138. How to Monetize Your Virtual Event with Jennie Wright

[00:00:00 - 00:01:34]On this podcast, I've been featuring a range of expert speakers on topics from creating content that sells to growing your audience and leading that audience to buy from you. And if you want free tickets to the get more clients from your content summit, then grab them now @ capsho.com. summit now I am beyond excited for today's episode because we are diving deep into something that's often overlooked but so crucial when we are just building our businesses. And that is how to host a summit. Yes, if you didn't see, you'll be invited to one. How to host a summit that not only builds your list, but also drives serious sales. And who better to guide us through this than Jennie Wright, a true expert in this space? We're peeling back the layers today to uncover the nuts and bolts of summit success. Jennie's going to be sharing her secrets, like how to design a summit that converts attendees into paying clients, monetization strategies at every stage of the summit, and actionable tips for selecting the right speakers to align with your sales goals. This episode will seriously blow you away. My name is Deirdre Tshien CEO and Co-founder of Capsho. The fastest way to create content design to get you leads. And this is win the content game. Hi, Jennie. Welcome to the Get World Clients react summit. How are you?

[00:01:34 - 00:01:38]I am stoked. I'm so excited to see you. I'm really excited to do this.

[00:01:38 - 00:02:27]Oh, my gosh. Okay. We were just prepping for this call, and I am so excited about all the topics that we're going to cover because not many people go into these nuts and bolts of actually holding a summit. We all know anyone who's here. You are part of a summit right now whose life is a three day summit. And Jennie is an absolute gun. She is a specialist at helping people hold these kind of events. And I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna talk a little bit, Jenny, then I want you to hop in. But, like, I know that a lot of people might, you know, talk about how good a summit is, and you get a bit of an overview. But when we were talking, I was like, Jennie, I really want you to get into the depths of, like, how do we actually make money? How do we actually design a summit to convert? And so you're actually going to take us through it. How pumped. I mean, I know I'm pumped. How pumped are you to do this?

[00:02:28 - 00:02:33]I love peeling back the layers because nobody really gets into this. Like, to the minutia. We're going to go.

[00:02:33 - 00:02:34]Yes.

[00:02:34 - 00:02:38]So this is going to be this is going to be cool. Cause it's going to show everybody how to make some cash.

[00:02:38 - 00:03:03]Yes. Okay, cool. Let's get into it. So we're talking summits. I want you to give a really brief. So, for people who have never held a summit, maybe they've never. Maybe this is their first summit that they've actually attended as an attendee. Can you just give us, like, a 30 foot overview of what a summit actually is and then we can die. Okay. Down into how we actually create a summit geared for sales?

[00:03:03 - 00:03:49]Absolutely. Okay, so you're on a summit right now, so you kind of know what it is, but I'll give you the 30,000 foot view. A summit is a generic click. It's a list build event. It's meant to attract your ideal clients. So you're pulling in all of these different speakers who are going to appear on your venta for free. And you're going to record or do live a bunch of really cool, informative interviews. Those speakers, in return for getting access and exposure to being on your summit, are going to promote it to their lists, which means hot and ready, warm leads, which means you don't have to spend a ton of money on traffic, and those people are going to promote it. You're going to have people coming to your landing page and register, and you're going to grow your list. And so you create this really cool transfer of credibility from your speakers over to you. Tada. New leads.

[00:03:49 - 00:04:30]It is magical. And I must say, we've literally done a summit every year for the last. This will be our fourth year running. And there's a reason why we do it every year, because it works. Okay, Jenny, I want to get into the sales side of it. So again, maybe we won't go 30,000 foot. Maybe we'll drop to, like, 20,000 foot. Can you give us, like, a bit of overview of almost, like, the monetization opportunities that people can have from holding a summit? And then we're going to get down into world, specifically the. The actual product or service or whatever it is that you know, that the offer is how we actually start to design the summit to get people to buy that theme.

[00:04:30 - 00:07:13]Okay, no problem. So a summit has four stages. Okay? It is the Runway, which is all the lead up time to when you're going to promote, like, promote your promo of the summit. So you're inviting people to register on the landing page when the summit is live. So those three or four days when it's actually happening, and then your post summit. So those are four really distinct stages during your Runway period where you're organizing and you're recording your interviews and you're doing all that. That is an opportunity to make money. That is an opportunity to raise the bar and show people that you're actually creating things. I have people, I have all my clients do behind the scenes social media content. And they talk about the thing. They say, oh, my God, I'm putting together this incredible summit. It's all about XYZ, and it's to support my amazing product that I'm going to be launching on October the first. I can't believe this is happening. How cool is this? So we're already introducing the product. You may not make a sale, that's fine, but you're introducing both things at the same time. And so you're getting into people's heads, okay. A little bit of, you know, cool stuff. And then when we go into promo, you're having people register. And so they're going to the landing page, which should be completely free if you're doing it the way I love to do summits. And once you register, you should have an opportunity to upgrade into a vip or all access pass to get some fun cool goodies. Okay. Yay. So you're getting something, and the prices vary on what that is, but the, you know, the quality of the, the content is usually amazing. And so as the host, that's your first sale opportunity. Okay. So you can make some money there. And if you do an affiliate with your speakers to help promote that, you can increase your chances for more sales. So I love that. Total win win for speakers. And you, the next thing that you can do is during the summit, you can actually include your program, product, or service into the event. Just kind of like finesse it in and make it just kind of like, smoothly get in there so nobody sees the difference of it. It just kind of like, fits. And you can actually talk about your program, product, or service and start to make sales. And then post summit, that's when you're doing your webinars and your sales conversations and whatnot. To actually sell your program, product, or service. And then there's one other way to make money, and that is with sponsors. Okay. Not a lot of people do the sponsorship thing. You know about it, I know about it. One of the summits that I hosted, or I. Sorry, I planned for one of my clients last year, we did like $30,000 in sponsorships, which paid for the whole event. Right. The whole event completely paid for and extra. So we could like promote it and so on and so forth. It's not that hard to do. So there's super like amount of opportunities. It just takes some planning and some forethought and you can make it a success.

[00:07:13 - 00:07:22]That is so crazy. And the really exciting thing is that for all of you, all access pass ticket holders, guess what? Jenny's going to do a deep dive on.

[00:07:22 - 00:07:22]That's right.

[00:07:22 - 00:08:08]Sponsors, sponsorship, getting all of that. And the thing is, like, not. You're right, Jennie. Not very many people talk about even think about this, but think about how much like you could actually, if you put this money towards ads and stuff, like how much you can actually just blow up the number of people that you actually get into the summit who a, join your list and then b, can actually get sold throughout the events into your product or your service. And so I want to talk about that now. Like, let's actually now. Whoosh. Like dive. Like, you know, really focus in on that part of it, which is how do we actually. So, you know, first, what Jenny said was like, first of all, you can insert people even before the summit about the fact that you have this thing. Cool. Second thing is that you can actually sell people into an all access pass. And some of you, you've done that.

[00:08:08 - 00:08:09]Do it now.

[00:08:09 - 00:08:31]You bought the all access pass and go. Yes, go buy it. So you can see, you can actually see this in action, right? And then the third one. So this is the one that really, Jennie, I want you to get into now, which is how do we actually design the summit in a way that actually starts to, during the event, sell our products and services. So let's, let's get into that bit.

[00:08:31 - 00:11:42]This is so juicy. I love this part. Okay, I'm going to like try and contain myself because this is super fun. Now, it doesn't matter what product you have, I can sell it in your summit. Just going to say. So let's talk about memberships. Okay. Anything with a reoccurring subscription revenue summits are ideal for this. You can do a 30 day trial or a 15 day trial into your subscription membership as part of the All Access pass. Now, I love two all access passes. I like two levels. And so I like your entry level all access pass. And then I like a super duper happy, awesome all access pass with extra goodies. And I like putting the membership in there. Right? So 15 day, 30 day trial into your membership into whatever. And then if you have a, like, if you're like a service provider and you're offering a, like a service. Like, I'm going to make your website. So your whole summit's about websites, and you want to actually get in and build gorgeous websites. What you can do is you can offer a website audit in your summit all access pass, and you can do audits for people, and then you can sell the product. Like, you can actually sell the improvements to their website doing something like that. Now, let's say you have a $25,000 mastermind or a $10,000 mastermind. What you can do is if people get the all access pass, they get access to two of the group coaching sessions in your high level mastermind, and you can pick whatever those topics are, and you can have them come in and see the mastermind in full effect. And you have your mastermind attendees, like the people who are already paying you, have them do a little bit of, you know, we love this product. We love, you know, we love our host and all that kind of stuff. So you can actually, you know, sell those things. So it doesn't matter what the product is. There's a way to gently and really well, like, just insert it really nicely into an event so that it feels like it's part of it. And that's the key. The summit has to be built around the end product so that it feels seamless. Whiplash kills sales. No whiplash. Everything has to feel seamless and enjoyable. And if you have a software, like, it's a SaaS software, like a piece of software that people, you know, you want them to use, then there's a ton of things you can do. You can add in all sorts of different coupons or free trials or exposure or whatever, and make that really simple as well. It's. Sales in a summit are actually a no brainer to me, and I think that it scares people. Like, how am I going to sell my thing? One of the best things you can do is create, and I mentioned this a little bit earlier, is the transfer of credibility. So the best thing you can do in your summit, regardless of what you sell, is insert yourself into your own summit. Don't just be the host, be the person that people can access and talk to. So as much access as you can create, create it. Hot seats, exposure, office hours, whatever you want to do. And also do your own interviews in the event. Don't have somebody interview you. Just do it like a talk and get into your own summit. So you can create a transfer of credibility from the speakers who've promoted to their lists over to you. Build up the know, like, and trust. That's going to sell your product a lot better. Whatever it is.

[00:11:43 - 00:12:07]So genius. Okay. I love that. And I think a lot of people watching this, they're going to have, you're probably going to have a polio coaching offer, whether it's good coaching, you might be a consultant, you might have an agency or a service. And Jennie has literally told you, hey, if you have this, do this. And the best thing is that what you offer as part of the Alexis past is actually not much additional time that you're putting into it. Like, how genius is that?

[00:12:07 - 00:12:08]It is.

[00:12:09 - 00:12:48]It is so, so good. Okay, so let's get into, into the actual speaker selection, if that's okay, because we've spoken about. Well, actually, I don't know, Jennie, we spoke rewind. Okay. Where you spoke about whiplash. And I want you to go into a, a little bit about what that actually means for you and how important it is for people, because a lot of us have multiple things that we probably could sell and want to sell, and we see this as an opportunity to be like, oh, well, I could put this in front of them and this and this and this. And so can you just talk to us about how, like, how do we actually decide what the one product is? Like the goal at the end of the summer? Can you just talk through how to actually think through that?

[00:12:49 - 00:14:46]Absolutely. So that is, that's a conversation that happens well in advance of your event actually even being organized or the speakers being chosen. So this is an activity that you want to sit down either with yourself, yourself and your team, yourself and somebody like me who strategizes and builds these things. And you have to figure that out. And if you have a multitude of products, this conversation can be both fun and also stressful. So what is it that you want to do? What is the economics for your business? Right. So if you have a high level mastermind, that's probably one of the things that you potentially want to sell. But caveat. Can you host a summit that speaks to your ideal client at the level who can afford your mastermind? Do you have to solve a problem for those people first before they can get into that high level mastermind? So that might be your lower end or mid tier product first. So that's where you might have to do a $3,500 offer or something else. I will tell you that if you want your summit to be a blowout success and make you tons of money, then you've got to figure out what that's going to be. I'll tell you right now, if you're selling canva templates, it's not going to make you a ton of money. I mean, you'll make a couple hundred bucks and that's awesome. But if you want to have this really cool income injection into your business, you have to figure out what it is that you're going to sell. And do not think that you're selling everything, okay? If you have a membership and you have a mid tier and you have a high tier, you're not selling all of it, you're picking one and then you can have something to upgrade into once they've, you know, purchased that. Right. So it's a tough conversation and it's not, it's not completely laid out until you have that conversation. And you might kind of like vacillate between the two things or the three things. But settle on one, I swear. Please settle on one. I promise you, it's going to be the, you know, the best way to go. And, and if you plan out far enough, then choosing your speakers to support that goal, it gets easy.

[00:14:47 - 00:15:03]Okay. Would you say, Jennie, rule of thumb, because I know that everyone has different situations, but rule of thumb is if you do have a semblance of a value ladder built out, then always go for almost your lowest tier ticket offer. Would you say?

[00:15:03 - 00:16:26]I don't start at lowest. I actually start, I start at like, if you have like a. If we're talking about value ladder or your. Yeah, I'd say like the $297 product, the 497 or the thousand, those are always going to do well. If your ideal audience is between year one and year five. Okay. Or even just like to year three, those are the things that are going to sell. Now, if your ideal client is already making six figures, then that changes. Then you're looking at the one to one or the one to many at like 35, up to, you know, nine grand. Right. Those, however, take a sales call. You're not going to sell it off a webinar. You have to be prepared to do the sales calls that sell those things. Basically, $1 to 497 doesn't need a sales call. Anything over that starts to feel like I better justify why I'm pulling out my credit card. And those where the conversations have to start to happen. So it's not the lowest thing, but it's definitely not the highest thing unless you are established. I will tell you that if you're multi six figure, you can sell the high end product no problem, right off the summit. But if you are starting out and this is your first event, or you're thinking about hosting your first summit, then stick to the safety side of low to mid tier, and then you can product offer them up and you can graduate them as they go.

[00:16:26 - 00:17:09]So, good. Okay. And that, I think, dovetails really, really neatly into actually what you were touching on a little bit before, which is speaker selection, because what was really interesting was you almost broke it down in terms of, like, where are your audience for this summit at? In their. Whether it's a business, their entrepreneurship life, or they're just their general life, depending on who your audience is, wherever they are in the journey of where you're helping them or what you're helping them with. Now, what becomes really important is actually speaker selection to that, because, you know, some speakers can talk to the one, two, three year. Some are more like, no, I'm like talking to ten plus, like six figure plus people. So let's actually start talking about speaker selection and how we go through this process to support the sales.

[00:17:10 - 00:19:34]Okay. This is interesting because do you remember how I, like, we just talked about the fact that I said, like, one to three, you know, three to five and then onwards. Those are years in business. Now, some people can make a boatload of money in year one, and some people don't make a ton of money until year ten. So think about the years as experience levels. Okay? Like, almost like in gaming, right? You're getting to, like, level four, level five, you're getting up there. And think about income as the ability to obviously make and generate money. So when we're looking at pulling in speakers, I always say, have your speakers be slightly tiered higher than your current audience. Right. So if you have a brand, like, if you're brand spanking new and your product is for brand spanking new newbies, you want to speak to the newbies, but you almost want to future cast them into the things they could do in the future. And so you don't want to just do. Okay, step one, set up your ex account. You know, step two, do this. Step three, do that. You almost want them to future cast to the things they could be doing slightly down the road. That's going to get them excited to the next step. Right? And so I like speakers that talk about those types of things. So, you know, and anybody can get the one, two, three basics. Let's go a little bit higher level on that. And then additionally with your speakers, they must have. This is the rule. And this rule is like, cast in stone. Do not break the Jenny rule. Your ideal client must be on your speakers list and on their social media. So you must do your research. I always sign up for my speakers, my potential speakers, with a dummy email address. Okay, so get the. Get the name of your dog or your cat, and I know yours. And so Veggie. Vegemite. And then a cute last name, you know@gmail.com. and create that email address. Sign up for all your potential speakers email lists and follow them on social media. You can follow them on your own account. No biggie. And start seeing who their ideal clients are. Start seeing who they're talking to, and start seeing how they email. Okay. You're going to start to see the trend of what they email, how they speak, and so on and so forth. And so you're going to get an idea of who they're speaking to. And when we go to select our speakers, we want completely speak, like, niche adjacent or on niche. And your ideal client must be on the list. And if they don't fit that criteria, I don't care if they're your best friend from public school. It ain't happening. They should not be on your summit.

[00:19:34 - 00:19:40]And this is why we all need a genuine lie, so that she can crack that way.

[00:19:40 - 00:19:44]Oh, yeah, I'll crack it, too. No problem. Oh, wow.

[00:19:44 - 00:20:16]Okay, cool. Okay, so let's. So now let's talk about. Because I want to touch on this, but I think that we're going to actually also continue this conversation in the all access pass session that we're going to have, Jenny, but almost the choreography of it. So you've mentioned that speak selection by way of where. Who they're speaking to, at what level experience that these people speak at, but in terms of actually pulling the days and the themes and, you know, all of that together. But that supports what it is that we're trying to sell. Like, how do you actually strategize that?

[00:20:18 - 00:20:21]Okay. There's a lot there. What do you want me to focus on first?

[00:20:23 - 00:20:24]I don't.

[00:20:24 - 00:20:26]I was like, three questions in one.

[00:20:26 - 00:20:39]Yeah. Okay, so why don't we focus on maybe the strategy around choreographing the themes or the days so that it actually supports the sale of the thing that you're selling.

[00:20:40 - 00:23:02]Okay, perfect. And I love the choreography piece because it is a dance. It really is. Think about the end goal in mind and then think about the journey. To get people from the, like, a summit is basically to solve a problem. Right. I don't get enough people who are downloading and listening to my podcast. Therefore, my problem is I need more listeners how do I get more listeners? That's the premise. So if you were to look at the journey from. I need more listeners. On my podcast, we're going to look at specific things. We're going to look at traffic. We're going to look at guests. We're looking at, like, the name of your podcast. All those things, those fit into really specific categories, right? And so you're going to put those into the categories, and then you're going to put them in order. I will give you a hint. Mindset is usually first, right. Because we have to overcome the head junk before we can achieve the changes that we need to make to overcome whatever problem it is that we have. So if there is a mindset piece in your problem that you're trying to solve for your ideal client, put the head junk in the beginning, okay? Get that out of the way. Get people feeling good overcoming that stuff, and then you can go to the next thing, and then you can sort of, like, dovetail it with the big. Ta da. Right? And so don't think that you have to put your big speakers on day one. That is a absolute farce, in my opinion. People who are like big names on your event, that's great. They're like, they're like, you know, they draw people in, but you don't want them on day one because then nobody's going to listen to day two or day three. Pepper those guys in, just kind of like, you know, make it rain all inside, have a good time. And so your speakers have to kind of sit in that space, into that arc of the change that you want to create, basically. So get the head junk done, fix all the little problems that are in way of the big problem. And then day three is like the big problem. Let's talk about that. That's one arc. You can do a completely different arc. Completely different is if you want to do it in the style of how to get from a to c. And I know that sounds the same, but it's not. So you're going to be like, okay, we're going to design the car, then we're going to build the car, and then we're going to drive the car. And that is, like, for technical things, right? So if you're learning how to build a website, that is, we're doing skeleton, we're doing copy, and then we're doing building, and that would fulfill that style. So if that makes sense, that's how I would do it.

[00:23:02 - 00:23:03]So, awesome.

[00:23:03 - 00:23:03]Okay.

[00:23:03 - 00:23:29]And I want to deep dive into a little bit of these things which we're going to do in the all access pass session. Wow, Jennie, this has been amazing. You are. When you say that you're a lead gen expert, like, I take it from me, you guys, I work, I work with Jenny and she is amazing at what she does. So. And she also has an amazing freebie for you today, which is a free guide to selling from your list build. So can you tell us a little bit about that, Jenny?

[00:23:29 - 00:23:59]Absolutely. It's actually, it's a really cool training on what you can do. Basically what we just talked about now, but it goes in depth and talks about how you can sell from your list. And there's multiple ways of selling from your list. And I break all of those down into their specific, like, components and how you can sell from everything. I basically, like, rip apart everything you could do to sell and make sure that you have zero excuses to do it. Because I refuse excuses. Just go do the thing and start making a big deal about it. Just go and sell.

[00:24:01 - 00:25:01]Okay, well, you heard it straight from the horse's mouth. Okay, cool. And if you do not have your all access pass ticket, then go get it right now. Because the stuff that Jennie's gonna unveil in the second session is seriously worth its gold in. Like it will just what Jennie's gonna share is worth way more than the price of the ticket. So what if you even waiting for. Yeah, go do that right now. Thank you so much, Jenny. And for everyone else, we will see you soon. Bye. That was incredible, right? Jennie gave us so many actionable tips to make sure your next summit converts like never before. Check out the links in the show notes to connect and learn more from Jennie. And if you want even more of this goodness on learning about creating content that sells, growing your audience and converting that audience into clients, then you'll want to join us at the get more clients from your content summit. You can register for free @capsho.com summit my name is Deirdre Tshien and as always, stay intelligently lazy.