Unknown 0:32

Hello, welcome to the show today we're talking about what if you wanted to host your own online summit or even in person summit, but maybe you're a bit nervous. Maybe you're a bit scared. Maybe you haven't got a massive gobby mouth like I have, what would you do? How could you do it if we do all those things? So we're talking about on today's show,

Unknown 0:50

the rails heroes. This is the new female Marketing Show with Kennedy as Carrie, tune in each week and learn the email campaign strategy and what's working right now to make more sales from that email list of yours.

Unknown 1:02

Hello, hello. Welcome to the show. Welcome. Email Marketing Show was kinda here. Carrie is not here with me today. She's off doing something else. But I am joined by my very good friend and very smart all round cookie Fifi. Means and if you don't know Fifi, she is the founder of the quietly influential Summit. And that is actually the person who introduced me to the world of summits. And when I saw people doing summit stuff, I mean, he messaged and said, How are you doing this what you're doing and it was based on what I learned from Fifi, but we ran a very successful summit for a whole bunch of years that we're gonna be bringing back in a couple of months time as well. You've probably noticed that a lot of email marketing platforms are putting their prices up, and the more subscribers you've got, the more you pay. I've made a quick free video to show you what you can do to save a pile of money before your next bill goes out. Go watch it for free at email marketing heroes.com/cleanup Email Marketing heroes.com/cleanup This episode is sponsored by zero bounce the email cleaning and verification service. So Fifi Hello, welcome to the show.

Unknown 1:57

Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Unknown 1:58

I'm excited to have you here. So how long have you been running your summit for? It has

Unknown 2:02

been four years now this year will be the fifth year so it will be a big celebration. Hopefully

Unknown 2:07

amazing videos. Some

Unknown 2:09

it's all about well total, it's about it is about personal branding, so personal branding for introverts and helping introverted coaches and business owners who struggle to put themselves out there they're holding back they might be just struggling to get visible in their business and they are the face of their business. So they need to find ways that really work for them work with their energy and work with their personality. And that's what it's all about.

Unknown 2:33

I love that. I love it. I love it. I love it. I think a lot of people think that if you're going to be in business or if you're going to be a personal brand, like you are like I am people often think that you need to be gobby and confident and kind of a bit like how I appear to be and I think I know when I've been at an event. I'm like, I'll message you. I'll speak to you the next day. And I'm like, exhausted like it's killer, isn't it? Yeah.

Unknown 2:53

Having to be switched on all the time and just always on and there's this kind of preconception that we have to be this outgoing, gregarious personality to be successful. And that's definitely not true.

Unknown 3:04

No, no, definitely not. But before we get into it, I think it's really important that I think there's lots of different people doing these summits in different ways. And people have got different definitions of what a summit is probably the purpose of our conversation. Just give us an outline of what we're going to be talking about. What is a summit in the context of what were we talked about today? Yeah,

Unknown 3:19

so the type of summit that I run is a five day free event, and then you have multiple speakers, maybe five a day speaking, it's pre recorded. It goes out at set times and there's maybe 24 hours for the attendees to actually listen to the replays and watch everything for free so they register for free. And if they wanted to, then they can upgrade to get a pass like an all access pass, which then gives them access to all the recordings and maybe extra stuff. So yeah, just a five day free event is what I've run. There's so many variations of summits. You could do a three day you could do a hybrid and live event. There's just there's lots of different versions, but that's what I've stuck to a five day event that is free to register. And if you wanted to you can get the upsell.

Unknown 4:03

Got it. And so why do you think it works? What's the point of doing a summit we want to just talk about the advantages that you found and doing because one of the things I like about it is it's a really good way of growing your list. I like that about it because you get the speakers and maybe if you've got other affiliate partners, they will promote it. It's an exciting time. We think that's going to happen. That's really nice, because you're left with people who are warm, but also there's some good money to actually be made from what is a free offering to the audience.

Unknown 4:26

Yeah, I call it a win win for everyone involved, basically. So for the attendees, obviously, they're gonna get high value, and it's free to attend. You don't have to purchase anything. If you're not in the bliss in your business to be able to afford anything. You can get a lot of free advice, basically. But then there's the opportunity to upgrade as I said, but then for the speakers, they also because you can have affiliates and they can also get paid. So if they were to share it enough and get enough people from their audience involved, they might get an affiliate fee from it so they're going to make some money from the event. And then most events are specifically mine. I do do this is you have like an opt in so all the speakers have something free that they give away and it's an opt in, and so they can get email subscribers as well. And then for me as the host, I make all of these new connections. I build authority by hosting this big kind of event that's really got all these amazing, incredible speakers from the industry by grow my email list, of course, because every speaker is sharing it, they are getting it in front of new people. And then there's also making money from the sales of the All Access Pass and anything extra. So everybody wins. And that's why I believe it's just a really brilliant way because nobody is getting the short end of the stick in a sense. Everyone who participates everyone who gets involved is getting something out of it. And I just love that idea.

Unknown 5:52

I really like it as well. I don't if you know this, but the very first summit that I ever ran. I think I might have no I'm pretty sure it was during COVID and one of my markets was I was teaching performers how to get more gigs. I had a membership in that space. And one of the things I thought was a really good opportunity was to serve that market at a time when they were really struggling because all the entertainers who I was supposedly helping now couldn't have any gigs or they were doing a few gigs online. It wasn't really anything like the same so they all have this problem of i What do I do? I thought this industry really just needs some hope. What can I do? I got a free online event on and so that's what I did. I did a summit I invited a bunch of other speakers in the market you and you all had audiences and lists Facebook, Instagram followers, all that sort of good stuff, and had them on this great lineup for a few days. And yes, I grew my email list but I was able to do something really nice for the market and actually did financially very well that will be awfully nice as the bad thing is optional. And I think that's really nice. You get to serve people. And then of course because people spend so much damn time with you over even get to a one day Summit. I've seen a couple of those around, right whether it's a one day or a five day I've seen really really long ones that are like a 14 days, if people spend more time with you, and you're hosting the summit and they keep saying the relationship with you is amazing. So converting those people to customers of yours later, through any other conversion mechanism, say a webinar or a sales video or a flash sale, you know, through calls, however you got to convert them. It works really, really, really well. Because you've sort of put your best foot forward first you've given first and then they spend some time with you and really and build rapport with you. What what I want to talk about is like was at the top of the episode, not everybody is a professional speaker or performer like me, and but you're not I mean, although you did some performance when you were younger you were you were a singer and stuff and you worked in bands and stuff, didn't you? But not everybody has that level of confidence. And some people might even label themselves or actually be introverts and analyse the market you really have so I'm just curious. It sounds like the kind of thing that you have to have a lot of confidence. You have to have a lot of energy for if you're going to put together one of these summits and for a lot of people that look at this what looks like a huge mountainous thing that they they want to achieve, which is this massive summit and I'm nobody and who am I even doing this to be taught at the conference or the connections that have been taken. But how do we do this in a way that doesn't completely write off a month of our time afterwards? Cuz it just absolutely sucks our energy. Yeah,

Unknown 8:02

that's a great question. So it was quite funny when I decided to do this. It took me it took me a year of going back and forth thinking I want to do a summit but I just I'm terrified of interviewing people. I never interviewed anybody. Before I started my virtual Summit. Literally

Unknown 8:19

doing a virtual summit the first time you ever interviewed somebody? Yes, the very first

Unknown 8:23

time, I did it for that virtual Summit. And when I figured out all of the tasks, the long list of tasks that needed to be done, and I mean, there was a lot that goes into it, so I'm not going to discount that. It was a daunting thing. I'm not gonna lie. There's a lot to do and a lot going into it. But the main thing that stopped me was interviewing people, interviewing people who I really looked up to who I really Yeah, like in my industry, they've made a name for themselves. They were well known and you

Unknown 8:49

wouldn't know this sort of status gap like who am I to be interviewing this? This godlike figure, kind

Unknown 8:54

of Yeah, so I at first was like, I'm not going to approach certain people because that's never going to happen. And then I kind of quickly thought, but this is a really good opportunity. It was around COVID When I did mine it was I started organising it in the April May time so we were still in lockdowns and I decided that I had to go for it because that was one way that I could really reach people at that time. Everyone was like online, virtual. It all made sense. So I went for it. And yes, being an introvert, coming into this thinking, I've got to connect with all these people. I got to interview people, I got to manage all of these things and then promote it all this just there is a lot that goes into it. But I quickly found really easy, quick ways to make it easier, which I can go into. But there's just you've got to be prepared for the amount of work that goes into it. But also find ways that work for you and find ways that work for your energy and your personality. So yeah, making sure that you do it strategically in a way that works for you. That's that's one of

Unknown 9:59

things I like as well. And maybe this is just my default position is the first time you do it is the hardest time. Right The First I do pretty much anything is outside, but in particular with a summit. You've got everything set up from Ground Zero, you've got like a flat piece of ground like It's like virgin soil, right? You've got to dig it out and build the foundation and then you've got to erect something on top of it. You've got to build the whole thing from scratch. Whereas for me if you build it as an asset rather than a thing that you'd have to rebuild from scratch every year, when we build ours. Ours is in a particular automation. It's in our system and it means that each year when we roll our eyes out, we go into that automation, we re familiarise ourselves with how the hell of work because obviously you forget to be between us. And then you go oh yeah, I just need to go into there, change some stuff need to change some dates and update some of the copy and just spice it up and make it more relevant or I was going to also update the names of the speakers and stuff like that. So I think one of things we need to realise is yes, the first time you do is going to be the hardest amount of work, the biggest amount of work, but then each year, just incremental. And then you look at a summit that a number of years on like any event, you've got a live event, look at an event that's a number of years on all the tiny nuances, lots of tiny little things that they do. You go How are you doing all these things because they didn't start from day one from summit one from event one doing that thing. They started off with the best they could do at the time. Then the next year, they thought, Oh, I'm going to add this bit. And then the next year, I'm going to add that bit on. But you can only do that if you've started off with an asset that you can just keep running if you have to rebuild the damn thing from scratch every year. That's how you can't be doing that. But the first year it's gonna be the most work so yeah, let's get into some of those methods that you've identified specifically for people who feel that this is a real energy drain, maybe a more introverted, quiet people. What are the kind of things that those kinds of people could really tap into to make this less of a daunting task?

Yeah, so I've got five key things to ensure it's going to be a success and to make it less exhausting, basically,

I've got my pen out. I mean, you can't see you from there. Too much information listeners, got a pad out there. The

first one is to ensure that you have 90 days or more to plan and organise. There's so many people that decide to do a virtual summit and they go I'm going to do it in six weeks time, maybe eight weeks time. And that is not enough time to organise. That's not enough time for you to get speakers and find the speakers that can actually promote it and put it into their promotional calendar because they need to have the time to schedule things and make sure that it aligns with what's going on in their schedule. You need to be able to like when you start the 90 days, the first thing you do is you find those speakers, and if you want to have some bigger names, you need to give them a lot of time to kind of be able to get back to you. You're going to do a lot of cases you're going to find that a month is going to go by pretty quickly before you get many people who have committed so if you're not starting 90 days or earlier, you're going to miss out on people you're going to put a lot of stress on yourself. And it really is very difficult to do that. So the first one is be sure that you give yourself 90 days or more to plan and organise

out to the big speakers 90 days out like 90 days out. You're starting to do that.

Yes, the first thing that's the first thing you do find those speakers at least 90 days before you want to launch it. But I do have a task list that I'm going to be giving away so that you don't have to figure all this out and find out what those tasks are. I've got a 90 day task list. To help you with all of those to get you started which

which love it. So the first thing we're gonna do is 90 days lead time. Cool. Yeah. Second thing.

So the second thing is narrowing your niche show being clear on who you're targeting and who you want to attend. And why why they are going to be attending. So a very specific topic, a very specific reason why you're putting this on for that audience. And this is crucial because if you're too broad, you're going to find that when you want to start emailing people and getting them involved in other things in your business, promoting to them. You're not targeting enough to what their businesses and what they actually need. So your summit needs to be a very narrow niche and very specific, especially if you're going to have a launch event right after as well. It needs to be tied into who that product or service is for. So it's very crucial to have a narrow niche.

And when you say narrow niche, do you see somebody more successful if folks are narrowing by who as in business for owners of Bengal cats or what you teach? So in our case email marketing,

I would say both you need to do both. So it would be life coaches, maybe even wellness coaches, email marketing, so that's specific. That's how specific I would go.

I like it a lot. Because I think last season a lot of marketing when I'm giving critiques or people's work or when I'm writing in coaching our writers here at your marketing heroes, one of the bits of feedback I give a lot is specificity like who we told them to hear be specific. I see on sales pages all the time when people are using our frameworks, a salesperson, like say some specific don't say something's going to be bigger. Tell me how much bigger or it's going to be better. What does that mean? being specific about exactly who your target is? It's great. so narrow that niche down. He says four of these things.

There's five so the next round, okay. All right, so number three. The next one is strategically choosing your speakers. And this is absolutely essential, because if you don't really think this through, you're not going to get enough people attending you're not going to get enough people registering. So it's important to find enough speakers that have the kind of audience that you want to target. And they have a good following a decent following. So a few 1000 people on their socials maybe, and they are willing to promote and I don't make it a requirement. To promote I don't say that but I do impress that it makes the summit better. I talk about how we reach more people, we can help more people if you're able to promote it, and that's what makes the summit better. If you're not able to promote it doesn't mean you can't be involved but it's really essential to the success of the summit. And so those people are generally they have medium to larger audiences not too probably not too big, because if they have millions of subscribers, millions of followers, they're probably not going to promote they're the type of people that you get in as the A listers as those who are going to bring people in because they see the name and they want to see them speak. So you have these different tiers more aliases than those in the middle who are crucial to bringing in the right kinds of people. And then maybe you would have a few people that have specifically chosen for their topics. And they might not have much of an audience but their topics are really super specific, super, super valuable and something that your audience really wants. So

I love this. I love this. When we're organising our summits, we have a spreadsheet and one of the columns is which of these three things does this speaker satisfy? Because we make sure you've got a balance. Otherwise you'll end up with loads of a list as a no audience or where the content is not great. So we have it broken down. Are they bringing status which is like the a list of thing are they bringing the celebrity the name to it right or of a content because you know that the audience needs to hear what's being shared, but they may not have audience or you've got an audience based speaker where I'm sure that contents gonna be great. Otherwise you just wouldn't have them on the content goes without saying is gonna be good enough. But actually they've got the perfect audience I think about as a status content or audience speaker. Yeah, I think it's amazing how we're so aligned on that. I'm not surprised. But

there's one bonus kind of tip though and after on this. This is what I learned after two years of the summit, and it is to actually get your speakers to commit to a date that they're going to email and post. I say I say this, like it's not a requirement, but when I collect their information, they put their information into a form as part of that form. There is date selectors for what date can you promote email, what can what dates can you promote for social media, and they put them in there and then I send them a copy of that. So they can then schedule it on the dates that they kind of agreed to. And it just gives like a micro commitment in a sense that they've already said they can do it. They've probably checked because they had to put in the day so they've checked the calendar, and then they can actually schedule to get it planned in and get it done. Instead of just saying there will be promotional needed these will be the dates, but giving them that commitment of just having to put that date in it really improved things in the two years after that. So

that was a great tip. That's amazing. Okay, so we've talked about strategically choosing the speakers, not just anybody you've heard of, but you're making sure there's a good range of people making sure that they've got a date to promote. Love it. So what's our fourth tip

number four is, this is one that I wish I had done more is using the tech that you already have, rather than investing in new stuff, trying new stuff. One thing that I'm sure most entrepreneurs fall into this trap is we get this kind of finding object we see new thing. We're like, oh, we'll try that. And we'll do that. We'll use that for this and then something else comes along and you start using that and then something else and then all of a sudden you've got I don't know if you're like me like to get lifetime access to these things. So I tend to do I have all of these different platforms that I've got maybe a lifetime access to, but then I'm thinking well, I'm going to host a summit. So I need this and I need that and I need all of these new things when I didn't really review the technology that I already had I was using, I paid for and that meant that I was adding extra costs which I could have avoided. And I also had the learning curve of learning something new on top of organising and planning. And that's that's quite exhausting in itself. So having a review of the tech that you already have the tools or software that you use, and seeing how you could utilise that instead of using something new or building something new like a website that's going to be all brand new. See, you can use what you've already got. I have a I think it's called out. I can't I can't quite remember what it's called. Now. I know stream yard does this but there's another one something live one stream. It allows you to schedule pre recorded videos and then they kind of go out as a live stream and I'm pretty sure that stream yard does this now and maybe it's other things that you can embed it anywhere. You can embed it into different websites, anywhere that you want. And that means that you could build and have your virtual summit go out anywhere on any kind of platform. So you could use I've got memorable I got a WordPress website. I've got heartbeat chat, which is another community thing. I got all sorts of different things that I could use instead of building something new. So I wish I had done this myself the first few years, just really thinking through the tech that I already have and use because there's so many ways you can make it easier, especially if you've got some kind of course platform. I know there's teachable and Kajabi and all these things it would embed in those and another way that you could make it easier for yourself is to have a cause for your speakers to fill out all of their information and it sends them all the stuff that they need. So you have it all in one platform and you could utilise the systems you've already got to make it happen.

So you could even add like a membership area or something like that, like most of us do. But of course, that'd be a great place to put all of the resources that help us be able to promote stuff you could put in swipe or sample emails or social media posts. They all be in there. Rather than having to like do something fancy what we do is we just have only been a Google Drive and we're like here we go like rather than have it like what the whole area of stuff I just keep it really simple because loads of things that people log into. They just don't I think the other side of the hotel is you've already got is using technology the audience is already familiar with as well. The amount hasn't been on some it's not like we're using Liberty lipstick and I'm like what's Flippity lipstick I don't mean that obviously but like what is it you've got to like give it permission for days and it's not quite load and everyone's pissed off. Whereas if you go that's the reason we host I was on Zoom because like everybody's been on a zoom goal. So if we broke up the whole thing through zoom, people like it's happening on Zoom, I know what that is, like we want to reduce the amount of friction for the speakers, for the attendees and for us and just go what is everybody else already using? Yes, they're all these crazy ass platforms you could definitely use, but you don't need to, because you're just adding more friction for you. And for everybody else. Nobody's winning in that situation. So I think I think I'd love it. Yeah,

that's exactly if you putting on the stress of having to learn something new for yourself and for your audience. It's just going to make things more difficult. So I just say do a review of all the tech that you've already got what you use for your own platforms. Your own content, everything you've got, you could use it in a way that works. It's great to have a system that does all of it. So like if you have affiliates to get them to sign up and register and everything if they could just sign up like anyone else would. And then they have an extra area that just gives them everything that they need. It just makes things much more simple and streamlined for the speakers, which is crucial because what makes us human is the speakers if you don't have them being able to prepare and promote it and feel confident that you know what you're doing and all of these things then it just makes it much more difficult and less accessible. So yeah, review your tech is the fourth one. Yeah, and number five, and number five, I kind of touched on it just then. So I highly recommend pre recording but I have seen recently kind of hybrid live events going on that seemed to work really well just having a bit of a live element to them. And why I suggest pre recording is especially if you're an introvert because that week if you're going to be having to be present, even if it's five days, three days, three days, whatever you decide if you're gonna have to be on and present in presenting that whole time that is going to be a lot of energy. So what I do is I do interviews, all of them are interviews pre recorded, and then use something like one stream live or stream yard so that you can stream them as if they are live. And then it's all kind of set up in the background and when it comes to summit where you can kind of sit back and just observe and correct the things that need correcting as things go rather than having to be the face of it all. That is just a suggestion if you are more introverted, more not not as kind of forward facing and wanting to be on all the time, but the hybrids are just a mixture. Maybe you would have a few live workshops during the week, which I'm going to do this year and I'm actually getting other people involved in those so it won't just be me having to show up all the time as well. So it's collaborating in smarter ways to do that kind of stuff, too. Yeah, that would be number five for me.

I love it. I love it. I love it. As you said earlier, there's a lot of pieces that make up all of these pieces as well as more beyond this, like how do you source because all of these to do with reminding speak and getting them to show up and then there's so many pieces to unpack this and you mentioned it during that so that you've got this checklist of things to make sure so I'm a big fan, like with any larger project, any new campaign and you think we're doing a new promotion, the first thing we do is create that checklist. Maybe we don't end up the day before about percent and realise, oh shit, that graphics not on that page, or Oh, I haven't thought of that one thing or haven't talked to that person. So how we find out more about that checklist and more about you. Yeah, so

I have a task list actually, yes, all of the tasks from start to finish that I started with and I've added to over the last four years. I'm going to give that away and it's at Fifi mason.com forward slash e m s that you'll find it and yeah, just right from thinking about the name of it. What Nisha you're going to have to the follow up afterwards and be back for your speakers and all of that. So all the way from start to finish it has all of the tasks on it.

I love it. So you would have Fifi Mason FYI, FYI mason.com/e m s until the initial email marketing show, we'll be able to download that that's absolutely amazing. Love it, love it. We're gonna get into this week's

subject line of the week. What do you got for us? Okay. Okay, so

this one is one that I sent out during my second summit, I believe. And then I've used it in a lot of campaigns since because it works really well. And it's very highly specific to my audience, but it is introverts get lonely too.

Wow. Okay. I like this. I like first of all, that's very specific, which is what all of us it's just you've got three specific people that I talk about. That's the point like they should be they should all be specific because bland broad sentiments are never gonna work as well as specific ones. And I love this idea that you've taken something which is an assumption that interests don't get lonely because what they want is to be alone. And you've spun that into Oh, yeah, that into the sort of new truth. Yeah, I love it. Absolutely love it. So introverts get lonely too. Thank you. So much being on the show today. Thank you for sharing all of this absolute gold. Absolutely right. If anybody wants to go and get that full task list, even if you're right now thinking I don't have everyone I want to sum it. What I would say is, it's worth going and downloading 50s task list for two reasons. One, in case you ever do, you don't miss out on the steps. But secondly, there's going to be stuff within that task list which you can apply to other things that you do within your business. So I will definitely go and download that over Fifi. mason.com/e m s VT. Thanks so much for being on the show. Thank you. I'll see you all next week. Remember, hit subscribe on your podcast player. We'll do this every single week on email marketing Wednesday, hit subscribe. The new episode will download automatically. I'll be back with Kerry next week. So

make sure you hit subscribe on your podcast player to automatically download new episodes of The New Email Marketing Show every email Marketing Wednesday.