Enterprise sales has a distribution problem.
Not a product problem.
Not even really a pricing problem.
A distribution problem.
Most B2B companies today — from early-stage startups to public software giants — are competing for the attention of the exact same Fortune 500 executives using the exact same playbook:
cold email
LinkedIn outreach
webinars
giant trade shows
automated sequences
“personalized” AI messaging
And according to Alex Sobol, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of The Millennium Alliance, it’s producing less and less actual access.
That insight became the foundation for one of the most quietly successful enterprise networking businesses in the market.
Bootstrapped from scratch in 2014, The Millennium Alliance has become an invite-only ecosystem connecting enterprise technology vendors with senior executives across industries through curated events, private dinners, media, and community. The company is now approaching $100M in annual revenue — without raising venture capital.
Their thesis is simple:
The people making billion-dollar enterprise decisions are increasingly inaccessible through traditional channels.
And most companies still haven’t adapted.
The Enterprise Event Model Is Broken
Sobol argues that traditional enterprise conferences have become oversized pipeline theater.
Trade shows like RSA or HIMSS still attract thousands of attendees and massive sponsor budgets. But the executives technology vendors actually need to reach often aren’t there.
Or if they are, they’re inaccessible.
“The people that really matter? They’re usually not at the trade show.”
Instead, most enterprise events optimize for volume:
more booths
more attendees
more scans
more noise
But not necessarily more meaningful decision-maker access.
Millennium took the opposite approach.
Rather than maximizing attendance, they focused on maximizing relevance:
highly curated executive participation
pre-arranged one-to-one meetings
deep attendee intelligence
private relationship environments
small-group conversations instead of crowded expo halls
Their events typically bring together around 90–100 senior executives — often CIOs, CISOs, CMOs, CFOs, or CHROs — alongside carefully matched enterprise technology providers.
The emphasis is quality over quantity.
And increasingly, enterprise vendors are willing to pay for certainty over scale.
Why Enterprise Buyers Have Become Harder to Reach
One of the most important observations from the conversation is that post-COVID enterprise sales behavior fundamentally changed.
Even massive companies like AWS, IBM, and other large technology vendors now openly admit they struggle to get meetings.
That wasn’t something many companies acknowledged publicly before 2020.
Executives became:
more selective with time
harder to reach directly
more protected by internal processes
less responsive to generic outreach
less willing to attend broad conferences
At the same time, traditional lead-generation channels deteriorated:
webinar fatigue exploded
email open rates declined
automated outreach became commoditized
trade show ROI became harder to justify
This created an opportunity for businesses capable of facilitating trusted introductions at scale.
Millennium positioned itself directly in that gap.
The Real Product Isn’t Events — It’s Trust
One of the more interesting insights from Sobol is that Millennium doesn’t really think of itself as an event company.
The events are infrastructure.
The actual product is trusted access.
That distinction matters.
The company’s differentiation comes from:
executive trust
long-term relationship curation
attendee qualification
sponsor matching
follow-through after events
obsessive operational detail
Sobol repeatedly emphasized that “every detail matters.”
That philosophy shapes everything:
room setup
attendee experience
sponsor matching
follow-up workflows
event pacing
content quality
even signage alignment
At scale, this becomes culture.
And culture compounds operationally.
Many businesses underestimate how much enterprise trust is built through consistency in seemingly minor details.
The Most Underrated Skill in Enterprise Sales: Persistence
One of Sobol’s strongest opinions is that most founders and sales teams quit too early.
Not because prospects reject them.
But because they interpret silence as rejection.
He argues enterprise salespeople dramatically underestimate:
executive workload
inbox volume
organizational complexity
internal politics
timing dependencies
The result is that many founders stop following up long before the buyer has actually decided “no.”
“If someone tells you there’s potential fit, you go to the end of the earth.”
This is especially important in enterprise environments where:
deal cycles are long
leadership turnover is frequent
budgets shift constantly
priorities change quarterly
The companies that consistently win enterprise accounts are often simply the ones that remain persistently present.
Respectfully persistent.
But persistent.
Why Bootstrapping Helped Millennium Win
Unlike many modern B2B companies, Millennium never raised outside capital.
Sobol and his co-founder funded the business themselves and scaled gradually through revenue.
That decision shaped the company’s operating mentality:
profitability mattered immediately
execution quality mattered immediately
retention mattered immediately
customer satisfaction mattered immediately
There was no “grow now, figure it out later” phase.
This forced discipline early.
And notably, the business survived — and even grew — during COVID by rapidly adapting its in-person model into virtual relationship-driven experiences.
That resilience later became one of the reasons acquirers became interested in the company.
If a relationship business can survive a global shutdown of in-person interaction, it signals unusual durability.
The Bigger Trend: Relationship Infrastructure as a Category
The most interesting takeaway from this conversation may actually be broader than events.
Millennium represents a larger shift happening across B2B markets:
Relationship infrastructure is becoming its own category.
As outbound channels saturate and attention becomes scarcer, companies increasingly pay premiums for:
trusted distribution
warm introductions
curated communities
executive access
credibility transfer
In many industries, distribution advantages now matter as much as product advantages.
Sometimes more.
And the businesses that facilitate trusted access between buyers and sellers are becoming increasingly valuable strategic assets.
Especially in enterprise markets where:
sales cycles are expensive
contracts are large
trust matters enormously
reputation compounds over time
That’s the bet Millennium Alliance has spent the last decade building around.
And so far, it’s working.
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Chapters:
00:01 — Introduction to Alex Sobol & The Millennium Alliance
00:33 — Growing Up in New Jersey and Moving to Miami
03:14 — First Job After College & Discovering the Events Industry
04:03 — The Origin Story Behind Millennium Alliance
06:58 — Why Alex and His Co-Founder Started the Company
08:57 — What The Millennium Alliance Actually Does
12:25 — Why Traditional Trade Shows Don’t Work Anymore
15:31 — How Millennium Creates High-Value Executive Connections
18:57 — The Business Model Behind Millennium Alliance
19:21 — How They Landed Their First Enterprise Executives
20:37 — Choosing the Right Markets and Event Categories
22:33 — Lessons Learned Building the Business
24:50 — Why “Every Detail Matters” in Event Execution
27:07 — Building a Culture Obsessed With Excellence
28:41 — Maintaining Founder-Led Culture at Scale
31:58 — Is Millennium Alliance Just “Pay-to-Play”?
33:56 — How New Events and Markets Get Created
37:46 — Defining Success for Enterprise Events
40:14 — Solving Enterprise Pipeline and Follow-Up Problems
41:53 — Firing Difficult Customers and Protecting Culture
44:03 — When Startups Should Invest in Enterprise Events
45:34 — How Enterprise Event Strategy Evolves as Companies Scale
48:24 — Expansion Into Europe, APAC, and Digital Products
50:44 — Rapid Fire Questions Begin
50:56 — Pivoting During COVID With Virtual Events
52:00 — Breaking Into Enterprise Accounts
54:21 — Why Founders Fail at Enterprise Sales
56:35 — High-Impact Enterprise Introductions and Big Deals
Transcript
Brian Bell (00:01:14): Hey everyone, welcome back to the Ignite podcast. Today we’re thrilled to have Alex Sobel on the mic. He is the co-founder and managing partner of the Millennium Alliance. This is an invite-only global network connecting C-suite execs, executives, with enterprise technology providers through curated events, media, and community. Very cool. Thanks for coming on, Alex.
Alex Sobol (00:01:33): Yeah, no problem. I’ve been looking forward to chatting with you, Brian.
Brian Bell (00:01:35): Yeah, yeah, me too. We had a good chat like a month ago, so we’ve been wanting to do this podcast for a while. I’d love to...
Alex Sobol (00:01:42): you know get your origin story what’s your background so I grew up in a I guess a city or a town in New Jersey called Fort Lee a lot of people have been in Fort Lee and not have realized it because it’s the town in New Jersey that connects the George Washington
Alex Sobol (00:01:56): Dr. Justin Marchegiani
Alex Sobol (00:02:19): As a lot of opportunities that he was hoping to, you know, get into or a lot of things he was hoping that would happen for him in the New York City area just never materialized. So we moved down there, went to high school in the North Miami Beach, Aventura, Florida area, came back to come out.
Brian Bell (00:02:34): Teaching high schools is pretty hardcore. You did it eighth grade summer going into ninth grade. Yes, it was tough. It was tough.
Alex Sobol (00:02:40): Yeah, I went from a town where, you know, wasn’t that wasn’t that big. It was very familiar to a high school that had about 4000 kids and I didn’t know anybody in that high school and it definitely took some time to adjust. When I left high school, I remember thinking to myself, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. It was the best experience for a couple of reasons. One is Miami is very diverse. So it definitely opened me up. You know, in my high school, you had rich kids, poor kids, black kids, white kids, Spanish. kids immigrants you had every flavor there so it definitely opened me up it made me realize I was probably a lot more sheltered than I had realized before I had entered high school moving in general is not easy it doesn’t matter what stage of your life but especially when you don’t know anybody and you’re in that kind of weird phase of growing up and you go from having friends to not knowing anybody and having to figure that out so it made me tougher uh and it made me it made me more resilient and it turned out to be a great experience I think my parents they didn’t I don’t think when they were calculating what the benefits were going to be of this move were gonna be for me they I don’t know if they really thought it through but for it actually turned out accidentally I think to be a great decision that they made overall for me yeah yeah a similar
Brian Bell (00:03:54): experience for me I changed in ninth grade and 8th grade so I changed like back to back in a year and it was really tough yeah
Alex Sobol (00:04:02): yeah really twice in a year yeah yeah it’s tough and then I came back up to the Northeast for college and went to University of Delaware and about a week after I graduated college I started working at a company that started at the time was starting to dabble into what we do now at Millennium and then sort of after six or so years there my partner the other founder of Millennium who was my first boss at that company you know we realized at that time that we felt that we could do what we were doing better we could do more than what we were doing we thought we could create a great company and 12 and a half years and we think we’ve done that you know times a hundred or whatever whatever in spades I would say that’s amazing so what it was
Brian Bell (00:04:42): the aha moment uh what were you guys doing at the company you guys were working at and what was that aha moment where you guys are I don’t know sitting at lunch or whatever and like hey let’s go do our own thing well the thing was
Alex Sobol (00:04:53): I think neither him or I his name is Rob we were never it was never part of the life’s plan to start a business right I don’t think we ever originally had an entrepreneurial bone in our body you know my lifelong dream was to work for ESPN but you know just like a lot of people who you know after college they don’t know They know exactly what it is they want to do. They go to a big city. I went to New York. We just try to kind of like figure it out from there. Luckily, when I got to the company that I started working with a week after college, I got really good at what we were doing really fast. So originally the company that I first started working for, their main business was trade magazines. So, you know, for all different industries, they would put trade publications out. So I thought when I had taken the job in March of 2007, that I was going to go sell advertising and magazines. And then when I got there they started doing these sort of high level conferences and I remember the first one I was put on right after my training week was on healthcare and then slowly but shortly I got really good at understanding the business model and the key was I think for my partner and I we were really exceptional at the revenue driving aspects of the model the sponsorships and all other ways in which the event sponsorships and all other ways you can try to make money off of the events and I think after six or so years for me and 13 years of him there It was kind of like a known thing. We had a really good friendship. He was my boss originally. And then as I rose through the company, he was no longer my boss. But I think it was always like one of those things where like Rob and Alex were good at this. I say this with total humility, right? But it was kind of like the idea of Michael Jordan and LeBron James had ever teamed up together what kind of what kind of venture that would be or what kind of team that would be and I often refer to my partner Rob as the Michael Jordan of what we do and me as the LeBron and in this example Michael Jordan is the best ever I know younger generation kids can’t get their head around that but to me it’s Michael Jordan and everybody else but to give myself some credit I don’t think LeBron is is such a slouch in that example oh he’s amazing he’s not Jordan
Brian Bell (00:06:46): no he’s not Jordan and when you explain that to kids in their 20s or younger they don’t know they don’t they don’t know how dominant he was you know two three-peats I mean you just don’t and just like all the clutch and just all the leading the league in every single stat category that you can lead it’s just being dominant on the offensive and defensive end never whining to the refs about any call ever just respectfully walks away you know
Alex Sobol (00:07:14): Yeah, I mean, I don’t know how anyone could watch The Last Dance and not, I mean, I watched The Last Dance. I’m not even, I wasn’t even like a big Michael Jordan. Like, I liked Michael Jordan as a kid. I didn’t really have his sneakers, right? I’m more a baseball guy. But I don’t know. I watched The Last Dance probably 10 times. I don’t know how anyone could watch that and walk away and not think that he was I’m surprised like I’m still astonished someone like him actually existed like what he could do physically in the air and just the whole way that he kind of went about how he did things I’m still almost blown away that that’s actually a real human Yeah. And then I think also at the time, you know, we didn’t like the direction the company was going. We didn’t like where the culture was. And we just felt like as much as it wasn’t instinctual in us to go out and start a business, we just tried to look at every
Alex Sobol (00:08:01): I’m
Alex Sobol (00:08:21): I love that. I love to kind of reiterate that lesson, which is, you know, a really good investment lesson too, and a good founder lesson, which is
Brian Bell (00:08:41): Don’t see it not working. You know, like, because I think as a founder, as somebody who starts something from zero, you have to, you really have to believe it to your core that it’s going to work out.
Alex Sobol (00:08:50): 100%.
Brian Bell (00:08:53): Yeah, I love that. Yeah. So what is, what is Millennium? What was it when you guys founded it? And what is it now?
Alex Sobol (00:09:00): So the, The original plan for Millennium was to be a place for people to meet at the very senior levels of industry. So when I say mostly private sector focused, but we do infuse some public sector and government people and entities into our programs. But there seemed to be a real need as the years had progressed. When I started in 2007, even started post-college in my working life and then starting millennium in January of 2014. There seemed to be this need that the types of people that are making and breaking big decisions for big enterprise businesses sat at the very senior level, C-suites and boards of a lot of companies, not just small and medium-sized businesses, but the bigger companies as well. So I knew there was a need. I knew organizations were having They always had trouble getting access that expedited coming out of COVID. So there used to kind of be this thing where before COVID companies of all sizes on the technology side, the vendor side wouldn’t necessarily admit that they were having trouble getting access. changed after COVID where clients of ours as big as IBM and AWS will come out and say that just, they just can’t even get access. So the thing was, is our bread and butter was events. So basically Millennium’s first product offering, which is still our main product Even though we have other products that we offer is we put together two day programs at what I would say is the national level. So if they’re in if they’re in a city in the US, let’s just say they’re in Austin or Miami or LA, they’re not really specifically focused to that city. We’re bringing in people, C-suite enterprise executives for either one particular industry or cross industry from a number of different industries, bringing them in from all over the US. And then we’re allowing for companies to come in on the technology side to also participate and meet with them over a two day period in a format that we think is complete opposite of a trade show, for example, but is much more beneficial for people to actually get conversations going and potentially get partnerships brewing while they’re together and then after the programs as well. So whether that’s via our one-to-one meeting format, which we put together and we prearrange before programs start through presentations, through networking and thought leadership and dinners and lunches. It’s really two days of just a lot of togetherness and a lot of opportunity to be with each other. And the best benefit of it is like with all the things that we do with our programs, whether they are localized events, which is what we also do now, in addition to our national programs in the US, I say national in Europe, but they’re pan European. So if a program that we do is in Barcelona, we have an event going on this week in Madrid. We’re bringing people in from all over Europe. We’re just providing people an opportunity to get access to people that they’re really not getting or they’re getting very randomly. We’re trying to solve a problem because the technology companies, another factor of this is that a lot of traditional legacy lead generation that companies have relied on for so many years, webinars, email campaigns, trade shows, they’re providing little to no return. And there’s a ton of evidence now that the way that we operate and the way that we do things is providing a lot more of a return if the audience matches the type of people that you’re trying to get in front of.
Brian Bell (00:12:06): Yeah it’s fascinating so yeah I think for for people listening out there they would say hey isn’t that what we do at trade shows like I go to a conference and I kind of meet people and there’s networking events and like there’s some one-on-one one-to-one like how do you kind of carve out the the difference there between what you guys do and like a conference yeah so the trade shows is really a numbers game
Alex Sobol (00:12:27): you know some trade shows have thousands of people at them what we find is that the people that really matter majority of them they don’t go to trade shows so if you’re a security vendor
Brian Bell (00:12:40): fortune 1000 and you go to RSA in San Francisco you know and there’s like 10,000 people there probably more than that yep yep well you’ll RSA is a really good example so let’s say I don’t know your Palo Alto Networks right you have a lot of really good relationships Palo Alto is a really good company you could be as big as them you could be a mid-sized company you can got you could be a small company a startup yeah yeah like the CISO of Procter & Gamble odds are he or she is probably not going to go to that event because if they’re
Brian Bell (00:13:04): going to go to that event maybe a lieutenant maybe like a you know one of their subordinates or
Alex Sobol (00:13:07): yeah you might you know at trade shows you’ll get people that maybe are like the people that use the technology and help with the rollout and do the engineering on it and stuff like that but you’re not going to get the people that really matter of whether or not you’re going to get them to be a customer or not so if you go to a trade show like RSA you’re going to get a lot of numbers and you’re going to see a lot of the same type of brands that you want to potentially that you’re prospecting that are big brands you’ll see a lot of those people there but you’re not going to really see the senior or even in some case the executive vice president level people that in this day and age with the economy so back and forth the way that it is and with boards of directors looking at where companies their companies that they’re funding or that they’re overseeing are spending money it’s a feel-good thing like you go to RSA you feel good there’s a lot of new tech you meet a lot of people you fill the pipeline but what I hear from a lot of technology vendors is that they still feel like they need to go to RSA which is great marketing on the RSA part and some of these other big trade shows like HIMSS the healthcare event but they’re finding they’re not netting a lot of actual hard Revenue results to those programs. On the opposite side, you have our events where, you know, generally we bring about 90 to 100. Let’s just use security. I mean, we do our programs at the national level. We do them for all different C-suite job functions. You know, I could go down the list, but, you know, CISO, CFO, CMO, RMO CIO CRO I mean you name it we’re doing CHRO we do them for individual industries we do them for cross industry so you’ll see 90 to 100 brands there that are marquee enterprise brands that your teams are probably trying to prospect but you’re going to get the generally the number one in some is the number two but the majority of the number one executive that’s making the decision of whether or not they’re going to onboard a seven figure or half a billion dollar pilot or they’re going to renew or they’re going to look for a new technology specifically so it’s quality over quantity in a lot of respects yeah
Brian Bell (00:14:55): that totally makes sense how do you kind of ensure connection at The event and how do you guys make money?
Alex Sobol (00:15:01): So we make money from a couple different avenues. In terms of ensuring connection, right? One thing that we did really smart in 2014, before we kind of got out of the gate, we spent a lot of time, Rob and I, in our network. So for us...
Alex Sobol (00:15:35): We took a lot of their feedback in terms of how to format these programs and more importantly what to do before and after so one thing that we do exceptionally well is we’re really good you would you would think that I would say this is putting these programs together right we’re very good at putting people together great format great hotel all the great things around the the event that are good everybody enjoys the program Where we really shine is before and after the program, the programs as well. So what I mean by that is, is that let’s just say you’re a technology vendor. Before you come to an event, after you’ve signed up for it, you’re going to get a ton of intelligence and research on every single executive that’s coming to the program. So what used to happen back in the day is, is that you would show a, we’re going to stick on the theme today, I think for IT security. You would show an IT security company a list of people that would be coming to your events and they would go, oh, Pepsi. They would go Procter & Gamble, Lululemon, Nike. I couldn’t get a meeting with the Sisu of those companies if I was hanging outside their window and knocking on their front door at their home. They’re not going to respond to a LinkedIn message. So what we realized is that we don’t just want people to come to our events just to pick people they just generally couldn’t get meetings with. We want companies that want I want to sponsor our program to come to our events with people not only that they can’t get access to, but are actually relevant for them. So each attending executive on the end user side, on the C-suite side, the 90 to 100 executives that come, they fill out really in-depth reporting on what their current technology stack is, what their budget looks like, how many people report to them, what vendors they’re working with, what hasn’t worked, what big projects they have, what’s important to them over the next six to 12 months. And we send that information across to all the sponsoring companies and we help them with facilitating who to pick for their one to and all their other sessions that they want to be in. And the reason why that’s valuable is because it not only makes the meeting valuable for the sponsoring company, but it turns out it makes the meeting way more valuable for the end user and they don’t feel like they’re meeting with people that don’t have a relevant solution for things that they’re interested in. so that’s one big piece in terms of the monetary side we do charge attendees to come to our programs not every attendee will come it’s not a big fee but it’s a but we charge a fee we’re the only company with our type of model that does that we do that not necessarily because we’re trying to make more money it’s just because even when an executive puts in a little bit of money we’re not talking big money it just makes for more of kind of a feeling of ownership and responsibility and it makes
Brian Bell (00:17:58): for less likely if someone yeah they paid to be there rather than they were incentivized to be there
Alex Sobol (00:18:03): Exactly, exactly. Not everybody does, but I would say about 80 to 85% of our attendees will pay. And then we also, all of our sponsors have to pay based upon, you know, how much access and what they want to do and all that kind of good stuff as well. So those are mainly the two places on our national events. I keep saying national, but for our national or pan-European events that we do. Right. That’s the main driver of revenue.
Brian Bell (00:18:23): You know, when you started, you didn’t have a brand. You never, you never did this before. How did you get your first, you know, C-suite execs to actually show up?
Alex Sobol (00:18:32): So two things. One was reputation. Rob and I built up a really good...
Alex Sobol (00:18:37): Ignite Insightsights
Alex Sobol (00:18:52): with their careers and you know kind of what they wanted to do in their personal life but also our reputation really came into play because we spent six years rob longer than I did meeting people and talking to people for long periods of time so a lot of people gave us a chance just because they liked us and they believed in us and they really felt they would say to us in that first year you know as new business owners you have to try to make this work but you guys from what we’ve seen most likely will make this work so that was that and from pure effort and grift and selling you know what we believe the story to be and what we were trying to do and just what we perceived would happen if all this came together so it was part reputation.
Alex Sobol (00:19:43): question it’s I told you when we had connected before we got acquired last July and that was a big moment something that we had never planned for as well which we could we could talk about at a different point and one of the things that all these companies that were looking potentially to acquire us be partners of ours would ask would be you know how do you figure out what events to do and it’s kind of like a mishmash of things you know we have good analyst partnerships with some marquee analysts that give us insight a lot of it comes from customers who say hey you know like did you think about this market did you think about that market like we would love to be a part of this that market But when we were starting, you know, we knew that there were certain staple industries and job functions that loads of people were trying to get access to. And those communities of people take CIO. Our very first event that we ran was in Dallas right The first one was coincidentally a week before I got married and it was just private sector enterprise CIOs and there’s infinite amounts of them so we knew we had the pool of the attendees the executives on the end user side. And there’s countless technology vendors, services vendors, hardware, software, consulting that are trying to get access to them. So we knew the safe bets to play early on based upon our experience and based upon the abundance of companies on both sides. And when that comes together, it’s generally how you figure it out. Our first year, we did the cross-industry CIO. We did a financial services specific CIO event and we did a cross-industry CMO program. And those events were still running to this day. Right.
Brian Bell (00:21:11): Yeah, kind of big supply, big demand. You need a big lead base. Yeah, that makes sense. What have you had to unlearn or what did you get wrong in kind of the early model that you’ve now kind of shifted or pivoted?
Alex Sobol (00:21:23): You know, I think about this sometimes because we’ve been going 12 and a half years. I feel like we’ve gotten a lot right. You know, I look at the company from where we’re at for where we’re at now. right I mean just to give some background you know we’re completely bootstrapped Rob and I funded this company totally out of our pocket we never took on any money we never never had any debt still to this day and I think that came from the belief that this was going to work and why wouldn’t we back ourselves there were people that you know family and friends that wanted to give us money but we kind of felt like so you guys bootstrapped the whole thing just didn’t make sense from a multitude of factors we didn’t need the money and it just didn’t make sense yeah so you know we’re we’re looking we’re embarking on what would be a major milestone this year 100 million in revenue by the end of this year which you know is there’s a realistic chance that that’s going to happen so I’ve been thinking about you know how did that all happen and I think that the the like in terms of decision making macro we made a lot of the big decisions right but we got a lot of the big decisions right over the course of time driving the car we’ve hit some speed bumps but I think what we’ve done really well is is that It’s just a company really of no ego. There’s not much ego. We’re always reverse engineering for what’s best for the business, what’s best for the people inside our company, what’s best for our customers, nothing really that revolutionary. But when we’ve gotten little things wrong, we’ve tried to figure out why we got them wrong, try to not let I mean there are things like you know we held an event in Houston during flood season you know going back that probably wasn’t smart but I think of that as a micro issue macro though in terms of how we built the culture built the product and just kind of moved forward throughout the last 12 and a half years I struggle to think of something big picture we we got wrong
Brian Bell (00:23:06): Yeah. What about all the minutiae of the details, right? It sounds like a lot of this is like kind of grinding out the little details. What are those like three, five, ten things that you’ve kind of iterated on to kind of, you know, make this work? I’m guessing you’re listening to your attendees and getting all the feedback and
Alex Sobol (00:23:26): iterating and but you know yeah I’m glad you said that I’m glad you talked about this because I don’t know if you’ve seen the bear on Hulu the restaurant show I
Brian Bell (00:23:35): worked at a restaurant too so like a crazy Greek guy in the Virgin Islands and he was just like completely engrossed in all the details so I know what that’s like
Alex Sobol (00:23:47): That’s us. There was a thing in the kitchen, I think it was either season three or season four, where they put, I think they put in the kitchen next to the timer, the clock, it said every second counts or every second matters. At Millennium, I always say every detail matters. The business model that we run, Brian, you don’t need to be Einstein to do this in terms of just running a business like this on the surface. What really makes a business like this go is culture, right? We have a phenomenal culture and there’s I think a few key reasons of why we have a phenomenal culture, but in terms of executing and delivery and pre-program preparation, it’s all about details and every single detail matters. They’re is never a detail small enough that we don’t focus on. And one of the things that we did when we started Millennium is we realized that a lot of the things that we do now that we had recommended potentially to do at our former company, which are tedious, they take a lot of time. I think what really makes our programs great at the national and the local level, because I mentioned earlier, we do a lot of local programs now for clients in cities across the US and Europe, that it’s just all the little things. It’s all the annoying things, right? It’s going not just above and beyond and exceeding people’s expectations, but it’s any detail you can think of that if we get wrong, no matter how successful our programs are, will keep me up at night. It can be something the way an infographic looks. It could be something the way the color of the tablecloths when you get to the event.
Brian Bell (00:25:08): How do you instill that attention to detail in the culture? Because that is a very particular way of operating, kind of like the Nordstrom way or cultures like that that just really, really pay attention to all the little things.
Alex Sobol (00:25:20): It’s because Rob and I are like that. I think because it starts from us.
Brian Bell (00:25:23): So everybody down the chain just expects like, hey, these guys are going to be on it. They’re just going to
Brian Bell (00:25:28): Ignite Insightsights
Alex Sobol (00:25:43): signage is kind of all the way like halfway down or a quarter down like I’ll focus on that not to give anyone grief on it but just like it’s more of it’s not really about that sign it’s really just about the fact that we got to get all the details right like a lot of people a lot of people come
Alex Sobol (00:25:58): Ignite Insights Ignite Insights
Alex Sobol (00:26:14): so we want to make the whole entire thing like really really blow them away and it’s not like when we hire people we sit with people we’re like how detail oriented are you or like are you going to focus on every detail I think it’s just a matter of Rob and I in the trenches management teams in the trenches it’s just like it’s just like part of the culture like the detail the details matter and we’re coming from a good place
Brian Bell (00:26:34): right so how do you maintain that kind of level of culture inside a larger organization that acquired you right that’s always kind of tough right kind of go through that transition and what does that look like so it’s really all about the
Alex Sobol (00:26:46): hiring so we have a very thorough hiring process at Millennium generally people go for three rounds sometimes four rounds 45 minutes to an hour interviews I speak to every single person before they get a they get a employment offer and I usually talk to them for 10 or 15 minutes it does not matter what department We actually, you know, for a role like we have a sort of like a enterprise type CFO who’s coming on board on Monday. I mean, obviously I didn’t spend 10 to 15 minutes with him, but for sort of the entry level and mid-level roles, I’m at least, you know, around 10 or 15 minutes with every person. And I think that’s important.
Brian Bell (00:27:17): You ever vetoed anybody that’s entry level?
Alex Sobol (00:27:19): Oh yeah, I veto people all the time.
Brian Bell (00:27:21): 10 or 15 minute conversation? Oh yeah, I veto people all the time. it’s like a Steve Jobs firing you in the elevator kind of thing well I don’t veto
Alex Sobol (00:27:27): people like I don’t tell them I don’t veto them on the phone but I you know I think they go through two or three rounds of interviews where it’s like tactical and tell me about experience and all stuff that I’m really not even that interested in but I’m happy other people are going to talk about at Millennium with people that are applying I care more I’m only I’m looking for I’m looking for personality right the things I’m trying to draw out are what’s this person like in a difficult situation how would this person handle difficult people which I think is important can I get a good gauge of what their work ethics like I want to know about their family what their parents do why they left a previous job why they studied what they did in college would they be a good fit and I didn’t realize how special that was until about a year ago where people were like kind of blown away that I made it a point to do that all the time and I think it’s made a big impact on culture and I think that It’s hard to like put on a paper exactly the type of person that we’re looking for, but I think that’s the first step in making sure that we’re bringing in people that we think based upon three vigorous long interviews and then coming to me are going to fit Culturally so I think that’s I think that’s a it’s a it’s a big thing and it’s it’s one of the things that has gotten us to grow as fast as we have and made us I think such a such a special organization it doesn’t mean that people come in and we make mistakes but one of the things that’s really cool about Millennium we have a crazy high retention crazy high retention which in the conference events media world you know media services world or marketing services world is is really rare and I think it’s just about being up front ownership and Rob and I never read a management book about how to run a business.
Alex Sobol (00:29:13): But it seemed obvious to us that if we’re in the trenches and we hold ourselves to the same standard that we hold everybody else to, people will feel like we’re there for the right reasons. We’re invested in them. We have the right intentions, the right motivation. So what’s important to us will then be important to them, which is what’s unfolded.
Brian Bell (00:29:29): yeah I like that um yeah it’s kind of founder mode is what we call it in Silicon
Alex Sobol (00:29:33): Valley you know I don’t sit I don’t sit in a private office I had a private office I never used it I had my fraternity composite in there which I thought would make me want to sit in it and look and reminisce about glory days of old but no I sit on one of the you know we have two full floors in New York a big floor in in in Europe in London and whenever I’m in the office wherever it is I’m always on the floor sitting doing my work doing interviews out in the public yeah like very transparent very open
Brian Bell (00:29:59): Yeah, I like, you know, I do a podcast, so I’m on board with transparency. So the cynical view here is that this is just pay-to-play access. You know, where is that critique right and where is it wrong?
Alex Sobol (00:30:09): I mean, to work with us, you got to pay. So I guess, I mean, we’re obviously not doing this for free. So I guess it’s not a total
Brian Bell (00:30:15): It is a business, right?
Alex Sobol (00:30:16): Yeah. Yeah, it’s not a total untruth. But I think about like what’s not a pay-to-play, right? I look at companies of ours, right? Just podcasts, not pay-to-play.
Brian Bell (00:30:25): Yeah. I said this podcast isn’t pay to play.
Alex Sobol (00:30:27): Yeah, this podcast isn’t pay to play. I would have paid to be on with you for what it’s worth. I look at what companies are spending, like companies will spend on anything if they think it’s going to get them pipeline, right? And what companies, what technology companies and software companies and all these companies trying to sell to the technology, the enterprise technology community, is they’re just spending so much money on stuff that barely works. So, you know, what’s the difference if you spend on, you know, a bunch of email marketing campaigns or a bunch of trade shows or a bunch of webinars or you spend with us? I mean, every kind of way to get access for the most part, unless your kid’s friend’s dad is the CIO of American Express, like it kind of seems like everything is pay to play.
Brian Bell (00:31:07): The inception of an event, is it, you’re identifying a market opportunity or somebody is bringing a market opportunity to you like I hey I am a security company and I want to like do an event is that kind of how an event starts sometimes or is it kind of hey I see the opportunity here in security and I’m going to do an event and I get the right
Alex Sobol (00:31:24): people so it’s a little bit about it’s yeah it’s kind of a little bit of both so we have an established calendar of events that we put out six months before every calendar year usually in the summer Yeah. Before. So this summer will be for 2027. And so we have an established calendar of events that we put together that we curate. And there’s some brands four or five a year, four or five CMOs, CISOs, CHROs, whatever they may be, supply chain events. Basically that offering are big multi-day fly-in type programs. You’re picking from audiences that we’re curating. right so it’s pretty transparent it’s like hey are you targeting these type of brands these sorts of executives right do they fit do they not it’s kind of pretty black and white when you go out and do the marketing to get the right people at the event yeah speakers sponsors attendees we do everything soup to nuts in in that model the multi-day fly-in national everybody’s coming in from everywhere type model you’re basically picking from the communities we build Right so and the content that we’re providing so it either fits or it doesn’t fit there’s not really much room to have that much input other than you know a couple of minor things if we can do them the local product that we do is pretty much it’s different right so what started happening toward the back end of COVID companies were saying to us like yeah your national events we got to get back out to we got to meet people from brands from all over the US and then we got into Europe from all over Europe but what they started to say to us is that we have reps in cities all over let’s take the United States for example We have reps in Cincinnati. We have reps in Memphis. We have reps in Milwaukee and so on and so forth. And their job is to that’s their territory. They’re trying to get access like we need to get them the same type of face to face in person access that you’re giving to our senior sellers and our senior C-suite teams at these national events. So we built out a model for bespoke programs in the form of kind of these marquee five star dinners in cities all across the U.S. and all across Europe. And the difference between the two is, is that we’re at our national marquee events where we do 140 to 150 of those pre-scheduled the year where you’re picking basically from the audiences that we curate with these private intimate dinners you’re the only sponsor and you dictate the audience tell us these are the accounts that we want these are the job titles we want these are the people that we’re trying to meet and everything if we take on the dinner program is guaranteed so we’ll do between the US and Europe this year we’ll do on top of 140 and 150 national or big sort of marquee continent focused events will do 400 plus of those private dinners. That’s now morphed into another type of event model where companies that like the dinners or like the continental focused events were like, We need more time than just a four hour dinner and we need more people. So now we’re doing single sponsored full day events where it’s one sponsor. It’s the dinners usually bring about 15 people. The one day programs are going to be local again. So for the local dinners, and for these local one-day events we’re not flying anybody in it’s local to the city they want to be in but it’s providing them much more time so now we have in the in-person event world we have our bread and butter 150 multi-day programs we have our private bespoke dinners that are city focused that have about 15 people that come from your targeted account and ICP list and then we have the one-day model which is still single sponsored 50 to 60 people and it’s tailored to the people that you’re trying to phone you’re trying to email and we go in and we just make sure that we get them there and You get to spend a full day with them.
Brian Bell (00:34:44): That’s awesome.
Alex Sobol (00:34:45): So what does success look like for those different types of events?
Alex Sobol (00:34:48): Pipeline for the sponsoring companies and high remarks from the end users. So obviously we’re getting feedback constantly from both sides. The end user community, there’s a lot of surveys, a
Alex Sobol (00:34:58): I’m
Alex Sobol (00:35:13): You can’t get a lot of input on the types of people that they want to meet with, both peers of theirs and also on the technology side. And I would also add, Brian, in addition to technology vendors being there and end user technology buyers being there, there’s a ton of other people there that are kind of neutral. analysts associations academics thought leaders that kind of bring everybody together and are kind of like a real source for kind of trusted verified content and conversation and we’ve embedded that into all all the types of programs that we do but success definitely is kudos from the end users that we’re following their kind of guidance and they’re enjoying the program even though there’s technology vendors present and also the pipeline that we’re helping create post program that we monitor very closely another thing that came out of COVID which not just these private local dinners that have really made huge impact I mean we’ve got 90% return rate on sponsorships for the dinners and we’ve got 80 plus percent return on sponsorships for our multi-day national focused events but a big piece of that is not just the execution of the program not just providing access to people they can’t get access to it’s because we help them manage the pipeline after for some reason majority of technology salespeople that we come across they struggle with the follow-up process so the worst thing that would happen before COVID is let’s just say you were the You know, a VP of marketing for a company that really liked our events. You’d say, Alex, I like our events, your events. They’re great. My team loves them, but I’m not getting any pipeline. So we take that off our clients now if they let us, which most of them do. And we handle all of we look at all of the people that these companies meet with and any Anybody that says they want to follow up, we facilitate the follow-ups for them to make sure that they get done and to make sure that they show pipeline, no strings attached. And we know in the back end, it’s going to make their teams that want to work with us again. Again, kudos from the end user that they’re happy with what we’re doing and being able to demonstrate pipeline for all the sponsoring companies.
Brian Bell (00:36:58): Yeah, that makes sense. Pipeline follow-up is a real thorn from events. There’s just a lot to do and so many people and who did I talk to? I think that’s smart if you’re measuring success as pipeline and that’s what your customers are paying you for. Just take that off their plates and just be like, I’m going to spoon feed you pipeline. These people said they want to talk after the event.
Alex Sobol (00:37:24): We have clients that come to us now that need help with the next follow-up. which is not a world that we’re really in at the moment but you know we’re basically trying to think of every which way to make what you what these companies think is the impossible possible we’re basically saying we’re going to provide you access we’re going to provide you information of people you’re trying to target anyway the same people that you’re emailing LinkedIn messaging calling harassing at trade shows we’re going to get you the right people from these brands that you need to be talking to that can or can’t work with you because what some clients like to do is they like to, from just the way that they go after companies inside their own companies every day, they see from the kind of C-suite communities they have that, you know what, these people, we shouldn’t even be prospecting these people anymore because I just met with their ex-company or I saw their paperwork for the Millennium event and they’re not really interested in what we do or they already have a vendor at what so with our programs and our information it’s not just about the people that you can work with it’s also about the people that you can’t work with which provide a lot of value so for us it’s not just access it’s not just a great experience it’s the before and after stuff so we leave nothing to chance and we do everything we possibly can for people to get pipeline and I think that’s the biggest reason why we have such high return rates for especially for our sponsoring community.
Brian Bell (00:38:32): Have you ever had to fire a sponsor and not do an event with them? Tell me a story about that.
Alex Sobol (00:38:37): Yeah, I did. Actually, I did it between one and two years ago. Just, you know, you know, a lot of times I, you know, I try to live my life when people are being hostile and frustrated and try to imagine that, you know, there’s something else going on other than what they’re telling me that’s going on.
Brian Bell (00:38:56): They lost the client and just the.
Brian Bell (00:38:59): Yeah, they’re on notice from the board that they’re going to get fired or whatever.
Alex Sobol (00:39:02): Yeah, I was dealing with a client, not a big company, really difficult, threatening to go to what people would deem as my competitors, throwing everything at us. I know we deliver. Now, we’re not perfect. I mean, we deliver. Large majority of the time, but even if things are outside of our control, like a weather related event and some people can’t make it to an event and that means the experience isn’t good for some companies. We always, we always make TSA shut down that week or whatever.
Brian Bell (00:39:27): Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Ice is, you know, in every airport in the country. Right. Flights aren’t getting out.
Alex Sobol (00:39:31): So I know that when we make a mistake, we own it and we fix it, we make it right. But with this client, I knew that we did everything. I knew what they were asking was unreasonable. I knew that what they were asking, they can never get anywhere else. And it was just taking up too much time. It was too draining. And I said, that’s it. It doesn’t make sense. It’s too, it’s too much. And it’s taking away attention from everything else. And I also felt a little bit like, really? You’ve expressed to us before how hard it is, how much you’re struggling to get pipeline and how no one’s taking your calls. You know, it’s just really difficult.
Brian Bell (00:40:04): Maybe look in the mirror a little bit. You want to go down this road? Okay, no problem.
Alex Sobol (00:40:06): You know, we didn’t do anything. We’ve done everything right. This was a partner that had been a partner for us for years that had done loads of deals from our events. It was a mix of, okay, you know what? I don’t know if you’re bluffing, but go see what else is out there. I’m happy for you to do it. And also, I know we did everything right. So yes, that was something that happened within the last two years.
Brian Bell (00:40:24): When, you know, a lot of founders, this is very much a venture capital and startups podcast. So what you guys do is definitely related. When should founders start thinking about going to events? Like how early is too early, right? We back a lot of pre-seed companies who are just barely have any revenue. Revenue and then you know some of those companies grow up to be you know tens if not hundreds of millions of revenue how does that sort of progression how should founders think about this like we do a lot of enterprise software right one is too early and how do they what’s the escalation of commitment and these sorts of
Alex Sobol (00:40:55): I would say for early stage companies, as soon as there’s a product ready for deployment, right? If you’re in the idea phase or in the stealth phase, because what shouldn’t happen is a company comes, right? They’ve got a ton of money behind them and they’re coming for brand awareness, but someone wants to, you know, go on site or see a demo and there’s nothing to demo so I’d say as soon as a product is ready for deployment and probably right after you get your first first handful of customers because what I find at the levels that we work with in the enterprise community is that often it’s hard for people to jump in if they’re going to be the first or second client so coming to our programs with some clients and some case studies in similar industries is big and if the product’s ready for people to actually buy, use, and deploy. Before that, I would think it’d be too early.
Brian Bell (00:41:42): Gotcha. And then how... as you know founders scale their companies you know from those first few customers to millions of revenue to tens of millions of revenue how does kind of the event
Alex Sobol (00:41:52): game change for them and there’s a lot of a lot of companies of all different sizes are kind of rethinking about trying to look at what’s working what’s not working I think what a lot of founders or a lot of early stage technology companies that have a lot of money behind them they get in this trap where they’re hiring very smart people right though they’ll bring on a chief marketing officer who’s Ivy League educated has a great MBA and is very numbers and metrics focused. And I find those type of marketers are struggling to provide enough value in a lot of cases for their companies. I’ll give you an example, right? After we do a round of events with someone, you know, a common thing people will say to us is, well, we got to see how the pipeline turns out. Right? We can’t do anything with you. They don’t normally say that with RSA, right? They don’t normally say that with HIMSS. They got to go to HIMSS every year. They don’t even wait to see what comes out of that. With events like ours, a lot of times they’re saying, well, we got to see what the pipeline looks like. We got to measure, you know, our email marketing campaigns, how many people open them. For me, I always say to people, you know we’re going to do everything we can to get you pipelining deals from this program. I never guaranteed anything, can’t guarantee anything, and I wouldn’t do that. But the people that are coming to everything else that we’ve talked about in the future... are the same people that your teams are gonna be prospecting all the time. And if you sit and wait six or nine or 12 months, which is, as you know, some of these deal cycles, you know, they’re that long, right? Is it really worth not meeting, getting the guaranteed access of the people that your teams are gonna be trying to hunt anyway? in their homes or in their offices, but not probably getting to. So I think the most analytical driven sort of marketers are missing the big picture. And whereas you see the stories of the companies that have really burst, right? I saw a thing someone put out about Snowflake. which is a great success story and they asked the CMO what was the biggest driver and impact for I think it was a woman for her company that worked inside the marketing department and she said you know face-to-face qualified meetings right so I just think that marketers that are bogged down in And it’s very easy. You start a company, you have money, you hire a C-suite team. They’ve got all the right credentials and they talk all the right formulas. But I think where they get tripped up is that they’re not in the trenches enough. They’re not talking to customers enough. They’re not meeting people where they’re at. They’re focused on algorithms and formulas more than just doing what you need to do to get to the right people that could potentially buy your products. Because the more customers you have, the more other people feel comfortable working with you.
Brian Bell (00:44:08): So what does the future look like? What are you excited about over the next five or ten years? What’s your vision for the future? You guys have obviously expanded into media, data, community. What are you guys excited about?
Alex Sobol (00:44:18): So we’re the clear-cut dominant player of what we do in the U.S., right? When it comes to C-suite enterprise access, nobody does it better. Nobody does it at the volume that we do. Nobody does it the way that we do. So we’re the dominant player. The immediate... A near term for me and for Rob is we want to become as established in Europe as we are in the U.S. And we’re getting there. We’ve been opening Europe a little bit over two years. Last six to eight months has been great. So the focus is to build the same momentum in Europe that we did in the U.S. And there’s always room to grow. There’s always room to grow in the U.S. because the market is the U.S. and there’s always more stuff to do. From an event perspective, as we get Europe more established, there’s a lot of talk about going into APAC. So that’s a market that we’re going to explore once I feel in my gut that Europe is like rock, like the same type on the same type of fire that the U.S. market is on. Europe’s also different. There’s a lot of learning experience, learning over there, different currencies, different cultures. So as we figure that out and we get bigger will then eventually hopefully get to APAC. But a lot of what we’re doing is on the digital side as well, because one of the things I’ve harped on here is legacy lead gen stuff that everybody still does for the most part is so the results just aren’t there. I love the idea to go into that sort of side of the industry and put our own kind of secret sauce on it. I mean, the data we have, the way that we market, the our reputation so we’re now digitizing because not everybody can afford to come to our events and some people spend all they can on the events that are relevant for them whether local or national and they want to do more with us so there’s an opportunity to sell digital products to people that love us and also sell digital products to people that like the small price point of legacy lead gen products that you can do on uh that you can do online for example and just do it with our flavor so it’s remaining strong in the US building out Europe APAC at some point is on the list and we’re starting to digitalize to provide the lead generation that people still think they should be doing but doing it in a much
Brian Bell (00:46:09): more impactful way for them it’s amazing well let’s wrap up with some uh
Alex Sobol (00:46:15): I gotta give Rob credit for this. When COVID hit, Rob called me up and said, I mean, we obviously got to furlough some people. This stuff is crazy. It’s not passing. I think we need to do our event model virtually. I think it could be really good. And I was just like, there’s no way people are going to sit on video for two days. He goes, I think they are. I don’t think people are just going to give up and just say, oh, you know, my career is over. So it turned out to be the right decision. We grew. The best case study for our business is that we grew. We did really well in COVID. which kind of felt weird because I was paranoid shit in COVID because I was afraid to shake anybody’s hand but our business did really well and I think that’s what also attracted so many organizations to want to potentially acquire us and have us be a part of their portfolio is because if you could survive and thrive in COVID right there’s really not too many macroeconomic sort of catastrophic scenarios that could really derail you I mean there’s a There’s a reason to work with us in good times and in bad. So I think of a decision that at the time to me felt crazy but worked out was just replicating what we were doing in person online so for me I always had it was always kind of ignorance is bliss right I never really looked at the CTO of Nike as any different than talking to you or talking to my friend or talking to someone someone like that so I think it’s just convincing people that people are people and it’s actually not that much different of a selling approach than it is that if you’re selling to mid-market or SMB you got to get access and you got to stay in front of people the best sellers that I’ve come across whether at my own company or whether at the at the clients of ours the companies of ours that are clients are the people that are the most persistent they stay in touch with people you know one of the things that technology companies software companies or technology vendors in general they got a They got to deal with is that C-suite people move around a lot. So the reason you got to kind of be in their face, especially early on when they take on a new job is because they could be gone in two years or three years, whether they go do something else, whether they get poached by somebody else, whether they start their own business or whether they get fired or whether they get replaced because of some reason. So I think that Obviously, there’s a little bit more of a sophisticated way of doing things with the enterprise, but the internal desire to stay on people, be in front of people’s faces. And with the enterprise, I think what a lot of sellers think is, is that you got to make them your friend, right? You got to kiss their ass, right? You got to be really gentle. And I just see the companies that do the best, whether they work for multi-billion dollar companies or they work for new companies, are the people that are really passionate that their product actually will help them. So it kind of motivates them to go the extra mile and be more annoying than they would more comfortably be. I just think not just thinking of the enterprise is that much different than everything else. There are pieces of it that are different, but the approach is not that much different than any other type of market you would sell to.
Brian Bell (00:49:12): yeah just be willing to get punched in the face which kind of leads into the next question what’s a pattern you see repeatedly among founders who fail to sell into the enterprise
Alex Sobol (00:49:19): they give up too fast right they have a good meeting with someone they send them an email or two the week after coming to a program of ours and meeting them at some breakfast they host or whatever it may be and just kind of moving on to the next, right? If you develop a relationship with someone just at the minimum level where they’re telling you there’s a fit for what you do, you should never let that die. You got to go to the end of the earth to try to see if that’s going to come to fruition. So I think founders make the mistake that I don’t think it’s that they think they’re too good to get in the trenches and do the follow-up I just think they think well you know Brian’s really not interested what’s the point and the truth really is is that odds are if Brian told you at the initial the initial outset that he was interested there probably was a lot of truth to that most of the people that I come across aren’t don’t lie and the reason he’s not reaching back out to you or not answering your emails is because he gets 5,000 emails a day his admin is filtering his emails his kids in the Little League World Series you know he may have gotten sick like I just think people have to think until they tell you no leave me alone it’s not a no yeah you know some of our biggest clients and the people that we use for testimonials and references are people that it took forever to get them to work with us and many times they switch two or three companies so I just think that this whole like let’s be gentle approach always be respectful always you Always be intentional in what you’re talking about, but there’s so much working against you. What I also find funny, Brian, is a lot of sellers I come across and a lot of company founders, they feel like they’re the only ones with this kind of gentle, I’m going to be respectful approach. They think everybody else is attacking these brands and these executives as wolves, so they’re going to go gentle. It’s actually the opposite. I can’t tell you how many companies tell me, we’re not like that. We don’t do that. they all are very kind of hands-off you got to be hands-on you got to be in people’s faces you got to be respectful but you got to go to the end of the earth when someone tells you that there could be a potential partnership yeah that’s
Brian Bell (00:51:06): great what is the most valuable introduction you’ve ever facilitated and why well I
Alex Sobol (00:51:11): could tell you about a rewarding one I mean we facilitated I don’t even know how many thousands of introductions virtually in person probably a million by now I don’t even know I don’t even know and you know I remember there was a Fortune, I don’t know, not Fortune 25, but like a top 25 IT vendor. We facilitated an introduction. This isn’t the one I was thinking about. They did a $250 million deal with a hospital system that they had been working for a year or two. And then the guy that came to our event was the guy they couldn’t get to. And that was the final piece. And then a couple months later, they did a $250 million deal. That’s a great story. The one that’s actually that came to mind when you asked this was great client of mine, Uncast Business. Right. It was my personal client. I have a couple of clients. I really like the GM in that business is a really good guy. And he said to me, he called me and he said, Alex, you know, he said, can you do me a favor? None of my teams in the field can get to the CIO of RBI, Restaurant Brands International. I think the old Burger King and Popeyes and all those others, right? All food you shouldn’t be eating. And he said, like, we’re in a five-way potential pilot with AT&T and all these other companies, right? He goes, I’m coming to your event in two months. Can you get the CIO there for me? I saw you’re connected to him on LinkedIn. He must be in your network. so I made it a point to myself reach out to the CIO at that time of RBI and spoke to him very transparently he knew about all these companies they were testing out I said you should come to our event right the GM of Comcast is going to be there he’s a great guy CIO of RBI knew who I was he made it there he decided to come to the event he came to the event and then I got a phone call from the GM of Comcast a few months later so we’re down to the final two and then a month or two later they won the bid so all of the All of the sort of wireless and the infrastructure you see in those restaurants is done by Comcast. And that stuff made me feel really good because one is I want to be seen as the company and as a person and as a group of people that have this special skill set that we could do things that, you know, all the millions of dollars that they’re paying for reps and sophisticated training and selling. They know that, you know, when the back’s against the wall, they should come to us. And two is I felt really good about that because that really was a big thing for his career. And he put a lot of trust into me when we were a young company and to repay that and to make that happen. He said to me without that meeting, that deal never would have happened. So that to me was one of my favorite introductions. I don’t know. I’m assuming it was a big size deal. I don’t know if it was. I don’t know what the number was.
Brian Bell (00:53:37): If it’s all the restaurants across the nation, yeah, it’s a lot. I felt great about that. So if you guys disappeared tomorrow, Millennium, what would be your best customers miss the most?
Alex Sobol (00:53:49): just a guarantee of access right you know with millennium right that on the dates of your private local event with your people in your territory or at the national programs with the enterprise brands you’re trying to get in front of that barring some pandemic some weather related activity something crazy that we can’t control that the people that your teams are targeting are going to be there there’s not really another vehicle that can do that that I found Right there are other companies that say they will do that but the evidence of the data proves out no one does it to the level that we do so I just think they would miss that kind of head on the pillow guarantee that you know my sales guys no matter in my field teams or my marketing teams no matter how good or bad they’re performing at least we’re going to get access to the people we need to get access to so I think they would miss that kind of guarantee and confirmation of getting access yeah
Brian Bell (00:54:34): um last question what do you want your legacy to be honestly I I just want people
Alex Sobol (00:54:38): to think that I live my life in a way that I hope people think of me as a kind genuine honest person did the best I can built a company not because I was super intelligent just because built it because I felt I was really good at something and you know I think everybody’s trying to find their happiness you know what’s going to make them the most happy I don’t know you know if you you know Scott Galloway and
Brian Bell (00:55:00): Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’m a big fan of his.
Alex Sobol (00:55:02): I think he’s like the Bible. He once said once a few years ago, he said that, you know, everybody’s trying to find their happiness, right? I didn’t get the job at ESPN, right? Luckily, because I don’t think that would have been great long term anyway. But he had said, if you’re the top, if you think you’re the top 10% of what you do, you should do that. That’ll make you happy. So I felt that I was in the top one tenth of one percent and my partner of what we did and that’s why we enjoy most days what we do something legacy wise yeah was just an example of you know didn’t have this crazy revolutionary idea got good at something wanted to do it better did that built something because we treated people well we were kind we did things with the right intentions we were accountable to ourselves we we we acknowledge when we make mistakes we always try to do the right thing and just like good people good person like that’s that’s really what I care about I care more about the fact that you know long long long way down the road whatever people think of Millennium they know the guts of Millennium the people operating Millennium did things with the right intentions and we’re good people speaking of
Brian Bell (00:56:01): which where can People listening, there might be execs listening to this, founders, people who want to do events, where can they find you online and find out how to work with you guys?
Alex Sobol (00:56:09): So our website’s mill-all.com, M-I-L-L-A-L-L.com. Fun fact, when we bought our first domain, we spelled millennium wrong. We spelled millennium with one N, so we just figured we’d shorten it to mill-all.com. We have a podcast that’s called Millennium Live. I jump on sometimes. Got a decent amount of viewership. We interviewed technology leaders and sometimes government leaders on that as well. but yeah that’s probably the best way to find us I mean we’re heavy on LinkedIn on all the social channels as well that’s pretty much where we’re at thanks for coming Alex I really enjoyed it I really enjoyed this too Brian thanks for the time thanks so much.
