Fears I Had Before, During, & After My First Summit

Having some fears about hosting your summit?

Trust me, I get it. And you aren’t alone!

In this episode, we’re going to cover:

• where I was at when I started planning my first summit
• the different stages that really freaked me out throughout the planning process
• how they each turned out and how I pushed through them
• what had me feeling a little freaked out after the summit was over

When I started to plan my first summit

Let's dive into where I was when I started planning my first summit. At that time, I’d run a WordPress development business for about 2 years and had about 400 people on my email list.

As far as clients go, I got clients when I needed them, but I wasn’t well-known, visible, or booked in advance. I’d run small challenges and some joint webinars.

I’d spoken at 1 summit, which is what gave me the idea. But at that time, I was too scared to even accept the idea that I could do a summit.

I was worried about:

• not being important enough
• what speakers would think of me
• being laughed at when I promoted
• looking like a big joke

Because of those things, I didn’t let myself consider a summit.

But one day in the car, it just clicked!

Something made me realize that I could do a specific summit for my audience just for designers. It was my hope to stand out and people would want to be a part of it.

Pitching speakers for my first summit

That helped me push through and start the planning process. Everything was fine and fun. I was enjoying it until it came time to find and pitch speakers.

All of those original feelings came flooding back. I was terrified I’d get nothing but negative replies or radio silence.

To help, I pitched a couple of people I knew well and who I wanted to speak at my summit. I quickly started to get a “yes” from them! That gave me a little confidence and also names to use for more pitches. Almost everyone I pitched said “yes”!

Promoting my first summit

That was all good until again, it came time to start promoting and put the summit out into the world.

The presentations I got from my speakers were great. I watched through a few of them. I loved what they were teaching. I knew my audience would love it too, but I was terrified at what everyone would think.

But just because I was terrified, those scheduled social media posts went out anyway. The summit went out into the world. My speakers started promoting.

Within the first couple of days, I had already hit my income goal and said I needed to set a new goal for registrations as well. People loved it. The conversions were high. They were so excited to get started. It was something they'd never seen before.

The specific messaging I used for that audience was catching people's attention because they hadn't seen a summit just for them before.

It doesn't matter if you have a tiny audience or if you're terrified of how it'll turn out if you have this niche and topic right.

Once we got started and I saw the results start rolling in, I felt better.

See the pattern here? Everything was great until the next thing happened.

Attendees were so much more excited and engaged than I even thought they would be. My speakers were loving the attention they were getting. Sales were rolling in like crazy. Honestly, I was floored, and thinking back to that day, I still am. This big thing for my little business worked.

All of the fears I had, all of the imposter syndrome I felt was proven wrong.

My biggest struggle during my first summit

Every step of the way I doubted that I was good enough. I'd never done anything like it before and my audience was small.

But my advice to you is that YOU are good enough and you need to recognize and accept that even though you're going to feel this imposter syndrome, it's going to be uncomfortable, but you can move forward and create an incredible summit despite all of that.

You have something of value to offer your audience. If you have the capacity to create a summit for them and you can get specific and solve a problem they have, you need to do that.

I really encourage you to push past these fears like I did. Embrace them, push through them, think of ways you can make it easier, if possible, but keep going with your summit.

Fears I felt after my first summit was over

I wanted to wrap this up by talking about some fears I felt after the summit. Part of these things you will deal with, part of them you won't.

After my first summit, I was scared it was a fluke. You might feel that way too. If you're working on your second summit or if you're still working on your first after it, you might be like, “okay, that was great, but can I do it again?”

For my 2^nd summit, I set a goal to make the same amount of money and get the same amount of registrations, but I doubted it would work again.

I can tell you right now, before planning for my fourth summit, I felt the same way. This time around I have a different fear and that is that my summit won't live up to your expectations.

I want to have incredible results to show you, but with that comes the fear that I'm going to host a summit, and it's not going to live up to your expectations. It's a lot of pressure to teach summits and then have everybody watch you host one.

While there’s that pressure, I'm trying to look at it in a way that no matter what happens, I'll be able to teach my audience something.

Recognize Your Fear

Recognize your fear when you feel it. Drill down to where it's coming from. See if you can find the root cause.

Push through knowing that it will all be worth it. Have confidence in that and just let the fear come and go when it needs to.

Resources

• Episode 4: Discover the Ideal Audience for Your Online Summit
• Episode 5: Choose a Profitable Topic for Your Virtual Summit
• Episode 20: How to Pitch Virtual Summit Speakers And Hear "Yes" More Than "No"
• Summit Host Hangout Facebook group 

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