Download Otter for your meeting notes

SHH296 | Otter.ai

SHH296

Krista - Summit In A Box37min

Krista - Summit In A Box

00:00

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 get to take you behind the scenes today of a summit that was so wildly successful that the host was able to add an extra zero to the goals he set, which does not happen very often, pros and cons of that, which I'm sure we'll get into as well, but we'll walk through goals versus what actually happened, why it was such a hit, what it looks like to manage 10s of 1000s more attendees than you expected, biggest takeaways and all kinds of good stuff.

Krista - Summit In A Box

00:32

But to give you some background information on our guest, he's a brand designer, strategist, educator and business coach, as well as the founder of a renowned branding and design consultancy that also serves as an industry leading blog in a really wonderful, vibrant community. He's worked with brands like Disney, Nintendo, Jerry Seinfeld. He even designed the logo for San Francisco. His website has been on over 80 million views. He's been featured in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, and Entrepreneur. He's a TEDx speaker. I wish I had an intro like this. He is so wonderful. I was lucky enough to have him speak at one of my summits a couple years ago, and he is just wonderful. So I'm so excited for you to get to hear his take on summits today. And without further ado, let's dive in and talk with Jacob Cass of Just Creative welcome.

Jacob Cass

01:14

Thank you so much. It's a pleasure. As you read that first part of intro, I was like, surely, that's pre recorded, but I'm so used to you saying that, like, such a hype, it just felt so like, yeah, natural. Anyway, thank you for the lovely intro. I'm very excited to share the pros and cons, the learnings from the summit and yeah, let's do it all. Thankful to you, of course, you know, many years ago when we first connected, speaking at one of your first summits, so it was, you know, the seed was planted, right? And I don't know what year that was, but it must be five or six years ago now.

Krista - Summit In A Box

01:45

Yeah, I don't know, 2021, I feel like was when that had to be. And it's always so cool for me to see it come full circle like that, where someone who did speak kind of like checking things out, thinking they might do it, and then come back and do it, and then at your scale, which blows all my summits away, is just really fun for me.

Jacob Cass

02:03

Learning from the best, learning from the best. I still have that T shirt from that summit. It's very comfy. I love it.

Krista - Summit In A Box

02:08

It has a good shirt. I do like that shirt. But why don't you tell us a little bit about the summit you hosted? Like, who was it for? What was it about, all that good stuff?

Jacob Cass

02:18

Yep. So it was called The Brand Builder Summit, and that comes from my background in brand, and I saw a weak... well, a weakness, a hole in the market in terms of summits in this space. There was nothing that was really focused on brand. There was a lot of design-focused summits. So I wanted to kind of bridge the gap between design and strategy, which are my kind of core focuses, but also marketing and business. So I think the cross section of those four things really help a creative or brand excel. So I wanted to join those four things together, and it was called the Brand Builders Summit. There was four days. Each day was focused on one of those topics. So there was brand strategy, brand design, growth or marketing, and then the business of brand/design. So those are the four days. And it was, there was 30 speakers and 10 podcast hosts. So it was a lot of lot of speakers, a lot of people, lot of HR moving pieces. And, yeah, that's the high level. I'm not sure where you want me to go from there.

Krista - Summit In A Box

03:17

Yeah, no, that's awesome. That's like, that's what I wanted to hear you also incorporated sponsorships, right?

Jacob Cass

03:22

Yep, did sponsors. Yes, there was probably about five sponsors, and we picked up one or two along the way. Once we launched, there's a story in there too.

Krista - Summit In A Box

03:33

I would imagine! that's a lot of extra things to manage as well. I'm curious what made you decide to host a summit, because you run an established business, and have for a while. What was the tipping point that was like, Okay, now it's time to do this.

Jacob Cass

03:46

Well, I've been a part of many summits. Can't even count how many now, and I love the model. And you know, it's free education, and everyone wins, right? Like the host gets the email list, you get some revenue. Then the speakers, they grow their list, they grow their exposure and awareness. And there's so many other back-end benefits, as you know, and as you teach behind running a summit. And I was like, surely, one day I'll do this. But I was always in the back of my mind... I was like, it's such a huge effort, such a big project. It was just like, pushed aside. And then I started getting more people asking about it, like, when's your summit, when's your summit, when's your summit?

Jacob Cass

04:23

And also my podcast host Davies from Just Branding, we had always talked about running a summit of some description, more of a conference than a summit, maybe in-person, but we just never eventuated. And then my business, or Google, kind of flopped a little bit in terms of one arm of my business, I should say, just to clarify. So all those things you mentioned around my brand before about who I was, that's, that's what my main focus is. But I also had a side hustle, which was affiliate marketing. So ran a blog for... I've ran a blog since about 2007 which is focused on content and marketing and SEO and affiliate marketing, and that's where the, you know, the 70 million views came from that you mentioned. So it's all that content, and that was a huge passive income stream, like a seven-figure amount, and then Google changed the algorithms, and it went slow. It went down and down and down over, like, maybe one or two years, and it just got worse and worse.

Jacob Cass

05:18

So that whole revenue stream evaporated in front of my eyes, and I had to let go of my team, and then I focused... I had to refocus. But the upside of that was that I now didn't have that as a, you know, side focus, if that can even be a thing, a side focus, it was like a side hustle. But I had a team that was very well-oiled, and it was, you know, it was... we're pumping out a lot of content. It was converting, but, yeah, things changed. So I suddenly had a lot of client leads dry out, because a lot of my leads came through SEO, and I was in a position of, like, Ah, I don't have any clients right now. This seems like a good time. I'm going to do it. And this was back in around February, and I didn't have any clients because it was coming out of that, like, some period I wasn't doing marketing because it was summer here in Oz, and then I'm like, I'm going to do it in February. And then that week I had three clients land at the same time. I was like, of course, of course. So I pushed it out to August. And thankfully, I did that, because I needed that extra time to really make a great experience. And it was the first time doing this. And there's a lot of videos in Summit in a Box, it's like, a lot of things to learn, and that took much longer than I thought. And I'm very particular and a perfectionist, I should say, in terms of wanting everything to be, you know, perfect for the perfect experience, and to an extent and that kind of I think I needed more time for that. And that launch in August was, really, was great. So yeah, allowed for a better experience. And at the end of it, the survey, I had about 150 people fill in the survey, and literally, 100% of them said they would recommend the summit to a friend, which was an amazing stat, and it was rated 9.7 out of 10 for the whole summit experience. So I was very happy with that. Obviously, that's skewed, because they're the most engaged people with, like, filling in a feedback survey, but I'll take it.

Krista - Summit In A Box

07:15

That is... Oh, wow. So I didn't know any of that about, like, that journey of what brought you to host a summit. So I'm sure there's a lot of not fun things in there, but it's really cool to hear how a summit could kind of fill some of those gaps. I also am just like, selfishly excited that even after speaking in my summit and in lots of other summits, that Summit in a Box was still like, needed and helpful and things like that. Because so many people think they can just go, like, reverse engineer and host this wonderful thing, but there are so many things you don't see.

Jacob Cass

07:43

You actually have no idea that like to do list of like, running down that list. That's like, I paid just for that, because that's literally the steps for you know how to run a summit. And that kept me in check, and I knew where I was at and the dates. It was just so helpful. Obviously, the tech and the strategy behind it helps with that as well. But, you know, I've been in the industry for a while, so know a lot about marketing, landing page and the websites and development and stuff, so it was more about the structure and the steps and how to integrate it all together that was most useful for me. And yeah, obviously was a success.

Krista - Summit In A Box

08:17

Okay, let's get into that a little bit. So what were your initial goals for this summit?

Jacob Cass

08:21

Okay, you're gonna laugh at this. I know you know this already. Okay, so my initial goal was 2000 to I'd be happy if I got 2000 registered attendees. Like, that's my baseline. My stretch goal was like 5000 registered attendees, and if I got in the middle of that, that's what I was sharing with, like, sponsors and my speakers and stuff. Yeah, grossly underestimated that, and we ended up getting 23,000 registered attendees over, like, the promo period of, like, about two months. It was a very intense two weeks around just before the summit. But before that, there was a lot of, like, pre-buzz, which really helped amplify everything. And a lot of people saw it because of the pre buzz. And when I say pre-buzz, it's like just sharing openly about the journey of running a summit and like the behind the scenes and sharing sneak previews of the speakers. So why I think this was successful was because people aren't as active on social medias as we think we are. Like, for example, on LinkedIn, we may be there every day, but the regular person, they may have a job, or they do would have a job, but they would have a full-time job. They made me check once, maybe a week, or a couple of times a week, and the chances of them seeing your your graphic or your post is less than what you think it is. So if you extend this multiple times over a longer period of time, more people can see it. So over time, there was a snowball effect, because more people sharing it, and it kind of amplified because of, like, a slower pre-buzz launch. And I think that was a big part, big part of it.

Krista - Summit In A Box

09:47

That's cool to hear. Did you have, like, the All-Access Pass special offer and everything set up, you know, those months out?

Jacob Cass

09:53

It was all a waitlist page. So everything went to a waitlist page, and then it went live two weeks beforehand, like the actual... maybe three weeks, two and a half weeks, the actual website went live. And yeah, obviously, as a brand design, I spent a lot of time on the actual brand design, the website, and making that a very interactive and unique experience. I've actually won an awards award after the summit. It was beautiful, which I was very happy for, a ypography honors Award, which was nice to get. Yes. So that was nice.

Krista - Summit In A Box

10:25

We, well, we kind of started with goals, and then we veered off to talk about this pre-promo period you did, but I'm glad, because that's not something I teach or have talked about. So that was like a great direction to go down. One I actually have a follow up question on that: Were you happy with, like, the conversion rate of people who signed up for their wait list who then actually signed up for the summit itself?

Jacob Cass

10:44

Yeah. So a lot of a lot of the people converted from that waitlist. And during my test periods of like email testing, I made a few mistakes sending, like duplicate emails and to, like the pre-launch people, and then like the waitlist people. I segmented the list to do testing, but they ended up getting double emails, and it was a mess. I totally messed up. But thankfully, I've only chosen, like, a couple of 100 versus the 1000 that were there to do the test on. So that's why you do testing. Yes, and I followed your your guidebook on that one, and I'm so glad I did, because segmented in I was using Kit or ConvertKit, and that was pretty new to me. I've done it once before, but not to the extent of, like, segmentation and testing and tags and like, ThriveCart integrations, like that was all new to me. It was, it was a headache, but we got there in the end, and the testing paid off. But yeah, people were getting, like, the upgrade to the VIP when they'd already, like, bought and like all that sort of stuff. So I figured out those bugs, and we got over the line. But yeah, no.

Krista - Summit In A Box

11:45

That's awesome.

Jacob Cass

11:46

Yeah, I keep forgetting what your questions are. I go on these tangents and I'm like, what were we talking about? Our goals and awareness? And then...

Krista - Summit In A Box

11:53

No, no, your tangent and that was great. You answered the question like, but the original question that we can circle back to as your goals for the event, which I just have to speak to this, because when you spoke at my summit, you can say the number, if you want. I won't say the number, but the amount of revenue you brought into my event. I can look at your goal here and be like, Why, though, why was your goal... why was your goal this low when you brought in 60% of that to my summit? You know, like...

Jacob Cass

12:21

Well, I think it was a bit different back 2000 if you're saying in 2001 I think summits were...

Krista - Summit In A Box

12:26

2021

Jacob Cass

12:27

It was '21? Yeah. So I think it was. summits were quite new then, and I don't... I think there were less people were less aware of them, I guess. And I hadn't done something like that to my list before, and I think that was all new and fresh. And I think these days it's a very saturated market, and people are more adjusted to the model and how it works. So I think we have to be a little bit more mindful of that moving forward. I wasn't aware that was 60% of yours, which is awesome. I do remember I was successful, but I didn't really know the numbers, and I didn't take that into account when I was goal setting,

Krista - Summit In A Box

13:01

That was just the revenue you brought in, by the way, like...

Jacob Cass

13:04

Okay, amazing.

Krista - Summit In A Box

13:05

That was just you from your affiliate promotion.

Jacob Cass

13:08

Oh, wow. Okay, so, like I said, I've been heavily into affiliate marketing, so very familiar with the model and marketing and, you know, sales and psychology and all of that. So that definitely does, does help with it. And having a list, like the values in the list, right? And as you know...

Krista - Summit In A Box

13:25

That's good stuff. Okay, so, like you just said, you know, summits, they're tougher now than they were in 2021 and that is absolutely true, much more saturated now. But you went in and you did this in an industry, in a section, you know, section of online business, in a niche that has just seen a growth in summit since I pulled myself out of that niche, because I got right. There's just a lot of them. I'm gonna go over here and do a different thing. But you came in and this event was an absolute huge hit, 23,000 people. Why do you think it was such a huge hit?

Jacob Cass

13:57

I think it was because it was it makes brand and strategy. So a lot of the other ones were focused purely on design, which, you know, which is great, but I was trying to focus on brand, and that was a unique kind of selling point. But I also think it came down to the marketing, the speakers as well, and the relationships that were there previously I knew probably about 80% of the people there, and the ones that I didn't know didn't perform. So it's it really does count come down to those relationships. And I do wish I spent more time speaking to some of the speakers. I regret doing that now, because I'd send emails, but some people don't really rely on email say they go by face to face. So next time, I'll be doing a live call with every speaker and running them through the promotional emails and how it works, and kind of get the face to face confirmation that they understand, like, Hey, you can send one to three emails. Or if you want to promote a lot, you can do all of this. No one did the full promotional launch like we would do it ourselves.

Krista - Summit In A Box

15:00

Yeah.

Jacob Cass

15:00

So next time, I would cut it down to like, Hey, you can do two emails and two posts. This is like the minimum. This is the package. But if you want results, here's what I'd recommend. It's like, five emails and say, four posts. That's what I'd recommend. And then I give like, an option of all in maybe there'll be someone to do it. I've, I really, there's hardly anyone that really does that, that I've come across. I have done it, but these days I'm cutting back on, you know, lot of emails, just because people's email inboxes are getting slaughtered these days. So have to be mindful of that. So those are the things that change better relationships with the each speaker, face to face videos beforehand, talking them through everything. And then, as I said.

Krista - Summit In A Box

15:42

I love that. That's cool, and I love that you pointed out that the relationships with your speakers made such a big difference. You know, that's something I think a lot of people try to skip over and like, you can host summits that work when you don't know a lot of people. Like my first summit, I don't know if I knew more than two of my speakers, but also that somewhat, was on a much larger scale. I had 1500 instead of 23,000 you know, like for me at the time, that was a win. I was good with that. But the bigger numbers you want to see, you do need those relationships. Because, like, I guess I won't speak for you, Jacob, but for me, like the summits or any kind of collaboration that I go hard for, if I'm going to send more than one email, I need to know and really like you, you know, like it needs to be, I am, I am wanting to support this person, and I know what they're doing is awesome, and that's how I'm going to do this. And, yeah, that's what gets the results.

Jacob Cass

16:33

And a lot of those relationships came from the podcast that have been running in for about five years. So we'd had some face to face, and then, you know, our chats on Insta and LinkedIn and so forth, I would say, Yeah, I'd probably say 80% of them, I had some in clean of or some conversations, and the ones that did perform were very aligned audiences as well. The next summit will be a little bit more challenging, because I have to go out of outside of my initial network, and I do want to have a more diverse mix of people. And I've got a lot of feedback from the summit as well on what people liked and didn't like. And you can see, like, how many views on each video, and especially with those numbers, you can get a better understanding. So there are some changes I'll be making moving forward.

Krista - Summit In A Box

17:14

I love that. Something else I'm curious about. Like, I can think of my biggest summit, my biggest summit to date, with 6500 attendees. And I am so glad that I was not in charge of the inbox for that summit, because it was just a lot. How was it to manage 23,000 attendees when you were expecting a max of 5k?

Jacob Cass

17:33

Okay, so I had a cheat here. I had an AI chat bot installed on our website, so I custom trained an AI chat bot, and had it on the Circle platform, and this was a game changer. It took away so many emails, so I pre-programmed it with all the like, all the questions people generally ask, like, when is this, and how do you access this? And like, what time is this? What's the conversion time? Like, how to access my all-access, like, all the common questions, this bot would answer correctly about 80% of the time, and then if it didn't answer correctly, it's like, Hey, you can email our editor or our support team and it would go to a separate email.

Jacob Cass

18:09

So then I had a separate person handling the support emails. However, that all went to shit when the ThriveCart decided to go down on the second day of our event, so no one could access their all-access pass portal. And this was because ThriveCart did a an up, like, a major update on that platform. Subsequently, our pages all went blank in the portal, so I literally had hundreds of emails, and we can't access this, can't access this, like during the summit, and I was, like, in a live panel at the time, live workshop, and I literally had to go through the emails and talk to my support person, and I only paid her for certain hours, and we'd gone over that. So it was like a complete nightmare, which totally lost focus for an hour or two while I handled that, ended up in some auto responders on. I figured out a way to put a message on the page saying, you know, it's it's been fixed, and then I sent emails out, and so it was a bit of firefight in but, yeah, that's how I handled the email. And all those questions was the bot, and it was very manageable, up until that ThriveCart issue.

Krista - Summit In A Box

19:11

There's just... there's always something, there's always something, yeah, you were not alone in that. You just had a much larger scale. That AI bot is wonderful. Is custom training an AI bot, something that a normal person can do?

Jacob Cass

19:24

Absolutely! So easy, so easy. I literally copy-pasted my whole landing page in there, my whole schedule. So I had a Schedule page that had the date and the time and everything, and copy-paste that into a text field and click save... like, that is it. I'm not, not even joking. So then I'd have people come in with new questions, so that I'd monitor the questions that come in, and then I'd answer certain questions that it didn't get right. So it's like, oh, how do I access this? And it would make up something. And it's like, you can amend the answer and say, no, actually answer here. Here's the link. So you can train it on the go, and you just click update, and then it retrains the bot. What was it called? I think it was called Chatbase. Chatbase. So Chatbase was the bot; it's 20 bucks a month. It was crazy, Best Value ever.

Krista - Summit In A Box

20:13

Yeah, life saver for something like that! Okay, that's super cool. I also...

Jacob Cass

20:17

On top of that, Krista, there was a... I had FAQs that was in the summit, and I answered most of them on the actual landing page and registration page as well, and in emails that have, like, links to the FAQs. So I knew what those would be, because, you know, you share them in yours, and being a part of a summit, I also realized what they were... so I've kind of preempted what they they were, and had all the copy ready to go for the emails as well, so you could just copy paste and share it with your VA as well. So, you know, just pre plan is pretty manageable.

Krista - Summit In A Box

20:22

Yeah, okay. Well, that's good to hear thinking of that many people, like, gives me anxiety. But like, you had, you had your systems in place. You had, you know, the AI bot, with which most of us wouldn't even thought to do. But I know AI is your jam.

Jacob Cass

21:01

I didn't think of it! Someone, actually, someone contacted me through LinkedIn and said they'll pitch in their other product. And I tried it out, but it just wasn't working properly. So I looked at other bots, and I found this one and trained it, and it worked great. Yeah, they still had a little bit to go on this, but yeah, it was that little intro that gave me that light bulb moment. So happily, so happy.

Krista - Summit In A Box

21:21

Yeah, okay, my last... well, I shouldn't say my last question. My last question when we're kind of reflecting back to, you know, how your event went, like: Do you have any major takeaway or takeaways that kind of come to mind, whether it's things you'll do the same or different next time, things that surprised you, anything like that?

Jacob Cass

21:40

Yes, I have a whole list. And when I did back the debrief, I put this together so I can just run down, yeah, what worked well, what didn't work so well.

Jacob Cass

21:50

Top of the list was AI chat bot, which we just talked about. Second was the workbook. This was a printable workbook that people could follow along. So I had a different designer for this. This was like D-Day, like a day or two beforehand, and people... I didn't have this planned, but it was very well received. But it was a little bit different than just, you know, some like lines on the page. We, we kind of compartmentalized different sections in the workbook. So on one page, you'll have, like the speakers photo, and there'd be areas like lessons learned, then a brainstorming area, then like a recapping area, there was like a mood tracker, there was a rating scale, so you could rate each of the presentations. And then there was another area for action steps and Q and A steps, so it was a very actionable workbook, and every single page was for each different speaker. Then we had some challenges in the workbook, and we also put sponsor... the sponsors in there as well. So every major sponsor had a new page to advertise, which wasn't in the original contract, but it was just a bonus for the sponsors.

Krista - Summit In A Box

22:51

As if they needed another bonus after your estimations.

Jacob Cass

22:57

But yeah, I want to look after them because they're they're going to be there for next time, and you want to support them, and it doesn't really add any extra. So I was always, always went above and beyond for the sponsors, like adding them in an extra email, or higher up in an email, or whatever it may be like, just that was a big priority for me.

Jacob Cass

23:14

Global live chat. So I hosted the summit on Circle, and there was a live chat section that went really well, and people could interact there. And I was surprised by that BINGO was very well received. Only about 100 people used it a day, versus from everyone, but they were super engaged. And those, they made the community feel very active and engaged, because they'll post and it just, I think that really elevated it, even if there was only a small handful that actually did it. I found on the first day, that's when people most watched and the last day it was the slowest. So that was just our summit.

Jacob Cass

23:48

The sponsor results. So I thought they would be stronger, like I had a chat with all the sponsors and just to see how things converted. And they were pretty much on par on with their other initiatives in terms of like conversion percentages, which I thought was interesting. I don't know if that says anything about their funnels or anything, but I thought it would be convert better because they were so aligned, especially with all the extra places Ipromoted them and everything. But I don't know. You can't really measure brand awareness either, like they had... we had 60,000 people come to the home page in a matter of four weeks, and then we had all the... we had the sponsors on like, every speaker page, on the community, in the emails, in the workbook, and everything, so that they had a lot of awareness. I don't think it converted as well as I thought it would from the results they've shared.

Jacob Cass

24:35

In Circle, I added an announcement area, so anything that was from me went into a certain space, and that allowed my posts to shine through from all the communities. That was the kickoff call this had the most amount of people join from any, any session, and I sent a mass email out to the whole community, and also three emails out about it to everyone that was on the right... well, on the list. So that got kicked everything off really well.

Jacob Cass

25:05

Something that worked well in that kickoff call was sharing a deal. This was like the last chance that they could get a discount on the ticket. And I limited this to say 10 or 20. So that got a lot, like there was a scarcity thing behind it, and it was a last chance. So that converted well to for all-access upgrade.

Jacob Cass

25:25

I created custom Instagram filters as like a little promo piece. So I just hired someone on Fiverr for that. And yeah, they created a Instagram filter that had, like our branding on it, and it was kind of like 3D, it was like AR and VR, which is awesome, and part of our BINGO game was to use those filters. So it got of a lot of attention. I got this idea from Gigi, another one of your students who had this just which was great.

Jacob Cass

25:52

Email support we talked about. Definitely would recommend getting someone for email support and a VA in general. So the number one thing that the email support did was helping fix typos. You laugh, but it's literally, people put typos in their email, and this is a big headache because, oh yeah, well, it's a big headache because they don't get automations and then ThriveCart and Kit or ConvertKit don't mix, like they don't compute, and then you have to change the the email in ThriveCart in the field, like the sales section, and then in the Learn section, and then you have to update it and ConvertKit, and then sign them up to the automations, just because they had a typo in the email. And this happened a lot. So in the future, I don't know if ThriveCart can do this. I would add two email forms, like two email fields so they don't enter their email wrong. I tried do that, like halfway through, but I couldn't figure out how to do that. It didn't let me do two fields. But yeah, so that was something that a lot of time was spent on that.

Jacob Cass

26:56

The printable schedule. So I didn't have this until like, the day before, either, and that was because people were requesting it. So I think next time I would join the printable schedule with the workbook all in one, and also have other information in there as well.

Jacob Cass

27:11

Mentioned live offers in the course. So like in the live calls, I'd have some like, prizes and giveaways; that went pretty well.

Jacob Cass

27:17

Email Marketing. I think we sent like 700,000 emails over, oh my gosh, yeah, like all the emails that were scheduled in the waitlist, and then the people that signed up, and then the follow ups and everything. It was a lot, a lot of emails, but all automated.

Jacob Cass

27:31

Backups. I did have backups on Zoom and Dropbox, if things were to fail, I thankfully didn't need them, but I thought it was be worth mentioning, because that gave me some, like, peace of mind.

Jacob Cass

27:42

Okay, those are the things that worked well. Things that did not work so well: I had merch and my... I had everything good, like it was 100% was going to go to charity. Everything would be to be donated. And it ended up selling about like, 300 bucks worth of merch, which I thought was not too good, but, yeah. I don't know what the results are for merch or stats are, but didn't think it was that well. Didn't go too well.

Jacob Cass

28:07

Discussion areas. I had too many discussion areas on in the community, so I had, like, every day I had a different discussion area, and that was, it was good in terms of, like, segmenting conversations, but there was just too many places for people to post, and I think it watered down things. And like, people have to, like, go to too many channels to read, read stuff. So I think I just have one big discussion area, next time versus it broken down by day, my talk I'd probably do on day one, next time versus day four.

Krista - Summit In A Box

28:37

Yeah, day one, spot one, you.

Jacob Cass

28:41

Yeah, well, that we got the kickoff call, so that was that went well. But just my talk suited the last day a little bit better in terms of the content, but yeah, it was definitely the slowest day. Things that didn't work so well are typos in people's emails, I would say, mentioned that already. ThriveCart going down. The bonuses, so having one place to download them all. I think could be handy in the future. Right now, everything was in ThriveCart Learn, and everyone had to go to a different page to access it and download it and enter their email. And I, I've been a part of summits that do this, and it's kind of frustrating, but I also understand, like it's a, it's a list builder for our speaker. So there's some other solution in here. I've seen a solution where it's like an Excel spreadsheet and then you share the emails after but, yeah, I wanted to... a sexier way to do this. Okay, I've got, I've got more. I don't know if you want me to keep going.

Krista - Summit In A Box

29:34

Yeah, no. I think this is a great start. I think this is so much good stuff for people to think about. And, like, really just tangible things, like, oh, I went to thought of that, okay, you know? And like, I loved hearing the different things that went well, just like, different out of the box things that you decided to try. So I think these are all really great things to pay attention to. And I just love how many takeaways you've had. Also, like, in a lot of them seem like little things, but when you put them all together. It's gonna just up level the experience even more, and it was already good.

Jacob Cass

30:04

Yeah, and that's, that's really what I focused on, was the experience. I'm like, I don't care if I'm gonna drop a lot of money on this workbook, but it's gonna elevate the experience so much. And that's what I came down to. It's like, is this gonna improve the experience? Yes, okay, let's do it. And that that was my thinking the whole time principal schedule. Yes, okay, let's do it. Let's figure out a way. It's like D-Day. I'm like, let's just get this done. So it was always about the experience.

Krista - Summit In A Box

30:28

I love that. So what would you say to someone who's thinking about hosting their first summit?

Jacob Cass

30:33

Good luck. Good luck. No, it's like the upfront planning is so important, the positioning and the messaging and nailing that that is vital. Like the landing page, the headline and the outcome, you need to nail that is so important because that's where you're going to get people into your how you're going to get people in your list. I'd also say spend a lot of time pre-marketing. A lot of people launched that so focused on getting everything done, but they forget the market inside of it, and that's where that's where the sales come from. That's where the waitlist comes from. That's where the buzz comes from. It snowballs. Spend a lot of time on positioning and the pre market and the pre-buzz. That is like 80% of it, in my opinion.

Jacob Cass

31:17

But I'd also say clear communication with your speakers, and relationships with your speakers. Spend a lot of time with them, because they're the ones that going to bring in the traffic. So it's vital to have those relationships, and you have to start early if you don't know them. I was a bit rushed for some of the ones that I just, like, had to fill in for people dropped out and that sort of thing. And, like, I did find some people, but I just didn't have the relationship there, and I didn't have the bandwidth at the time to, like, really educate them and so forth. And then I'd had speakers like, who had huge profiles, but were just so busy and they didn't really perform. And because I also think it's also part of me, I didn't have that relationship and that face to face, I just did everything by email. So I've already shared that as, like, a big tip is, like, get on calls if you can.

Krista - Summit In A Box

32:04

Man, so much good stuff. Thank you for sharing all this so freely. Like, there's so much people can take away from this episode. So I'm really grateful you came on and shared. Can you tell everyone more about where they can go to learn more about you and what you offer and hang out with you online?

Jacob Cass

32:18

Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Jacob Cass. My brand is Just Creative, and you can find me at justcreative.com. There is a huge branding bundle of goodies on there that you can download, and there's a lot of freebies in there. Branding design resources like mockups and sales books and logo inspiration. And it's like a huge bundle that you can grab for joining the email list, and you'll get a pop-up when you get to the page, and you can connect with me pretty much everywhere, Just Creative. So Instagram and LinkedIn are my most used profiles. And yeah, hope to connect. If you do have any questions around summits, I'm happy to answer them. And Krista, I did have more. I don't know how much time you have left on this, but I did have a few more takeaways that I had on that the page. Don't know if it's too...

Krista - Summit In A Box

33:01

I mean, if you got time, I know we're over, so I was trying to respect that. But if you've got time, I've got time.

Jacob Cass

33:06

Okay, let's just it's only a couple of bullet points, but...

Krista - Summit In A Box

33:09

Yeah, let's hear it.

Jacob Cass

33:10

Okay. So I went too crazy with creating graphics, and that's a designer in me. There was a lot of production work, so next time, I would do less graphics and have one or two templates that I could send to a production artist. But I really enjoyed this part of it, maybe not the full production side, like doing 30 versions of it, but times like 10 I didn't enjoy that. But like the actual creation, art direction, everything, that's what I enjoyed. But yeah, I'd definitely get a production like a design production artist to help you with graphics. And this was a big part of helping other speakers promote.

Jacob Cass

33:44

So I did videos, I did graphics and customized them, and it really made it, made it easier for speakers to share. I would make the email templates easier to follow, which I just made it too complex for others. It was too much. I expected people to share more. But next time I just do, like, Hey, here's one or two emails and here's like a medium version. That's what I do. Yeah, I'll delegate more, especially production work.

Jacob Cass

34:05

I'd create a PDF with everything inside, like the ticket, the schedules, the links, like one, one workbook. Consider like a digital version, like Trello or something for it as well. People love the live panels of coworking and networking ops, and I had that for the upgraded members. So I'm considering next time to make this more accessible for everyone, for a better experience, and then have, like, exclusive VIP panels for the upsells.

Jacob Cass

34:28

Yeah, more face to face opportunities. This is something I've really kind of failed on. Circle was, is it's great for posting, but you don't see everyone's faces. You just see the speaker and yourself, and that lost a bit of, like, the community feel. So the one session we did have on Zoom, everyone loved. It was a networking or the networking session. And like, you came in, everyone's like, you know, nervous and like, like, what am I doing here? After the first five minutes where the breakout session to come back, everyone's beaming. It's amazing. So I definitely integrate more of them. They were really well received.

Jacob Cass

35:05

I didn't like how the livestream and the presentation pages were separate. What I mean by that, like the live Q and A's were separate. It was hosted in Circle, whereas the presentation pages were hosted on my site. It was a disconnected experience. I'm not sure if there's a better solve, like having my own page and then like live Q&A with like Streamyard or something, something like that, but then I'm not using Circles tools. So that's I thought there was a bit of a disconnect between having Q and A's and presentations separate. That's a harder solve. I have to figure that out.

Jacob Cass

35:40

I would have a video walk through of the community, teaching people how to use community, how to do convert time zones. I didn't have a welcome video that... should have had that. I did 12 podcast interviews as a part, as a bonus for the upsell. That was a pretty excessive, but I do have a lot of content I'm posting now, so I probably cut that back, or not do it at all. I'd have more customer email, customer support. I learned that there's always going to be people that complain, even when it's free, you can't please everyone absolutely. Have a back end offer ready. I did not. I didn't have an upsell. I was just too busy. I still don't have an upsell, but I'm working on that for next time, and I think maybe next time I'd use your printed workbook. I didn't use that, and I regret not getting that. So I got it for this time. That's it. That was my last bits. But, yeah, all practical.

Krista - Summit In A Box

36:24

No, again, so much good stuff, and I love, again, some of just the unique ideas you have had from just keeping an eye on your people. I think it's so easy when we're doing things like this, to get so caught up in what we're doing and what we have to do next that we don't stop to, like, look at what the feedback and what the reactions actually mean, and it seems like you, like, have a gift for that, for seeing what people are saying and doing and not saying and doing, and figuring out solutions for what you want them to be doing.

Jacob Cass

36:53

And the survey helped a lot after summit survey, because 150 people filled that out, and they were the people that had really great experiences, but they did provide feedback on what they they didn't like as well. So there was a part in there that, like, what, how can we improve? And a lot of that came from that, but also just reflecting and taking a moment to see, like, where you could improve, and for next time to improve things like in general, for everyone.

Krista - Summit In A Box

37:18

Yeah, well, I'm excited to hear what round two looks like for you. Yeah, again. Thank you so much for coming and sharing so freely, and thank you so much everyone for tuning in for show notes, resources, links to all of Jacob's stuff. Please go ahead and head to the link in the episode description, wherever you're listening. We'll have everything listed out in the show notes for now. Go out and take action to plan, strategize and launch your high converting virtual Summit.

00:0000:00