The Business of Meetings

We're delighted to welcome Tom O'Malley, the CEO and founder of Meshi, as today's guest. Tom is a true tech entrepreneur. He spent more than 25 years in technology before moving into startups.

Stay tuned to learn about a new approach to AI-powered networking that Tom is developing at Meshi that could change how we connect at events, in communities, and throughout our careers.

Tom's journey

Tom went to university in Japan to understand its successful economy and different culture. After working for a Japanese trading company, he coordinated the construction of six houses following the Kobe earthquake. He later moved to China, Singapore, and Madrid before returning to Silicon Valley, where he moved from corporate strategy at Oracle into startups.

Meshi is his fourth startup in 15 years. Tom has always been entrepreneurial. In high school, he ran a landscaping company employing 17 people. While working for large companies, he gravitated towards entrepreneurial projects and risky opportunities. After returning to the United States, he found his corporate role too narrow, with departments and people responsible for almost everything. So he decided to build his own technology.

Building Startups

While living in Madrid, Tom began building technology and learned through trial and error. After moving to Palo Alto, he found a mentor who helped him develop his skills, and a chance meeting with a Yahoo engineer who had built software for landscapers led to YardBook. They raised $1 million in two weeks, and the software eventually served 15% of all landscapers. Tom then built an engagement platform and secured his first $30,000 project through sales calls. The business grew rapidly, raising $5 million in its second year.

Technology Connects People

Tom believes technology does not only automate tasks. It also connects people. This belief shaped his move from operational software to platforms that bring people together to work on business-to-business innovation problems. He views connecting the right people as one of technology's greatest opportunities.

Matching People

While running an expert focus-group platform, Tom began using AI to summarize reports and facilitate online engagements. When AI started predicting which experts would make good panelists, he recognized the potential for something much bigger. People are highly nuanced, and matching using only a few tags cannot capture who they really are. Deep personalization makes it possible to build a more detailed understanding of each person and reason about who should meet whom.

What Meshi does

Meshi builds an AI agent for each person and allows the agents to communicate with one another. This creates a people layer that can sit beneath an event app or alongside existing systems, without requiring another standalone app. Event organizers can use it to arrange table seating, balance groups by archetype, personalize newsletters, and help attendees identify the people they should meet.

Networking

Tom believes technology's greatest long-term value lies in its ability to connect people. This led him to move beyond software that serves an operation and focus on bringing people together to solve business-to-business innovation problems and find the right connections.

AI agents

Meshi aims to let people use the same AI agent across events and communities. An agent gateway would connect personal agents such as Muse or Instinct with an event's AI concierge, helping event attendees find relevant connections while allowing organizers to retain and build on their data.

Agentic Networking

Agentic networks could connect people across events, country clubs, meetup groups, and Substack communities based on their intent. The same technology could also help match products in supply chains and solve complex problems, such as matching organs with patients.

Better Matching

Tom wants to increase the number of meaningful connections people make. Better matching could help people find the right collaborators, mentors, and opportunities much faster.

How AI can preserve serendipity

AI recommendations would not force people to meet. Both parties would still need to opt in, and spontaneous encounters would continue in everyday settings. The greatest opportunity is large events, where thousands of attendees, multiple sessions, and extensive exhibition floors make it hard to know where to spend time. AI can help attendees identify valuable connections and improve their return on investment without removing the freedom to make their own choices.

From Attention to Intention

Young people are growing up with constant technological change, social media, and now, AI. Tom believes AI agents could shift technology away from competing for attention towards understanding people's intentions, filtering information, and helping them focus on what truly matters.

Solving Problems

AI agents could act as digital advocates, helping people manage their information, remember their priorities, and identify steps towards their goals. Tom believes that although technology creates problems, it can also help solve them, and that younger generations may be better prepared for their future than older generations realize.

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Today, Eric shares the session he gave at IMEX Smart Monday, called "From Overwhelm to Clarity."

Stay tuned as he walks through his three-phase clarity exercise, discusses the power of community and peer learning, and offers a sneak peek at Eric AI.

Feeling Overwhelmed

You may be familiar with the overwhelm trap: everything feels urgent, nothing gets the attention it deserves, and your momentum stalls. You're not alone. Almost every business owner in the meetings industry faces the same challenge. It's not a lack of effort, but a lack of focus and clarity.

Clarity isn't something you find; it's something you build, one focused decision at a time.

Track Your Time

For two weeks, track everything you do so that you become aware of how you're actually spending your time. After that, decide what to keep doing, what to delegate, and what you need to stop doing.

Your Ideal Week

Next, define your priorities and create a week that supports your goals. Map out Monday to Sunday, from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m., and start blocking the time for your ideal week.

Use AI tools to help you list what you're doing and design your ideal week.

Your Calendar

The third step is to put everything in your calendar. Block your time, protect your priorities, and make it happen. Also, remember to leave some free time for the unexpected.

Community and Peer Learning

You don't have to figure it out all alone. Some powerful breakthroughs in business can happen in a room with peers who truly understand your world. By sharing your experiences and concerns, listening to others, and hearing others' questions, you will likely find ideas to implement afterward.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality creates the trust you need to share your experiences, concerns, and challenges openly and receive honest feedback from those who understand your world. Honest feedback, however, is only part of the process. You also need a system to keep you accountable.

An Accountability Buddy

An accountability buddy helps you review what you said you would do and what you intend to do. You also need to demonstrate to them what you have done. For example, show them the marketing plan you said you would work on.

Turn Goals Into Results

Your goals provide direction, but consistent progress comes from having systems that create accountability and help you execute. A strong system turns your priorities into concrete action and keeps your business moving forward.

The Innovation Lab

The Event Business Formula Innovation Lab provides the structure, rhythm, and support to turn your ambitions into consistent, compounding results. It's a year-long program that takes you from overwhelm to clarity and then from operator to builder. The program has three pillars: foundation, customer, and growth.

The foundation pillar focuses on your 10-year vision, values, mindset, business model, and ensuring your team understands where you're going.

The customer pillar covers positioning, marketing, networking, sales objections, answers to those objections, numbers you should measure, and how often you should review them.

The growth pillar includes time management, delegation, mental health, building a dream team and a new culture. It should finish with the execution plan and accountability.

These pillars give you the framework and system to help you grow your business.

Eric AI

Eric AI is a digital coach for the meetings industry, drawing on Eric's books, webinars, coaching sessions, conferences, and more than 340 episodes of the Business of Meetings podcast. It is totally confidential and available in 77 languages.

Use it to identify your next best business step, structure proposals and client pitches, work through pricing and positioning, prepare for difficult conversations, build better business systems, and stay accountable to your goals.

Your Next Step

Start with the clarity exercise. Examine how you spend your time, define your priorities, create your ideal week, and put those priorities in your calendar. You can then explore the Innovation Lab and try Eric AI as an ongoing resource for your business.

Bio:

Eric Rozenberg has dedicated his career to helping event entrepreneurs build real companies— not just successful event businesses. Over the past two decades, he has built, scaled, and successfully exited multiple companies, giving him a unique perspective on what it truly takes to create a profitable, scalable, and transferable business.

Having produced events in more than 50 countries for Fortune 500 organizations, Eric understands the realities of the Meetings & Events industry from the inside out. He knows the pressure of wearing every hat, the challenge of building predictable revenue, and the difficulty of leading a business that depends on its owner. More importantly, he knows how to solve those challenges.

As the founder and CEO of Event Business Formula, Eric helps business owners move beyond being overwhelmed operators and become true CEOs. Through practical frameworks, accountability, and decades of entrepreneurial experience, he has helped companies increase profitability, build stronger teams, create predictable revenue systems, improve their quality of life, and reduce their dependence on being involved in every decision. His mission is to help entrepreneurs build businesses that work without them—and that one day can be sold.

Continuing his commitment to innovation, Eric is also the founder of Eric AI, the Meetings & Events industry's first AI-powered business mentor. Available 24/7 in 77 languages, Eric AI provides entrepreneurs with instant access to proven business guidance, practical frameworks, and decades of entrepreneurial expertise, making world-class business mentoring available anytime, anywhere.

Unlike many coaches and consultants, Eric doesn't teach theory. Every strategy he shares has been tested through his own entrepreneurial journey and refined through multiple successful business exits. His clients benefit from lessons learned in the real world—not just in the classroom.

Eric is the author of Meeting at C-Level and Before It's Too Late, and the host of The Business of Meetings podcast, where he has interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs, executives, innovators, and thought leaders from around the globe.

His mission is simple: to help business owners in the Meetings & Events industry build companies that create greater profit, greater freedom, and lasting enterprise value.

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Next week, Eric and thousands of others in our industry will descend on Las Vegas for IMEX America.

Today, Eric explains how to turn a trade show into an investment, not just an event. Stay tuned for more!

Before IMEX

Before you go, identify three main outcomes you want from your attendance. You might want three conversations with potential clients, two strategic partners, to understand what buyers are saying about AI, to reconnect with five relationships that matter, or to find one idea that could materially improve your business.

Who You Meet

Be intentional about who you need to meet. Research the exhibitors, speakers, and attendees you already know, and reach out now instead of hoping to bump into them.

Prepare Your Luck

Serendipity matters, and some of the best connections can happen unexpectedly. But don't count on serendipity alone. It's not enough. Prepare your luck by doing the work beforehand, while also leaving room for unexpected opportunities.

What Do You Do?

When someone asks what you do, be ready to answer clearly. If it takes you three minutes to explain your business, IMEX will expose that weakness very quickly. Be ready to communicate what you do in a way that can start a conversation.

Stop Collecting Contacts

During the show, stop collecting contacts and start creating conversation. Being interested in the people you're talking to is far more valuable than simply collecting business cards or batch scans.

Stop Pitching

Pitching is tiring, and it doesn't work, so don't do it. Ask engaging questions, like what people are seeing in the market, what has changed in their business, where AI is actually helping, what clients are asking for today, and who they think you absolutely need to meet.

Don't Over-Schedule

Don't schedule yourself from 8 a.m. until midnight. Some of the highest-value conversations happen walking between booths, over coffee, while waiting for an Uber, or because somebody says, "You two should meet." Leave time open for spontaneous conversations that are both genuine and worthwhile.

Market Intelligence

You'll be surrounded by customers, competitors, suppliers, technology companies, destinations, hotels, associations, and industry leaders. Use that access to study the industry. Look at what people are buying, problems that keep coming up, the type of language customers are using, where money is moving, which capabilities are becoming commodities, where margins are being created, what AI could eliminate, and what clients will happily pay more for.

Enjoy the Show

Enjoy IMEX, enjoy meeting people in the industry, and enjoy the evenings. Nothing replaces being there in person, and nothing replaces the magic of in-person connection.

Follow Up

Block time to follow up within 48 hours of returning. Make the follow-up useful. If someone mentioned a problem, send a resource, a person, or an idea that continues the conversation.

Keep Building Your Network

Not every contact will become an opportunity. Separate contacts into buckets for opportunity, relationship, and intelligence. The industry is vast, and people are moving, so continuously building your network is extremely important.

Three Things That Matter

When you leave Las Vegas, take a blank piece of paper and ask yourself: if IMEX is a great investment this year, what will have happened by the time you come home? Write three answers. Your objective is to come home with three things that can change what happens in your business over the next 12 months.

Prepare, Then Execute

Prepare, and then leave room for serendipity. Meet fewer people, have better conversations, ask better questions, and listen to what the market is telling you. When you come home, execute and be accountable. That's how you turn a trade show into an investment.

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Today, we're delighted to welcome Justin Donald, the founder of Lifestyle Investor and author of The Lifestyle Investor, as our guest!

Justin has built a mastermind community where people come together to talk about investments, have fun, and enjoy life together. Stay tuned to hear about his fascinating entrepreneurial journey, learn more about the financial side of running a business, and find out how to save, invest, and project so you can decide whether to retire early or keep on doing the work you love.

Justin's Journey

Justin grew up in a middle-class family and paid for his own university education through various business ventures. In seventh grade, he started a small sales business selling newspaper and coupon book subscriptions, and by his senior year, he was recruiting and teaching others to do the same. He then joined Cutco, where he developed his sales skills and learned to handle rejection. He eventually built a large organization, and as his business grew, he realized that he was working long hours and that, even with a systematized business, too much still depended on him. So he started looking for a way to buy assets that could produce income without requiring his time, which led him into cash-flowing real estate, starting with mobile home parks. Over time, he invested in different types of real estate and cash-flowing businesses. He eventually created Lifestyle Investor to share the investment, tax strategy, estate planning, and other things he wished he had learned earlier.

Build a Business That Doesn't Depend on You

It's hard to build a business you can step away from when everything relies on you. So systematize your business, hire the right people, and have someone who can step in when needed.

Buy Back Your Time

If most of your net worth is tied up in your business, it means you're overconcentrated. Instead, put some of your money into cash flow-producing assets. That cash flow can initially cover your car payment or utilities and eventually grow large enough to cover your whole lifestyle.

Financial Freedom

Financial freedom is not just about reaching a particular net worth. It's about knowing what it costs you to live and creating enough passive income to cover it. Once you can cover all your expenses, you own your time. Then you can choose whether to continue with the work you're doing or retire early.

Put Your Surplus to Work

Once your lifestyle is covered, you can decide whether to spend your surplus income on improving your lifestyle or put it toward investments, wealth creation, and making an impact where it's needed.

Know Your Numbers

Regularly reviewing your financial dashboard can give entrepreneurs clarity and confidence, helping them feel more in control.

Hire Well

Don't keep people who do not fit the business culture or aren't doing a good job. Take the time to hire really good people, but avoid bloating the business by hiring more people than you actually need.

Get Some Help

You don't have to figure everything out alone; books, mentors, and peer groups can help entrepreneurs feel empowered and supported as they grow.

Tax Code

Understanding the tax code can help you take advantage of deductions and credits for activities the government wants to encourage, including business, small business, agriculture, housing, and energy.

AI

AI is here to stay, so the better you understand it, the more opportunities you will likely have to grow or protect your business or start another business that could be more lucrative than your current one. If you invest in early-stage AI companies, Justin suggests using your surplus income and keeping the allocation limited because it is not yet clear which companies will succeed.

Bio:

Justin Donald, called the "Warren Buffett of Lifestyle Investing," is the #1 bestselling author of The Lifestyle Investor: The 10 Commandments of Cash Flow Investing for Passive Income and Financial Freedom.

As founder of The Lifestyle Investor, he specializes in low-risk cash flow investing, simplifying complex financial strategies, and structuring deals.

A seasoned investor and entrepreneur, Justin has served as an SXSW investor judge and spoken at notable venues like Texas Ranger Stadium. Through his Lifestyle Investor Mastermind, podcast, and consulting program, Justin coaches entrepreneurs and executives to "create wealth without creating a job."

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Click this link for a free strategy session (worth $500) with a Lifestyle Investor team member to help you figure out your next move.

We're excited to welcome Marco Giberti, the Founder and CEO of Vesuvio Adventures, as today's guest.

Marco is well known within the events industry for his thought-provoking LinkedIn posts. He is incredibly smart, has a wealth of experience, and operates at the intersection of technology and events, making him the perfect person to discuss AI, private equity, and the industry's future.

Stay tuned for more!

Marco's Journey

Marco started in advertising and marketing, creating a small agency while he was in college. One customer was an Apple distributor in Argentina, which led Marco to pitch Apple and eventually be hired to run marketing for Latin America. After three years, he left Apple to start his own events company. His first show was Windows Expo, followed by partnerships with Comdex and other technology shows. He eventually built a business with 45–50 trade shows and conferences annually and sold it to Reed Exhibitions. After exiting that business in his early 40s, he started Vesuvio Ventures. Today, he invests in event and event technology companies, works with private equity as an advisor or board member, and focuses particularly on early-stage investments.

Building an Event Business

Building an event around a specific vertical with existing knowledge, a network, some validation, and a track record provides a strong foundation. Strategic partnerships can complement and accelerate a launch, while a niche approach, applied effectively, can help you build the right audience. Live events remain relevant in an AI economy because remote work and digital isolation are challenging human connection. They offer opportunities to connect, build trust, trade, have fun, and create other added value.

Private Equity and Building Value

Private equity has been involved in events for many decades, and more private equity firms are now entering the category because of its potential for growth and efficiencies through scale. An event generating $5 million-plus after two or three years, growing 20% or more, with a 25–30% EBITDA margin and clear evidence that it is relevant to its community can be highly attractive for small M&A. Private equity also recognizes the importance of being founder-friendly and keeping the founder or founding team, while balancing margin efficiency with product health and growth. An honest conversation about product priorities and community can help align founders and private equity.

Qualities of a Successful Founder

A successful founder needs a killer instinct, resilience, self-confidence, and psychological resistance to failure. They need to be coachable while having strong opinions, listen while still making decisions, and execute. They also need to sell a dream and attract a dream team. So, if you want to build a valuable, sellable company, you need to think about scale because there is a massive difference between a one-event entrepreneur and a scalable company entrepreneur. Marco believes that founders need to own their decisions, make mistakes, learn quickly, and pivot.

Failure and Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is not as easy as it sounds. The day-to-day reality is difficult and requires resilience. Marco considers failure an important asset because it is part of the learning cycle. As an immigrant, he was struck by how forgiving the U.S. is of failure and how willing people are to give entrepreneurs another chance.

AI and the Events Industry

Marco believes AI will replace or dramatically reduce every repetitive, low-added-value task. Customers will expect more from their event experience, and brands will expect better ROI measurement. New event technology companies are helping brands analyze their event ROI, increasing expectations for organizers. He is seeing AI-centric event founders building agents for critical parts of the business and hiring humans only when they deliver incremental value. So, fewer people may be needed to launch an event than in the past, but those people need to be AI-sophisticated and understand how to use agents. At the same time, events cannot run only using AI because trust is built through face-to-face interactions.

Where Marco Would Invest

If he had $10 million to invest in the meetings and events industry, Marco would put 25–30% into event technology solutions, particularly AI-centric companies solving problems the industry still needs to fix. He would spread those investments across five to seven companies and put most into building early-stage events. He would also consider launching two or three events to diversify risk, or buying a small event with potential to acquire, accelerate, restructure, and grow. Once an event is cash flow positive and profitable, a founder can decide whether to sell or receive dividends and keep growing.

How Marco Uses AI

Marco built his own agent, Marco Events Twin, using his books, events masterclass, and other content. He uses it to analyze deals and pre-launch plans, drawing on years of information that he might otherwise forget. But he doesn't let the agent make investment decisions for him. It provides green, yellow, or red lights and offers guidance, but he still relies on his own feelings and judgment when assessing an opportunity.

External Validation

External validation is critical when building an event from scratch. Input from people who bring a different perspective, particularly experts in the specific vertical, can help establish whether there is a genuine need for the event. Event people are generalists, so expertise in the relevant industry can be as important as the event team's own analysis.

Bio:

Marco is a successful entrepreneur, investor, and advisor with more than 25 years of intensive experience in media, technology, and the events industry. He is Founder and CEO of Vesuvio Ventures, providing early-stage entrepreneurs access to coaching, partnerships, advisory, capital, and advice from big corporations on innovation and digital strategies.

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We're delighted to have Jayson Gaignard back on the Business of Meetings podcast today.

Jayson is the founder of MMT and the author of Community Made: The Truth About Success and the Relationships That Create It. Eric had the privilege of reading Jayson's book, which includes many of the lessons he learned about relationships, community, and success.

Stay tuned for more!

Jayson's Journey

Jayson dropped out of high school and started a service-based business before pivoting to online e-commerce, which he grew to about $7 million a year over four years with no outside investments. After seven years, he realized he didn't need to impress anyone, so he scaled it down to zero. In August 2012, things beyond his control left him in debt. So he began hosting dinners that brought fascinating people together, which eventually led to MMT and building communities. In 2023, he started putting his lessons in writing, which led to his book, Community Made.

Community Made

Jayson's book, Community Made: The Truth About Success and the Relationships That Create It, centers on three areas: finding your people, investing in your people, and asking for help. Asking for help was pivotal to his personal growth, so he also explores why people avoid it.

Transactional and Transformational Relationships

Jayson explains the difference between transactional and transformational relationships. Transactional relationships can help you reach a specific goal, while transformational relationships are based more on shared values and wanting to spend time together. He believes you need to be intentional about the people you bring into your life and the energy you invest in those relationships.

Building Community

Jayson's approach to community is based on careful curation and creating an environment where people can be authentic and vulnerable. The right people, shared values, trust, and confidentiality are essential to creating a community where members can support one another.

Success and Comparison

Jayson discusses how success can affect relationships and create comparison and envy. He believes you need to be genuinely happy for other people's success while remaining focused on your own path rather than measuring your life against someone else's.

Technology and Connection

Jayson believes technology and AI can strengthen communities by helping people find others with relevant experience and expertise. However, technology cannot replace the value of being together in person, which remains central to building meaningful relationships.

Preparation and Mentorship

Jayson also discusses the importance of preparation, especially when having meaningful conversations with other people. He credits mentors and friends who believed in his potential and encouraged him to think bigger.

Bio:

Jayson Gaignard is an author and community builder who has spent more than a decade creating high-trust communities and experiences for entrepreneurs. He is the Head Curator of MMT, one of the world's most exclusive entrepreneur communities, and was named one of Forbes' "Top Networkers to Watch." His work explores what happens when you bring the right people into the right room—creating opportunities, ideas, and relationships that can transform businesses and lives. Jayson's work has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, and Tim Ferriss' Tools of Titans.

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Today, we're thrilled to welcome Muhammad Younas, the founder and CEO of vFairs.

Muhammad is a true North American tech entrepreneur. He developed the award-winning event technology platform, vFairs, which has powered over 50,000 and reached more than 100 million attendees worldwide.

Stay tuned to hear about Muhammad's entrepreneurial journey and the invaluable insights he shares today.

Mohammad's Journey

Mohammad started at IBM before moving into a role involving virtual events. Frustrated by the limited technology and support available, he built his own platform and used it to run more than 100 events. When an exhibitor asked to use his technology, he saw the opportunity to license it, and vFairs was born.

COVID

COVID created hockey stick growth for vFairs because the company already had hundreds of customers, case studies, testimonials, and references. Customers also helped shape what came next, asking for tools such as a mobile app, badge printing, exhibitor management, and a speaker portal as they prepared to return to in-person events.

Event Technology

Event technology can do far more than support an event. Sponsor banners, sponsored notifications, different booth tiers, enhanced profiles, and meetings can create new revenue opportunities while giving sponsors and exhibitors more value.

Using AI

Mohammad sees AI as a way to remove repetitive tasks from the event process so that people can focus on what technology cannot replace. That includes designing the event experience and creating meaningful connections between attendees, exhibitors, and speakers. The aim is not to automate the human side of events, but to give people more time to focus on it.

Automation

Before introducing automation, Mohammad recommends mapping out the workflow and deciding which parts genuinely need human involvement. AI can handle repetitive, time-consuming tasks, freeing event professionals to focus on decisions, relationships, and experiences where their involvement adds the most value.

Keep the Customer at the Center

For Mohammad, building a sustainable business starts with making customers genuinely happy. He sees events as part of the hospitality industry, where the quality of the experience matters because satisfied clients become advocates, generate word of mouth, and create opportunities for future business. The goal is not simply to deliver an event, but to build a company that can continue serving customers well over the long term.

An Opportunity for Small Businesses

Mohammad believes smaller companies can use AI to rethink problems that were traditionally solved with complex, established software. AI-native technology creates opportunities to build new approaches from the ground up rather than simply adding AI to existing systems. But because events involve so many different use cases and edge cases, that opportunity depends on first understanding how the industry actually works.

Perfect It Manually First

Mohammad's advice is to understand a process before trying to automate it. That means going through the entire customer journey manually, identifying the real pain points, and learning what prospects and customers actually need. Once the process works and you've built trust with customers, you can use AI to automate the parts that it will genuinely benefit.

The Event Planner's Role Is Changing

Mohammad expects events to claim a larger share of marketing budgets, but that will come with greater pressure to demonstrate results. Event planners therefore need to move beyond simply executing events and become more involved in the strategic side of the business. Their role is increasingly about showing how an event supports broader business goals and delivers measurable value.

Bio:

Muhammad Younas is the Founder and CEO of vFairs, an award-winning event technology platform that has powered more than 50,000 events and reached over 100 million attendees worldwide.

Over the past decade, Muhammad has helped grow vFairs into a global, all-in-one platform for in-person, hybrid, and virtual events, serving organizations across 50+ countries.

Through his work with thousands of event organizers worldwide, he has developed a unique perspective on how technology is reshaping attendee expectations, event engagement, personalization, and the way event teams operate.

Under his leadership, vFairs has grown to more than 270 team members and has been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Event Technology Platforms, while earning a 4.9/5 rating on G2.

Muhammad regularly shares practical insights on event technology, AI, attendee experience, and the future of the events industry, drawing on lessons learned from building event technology at global scale.

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Most event professionals can tell you exactly what will happen on stage at any given time. Yet far fewer can tell you exactly what would happen if someone collapsed in the ballroom.

Stay tuned as Eric tackles emergency preparedness and security.

Emergency Preparedness

A 70-page emergency manual that nobody has opened in two years is documentation, not a system. Emergency preparedness starts with the people responsible for responding, not with a binder, processes, or SOPs. Everyone needs to know their role and be ready to act when an emergency happens.

Know Who Does What

You need to know who makes the decision, who communicates, who executes, and who takes over if someone is unavailable. If you can answer those four questions, you have a true emergency preparedness plan you can act on immediately if something happens.

Medical Emergencies

For a medical emergency, decide who calls the emergency services, who contacts the venue, where the AED is, who manages the surrounding attendees, who goes with the individual, and who stays on site. It's essential to discuss that before an emergency actually happens.

Safety and Security

You need to know who is defined as a suspicious individual, what constitutes a threat, who makes the decision, who gets called, and what happens if there is civil unrest or you need to evacuate. Your event team is not law enforcement, so you also need to establish when control transfers to venue security, police, the fire department, or other authorities.

Lead by Example

If something unforeseen happens, inform the people in charge, lead by example, and support your client. Everyone needs to communicate and be aligned on the action to be taken, with one person making the final decision.

Planning

You need a plan for hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, wildfires, and other events that could disrupt a meeting. Decide who makes the decisions, what the plan B is, what the hotel will do, what insurance is available, and what everyone involved will do.

Technology and Cyber

You need to know what happens if your registration disappears, the internet goes down, attendee data is compromised, your payment system stops working, the app fails, or somebody hacks the system. You also need to consider whether your meeting can continue manually if your technology fails.

Business Continuity

Owner-dependency problems must also be addressed. Think about what happens if you, as the business owner, are unavailable. Who has access to the bank? Who can authorize payment? Who has the passwords? Who handles communication? Who is running the company?

Communication

During an emergency, people become desperate for information, and if they don't have it, they create it. Define who communicates internally, who speaks with the client and attendees, who deals with the media and law enforcement, who contacts families, and who is not authorized to communicate publicly.

Organizational Dependencies

Ask your team to imagine what would happen if you disappeared for the next seven days. If you couldn't call, text, or email, and they couldn't ask you a single question, what would they be unable to do? Their answers will help you identify the organizational dependencies that need to be addressed.

A Simple Plan

For each major risk, define the trigger, who leads the response, the first three things to do, who needs to be involved, who needs to be informed, who communicates, and who takes over if the designated person is unavailable.

Keep the Plan Current

Your plan needs to be a living document that reflects your experience, your tests, what you are learning in the industry, and new issues that can happen. Circumstances, the environment, and people change, so you need to review the plan regularly and train your team.

Test the Plan

After writing a plan, you need to test it. Create a scenario, present it to your team, and watch what happens. The more realistic and unexpected the example, the better you can see who takes control and who is the right person on your team to respond.

Build a Business That Can Handle Almost Anything

The objective is not to have a plan for everything, but to build a business that can handle almost anything and a team that is ready to act in any situation.

Eric Rozenberg's Bio.

Rozenberg, CMM, CMP, is an entrepreneur, author, podcast host, and business mentor who has built, scaled, and successfully exited multiple companies in the Meetings & Events industry. As the founder and CEO of Event Business Formula, Eric helps event entrepreneurs build real companies—not just successful event businesses. Through practical frameworks and decades of real-world experience, he teaches business owners how to create predictable revenue, build stronger teams, reduce owner dependency, and develop businesses that are scalable, transferable, and ultimately sellable. Eric is also the founder of Eric AI, the Meetings & Events industry's first AI-powered business mentor, available 24/7 in 77 languages. He is the author of Meeting at C-Level and Before It's Too Late, and the host of The Business of Meetings podcast, where he interviews entrepreneurs and industry leaders from around the world.

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Today, Eric explores the value event professionals bring to the table and why that matters more than ever in the age of AI.

Stay tuned to learn what you need to know about the client before designing an event, questions you need to ask to position yourself as a strategic partner, and how to maintain your competitive advantage.

Ask Better Questions

When a client gives you a brief, resist the urge to immediately start discussing destinations, rooms, budgets, activities, speakers, themes, or technology. Start by understanding what the client is trying to accomplish, where the face-to-face meeting fits into their strategy, and what people should know, feel, believe, or do differently afterward.

Strategic Partner

You can either work with a client as an order taker who executes what they ask for, or as a strategic partner who helps determine what they actually need. If your value lies only in execution and logistics, you become much easier to replace as AI becomes more capable. Your value comes from helping clients identify what they are truly trying to accomplish.

Identify the Real Challenge

An insurance company asked for an incentive trip, but further questioning revealed that employees from three different generations were working alongside one another rather than together. Eric placed employees from different generations and tenure levels into groups and had them work together to write and perform a song. The activity required them to collaborate and helped change the way they worked together afterward.

What Needs to Change?

When a global medical device company asked Eric to arrange a sales meeting to launch a new product, Eric discovered the new product could allow the company to become the market leader for the first time. The salespeople needed to stop selling as a competitor and start selling as the market leader. Through a role-playing exercise, they developed a new sales playbook to share with the entire sales force. Six months later, the company became the market leader.

Ask Five Essential Questions

Before discussing logistics or event design, Eric recommends asking five questions:

1. Why are we bringing these people together, and what needs to happen when they meet?

2. What business problem are we trying to solve?

3. What needs to be different afterward?

4. What is preventing that from happening today?

5. How will we know that the meeting worked?

Only once you have those answers should you start designing the meeting.

From Logistics to Strategy

AI can produce creative concepts, destinations, themes, team-building ideas, and sample agendas in seconds. That does not mean AI will replace event professionals. But it does mean your value needs to move from execution to diagnosis, from answering questions to asking better ones, and from logistics to strategy. Instead of simply accepting the treatment a client prescribes, such as an incentive trip, conference, or team-building experience, first diagnose the problem they are actually trying to solve.

Diagnose Before You Design

When you receive a client brief, do not immediately start developing the answer. Identify what information is missing and what questions you still need to ask to understand the client's real problem. Although AI can speed up execution, your competitive advantage comes from understanding the client deeply enough to identify their underlying issue and ask the questions nobody else thought to ask.

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Today, Eric explores the role of failure on the road to success.

Stay tuned as he clarifies why failure is part of the entrepreneurial journey, what you can learn if something goes wrong, and how you can keep moving forward.

Failure

When you build a business and take risks, things do not always work as planned. Failing is the price all entrepreneurs must pay to embark on their journey toward success.

Failing Does Not Make You a Failure

If your business fails, it does not make you a failure. When something goes wrong, you need to separate what happened in your business from your personal identity, and focus instead on what you can learn from it.

Learning

It's essential to learn from every mistake you make. There is always something valuable to learn from costly mistakes that can help you prevent an even bigger one in the future.

Grit

Having grit does not mean you must keep going with something that is not working. You must always stay committed to your goal, but you might need to change the route you take to reach it.

When to Give Up

At times, you might have to give up on a bad product, a bad strategy, a toxic employee, or a market that does not want what you are selling. One failed approach, however, does not mean you should give up on your bigger mission.

Timelines

You can start a business at any age. Your timeline is your own, so there is no reason to measure your progress against anyone else's.

Social Media

Social media tends to show the exits and successes—not the struggles that came before them. When you compare your behind-the-scenes with somebody else's press release, you get a distorted picture of entrepreneurship. Struggling does not mean you are doing something wrong. It is simply part of building a business.

Learn From What Went Wrong

When things do not go as planned, you need to focus on the facts. Look at what happened, what was within your control, which assumptions turned out to be wrong, what you would do differently next time, and what system needs to change to prevent the same problem from happening again.

Unexpected Outcomes

Your failure could lead to an outcome you may not have anticipated. Some of Eric's own difficult business experiences ultimately led him to make better decisions and find new opportunities.

Progress

To progress, you need ambition, learning, grit, and failure. Without learning, you will most likely repeat your mistakes, and without grit, you may even quit before allowing your attempt enough time to work properly.

Getting Back Up

You cannot avoid setbacks when building a business. What really matters is getting back up and becoming a little smarter each time.

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