#184: Why Summits Are Awesome for Course Creators with Becky McCleery

Welcome back to another episode of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia, here to get you stoked about your course or your program, whatever you’re building right now. And to help you build up the course based business of your dreams. And I’ve got a very special guest on the podcast today who is an incredible digital marketer, a strategic business consultant, and my online business manager, Becky McCleery.

I’ve talked about Becky multiple times on this podcast, and she is just a force. She’s so smart, so insightful and she loves to work with inspiring, heart centered service providers to create a kinder, more compassionate world. And she’s here to help you share your gifts. I mean, what an awesome mission statement. Right? And Becky is specifically on today.

We have talked about a number of topics, but we are talking summits today and how you can create your first or your next summit in order to grow your audience. Now, last episode, we talked about partnerships and how you can build up relationships to grow your audience. This was a good one. So we talked about three tiers. If you haven’t listened to that yet, go back and listen to one at E3 and then I want you to listen to this summit episode where we talk through how to build the summit, why a summit is so effective in terms of building up your audience and then learning from the queen of summits.

Becky, about what to avoid and what to really hone in on. And this is a great audience building episode as well. It’s kind of a companion to the last one I just did about relationship building. And I think Becky just is so insightful and smart about talking to your target audience and what’s really going to help you sell your course at the end of the day.

So I want you to listen in to this interview and think about where you might be able to create a summit or maybe team up with somebody to create a summit. But enough about that. Let’s listen in. Becky, welcome to the podcast. You know, I wanted you on for the longest time, and now I’ve got you. So welcome.

Welcome. Thank you. It’s good to be here. Okay. First and foremost, you are the queen, I feel like of Summit. So why are those why are they so effective in terms of list building for us as course creators? Well, when you think about building your list, ideally you want to be bringing in a lot of people and there are lots of different ways that you can do this, but many of them take a long time.

So if you think about posting on social media, that’s going to be a long term strategy before you start to see real growth. If you think about guesting on other people’s podcasts, which I do recommend that on a long time, you have to find the podcasts and you have to wait until you get interviewed and you have to wait for the episode to come out.

And so again, it kind of trickles out. And if you go the address out, that could bring in people quickly. But it’s also kind of a gamble. Yeah, a lot of us, when we’re first starting out, we don’t have enough money to be investing and ads might not be the route we want to go. So what I love about summits is it’s a way for you to bring in a lot of people in a pretty short amount of time, and you’re really partnering with other people.

So I think there are other benefits to it beyond list building, and it can also open up other opportunities for you to become an expert or be seen as an expert by others and be invited into other opportunities as well. Okay, So many great reasons. I love that in an episode or before this one, I was talking in terms of the layers of audiences, you know, because, Becky, you were my go to person in terms of checking out my script.

So and so awesome to look at my podcast. But tell me about your journey with Summit because I feel like you’ve been doing them well at least as long as I’ve known you. So how did you get started with them? Yeah. So I started out, I did my first summit. It feels kind of embarrassing because the technology has changed so much.

Back in 2011. So when I started out in the online space, I was a teacher. Then I had kids. I wanted to be home with them. I decided to become a coach. I did the whole certification, I had the website built, and then I realized I knew nothing about building a business and people in my everyday life and I’m in the Midwest had no idea what I was doing.

I think they thought I was having some sort of early crisis in my life and then in the online space, it just felt overwhelming. So I actually started by trying to learn from other people. And at the time, a lot of people are hosting summits and that’s how you could learn about different aspects of having an online business.

And I realized, like building a list is important and these other people are doing it through summits. So organization has been one of my skills. I was like, I think I can figure this out. And so that’s what I did is I thought, okay, I’m going to choose a topic. I’m going to find speakers who I think can teach about different aspects.

I’m going to invite them to join me and then host it. And so we did. I mean, back then it was like get a conference call number and you actually felt like we all but but that’s how it started. And I did. I quickly built a list and from nothing to over 1000 people on my list, my problem, which I think we’ll talk about later, was that I didn’t have an offer at the time.

And I was like, Oh, you don’t know what to do with them now. But I learned a lot along the way. And so now when I talk with you on Summit, we do have more of a game plan in mind, but I have found it just to be a really effective way of building a list quickly and bringing in a lot of people who are interested in the work that you do.

How did you get that courage early on to ask people to be a part of your summit? I would same a little bit and I part of it was just maybe being a little young and naive and just thinking like, Oh, everyone wants to help everyone else out. And so that’s kind of how I viewed it was like it was a win for everyone involved because they were going to get to be in front of new people and they were going to be able to make new connections.

And so I just approached it like that. And for the most part, people were very kind. It did have a couple of rough experiences where, you know, I don’t come from the corporate background at all. And so I think sometimes when I interact with people who do have that loss, I think coming from the Midwest who sometimes different personalities can come across as much more rough.

And so I had to work to, you know, let things go that way. But I think for the most part it was just coming at it as like, let’s make this a win for everyone. And and also just being a little naive. Well, and I think you’re there to add value, right? You’re there to offer them something that can help them.

I think that’s one of your core philosophies, is it not? Like how can I? I feel like every relationship is like, how can I add value to this person? Exactly. Yeah. And I think every time I’ve done an event like this, it’s been, how can this be a win for everyone? How can this be beneficial to everyone who’s involved?

So, yes, I think coming at it with that in mind also helps. Okay, that’s great. Now I know there’s not enough time during this podcast to walk through like, Hey, can we just walk through the phases of planning out an entire summit but just want to walk through some core principles that you think are the most important when building out your own summit, whether it’s the first time or it’s the next time that you’re doing this.

Like, can you give us a couple of details of what you always like to double down on or focus on? Okay, so learning from my mistakes, the very first thing is to be really clear on your intentions. So, yes, you want to bring people into your audience, but why do you want to bring people into your audience? So ideally you have a course that maybe is ready to sell or you’re working on behind the scenes.

So I would start with that in mind and be thinking about, okay, who is a good fit for this course? Where are they now? And what information in a summit could help them. People who are interested in this summit will then be interested in my course. So you want something that ties in closely to the course, but that doesn’t really overlap too much because you want them to want that next step with the course.

So once you have that in mind, then I would think through more of the details. As far as what topics do you want to cover, what types of speakers do you want to have? And then maybe think about the format of your summit too. So some people like to do video, some people like to do audio, some people like to do it live, some people like to prerecord.

So I would think through the more what works for you and get clear on kind of your vision or the summit. And from there, once you have those details, it’s then time to find speakers so you can do this a couple different ways. I’ve done it both ways where sometimes you’re seeking speakers and you send out invitations to them.

With those invitations, I would include the details because people, you know, people are busy. They need to know what’s going to be expected of them. Also, what is in it for them. And then the other way that you could do it is you could create an application form or speakers. And there are a number of different places online where people are looking for speaking opportunities.

So you could post it and have people apply that way. So, you know, the one way is if you’re inviting speakers, that requires more time and energy upfront. But on the other hand, if you just have a form, you don’t quite know what you’re getting. So it’ll require a little bit more time on the back end as far as going over applications and selecting people from there.

Okay. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Oh, that’s okay. So yeah, so after you’ve done that, once you have people who have applied or you have selected speakers, then you need to go through the process of either pre-recording interviews or getting things set up so you can go live. You also what I like to recommend is doing marketing materials for your speakers, so that way it’s very easy for them to help me out and they can always adapt the the copy and all of that.

But if you give them materials, it just makes it easier to help spread the word for the event. Okay. Yes. Let’s unpack this a little bit. This is so great. So you could tell you’re a pro at this because you could just rattle off the steps in your head. Finding the speakers or finding the audience that really works for you.

Right. And you said this upfront about a good fit for what’s a step before my course. So how do you do the research where, say, I’m proactively going after speakers that I know might have a great audience for my course? Like what are your tips for us for that? Like, is there any words of wisdom in terms of finding the right audience?

Yeah. So I think the first thing that comes to mind for me is to give yourself time. I think a lot of us have ideas and we want to act on them right away and that can put a lot of unnecessary pressure. So when you’re clear on your audience and you have ideas about what topics they would be interested in, I would start looking for people who are experts on that topic, and then I would start looking at their audience and see the audience overlap with yours.

So, for example, if you want to work with service based businesses and they only work with product based businesses, their people are not or people. So I would take a little time to look at that. And you could you could look at their social media and kind of see who’s engaging with them and what are they putting out there.

You could also join their email list and see what are they sending out to people. Does that resonate with you? Another great way to connect with people is just through your network. So it might be that your connections aren’t ideal speakers, but they really know people. So if you tell people, Hey, I have this idea for the summit, here’s who I’m looking for.

You know, anyone who might be a great fit a lot of the time you’ll get recommendations now. So okay, I love this. And at the beginning of this episode, I talked about how you connected me with some summit. And one of them she reached out to me because I was the course creation spot, right? So she had an echo spot, she had a legal spot.

And then etc. I’d be like an IG person. So I thought that was smart. How she had categories that then fed into her kind of outcome. Like, do do you love that idea? Do you like. Yes, that’s something I want to make sure to cover, is that I think it’s really important that each speaker can be seen as an expert contributing to the whole event.

So that way they’re not competing against one another, but they’re bringing in kind of different pieces to the puzzle. So that way everyone can really shine in their expertise. And I think it helps the speakers because everyone gets the spotlight, but it also helps your attendees because they’re learning about different topics that can help them in their growth.

And it’s not going to be hearing that same thing over and over again. Yeah, that was so smart. Okay, let’s dig in to some mistakes. So I know you mentioned offer. So can we go back to that dark, dark period of your past? So you do all this work for a summit and then what happened when in terms of you didn’t have an offer?

Like when did you when did you make that. Aha. Like take us back. Yeah. So I think for me I realized that, I mean, I been a teacher, I didn’t have any experience in sales at all and so I didn’t realize how uncomfortable I was with selling anything. And so it was easy to put together a summit because I’m getting things for free right?

Then afterwards, it was like, you know, and during the summit you’re able to email them consistently, reminding them to listen to different things or watch different things. And that’s easy. But then afterwards I was stuck with what am I going to write to them about? Like I have this email list, what am I going to share with them?

So I definitely recommend that you have an offer and you have a plan before you leap into all of this. I will say like looking back, way back, it was just kind of an experiment for me. What worked, What didn’t work. And I do like to say that now, looking back, I learned a lot and it can help other people along the way.

So I’m pretty adamant. And you know, this, you know, my philosophy is that if you’re going to put in the work, let’s let’s make an offer. Even if it’s a low price point offer. I do understand also your outcome was list building. You got your outcome. But do you not recommend that if you’re going to put in the effort into a summit that you have something to sell at the end of it?

I think you should. So we know that it used to be a thing. It might still be in some places. Yeah, you do a summit for free or you could do a VIP upgrade check. I personally have found that that’s not really worth the effort because of what they’re doing with that is you’re making content only available for a limited period of time for those who are free, and then you have to take it out and that just requires extra work on your eyes.

I view it as the whole idea of with the summit is we want we want people to listen to the interviews, to the different sessions. And if we’re giving them a very limited window, that makes it harder. And so I don’t think it’s as valuable or the attendees or the speakers. And I also just from being behind the scenes of a number of summits, the sales don’t seem to make up for the amount of work put into it.

So what I do recommend is instead of selling a VIP. Yeah, sell is that you have an offer afterwards. Okay. Something I’ve been doing with clients lately is we have like a week long summit where they’re bringing speakers and then the next week we do. I wouldn’t call it quite a launch, but it’s more, you know, maybe they’ll have a workshop or they’ll have a challenge where the host of the summit is now sharing a more of their expertise in one session or a few sessions that are live, and then that leads into sales or their program summit there.

So instead of just selling the summit itself, it is leading into one of their offers. Okay, I love that. I do. I really like that, that kind of flow. And I agree that something into a webinar or workshop or a challenge. What about a paid summit? How do you feel about free versus paid? I think it depends on your goals.

So if well, I have lots of opportunities now, so have it. So on the one hand, I do think there is an issue where you can get a lot of people on your list for free, but they’re never going to buy me. Okay. So I think it depends on your business goals. You know, are you going to have, you know, a course that you’re offering regularly and you need a really large audience for that.

Or maybe you have more of a high ticket offer and you don’t need as many people for that. So I think if numbers are your real goal, really make sense. And that could work for, you know, if you’re selling into a lower priced membership, something like that would be easier to convert. On the other hand, if you have a real high ticket offer and you’re going to have a more targeted audience with that and some of those people, they’re going to value things more if they have to pay for them benefits.

I know also, like depending on who you work with, you know, as I’ve gotten further along in my business, I don’t have time for a lot of great things. But if I invest in a program that I’ll make time for that. So I think part of that comes down to knowing your audience. So if you have those people that are going to value it more, if they pay for it, then I think I’d make sense.

I would just go into it with idea that this isn’t necessarily about making money from this event, but that it’s about getting the right people. And what what have you been doing with your clients and with yourself lately? As have been more free or more paid? It has been more free, but then leading into a paid offer. And so we we do kind of what I talked about with that, you know, the summit itself is free.

And then there is, you know, a more intensive workshop or webinar and then into a paid offer. Okay. Okay. I love that. All right. Thanks for giving us both sides. It’s really helpful. I want to go back to when you broke down the different components so what if I’m keen on doing a summit but topic, maybe I’m hung up a little bit on that.

What what do you recommend I do? Get in touch with my audience like, what are some tips that you have in terms of I do want to hold one, but I just don’t know what I want it to be about quite yet. That’s a really good question. So if you are currently working with clients, I’m thinking of people where maybe you’ve been doing one on one work, you’re creating a course in similar to the work you’ve done with clients.

Yes. Thinking back to your clients and where they were before they worked with you, and what were some of the topics that they were struggling with? What were the reasons they came to work with you in the first place? Ooh, that’s good. I love that. Or some of that. You might go back to clients and ask, What were you struggling with?

What made you decide to work with me? You could also do surveys with your audience. I would just make sure when you’re asking questions, that is to your ideal clients and seeing people where they’re posting, you know, surveys and Facebook groups that are a bunch of other business owners or a bunch of other course creators and those people aren’t necessarily or audience.

So their answers may or may not be on target. So I think asking either if you have an email list, asking them or asking your clients would be the best bet. I love this idea. I was just talking to another client about the Ryan Levesque questions, right? Like what did what did you want or why would you think you’re missing out on what’s what’s the fear?

I’m butchering them a little bit, But but the idea of going back to clients that have seen the results right. And asking them to think back, I think is really smart. And in terms of what did they really want and then how you can solve for that. I love that. So smart. So smart, Becky, I got to ask you, you’re like the ultimate introvert in my in my eyes.

And I say that because I’m a raging extrovert and you know that. And it’s wonderful that we can get along so how did you how do you do it? How do you do the summit? How do you put yourself out there? How are you on this podcast right now? Like as because because I know it must be a thing, right, as an introvert.

So I will say today was about challenging myself to do something outside my comfort zone. But the big thing for me is to get out of my head, because if I focus on myself and how nervous I am, then it’s very easy to just shut down and not do any of this. But if I focus on could someone out there benefit from this, if I focus on helping that other person, even if it’s one person that gets me out of my own way and helps me to get out there?

As far as this summit, what I have learned really is kind of guarding my time. And so I learned, you know, for me doing things live. I did do the first ones or live. Yeah, I kind of a situation where speaker didn’t show up on time and I had, you know, where you live already and they didn’t show you weren’t there.

I was like, What am I going to do? Why did you do it? I babbled a lot, probably, okay, I’m just talking and filling in. And then she did show up. She was like 10 minutes late. So from there I was like, I’m never doing it live again because I don’t want that stress. I don’t do well with that stress.

So part of it is just knowing yourself and and so pre-recording helps me because that way I know if disasters strike, we’re okay. And I can feel confident that what we’re putting out there is something that I feel good about. And then also with that, like when I set up my calendar to pre-record, I limit it to certain days when I’m doing it because I’m I’m on calls every single day of the week that’s draining me.

But if I can limit it to a couple of days, that’s easier for me. So I would just say being aware of yourself and what works for you and allowing yourself to build it out in a way that works for you, so that way you’re not overextending yourself. Okay, I love that. And then I want to go back because you mentioned this pre-recording versus video, audio versus video.

I know we were getting kind of burnt out on audio video, right? So going live on video with Summit. And then you sent me some just audio only summits. Like is that still hot or is that kind of cooled off a little bit? What I’m seeing if the audio still working really well. The platform hello audio works really well I private you can set up like a private podcast basically and you can have it set.

So people could either listen just to individual sessions or you could have it like a private podcast where they can just go from one to another on their. And what I like about that is, you know, I can listen to a podcast if I’m going for a walk or I’m running errands, or if I’m, you know, folding laundry, whereas sitting down, making time for a video, I have a harder time doing that.

Yeah, me too. Part of it that just depends on knowing your audience. And and while will they make time for Because again, your goal is for them to actually listen to it, learn from it, implement it. And so I would choose whatever format you think is going to encourage that. And I feel like maybe a little bit more apt to go back and listen.

If it’s audio, it just feels a little easier or I’m more, I guess, up to listen versus getting to watch a video Sitting down. Watching a video. Yes. And another idea that comes to mind with that is thinking about the length of your sessions, as well as how many years you’re going to have. Because I know, again, this was many, many years ago.

People used to have, you know, 40, 50 speakers on these being like 45 minutes to an hour. And no. One, I don’t think anyone has time to listen to all of that and something and you think about being a value both to your speakers and your attendees. I, I think the shorter sessions are good and also not as many speakers.

Okay. I love that the shorter sessions are a great idea. I mean, there’s so much we could dive into, but tell me, what do you have going on? What’s next? Where can people learn more about you? Yeah, so I feel like I’m always kind of evolving and that I’ve been, you know, doing the operations for quite a while.

So right now I do have several of these virtual events that we’re working on. So we have a summit and then later on this year we have the giveaway that we’re doing and I am working with some clients on these type of events as well. And so, Gina, I’ll just give you a link in case people want to connect that and I mean, I’m happy to work with people, but I’m also happy, like I’m always networking and and sharing my referrals to people.

So welcome anyone to reach out if they need a recommendation or a referral. A great network of different operations people. If you need people to help you with the tech aspect of any of this too, that be awesome. And then something that promotes you to Becky, because you have to remind Becky to do that. And before I let you go, I just wanted to say thank you so much for being like the wind beneath my wings for the last few years.

You put up with so much crud from me, you know you don’t put up with cried, but you have helped me so much and you were so generous and so loving and such a wonderful person. I am very lucky to have you in my life. So thank you. Thank you so much. I’m grateful for you, too. Okay. Thanks for coming on.

Thank you. All right. What did you think about Becky? Right. So great. She’s so thoughtful. She’s so insightful when she’s talking about starting with your intentions and then what’s a good fit for you? I just think following her instructions to a tee and you’re going to win. You’re going to succeed. All link to all the links that Becky mentioned in the show notes.

Make sure you check her out. Make sure you follow her on LinkedIn because she is just an absolute gem of a person and so smart when it comes to online marketing. All right. Hopefully you enjoyed that episode. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss one workshop or guest. And until next time, go create be you and be brilliant and get it done.