Every so often I get to sit down with a client and hear a first-summit story that makes me want to grab a notebook. This is one of those episodes!
Kelly Rossouw is a Cricut and crafting creator who has been making YouTube videos for years, sharing hundreds of free tutorials with a community that spans multiple continents.
In this conversation, Kelly walks me through why she waited until she had something genuinely different to share before hosting a summit, how she structured her live sessions around her real life instead of every time zone on earth, and the fundraiser she built into her event that raised just over $6,000 for a big cat sanctuary. If you've been telling yourself you already know enough about summits to figure it out on your own, her answer to that question might change your mind.
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Episode at a glance:
[01:50] Why she hosted a summit after speaking at so many
Kelly had been a speaker at summit after summit, and she loved the experience every time. What kept pulling her in was the contrast with her main platform, YouTube. A video can rack up thousands of views and generate almost no engagement from the audience. Speaking summit gave her a conversation that went both ways!
She also wanted to stop running her business on a single stream of income, and she wanted control over the inputs and the outcomes instead of handing off a presentation and hoping for the best. One thing she was sure about: she wouldn't host until she had something different to say, because there are already a lot of crafting and Cricut summits out there.
"With a summit, I feel like there's just so much more interaction, and people get the kind of tutorials that they want and they enjoy, and I just really wanted to get involved with something that was a little bit more two-sided as opposed to one-sided."
[04:38] Could she have figured it out from the speaker seat?
I ask this one a lot, because "I've spoken at plenty of summits, I can probably do this myself" is something I hear often. Kelly's answer was immediate. Watching every video, checking every file, setting up the tech, redoing the tech when it doesn't work, the email sequences, the follow-up. None of that is visible when your only job is submitting a presentation.
"Not a chance. Not a chance. There's so many moving parts and so many different things, and so many things that you never consider when you're just handing in your video."
[05:54] What community engagement actually looks like on the other side
The payoff Kelly talks about most isn't a number. It's seeing the same names show up in the live streams and the Facebook group, and watching attendees ask each other about their lives outside of crafting. In crafting specifically, the loop closes in a way it doesn't in a lot of niches: someone watches a tutorial, spends six hours making the thing, then posts a photo of it. She has a whole folder of those screenshots she goes back to when she needs a pick-me-up.
"It's no longer just me talking to the camera on YouTube to a vast sea of nothingness. I can actually get to know the people, and that for me has been, like, the absolute highlight of everything!"
[08:15] The numbers, and the positioning behind them
Just over 10,000 people registered. Kelly is quick to point out that she'd spent roughly two years focused on growing her email list to just over 20,000, largely by saying yes to speaking and giving away as much free value as she could. But the positioning mattered just as much as the audience size. Instead of just another general Cricut summit, she built hers around using offcuts, scraps, and materials already sitting in your house. Not everyone's cup of tea - and that was the point!
"That's not everybody's cup of tea, but that was the one thing that I wanted to do, 'cause I'm really stingy with my materials."
[12:57] Collaboration over competition in a B2C niche
One reason Kelly's event got the results that it did is the speaker community around her. She hasn't run into the territorial, competitive energy that shows up in some spaces. People said yes to speaking, promoted, offered advice, and generally acted like a tight-knit group rather than a bunch of competitors.
"I know there's a saying that says, 'Competition happens at the bottom, collaboration happens at the top.'"
[14:02] Hosting from South Africa for a mostly US audience
About 60% of Kelly's audience is US-based, and she ran all of her live sessions in her own evenings. Because she'd spent years joining other people's livestreams at odd hours, the schedule didn't faze her. She also made a deliberate call to keep those live sessions casual, chat-style, and non-essential. With seven prerecorded sessions available each day, adding more required viewing would have overwhelmed her attendees and her.
"I specifically wanted to focus on creating live experience where attendees could put the chat on and listen to it in the background while you're busy making your craft kind of thing."
[17:24] The fundraiser she built into her summit
This is my favorite part of the episode! Rather than donating a percentage of all-access pass sales, Kelly created something entirely separate to raise funds for a non-profit. A big cat sanctuary about two hours from her home had been hit by devastating wildfires earlier in the year, and the initial wave of donations had dried up while they were still unable to reopen. So she reached out, got their big cat paw prints, and designed three original digital bundles of stencils, cards, and mug designs around them. Ten dollars each, or $25 for all three, with a pay-what-you-want minimum that people were generously paying $50, $75, and $100 for instead. Every cent went to the sanctuary. They raised just over $6,000.
"I told them you're not helping fund me, you're helping fund them directly, 100%."
[23:25] What she'd change, and her advice for first-time hosts
Kelly wouldn't change anything about the summit itself - what she'd change is everything around it. She'd said yes to too many outside commitments that all landed at once, and she crossed the finish line, as she puts it, kicking and screaming. Her advice: start earlier than you think you need to, build in buffer time for late speakers, and fiercely protect your time. Not just for your own sake, but because a burnt-out host affects the attendee experience.
"I made it to the goalpost, but I was, like, kicking and screaming and clawing towards the end... And would I have changed a thing? No, because it was probably the best month of my entire life."
About Kelly Rossouw
Kelly is a Cricut and Crafting Creator, and loves to share her knowledge about many different craft types. She especially loves to help break down complicated projects into a few basic steps so you can easily learn any type of project.
Her motto is to help you live an easier, creative life, and she does this by sharing hundreds of free YouTube videos on her channel, blog, and fun posts on social media.
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