18: How to Launch a Money Making Virtual Summit

Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host, Destiny Kopp. And in this podcast we're covering actionable tips to grow your online course business. And I have a special guest with me today. I have Eden Fried. Eden is the Digital Product Lady. After bailing on her plan to attend law school back in 2016, Eden decided to try her hand at entrepreneurship instead. Since then, she has mastered the art of making a full time income with digital products. Also, she is the host of the Rebel Boss Ladies podcast and founder of Rebel Boss University, a membership community where she teaches rebels how to create and launch a digital product within 90 days. When EDA is not at work, she can be found at the gym throwing around some moderately heavy weights or re watching an episode of Friends or How I Met yout Mother for the millionth time. And Eden, I have a really fun fact for you.

All right.

When I was in my 20s, I won from a radio show a trip out to LA to see a live taping of Friends.

Oh, you're kidding. That would be my dream come true.

So it was the episode that Charlie shared Sheen was a guest on, so he appeared as a guest in the one where Phoebe got the chicken pops. And I'm sure you remember that.

Oh, yes. Oh, yes, I know that one. I know them all.

Yeah, it was a great one. It was so awesome to be there live and just see how they, you know, filmed those TV shows, you know, right there with the live audience. It was awesome.

Super cool.

So, Aidan, why don't you tell us a little bit about you, your journey. I definitely want to understand why you decided not to attend law school and go into entrepreneurship. That was a huge decision on your part. So tell us all about your journey and how you got to where you are today.

Absolutely. I'd love to. First of all, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I'm really excited about our conversation today. So my story, like you were reading in the bio, is a little bit unique. I never really planned to start a business. In fact, I didn't know that I had it in me. I kind of felt like entrepreneurship was something that other people did and I didn't have those genes. But back up a few years and I was in a full time job, not really happy. I didn't really know where my life was headed. But I knew that at that point I wasn't really enjoying myself. So I decided, you know what, why not go to grad school? Why not go to law school? And you know, that's what people do. Right. Like, they either graduate college and get a job that they love or they tolerate, or if they don't like it, they go back to school so that they can try it again and find something else that's better suited for them. So I kind of went with what society tells you you're supposed to do. But right before law school was about to start, I had already gotten in and paid my seat deposit. Everything was all set, squared away, ready to go. I decided at the last minute not to go and to start a business instead. And I think that that was due in large part to some influence of my family. You know, a lot of people's family kind of, they support going back to school and they support that, like, extra degree. My family is full of entrepreneurs, and they were really encouraging me to avoid taking that quarter million dollars of debt and just try my hand at entrepreneurship, because what do you have to lose? You know, lots of people say starting a business is really risky, but isn't it equally as risky, if not more risky, to take out $250,000 in debt to go to grad school to get a job afterwards that you may or may not be able to pay off that debt or that you may or may not enjoy? So with that in mind, I decided to start a business online for at least a year to see how it went. And needless to say, I never went back to law school. And I just, you know, I've been doing the business thing ever since. So that's the short version of my story these last few years.

So I absolutely love it. And speaking from someone who has three different college degrees, I definitely think that, you know, whatever decision people make, I think it's the right one for them. But I really like what you said about, you know, going back to school and taking on that debt and then having that risk of, you know, let's just say you did it. You went back to school, you went into debt $250,000, and then you into a law firm, and you hated it. I mean, that would have been. That would have been awful.

Yeah, it's definitely not suited to my personality. But when you're so young, it's hard to make decisions that are good for you because you barely know yourself. So I always say, like, do what feels good for you in the moment. What makes the most sense for you. Don't make decisions that are going to trap yourself for the next few decades.

Great advice. And today we are talking about all about virtual summits. And I know that I've listened to your Podcast. I was very much intrigued about the Virtual Summit that you ran here recently, and I think you made a good amount of money from that. I'm sure you'll talk about that today. But for those in the audience who might not be familiar with what a Virtual summit is, can you tell us a little bit about what it is and give us some background there?

Sure. So a virtual Summit, you can actually think of it as kind of like an online conference. So instead of having to pay your ticket to the conference and get a plane ticket, if you don't live local or grab a hotel for a few days, you don't have to do any of that. It's all hosted virtually online. And the cool part about virtual Summits is that most of them are actually 100% free to attend. Now, obviously there are some restrictions. Usually if they are free, you would only have access to the material for a limited amount of time, which is the format that I followed. But it's just the fact that it's virtual makes it really accessible to folks who may not have the budget or the means to attend an in person conference. And you can host a virtual Summit no matter what niche you're in, no matter who your audience consists of. I've seen virtual summits done in a wide variety of spaces, which is actually really, really cool to see. See. But yeah, they're kind of like this super accessible conference that you get to attend for free online in the comfort of your own home.

And what I like about that, and to me, the biggest draw of them is that they're accessible. Because at my point in life, you know, I'm busy with my kids at home, driving them here and there and all the sports activities and they're in school. And I mean for me to drop everything I'm doing also with my business and fly out somewhere to attend an in person event, it's not something I can do very often. So that's what I really like about them. So can you tell everybody why is running a Virtual Summit beneficial for your business?

That's a great question. You know, we always say our business is for our customer, right? Like everything that you do should be to benefit your customer. I always like to find strategies and things that I can do in business that benefit both me and my customer. Obviously, as business owners, we want to do things that we enjoy. That's the whole point of being in business. So that you call the shots. You create a business that you love to show up to every single day. So the Virtual Summit is both beneficial for you as the host, and also for your attendees. Now, the cool part about running a virtual summit is that you're actually working with a lot of people for one event. So at a virtual Summit, it's not just you who's speaking, it's all. All of the speakers that you invite. So my virtual summit had 28 speakers at it, and all of those 28 speakers brought their own audience to the summit, which meant that it wasn't just my audience showing up. It was everyone's audience coming together, which meant that it was really great for me, from the host perspective, to grow my audience that way. So in the span of three days, my list grew to by over 3,000 people who attended that virtual summit. And that was my very, very first virtual Summit. So for any folks listening who think you need to have a lot of experience to do something like this, that's absolutely not true. My very first virtual summit brought over 3,000 attendees. So in addition to having that big new audience, which is a major benefit, because obviously they're buying things during the summit, but you can also sell to them after the summit now that they're on your list, the other big benefit is that you're working with those speakers, and those speakers might be people that you've never really had a chance to work with in the past. So while you're hosting the summit, you're building relationships with those new speakers. For me, the benefits of building those relationships with speakers are really still coming to fruition months after the summit is already finished. I've been on multiple podcasts since then. I've planned multiple JV webinars. So since then. And I've just made lots of friends, which is always really important in the online marketing space. When you're working by yourself, it can get a little bit lonely. So having those friends is absolutely crucial. So, yeah, so growing your list, making those connections, and then obviously making a profit is a big benefit as well. And I know. We'll talk about that in just a minute about how a virtual summit actually makes money, but my summit made over $16,000, and again, that was my first time hosting it.

So, yes, and we are definitely going to dig into the numbers because I want everybody to hear what you did and what you accomplished there. And, you know, building your list, I mean, I can't even, you know, and I own a Facebook ads agency. I mean, building your list with 3,000 attendees would. If you were going to do that with list building ads, that's a chunk of change. So it's amazing that you were able to do that just through hosting a Virtual Summit. But what I loved about what you just said, because this is very important to me, was the making connections and the building relationships. And you almost can't place a value on that.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. You can only go so far alone, but you go much farther when you're working with other people.

Absolutely. So tell me, let's dig into the numbers. So how does a Virtual Summit make money? And we want to know all about your experience and how you, you know, made your $16,000.

All right, now we're getting into the good stuff, right?

Yes. Okay, everybody take notes here.

Yes. So virtual Summits can make money in a number of different ways. And there's really no right or wrong way to do it here. So I'm going to share with you what I did, also include some additional ways that you can work this to your advantage. So, like I mentioned initially, Virtual Summits are usually 100% free to attend. So for me, my Virtual Summit was free to attendees. And there were three days of the Summit. The next time I'm hosting it, there will be four days of the Summit. But basically, during one day of the summit or every day of the summit, there were about eight seminars speakers. Those speakers, interviews and presentations were available for free for 24 hours and then they expired. And the same thing is true for the next day of the summit. Those eight speakers presentations were available for 24 hours until they expired. Anybody who got a free ticket would have needed to watch all the presentations that they wanted to see before the presentations expired. If they wanted to have access to the presentations for life, meaning no expiration, they can watch it today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, then they would need to upgrade to what's called an All Access Pass. The All Access Pass is how the Virtual Summit makes money. Now, if you go and start peeking around other people's Virtual Summits, there's a wide range to how much an All Access Pass might cost. My summit, I wanted to keep things stupid simple the first time around. So I made my All Access pass cost $47. And if you bought the All Access Pass immediately after signing up for your free ticket within 15 minutes, you also got access to a bunch of other bonuses in addition to the All Access Pass. And the vast majority of people who upgraded ended up upgrading their ticket within the first 15 minutes of signing up for their free ticket. We had over 200 some people actually upgrade their ticket to the All Access Pass. And I believe the All Access Pass generated over $10,000 for the virtual summit, which is pretty remark especially for a first time Summit host. And there's lots of different ways that you can do that. The next time I'm running my virtual summit, it'll be a little bit more expensive and it'll have more bonuses in there. There'll be additional upgrade options. But again, the first time I did it, I wanted to keep things really simple. And now that I know what I'm doing, I'm going to be able to make them a little bit more complicated with success the next time around. I've seen Summit hosts sell their all access passes for over $70. I've seen them sell it for over $97, $147. But in most cases, Summit hosts will increase the price of the all access pass throughout. So during the pre promo period, meaning before the virtual Summit actually starts, it would be like a pre sale ticket at the door, it would cost a little bit more. After the summit is over, it would cost even more. And usually that's what I did. And most of the time Summit hosts will use that tiered approach to constantly increase the price, which also adds in a bunch of urgency to get people more apt to make that purchase. Now some other ways that you can make money for or from your summit, you can actually have people. And now I did not do this, but it's something to consider. And I was given the opportunity to do this. I just said no. But you can have representatives from different companies come and do a presentation for you during the summit that teaches a specific topic but also promotes a product. So usually these would be representatives from software companies. For example, I had like webinar Jam, they wanted to do a presentation at my summit. And so basically they wouldn't promote the summit to their audience, but what they would do is they would teach about webinars and then promote their webinar software with a unique deal that's only available to Summit attendees. And they would do so using my affiliate link, meaning anytime somebody purchased webinar jam through the summit, then I would make a commission. So that's definitely an option for you guys to consider if you're interested in doing something like that. Now for me, I said no to all those opportunities at the beginning because virtual summits are successful because the speakers bring in their audience. And the more spots you give to companies who aren't going to promote, the less successful your summit will be from a list building standpoint. So I was very, very cautious with who I gave my speaker spots to because I wanted to make sure. This was beneficial to my speakers, in addition to my audience, in addition to me. And the more that I would give away spots to companies, the less successful it would be for all of us all around. So I think that it's really important to just have a healthy balance there. There's nothing wrong with offering a few spots, but just definitely not all of the spots. The next way that you can make money with a virtual summit is with sponsors. And again, I definitely recommend balance here. I did have sponsors for my first virtual summit. I had three different sponsors and they were kind of all at different levels of stuff, sponsorships. And I really enjoyed working with sponsors. It was my first time doing so. So it was a huge learning opportunity for me and it was also a huge way to make money. So my Summit made over $6,000 from sponsorships the first time around, which obviously made the Summit. It basically covered all of my expenses. So right off the bat, I knew that the summit would make a profit because I had sponsors on board. That being said, even though there's lots of benefits to working with sponsors, the downside to working with sponsors is that you really need to cater your approach to make sure they're getting the return on investment, the ROI that they need in order to get value out of the experience. And that was a lot of pressure for me not to say that I didn't enjoy doing it because again, I love learning new things and trying new things. But this time around, I think I'm going to avoid working with some of the big shot sponsors out there because really want to make sure that I'm getting the most value out of it, that I'm focused on my ROI as a company in addition to giving a really beneficial experience to my speakers and my attendees. So again, there's really nothing wrong with doing it. There's a lot of benefits to doing it. You just kind of have to weigh the costs and benefits from your own perspective to see what's right, what works for you. So, yeah, so I would say those are the three main ways to make money from your virtual summit. And then the next way to do it is to use your summit as a lead magnet. Usually when we think lead magnets, we think little workbooks, ebooks, maybe a little mini course or something like that. But really, anything that brings in email subscribers is considered a lead magnet. So in a sense, a virtual summit is a lead magnet, and it's a pretty good one. It obviously takes a lot of work to launch and maintain. I spent countless hours working on the virtual summit but it brought in over 3,000 subscribers. Those are leads, which means on the back end of the Virtual Summit. At the end of the Virtual Summit, I was able to host a launch for my membership site and get new members into that program, and I was able to upsell some of those folks to coaching. So there's a lot of different ways that you can leverage those new leads from the Virtual Summit after the fact. Obviously, those profits aren't necessarily included in my $16,000 virtual summit number, but there still, it's still profit that came as a result of the Virtual Summit. And it's definitely something to consider, especially because it's such a great lead gen tool. Yeah. So those are all the ways that your Virtual Summit can make money.

So definitely a great lead gen tool. And the one question I have, though, and this is kind of off the cuff, if you would, but when you. So you had your Virtual Summit and then right after that you went in to launch your membership and maybe you sold some coaching and stuff. And at the end of your launch, were you extremely exhausted from doing the Virtual Summit and then a launch at the same time, back to back?

Oh, yeah. And I talked about this a little bit on my podcast, Rebel Boss Ladies, where I kind of went behind the scenes of everything surrounding this Virtual Summit. But I wasn't really sure what to do about my launch. I was kind of in this pickle where I had a vacation scheduled. My husband works a very traditional job. He's a resident in an oral surgery program. So his vacation is set in stone. Like, there's really nothing that I can do to work around it. Whatever week they say we get off, that's the week that we go on vacation. So I had this vacation coming up, which I was so looking forward to, because obviously the Virtual Summit took a lot out of me. And I could either launch my program right after the Virtual Summit or I could wait like a month after my vacation. I didn't want to think about it during my vacation. I wanted it to be one and done. And I wanted to be 100% on vacation because I was so incredibly burnt out. And I had asked for some input from other folks who have run Virtual Summits in the past. And I kind of got. I asked them, should I do the launch now? Should I do it later? Some people said, do it later. Some people said, do it now. The majority said, do it now while your list is warm. And so I did it. And I probably would not do it again that way because I was like you were saying, I was so, so burnt out. And the problem, I mean, the reason I was so burnt out was because I was doing the virtual summit 100% independently. I hadn't really hired a team to support me with this. I have people working under me for different aspects of my business. But I found it hard to delegate tasks for the Virtual Summit when it was all so new to me and I was kind of figuring out how to do things on my own. I'm sure some of you guys listening can relate to that. It's hard to delegate when you just, you don't know what you're doing. So this time around, I have a team of people supporting me for the Virtual Summit so I could realistically launch right after it and not be completely burnt out. But I'll probably wait a little while. Because when you're launching a Virtual Summit as an info product, launching an info product right after the Virtual Summit is exhausting for your list as well. You know, they have so much information already, why do they want even more information? So, you know, my plan is to really use the Virtual Summit in the future as a lead gen tool that is kind of like the preceding for my launch. That would probably take place about three to four weeks after the fact.

I definitely see the pros and cons there. There's no doubt about it. A few minutes ago you talked about there's a lot of different niches that you could host a Virtual Summit in. Can you tell us a little bit about why might a course creator want to host a Virtual Summit?

Yeah, that's a great question. As course creators, you really need to be growing your business at all times. There's that saying, if you build it, they will come. But once you've launched a course for the first time, you realize that's not necessarily true. You build the course and no one's going to come unless you've properly marketed it with different lead gen strategies. You might be running Facebook ads, you might be hosting webinars. Whatever it is that you're doing, you have to have people lining up to get on your email list so that you can actually sell them your online course. So that's really the number one reason why a Virtual Summit might be interesting for you as a course creator to bring in those new leads. Like I mentioned, I got 3,000 people over the course of three days to get on my email list. And because my Virtual Summit topic is so closely related, like so closely as in it's 100% overlap with what my products are all about, then I knew that everyone Signing up for my email list was an ideal candidate for my program. Now, my program isn't a one off course, it's actually a membership site, but it's the same idea. So the big picture here for you guys, if you're thinking about whether or not hosting a virtual summit is useful for you, pick a topic for your virtual Summit that's like 98% overlap with what your course is actually all about. So you need to create the sort of summit that is going to attract your ideal customers. That's going to be easier for some folks and more difficult for others. It really just depends on what your niche is. But I've seen lots and lots of course creators host virtual summits and immediately upsell them into their courses.

Excellent tip. So you've talked about how much money you've made and a lot of the tips that you have for us. Can you tell us about some of the struggles that you have experienced with hosting a virtual summit and maybe even some mistakes that we need to avoid if we're thinking about this?

Oh, yeah, I'd love to. I'm all about transparency and, you know, I think it's really important if I'm going to talk to you about how great something is, to also share some of the difficulties that kind of happen behind the scenes. So I started to mention this a little bit earlier, but I was doing this 100% independently. And just to kind of give you an idea of what that actually means, when you attend an event like this, usually they feel pretty flawless. They look really great. And I got a lot of feedback that my summit looked extremely professional, like very well done. And I don't take that lightly because only I know how much work went in behind the scenes. There was so much that went in. I was up for basically weeks on end working, you know, 12 to 18 hours, making sure that everything was perfect. And, you know, I was trying to make sure things were perfect. But between you and me, it was 100% not perfect. It was definitely an imperfect summit, but I just worked really hard to make it as perfect as possible. So that was a big struggle for me, like I mentioned earlier, was just working independently. And to that end, I had to manage a lot of different stuff independently. So I was managing 28 speakers. Every one of those speakers needed to turn in presentations, they needed to turn in their headshots, they needed to turn in their bios, they needed to share freebie links. I needed to edit all of their videos to include an intro and an outro, and I needed to pre Screen all of their videos to make sure that they were appropriate and that they fit what the expectations were of the summit. Because obviously my reputation is on the line and I only want to give top quality content to my attendees. So I needed to screen all of that content. That's about 28 hours of content right there. So managing all of the speakers, making sure they all enrolled in the affiliate program was another thing. Because speakers need to promote and if they don't promote, the summit is nothing. Right? They all have to bring their own audiences in order for us to have any audience at all. So I needed to create the affiliate program and I needed to give the speakers everything that they needed to promote. Which meant for about four weeks, I was writing their emails, I was sharing the social media graphics with them. By the way, those were all custom social media graphics specific to each speaker. I was sending them messages to say, hey, it's time to send another message to your email list. So there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes specifically related to managing all of those speakers and enabling them to be very successful, which obviously translates over to your success as the summit host. On the other side of that, months before I even started working with the speakers, I needed to set up technology. So I mentioned the affiliate program. I needed to set up a website, I needed to set up my email software, I needed to connect everything so that when somebody actually lands on the site and wants to sign up, that it would actually trigger them signing up and giving them a free ticket. And then if they upgraded to an all access pass, I needed them to remove them from the free ticket and give them access to that all access pass. So there's just so much technology stuff that goes into everything, addition to all of the video editing. So I would say definitely the biggest struggle going in was I had no idea, like absolutely no concept how big of an undertaking something like this really is. It really, it's a full time job going in the next time around. I've done it already, so the systems are in place and I know where I screwed up pretty badly. So I'm able to anticipate those things and make sure, sure that I'm very successful this time around. The biggest change that I've made is I have a virtual assistant now. So I basically do all of the pitching to my speakers, I invite all the speakers to the summit and then from there I use Asana as a project management tool. My virtual assistant knows what speakers have confirmed and then she takes the wheel and sends them next steps. And manages everything. So if someone's missing something, she. She hunts them down for that. Once they turn in all of their information, she puts it on the website. So there's like a whole system of things that follow after someone confirms when they're a speaker. And she manages all of that so that I don't have to worry about it at all. And I can do the stuff that's actually going to make the summit a success, like managing the promo materials and all that good stuff. So, yeah, I would say short answer to that question, I know it's pretty long winded there, but short answer is just really not understanding how big of an undertaking it is and all of the different elements that are involved and being prepared for that amount of workload.

So what I'm hearing through all of that is that it's definitely a lot of work. You did a lot behind the scenes, that from the outside looking in looked like it was all easy, but it was because you were, you know, staying on top of things on the, you know, kind of behind the scenes. So I guess my next question is, let's just say that we were thinking about launching a virtual summit. Let's just, you know, throw out a date and say October. When would we need to start planning for it?

At a very minimum, give yourself 90 days. I had exactly 90 days. It's kind of funny, but I literally had 90 days to do it. And I wish I had like two extra weeks. So I started much earlier. I gave myself like 120 days this time, even though I've done it before. So I probably really only needed that 90 days. But definitely give yourself time to screw up and to correct those screw ups and also give your speakers time. So the big hold up with hosting a summit is that speakers are busy and you don't really know what's on their calendar. So if you give them a deadline, you can expect that they're going to be three weeks late with the deadline. At least a portion of the speakers. For me, there was definitely a portion that was on time or early, which was always appreciated, but a lot of the speakers were very late delivering their content. And that's just because they're busy people and they're experts in their space. So they have a lot going on. So it's important for you to understand that and to prepare for it. If someone's late, it's not really their fault. It's your fault that you didn't build in enough buffer time. So for me, my next virtual summit's happening in late July. I'm asking my speakers to turn in all of their content by June 14, which is over a month before the summit actually takes place. Realistically, if someone hands things in two weeks late, I still have a month to get everything together that I need to do after the fact. So, yeah, I would say at a minimum 90 days, if you can add an extra two weeks to give yourself even more buffer time. But within those 90 days, you should know that you should almost instantly be pitching speakers the opportunity to participate because you need to give them a lot of time to get their stuff in order.

Great tips. As I'm listening to you go through all of this, I'm like, she needs to make a course on this. Do you have anything like that? Like a course or something that somebody could purchase to kind of, if they were thinking about doing a virtual summit?

Yeah, that's a great question. It's funny, you're definitely not the first person to say that to me. I've had a bunch of people start to ask me questions about how to do it. In reality, I don't have a course yet. It might be something on the horizon, to be honest, I'm not sure yet. I'm a very focused person and I'm very much into what I'm doing now, which is helping people to create and launch their first digital products within a 90 day window. But, you know, you never know. That might come in the future. I will give a shout out to somebody that supported me a lot, my friend Krista Miller. You guys can check her out at Suminabox. Co. I basically purchased her Asana template, which is basically a checklist of everything that you need to do to host a virtual summit in 90 days. You know, full disclosure that that checklist is just a checklist, right? Like it's not going to do the stuff for you, but it's going to tell you all the things that you need to do, which is very important when you're doing something of this size for the first time because you don't know what you don't know. So it's hard to think about things that you just, you don't know that you need to be thinking about. So she's done it before and she made this list of things and it was super helpful. If you're using Asana, you just add some deadlines in there and you have a great little project management tool that can keep you on track. So I definitely recommend checking her out as far as courses go. Who knows, maybe.

Well, thank you for sharing that and I'LL definitely be checking that out. And Eden, can you tell people where they can find you?

I'd love to, yeah. So I hang out a lot on Instagram. My handle is Eden Freed. Fried is spelled like fried F R I E D. You can also check me out@rebelbosses.com that's where the virtual summit's taking place. I have one coming up and I plan to host one every twice a year, every year if all goes well. So definitely check that out especially if you're interested in creating and launching a digital product. And my main website is edenfree.com if you go to edenfree.com podcast you can check me out at the Rebel Boss Ladies podcast where we talk about all things digital products.

Thank you so much Eden. Course creators, I hope you enjoyed this episode today. Would love it if you could rate and subscribe review on itunes or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day. Bye for now.