The Summit Host Hangout Podcast

Hundreds of episodes filled with real stories, real strategies, and real numbers to help you make your virtual summit (and the launch that follows) as streamlined and profitable as possible.
Get a curated playlist of episodes here!

Behind the Summit #13: Summit Week

After months of planning, it's finally here! Join Kate and I as we take you behind the scenes and what happened when my team had to run everything without me.

After months of planning, it's finally here! Join my Operations Lead and Executive Asisstant, Kate, and I as we take you behind the scenes of what our live summit week looked like.

We'll cover what went on each day, what each of us was focused on, and what happened when my team had to run everything without me.

It's Summit Week!

There are a lot of tasks that go into running a summit and...

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Behind the Summit #12: Finishing Touches + Encouraging Speakers

It's the week before our summit! Grab a behind-the-scenes look at the finishing touches, how encouraging speakers was the main focus, and where our numbers are.

Welcome back to the Behind the Summit Series! We're in the middle of promotion and this week was all about putting the finishing touches on things along with supporting and encouraging speakers. 

In past runs of the event, to support speakers, I...

  • Sent regular updates and encouragement
  • Created custom promo material 
  • Collaborated on promotion 

This year was more low-key....

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Behind the Summit #11: Track, Tweak, Repeat

Speaker promotion is in full swing and I found that making a few small changes (and looking at the correct numbers in Google Analytics) makes a big difference!

We've entered week two of summit registration, and speaker promotion has officially kicked off! If you've been following along with the Behind the Summit series, you know that my numbers were not where I wanted them to be when I opened registration last week. 

This week, I'm continuing to focus on the data. Now that speaker promo has started and there are more eyes on the...

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Behind the Summit #10: Solutions Over Problems and Data Over Drama

My summit registration is open! The numbers aren't bad, but they aren't what I was hoping for. It's time to focus on solutions over problems and data over drama.

When your summit results aren't looking the way you want, it's easy to focus on the fact that it's not working and go into a downward spiral.

But it's so important to focus on data and solutions instead of drama and problems.

Registration for my summit opened up this week, and the initial numbers are not where I'd like them to be. When I saw that my numbers were lower than expected, I had...

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Behind the Summit #9: Testing Before Opening a Virtual Summit for Registration

No matter how many times you've hosted your virtual summit, you NEED to test. There's so much room for small details to be missed, it's simply not worth the risk.

It's almost time to open up registration, but first, we need to test and make sure everything is working correctly.

This week in the Behind the Summit series, we are doing the final preparations to get ready to open up registration for this round of the summit. There were a few tweaks and last minute tasks that needed to happen this week, but the main focus was testing. 

No matter how...

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Behind the Summit #8: Organize and Incorporate Virtual Summit Sponsor Activations

See how I keep my sponsorship activations organized and how the process is going, my final speaker lineup, speaker communication, and final website updates.

This week, we're continuing with the Behind the Summit series, where I'm sharing the behind-the-scenes of my summit planning process in real-time as I prepare for my next event. 

Registration for the summit is drawing near, which means I've had a heavy focus on organizing and incorporating my sponsor activations into the event. 

I finally got all of my sponsor information this week,...

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Behind the Summit #7: What to Do When a Speaker Drops Out of Your Virtual Summit

This week's episode shares my favorite ways to fill a spot that opens in your summit schedule, whether it's a month out or a few days out from your event.

You've got the perfect speaker lineup and you're ready for your summit to happen...but then....someone drops out. 

Having a speaker drop out of your summit causes many first-time summit hosts to panic, but it happens more often than you might think. 

There are all kinds of reasons that speakers might drop out, such as...

  • They got excited about the event initially and later realize...
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Behind the Summit #6: Creating a Meaningful Virtual Summit Schedule

In this behind the scenes episode, you'll hear about the process I used to take my group of 35 speakers and put together a meaningful event schedule.

We’re moving right along with our Behind the Summit Series, and this week I’m taking you behind the scenes of my event schedule planning process.

Like most aspects of an online summit, a lot more goes into this than you might initially think. 

I knew this would be a big project with a lot of moving pieces (35 speakers slots and even more live sessions over 5...

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Behind the Summit #5: Landing Virtual Summit Sponsors

This week's behind-the-scenes episode talks about how I secured my first $8k in summit sponsors with another $4-6k potentially in the works, without pitching!

If you’ve been following along with my summit planning journey, you know that I had no plans to pursue sponsors for my summit this time around. 

The last time I tried to get sponsors for one of my summits, I didn’t have much success, and I didn’t enjoy the process. So I wasn’t planning to try again. 

I was expecting this week of summit planning to be pretty...

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Behind the Summit #4: Pitching Virtual Summit Speakers

Come behind-the-scenes as I finish up final tasks and pitch virtual summit speakers and look at the stats from my all-access pass payment plans from last year!

While a lot of summit hosts send all their speaker pitches at once, I like to break them up into groups and send my pitches in rounds.

This helps me get some easy yeses right away from speakers I feel pretty sure will say yes, and it also gives me a confidence boost before reaching out to people I don’t know as well. It also gives me some “social proof” I can include in my...

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