it last year. We did the year before.

Right, Exactly. Remind me of a meeting I had with a board member, head of marketing and events and communication of a very large financial institution in Belgium, which is international brand, and there were seven people, and we're discussing about their upcoming 10,000 employee meeting. And I was asking them questions, and after, I don't know, 20, 25 minutes, the only thing I could hear is, we need to align people. We need to align people. We need to align people. Great. Then I look at them, say, can you do me a favor? 60 seconds of your life, please. Each of you take a piece of paper, write down, which is for you, the three main objectives of the bank next year. And I collect the paper, guess what? Seven people, 11 objectives. And I look at them and say, you want to align 10,000 people? You're not even aligning yourself. So, you know, in that case, you have two options. The first one is, who the hell does the thing he is. But thank God they went for the second option, which was like, ah, you made us stink, really. And so we start reviewing with them the whole process, from the local wine and cheese evenings up to the sponsorship of the national soccer team. And we start looking why they're doing this, what are the questions they should be asking, who should be invited, how they're going to measure the impact. And that is a completely different approach. But I was just first of all, by asking questions, and too often the. The people that are leading organization, as well as the people that own an event business, are going straight to logistics instead of saying, okay, what's your industry? What are your challenges? Why do you do that? Who are the profile of the people coming? How are you going to measure success? And only then, of course, the logistics is very important. But it's almost a given that if you're working with professionals in the field, the logistics will be great. So it's more going back to the strategy. Why does a company invest sometimes a big amount of money? And I would tell you that I'm always surprised how much organization can pay consultants to come and we're talking like millions of dollars. And then when it comes to sharing the outcome, they just ask a junior person in the company to put a meeting together, thinking that it's going to inform everyone. It's fascinating how people can quickly forget about that.

You know, as you talk, one of the things that occurs to me is that a lot of times people just sort of assume that, well, you put the right people in the room and you talk about the usual things and it's going to be. And for sure, like the meeting in the Middle east that I went to, like, it did accomplish something, right? We got together, but. But it missed an opportunity. They did bring people together. Something moved, but there was a lot of money, right? You think about flying people, you know, two to $10,000 a person, then you got the hotel, then you've got the meeting room and the AV and the food and like, oh, my goodness, right. It adds up.

You know, you make me think of. And by the way, when you describe, there's also the international aspect and, and the cultural difference in management, we can talk another time. But that is Also a very important aspect. But we had a client which the largest consulting firm in the world, probably they had a new division which was more focused toward IT solutions. And one of the challenge was that the main company was not really recognizing them and there was some sort of discrepancy in the brand and in the alignment of people internally. And so I was meeting with the head of that new division and he said, we have this challenge. I said, okay, so what would be the best thing? Oh, the best thing would be for the global CEO to come and speak and broadcast that to the rest of the company. I said wonderful. And then he said, but I don't know when we're going to do that. Where are we going to do that? And I was like, where is the majority of your people in Europe? Where is the CEO base in London? Okay, just call his assistant, ask when he's got an opening in his calendar because pick the date, make sure he can come. And the rest we build around it. And it was like looking at me like, duh. So sometimes, you know, you don't have to start having complicated way of looking at things, but always come back to the why of the meeting, to the why of the face to face in person. And the other thing I want to tell you that you mentioned and is so important, you know, people talking about technology, people are talking about AI is going to replace everything. I am so confident that it's never going to replace the face to face aspect. And yes, AI is phenomenal and yes you can be much more efficient but the encounter you have at the trade show, the water cooler conversation, they don't happen online. There is a category of meetings or education that you can do online. But the rest, when it comes to business, when it comes to relationship with customer, when your sales team with aligning all the company and making sure that everyone understand what's going on as well as knowing what's going on in the industry, having new ideas, the serendipity of the, of meeting someone face to face will never going to be replaced ever.

Yeah, that's really the key, right? When I think about my Dubai meeting, like it's the time that we went to dinner, it's the time that we had the small breakout conversation. It, it's the little dinner and drinks on a boat that one of our friends organized and that I went along and it's the dancing at 3am with a few of the people that stuck around and were like those are the times where we connected. Those are the times where you saw the character of people where you grew to appreciate them more fully. Including the 3:00am thing, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, that conversation in the bar, you know, that kind of thing, you.

Know, that's something that would always make sure when I start my business, my first business, like I was involved in everything, nobody can do it better than me. It's my brand, blah blah, blah. I mean the classical mistake until I start delegating, but. And I will always make sure that the major program, even if I was not involved at all anymore in organizing it, I will be there the last evening at the bar with a client to prepare for the future. That's the best moment you have another thing that I'm thinking about. We both coaching accelerator for eo. Okay, you can do this theoretically, we can do this online. And there's a part of this online. As you know, Vern Arnish is the founder of that, not only of eo, but also the program. And we have videos of him that is explaining some part of the material which is great, but. And when you speak in front of the entrepreneurs, when you see their reaction, when you ask questions, when you are an entrepreneur yourself and you hear other questions in the room that make you think about something else for your business, this is not something that you're doing online. You see the reaction, the non verbal and plus the interaction afterwards. So that's really a mix between hybrid if you want, between what could be online but in person. And when you start thinking strategically about any type of organization, why you bringing people together? What is the impact that you want to have? How does that fit in your strategy? Then you start looking at meetings as an essential part of executing a strategy.

You know, it's funny, so as we're recording, right, we're in the middle for that accelerator program of execution. And you know, the, the slides, the worksheets, the exercises and the execution day are. They're the slides and the stories that we tell. And I tell the same ones. I will have done this one and the things again and again. There's a slight different emphasis. We're using more AI today than before. But. But the stories, the principles are largely the same. And I've now led this particular one for several hundred people this quarter across some different cities. And each person got different things out of it because of what they heard, because of what was going on in their life, because of the person they happened to be sitting next to that day, which maybe wasn't the person they were sitting to the prior day or the last year that you know, like that Kind of thing. Like those unique serendipitous things, they give rise to insights and ideas that, you know, you can't get it. And the feedback from someone, like, you're working on your priorities or you're thinking about your meeting, and then somebody shares something that, like, you weren't expecting, you weren't looking for, you didn't think it was broken in your business. And you realize, oh, I have a need for something. I have an opportunity. And I think there's a magic there. So constructing opportunities to gather people. Right. And I mentioned being out dancing at 3am and being in the bar and that kind of thing. And for sure, the connection. And like, you could also design it to get out of hand if you put too much social lubricant into the whole mix, if you set it up too crazy. Like, you can also, I've seen company meetings go wrong because we didn't stir the recipe just right. Let's talk about some of those. We're going to talk about the FIFA World Cup. But before that, why don't you talk to us about a volcano going off and disrupting.

Yeah. So I was still living in Belgium and had friends, were having lunch with some friends. And you know, in Belgium, it's totally okay to have a glass or two of wine during lunch. So I'm serving everyone, and my friend Mark goes, no, no, I'm flying this afternoon as a private pilot. I said, okay. Five minutes later, he's got a phone call, hangs up the phone. Look at me. Said, eric, give me a glass of wine. I said, mark, you're flying this afternoon? He said, no, they're closing the airport. I said, you mean they're closing the airport. I look outside, felt like it was in Florida, like a little cloud, and everything blew. And he said, no, is the volcano in Iceland? That was the name of it and erupted and there was a cloud of ashes that was going over Europe, closing the airport one after the other. And so there you are having lunch with friends on a Friday afternoon. Wonderful. And the following week, we had five programs, including an incentive trip to Vietnam. And it was like all hands on deck the whole weekend trying to find solution, working with different partners, going back to the client and being able to offer a solution that is something that you don't see because it's behind the curtain. But then you go on Monday morning to the client and you say, listen, this is what's happening. We're supposed to leave from Charles de Gaulle on Wednesday. People. The airport is still closed. People are stressed because they don't know that even if they can leave, are they going to be stuck in Asia? So I think you should postpone everything for three months. And they look at me, said, how much is it going to cost? I said, nothing. I said, what do you mean nothing? I say, no, the airline here, I have an email, they're postponing at no cost. And when it comes to the local program, my partner on site just totally agree, it's not our fault, including the major hotel in Hanoi, the dinner in Ha Long Bay, everything. And so we helped them communicate. People were calling to say thank you because they were stressed to go and supposed to be a reward. And so by doing, to be able to do that, not only you need to understand why an organization is doing something, but you need to have great partners. And by the way, everything was said on the phone with my partner going to the client on Monday morning, and I never sign anything with the client to say that it won't cost more. That's probably not always advisable, but that's something you can do with the right people. And quite Frankly, Bill, in 20, 25 years of having planned meetings, incentive trips, sales meeting, all over the world, in over 50 countries, I've never had one project that was executed exactly the way it was planned. And that's honestly, if you cannot cope with unexpected and somehow getting a kick out of something's happening and say, okay, I'm going to find a solution, and then this industry is not for you.

You know, I'm reminded how often, just before any meeting, there are all kinds of problems, threats, concerns, issues that can get in the way. And it starts to look like, well, maybe this is a bad time, maybe we should kick the can down the road, maybe we should cancel. I helped plan and deliver a meeting on Santorini a couple of years ago, and the meeting was originally scheduled for 2020. Right. And obviously it didn't happen. It got pushed out a few years because of COVID And then everybody came together and they made lots of modifications and that kind of thing to the meeting. In the end, lots of people got Covid at the meeting, even several years later. But of course, it wasn't the same global emergency anymore because of the changes in the, in the survivability and the vaccinations, things like that. But it was fascinating how, like, we had to be flexible. I was recently, I was on a trip just a couple weeks ago, and there was a security situation and lots of airlines canceled flights. And it looked like several of us who were due to fly out in a couple days. Like our flights are all canceled and nobody's flying and all the flights are full. And I think I booked three. My friend booked five different other flights on different carriers and options trying to get out. And I started to look at reorganizing my whole. My whole world, right? Like I would have to do this and that and so many different things to deal with it. And. And then in the end I ended up with a routing. So not everybody canceled. There were a few carriers that were still flying. And I ended up flying from a different. Through a different city. And it was a longer flight, but I ended up getting home actually a little ahead of schedule from when I was planned to be. And no disruption. So staying flexible, creating different options always seems to be the better thing. Like not just canceling everything and freaking out, but like, okay, let's create a couple plan B's and C's and D's and let's explore some things and let's see what we can do. And then, you know, I had a lovely flight home and my life went on as scheduled. It cost me a little bit more money, but I also made more money that week. I don't know why, like maybe the stars were aligned or like something was a little bit better, right? Because of that. Like it, it took care, you know.

The unexpected is the rule, that's for sure. The mindset is also very important. I remember we're doing a product launch for. For Schweppes Cadbury, Schweppes, the Agroom back then. And we are in Sevilla and everything is wonderful and with a three days program and it's the end of the afternoon and we got the Veneziador and the music and the Flamenco and everything and the sun is shining. And I call the airline and they said, sorry, we're going to be two hours late because they obviously fly several times in the day. And I went like, shoot. The whole program was great. And that's the last, you know, the last sharing that on the cake that unfortunately is not going to work. And that's what mindset is very important. I speak with my client and Theo is his name. He said, I got this. And he goes, take the mic. And it was his main client. We are told you 180 people. He said, ladies and gentlemen, are you enjoying yourself? Yay. That's a great day.

Yay.

You like the sun? Yay. You know it's raining in Brussels. Oh. I managed to delay the flight for two hours, everybody. Yay. So it's really, to your point, the question of mindset, try to focus on what you can control. And that's not only in this industry, obviously, but if you can focus on what you can control and the rest, what you cannot control, so be it. But also, if I may add another example, when it comes to defining what you're doing with the meeting, and that's the best example I can think of with an insurance company, the general manager, Luke was asking me to do an incentive trip in New York. And I asked him, okay, what are the challenge that you have in the company? And he said, eric, we're doing this for 20 years. I know you're going to do a great job. Do an incentive trip in New York. And at that moment I could have said, okay. But I look at him and I look at my watch. I said, five minutes, give me five minutes, not one more second, but I need to ask you more questions. He said, okay. And we ended up by understanding that the two main challenge they had was first, they had three generation of people working with each other, actually sitting next to each other, but not really working with each other. And second, those who were in the company for 20 years, you can do anything, they would be blase. And those that were there for two years, everything would do. And so knowing that, I start preparing for, for the program in New York, yes, we had the motorcade with police escort. Yes, we had the helicopter tour. Yes, we had the private breakfast with fashion show at 6 at Saks Fifth Avenue before it opens. Quite frankly, Bill, if you are in this industry, it's easy. You just make a phone call, it's fine. But what we did is that we work with a company called Song Division and we rented the Sears studio. And so everybody arrive and there was a band playing rock and roll. And Luke could say, this one played with Bruce Springsteen, this one played with Billy Joel, this one and Jon Bon Jovi. They were all very well known musicians. And then he looked at them and he said, now we're going to split you in four groups because there's three little studio and one main one. And you're going to have two hours with one of the professional musicians to find the tune on which you're going to sing and to write the words of your experience in New York the last three days. And of course in each group we had people that were there for 20 years and people that were there for two years in the company. And in each group we had the three different generation in the same group. So they worked together. Then they were recorded and sang in front of everyone else. And in the evening they thought that they were done and we were staying at the W in Times Square. We went out right. And. Right. And started working towards the Hard Rock Cafe. And, and if you know how Rock Cafe Times Square, they have a marquee that goes out. So we had a special authorization to take a picture on this platform. We had the logo flashing on the marquee when we were approaching. We had the private room, we brought the musician back and we had the entire company on stage singing the most entertaining of the four songs. I can promise you. Since then, every time they see the ball falling on 31st of December or if they see a movie with New York, they go, once I sang on the stage of the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square. And that is when you creating moments that people cannot duplicate if they go back with their friends and their family. And that's where you leverage the power of incentive trip. A face to face meeting for an organization.

Yeah, I think, I mean that speaks especially to connection and memories. Right. Creating a full experiential moment in time. For sure. The sounds. Right. But the sights, sights and sounds. And then you're in a restaurant, so there's going to be some smells. Right. And then like everybody together. It's really evocative of something. And you can picture and feel and think about that time that you were there. Absolutely, I was there. I know what that's like. Right. And. And if you have that shared between people, then you have a connection between them. Right. What, what bonds us as families? What. Well, family holidays, but also the challenges that we got through together where we helped each other out, like all of those kinds of things connect us.

It's a share experience or a shared vision. As you, you know better than I do. When you can share something together which is an experience or a shared vision, then you can rally everyone behind it. And that's the power then that you have with teams.

You know, one of my dearest friends also produces events as a production company, a different kind of events. They do like the halftime shows, they do the Expos in Dubai, they do the big, you know, the big games and the things like that that go on the big spectacles and they take years and they cost a lot of money and teams, you know, toil away in Kazakhstan and other places to create these big kinds of things. You have a story to share about FIFA World Cup. I think be a good time to talk about that. You said you could talk for a while on this. I'LL cut you off in 20 minutes.

Yes, yes. By the way, your friends putting the halftime show. I think I know who you're talking about. This company and what they do just with the halftime show. I'm always fascinated because everybody's watching the.

Artist, watching the preparation warmers, and they've got pyrotechnics. And it's over the top how they.

Put that together, how they set up everything and dismantle everything in. In five minutes. It's spectacular. Really spectacular. So, yeah, that the FIFA World cup was 1998, and it was in May that my client, which was Cafe de Colombia, Juan Valdez, the president, called me and said, eric, I have all the officials from Colombia, I have the top people in the coffee industry in Europe that are coming, so I need to have a group of 30 people for the semifinal and the final of the World cup in Paris. And I went like. But it's. It's. It's end of April, beginning of May. This is happening in July. I mean, every time everything is sold already is that. I know, but I. I can help, but I need you. I need you to deliver that. So I start looking, found somebody I had met at a conference that was involved in an organization and professional organization. So I thought I could trust her, which was a big mistake. And I went back to him, I said, I found the person this is. The price for the ticket is insane. He said, I have no choice. So he wired the money, I paid the tickets, we went with the hotel and everything. And then I went on the inspection a few days later to Paris, and she wasn't there. She sent me somebody who's like an interim person. And I look at that lady, and I said, she doesn't have the ticket.

Right.

I had this. This sixth sense. And she said, I don't think so. I became pale. So first thing, I went back to Brussels and I went to see the president of the company, my client, and I said, listen, this is what's happening. I don't think that she has the ticket. And he became. Billy was like, pale. I thought he was going to faint. You don't understand who's coming. I said, yes, I do. And I told him. So you remember the first time we met? You said, the people that you know in the same student organization, when we promise something, we deliver. I don't know how, but I'm going to deliver. And so for a month, I met everyone in the industry, in the soccer part in France, and if you were involved in 1998 for the World cup in Paris, you know, there was a big scandal all over the media about the fake tickets. And major company had hundred clients and on the morning off and couldn't go because they were the fake ticket. So long story short, I found somebody who had ticket, but not only for the semi final and the final in the package, which was extremely expensive, there was the concert of the three Tenors, Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras under the FL tower. And so I bought the thing, I went back to my client, I say thank you for your trust and said, here are the tickets for the semifinal. Here, the tickets for the final. By the way, thank you for your trust. Here you can invite everyone to the concert of the three Tenors. And he had tears in his eyes. It was just amazing. And so we went there and it was Friday 10th July 1998. I'll never forget, we're coming back from the concert of the three tenors. We're going to the hotel, it's about midnight, midnight 30. And then he look at me and said, oh, by the way, on Sunday, in two days, we need first to have a reception at the consulate at the Les Invalides. And I look at him, this is impossible, I cannot be there at 2:30 and have your reception. And at 4:00 clock we need to be at the start de France. France is playing against Brazil. Everybody's. I mean, the traffic is going to be insane. It's impossible to do it. You say, I have no choice, it's a political thing. So we went 30 at the invalid and when they came back an hour later, it's 3:30, 30 minutes later, we need to be in the state of France, which is impossible. So we go in the market of Renault Espace, I'm with the president, the first car, and we wait. And he said, eric, let's go. I said, please give me five minutes. And here you are, the police escort that was actually going to Charles de Gaulle to bring Henry Kissinger, who was living there. I had managed to get in touch with the dispatch and the person responsible for that. So they came official that we were in the car and we went from the Invalid to Stade de France in less than 30 minutes. On the day of the final, with all the traffic blocked, we were going counter traffic, we arrived just under it and it was the final. I can tell you, since then, I've never had so much stress in, in over a period of six months. But we're still thinking, talking about it today. There's always a solution, always a solution. But obviously that Little of luck, but this is something. And I shortened the story because we're on your podcast and I don't want to bore people, but if I tell you all the moment that I thought I had the ticket and that someone was lying, that someone was trying to sell fake tickets, and then they were, it was just insane. And finally we went to see France winning 30 against Brazil, which for Belgians hurt a lot because in, you know, in Belgium, we, we support Belgium. And then we just want to know who's going to beat France. That's the only thing that matters.

We want anybody to meet my. To beat my enemy. It doesn't matter. We'll root for anyone else.

Right now, it's good I'm supporting the US So I don't have to bother about that. But it was just amazing, a unique experience. With access to the Club France on the Champs Elysees. It was just a unique experience. And next year it's coming now here in North America. So I'm not doing that. I'm not planning meetings anymore. I'm helping business owners in our industry to grow their business. But the next time, I said, I can help you with everything, but I'm not responsible for the tickets.

Well, if you find yourself on the west coast for that, you'll have to come visit us, maybe stay with us for a day or two, do some things. I know they're going to do some stuff up in Seattle, but, yeah, it'll be very busy. So I, I'm hearing a few things, right? I'm hearing about creating memories and emotional connection, like creating some feeling around things and touching on all the senses. I'm hearing like, experiential. I'm also hearing like, the importance of remembering why you're doing the meeting or actually just thinking about and declaring why. Like sometimes you forgot why. You didn't say why. You just said a meeting. It was unconscious. And then it becomes something to invest in, not a big mere expense. Right. You're spending money to create a particular outcome that, that drives something. But you know why you're doing the meeting. And we've alluded to it a little bit, but maybe now is a good time to walk us through what is your. Like, what are the seven steps that you take companies through?

Yes. So thanks for the question. I'm not going to go into the details, but starting with the most important one that you mentioned. And that to me, it's the key to hold the process is going there and positioning yourself as a strategic partner. If you are the commercial Director of company xyz and I come to you and I said, bill, how many people are coming? Do you want double room, single room? You have any vegetarian? Do you want a welcome cocktail? You want a farewell dinner? You immediately look at me as the specialist of logistics and I'm not differentiating myself from anybody else. Now if I come to you and instead of asking those questions which are important, but we'll come to it later in the process, if I come to you and say, if I understand you well, your industry, the main challenges is this. From what I my research told me, you're trying to do this with your company and those are the objective that you have next year. And said, yes, who is coming to that meeting and what you expect them to do afterwards and how is this going to impact your bottom line? I'm positioning myself in a completely different way. And so that's the very first thing is to understand the industry that your client is to understand their challenges and then to move into the specific meetings and what it is that they are trying to achieve. And then you go into the design based on all of the above. Obviously you have the execution, you have the feedback afterwards. But what you do, the next step is to measure the impact. And in order to measure the impact, you don't wait that moment. It's part of the first conversation. And you can even link sometimes your fees to the success and having the opportunity to have even a flat fee or success fee based on those outcomes. But it's very important to know what you're going to measure and how you're going to measure it. For instance, we had a client, they were doing annual retreat and they have specific objective and we had the flat fee and different bonus based on on survey that they will answer a specific question that we agreed upon from the beginning. And the good thing is we had to charter plane for the company in two different locations. So when we were flying back, people had to answer the survey in the plane. If not, they cannot get out. So we got all the results. And so when you're able to measure that, then it's a different story. And for your client as well. Again, if you're the commercial director of a company, I give you all the data, you can go back to your exec meeting and say this is what we invest, but this is how you're measuring it. And that can be even one, two, three months down the road. And last but not least at the end is always trying to do something different. Don't try to do something more bigger or More expensive. Always look at doing something completely different, that ideally they're not going to compare. When it comes to sales meeting, it's very easy because there's new material, there is new way of new product, whatever it is. But even when it comes to an incentive, I was thinking of Sunny Music was one of our client. We did a fabulous incentive trip in Zimbabwe. I went to Victoria Falls and everything. They came back, the client came back and bought a page of advertisement in the industry magazine at that time to thank them for the amazing program. And two years later we had to do another program for the same people. But this time we went to India and did something completely different. They went back, they bought the COVID of the magazine. The competitor were calling my clients. What did you do with them? It's just insane. So it's just start with why you're doing this. Understanding the industry, understanding the objective, understanding the challenge of the client. Go back to specific meetings, how you're going to define success, what is the objective that they're trying to reach. Then you go into the design, then you go into the execution, then you go into the measurement and then you go into the follow up and doing something completely different. And so at every step of the way there's a different approach, there is different question you should ask yourself. And that's in summary if you want how we've looked at it and where we were able to win business even during the subprime crisis with my business partner and I at that time, we developed that methodology. But it's at the end of the day it's coming back to say understanding your clients, understanding the needs, focusing on the customer, that's what it is. Instead of going straight into the logistics. And that's how I think that will improve our industry, but also how we use the face to face meeting in a more strategic way for any organization. And I can summarize that by telling you that you can think of any business challenge, aligning your team, motivating your sales team, relationship with customer, sharing information, whatever it is, if you want to be successful down the road, you will always have a face to face meeting.

You know that bringing in the face to face. We started to have face to face meetings in the latter part of 20 and even into 21 by being creative with it. Right. And that was among the most extraordinary constraint of our lifetime. But we had, generally speaking, we had outdoor meetings and we created environments where we could begin to do come together and have outdoor meetings again because we saw it was important to have the UNPLANNED times. We do great Zoom meetings. I have a Zoom meeting tomorrow for some hours with a team in New Zealand. And they're very productive. They're very efficient in times, but we don't get the richness that we get with the other meetings. Now, if we can get them together and me remote, or we can do some things to improve it, but complement with something. And this is true, like, across the board, right. I was running a fashion jewelry company with my wife some years ago, and when I first came into the company, they had these. They had a number of meetings with, like, department store buyers and others in these drab buying offices in New York. And it was really depressing spaces with bad lighting and things like that. Everybody'd arrive and there'd be bags opening up. It was nothing remotely glamorous about it. And yet our customer, our partner, would not sell our product in that way. They would put in a beautiful showcase, and then there'd be people smiling at you, be the music in the background or maybe somebody playing the piano or that kind of thing. Like a great created experience. And I. And I looked at other companies. I'm like, we can't do this anymore. And then I looked at some of our trade shows, and they were abusively expensive and often just crowded, noisy, crap shows of things. So we started booking premium suites and cool hotels and then bringing in, like, cookies or food or things like that and picking a playlist for it and decorating the room and showcasing the thing and then bringing people into, like, a beautiful hotel and welcoming them, and here's a glass of wine or something. Mostly they decline the wine or champagne, but they. Because it's North America and we don't drink in the middle of the day here. Right. Unlike you Europeans. Right? So we. But they'd be like, oh, but I'll try that little truffle or, you know, something like that. Right? So. But we created memorable experiences for people. And when I think about that, I like with all of employee meetings, customer meetings, that kind of thing. I had a fairly significant company a few years ago, a thousand people in this company. And the owner's like, no, we're just going to have it in our training room. Like, your training room's awful. It's a windowless, dreadful room. And so they have 35 people in it. And then the next time I really. And I'm like, this was a depressing thing. You didn't make your people feel special bringing them here, and you saved yourself the hassle and maybe a little bit of Money, but you don't need to save that money. And so I pushed on him. The next meeting was in La Jolla, and now we're in La Jolla in this large house that they rented on the beach. And we were meeting. He's like, this is, I think, the best meeting that I've ever had, right? And it was a little cramped. It wasn't a professional meeting space, but. But it was cool. We were right on the beach. I'm like, okay, let's go out and let's do a couple circles out on the beach and let's pass the ball around and talk and that kind of thing. We got, I think, 35 people in this meeting, and we had like, seven people staying in the house, the other people staying at a neighboring property. But we're using the place and the environment to create something that's meaningful and memorable, right? Designed around producing a particular outcome and pulling all the levers. So the sights, the sounds, the smells, the music, the way we interact with people, right? That's not just a windowless conference room in the basement of a hotel somewhere, right? You could go to a Marriott conference room and no complaint on Marriott. I just randomly, it's the biggest brand, right? But like anywhere around the world, and you could do that kind of thing. And you really have to do a lot to create a memorable thing in a windowless ballroom.

But you know that to your point, but it. For every industry, for every profession, for every company, you will have bad example, which unfortunately is sometimes most of the time what people insist on. But if you. Look, you're talking about the trade show and the bad experience you have, I would offer that it's also depending on the organizer, the way they structure it. But if you. I remember an interview from Gary Shapiro, who's the president of CES in Las Vegas, and he was sharing a story of the president of, I don't know which tech company, a huge tech company, who was thanking him for organizing ces because he said, in three days or four days, in a week, I actually met all my clients, so you saving me six months of travel. So it depends on how you organize that. It depends on how you structure and design everything. And it depends before anything else, to go back on, why is it that you're investing in that.

Create some joy, create some excitement. So much to think about here. Look, if you want to talk to Eric or learn more about his work. Eric Rosenberg, thank you for joining us. Eventbusinessformula.com LinkedIn I'm on LinkedIn all the time. Also on LinkedIn eventbusinessformula.com is where you can find him. We'll put that in the show notes. It's there on the screen if you're watching in video. Such a great conversation, stimulating. Thinking about making more powerful, better, memorable events with great return, whether it be for customers, employees, the market in general. A lot to learn there. Let me.