Reinventing Event Revenue: Michelle Troop on Customization, AI Tools, and Selling Beyond the Booth
In this episode of The Revenue Room, host Heather Holst-Knudsen speaks with Michelle Troop, Chief Revenue Officer of Ai4, the world’s largest artificial intelligence event. Michelle shares how she helped scale Ai4 from boutique gatherings into an 8,000+ attendee juggernaut—and how her entrepreneurial mindset has led to multiple successful event acquisitions.
She breaks down the playbook behind Ai4’s revenue transformation, including:
- How to enable your sales team to go beyond square footage
- Why modern sponsors expect customization and real-time ROI
- How to use AI tools like ChatGPT to boost outbound performance
- Rethinking hosted buyer models and 1:1 meetings
- What signals you're ready to scale or sell
Whether you lead events, sales, or strategy, Michelle’s insights will inspire you to rethink how you monetize audience, data, and content in today’s fast-moving B2B environment.
About Michelle Troop
Michelle Troop is currently the Chief Revenue Officer of Ai4, the largest and most significant international artificial intelligence event, which was recently acquired by CloserStill Media—a global events organization with over 200 award-winning brands spanning Business Technology, Learning, HR & Education, Healthcare, and Future Transport & Infrastructure.
With over 35 years of trade show experience across consumer events, trade shows, and conferences, Michelle has consistently transformed and scaled events into industry-leading platforms. Her career highlights include rebuilding key trade shows into Trade Show Top 35 events, traveling the globe for the launch of the original PlayStation, and—over the past 13 years—co-founding and building several premier events such as InsureTech Connect (ITC), Mobile Apps Unlocked (MAU), and LeadsCon. All of these grew from launch to critical mass and were ultimately acquired by Clarion and Access Intelligence.
Most recently, she helped reshape the strategy and scale of Ai4, growing it from a series of 300-person events in New York into the leading global AI event, drawing over 8,000 attendees to Las Vegas.
Michelle is passionate not only about building great events, but also building exceptional teams. Together, they’ve delivered exponential growth in attendance, revenue, and audience experience.
When she's not driving innovation in
About Heather Holst-Knudsen
Heather Holst-Knudsen is the founder and CEO of H2K Labs and Revenue Room™ Connect. She is a seasoned executive with extensive experience in digital transformation, data, and revenue growth. She is a recognized leader and operator in media, marketplaces, events, and adjacent technologies. Heather has a proven track record of leading organizations to achieve customer-centric innovation, revenue growth, and enterprise value creation. As a thought leader, Heather shares her insights on multisided business models under The Revenue Room™. Connect with Heather on LinkedIn.
ABOUT REVENUE ROOM™ CONNECT
Revenue Room™ Connect is a high-trust membership network for growth-minded executives in media, events, data, and B2B platforms. It’s where forward-thinking leaders align around what actually drives revenue—with curated content, peer exchange, and exclusive access to frameworks, events, and executive insights. Join to connect with others solving the same challenges you are. Create your free profile at https://www.revenueroomconnect.com.
ABOUT H2K LABS
H2K Labs is a tech-enabled value creation specialist that helps media, data/information, event, and marketplace businesses accelerate revenue, drive profitability, and fuel enterprise value using data, digi...