SPI 494: Why Online Summits Rock (& How to Run One) with Rob Gelb of HeySummit

SPI 494: Why Online Summits Are Hotter Than Ever with Rob Gelb of HeySummit

Pat Flynn:
One of my favorite things to do here on the show is invite people on who literally have dedicated their entire life’s work essentially to a specific thing. And then, they come on and share about how to use that specific thing, how to enjoy it, how to make money from it, all that great stuff. And today we’re talking with Rob from HeySummit. Yeah. Summits. We’ve talked about summits, creating virtual summits a long, long, long, long, long, long time ago before even Zoom was a thing. You might remember, I think it was episode 10 or 15 or something with Lain Ehmann, and she was making a killing, creating virtual summits for the scrapbooking world.

And guess what? The trend is back and hotter and better than ever because now we have even more tools to be able to do this, like HeySummit. That’s a tool that Rob has co-founded, and I’m really excited to bring Rob on to give us all the ins and outs, the very practical strategical step-by-step advice, literally step-by-step: What do we do if we’re going to create our first summit? Where do we start? How do we do it? How do we make it happen? A summit, an online event that allows you to record things ahead of time, and then share them live. You record interviews, videos. You can drop into tutorials, workshops, whatever you want to do. And it’s kind of planned ahead of time. And then it kind of just runs, and you can sell it. So, we’re going to talk all about that today, here with Rob from HeySummit. So, sit back, relax. This is going to be awesome. Let’s cue the intro.

Announcer:
Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, where it’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back, and reap the benefits later. And now, your host, his favorite pizza topping are the pepperonis that curl up into little cups when they’re baked: Pat Flynn.

Pat:
What’s up, y’all? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to session 494. Wow, we’re approaching 500, that is crazy, of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Thank you so much for joining. And today, we’re going to learn all about creating a virtual summit. I promise you, you are going to have an idea in your head after this to go, “Wow. I have an opportunity in front of me to bring people in my industry together, to create an event that everybody can benefit from.” You, because you’re going to create something awesome, you’re the connector. You’re going to level up your brand, and potentially make money, if you sell this thing. You’re going to invite other people in your industry in to give them a platform to speak, to build their authority, to have a recording, maybe they’re going to be an affiliate. And you also have an audience that’s going to come who’s going to benefit because you are the one that’s bringing all these people together in a summit.

Again, today we’re talking with Rob from HeySummit. Full disclosure, myself and my partner, Matt, we are advisors for the company. So, as you know, like with ConvertKit and Teachable, we wouldn’t be advisors if we didn’t love the platform. We are going to be using it later this year, and we cannot wait to share it with you. But how do we create our first summit? Well, let’s talk about it with Rob. Here he is.

Rob, welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Thanks so much for coming on with us today.

Rob:
Great to be here.

Pat:
So, let’s just dive right in. I want to talk about events because events are something that has changed drastically over the last couple of years now that the pandemic’s around. And you being a co-founder and CEO of HeySummit, it’s like, this is the perfect opportunity for something like this to come around. So, I’m really excited to introduce HeySummit to everybody. But talk about events in general, like, events have always been around, but they’re changing. How are they changing? And why should we pay attention to online events specifically?

Rob:
Yeah. I guess the two ways to attack that, and to answer that: one is kind of in a pre-pandemic world, and one is in a post pandemic world. HeySummit actually predated the pandemic. We were a thing beforehand, people were using us, but mostly from the more traditional, if you want to call it, side of what virtual events were, or virtual summits were. And this is basically like a collection of content that is delivered through the mechanism of a summit. With COVID, that accelerated that. That accelerated the ways in which people wanted to connect online. And it meant that people were trying to replicate certain experiences they were having offline. But at the same time, it was also doing a different thing that I think is a bit more relevant at least to the work that we do.

Our core customers are creators. They’re independent entrepreneurs. These are people who are looking to monetize their expertise, monetize their network. And what COVID actually did from that perspective, was to make people think, like, rethink the way they’re earning income, rethink the way that they’re building their own businesses. Maybe they want to start that side hustle. Maybe they want to start that other thing. And virtual summits kind of became one outlet that was available to them, but also had a lot of interest because of the pandemic. So, yeah it’s been really interesting seeing both of these things coming together at the same time, and it’s been pretty exciting.

Pat:
Yeah, that’s really cool. And I remember virtual summits being around for a while. We had an interview with somebody in 2011 talking about virtual summits, but it always felt like this huge thing that took so much massive coordination, that it literally felt like a regular in-person event, but just online with this content, and guests coming in and such, which is why I love how HeySummit’s coming around and making that easy for us. Can you walk us through an experience of what it might be like as a creator to go through this process, whether you use HeySummit or whatever, to create this experience for your audience? And perhaps you can pull out somebody who is a user of HeySummit, and how they’re kind of running it. And we’ll just kind of go through that experience, so people can get a sense of, what is this actually like.

Rob:
Absolutely. So, yeah, you’re right. Fundamentally, people come into this, and they see the word “summit” and they think “This is a big thing. This is a massive thing. And also I need a big team to be able to do it.” And the whole point of having something that is essentially a content marketing opportunity means that it has to be efficient. It has to be a good way for you to maximize every hour you’re putting into it. That’s the reason why courses are so great, and podcasts are so great, that they are allowing you to utilize every hour of your day in a more efficient way. And so the way that you can do that with virtual summits, that name, that excuse for a reason why everybody wants to come together, it’s more about you being able to present that to your audience rather than you thinking of it as a very complicated thing to set up yourself.

And a typical example is… I’ll give you one example: face painters at kids’ birthday parties.

Pat:
Yeah.

Rob:
Right? Okay.

Pat:
My face has been painted many times.

Rob:
So, we have a team of face painters, but their business is about training you how to paint faces. So, they’re not just the face painters. And they do a bunch of different things. They run courses, they have sessions, they do coaching, all that kind of stuff. And they decided to create a summit. And the purpose of that was to give people access to a whole bunch of different face painting techniques. So, they had… I don’t remember, I think it was 30 different face painters, experts teaching you how to do different techniques. They were a team of two, maybe three that were planning this, and they ran it in order to efficiently spread the word about what it is that they did, position themselves as thought leaders in the space in a way. The reason why you were getting access to all of these wonderful face painters was because of these folks.

And then value. This was a paid summit. So, someone would pay 20 bucks to access this, but they’d get 30 different techniques. So, it was incredibly popular. And for them, they ran this, I think they organized it in about a month. They ran it, and then they made a lot of money, and then they planned their next one, they made even more. So, for them, they’ve worked summits in a relatively narrow way, into part of the way in which they generate leads, but also that they monetize the audience that they already have. So, I think that’s a really good example of how someone who is interested in positioning themselves as a gatekeeper of knowledge can use virtual summits in a very efficient way. And by the way, all of this was prerecorded. None of it was live. It was all prerecorded. I think they had live chat. So, we’re not talking about a huge heavy lift in terms of time on the day. And, it was incredibly efficient in terms of time and effectiveness.

Pat:
So, there’s a few things one might need to prepare for a summit like this. It would be gathering these interviews, or workshops from all these different creators who are involved. And I love that idea of, okay, well, you being the connector, people might come for those specific people, but the fact that you were the one facilitating this, that elevates your brand. You are the glue between all of this, and that can’t do anything but put you, like you said, in an expert position. And not only that, I’m also thinking of just if I were to just reach out to some people who I would want to connect with, it might be harder because well, they don’t have the time. They’re not getting anything back in return for that time. So, it might be difficult for me to reach out to them, and have a conversation, or get any information from them.

But if I say, “Hey, I have this summit, and it’s… You don’t have to get on a call live with me in front of an audience, you just kind of prerecord your workshop, or we can do an interview together, and then we’ll put it up there for you at a specific time, and we’re going to share you with hundreds of people, thousands of people who arrive.” Now, there’s incentive for the person showing up too, which sometimes doesn’t happen when you just do like a regular podcast interview, because it doesn’t feel as formal, but it also is not so formal that it’s not achievable, right?

Rob:
If you boil it down, it’s an excuse. It’s a whole bunch of different excuses. It’s an excuse to engage. It’s an excuse to make a big deal out of something. It’s an opportunity for you to benefit from cross-pollination, it’s an excuse for you to ask if I were to invite you to one of my summits. It’s an excuse for me to be able to say, “Can you send an email to everyone that you know telling you about the summit, because by the way, you’re in it.”

At the end of the day, it’s a device that you can use in order to achieve a whole bunch of different things, or at least try out a whole bunch of different things, and test different assumptions without you needing to be the creator of all of the content. And so we find virtual summits are really, really great if you’re wanting to test out an idea. If you don’t necessarily know, what area of a particular niche is of interest, create different streams. See which is the most popular; that’ll tell you. But then also there’s the cross-pollination opportunity as well, especially people who are just starting out, and you’re great at working with people, and you don’t mind herding cats, maybe in a way.

Pat:
Yeah.

Rob:
That’s a really, really great way to establish yourself, as you say.

Pat:
Yeah. And I’m remembering the episode with Lain Ehmann who had created a virtual workshop in 2009 or 2010 in the scrapbooking space. And she was able to do that because she had all these connections, and this was just the place for all those connections to come together. So, she was utilizing her superpower of connections. She had a big Rolodex—let’s bring them all together, and create this event, and charge for it. And whether you charge for it or not, that’s up to you, but that’s really amazing. But also at the same time, if you don’t have these connections, this could be a great way to start these connections, and then build that Rolodex too. So, it’s kind of like a perfect situation.

Can you… Okay, let’s just go like, okay, we’re going to make a summit, Rob, we’re going to do it. Now, it feels very heavy, because we’re going to do it, but what do we need in place? How do we make this easy for ourselves? What ducks do we have to have in alignment before it happens?

Rob:
I know it sounds really boring, but like the persona. Why? Why is it that you’re doing this in the first place is the most important thing. There are different types of summits, and I can talk a little bit about in general the types of summits that you might want to think about, but fundamentally you knowing why you want to run the summit. Is it because you want to make money? Is it because you want to raise your own profile? Is it because you want to just lead gen, or serve a community? That kind of stuff sometimes where people maybe get a little bit confused is because they don’t actually establish that right off the bat.

The second kind of stage is to just as you would with any other business, understand what your attendee persona is like. What are the attendees interested in? Why are they coming?

And then what we suggest people do is actually just write, take some time, write out the summit on paper. Come up with the titles of these talks yourself. Pretend like you’re writing a book, and you’re creating this from scratch. And what ends up happening is you have a nice outline, a nice tight outline of this summit that doesn’t exist. And from that point, this becomes your bible. And that will help you understand what are the types of speakers that are going to be the most valuable? What are the types of talks? What are the types of formats? And it kind of sets you up for success that way. And I think a lot of times when people are like “Crap, I’ve decided I’m running a summit. What do I do next?” Going back to that gives you a sense of security, just in knowing this is why I’m doing it, and this is what I’m looking to achieve. So, I think that’s the first step.

Pat:
I like that a lot. And we’ll keep going from there in a minute, but yeah, definitely understanding why you’re doing this in the first place. How are you able to measure whether this is successful or not if you don’t know that? So, that’s obviously really important, and then knowing who this is for so that you can develop your plan, your outline, like you said. And that becomes almost like chapters of a book, but in more of a summit fashion. And that allows you to then not start with… Because I think a lot of people, when they’re thinking of doing this, they start thinking about who they know, and who they could come and bring on, and they almost force a programming on their audience versus, okay, here’s your audience. This is the perfect programming now to help them, and let’s now find those people that can support that, right? Is that the better approach to kind of do it that way?

Rob:
Absolutely. It’s not your job to come up with a solution and find a problem. It’s your job to fall in love with a problem, and figure out what solution works for that problem. And so, you knowing you have a network in the back of your mind is really valuable. But if you develop the plan, why is it that you’re doing a summit? That means you can throw that network against that plan, and the bits of that network that stick is great because that means you’re going to be delivering value to your attendees. The ones that don’t, you’re going to find another way to engage with them, and work with them and focus on them for something else that you’re doing. But being able to say who you’re speaking to is just as important as being able to say who you’re not speaking to.

And some of the challenges that I see first-time summit producers make is that you ask “Who’s the summit for?” and their response is, “Well, everyone could get some value out of this.” And that’s just—

Pat:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rob:
Not the case. If you’re trying to build something for everyone, you’ll end up serving no one, and you shouldn’t be afraid to go niche. Another example for you is a creator named Neil Wallace. He’s an author coach, a writing coach, and he wanted to do… he speaks to authors, and that’s part of his business. He wanted… He was debating whether or not to do like “AuthorCon 2020,” or niche down into a particular subject. And he ended up deciding to create a summit all around plot—not the author con, just about plot. And it was so good that he was able to do that.

It still spoke to the same audience, but it allowed you to go really deep into a particular area, and show the value. So everyone knew that they were expecting like a lot of really valuable content around a very specific part of their experience, and he could charge for it, and he made a decent amount of money from it. But that also means that the next summit that he does could be about setting or [crosstalk] editing.

Pat:
Yeah, character development.

Rob:
Yeah. And we find that if you’re debating, do I want to get really broad, and be like marketing con 2021? Or do I go niche? But I’m worried that it’s not going to affect as many people. We would suggest, usually I would suggest usually, starting niche allows you to build a purer experience, and get better engagement, and you still speak to the same audience.

Pat:
I love that. I always say the riches are the niches, even though you pronounced it niches, which is a real way to pronounce it. It just doesn’t rhyme as well though. I love that. I can imagine if the first one goes well, I’ll do the next one two months later on topic two; the next one, two months later on topic three, maybe I can use the recordings from one and two as bonuses for number three, and start to develop this maybe all access passport for the entire year. I’m just… My gears are flying right now in terms of what you could do with that kind of stuff. But we want to start small. We want to start with the first one.

So let’s kind of bring it back down to that first one. If I’m imagining my first summit, how many days is this? Does this like… Is this like eight hour days for three days? And it’s just like I’m pushing all the content that’s there, or is this one big topic per day, for two hours, for seven days in a row? Like you had mentioned, there’s different kinds. Can you speak to what this actually looks like, and the different kinds of ways we can sort of position it?

Rob:
Yeah. And I’m going to be really irritating. I’m the son of an economist. So, like it’s on one hand, there’re some options, and on the other hand, there’s other options. And the true answer is that it depends, but there are a few things for you to kind of keep in mind when you’re thinking about this. So, first off obviously is going back to your attendee profile. What are they interested in the most? Are they interested in a lot of collaboration? Or are they interested in mostly like learning? Is it a one-to-many relationship that is the vast majority of the things that you’re producing? Or is there an expectation that there’s going to be workshops or co-learning or office hours? Understanding that, and also understanding just the geography of your customer base is important.

For some, that means we’re going to do an eight hour live session. And the reason why it’s like that is to demand everybody’s attention for eight hours. I don’t usually recommend that just because you’re competing with the same real estate screen, real estate as someone’s emails and other meetings. But certainly if it’s training heavy, that can be really exciting, and really engaging. I’ve also seen people do, let’s say three days, but it’s only taking place in the morning. Morning Pacific time from 9:00 AM to 12:00 AM is the same as early evening Europe. And so, having three hours of content allows people to carve out a semi routine for a few days, but know that they get breaks.

Pat:
I like that.

Rob:
I’ve also seen people split it, especially if they are doing a hybrid, like they want a bit of live, a bit of prerecorded. So, this works really well if you want to do a few keynotes, or a few workshops, but then you have a lot of prerecorded content as well.

They’ll have the same time every day as live, and the same areas of networking, time frame of networking every day, but then the afternoon will be filled with prerecorded, but everybody will know that it’ll be prerecorded. So, you can dip in and out, you can access it later. So, it’s about forming it to your audience. Some people also play around with running up things at the same time to see which ones people go for. There are certain complexities that are there. There’s certain upsell strategies that people take. But in general, if you’re just starting out, I would be thinking carefully of making it a limited time, not necessarily making it, having the expectation that somebody is going to be sitting in front of the screen for eight hours, and then playing into that. So, if you have five talks, a day is great.

If you have 20 talks, a day is not great, and you should be expanding that. The nice thing though about creating summits is that it should be a pretty open experience. And this is again, where sometimes people get a little bit nervous. It’s completely okay for you to launch your summit with like three speakers. And you know that every week you’re going to be adding a new speaker, you’re going to be adding talks. Maybe you’re going to decide, “Oh my gosh, we have too many speakers. We’re going to be extending this into a second day. We’re going to be extending into a third day.” That all is an opportunity to engage with your audience, and bring them along with you and make them feel part of this experience. Not enough people I think take advantage of that. It builds excitement, it builds engagement, and it’s a really fun experience to go through.

Pat:
Yeah, that’s true. That’s actually a big differentiator between something like a summit versus like a webinar, right? A webinar, here’s a training on one day and kind of that’s it. You get it, you leave, versus like a summit, which is more of an experience, right? Where there’s sort of a building and there’s programming, and there’re different parts, and parts that people can choose to go to, prerecorded, some live perhaps. And it does feel more like an event. And I think that’s really cool because you could hypothetically use webinars to offer something similar, but that’s not what webinars are for, right?

These are almost like series of webinars, if you will, trainings that kind of all turn into something much bigger, and whether you choose to sell into it, or you choose to sell during it, or it’s all lead gen. There’s a lot of different ways that you can benefit from doing such a thing. How much time might you need to give yourself? If you’re just starting out and you’re recommending, “Okay, don’t go crazy, but make it great, make it valuable.” How much prep time, how much time would I need to prepare this before launching it? And also along the same lines, how much time would I be recommended to market this thing before the first talk, if you will?

Rob:
Yeah. It’s an interesting one. Because again, it depends a little bit about whether or not you’re using this as an opportunity to activate an existing audience, and engage an existing audience, or to build an audience. So, the more that this is about building and raising awareness, the longer lead time you should be counting on. You want it to be out there. You want people to be talking about it for a while.

So, we advise thinking around the two- to three-month part mark. But if you already have a pretty engaged audience, let’s say you’re only selling this to your email list, and you already know the speakers that you want to have, then your lead time is not very long at all. I think that anything less than six weeks starts to feel like it’s a little bit time pressured, but we’ve seen some great events pop up within four weeks. But usually 20% of the work takes 80% of the time. And a lot of that, a lot of that time is corralling people, and making sure that people get you their recordings, or lock them down in terms of their scheduling. So, if you don’t have that problem, if you can front load a lot of that work, and work on prerecordings, and maybe have someone to help you, then six weeks is fine. But in general, we usually see about two to three months.

Pat:
Awesome. Okay. That’s perfect. Another question. One thing that I always ask myself when I’m doing something, especially something new is how do we make this special? How do we make this an amazing, memorable experience for people? What can people do in these summits to create something that people start talking about and will want to come back next time around?

Rob:
Few different directions, you can head into that. And you can get a little crazy with it too, but first off, offers, giveaways, and viral incentives, right? So, if you’re wanting to create a bundle, a goodie bag that folks will get from attending the summit, those are great places to start because those are ideas that are already out there, and you’re allowed… you’re able to get creative within a certain number, a certain amount of constraints.

Pat:
Is it like a digital bundle or like a physical bundle?

Rob:
Yeah, digital bundle. Exactly, exactly.

Pat:
Okay.

Rob:
Exactly. So, physical is another level, and we’ve seen people do some physical things as part of their summits as well. So, for example, there was an event that was around startups, and it was around consumer startups, and you could pay one fee for access. You can pay another fee to get a gift box or get a box of all of these consumer products sent to you so you can try them all out.

Pat:
That’s cool.

Rob:
Quite fun. Another person, and this was crazy, but they arranged for everybody—because their summit was live, and it was like a five-hour summit—you had to put in your address, and everybody got delivered a Starbucks coffee at like 8:30 AM for the 8:45 AM start-

Pat:
That’s neat.

Rob:
Wherever they were. It was neat. It was the… And there’s some really cool ways that you can… Cool things you can do. I wouldn’t necessarily focus on that if your goal is to use this as mostly like a lead-gen opportunity. But if you’re, especially, if you’re wanting to create an experience that is a bit special, a bit unique, those are kinds of things that you can do. The other thing is just to play around with formats. And I think people underestimate that being able to… If you have a great speaker that has produced a really great piece of content, and they’re willing to be available for office hours, literally have a Zoom session open while they’re working for anyone to pop in and say hello, and ask a question, that’s an interesting use of a format that is low stress, low pressure, and hugely high value to potential attendees.

Pat:
That’s smart. Yeah.

Rob:
Or including networking, like using tools like Remo. Remo, or fun ways of people engaging. That kind of stuff is really helpful, as long as you are intentional with how you schedule it. You shouldn’t have just one networking area that’s open like an expo hall for people to connect. Those don’t really work. Scheduled time, giving people purpose, and playing around with formats is a really great way for people to ease into making it a bit special.

Pat:
I like that. I’m also imagining there’s a number of different ways that because it’s online, because it’s virtual, you can actually do things much easier, better than when it’s actually live. For example, utilizing the chat, playing some games like that kind of stuff. Does that go down very well? Or can it seem maybe, I guess it depends on how you approach it, but I can imagine it working out really well if you do it right.

Rob:
Absolutely. Novelty is actually really important. And oftentimes obviously, the best events that you’ll attend are the ones that you most align to. So, the ones that are most focused. But I think we’ve all been to Zoom webinars, Zoom meetings, Zoom events that we’ve really hated, and we’ve really struggled through. But we’ve also been to other ones that have been really exciting, really fun, really well-designed. And part of that is obviously the content, and the person’s ability to engage. But oftentimes at least, I’ve found the ones that are most memorable are the ones where they are using this, this thing, this Zoom meeting in a way that wasn’t expected. And there are a lot of really fun things that you can do, and games that you can play. And no matter how serious you might think the audience is, allowing someone to experience some sort of novel experience is a great way to just break down the barriers a little bit, remind us all that we’re human, and have a bit of fun.

There are also some tools that you can use. A great one is Gather, https://gather.town, or Cosmos Video is another one where you have an experience where you’re little Game Boy characters, and you’re walking around talking to each other.

Pat:
Oh, that’s good.

Rob:
It’s Similar to Remo. Yeah, do a session on there. Why not? We’ve also seen like scavenger hunts, digital scavenger hunts, where people will ask all of their speakers to put a little symbol in the side of their slides. Like things like that, that people can then discover, but you don’t tell anyone about it. They have to figure it out. There are some fun things that people can do.

Pat:
That’s really cool. Take a moment to talk about HeySummit specifically, as far as the technology to help a person with a summit. I know there’s some other options out there, but I know HeySummit’s the best one. And full disclosure, and I already mentioned this in the intro: Matt, my partner and I are advisors to the company. So, just take my promotion of it with that grain of salt, but I wouldn’t be an advisor or having you here if I didn’t love it. We’re excited to use it later this year as well, but talk about HeySummit. What are the things that it does that perhaps others don’t? And how does it make our lives easier?

Rob:
I think that point is the real crux of why we built HeySummit. It’s about making lives easier, and making you more efficient. So, maybe-

Pat:
Lives, there’s a pun there!

Rob:
Lives or prerecorded.

Pat:
Yes, that’s true. Yeah.

Rob:
So, in general, HeySummit is at its core a marketing and an organizational platform. So, we combine all of the elements that usually take the most amount of time when organizing an event, and we make it automated or close to automated. So, that’s like landing pages, speaker management, attendee management, ticket sales, complex ticket setups, scheduling, offers, giveaways. You want to create an affiliate program just for your event, you’re able to do that without another tool. So, we have all of these tools available as part of the platform. And then we allow people to use the video webinar, or prerecorded, or streaming platforms that they’re already used to, or they already like using. So, you can run your 9:00 AM keynote using Zoom webinar. You can run your 10:00 AM networking session on Remo, and you can have your 11:00 AM masterclass pulled from a Wistia video, or something from Vidalytics, or something like that.

So, the reason why people end up using us is usually for two main reasons. One is the flexibility: You can make a HeySummit event look nothing like any other thing out there. You can really kind of customize it to your brand. And then the second is customizability. You can use Zoom, you can combine different tools, you can put different types of analytical tools involved. You have access to change the entire CSS of the look and feel if you want to. But if you’re not technically inclined, you also don’t have to touch any of that. It’s still easy to use, and still easy to make liquid.

Pat:
That’s awesome. And we’ll have links in the show notes, but if you want to check it out now, SmartPassiveIncome.com/heysummit if you want to check it out. But to finish off here for me and Matt, as we are coming up with programming for potentially something later this year, and for everybody else out there who’s going to be doing their summits as well: What are some of the biggest mistakes that we should be avoiding? What can we make sure we don’t do when we start to enter this world? And you obviously have experience with a lot of people who’ve done things right, and done things wrong. Help us avoid those big mistakes. [Full Disclosure: I’m a compensated advisor and an affiliate for HeySummit.]

Rob:
First, I get really clear about the attendee persona. What are the expectations there, and what are the motivations? And don’t worry too much about flashy formats if they’re not appropriate for the persona. I think that people get excited about being able to do all of these wonderful things, and that’s great, and it’s true, but at the end of the day, if you’re creating an experience for yourself and not for your attendees, you’re going to kind of be let down because at the end of the day, you’re not doing it for yourself, you’re doing it for them. So, that’s I guess one big tip. The second is, yeah don’t be afraid to be “niche” or niche, to niche down.

Pat:
Thank you.

Rob:
You’re welcome. Don’t be afraid to do that. And I think that focus subject matter is not the same as not being ambitious. And I think those are the… that’s a common challenge. Someone’s like, “I’m not big enough. I’m not making this big enough. Therefore, I’m not going to get the biggest… I’m not going to have the biggest impact.” Whereas in reality, the opposite is true. The third thing is try not to overstrategize. Oftentimes people will say, “I’m going to create a very complex ticketing system where you’re going to get any two talks free, but then you have to buy a pack for any three talks that you want to access, and a different price if you want to access the replays.” And some people really like to design those funnels, but when you’re just starting out, I would keep it simple, keep it focused on the value more than anything else, and you’re going to see how people react, and how people go.

The final thing is, which is probably not as big a problem for you, but for others that are listening out there. When you’re working with speakers, and when you’re engaging speakers as part of your event, make sure that you’re knowing that you’re the prize here. You are providing something that speakers want to speak at. It’s not just they’re doing you a favor by speaking at your event. I see oftentimes people will approach the speaker, they’ll say yes, and they’ll basically be really afraid to ask the speaker to do anything.

Whereas instead, you’re giving the speaker a platform to get their word out there, to get their brand out there. And so, have that confidence, and be able to make it clear at the very beginning what the expectations are for partners, or for speakers. Don’t worry too much about saying, “Can I ask, what is your outreach strategy for this? What are you planning to do? How can I help you be more successful in recruiting people to this event?” Setting out expectations is not necessarily a bad thing, but we certainly find sometimes people are a bit shy to get going, at least the first time around.

Pat:
That’s really amazing. Do you imagine that it would be easier to have a team, or can a person actually do this literally all on their own?

Rob:
They can definitely do it all on their own. I’d encourage if someone’s doing it on their own, that prerecorded is probably the way to go, at least to start off with, unless you’re doing a small number of events. If you have a virtual assistant, or you’re a team, or you’re two people, that’s great as well. But you can certainly organize something like this on your own. You’ll experience it in fits and bursts. You’ll have periods where it’s about corralling, and then you’ll have to shift mindset onto something else. But it’s absolutely attainable on your own.

Pat:That’s good news. Again, to circle this back to what I mentioned the very beginning, virtual summits often feel very heavy, very way out of reach for people. And so Rob, I just want to thank you for building a software that can help make this easier, for coming on the show to help us sort of put into perspective just what is possible here, and some of the biggest mistakes, and things that we can do to make this great. So, Rob, thank you again for coming on the show, appreciate you so much. Looking forward to some of our private chats coming up, I’m sure, and bigger things as we work together here. So, appreciate it.

Rob:
Thanks so much.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that episode with Rob again. You can find Rob and the beautiful platform at HeySummit at SmartPassiveIncome.com/heysummit. H-E-Y S-U-M-M-I-T.

That is, full disclosure, an affiliate link. That’s also, remember, going along with the fact that I am an advisor to the company as well. So, if you are going to run your first summit, go ahead and check it out. SmartPassiveIncome.com/heysummit. And Rob, thank you so much for laying it just brick by brick for us so we can build this thing and make it happen, and you’re also helping us on our team too. Stay tuned because we have some stuff and some news coming out for our own version of something like this coming out later in the year. We’re still in the planning phases at the time of this recording, but cannot, cannot wait to share it with you. It’s going to be a lot of fun, and it should provide you a great example of the different kinds of things you can do as well.

And the cool thing is you don’t need to be the biggest player in your space to make this happen, to gain authority, to potentially make some money, and to make it awesome for everybody involved. So, hope you enjoy the episode, again: SmartPassiveIncome.com/heysummit and all the links and stuff that were mentioned on the show. You can also check it out at SmartPassiveIncome.com/session494. Thanks so much for listening all the way through. Hit that subscribe button, if you haven’t already. Again, as always, I appreciate you. Cheers, peace out, and as always, #TeamFlynn for the win. [Full Disclosure: I’m a compensated advisor and an affiliate for HeySummit.]

Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Sound design and editing by Paul Grigoras. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess, our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media. We’ll catch you in the next session.