On a Thursday morning with no game on the schedule, roughly 600 business leaders, advisors and partners filled the Miller Lite MVP Club at MetLife Stadium, a room that holds about five times that many people on an NFL Game Day.
Leon Grassi was thrilled. But not satisfied.
Grassi, the Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Business Development for SAX and all its divisions, said the firm’s symposium has doubled in size in a year — and more than doubled in scope from how it began five years ago: A small event for clients in one niche.
His goal for next year is 1,000 people.
“My hope is that this becomes our annual trade show,” he said.
It already serves as a business model for business events of the future.
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The SAX Business Symposium began five years ago as a gathering for SAX’s consumer products clients, the manufacturing and distribution niche. Grassi said the firm held it at American Dream because the Meadowlands area was home to a large share of the firm’s clients.
It has taken off from there.
“There was so much interest from a client perspective and a COI perspective that it just kind of caught fire,” he said. “We got more sponsors every year, more interest every year.”
How much? Last year the firm moved the event to MetLife Stadium.
“We literally grew out of American Dream, so we needed a larger space,” Grassi said. “This facility gave us the opportunity to do that.”
Last year’s event, still focused on consumer products, drew about 300 people, according to Grassi. Afterward, the firm decided to open it up.
“We said, ‘We should do this for the whole firm, not just for consumer products,’” he said.
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Josh Chananie, a longtime SAX partner who runs the firm’s consumer products practice, helped build the event with Grassi. He opened the day by reminding the crowd of a promise.
“I stood on this same stage last October as we concluded our manufacturing and distribution consumer products conference with a promise that we would be right back here in MetLife this year, and here we are, not just representing one industry, but the entire SAX nation,” Shannon said.
The depth of the firm showed in the content.
CEO Joseph Damiano opened with a fireside chat on leading through uncertainty alongside Dr. Dustin Riccio, CEO of St. Joseph’s Health, and Ira Robbins, CEO and Chairman of Valley Bank. Breakout sessions covered AI, legacy planning and preparing a business for sale.
Exhibitors including BlackRock, Capital Group and Nuveen gave demos, and former Giants quarterback Phil Simms gave the keynote.
But then there’s this: Grassi said the content isn’t the main point.
To him, the point is the conversations that happen between sessions. He called it part of the SAX pitch: an advisor that doesn’t help clients grow isn’t really advising.
“We’re not being consultants and advisors unless we’re helping them to grow their business,” he said. “It’s like low-hanging fruit. The easiest way for us to do that is to introduce them to other clients.”
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The event was about connecting.
“I want our construction clients to meet our real estate development clients,” Grassi said. “I want our manufacturing and distribution clients to meet each other, and then the real estate development, because there’s always opportunities with warehouse development and all this other stuff.”
Grassi said the benefits go both ways.
“By brokering those introductions, yes, we’re serving SAX, but we’re also serving the community,” he said. “We’re helping the businesses that we support to grow and to make relationships.”
The panels are a bonus, he said.
“I don’t want to make it an advertisement for the firm,” he said. “What you see happening right now is what this is about.”
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Grassi has been in marketing for more than two decades. He said the standard conference has grown old.
“Every year we see a decrease in the amount of attendees that come to events because, if I’m being honest, it’s the same old, same old,” he said. “You see the same people.”
Grassi’s answer was to, well, change everything.
“We’re in the business these days of standing out in a crowd,” he said. “And this is how you do that. You don’t just host another event at a hotel.
“You change the venue. You change the idea. You change the concept. This is a great representation of that.”
The venue is part of what attendees take home, Grassi said. Most people only see MetLife on game day, behind security lines.
“You see this stuff that you don’t normally get to see, and it’s cool,” he said. “It’s part of the experience.”
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Grassi said the keynote shows how far the event has come.
“We wouldn’t have had Phil Simms five years ago,” he said.
He gave the credit to his team. Six staffers, wearing SAX jerseys Thursday, have worked on the event since June.
“Almost as a part-time job on top of their full-time job to make this happen,” he said. “I don’t believe a lot of firms our size, like accounting firms our size or advisory firms our size in the marketplace, can pull something like this off, just from a resource perspective.”
The growth plan relies on word of mouth.
“I hope people come. I hope they have fun. I hope they tell their friends about it and say, ‘You got to come to this next year,’” Grassi said. “That’s what happened last year, and that’s why so many more came this year.”
If that happens again, next year’s crowd could be close to 1,000 people.
“With room to grow even more,” Grassi said.
