In my last edition of our Throwback Thursday Series (#TBT), I shared how — in 2013, two years into my business — I was bumping up against the edges of having a not-big-enough audience to generate the kind of income I was hoping for…
And how I solved that problem by launching the Video Superhero Summit — even though I thought I had nothing to offer. I didn’t have a lot of high-profile relationships or a large email list…
But I used the power of a great, well-executed idea to attract an all-star line-up — which added 10K people to my list and $100K in revenue.
That one event built my audience and put me on the map with high-profile JV partners… I went from being a complete unknown to having my online business legends asking ME to feature THEM — just so they could be on the line-up as a cartoon Superhero…
So, what do you think I did?
I repeated it.
4 more times!
Video Superhero Summit (May 13-24, 2013)
Social Media Superhero Summit (November 4-15, 2013)
Traffic Superhero Summit (March 24-April 4, 2014)
Online Business Superhero (July 7-18, 2014)
Author Speaker Coach Superhero (November 10-21, 2014)
I learned that once you have something that works, you want to rinse and repeat. And rinse and repeat. And rinse and repeat!
And that’s what I did…But I went a little overboard! 3 Summits in 8 months was WAY too much — and by the time the last Summit wrapped, I was DONE.
We had sold 946 Superhero Packs (featuring recordings of each of the 10 sessions) between the 5 Summits, for a grand total of $115,060.
I had also brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars in affiliate commissions and summit sales of my own courses.
Built my list up to over 50,000 people…
And commissioned 53 Superhero cartoon illustrations!
Was it worth it? 100%!!!
So what exactly did I do to make these Summits such a HUGE success — above and beyond having a great, well-executed idea and a whole lot of hustle?
That’s a great question… and the answer is — a lot!
So I’m going to focus on the 3 biggest lessons and needle movers:
#1 – It’s kind of hard to believe, but back in 2013, live streaming video (yes, the kind we now take for granted everyday through tools like Zoom) was BRAND NEW. And the only way to do it was through Google Hangouts on Air.
It was so new and complicated that I had to hire a specialist — one of the few people in the world — who understood how to hook up YouTube and Google Hangouts to actually make this possible.
And it was buggy AF! Sometimes it just didn’t work. Sometimes we got the livestreaming going but it wouldn’t record. Sometimes it just glitched in the middle of a session…
BUT, we did it anyway.
And we were the first to feature these online business and internet marketing superheroes in a way that people could see them LIVE… and interact with them on chat… and ask questions!
And the energy of that was new and exciting and even magical.
So I learned that it’s worth it to jump through a few extra hoops to leverage tools and strategies that other people weren’t vs simply doing things the fastest easiest way possible.
Because — when you do that — you standout!
#2 – I quickly discovered that Webinars, Events & Summits get a significantly lower opt-in rate than instant gratification PDFs, and that money is made when people show up live.
So, for every Summit, we created a Guide featuring top tips from each Superhero while teasing their upcoming Session!
And — to drive LIVE EVENT participation even more — we created high-value show-up gifts.
We designed an amazing infographic for each Superhero around their Session… like this one from Pete Williams!
By attending each Session live — people would get each infographic and ultimately fill their “event Playbook” one Session and one page at a time. Or, of course, they could also buy the Superhero Pack and get the complete Superhero Summit Playbook in one go. How cool is that?
And finally #3 – I was able to attract such a great line-up because I offered our presenters 3 bites at the apple.
I don’t know about you, but I get dozens of Summit invites every year and most of them are thinly-veiled list grabs — send 3 solo emails to your list of 5000 or more and you’ll have the honor of being on my Summit.
No thank you.
Why would I do that?
The opportunity cost of carving out that time on our editorial calendar (and everything it takes to prepare for my Session) is larger than the pay-off.
I KNEW I was approaching people who had much larger audiences and businesses than me, so I had to offer them a big enough win for them to say yes.
The superhero cartoon was great, but they needed to make money too!
So I gave each presenter 3 ways to get paid (which, BTW, also overcame the greatest potential objection to being on the Summit):
- they would get 50% commissions on any Superhero Packs their audience bought
(Everyone offers this, so it wasn’t special, but combined with the other 2 ways to get paid, it added up!)
- they could make an offer of $197 or less at the end of their live Session
(Since we limited each Summit to just 10 Superheroes, I thought higher price points would mean less to go around for everyone, so I capped everyone’s offer at $197. This had the unintended side effect of generating some incredible deals as presenters dropped the price of $497, $997 or even $1997 courses to fit this restriction — and our attendees knew they couldn’t find offers like this anywhere else.) - I would split my 50% commission on other partner sales with them
(This overcame the big objection, why would I send my audience to everyone else’s stuff? That’s true, but you’ll get paid for it!)
So, as you can see, by giving all my Superheroes 3 bites at the apple, they were stoked to say yes and promote!
That said, what I quickly learned is that not everybody honors their word.
Some people took me up on the opportunity to speak and to earn, but didn’t follow through on their promotions…
The most egregious present sent just 33 opt-ins. Others sent 100-300. And my top Superheroes, who I invited back, sent 500-1500.
Since I limited each summit to just 10 Superheroes — and needed each Summit to build my list by about 10K to make it worth my while — it was a HUGE hit to get less than 300 opt-ins from a Superhero.
This was one of the big reasons I stopped doing the Summits after 5.
I put so much into each Summit — and delivering a big audience for each Superhero — but many of them didn’t do their part.
I also discovered that many Superheroes didn’t know how to convert on a webinar or presentation.
So, not only did they not send traffic, they didn’t get sales — which meant I blew a spot and got little to nothing back in return.
But the thing that was a dealbreaker for me was that I discovered that not everyone in this industry has integrity and a commitment to delivering extraordinary value to their customers.
Despite my due diligence, there were a couple Superheroes in there that sold products they couldn’t fully deliver on and I had to clean-up the fallout, since I had made the recommendation.
My reputation became linked to theirs. And I wasn’t OK with that. That was a HUGE learning and — after that — I became a lot more careful about who I put in front of my audience.
So — while I did ultimately end up returning the Superhero Summit series after 5 Summits — I had already won big!
We closed out 2012 (the year before my first Summit) with about $175,000 in sales…
In 2013 — after our first 2 Summits — we almost doubled our business to $305,974.
Then in 2014 — after 3 more Summits — we more than doubled our business to $648,374!
Our 2-year focus on list growth had really paid off!
And it just continued from there!
In 2015 — the year after I closed our Summit Series to focus on launching our own courses with my new 50K+ person list — we took Live Your Message to $1,453,795 (more than doubling again)!
And we’ve grown every year since then… through recessions, pandemics and even during times of personal or family crises when I felt like my attention was being pulled in a million directions…
Showing that you CAN build a successful business in just about any circumstances when you focus on the right things!
Throwback Thursday Series
Throwback Thursday #1: Build Your Site, Launch Your Business
Throwback Thursday #2: Strike Two — As If One Failed Attempt Weren’t Enough!
Throwback Thursday #3: My First Semi-Hit — Insights Gained From My Message to Money Program
Throwback Thursday #4: The Win That Came Disguised as a Fail
Throwback Thursday #5: You Did What?!!?
Throwback Thursday #7: Me? Do a Live Event?
Throwback Thursday #8: My First Upsell
Throwback Thursday #9: Course ✅ SaaS Next?
Throwback Thursday #10: 1 Launch > 4 Big Lessons
Throwback Thursday #11: Message to Millions
Throwback Thursday #12: Website in a Weekend