The Biggest Mistake Repeat Summit Hosts Make That Can Cost You Thousands
If you've hosted a summit before and you're gearing up to run it again, I want to ask you something first: what's your plan for making it bigger and better this time?
For a lot of repeat summit hosts, the honest answer is some version of, "I'm just going to run it again. It'll naturally do better." But that assumption is the single biggest mistake I see repeat summit hosts make! And I've watched it play out over and over with people who come to us after their second or third summit, confused because their numbers went down instead of up. So that's what we're diving into today.
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When "Just Run It Again" Backfires
We've had people apply to our Launch with a Summit Accelerator® program after seeing their numbers shrink from one summit to the next. One person's first summit brought in 2,500 attendees and $20,000 in revenue. Their second only brought in 1,300 attendees and $8,000, cut by more than half. Someone else saw their first summit generate 7,500 attendees and $19,000, and their second dropped to 2,700 attendees and just $2,500.
These weren't people who didn't know what they were doing! They'd already run a summit that got solid results. They just assumed that would be enough to repeat it. It's not. There are internal and external factors, along with your actual data, that need to be looked at before you decide what to change (or not change) from one event to the next.
What It Looks Like When You Do It Right
Our Accelerator client Janelle leaned into her summit as the core growth strategy for her business from the very beginning. (Listen to her full story here!) Her first summit brought in 2,700 registrations, $25,000 in all-access pass sales, and $11,000 in program sales.
By her fifth or sixth summit, those numbers had grown to 6,300 registrations (almost 3X), over $100,000 in program sales (10X), and close to $200,000 total when you factor in her all-access pass revenue. That's roughly 4X her original revenue. It didn't happen by accident, though. Janelle did the work we recommended, worked with us to understand what was driving her results, and made improvements every single summit.
I've experienced both sides of this too. My first summit in April 2018 grew my email list from under 500 to 1,500 people and brought in $16,000 in all-access pass revenue, more money than I'd ever seen at once in my business. So six months later, I ran it again... and changed almost everything. New positioning, a different format, basically undoing everything that had worked the first time. That summit brought in 400 attendees and $3,000. A steep drop.
For summit number three, I went back to what had worked the first time around and saw 2,200 attendees and $22,000: some growth, but not what I really wanted. It wasn't until I started paying attention to the data and making strategic, intentional shifts that things really took off: summit four brought in 4,000 attendees and $60,000, and summit five brought in 6,500 attendees and $121,000.
Three Mistakes That Quietly Shrink Your Results
1. Leaving your pages untouched. Your registration page and all-access pass sales page are two of your most powerful assets as a repeat host. After your first summit, you have real data on how they converted, testimonials, screenshots, and a sense of what resonated with your audience and what didn't. If you just duplicate those pages for the next summit without optimizing them based on what you learned, you're leaving results on the table!
2. Not touching your monetization strategy. It's easy to rerun the same all-access pass at the same price with the same post-summit launch approach. But look at each piece and find where the biggest opportunities for improvement are. Even after hosting 15+ summits and working with hundreds of clients' summits, we're still experimenting with monetization for each new event. You don't have to reinvent the wheel (actually, don't do that!), but don't skip this step entirely either.
3. Ignoring speaker performance. Not every speaker drives the same results. Some of your speakers from the first summit likely brought in a ton of registrations and sales... and others brought in none. As a repeat host, you get to double down on what worked: invite back your top performers, build those relationships further, and use the data to find similar speakers for your next lineup.
Your First Summit Is a Foundation, Not a Template
Growth like $17K to $55K, or $30K to $90K, doesn't happen by luck. It happens when you understand your summit results numbers, spot the gaps and opportunities, and make the right improvements from one event to the next. That way, you can run a summit once or twice a year and continue to grow your business through them!
If you've hosted at least one summit and want help figuring out exactly what to change for your next one, I'd love to offer you a free Repeat Summit Audit. I'll personally dig into your past results and pages, show you what performed well, and make specific suggestions for your next event. Just DM me the word "REPEAT" on Instagram to get started.
Resources
- DM me REPEAT on Instagram to get a free Repeat Summit Audit!
- Episode 191: Build On Your Speaker Relationships After a Virtual Summit without Burning Out with Amelia Roberts
- Episode 228: The Power of Repeat Summits (they're more than a 1-time cash injection)
- Episode 288: Innovating and Experimenting in Summits without Breaking Everything
- Episode 324: How a B2C Summit Host Turned List Growth Into Six-Figure Course Sales with Janelle Hardy
- Summit Host Hangout® Facebook group
- Launch with a Summit Accelerator®
- 6-Figure Summits Workshop Bundle
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One Summit Away Private Podcast for Membership Site Owners
In 10 short episodes, get a behind-the-scenes look at the summit strategy built specifically for membership owners. Learn how to attract the right people, convert them into members during the event, and build the kind of momentum that sustains your membership long after the summit ends.