Luckily, Mario Di Ubaldi, my VP at the time, brought experience from his previous position that gave us a crutch to hobble on. We got three major sponsors to go in on a CEO Roundtable. It was, essentially, 10 industry CEO’s sitting around a table participating in directed discussion followed by a dinner. Conversation was recorded and transcribed for an editorial piece. Sponsors got a seat at the table. A couple of other neat tricks made it successful.

It was hard work, but cheap to produce and it netted a quick $50k. Then we did a CFO Roundtable. Then we did one in Europe, then we did one in Asia, and another one and another one. We finished the year almost on budget.

I’ve done several permutations since, including a webcast roundtables. Pros: defined financial upside, low risk. Cons: Events start from scratch, huge time investment. The Lesson: Talk to your largest exhibitors/advertisers, see if they’d be willing to pay for exclusive access to a highly targeted audience. Could be a roundtable, webcast, lunch, parasite event, whatever. Then invest the hours of work that it takes to find the bodies and make it happen.