This is a snippet of a live training we held during Sell With a Summit: Podcaster Edition. Krista from Summit in a Box is sharing her insights on how podcasts and summits work together to grow your business and monetization options for your podcast.
Jenn: So I will go ahead and let Krista introduce herself a little bit before we jump in so y’all can get to know her a little bit better.
Krista Miller: Thank you. Thank you, Jenn. Hey, everybody so happy to be here at Sell With a Summit. I love that this one is focused around podcasts, like so genius. But my name is Krista. I run a company called Summit in a Box where our goal is to help entrepreneurs run summits that 3X or more their business, as far as revenue list, growth, visibility, everything goes without starting the process.
And I think I’m going. Now, what, what am I doing? This is so stressful. Like our goal is to make it easy. So we have every template, training, tutorial resource you would ever need. We have over a thousand resources for hosting a summit touches, make the process easy. I have a podcast called the summit host hangout podcast.
And basically I’m just a big summit nerd. So I’m so excited to be here. And, the podcast, plus the summits together is just perfection. So this is awesome. Yeah,
Jenn: I’m really excited. It’s some of us are a great way to build a podcast audience and start monetizing the podcast sometimes even before you launch it.
Krista was my co-host for the last edition of Sell With a Summit. So we love nerding out about summits together.
Okay. So first off, what would be one thing that you would say to someone who’s like, I think I might want to host a summit, but it seems like a lot of work. I’m not sure what I should do it on. What would you tell them to get them going?
Krista Miller: Yeah, I love this. So the first thing I would say to them is it is a lot of work.
So if that’s something you’re not ready for, or don’t have the capacity for just know, okay, maybe I want to do this later. Maybe right now, it’s not my time. Or look at the things that are making you busy. Why are you saying, I don’t know if I’m going to have time for this and is there anything. You can pause or staff doing to make time for a summit.
So for me, when I was thinking about my first time I was doing so many things, I could not have kept doing all those things and plan that first summit. And so I was like, really took a step back for the first time ever. And it was like, okay, I’m doing so many things to try to grow my business, what isn’t isn’t working.
So for me at that time, I was publishing weekly YouTube videos. I had never had a client tell me they found me through a YouTube video. So I stopped doing that. I was publishing a weekly blog posts along with that, and weekly newsletters for two different websites. So I dropped down to every other week for both of them.
I was posting on Facebook, my Facebook page all the time, Twitter, 10 times a day, staff doing those things because they weren’t working like, and it wasn’t stopping anything that was working. I was just stopping all the things that weren’t right. And now I had time for that summit. So look at your business and see if there’s anything like that, where you can just straight up stop because it’s not working or something where you’re just like, I’m just going to pause this for now.
And I can start doing it again after my son, that when I’ll have a bigger audience, it’ll pay off more anyways. And then, then from there, if you’re sexing, okay, I want to do it, but I don’t know what to do. What about. That’s when it’s time to look at your audience and your topics. So the first thing I want you to look at is the audience you have for your business.
And I’m thinking, I talked about this in my presentation and I’m totally blanking right now.
But look at your audience for your business. If it’s a wide audience narrow your summit, like Jenn did with this one, it’s just for podcasters makes everything so much easier. And then you can talk to people in that narrow down audience and say, Hey, what kinds of things do you need help with? And they will tell you what to host their summit about.
Like, again, Jenn, as an example, What do people with podcasts have trouble doing, growing an audience and monetizing boom, here’s Sell With a Summit, solve our problems, sell your app, solve your audience’s problems. That’s what you want your site to do. So that would be the first place to go with that.
Jenn: Perfect. Yeah. That’s exactly what I would tell people too.
So what is something that you see trip up a lot of upcoming summit hosts? People who’ve never hosted a summit, what is something that they underestimate or don’t think about until it creeps up and kind of
Krista Miller: hits them? I would say it is the audience and topic thing. I’m not getting specific.
And I find that because. It is easier. It’s straight up easier to just think of the first audience that comes to mind. The first topic in general, something like how to grow your online business or. I don’t know how to be a happier mom or something like that. That’s the first thing we think of. Cool. Let’s also someone on that and we don’t put in the effort to get more specific and that’s where the issues come in.
And that’s where my students can submit their ideas and everything to me before they continue. So I can be like, That’s a problem. And that’s like the biggest time, like, please don’t post a song about this. Let’s see what we can do. Listen. Some of them don’t and the ones that don’t are the ones that then struggle they open registrations and they’re like, why are my conversion rates so low?
Why is no one signing up? Why aren’t my speakers promoting and everything like that. It’s going to come back and tie around to that audience and topic, because if you have an audience and topic that people aren’t excited about, that’s not unique that doesn’t stand out. Your speakers, aren’t going to want to promote people.
Aren’t going to be excited to sign up when they see it. So I would say that. So that’s the biggest thing is taking the easy way out and just choosing the first audience and topic that comes to mind. And I’m like, I could preach on that all day long.
Jenn: I mean, I did an entire session on this. Yeah.
Krista and I are definitely on the same board with that because I did a summit. My very first summit was for creative entrepreneurs and. I went to general with it. I did tracks which helped, but it was about how to grow your creative business. And I got great responses, but it was, if you go to general, You’re going to attract nobody and it just makes everything so much harder.
So we have another couple of questions. Becky is wondering how it works for non B2B stuff. So, I believe Becky your is yours, the literary escape membership, and you’re doing a podcast around that. So, what would you say to someone like Becky who isn’t going and selling B2B?
Krista Miller: Yeah. So I have all kinds of students who aren’t in B2B and everything still applies.
You still have to get specific with the audience, which, it sounds like you might already kind of have that down. Well, readers. If your audience is readers, we can get more specific than that too, even. But everything else still applies. You still have to have a specific topic that solves a problem.
One of the most recent non B2B summits I went to was for like parents of toddlers. Everything was like set up the way I teach it. And heck yeah, I went to that. I bought that all access pass because they were solving a problem. I have, please help me not destroy my toddler and help her not destroy me.
That’s what I want in my life. So everything else can still be the same. The biggest thing I see trip up non B2B people is the speakers because it seems like there might be a little bit more issues finding. Speakers who have the same target audiences. You like it’s easier. Like doctors, other thing coming to mind if you’re hosting a summit that would involve doctors like going and reaching out to doctors, you know, but they don’t have an audience.
Well, if they don’t have an audience, they can’t promote something. You need to be careful about with a B to C summit, is that you’re still getting speakers who have the audience you’re trying to attract. That’s the biggest thing I see trip up not in B2B summits, but everything else. Is really the same.
If you have any specific questions or anything, you’re like, ah, I don’t think this is the same. Let me know Becky. But yeah, I’ve seen a lots of incredible summits that won’t be to be okay.
Jenn: Cool. So yeah, Becky’s thinking that authors would be her speakers for this particular use case.
Krista Miller: Yeah. I mean, as long as the authors have an audience of the kinds of readers you want to attract, then that is great.
Jenn: So Cynthia is wondering what are some ways that you can monetize a summit? So I know we’ve done a bunch of different things, so,
Krista Miller: yeah. So I feel like there’s three that I talk about. First one is the all access pass, which you would have seen as you signed up for this summit.
So someone signs up. For the event for free and they get access to the presentations, they get touched, they have a great experience, but if they want more, if they want, maybe we’ll ongoing access to the presentations is usually included if they want some awesome bonuses. If maybe they want special access to some certain lives that’s intro sessions or anything like that, you sell it as an all access pass.
So it’s like an upgrade to the summit that is. The first way and easiest way to monetize your summit because you know, it’s something people want. If they’ve signed up to your summit, there’s a decent chance. They would want that. Average industry standard conversion rates for that are like three to 5%.
Generally, the way I teach things, my students are seeing 15. 15 ish percent between 10 and 20% usually. And that can be huge. My first summit ever, I think, oh yeah, I brought in $16,000 through the all access pass alone. The most recent one I just got done with Brendan $80,000. So there is just the range is crazy.
I had a student who brought in a hundred thousand dollars through her all access pass in her first summit with no audience. And I was like, what happened? That’s amazing. So, you know, all that has passed as an incredible thing to do, just keep in mind like a $20. Offer. That’s just access to presentations.
Isn’t going to sell, well, you need those bonuses. You need some stuff that’s going to make people want to buy. So that’s the first thing. Second thing is to sell your offer after the summit. So if you have product services, whatever that is, it should be related to the audience of your summit. Of course, something they want should be related to the goal of the summit as well, launch that after your summit starts.
So with Sell With a Summit, last time we ran this. Day five. I hosted a masterclass and it sold my son in the box program. I provided, we provided a ton of value through it. I’ll say that, but I think I opened the doors and I was like, Hey, if you want to make your summit easy, here is this offer I have for you best launch I’ve ever had for my course.
So if you can launch your thing through that and you can also get sponsorships. So, companies basically paying you to get in front of your audience. In different ways, which Jenn, I think I have never really successfully done sponsorships. I know Jenn did a great job this time around and that’s another way to do it as well.
Jenn: Yeah. It’s and especially with sponsors because you can bring them on as speaker. So every single one of my sponsors is also a speaker. Krista’s a sponsor. Nicole’s a sponsor Lindsay with hello. Audio is a sponsor. The script’s a sponsor and they’re all speaking. They all have amazing sessions. Sponsors are really, I’ve had a lot of fun.
We didn’t end up doing them much with the last edition, but I went as all out as I could with this one. And it’s been great. I’m really excited to have sponsors for this one because it just adds so much value for everybody attending the summit too.
So as a podcast or yourself, what are some ways that you would suggest that podcasters kind of use their summit with their podcast to boost both of them?
Krista Miller: I love it. So I am actually at the summit as an attendee as well, to get more ideas for this because, oh my goodness. If I can use a summit to grow my podcast and vice versa. Cool. But the first thing that comes to mind for me and the thing I’ve done before. It’s oh my goodness. You have all of these awesome past guests who, you know, talk about great things.
You know, the ones that deliver the most value, you know, the ones who were willing to promote their episode. Cool. You already have a bank of speakers to pull from. They knew, know who they are, or they know who you are. They connected with you. They’ve promoted you before. There are so many things working together for you to already have an awesome bank of speakers to pull from.
So I would say that is the easiest way to make the two play off of each other. Pull your past guests as summit speakers. And when you get new summit speakers, cool. Invite them to your podcast after the event is over. And those just build on those things. I actually had a student who hosted a summit last week and all this year, the only People who had been on her podcasts since January, maybe even like December, where were her stomach speakers?
Every single summit speaker came on her podcast as a guest. And that was just a way to build interest for her summit, for the podcast audience she already had. So I thought that was really cool too. She said it was a lot of work and like a lot of logistics, but I mean, really, if you. And I think that was because of how much even farther ahead she had to be planning.
She had to get yeses, get them on the podcast, get everything ready in time for it to all go live before her summit started. Which kind of gives me a headache, but it’s a really cool idea. So I love how your speakers can kind of come into play on both sides of things. There.
Jenn: And one thing that I didn’t end up having time for this time around, but one thing I want to do for the next one is as I’m editing the sessions in de script, go, and pull out pieces of it and put them into another D script project and kind of make your own patchwork quilt of the speakers and do podcast episodes out of that.
So it’s another thing I’m going to. Play around with, for the next one.
Krista Miller: That’s really cool. I could do like a top 10 tips episode and pull out like a couple little snippet like that.
Jenn: Yeah. It makes it so much easier because then you also have less podcast content, which is always great.
If you want to learn more about how hosting a virtual summit can help you grow and monetize your podcast – without sponsors! – then you’ll definitely want to check out Sell With a Summit: Podcaster Edition. We covered topics around virtual summits, podcasting, and monetizing your podcast during this free event and you can still get access to it all! Just click the link. 🙌
Learn more about Krista at https://www.summitinabox.co/