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 I'm excited for kind of like, a timely, unique topic compared to what we normally have on the podcast today. And if you've been in online business more than a couple years, you have noticed a shift in the past year of people being more and more skeptical and needing a higher level of trust before making a purchase or really wanting anything to do with you and like, we could go down the whole rabbit hole talking about that and breaking that down and complaining about it, but instead, I just want to get straight to the point today and talk about how to overcome this in part, with virtual summits and like where summits fit in this trust economy we're experiencing today. And I brought in an incredible guest to have this conversation with to give you some background before we dive in. Anthony Obey is a direct response copywriter and digital marketing consultant who's been helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses since 2007 his campaigns have generated hundreds of millions in verified sales, earning him the title Million-Dollar Copywriter - who would not want that title? That's awesome. Anthony and his wife Crystal, co-founded Life and Launches, where they help entrepreneurs build what they call high profit, low stress lifestyle businesses. But they're also homeschool parents of five, and they recently launched Homeschool Money, a program aimed at helping 100,000 parents self-fund their homeschooling journey. And today he's here to share how virtual summits can be the perfect strategy for building instant trust and authority in this trust economy. So without further ado, let's dive in and talk with Anthony from Life and Launches. Welcome Anthony.
Hi, Krista, thank you so much for having me on your show. It's such an honor. Thank you so much.
I'm so excited to have you here and, like, just for everyone listening, we were kind of like reminiscing before hitting record, but like, I think we first got to know each other because you joined you and your wife joined Summit in a Box. You hosted how many summits at this point?
At this point, we just hosted our one... yeah, we've hosted one summit so far. Yes.
And then just through that caught my attention. I think there were maybe some bonus calls or something with that, then started speaking at my summits. And like, here we are. It's just like, one of those things that was kind of meant to be. And I'm excited for this topic today. Like I said, I think this is really timely. I would love for you to just tell us a little bit more about your business. And, like, what you do that helps you, like, see all of this happening, kind of from, like, an outside perspective, and be able to speak to it, especially compared to those of us who are more like reacting to it.
Yeah. Well, just to first off, it's so funny because we bought Summit in a Box in 2023 okay, and we planned on hosting our first summit. We planned on hosting it at the beginning of 2024 but we were just after taking Summit in a Box. It was so I mean, all of the modules, all the lessons, were just like, really, really good, really, really detailed, step by step. Everything was laid out so well that we were excited. And so we attempted to kick off this summit in early 2024 but then we just realized my wife was really struggling, because we just we as we had a newborn. We had a newborn, and he was still so young, and she was nursing all the time, sleep was crazy, and so it just kind of fell apart on us. So we actually wanted to... we kicked it out a few months, and went to do it, like, start planning it and bringing it together during the summertime. Well, then, because of all this stress my wife was under, just with, like, the physical stress from nursing, and this is our baby number five, and so we have the homeschooling of the other four, nursing a newborn and everything, my wife ended up getting shingles. She came down with her, yeah, she ended up getting the shingles, and was just in a lot of pain, extreme pain, for like three weeks or so until, you know, antibiotics kicked in and everything, and she was able to recover from that. So that kicked us off, like three months from the point of being able to... not three months that could this out, for another month or so from being able to start really seriously planning our first summit so we execute our first summit for ourselves. I've helped it. Helped other people with their summits, and I've been, you know, helping people with their launches and events for years, but our own summit in a niche that we were new in, which is homeschooling.
So we've been homeschooling for 13 plus years, but this was going to be our first, actually, like event or something we put together as homeschool, as a homeschooling family wanting to share and teach other homeschooling families. And the perfect way that we thought to do that was a virtual summit, the best program to help us fine tune strategy and all that, Summit in a Box. So that's, that's how we ended up with just, you know, having done one so far, but definitely planning a virtual summit coming up as our as our second one. So yeah, just to start off with that, what just wanted to share a little bit more about that, give a back story on that. Now to more to your question on trust. Trust economy. And I just want to, sort of like, in your question of wanting to paint a picture of what being in a trust economy is, and what what that means for online business owners today. Well, it's first good to realize that we're in a trust economy. That's, I think that's like foundational and then understanding what that even means. I would define being in a trust economy as the understanding that we the number one currency we are trading in today in online business is trust. Now for me, that's not really scary, because I learned from some of the best marketers and some of the best copywriters. When I first started writing copy back in 2007 I learned from some of the best and the I learned how to do what I would just say, all the things and so all the things that were working then in 2007 I'm really happy and excited to say that those things are working today as well. However, I would say that today, if you're just getting started online business or younger in it, you've been marketing online for a few years, you need to understand that things such as social proof are very important in your marketing. They're as equally important as setting a firm foundation in your messaging. So there's some things that you need to do in your messaging. You need to attack. You need to set a big idea for your marketing and for your brand, and whatever it is product or service you're trying to sell, virtual summit that you're trying to sell. You need to set that big idea, and it needs to solve the top two to three problems or pain points or predicaments that your target audience has that is critical. And then you need to the the actual solution that you're offering in a virtual summit or through your product or service. You need to solve each one of those, those problems, those pain points, with the features of your virtual summit or product or program, and those features need to produce benefits outcomes. So each feature of whatever it is that you're selling needs to actually provide a benefit, an outcome, a result, a transformation for people.
And that's how some people say, Oh, you want to focus on benefits versus features. Well, they go hand in hand, because it is the features that that produce the benefits that we're selling. So with a summit, your features are the topics that you're going to to present. So I would focus on making sure you have a have great topics, and those topics should or the features, but they should produce an outcome or a result or transformation for people who take the actions of following through on what they're learning in those topics, that's important, but it's also equally important to provide the social proof aspect of it, and that's the beauty of doing a summit. Whenever you do a summit, there's a lot of social proof that's sort of inherent and built in because you're calling on speakers, and you're asking those speakers to to mail for you, and when they were when they mail for you to their audiences, you're automatically getting social proof. And you are automatically getting sort of a nod like, oh yeah, this person is okay, this person is safe by the fact that they are mailing for you. And so you gain sort of instant credibility in in that regard.
So in trust economy, social proof is so important. So peer reviews, case studies, ratings, all of those things are very important in addition to your essential core message, your your essential brand and sales message, thought leadership, being a person who's who comes from behind the brand. Big box brands don't work anymore. Even with people who are building a brand online, like a product or something like that, that they're they're really wanting to grow out and end up in stores. You're seeing more and more those people with the founders of those brands showing their face on the actual boxes of products that are featured on the shelves of target or whatever, right? Those those products are moving faster because people are doing those the brand owners are doing interviews. For instance, they're doing interviews on different people's podcasts and that type of thing. And that's how people are learning about these brands, learning the backstory of the founder and the story of that founder and how they came to discover this product or focus in on this product or service. And so in a trust economy, social proof is important. Thought leadership is important. Being an influencer of your own product is important, and transparency, transparency is another key factor in a trust economy, because transparency says I am an authentic person. I have flaws, I make mistakes, and I learn from those mistakes. But see that doesn't scare me, because those are things that I have been weaving into the founder story since 2007, so whenever I write about the founder story in a sale on a sales page, I want to get their story, and I want to tell it in such a strategic way that I'm going to include a a mistake that was made, or whatever, that that caused them to stumble upon this discovery that led them to creating this grand solution that's already baked in, that's already been built in since I've been writing campaigns to do that, you know, back in 2007 so that doesn't intimidate me, that that needs to be included today, that it's just a doubling down and realizing that that aspect of your sales message is really important to be authentic and to strategically share some mistake that you made. And I say strategically because I've seen how this has played out. I was I remember being in a mastermind one time, and a young lady getting up and sharing some personal things about herself that were just like, Oh no, no, no, no. That's not what you do. That's not what you do, but she was trying to be authentic, but you need to be strategically authentic. You need to be strategically transparent about where you are, what you're dealing with, or what led you to, the creation of the product or service that you're now offering, and so not just sharing personal things, but strategically doing so.
Oh my gosh, so much good stuff in there. And what's like standing out to me as I was hearing you speak to this, you know, summits in a trust economy, and helping them, or helping use them to really fuel your business, is that, like, you can't hide in your summit. And I see people do this all the time, and it drives me nuts. You have to give yourself the opportunity to do this, to be in front of them, to tell the stories for them, to get to see the things you do well and the things you don't do as well, to hear stories of how you've you've helped people. And I can think of places all throughout the summit process you can do this, but I'm thinking like right on their registration page. Hey, yeah. Have have your picture and and your strategic bio with you know, certain pieces of your story. Have a video, yeah, have screenshots of what people have said about previous events, all of these things, both I would assume, and I guess I've seen, get people to not only buy into the summit right, getting you better results for that up front part of the funnel and the summit, but that's gonna carry through all throughout where they instantly feel like they know way more about you than they would if you were trying to kind of hide behind this event. And I think that's even more important now with what we're seeing.
Yes, yes, absolutely. I think it's so important to your point to strategically, just write down, I like working with clients. You know, I work with clients or whatever independent. I work with people who are, you know, have established businesses, as well as folks who are just getting started. They just have a concept. I like to say that I help people go from concept to cash flow. And so whenever I just get to work with somebody who's just getting started in what they're doing, maybe planning a virtual summit or something, or just formulating an idea for a new product or service, I like to take the time to really take it from the top. And whenever I say, take it from the top, let's think through yourself. Before you think about your product or service, let's think through yourself, your personality, your likes and dislikes, your core values, your core values, and what makes you, what drives you, what motivates you. And that's what I'm trying to get at. Whenever I look at a person's core want to pull out and extract content about a person's core values is because, however, whatever drives you, the you have an opportunity at the beginning to build the type of business that you really love yourself, one that energizes you.
So you don't want to build your business by attracting people who are misaligned with core values, who don't value the same sort of things that you do. And so if you value family time and family in general, like write that down as a core value and then strategically include that in your story, tell and telling the story, or at least some element of the story of that in your messaging on your virtual summit page. So when we did our homeschool summit, first of all, we did a homeschool summit because our one of our top three core values, our number two core value, is family. And so what excites me even more than writing campaigns for other people is talking to people who approach their business ownership from a hey, I want to do this to build a family business, or I want to do this to build a sort of lifestyle business that allows me to have more time with their family. So I think in a trust economy, that's the deeper dive. It's not just hey, I want to build a sales funnel. It is hey. I wanted to build a lifestyle sales funnel that allows me to be able to spend more. Time on my core values, and for us, that's, that's that's family, that's maybe time volunteering. There's a sort of ministry I'm we're Christian, so there's a ministry that I want to really focus more time and attention on. And so like that's really driving some of the work that I am doing in putting together sale, a sales funnel for our own selves that is more automated, that would allow me more time to engage in other activities that sort of feed my core values. So it's really important to incorporate core values and your own personality into your brand, or whatever that brand may be. It can be as simple as the colors that you choose for your brand. What's your favorite color? Why would you choose blue? If your favorite color is purple, you know, things like that.
I love that you're talking about values. And I was kind of like you were talking about it in one regard, and then I was thinking of it kind of like in a parallel of how much I have seen leading with my values built, like, build this exact trust that we're looking for, and it happens in in all kinds of different ways, like I know for a fact when I lead with my faith, people who who feel that way as well, who who believe the same things I do, they love that they feel safe and welcome, and they want to like be in my bubble and be supportive, and they have that trust, right, that trust is already there, and I think it goes another way, because, like, there are other values I have around, like inclusion and diversity and things like that, and people who don't believe that, that's one where I draw a line, like, if you don't believe those things, it's not a good idea for you to be here. And I think that creates a layer of trust with the people who do belong there, because then they also know the community is safe. So there's like, a deeper trust with with, like me as as the leader, and then there's more safety in the community, which I think just helps all this trust, like, flourish inside of it, just like, does really great things. So I'm glad that you brought up values, because I think we just, like, touched on three different ways in in your business and in your life, that that is beneficial, like it's just going to feel good to you, and it builds so much trust in every layer of your community, whether people just found you for the first time, or you know are in your in your space, knowing that it's safe for them to be there. I think that's a really important thing to think about.
Absolutely.
Okay. I love this.
Yeah, and that's one of the things I like about I love about your brand, and we - Crystal and I - both appreciate about your brand is that you have flown the flag on your faith, but then you also value inclusion. And so I really, we've really appreciate that about your brand, that you share that because your business is a is a platform and opportunity for you to build a better world, the way that you see that it can become a better world. And so you're doing that through your brand, and I appreciate that.
And there's actually like, we can tie this into summits too. Like you can be, like, more low key overall, like it can be a part of your messaging or not, or it can be in your bio or not. And something I've actually done with values are like, I have this value. I really strongly believe this. It doesn't actually fit perfectly with my summit. I don't care. I'm gonna have a series about this anyway. And I've done that, I think, three times up to this point, just in different summits. I had, you know, we were teaching designers how to be like more efficient and profitable in their business. But I had sessions on sustainable design, on inclusivity as a designer, as designing accessible websites. Like, those didn't probably make their jobs easier, but I'm like, these things are important. I want this baked in, and you can do that with with anything. So I think that's fun to think, right? Like, I love how your summit, Anthony, it's all together, right? Like, family is one of your values. The homeschool summit is about family. But even if your topic isn't as directly related, there are probably other things you can do to still make it fit and make it feel good to you and build that trust.
Absolutely. Actually, it's so funny because our the first summit idea we had was not on homeschooling, it was actually on something that was sort of related to the pregnant pregnancy experience itself. So I guess, you know, yeah, in the process of living out our values, we always wanted five kids, for instance, okay, so my wife and I met in college, and when we met, we knew that we wanted five kids. We knew that years before we had started even trying to have kids, and so we've been blessed with five kids now, but to get there nine pregnancies, four miscarriages and two near death experiences, yeah, number four, the first near death experience, was what we learned was a silent killer, quote, unquote. That's what they call it, a silent killer, and that is postpartum preeclampsia, basically high blood pressure. It wasn't related to weight, it was related to the pregnancy experience. And that happened a couple of three months down the line, after after baby came. And that's why they call it postpartum preeclampsia. And so. So we, I rushed my wife to the hospital three different times in one week, and by the third time, I was so, like, traumatized. I was so, like, just scared because medication was not working and it was driving her blood pressure back up to like, everything was double digit. So if it's supposed to be 120, over 80, hers, hers have gotten to the point of 240, over, like 150 or 60 or something like that. It was like stroke, heart attack, seizure level, and they did that three times in one week. It was very scary.
So anyway, we ended up moving forward and moving past that, then experienced three more miscarriages, and then we went through and then she got pregnant, carried him to full term, and that's how we ended up with number five. After number five, guess what? Within six days, I had to rush my wife to the hospital with a kidney infection that had went septic. So my wife actually had sepsis. And as you know, sepsis, you hear about a lot of people in history, they say that they bacteria, whatever, they got sepsis or whatever, and they and they died like that's a killer. So one of the top, like the top two out of three killers of women postpartum, my wife dealt with in the last two successful pregnancies, and so we wanted to do a summit on postpartum care, and it's still a great topic to do one on, but we haven't done that one yet. So yeah, you could do a summit on the beautiful thing about doing virtual summits is that you can do a virtual summit on a lot of different topics. It doesn't have to be a core business. It could just be something that you're passionate about. And because summits have such built in monetizations, you can monetize just with the ticket sales itself, just to get an important message out there. So I don't know, I just, I was just inspired to think about that because you said what you said previously, and I just spurred that thought on. Yeah, we wanted to do this summit on postpartum care, and we're just so busy we haven't returned back to it. But it doesn't have to be something that's directly related to your core value, or even your core business, for that matter. I think that's how it got off on that tangent.
Man, and like, and again, if we circle back to like, the trust piece of it, there will be that instant trust there, because you guys have that power of I'm sitting here at the edge of my seat listening to this story. You know, people are coming because they've experienced it, or they're worried about it, or whatever. Like, there's going to be that instant trust and connection. I love that. Yeah, I guess one other thing I kind of want to circle around to when it comes to virtual summits in a trust economy is like, do you have any thoughts on how the balance of like, giving value versus selling works when this is our focus, right? Because most of us like, yes, we can totally host summits in this left field topic that does not relate to our business. I've thought about it, but most people are probably hosting them to grow their business. So how do we find that balance right now?
Yeah, that's a great question. Giving high value, but also not cannibalizing yourself so much in what you're giving in your Summit, so that you, you know, cannibalize your ability to sell so, so important. And so what I always say with that is write it down. Write down. You have to start with strategic topics. You have to think about your topics. And you to do that again, I always start at the top. The top is what is the goal, what is the outcome, what is the result that you want people to be able to achieve, maybe through your product or service that you're trying to ultimately sell, and even through the paid through your monetizations. I mean, what is what are you trying to sell through your monetization so if it's the all-access pass, what do you want to include in the all-access pass that will bring the transformation if you're trying to sell all-access pass and sell something, a launch, something on the back end, a mastermind, or a course or a product of some sort, or a one on one service, think about what the outcome of that is, and then work backwards from there by right, starting with again the three pain points. I always start with everything with the the same way, start with the three pain points, the three problems, the three roadblocks that people have in order to achieving that goal, achieving that result.
And then think about topics in across each one of those pain points that would sort of help to mitigate or remove those barriers or boundaries, but not those would be topics that you want to have other people speak on, but not necessarily the direct solution, or whatever that you're trying to solve for and that you're trying to sell on the back end. And so that's kind of how we rolled out the thought process of how and who we wanted to invite to speak with ours is just thinking about what problem we're trying to solve, number one.
Number two, what are the problems that people have on their path towards successful homeschooling. And then let's, let's think about, write down those topic ideas. And then we also thought about the life cycle of homeschooling. Okay, so that's another way of solving for this problem. Well, we always know, we know that most people are going to be in the beginning stage of whatever, whatever it is you're selling. Most people are going to be at the beginning stage of whatever it is you're selling. So you're going to have less people who've been using products or services, maybe in what you're selling for five to 10 years, and then even less people who are experts in what you're doing. So you want to build your summit around the beginners. That's usually the case with a lot of things. So you want to attract those people who are, I mean, definitely build a lot of messaging around beginners and a lot of topics around folks who are just starting off on whatever process you're you're trying to sell. And then think of, think about, again, topics that complement what you're selling and not competing or cannibalizing what you're trying to offer on the back end. And so that's how we approached it. And I think that's a I think that's a good approach, if that makes any sense.
Oh, for sure. Like, when I think about it with like, what I do, I teach the entire deep dive process of hosting summits. I can't host a summit about that. Like I can't teach people in a summit what I can teach in my course, but I can teach them the beginning, right? I can talk to them about I can look at what are their pain points they have with getting started with the summit, what things are really holding them back? What do they need to do at the beginning, there's all my summit topics and I don't have I can add so much value with that. I can remove so many barriers. I can get them started. But it didn't take away from my offer at all. It just added a ton of value in the front end. So I think, I think that applies to probably most people.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Especially when what you're offering like you're Summit in a Box. There's so much, there's so much in there's so many lessons and so many steps that need to be taken. And that's what's great about your program, is that you you took such a detailed step by step approach, you're not going to be able to exhaust or cannibalize your offer of Summit in a Box by talking about Summit in a Box in any one sitting, or two sittings or three sittings even, because there's so much there. So yeah, whenever you build out a product or program, especially like a course you're you have to be concerned about that cannibalizing your offer. But not whenever you've built a course or program that's very step by step and very action oriented. You can do a lot in talking, like on the free the free area of your Summit, just as like the free videos of your summit, you could do a lot by just, you know, setting the stage and talking about why this step is important with before you even get to the how to actually execute on on something, right? Because that's such a big part of selling is talking about why you do things the way you do, instead of just talking about, okay, now here, take this step, this step in this step, this step, this step, and this step, step one, two and three. That's for the course. That's, that's what you're trying to sell, the why you chose to take, the approach you took, that's, that's the giving the value part.
I love this. I and I hope this is like helpful for those of you listening to be thinking about how doing that, like how giving them these steps at the beginning of the process are both adding a ton of value, leading to the sale and building trust all at the same time. I think it's just kind of a different way of thinking about the strategies that we're used to being fed for the sake of making money. Like, let's put a little heart and a little care behind it. Remember that there's people on the other side of this, and it all meshes together well. It just is a different way, different way of thinking about it, worrying less about the sale and more about the impact, and then the good things happen when it all comes together. Yeah. So, man, thank you so much for all of this. I feel like there are just like, so many ways my brain even wants to go right now to just start brainstorming how I could do this even better. So thank you for that inspiration, Anthony. I would love for you to share where people can go to learn more about you, what you offer, what they should grab to get started in your world, anything you want to share.
Oh, yeah. Well, thank you to learn more about me or to maybe get help with campaign that you have coming up. Just visit lifeandlaunches.com we have free stuff there. Our latest free video series is called Launching and Selling Online, that coordinates with a book that we're releasing called Profits on Autopilot. So just go to lifeandlaunches.com and navigate your way to our store: lifeandlaunches.com/store, and you will see the Launching and Selling Online free eight-part video course, plus a one sheet that sort of gives you all the five essential steps you'll need to building out your sales system. And I would just like to add that we just recently launched the Homeschool Money Podcast - podcast newsletter, and course - and that's something that is special to us, because there's not really been a resource like it in the homeschooling space. So this is all about personal finance, but also free money resources that are available to homeschooling families to help you with your homeschooling journey, as well as the best sort of work from home and business opportunities that are strategically chosen for homeschooling families who want to spend more time building their their their building into their children's lives, but also make some money and income on the side as well. And so homeschool money, the Homeschool Money Podcast. Check that out on iTunes or Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
I love that. Thank you so much. We'll link to all that in the show notes. As a homeschool mom, I'm excited to check that out as well. And thank you so much everyone for tuning in. For show notes, for the resources Anthony just mentioned, go ahead and head to the link in the episode description, wherever you're listening. We'll have it all for you in the show notes for now. Go out and take action to plan and strategize and launch your high-converting virtual summit.
