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What if some of the things you've been told you need for a successful virtual summit are actually the very things making your summit harder to host, harder to navigate, and harder to get results from.
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You need more speakers, you need a Facebook group, you need a massive bonus bundle, you need to offer replay access for months, you need everything to be live.
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You need fancy branding, you need thousands of registrations, and maybe you even need to create a brand new summit every single year.
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Well, today we are going to be disagreeing with a lot of that.
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Because after years of hosting summits, experimenting with different formats, working with speakers, watching attendee behavior, and looking at what actually moves the needle for a business, we've developed some pretty strong opinions, and we are going to be sharing those with you today.
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Some of these might be opinions that you completely agree with, and some might make you rethink how you're planning your next summit.
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And some you might totally disagree with, and that is okay.
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Because our goal isn't to tell you that there's only one right way to host summit, because that's just simply not true.
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It is to get you thinking more strategically about why you're making the decisions that you're making instead of simply doing something just because, quote unquote, that's how summits are done.
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Let's talk about it.
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Hey there and welcome back to the Virtual Summit Secrets Podcast, the go-to show for entrepreneurs who want to host profitable, high-impact virtual summits without the overwhelm.
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We're Jenny and Lindsay, virtual summit and visibility strategists, and today we're talking about the biggest summit opinions we have that not everyone agrees with.
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So let's jump into today's episode.
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So let's start with one you've probably heard us say quite a bit, and that is bigger isn't automatically better.
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And if you haven't listened to the episode about that, it's a couple episodes back in the feed.
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So make sure to go tune into that episode.
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But when we say bigger, we're usually talking about more, more speakers, more presentations, more days, more bonuses, more things inside the VIP pass, more features, more attendees.
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And we understand why bigger can be appeal, can be appealing.
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Because bigger looks successful.
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If someone says that they had 5,000 registrations and 50 speakers, that sounds impressive.
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And if someone says their summit had 10 speakers and 500 registrations, it can feel like the smaller event somehow wasn't as successful.
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But here's the thing: bigger doesn't automatically mean better or more profitable.
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And one of the biggest problems with making your summit bigger is that every additional element creates additional complexity.
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More speakers means more speaker management.
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More presentations mean more content for attendees to sort through.
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More bonuses means more things for people to decide whether they actually need it or not.
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More days mean a higher like commitment from your attendees.
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And eventually you can get to the point where your summit has so much going on that the attendee doesn't even like know what they're actually supposed to do.
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And that is a massive problem because our goal isn't to create the biggest event possible.
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Our goal is to create an event that creates a great experience and supports the goals of the business.
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Now, could a summit now could a bigger summit make sense?
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Absolutely.
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If your primary goal is list growth and you're selling a VIP pass, but you don't have like a back end offer that you're moving people into, then a larger speaker lineup might make more sense.
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There are business models where volume makes sense.
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We're not saying never have an event with 40 speakers.
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If you generally want to host a 40 plus speaker event, we'd rather help you understand the pros and cons so you can make that decision that makes sense for your goals.
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We're just saying that don't, we're just saying not to assume that 40 speakers is automatically better than 10 to 15 because we'd rather you have less speakers and better alignment than more than more speakers and confusion from the speakers and attendees alike.
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Okay, now this one might make some summit hosts like clutch their pearls.
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And we've been like doing this for a while, but you don't need a Facebook group.
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For a long time, it felt like a Facebook group was basically just part of the Summit starter kit.
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You had your registration page, you had your speaker lineup, you had your Facebook group, and we understand why.
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Everyone was doing it, and having a community can be an amazing part of the summit experience.
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But here is the problem.
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A community is only valuable if you actually have the capacity to facilitate that community.
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We've seen hosts create a group because they thought they were supposed to, and then barely manage it.
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There are a few welcome posts, maybe a few discussion prompts, and then during the summit, nobody really knows what's happening in there.
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That's not creating a better attendee experience.
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It's creating another thing you just feel guilty about not doing.
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So when does a summit community make sense?
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So when you actually have the time and energy to manage it.
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Oh, let me try that again.
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So when does a summit community make sense?
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Well, it makes sense when you actually have the time and energy to manage it.
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And when facilitating and when facilitating conversations is a part of your summit strategy.
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When you want to continue nurture and maybe even and also even when you want to continue nurturing that audience beyond the event.
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But if you don't want to manage a community, you don't have to.
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You can create engagement in other ways.
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We've actually moved away from using a summit community recently, and instead of and instead, we focused on gammifying the summit within our course hosting platform.
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And that's worked really well for us.
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So if you're creating a Facebook group simply because you think you're supposed to, I want to give your I want you to give yourself permission to question that.
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Now this one connects directly to our first opinion, but we want to get even more specific.
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More speakers do not automatically mean more registrations, more VIP sales, or more backend sales.
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In fact, sometimes adding more speakers can actually make your results worse.
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You might be wondering why.
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And it's because more speakers can mean more overwhelm.
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And overwhelmed people are less likely to make decisions.
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Imagine you're an attendee, you register for a summit, and suddenly you're looking at 40 presentations.
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Where do you start?
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Give it a second.
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I knew that was coming because I heard a door.
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I know you're not picking up on all of it, but I'm getting very distracted over here with all the noise.
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Which ones are actually relevant to you?
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What if you miss something important?
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What if you only have an hour?
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So now you've gone from I can't wait to learn to oh my God, I don't have time for all of this.
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And that is not the experience we want to create for our attendees.
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So what makes a speaker worth including?
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So for us, that is alignment.
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We look at the topic they're going to cover.
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We look at whether they have an audience that's similar to ours.
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We look at whether they're engaged and willing and willing to participate, and we look at whether they actually fit the event.
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A big name isn't enough for us because one speaker cannot carry the cannot carry the entire event.
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The success of the summit comes from the experience you create as a whole.
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And we've absolutely seen smaller speaker lineups produce better business results.
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So before you add another speaker, ask ask yourself this.
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Does this speaker make the summit better for my attendees?
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Not just will this speaker bring me more registrations.
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Now we want to be careful with this one because we absolutely believe that your summit should look professional, but we believe fancy branding is overrated.
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You do not need to spend weeks creating a completely custom visible identity for your summit.
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You don't need 47 different graphics.
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You don't need a wildly complicated website.
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You just need a professional, clean, thoughtful experience.
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At a minimum, you're probably looking at these things: a registration page, an upgrade page, a special offer page, a thank you page, and then the graphics and assets that support the event.
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But there's a difference between this looks professional and we keep making this prettier because we are nervous about the actual strategy.
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And sometimes that's what happens.
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It's easier to tweak the colors than it is to rethink the entire summit topic.
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It's easier to create another graphic than it is to clarify the promise.
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And it's easier to redesign the website than to figure out why people aren't converting.
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So, yes, make it look good, but don't confuse design with strategy.
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Your branding should support the experience.
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It shouldn't become the project.
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So this is another opinion that we've developed over time, and it is replays alone aren't a great VIP offer.
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And honestly, this is one where attendee behavior has really influenced how we think about the VIP offer.
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For years, the extended replay was the obvious VIP upgrade.
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One lifetime access, maybe even just six months of replays, one to keep the recordings, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
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But this is a problem.
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People already have so much content.
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Think about how many courses, webinars, trainings, summits, workshops, replay libraries that people have access to.
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Like my head is spinning just thinking how much I have access to.
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And like how many of those they have actually gone back and watched.
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And I'm gonna say very little on my end.
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Um, so it's probably not nearly as many as they attended to.
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I know in my case, I intended to do way more than I actually have.
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So simply giving people more access isn't necessarily compelling enough anymore.
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What people increasingly need, we see what we're seeing people increasingly need is help with implementation.
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They don't necessarily need another 30 trainings.
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They need to actually do something with the information they've already consumed.
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That's why things like implementation days or even implementation weeks, extra support, workbooks, action plans, and then guide and guided experiences can be much more valuable.
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If you gave us the choice between 10 random bonuses or one really good implementation resource, we're gonna be taking the implementation resource every time because more information isn't necessarily more valuable.
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Sometimes support is the value.
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Okay, now let's move and talk about live events because there's this assumption that live equals more engaging, which then equals better.
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And that's not always true.
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There is definitely a dopamine hit that comes with showing up live.
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There's energy, there's interaction, there's that feeling of I'm here with everyone else.
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And live can be fantastic, but live also comes with challenges.
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Technology can break, speakers can have scheduling conflicts, people don't always show up.
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That's happened to us when we have live panels.
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Um, attendees have their own schedules.
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And if you're asking someone to be available at 2 p.m.
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on a Tuesday, you are immediately excluding everyone who can't be there at that time or people in different time zones where it might be the middle of the night for them because right, we have like a worldwide business when we're running our summits.
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We attract people from all over the world.
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So that's why we found that pre-recorded content combined with strategic live elements that we offer replays to can give you kind of the best of both worlds.
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You can have the flexibility of pre-recorded sessions while still creating opportunities for interaction.
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Things like live panels, opening sessions, reflection sessions, implementation sessions, and community engagement, those can all add energy without requiring every single piece of your summit to happen live.
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So don't so don't assume if it's live, then it's better.
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Instead, ask yourself this Does live make this particular part of the experience better?
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That's a much better question.
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You don't need a huge email list to host a summit.
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Of course, having a large audience can help.
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We're not going to pretend that it doesn't.
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But we've seen smaller summits outperform larger ones because they were simply more aligned with the next step.
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And that's really the point.
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A summit isn't successful just because you got a huge number of people to register.
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You need to ask who registered.
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Were they the right people?
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Did they engage?
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Did they get results?
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Did they take the next steps?
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Did they buy?
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And did the summit support the business?
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So if you're a business owner, that's a huge one.
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Because a smaller audience of highly aligned people can be much more valuable than a massive audience of people who are never going to buy what you sell, who are just going to unsubscribe shortly after the event.
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So if you're sitting there thinking, I can't host a summit because my list isn't big enough, we want to challenge that because you don't need thousands of people.
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You just need the right people.
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Now this one is especially relevant because we just talked about this in episode 49.
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Your summit isn't just an event, it is an asset.
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And if you create a summit that works, you don't automatically need to throw it away and start from scratch the next time.
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If the topic is evergreen, if the audience still needs it, if the event supports your business, if the offer still makes sense, why wouldn't you run it again?
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You can refresh the speakers, update the session topics, change the bonuses, improve the attendee, improve, improve the attendee experience and use what you learned last time and use what you learned last time, but keep the core of what worked.
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Because starting from scratch every single year means you're constantly spending time and energy proving something new can work.
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We'd rather improve an existing summit than start from scratch with something we don't know will convert.
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And that's how you start building and that's ex and that's how you start building event equity.
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You become known for the event.
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You improve it over time, you build recognition, you gather testimonials, you collect data, and you get better.
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And eventually your summit isn't just something you host, it's something that your audience recognizes.
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So we are going to pull all of this together.
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If you said, okay, Jenny and Lindsay, you've hosted enough events that I want to know what you really believe.
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Here are some key things we want you to know.
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First off, yes, it is a collaboration, right?
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Hosting a summon is a collaboration, but the success of an event still lands on you as the host.
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And I know that is a big differing opinion from some people, but you are bringing together speakers, attendees, and potentially affiliates.
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And it is your job as the host to create it as a win-win-win, right?
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A win for speakers, a win for attendees, a win for yourself.
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Um and it lands on you ultimately.
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So you need to take that responsibility.
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The second thing you need to do is appreciate your speakers.
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Yes, of course, they're getting exposure from your event, and they may be growing their audience, but that exposure is not guaranteed.
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You're asking for their time, their expertise, their content, and often their promotion.
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And honestly, without your speakers, you would not have the event.
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And we've said this two billion times, but it's so true.
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So you want to treat them that way.
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Treat them as if you would have no event without them, because it's true.
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And communicate well, be organized, and make their expense and make their experience awesome.
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Which leads us to the third thing, and that is the attendee experience is the most important thing for your summit.
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Not the number of speakers, not how many bonuses you can cram into the VIP pass, not how fancy your website is, and not how many features your summit platform has.
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The attendee experience matters because more isn't always better, as we've said over and over, but attendees aren't necessarily looking for more information.
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They're looking for information they can use, they're looking for support, for clarity, and most importantly, they are looking for a path forward.
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And finally, a summit isn't a one-time thing.
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This might actually be the biggest opinion that we have.
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A summit is a business asset.
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If you have a business and you're hosting a summit, you need to look at where that summit fits into your overall business structure.
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What is the summit supposed to do for you?
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Grow your list, generate leads, sell a back-end offer, create relationships, build authority, support another or support another offer.
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Because once you understand that, your decisions get so much easier.
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You don't have to chase someone else's version of a successful summit.
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You can build the summit that makes sense for your, you can build the summit that makes the most sense for your business.
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So if we could convince every summit host of just one thing, we think it would be this.
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Stop asking what you're supposed to do with your summit and start asking what actually supports your goals and your attendees.
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You don't need more speakers just because someone else has 40.
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You don't need a Facebook group just because everyone else has one.
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You don't need a giant bonus bundle just because that's the way it's been done for the past few years.
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You don't need everything to be live.
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You don't need fancy branding.
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You don't need thousands of registrations, and you don't need a brand new summit every year.
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More isn't automatically better.
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Better alignment is better, a better attendee experience is better, and a better fit for your business is better.
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And we hope like we really want to drill that in because I feel like with the rise of so many things in AI and technology, like people are just going for more and they're forgetting what really matters.
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Because if we're being honest, we would take a smaller, simpler, highly aligned summit over a massive, complicated event any day.
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But if I don't have to do all these things, how do I actually decide what what I should do?
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Well, this is exactly where we're headed because sometimes the problem isn't that you don't know how to host a summit.
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It's that you're trying to wake is that you're trying to make way too many decisions.
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Which speakers, which tech, how many days, what should go in the VIP pass?
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When should promo start?
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Should you have a community?
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Should you add another bonus?
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Should you change the schedule?
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And suddenly you're spending more time deciding what to do than actually doing it.
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So in our next episode, we're going to be talking about the summit decision fatigue problem and how to simplify everything.
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We're going to talk about why hosts get stuck even when they actually have the strategy they need, how to create defaults so you're not reinventing every decision for every single summit, and our simple three-option role for making decisions without getting trapped in analysis paralysis.
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Because sometimes a good decision made quickly is much more valuable than a perfect decision made three weeks too late.
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And if you are feeling like your summit has become mentally heavier than it needs to be, definitely come back for that one.
00:19:57.920 --> 00:20:02.720
Until then, remember you don't have to build your summit the way everyone else builds theirs.
00:20:02.880 --> 00:20:07.759
You get to build the event that makes sense for your audience, your business, and your goals.
00:20:07.839 --> 00:20:10.079
And we will see you next week.
00:00:02.879 --> 00:00:13.199
What if some of the things you've been told you need for a successful virtual summit are actually the very things making your summit harder to host, harder to navigate, and harder to get results from.
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You need more speakers, you need a Facebook group, you need a massive bonus bundle, you need to offer replay access for months, you need everything to be live.
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You need fancy branding, you need thousands of registrations, and maybe you even need to create a brand new summit every single year.
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Well, today we are going to be disagreeing with a lot of that.
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Because after years of hosting summits, experimenting with different formats, working with speakers, watching attendee behavior, and looking at what actually moves the needle for a business, we've developed some pretty strong opinions, and we are going to be sharing those with you today.
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Some of these might be opinions that you completely agree with, and some might make you rethink how you're planning your next summit.
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And some you might totally disagree with, and that is okay.
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Because our goal isn't to tell you that there's only one right way to host summit, because that's just simply not true.
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It is to get you thinking more strategically about why you're making the decisions that you're making instead of simply doing something just because, quote unquote, that's how summits are done.
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Let's talk about it.
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Hey there and welcome back to the Virtual Summit Secrets Podcast, the go-to show for entrepreneurs who want to host profitable, high-impact virtual summits without the overwhelm.
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We're Jenny and Lindsay, virtual summit and visibility strategists, and today we're talking about the biggest summit opinions we have that not everyone agrees with.
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So let's jump into today's episode.
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So let's start with one you've probably heard us say quite a bit, and that is bigger isn't automatically better.
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And if you haven't listened to the episode about that, it's a couple episodes back in the feed.
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So make sure to go tune into that episode.
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But when we say bigger, we're usually talking about more, more speakers, more presentations, more days, more bonuses, more things inside the VIP pass, more features, more attendees.
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And we understand why bigger can be appeal, can be appealing.
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Because bigger looks successful.
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If someone says that they had 5,000 registrations and 50 speakers, that sounds impressive.
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And if someone says their summit had 10 speakers and 500 registrations, it can feel like the smaller event somehow wasn't as successful.
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But here's the thing: bigger doesn't automatically mean better or more profitable.
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And one of the biggest problems with making your summit bigger is that every additional element creates additional complexity.
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More speakers means more speaker management.
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More presentations mean more content for attendees to sort through.
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More bonuses means more things for people to decide whether they actually need it or not.
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More days mean a higher like commitment from your attendees.
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And eventually you can get to the point where your summit has so much going on that the attendee doesn't even like know what they're actually supposed to do.
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And that is a massive problem because our goal isn't to create the biggest event possible.
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Our goal is to create an event that creates a great experience and supports the goals of the business.
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Now, could a summit now could a bigger summit make sense?
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Absolutely.
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If your primary goal is list growth and you're selling a VIP pass, but you don't have like a back end offer that you're moving people into, then a larger speaker lineup might make more sense.
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There are business models where volume makes sense.
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We're not saying never have an event with 40 speakers.
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If you generally want to host a 40 plus speaker event, we'd rather help you understand the pros and cons so you can make that decision that makes sense for your goals.
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We're just saying that don't, we're just saying not to assume that 40 speakers is automatically better than 10 to 15 because we'd rather you have less speakers and better alignment than more than more speakers and confusion from the speakers and attendees alike.
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Okay, now this one might make some summit hosts like clutch their pearls.
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And we've been like doing this for a while, but you don't need a Facebook group.
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For a long time, it felt like a Facebook group was basically just part of the Summit starter kit.
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You had your registration page, you had your speaker lineup, you had your Facebook group, and we understand why.
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Everyone was doing it, and having a community can be an amazing part of the summit experience.
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But here is the problem.
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A community is only valuable if you actually have the capacity to facilitate that community.
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We've seen hosts create a group because they thought they were supposed to, and then barely manage it.
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There are a few welcome posts, maybe a few discussion prompts, and then during the summit, nobody really knows what's happening in there.
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That's not creating a better attendee experience.
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It's creating another thing you just feel guilty about not doing.
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So when does a summit community make sense?
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So when you actually have the time and energy to manage it.
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Oh, let me try that again.
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So when does a summit community make sense?
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Well, it makes sense when you actually have the time and energy to manage it.
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And when facilitating and when facilitating conversations is a part of your summit strategy.
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When you want to continue nurture and maybe even and also even when you want to continue nurturing that audience beyond the event.
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But if you don't want to manage a community, you don't have to.
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You can create engagement in other ways.
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We've actually moved away from using a summit community recently, and instead of and instead, we focused on gammifying the summit within our course hosting platform.
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And that's worked really well for us.
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So if you're creating a Facebook group simply because you think you're supposed to, I want to give your I want you to give yourself permission to question that.
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Now this one connects directly to our first opinion, but we want to get even more specific.
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More speakers do not automatically mean more registrations, more VIP sales, or more backend sales.
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In fact, sometimes adding more speakers can actually make your results worse.
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You might be wondering why.
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And it's because more speakers can mean more overwhelm.
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And overwhelmed people are less likely to make decisions.
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Imagine you're an attendee, you register for a summit, and suddenly you're looking at 40 presentations.
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Where do you start?
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Give it a second.
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I knew that was coming because I heard a door.
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I know you're not picking up on all of it, but I'm getting very distracted over here with all the noise.
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Which ones are actually relevant to you?
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What if you miss something important?
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What if you only have an hour?
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So now you've gone from I can't wait to learn to oh my God, I don't have time for all of this.
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And that is not the experience we want to create for our attendees.
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So what makes a speaker worth including?
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So for us, that is alignment.
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We look at the topic they're going to cover.
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We look at whether they have an audience that's similar to ours.
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We look at whether they're engaged and willing and willing to participate, and we look at whether they actually fit the event.
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A big name isn't enough for us because one speaker cannot carry the cannot carry the entire event.
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The success of the summit comes from the experience you create as a whole.
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And we've absolutely seen smaller speaker lineups produce better business results.
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So before you add another speaker, ask ask yourself this.
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Does this speaker make the summit better for my attendees?
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Not just will this speaker bring me more registrations.
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Now we want to be careful with this one because we absolutely believe that your summit should look professional, but we believe fancy branding is overrated.
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You do not need to spend weeks creating a completely custom visible identity for your summit.
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You don't need 47 different graphics.
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You don't need a wildly complicated website.
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You just need a professional, clean, thoughtful experience.
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At a minimum, you're probably looking at these things: a registration page, an upgrade page, a special offer page, a thank you page, and then the graphics and assets that support the event.
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But there's a difference between this looks professional and we keep making this prettier because we are nervous about the actual strategy.
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And sometimes that's what happens.
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It's easier to tweak the colors than it is to rethink the entire summit topic.
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It's easier to create another graphic than it is to clarify the promise.
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And it's easier to redesign the website than to figure out why people aren't converting.
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So, yes, make it look good, but don't confuse design with strategy.
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Your branding should support the experience.
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It shouldn't become the project.
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So this is another opinion that we've developed over time, and it is replays alone aren't a great VIP offer.
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And honestly, this is one where attendee behavior has really influenced how we think about the VIP offer.
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For years, the extended replay was the obvious VIP upgrade.
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One lifetime access, maybe even just six months of replays, one to keep the recordings, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
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But this is a problem.
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People already have so much content.
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Think about how many courses, webinars, trainings, summits, workshops, replay libraries that people have access to.
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Like my head is spinning just thinking how much I have access to.
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And like how many of those they have actually gone back and watched.
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And I'm gonna say very little on my end.
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Um, so it's probably not nearly as many as they attended to.
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I know in my case, I intended to do way more than I actually have.
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So simply giving people more access isn't necessarily compelling enough anymore.
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What people increasingly need, we see what we're seeing people increasingly need is help with implementation.
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They don't necessarily need another 30 trainings.
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They need to actually do something with the information they've already consumed.
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That's why things like implementation days or even implementation weeks, extra support, workbooks, action plans, and then guide and guided experiences can be much more valuable.
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If you gave us the choice between 10 random bonuses or one really good implementation resource, we're gonna be taking the implementation resource every time because more information isn't necessarily more valuable.
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Sometimes support is the value.
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Okay, now let's move and talk about live events because there's this assumption that live equals more engaging, which then equals better.
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And that's not always true.
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There is definitely a dopamine hit that comes with showing up live.
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There's energy, there's interaction, there's that feeling of I'm here with everyone else.
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And live can be fantastic, but live also comes with challenges.
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Technology can break, speakers can have scheduling conflicts, people don't always show up.
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That's happened to us when we have live panels.
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Um, attendees have their own schedules.
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And if you're asking someone to be available at 2 p.m.
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on a Tuesday, you are immediately excluding everyone who can't be there at that time or people in different time zones where it might be the middle of the night for them because right, we have like a worldwide business when we're running our summits.
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We attract people from all over the world.
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So that's why we found that pre-recorded content combined with strategic live elements that we offer replays to can give you kind of the best of both worlds.
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You can have the flexibility of pre-recorded sessions while still creating opportunities for interaction.
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Things like live panels, opening sessions, reflection sessions, implementation sessions, and community engagement, those can all add energy without requiring every single piece of your summit to happen live.
00:12:34.639 --> 00:12:38.159
So don't so don't assume if it's live, then it's better.
00:12:38.320 --> 00:12:42.799
Instead, ask yourself this Does live make this particular part of the experience better?
00:12:42.960 --> 00:12:44.879
That's a much better question.
00:12:55.279 --> 00:12:58.000
You don't need a huge email list to host a summit.
00:12:58.240 --> 00:13:00.799
Of course, having a large audience can help.
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We're not going to pretend that it doesn't.
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But we've seen smaller summits outperform larger ones because they were simply more aligned with the next step.
00:13:09.600 --> 00:13:10.720
And that's really the point.
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A summit isn't successful just because you got a huge number of people to register.
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You need to ask who registered.
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Were they the right people?
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Did they engage?
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Did they get results?
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Did they take the next steps?
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Did they buy?
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And did the summit support the business?
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So if you're a business owner, that's a huge one.
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Because a smaller audience of highly aligned people can be much more valuable than a massive audience of people who are never going to buy what you sell, who are just going to unsubscribe shortly after the event.
00:13:41.279 --> 00:13:48.799
So if you're sitting there thinking, I can't host a summit because my list isn't big enough, we want to challenge that because you don't need thousands of people.
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You just need the right people.
00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:56.559
Now this one is especially relevant because we just talked about this in episode 49.
00:13:57.039 --> 00:14:00.240
Your summit isn't just an event, it is an asset.
00:14:00.399 --> 00:14:05.600
And if you create a summit that works, you don't automatically need to throw it away and start from scratch the next time.
00:14:05.759 --> 00:14:13.200
If the topic is evergreen, if the audience still needs it, if the event supports your business, if the offer still makes sense, why wouldn't you run it again?
00:14:13.360 --> 00:14:27.759
You can refresh the speakers, update the session topics, change the bonuses, improve the attendee, improve, improve the attendee experience and use what you learned last time and use what you learned last time, but keep the core of what worked.
00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:33.600
Because starting from scratch every single year means you're constantly spending time and energy proving something new can work.
00:14:33.759 --> 00:14:38.320
We'd rather improve an existing summit than start from scratch with something we don't know will convert.
00:14:38.480 --> 00:14:43.840
And that's how you start building and that's ex and that's how you start building event equity.
00:14:44.080 --> 00:14:45.440
You become known for the event.
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You improve it over time, you build recognition, you gather testimonials, you collect data, and you get better.
00:14:50.399 --> 00:14:55.360
And eventually your summit isn't just something you host, it's something that your audience recognizes.
00:14:56.320 --> 00:14:58.639
So we are going to pull all of this together.
00:14:58.879 --> 00:15:04.720
If you said, okay, Jenny and Lindsay, you've hosted enough events that I want to know what you really believe.
00:15:04.960 --> 00:15:07.679
Here are some key things we want you to know.
00:15:07.919 --> 00:15:11.200
First off, yes, it is a collaboration, right?
00:15:11.360 --> 00:15:17.919
Hosting a summon is a collaboration, but the success of an event still lands on you as the host.
00:15:18.080 --> 00:15:25.840
And I know that is a big differing opinion from some people, but you are bringing together speakers, attendees, and potentially affiliates.
00:15:26.000 --> 00:15:30.320
And it is your job as the host to create it as a win-win-win, right?
00:15:30.399 --> 00:15:34.559
A win for speakers, a win for attendees, a win for yourself.
00:15:34.799 --> 00:15:40.639
Um and it lands on you ultimately.
00:15:40.799 --> 00:15:42.799
So you need to take that responsibility.
00:15:48.080 --> 00:15:51.440
The second thing you need to do is appreciate your speakers.
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Yes, of course, they're getting exposure from your event, and they may be growing their audience, but that exposure is not guaranteed.
00:15:58.320 --> 00:16:02.639
You're asking for their time, their expertise, their content, and often their promotion.
00:16:02.799 --> 00:16:05.440
And honestly, without your speakers, you would not have the event.
00:16:05.519 --> 00:16:08.480
And we've said this two billion times, but it's so true.
00:16:08.639 --> 00:16:10.000
So you want to treat them that way.
00:16:10.159 --> 00:16:13.600
Treat them as if you would have no event without them, because it's true.
00:16:13.759 --> 00:16:19.919
And communicate well, be organized, and make their expense and make their experience awesome.
00:16:23.440 --> 00:16:28.960
Which leads us to the third thing, and that is the attendee experience is the most important thing for your summit.
00:16:29.120 --> 00:16:38.879
Not the number of speakers, not how many bonuses you can cram into the VIP pass, not how fancy your website is, and not how many features your summit platform has.
00:16:39.120 --> 00:16:48.000
The attendee experience matters because more isn't always better, as we've said over and over, but attendees aren't necessarily looking for more information.
00:16:48.080 --> 00:16:56.240
They're looking for information they can use, they're looking for support, for clarity, and most importantly, they are looking for a path forward.
00:16:57.440 --> 00:17:01.039
And finally, a summit isn't a one-time thing.
00:17:01.200 --> 00:17:03.600
This might actually be the biggest opinion that we have.
00:17:03.759 --> 00:17:05.359
A summit is a business asset.
00:17:05.440 --> 00:17:10.400
If you have a business and you're hosting a summit, you need to look at where that summit fits into your overall business structure.
00:17:10.559 --> 00:17:12.240
What is the summit supposed to do for you?
00:17:12.480 --> 00:17:19.680
Grow your list, generate leads, sell a back-end offer, create relationships, build authority, support another or support another offer.
00:17:19.839 --> 00:17:23.440
Because once you understand that, your decisions get so much easier.
00:17:23.599 --> 00:17:26.640
You don't have to chase someone else's version of a successful summit.
00:17:26.720 --> 00:17:32.319
You can build the summit that makes sense for your, you can build the summit that makes the most sense for your business.
00:17:35.680 --> 00:17:40.640
So if we could convince every summit host of just one thing, we think it would be this.
00:17:40.880 --> 00:17:48.960
Stop asking what you're supposed to do with your summit and start asking what actually supports your goals and your attendees.
00:17:49.200 --> 00:17:52.240
You don't need more speakers just because someone else has 40.
00:17:52.400 --> 00:17:55.440
You don't need a Facebook group just because everyone else has one.
00:17:55.680 --> 00:18:00.640
You don't need a giant bonus bundle just because that's the way it's been done for the past few years.
00:18:00.799 --> 00:18:02.640
You don't need everything to be live.
00:18:02.799 --> 00:18:04.400
You don't need fancy branding.
00:18:04.559 --> 00:18:09.599
You don't need thousands of registrations, and you don't need a brand new summit every year.
00:18:09.839 --> 00:18:12.240
More isn't automatically better.
00:18:12.799 --> 00:18:20.160
Better alignment is better, a better attendee experience is better, and a better fit for your business is better.
00:18:20.319 --> 00:18:33.279
And we hope like we really want to drill that in because I feel like with the rise of so many things in AI and technology, like people are just going for more and they're forgetting what really matters.
00:18:33.519 --> 00:18:42.319
Because if we're being honest, we would take a smaller, simpler, highly aligned summit over a massive, complicated event any day.
00:18:47.759 --> 00:18:52.640
But if I don't have to do all these things, how do I actually decide what what I should do?
00:18:52.880 --> 00:18:57.839
Well, this is exactly where we're headed because sometimes the problem isn't that you don't know how to host a summit.
00:18:57.920 --> 00:19:02.079
It's that you're trying to wake is that you're trying to make way too many decisions.
00:19:02.319 --> 00:19:05.920
Which speakers, which tech, how many days, what should go in the VIP pass?
00:19:06.240 --> 00:19:07.599
When should promo start?
00:19:07.759 --> 00:19:08.720
Should you have a community?
00:19:08.799 --> 00:19:09.759
Should you add another bonus?
00:19:09.839 --> 00:19:10.799
Should you change the schedule?
00:19:10.880 --> 00:19:14.480
And suddenly you're spending more time deciding what to do than actually doing it.
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So in our next episode, we're going to be talking about the summit decision fatigue problem and how to simplify everything.
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We're going to talk about why hosts get stuck even when they actually have the strategy they need, how to create defaults so you're not reinventing every decision for every single summit, and our simple three-option role for making decisions without getting trapped in analysis paralysis.
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Because sometimes a good decision made quickly is much more valuable than a perfect decision made three weeks too late.
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And if you are feeling like your summit has become mentally heavier than it needs to be, definitely come back for that one.
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Until then, remember you don't have to build your summit the way everyone else builds theirs.
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You get to build the event that makes sense for your audience, your business, and your goals.
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And we will see you next week.
