It's Personal Stories, A Hospitality Podcast

Anil Aggarwal CEO Milestone Inc interviewed by Dorothy Dowling

• David Kong

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In this episode of 'It's Personal Stories,' Dorothy Dowling interviews Anil Agarwal, CEO of Milestone. Anil shares his journey into entrepreneurship, starting with his early days at the University of Georgia where he founded an entrepreneurship club. His interest grew through interactions with members of the Indus Entrepreneurs organization. This led him to start Zeevo, a company that innovated Bluetooth chip technology, which was eventually sold to Broadcom. He later co-founded Milestone, a digital marketing company for hotels, with his wife, Benu. They successfully scaled the business, despite initial challenges. Anil discusses the importance of building the right team, continuous learning, innovation, and integrity in leadership. He also emphasizes understanding the impact of one's work and building strong relationships and collaboration. Anil attributes his success to continuous learning, empathy, and integrity, and shares advice on defining personal success and the importance of hard work.


Dorothy Dowling:

Greetings. I am Dorothy Dowling and welcome to It's Personal Stories, a hospitality podcast that highlights the inspiring journeys of leaders in the hospitality industry. We are a nonprofit organization dedicated to personal empowerment. Today, I am delighted to welcome Anil Agarwal, the CEO of Milestone. Anil, it is such an honor to have you with us today.

Anil Aggarwal:

Hi, Dorothy. It's fantastic to be on this show and I look forward to some good conversation here.

Dorothy Dowling:

Wonderful. I do too. Anil, I hope we can start at the beginning and perhaps you could share with our audience what sparked your interest in entrepreneurship and how did your career evolve to where you are today?

Anil Aggarwal:

Yeah, let me, without really realizing this was entrepreneurship, it was probably in me because when I was in business school, I. Just Hey, what about while we're in business school? Why don't we just start up some small tutoring thing when we start setting up small businesses so that we can actually make some money doing this? And so that was the, so I actually ended up at university of Georgia. The entrepreneurship club is pretty big now, but I actually started that way back in 1993. And so that was my first attempt, although I didn't really think of it as entrepreneurship. I was just like, how do we make money for beer? And this is a good way for all of us to do this. And then really I started working in a corporate environment and I used to go to, so five years into that job, I used to go to this organization called the Indus Entrepreneurs. It's a very large. Entrepreneurship organization at that time. It was just brand new. It had only two years. It had been started. So this isn't back in 99 and I used to go meet all these people are 98 99. I used to meet all these people who started companies and made them really big. I learned about this company called Neomagic that did graphics. I learned about this company called NVIDIA at that time, which was doing graphics processor. So I kept learning about these companies and kept meeting these people who had created these companies. And I'm like, I want to do one of these. And that's really what inspired me to start Xevo, which Bluetooth came about and I used to be a wireless industry expert. Bluetooth standard was launched and I immediately saw a very big need. It was fulfilling. So I was like, we're going to create a, and then, in my previous job, I was going through a transition because they got sold to Philips. So there was a gap and I was like, okay, this is a perfect time. I'm going to create a company that creates a Bluetooth chip. And that's how we got started. The problem that we were solving was the Bluetooth chip used to be as big as the palm of the hand. And to make it go into a cell phone or your computer, you have to shrink it down to a thumbnail size. And that technology was very difficult because there was a digital and analog technology, two different technologies and done in two different systems. And we had to bring it all together into a single technology. So that was the problem we were solving. So we were the first three companies in the world to make that happen. And Eventually we sold that company to Broadcom. And then I started in parallel. My wife was a hospital person. She worked in hotels. She understood hotels and she had this little outfit where she was selling marketing services to her and very creative. And I'll tell you some really great stories. If you want, I think your audience will get a kick out of this because. One day I came back home from my board meeting and this is probably in 2001. And I I see I tell her like during dinner, I'm just telling her like, Hey, Mark Stevens was talking about this company called Google. Which is quadrupling every quarter. And she's Oh, I'm taking classes on how to market hotels on. This is back in 2001. And so that really sparked my interest. I was helping her in the background with a lot of stuff, strategy and material. And then when we sold Zivo I started to look at what we want to do, and we said, okay, maybe. There's an opportunity to grow this business. I got some advice from Mark and some other people and they said this would be a good business. The question was whether it's scalable, can we make it large scale or is was it more custom? The second was, Do you work with your spouse? You've got a good relationship and you want to do that. So we said business date for a year and years timeframe. I could, I was continuing to consult in the wireless industry and I could go back. So we, that was 1995. We decided we'll business date for a year and figure out whether we can this is something that can scale and. Whether we can, it can scale for both of with both of us in and not getting into each other's nerves. It worked out well. I guess we are in 2025 and we're still married and the company is doing well. So I guess it worked out well.

Dorothy Dowling:

Thank you for sharing that story with us, Anil. And there's, there's a few things. One is, I think the fact that you started an entrepreneurship club when you were at university. I think that really foretold. Your future, because I think those were in the very early days when those clubs were being started at a lot of university campuses. I appreciate how you really developed up that opportunity for students to really embrace, what's different about being an entrepreneur versus an employee. And then I just think about the amazing success you had with Zivo and then, in fact, becoming a serial entrepreneur and. Reinvesting in terms of a digital marketing company, which milestone he has. And I love the story that you shared about the new being so early on with Google, because I think she is one of the most brilliant digital marketers that I have met in my career. So now I fully appreciate that she was really on that first. ground level with Google and understanding how a lot of that was going to impact our industry. So I appreciate you sharing that. I'm wondering if we could talk a little bit about challenges because I think entrepreneurs the success rate I think they say it's one in 10 that actually break through and are successful. I'm just wondering if there's any kind of outstanding element in your journey that really was one of those challenges that you had to navigate that you might share with the audience.

Anil Aggarwal:

Yeah, I think the everybody has their challenges and anybody who tells me otherwise either they're bluffing or there's, they're probably one in, but we had our sets of challenges. Theory is, and I do a lot of coaching for you. You're going to go out to do big things, whether in the corporate world, whether it doesn't matter. You're going to go. The fact that you're going to start rising to the top is because you're really good. Being really good does not translate to success, right? There's a lot of other things, including luck, including timing, including there's a whole bunch of things that into success. And I think that was a humbling experience and lessons for us because you come in very heady or top of your game. You're one of the best in the industry and starting this company. When we started Zeebo, I was 31. I was the youngest semiconductor company person. They didn't, at that time, you didn't have 30 year old CEOs. Which internet changed all of that. But at that time you didn't. And you felt awesome about everything. But then as you start building stuff we were solving a very difficult technology problem and very difficult technology problem. And it just took us a lot longer to solve it than than others or than one other company, the other third one sold itself earlier. And. What happens in the semiconductor industry, I don't know if you're familiar with Moore's law, but the prices drop at 30 percent every year. So if you miss a cycle, which is what we did, it took us longer, which means we, our product missed a cycle. In the end, we had a fantastic product that was doing the job. It just, it was too expensive or the cost was too high. You had, so we had 40 million in run rate selling it to Logitech and Dell and. All of those chips, you, when you buy, even today, when you buy those, some of those headsets they're my next generations of the chip that we created. But what we found was that the, so you, you were cost challenge. And so we ended up selling zero at at discount, not what we would have and what. Broadcom was able to do was bring the cost down and make that division to a 2 billion division, actually. So they didn't, the product really didn't work. But I think the biggest learning from challenges point of view is that it's not just you, It's the whole team. Everybody has to execute, right? And if you have, you're only as in a big, in a team environment, in a company environment, you're only as strong as the weakest link in your organization. And if it doesn't matter. Where the problem happens, if the problem happens, and I think to me, that is the biggest learning is you gotta look at across your organization and if you have a big weak link, you gotta attack that.

Dorothy Dowling:

I know we'll talk a little bit about people leadership a little later. And one of the things that I have such great respect for you, I think is really just, you bring that. CEO capability in terms of the business challenge. You also bring all this subject matter expertise in terms of digital marketing and technology. So you connect all the dots for people, but it is truly your understanding about driving to business outcomes. And then really being able to unpack a lot of the how to get there that I just think you offer so much to the partners that, that that work with you. Cause I've obviously had a first row seat to seeing how you bring all of that leadership to your business partners. I'm presuming that's something that built over time in terms of your understanding about how to drive just when you're talking about working in the technology space and understanding how depreciation works in the industry and how those windows of time in terms of the growth trajectory and the pricing strategy and all those kinds of things impact what kind of potential exit. You can drive in terms of the wealth factor. I don't know if there's anything else you want to comment on that, because that's what I see is that you understand the macro business problem, and you really bring that sense of urgency and understanding about how do we really crystallize a lot of the elements of how to get there.

Anil Aggarwal:

Yeah. First of all, thank you. I think you're being too kind, but and just for the record, respect is mutual.

Dorothy Dowling:

Thank you.

Anil Aggarwal:

Think the biggest challenge that I see in organizations is there isn't a clarity of, and what happens is, everybody's working hard. So this is not a. a knock on anybody's capability that just people are working, but what I find is that when you set a goal for people, you give them clarity of this is where we need to get to. You get just much better outcomes, right? The effort may be similar, but it's more focused. People are tension. So that's one thing that you know, I tend to do now. The challenge is that you can set a goal, but if people don't understand what that how do they have to get there, right? So the job of the leader is not to just set a goal and say, tell me how you're going to get there. It is to seek input and figure out how to get there. But in the end, the leadership is about making sure people get

Dorothy Dowling:

there. Yeah.

Anil Aggarwal:

And making them. And whether you do that through ideas or whether you do that through creating a dialogue and creating a conversation, sometimes rough conversations, sometimes uncomfortable conversations, but you have to get people to start talking about how do you get there? So that's one of the things, and I'm a very big believer in if people don't understand, they don't, they will not be able to. So I spend a lot of time, whether it's with our customers, our partners, or our employees. Making sure that people actually understand, right? And, sometimes I feel like there's people, you can, you, you just need to have a positive outlook on that, right? If somebody doesn't understand, your job is not to make them feel bad about it. Your job is to make them understand. Because they might, they'll rise up to the occasion most of the times, most people, I think one thing that I learned about leadership is most people want to do great. And so if you give them the opportunity and you enable them to rise up to occasion.

Dorothy Dowling:

I think that's really good advice for everyone. And cause I do also believe that everyone wants to be successful in Neil, but I think what you do extremely well is you ask questions to help people understand, because I think the questions that you ask actually allow others. to potentially be on that path of understanding on their own journey. Anyways I admire how you, how well you do that. I'm wondering if I can ask a little bit about your own commitment to learning, because obviously you're on the forefront of. Digital and marketing. And there's a tremendous amount of change that's going on in the space, particularly right now with artificial intelligence. I'm wondering if you can share with the audience about how do you stay on top of your game yet? What does your professional growth investments look like?

Anil Aggarwal:

Yeah. Yeah. I, I subscribe to this principle, Dorothy, and very strong, strongly, I believe knowledge is power if you understand you're going to be. able to execute on that stuff. So I spent a fair amount of time reading articles and. And just, it's just not reading, like a lot of times I focus in on if I was to be able to stand up and ask to speak on this subject, how would I do that? And as soon as you take that slightly different angle, you actually go a lot deeper because sometimes you read stuff and you think you understand it, but then you're asked to speak about it and you're struggling with it. And being able to draw a picture of what you read and how to be able to tell that story. So I'm a very big believer in learning reading. I'll tell you a very interesting story at at milestone. So I think you're going to get a kick out of this one because so I told you I decided with the new in 1995 that I'm going to help. I'll And, the reality was that she had never actually sold before because she was the only one doing that stuff. She had 60 hotels. She worked with and she had a waiting list of customers because she I

Dorothy Dowling:

remember those days. Everybody wanted Banu. Yeah So

Anil Aggarwal:

she had never sold before so when we decided that I was gonna help her like What should I work on and we decided that I'll get sales marketing outward bound business So the strategy as well, but technology and development and I said, what should I work on? She's like I have no idea you know you decided that you want to you think you want to try this, but I have I'm like the quantity is that we need to grow this business. So I'll do the sales thing and I'll call this. It was a really dismal period actually, because I think it's the lowest I've felt in my career over three weeks, I called so many hotels and every single one of them hung up on me. And then you're sitting there for a little bit. And so I have nothing to do with next time was because all I did was call and they hung up and I was okay. But in the process when I was browsing and I would, I was like, okay, if I really wanna understand, and the part of the reason was I couldn't talk about, so I said, I'm gonna understand and read about hotel. That is who I'm selling to. So I went, downloaded some profit and loss. At that time, internet was not all that great, but there were some p and l statements online for some of the chains. I think there was a Hilton, there was a couple of, I downloaded what. And I just really absorbed it. I created an artificial PNL and if I was running a hotel, this is what I would do. And long before in the third, fourth or third or fourth week, I was calling in and I called this hotel at Hampton in Truckee. I still remember there was a GM at Rick at that property. He was in, he picks up the phone and he started chatting with me. Finally, I got to a person who was chatting rather than hanging up. And then he said, like, how long have you been in hospitality? And I said, four weeks. And then he said, so what did you do before? I told him a little bit about what I did before. And he said so you think you're one of those Silicon Valley guys who can sell me anything? I'm like, that's not really true because I've been able to sell nothing for the last four weeks. He said, look, you called, I like talking to you. I'll do one thing. If you tell me the cost of my laundry in my room, all the laundering, the colors, I'll buy whatever you're selling. He had till this point. We hadn't even talked about his channel and he's like I'll buy whatever you're selling and I don't even need to look at so I told him because I had done the pnl So I told him exactly what the cost was and he was a man of his word He bought then he said okay show me what you were doing and then but I think the Moral of the story is educating yourself on your customers about the market, about trends. It's extremely important. And I, I'm very fortunate the news believes that way. So she churns out a lot of material that we all absorb, but I do a lot of reading of online.

Dorothy Dowling:

But I think, so you've said a lot of things that I think have a really great relevance for the audience. And the one is that sales is really hard and that whole element of being rejected that's just part of the sales journey. And I, and that's why I have such great admiration for people that, are in a sales and business development role. I think the other part in terms of being informed about your customer and really understanding their business challenges and understanding how they make money is also really important for people to be able to add value in terms of driving their growth. So I think those are really foundational elements. I also just think that commitment that you have to continuing to up your game because some people come from another industry and join the hospitality industry. A lot of us like me have been in it almost my entire career. So a lot of that has been part of the journey is as we have gone. But I do think having that category knowledge is critically important to be able to add value to others. I'm wondering if we can talk a little bit about success because I think this is a natural lead on from what you're saying is that success always means different things to different people. And I would love to understand how you define success in terms of your profession and also you as a person.

Anil Aggarwal:

Yeah. Yeah. But before I do that, I do want to say that out of my 30 of career 20, you have been in hospitality. So I'll say that I understand hospitality marketing really well, right? You do.

Dorothy Dowling:

2005 to 2025, 20 years for sure.

Anil Aggarwal:

All right. So, that's a very good question. What is success? I actually, what I, when I'm guiding our kids or something I tell them the definition of success is different for him, right? And you have to figure out what that means for you. It could very well be that, Hey, I really want a simple life, a job and be able to live in my home and raise my family and get enough time with my family. You may want to be a millionaire. You may want to just be a regular person. So I don't think the definition of success, there is a criteria definition of success is what I want out of my life. And if I can achieve that and I think that's a very big radical difference between my thinking, because sometimes I'll tell people I just get a sense, like they're telling me, Hey, I really just want to come home at five. And I don't want to push those people beyond those because Now success would be that you come over at five, but we do a fantastic job between nine to five. But so that is the goal of that's what you want to do. So my, my theory on success is that every individual sets their own bar, right? Like even for our kids, like a lot of people have very lofty goals for their kids that we want our kids to do this and what this, and both Benu and I, as parents, we just said. We want two simple goals for our kids. We want them to be really good people that we want them to treat people well. And second is we want them to be able to earn their own living so that they're never dependent on anybody else, but that's it. It had nothing to do with what roles they will play, what careers they will play, how much money they will have just enough to live a good life and be good people. So I think it depends on, that's really what I feel both personally, professionally, you've got to define what. What do you want? And if what you want is a lot of money, then you have to figure out ways to make money, to work hard. If you want career upward mobility, then you just got to figure out what it takes to get that.

Dorothy Dowling:

Yeah. And I think that message in terms of understanding the individuality of what success means to different people, Neil is even more critically important today, because I think we're understanding as employers, That employees do have different definitions of success, and we have to respect the definition of success that they hold. I think in days gone by, we all felt that the employer could define success and impose that on their employee base. But now we realize it's a collaborative effort, and we have to. Bridge and make everyone comfortable and allow them to contribute the way what's meaningful for them in terms of what success does mean for them. So I think that is a really important leadership principle. I'm also wondering if you could expand on that a little bit in terms of how you've really built your business and how you've nurtured teams, because when I look at the. Leadership team that you have at milestone, you have a very impressive group of individuals that you have taken from some very high profile technology companies. And they're obviously there because they believe in you and they believe in the new and obviously they believe in milestone. But I'm wondering if there's values or principles that you could share that allowed you to attract those people to retain those individuals and allow them to contribute to milestone and make it as successful as it is today.

Anil Aggarwal:

I I do. I, we're very fortunate, so I'm just saying that we have a great team and it takes a lot of effort to build a great team. And it's an IT process sometimes to get to the right team. But you know what I find it doesn't matter what level you're operating at, people follow the leader because. Of certain things. One, one is a good leader, gets more out of people than what they would contribute on their own. And I, what I find is if you can create an environment where people can contribute well, and they can contribute more and their opinion is valued. So that's one aspect. The second is I think we're very big believers in innovation. And constantly challenging. There is no settling for anything, right? So you get to this level. And then how do you get better? And how do you get better? And how do you get better? And I think people love that because otherwise it gets boring. I'm talking about the people again. The assumption is the leadership. People that we have in leadership place, they're like minded people. They want to grow the business. They want to grow themselves and their careers at some day they want to run companies and if you can provide them the mentorship and leadership so that they can do that, the and I would say integrity is another very important thing. If people trust you, then they will follow you. And and I think to me that's very important. It's there's I have zero tolerance for integrity compromises because because, if I can't trust a person, then I can't work. So I think there are a few things that I feel like values wise, innovation, empathy. Making sure you're a kind person to them, so there are a few things that we

Dorothy Dowling:

do okay those are really great human qualities that I think are important to all employees at all levels, but I certainly believe it's true of leaders too, because that discretionary commitment that you talk about when people give you more than, what is say within a normal work day, that really comes because of that trust and belief in the leaders that they work with the Neil. So very well said, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the advice that you might give to others in the industry about building relationships and collaborating with others to really build on those shared goals, because you do that exceptionally well. So I'm sure you have some wisdom you could share with all of us.

Anil Aggarwal:

Yeah, I'll do that. But let me touch on one other point on the previous one. I think when the employees understand what impact are they having they tend to perform that. So there are two schools of thought, just do your job. Or the second is, here's how your job actually is impacting the company. And if they can get to that point you create a culture where the employees can understand how what they're doing impacts the company. almost invariably in my career, you get more out of it.

Dorothy Dowling:

Yes. No, I think that comes back to some of your earlier thoughts about unpacking understanding for folks, because I do think that clarity of understanding really empowers everyone to stay focused on the right things and do more of the right things to help everybody win together. So thank you for that.

Anil Aggarwal:

Yeah,

Dorothy Dowling:

so now it was about relationships and collaboration. I don't know if you have any wisdom.

Anil Aggarwal:

Yeah. No, I do. I think the biggest, and this is probably the biggest flaw. Some of the smartest people have is they think they can do it all themselves and they can do it. And, I've got some good advice for them because I came from there. And you guys that you're not all that great after all. You need a lot of people to be great and people who don't follow you, people who actually are with you, so it's not like you're the boss and you can just lead and it's more of you're taking them with you and they're all growing together. So I believe in relationships. I think building. My advice to people is figure out the ecosystem of relationships that you need, whether it's on the partner side, whether it's people who are going to be vendors to you, who are going to help you succeed and then you really have to, especially of the vendor selection. I think. The tech companies have a big thing. They're not invented here. Like I want to do it myself, but we, but that can hurt you because you're not great at everything you do, you want to be able to outsource the right portions, bring in the best of the best. where that is necessary. So those relationships Dorothy are very important. Your vendor relationships, your partner relationships, your industry friends how, we just didn't, I just love the interaction you and I have. And, that's a relationship that's based on where you bring in the value that you bring and we add value where we bring and it's collaboratively. One plus one is far greater than two. I think that's how I see it.

Dorothy Dowling:

When you say that, Anil I had the privilege of working with David Kong for a long time, who's the founder of this It's Personal Stories, and that's the way he always spoke, one plus one equals three, and it is that power of collaboration and really understanding how together we are so much better than we are individually or even as just two people. It's a power of the, extra work that comes or the extra learning that comes from just the two people really powering each other. So, I'm wondering, we're coming up near the end of the interview, Anil, and we always like to ask a couple of questions. One is if you were Sitting on your shoulder of your younger self today, if there's any particular advice that you would offer to yourself as you started your career journey.

Anil Aggarwal:

Yeah. Yeah. I think I would say, get the right team. So, when you get placed with the responsibility at whatever level, what I tell people is, or myself, the reason I have that responsibility is because. Somebody thought I was really good too and was going to be able to get that done. So making sure that you're confident at that point. And if you're seeing flags, then, you know, attack them don't second guess yourself, right? Because you've been placed in that situation. I think I do in corporate world. I just think I can't emphasize under how important people are. So if you find yourself. With people on your team who are not moving with you or not aligned, then as a leader you have to make those tough calls and make those changes. Because if you don't, everybody else will suffer alongside.

Dorothy Dowling:

Yeah that's very good advice. And many of us avoid those kinds of hard decisions because they are so hard. So I think that is Advice that we should all adhere to. I'm wondering if there is anything that someone in your career, what piece of advice that they offered to you that has been very influential.

Anil Aggarwal:

Yeah. My mom, and I keep thinking it's a very simple advice, Dorothy, because what she said to me is if you're good at one thing, you'll be good at the other. Everything you put your heart and so you have to believe that, right? And and I've used that time. And again, I was a really good engineer. Actually, I wrote a research papers. I was. Doing a lot of research scientific work and then you switch to marketing or management and I was very afraid I was in a different country different environment didn't really understand the business environment and she had only one tip for me It's hey, if you were a good engineer, you'll be a good product management and you'll be a good leader And I think i've used that over and over again To inspire myself. The second advice is there is no replacement for hard work. There's just no matter how smart you are, every single leader, they may not show that, but every single leader who's out there work very hard. So those are a couple of things that I think. That I go by

Dorothy Dowling:

I, and I think those are very impactful statements because essentially your mother had said, if you really love what you do and you're leading with something that you have that great heart for, that you will be successful. And the other part is that it does take hard work. It does. Nothing comes that easy. And so we always have to make sure that we are fully committed to driving to those business outcomes. So I appreciate that. I'm just wondering as we come to the close, if there is any other message that you'd like to leave with our audience in terms of the hospitality professionals that are listening or viewing this episode today?

Anil Aggarwal:

Yeah. Yeah. I think I just simply love the hospitality industry. And I'll tell you why we are because Dorothy, at a very macro level, what we're doing is we're making people's dreams, imaginations come alive, right? When they travel all these destinations and basically we are enabling all of that. It won't, none of those. Things would be possible. So in the big scheme of things, we're actually one of the highest, level of satisfaction from the jobs that we're doing because you're making people's dreams come true. And I think it's a great industry to be in. There is a lot of innovation. Apply yourself, do this work hard. Don't let you let anybody tell you otherwise that you can do successful and, to make your definition of success and go at it. So great industry. I love it.

Dorothy Dowling:

I think you've articulated it so well. One of the things that I do love about our industry is it is, traveling is a learning journey for many of us and it is incredibly satisfying in terms of enriching our lives. But the other part that I love about our industry is that there's just so many entrepreneurs And I have great admiration for entrepreneurs like you because You really do put it all on the line and you're making a commitment in terms of growth and building something. And I think that's a very admirable pursuit. If I may, Aniel, I just would love to thank you for taking the time today to share your story with the audience, share all your wisdom in terms of your entrepreneurial journey and also how we can all become better in terms of the way we manage our careers. So thank you.

Anil Aggarwal:

Thank you, Dorothy, for inviting me and having me on your show. I love the conversation and hopefully your audience.

Dorothy Dowling:

Thank you. And if I may also thank our audience and say, if you have enjoyed this interview with Anil, I hope you'll come and visit us on our website. It's personalstories. com where you'll see webcasts and podcasts from other industry leaders that will empower your knowledge and fuel your spirit.