Hey hey, welcome to the Summit Host Hangout Podcast where you'll learn how to host a high converting virtual summit that leads to your biggest signature offer launch yet. I'm your host Krista from Summit in a Box. And today in Episode 232, I have a couple of incredible summit hosts that I cannot wait for you to hear from on two fun topics. We're going to talk about finding your spot and having a ton of success with a summit in a crowded niche and running a summit with a co host. Before we dive into that, I want to give you a little background information on our guests. We have Amy Romeo, who specializes in jewelry making with a Cricut machine and her passion for crafting has turned into just a wonderful business that she runs today to share her skills with her audience primarily through her blog, YouTube channel. And more. Then we have John swift who's the owner of well crafted studio where she specializes in designing projects with procreate and helping people create with purpose through tutorials, project ideas, downloads, and more. And these two came together to co host the Cricut crafting adventure Summit. I cannot wait for you to hear more about it today. So without further ado, let's dive in and talk with Amy and Jen, co-hosts of the Cricut Crafting Adventure Summit. Welcome Jen and Amy, I'm so excited to have you here.
Thank you so much for having us, Krista. We're very happy to be here.
This is gonna be so much fun. And I want to just start by kind of just setting the stage with what you both do to kind of give context of our own your summit and kind of where it came from. So Amy, do you want to start with telling us a little bit about your business?
Sure. I'm a crafter and a YouTuber. And I like to share cricut crafting projects and jewelry making ideas with my audience. And I've been crafting with a cricut for about four years. But I'm a lifelong crafter and jewelry maker.
I love that. What about you, Jen?
I've actually, so I think we both started off with the whole just like the craft thing. And then just kind of gone from there. And I also like to teach. It's kind of runs with the family. So I've kind of combined the two. It's just it's a really fun thing to do. I really love what I'm doing.
Yeah, I love that you both started with a passion and it has just kind of grown and grown and grown along with you. So what made you decide to come together to host a summit? Well,
Jen and I have never met in real life. But we met about four years ago, we collaborated on a cricct crafting project. And we just became friends. And we've been asked to speak in many prominent summits in our industry. And as we've collaborated together and with other speakers, we started talking about how we would like to do something like this. And how would it what would it look like? How would it be different? And the idea just grew and grew? And we knew we had to tackle it?
Yeah. Oh my gosh, I love the way it turned out. I can't wait to dive into it a little more here. What would you say? You two were hoping to get out of the event? Like what were your primary goals with it.
I think when we first started talking about it, a lot of it was just really wanting to create a community and really kind of bring people together. And Amy, both of our big thing was just to get the people to try something new. Because we know that when people are doing Cricut crafting or even just crafting, there's like a fear of the unknown. And so trying to get people to feel adventurous and to kind of get over that fear and just dive in and really do something that makes them feel good about who they are and what they're doing was huge for us. And we felt like an event that kind of like how the build up and all the excitement and things would be a really good way of doing that. Just kind of get people to jump off that cliff.
Yeah. And it sounds like you nailed it. So let's talk about your event. And let's start with the basics. But also whatever you want to share, we would love to hear. So tell us about the event who it was for what it was about all the things.
We call that the Cricut crafting adventure, because we wanted our attendees to know that it was an adventure from the very start. We wanted them to embrace the event. It's a virtual event. It spanned five days and we wanted to have the attendees know right away that we were going to be teaching them new things, new materials with the cricket new techniques, they were going to be exploring and learning and having fun. And a cricket is a cutting machine. And there is a technology piece involved with using a Cricut so some crafters get frustrated with that technology piece. And then they give up and they don't want to try crafting. So we wanted to make sure they were in a safe space and they felt like they could ask questions, make some friends, connect with speakers and develop a community. So over five days we had 30 speakers in our industry and we had 40 presentations that were virtual and attendees could watch them each day with the free pass and then they had access to all of the presentations and all of the projects for a lifetime period when they purchased the VIP pass.
Amazing! I love the fact that you balanced like the tech like crafting should be super fun and relaxing right so I love the fact that you balanced like the potential tech frustration with the adventure side of things you're like no we're gonna make this fun and lucky position your whole event around that so well. I didn't put together when we were working together on like when I was going through your stuff I didn't put those two pieces together so I really like love that realization that was So that was smart. Do you feel like that was picked up on? Like, do you feel like the adventure part kind of helped balance that tech part?
I do. And we did a lot of very careful branding. Jen was in charge of all of our branding. And she did the most incredible graphics. And we we really pushed in our marketing that we wanted people to embrace the spirit of adventure in their crafting and try new things.
I loved it, too. I think I remember going through your registration page and just feeling like a dork at all the times I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is so much fun. This. It definitely came across. I think you guys did a great job with that. And like, also, the Crafter niche is no joke with summit these days. There are a lot of them. Were you guys concerned in the beginning with adding a crafting summit with all of the successful ones out there? Or did you feel confident like we got this, we can make our own path and make this different?
I think we kind of go in between the two. And because there's two of us, it's like a Sisa thing. So there's like the times where I'm like, oh, no, this is never gonna work. And Amy's like, oh, my gosh, we got this. And then it seesaws and she's like, okay, but there's this and I'm like, Oh, no way. You know, we have friends we have I mean, we've got this great community already. We love that we're doing well, I'm sure that there's going to be just a ton of people that are going to be interested in excited about this. So I mean, no matter like how big or small the niche is, and currently you're correct. Like the crafting like summit niche is pretty. I mean, it's a it's exploded, but I think it is because the craft is are so community like minded. Really, we all just want to get into a big room and craft together. And so it's like it just is the perfect venue for for this kind of for this group of people. I honestly think so even though there are like several of them. Now, I haven't seen one of them fall yet. I mean, everybody, like every single one has done great.
Yeah, I've seen that as well. What do you think was the key for your event to stand out among all of them, I think we
were able to carry the theme of adventure throughout the branding of our entire event. And it went through the graphics, it went through our marketing. And even our speakers, we asked them to create travel themed projects, because in our virtual event, our presenters teach a new skill or a new material, something using the Cricut machine through a project that they create and share. So we asked them to create everything that was travel themed. And it really helped just enhance, enhance the spirit of our event and really set us apart I think from other similar summits.
Yeah, it was like it's fun experience, like you followed the framework of of asana and how we teach it. But to me, it felt so custom and fresh and new and different, because you did carry that all through. So well. I loved it. So are you up for sharing some numbers with us letting us know how it all turned out? Sure. I'm sure we're happy to. Yeah, so I mean, share whatever you want registration sales, we'd love to hear whatever you're willing to share.
Well, when Jen and I first started, as I mentioned, we've been speakers and other similar summits in our industry. So we had an idea of what other very big crafters in our industry were were doing in terms of summits. So we set our goals pretty conservatively, we were hoping to get about 20 to 25,000 attendees. And we ended up with 45,000, which we were so excited about. And we sold about 4600 VIP passes. So that was our 10.1 conversion rate. We were happy with that. And we grossed $192,000 In total revenue.
That is like quite impressive for first time Summit Host. Hangout like oh, like, I know, we see the potential in the crafting niche, but like, those numbers are not common. So I hope you two are so proud of that. And like celebrated that so hard, because that's amazing. Like you put on something that these people wanted to be a part of. And that's, that's really great. And I love hearing that you just blew your goals out of the water that probably felt pretty dang good, too.
It did. We're really proud of those numbers. And we know that it's not common for you know, a lot of different summits in different niches. So we're excited.
And I remember like partway through your promotion period, we were working together in the Accelerator and your conversion rates were looking okay, but you knew they couldn't be better. You'd seen these other events, you knew what you could be aiming for, and just wanted to aim higher, which I'm all about. I know Elli worked with you on some things, I did a critique. And I know I threw a lot of stuff your way in that. But it seemed to help. So I'm curious, what do you think was the most important change you made that helped up numbers after that?
Well, I can speak first to where we were at before, we were around a seven and a half percent conversion rate. And in Summit in a Box, we learned what sort of normal conversion rates were and sort of off the chart conversion rates, and we really want it to be in a 10 to 15% range. So I think that we Jen can talk more about the changes that we made, but we had spent she and I had spent so much time looking at our sales pages that you know, you just become numb to what it looks like and it's hard to think of how it could look different. So when we reached out to Ellie and we were able to come up with some changes. Jen made a lot of those changes on our page. And I couldn't believe how much they helped.
Yeah, John Muir, on talks through some what some of those changes were,
they really were pretty simple changes. And they really were just kind of a mindset thing. So I think one big thing was that we had an easy opt out right away for people. So like, you know, they could go click to learn more, and then we had no thank you right underneath, which we had it set up to go to a really nice, no thank you page. And we, I'm not even sure I mean, so it all flowed well. But you were like, Why? Why do you that? And we're like, oh, well, oh, you're like, kind of following along, you're just doing all the things, and then you just kind of don't stop. So having Ellie and you take a look and just say okay, wait a minute, why did you do that? You know, and oh, wait a minute, what about if we tweaked this, and I think that at that point in the game, we had been like putting in these insane hours, just on all kinds of different things. And so yeah, your brain gets kind of like overwhelmed. And you stop kind of seeing every little bit individually. And it's just like this big, huge hole. And so just having someone stop and say, Okay, well, let's let's talk about this. A couple of things we did keep kind of did we even I think it might have just taken the year list and just gone down it and just seemed everything you said, I think actually,
that's exactly what we did think it was just
that not Yep, do it, do it, do it, do it. And Amy's like telling you to do it. And if I were to get it done by the time she's done talking,
and even just simple things like moving sections, the way of a reader is going to go down the sales page, the way the sections were connected, your comments and your feedback and, and the feedback of Ellie, it was just so smart. And a really helped. And then immediately, immediately, we saw higher conversion rates, which when you're talking about $192,000 In sales, a difference in a few percentage points is huge.
Yeah, I think I calculated it afterwards, because I was so excited with the numbers you shared. And it was like $18,000 Extra in the seven days after making those changes. And I didn't follow along after that. But like, I love hearing that the changes were like simple to make on your end, and then you saw pay off right away. Like that's what it's all about. So
you were so simple. Like I said, like, I really think that by the time she was done talking to me, I'd already made the changes. And they made that big of a difference. And it was just because we had people with who had another set of eyes that weren't like, you know, fatigued and overwhelmed and tired and stuff to look at it and say, Wait a minute, and then just Yeah, no, that was so incredibly helpful, like insane.
Amazing. Well, thank you for sharing about that. That's really cool to hear often, like Elio so back to this all staff knows. So I also want to change gears a little bit and pick your brain about CO hosting. And since you're both here and smiling, I'm guessing that your co hosting experience was a positive one. What do you think are the primary reasons for being able to have a successful collaboration of this size?
You know, I have to say, Jen is such a good virtual friend of mine. And one of my biggest concerns about doing a summit with a friend was I did not want to ruin the friendship. And I know that I know that Jen was concerned about that, too. We've worked together on other projects, but not in this scale. It really was a process where we just communicated a lot, we met three times a week on Zoom. We were messaging each other constantly, always bouncing ideas off each other. And she and I just have a real respect and admiration for each other. And I think our communication was key. There were so many times that we didn't agree on things, but we would sort of just talk it out. And Jen is always the first one to say if I do something and I tell her Oh, I you know, change this on the whatever on the checkout page, she would say thank you so much for doing that. I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. She always made me feel like what, what I had to say was important and valuable, even if she didn't agree with it. And I always felt like I was working with someone who appreciated me and respected my opinion and my input.
That's everything, especially when there's disagreement and you still feel respected and appreciated. That's huge. With a project where you're probably going to disagree a lot. It's important to keep that morale and everything up and the relationship really solid. I love that.
I don't think we did disagree a lot. We didn't disagree, but there were definitely things that you thought we should do one way I thought we should do another way. Yeah. So it was those sorts of things deciding how to proceed.
It was pretty much like she said, I came into this to kind of a little bit worried like not really knowing because it's a different level of like working together to be actually partner with somebody on something like this. And honestly, the whole experience was like I mean, as good as it could possibly have been. It's way better than I actually could have like hoped for even like I feel like we're so much closer. Anything that we did kind of have any slight like different perspective on we were able to talk it through. Amy is like so good at dealing with my personality. And I respect her so much like I honestly like I'm her biggest fan So to be able to do this with her, and create something like this together was like such a, I feel honored. I know it sounds dumb, but like I really do to feel like I got to do this with her go through this experience with her was like the biggest thing for me.
Oh god, I'm tearing up. So...
Something I wanted to mention also was we made a decision early on to sort of have a team captain. So there were areas of our summit that Jen was in charge of, for example the graphics, Jen created over 700 graphics for our summit. They were unbelievable. She's an amazing illustrator, graphic designer. But that was her area, that was her baby. I did not critique, I did not go and change her images. I didn't even try to be involved in that process. I had my own things that I was in charge of. And each of us having sort of our own lane, let us work autonomously and independently. And I feel like we were more productive and more efficient. And getting things done. I trusted what she was doing. She trusted me. And I think it's important in the start when you're co hosting with someone to sort of decide, what are you taking ownership of and what am I taking ownership of? And what things do we want to do together? I thought that was really helpful.
I love that. I would say that's probably the biggest area I struggled with when I co hosted a couple years ago. And like my co host is amazing. We never like gotten any arguments or anything. But the CO hosting experience was tough for me because of constantly having to like I know summits constantly having to go someone and ask Is this okay? Can we do this and get approval. That was exhausting. And she also knows summits like she also teaches about Summit. So like for us to come together and something like that. Like, again, we didn't have disagreements, but it was just just felt like a lot where I can see where you really are owning your own space, or each seeing what the other person is doing. But not probably not critiquing it, unless probably there's something very obvious that you would want right up anyways. That's like, that's a really great way to split it up.
I feel like it kept us from getting too fatigued to just because like if I would do my part of the sales page, which was like the design and stuff, and then I'd say up words, and then handed off. And then she'd be like, Okay, done. And then you know, then she'd handed off again. And so we were constantly going back and forth. But because each of us were in our like area of of expertise, neither one of us felt like it was like too much. And it was more it was it was like play. Like it was like we were constantly just passing the ball back and forth to each other. That's awesome.
I agree. And then then there was some things that we enjoyed doing together like planning our speaker, thank you box. That was a whole bunch of fun, because we wanted it all branded, you know, travel themed, we wanted to keep the adventure, the adventure theme and the design, and then the selection of items we put in the box. So we enjoyed a lot of collaborations together also.
Yeah, the perfect mix. It sounds like I love it. So are you guys gonna do it? Again? We're gonna have around to Oh, totally. Yeah. I love it. So do you have any advice for anyone, you can take this whatever route you want anyone either looking to host their first summit, or looking to co host whatever comes to mind. First, I'd love to hear from both of you. I would say
for myself, when you're doing a summit. Just give yourself way more time than you think. And I don't know, if we were just extra in all of the details, all of the elements, we added all the design all the different features. But we needed a lot more time than we gave ourselves, we sort of ran up against the the deadline for when we were going to let our affiliates share our sales page. And we had not yet shared the sales page ourselves to our own audiences. Because we just ran out of time, we ran out of time having you and your team review our sales pages because we ran out of time. So I would say if you're planning a summit, give yourself a lot more time than you think you'll need. Because it takes a lot of time. But it's so worth it. I mean,
this was our first time doing this. And it was a really big event. So I think time was like the probably our biggest thing. But a lot of it was just trying to keep a work life balance with family. And you know, I mean kids and life. And I've had a graduate this year and you know, just trying to do like all the things, but trying to kind of keep you know, all those different balls in the air. And this is one really, really big ball that we are sharing. And so there was a lot of, I think, challenge there. But I feel like we both really grew as business owners to try and work through all that. So I think that was a really good experience. I know a lot of people don't co host but I do think that if you can find the right person, I think that what can come out of an event that's co hosted is probably bigger and better than what can come out from just one person because they don't have somebody there, not just encouraging them but also kind of bouncing things back. I mean, just bouncing that sales page back to you and Ally made such a huge difference. And Amy and I were able to do that all the way along through the process and with each other as well. And so I think that having that I feel like that created kind of an energy that isn't necessarily always there for some events because You don't have that excitement of creating something with someone else. And just constantly trying to get it to be bigger and better and more fun and keeping that excitement. Does that make sense? Yeah, I
feel that I totally feel that like, even with my own projects, I don't necessarily bounce my stuff back to like, well, some tips, sometimes I am in a program and bounce it back to the coach, but like Ellie, on my team, it's like, she's the person I bounce everything off to. And it's, it's so helpful to have that and, like thinking back to when I was making my first semester, without that they would have been better if I would have had someone else to come in, you know, maybe uplevel my ideas just a little bit, give that encouragement in the times. Um, are you getting the you know, that's part of what we'd like, that's like, part of why we love working with clients is to be able to do some of that, but I love you pointing that out from the coasting perspective as well. It's definitely powerful.
I just say you have no problem and something I really, really value is that she will be like, you know, okay, Jen. Yeah, no, maybe we should, like think and, you know, she'll, she'll kind of rein me in, because I'll be like, Whoa, and then she'll, she'll be like, Okay, let's, let's step back and say, maybe we need to put a little fence around this for now. And, you know, and I totally, that's something that, like, my personality kind of needs. And so to be able to trust that she's, you know, not doing that, like, you know, that she's doing that constructively. And that, you know, is really helpful. And knowing that I can do the same with her. Like, there are times where she just is like, what, and I'm just like, take it down to 10. You know, let's, we're just gonna kind of keep it you know, a little bit more. And it's like we can, we feel confident, and we're able to do that with each other. I don't know, it's just, it's a really positive thing for us. So I do feel like if you can find the right person to co host with, it's like, it's really amazing, like, makes the experience so much better.
What I wanted to say was another benefit, obviously, of CO hosting is now you have access to to creators audiences. So Jen and I both have healthy audiences that we've spent years developing and there is some overlap, but I was able to access members in her audience that got to know me that didn't know me before, and vice versa. And I wanted to say, our attendees loved that we played up the idea that Jen and I were on an adventure together, we were on the adventure of the summit, and we were friends hosting this as an adventure. And our little graphics had us on a road trip. And it was all it was all very friendship based. And our attendees really liked that part of the experience as well.
Oh, my gosh, I love that. I'm like tearing up again, you guys keep getting me.
On that's the part that actually people connected with a lot. And that's part that we've kept going. We're now doing these weekly YouTube live chats, because we started during the summit, and people loved the connection, seeing us connect with each other so much. And then like the be able to do the live chat and connect with us together. That's something we've decided to keep going now through. So since the summit ended, yeah.
Oh, my gosh. Okay, so I'm curious, would you like before this, have kids, like considered each other competitors at all? Like, do your offers overlap or compete in any way? Or is it very, like complementary?
I would say they're complementary, but we've never felt competitive with each other. And actually, there are other competitors in our niche that do the same things that we do. And honestly, I know, Jen would agree, we don't feel they're our competitors, either. They're more of our colleagues. And, you know, Jen and I both believe that. What is that saying? rising waters lifts all boats, we, we really, we really believe in the spirit of collaboration, more than competition, that's an important value to both of us.
I feel like that is displayed really clearly like with your results with other results I've seen in the crafting space where people could definitely see each other as competitive, like, oh, I don't want to invite this other person, but they do. And then the summit's just explode. It's so cool to see. I've loved seeing you guys come together for this. So thank you so much for sharing all of this today. I really appreciate this is a lot of fun. Where can people go to connect with each of you and Jen, let's start with you.
Well I'm at Wellcraftedstudio.com. So they can go there and find me. I links to everything that I'm doing.
My blog is Amyromeu.com. And I also have a YouTube channel by the same name Amy Romeu. And that's where I share my Cricut tutorials and different projects.
Is that where you guys go live together too? Well, to both of your YouTube accounts probably.
Actually, we've been doing it to the Cricut Crafting Adventure YouTube.
Oh, fun!
We created that during the event. And now we that's where we go live every week. So I have a Facebook group that for Cricut crafting adventure. And we do kind of tie that in with some weekly challenges that we've been doing. We announce them in the when we think of it. We announce it during the live and then we go ahead and post into the Facebook group. And then people can kind of post pictures of things that they're doing and kind of answer the challenge question. So.
Fun! I love it. Awesome. Well, I will link to all of these things in the show notes for everyone to come connect with you and check out what you're doing. But thank you so much for being here. This was so much fun. And thank you so much everybody for tuning in for show notes and resources mentioned in this episode and links to everything from Jen and Amy had to summit host hangout.com/ 232. In the next episode, we're gonna keep an eye on what Amy and Jen talked about with unique positioning being a key to standing out and continue with a short series about summit positioning. So I'm bringing in my positioning expert and lead coach in the Accelerator to teach you what you need to know. So be sure to stay tuned for that. Now go out and take action to plan, strategize and launch your high converting virtual Summit.
