The Business of Meetings 06: Positioning Yourself in the Events Industry and Weathering the Crisis with Dan Berger
Anything can happen when you make the leap as an entrepreneur, and this fear often holds people back, but not Dan Berger. When Dan Berger launched his career as an entrepreneur and founded Social Table, he not only met great success but was able to sell his business and propel himself onto his next project. In this interview, Dan shares his story, tips on how to position yourself in the meetings and events industry, and how to face crisis. This conversation is full of great advice on how to get traction for your business and an interesting perspective on generational cycles of the meeting industry.
Dan’s Bio: Dan Berger is an American-Israeli entrepreneur and investor. He is the Founder and former CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based Social Tables, which was acquired in October 2018 by Cvent, a Vista-backed company, for a reported 8-figure deal.
Founded in 2011, Social Tables provides event sales, marketing, and operations software products, which have enabled over 250,000 hospitality and event professionals execute over 1.5 million events per year. The award-winning software is used by over 50% of all full-service hotels in North America.
Show Highlights:
- What inspired Dan to become an entrepreneur
- Eric and Dan discuss how being an introvert or extrovert effects business leadership
- How to overcome fear when becoming an entrepreneur
- Challenges you overcome early in business
- Dan discusses the importance of human connection
- How to apply what we learn from crisis to highlight the importance of the meetings industry
- How the meeting business model and generational re-skilling impacts event planning
- Opportunities that the online community has created for the meeting industry
- Dan’s story of building and selling his business
- How to collect data, filter out noise, and listen to your gut
- Dan shares what his upcoming projects look like
Resources:
Social Tables LinkedIn
Connect with Eric:
www.eventbusinessformula.com/podcast
Eric’s LinkedIn