From Virtual Summit Skeptic to Crushing Every Single Goal with Dominique Falla
Not convinced that a virtual summit will work for your business? My guest on the podcast this week wasn’t either when she decided to host her first summit.
After hosting several popular (but not exactly the most profitable) in-person conferences, she was skeptical that hosting a summit would pay off or work for her audience. She went in with low expectations, and even a little resistance to the idea of hosting a summit, but in the end, she’s so glad she pushed through to make her summit a reality.
Not only did her summit wildly surpass every single goal she set for herself, but she’s already in the process of planning the next one!
In this episode, you’ll hear from Dominique Falla about her experience hosting The Typism Summit, a virtual summit for hand lettering artists who want to turn pro, and how she was able to host an incredibly engaging and profitable summit that completely surpassed all of her expectations.
In this episode Dominique shares:
- What it was like to host a virtual summit for an audience that was accustomed to in-person events (and how she brought some of the in-person experience online).
- How she narrowed down her large and varied business audience to a highly targeted summit niche.
- Surprising strategies that worked extremely well for her summit, despite her initial skepticism.
Listen to the episode
Download the episode transcript here.
Episode at a glance:
[1:30] Dominique is an illustrator and graphic design educator by trade, and she got her start in online business as a way to help her graphic design students niche down their skill sets through books and conferences on typography.
[2:43] After 6 in-person Typism Conferences, COVID lockdowns forced Dominique to rethink the in-person business model.
I wouldn't even say the in-person conferences ran at a profit, they just covered their costs. They were great brand-building and community-building exercises, but from a financial risk perspective, they were also quite terrifying.
[4:29] When Dominique decided to host a summit, she wasn’t thinking it would be a virtual version of the in-person conferences she used to run, but that’s what her audience wanted! So she customized pieces of her summit strategy to incorporate things that her audience loved about her in-person events into her virtual summit.
[6:11] Even with plenty of experience running in-person events, Dominique had a lot of doubts about hosting a virtual summit.
I had lots of doubts about hosting a summit, mainly from my own summit attendee experience. I love speaking at summits, but I don't often have the time or patience to attend many other summits, so I was just worried that the only people attending my summit would be the 26 speakers. But that’s not what happened at all!
[8:09] One of the things that made Dominique’s event so successful and engaging was getting very specific on the audience and topic of her event. She had a broad audience of people who were interested in typography and lettering for her business, but she knew she needed to be more specific with her summit positioning, and ultimately landed on an event helping lettering artists go pro and build a career out of their talent.
[10:25] Dominique went in with “good, better, best” goals for email list growth through her summit. She would have been “good” with 500 subscribers, “better” with 1000, and the “best” goal that felt out of reach was 2000. In the end, doubled her “best” goal, with over 4000 attendees who were new to her!
[11: 26] This trend of blowing past her “best” goals kept going to every area of her summit, including her all-access pass sales, and the sales of her bundle that she launched through the summit.
I realized right after opening registration that my doubts about hosting a summit were wrong. I sent out the first email to the waitlist, then I got up and made a cup of tea. When I sat back down at my computer and I'd already made a sale. I started jumping around the room, because I knew it was working!
[16:07] She now has foundations she can build on for next time! As someone who specializes in funnel building, Dominique knows the power of a strategy that’s working and optimizing it for even better results. Now that the foundation is set, she now has everything in place to continue hosting her summit over and over again, with less work each time.
[17:42] What made Dominique's event so successful? There were several factors that contributed to blowing all of her goals out of the water, but one that stood out most was engaging affiliates with a little friendly competition that got them excited and motivated to promote.
[18:10] Another big contributor that made this event a success: a high-value All-Access Pass. Dominique had some incredible speaker bonuses included in her All-Access Pass, which made it an incredible value for her attendees. Not to mention, because all of her speakers were letter artists, their contributions were very well designed, making the upgrade seem even more appealing.
[23:00] After going in as a summit skeptic, Dominique is officially hooked on summits. One of the unexpected benefits she experienced from her summit was that it completely replaced her in-person conferences. Her audience was craving an event experience, but she wasn’t excited about the idea of hosting her in-person conferences again. She now has a plan for hosting a virtual (and more profitable) event annually!
[24: 26] Advice for first-time summit hosts: give it a go and embrace the process. Dominique hosted an extremely successful virtual summit, but she wants new summit hosts to keep in mind that it’s ok to start small and grow over time. After hosting the Typism summit for an established brand with an existing audience, she’s now working on a summit for a brand-new business. She’s keeping her expectations in check, and focusing on laying the foundations for something that can serve her business now while also setting her up for more success in the future.
About Dominique
Dominique Falla is the founder of Typism and host of the Creative Spark podcast. She is a certified funnel pro, author, podcast host, creator of the funnelancing movement, and a coach redefining how creative freelancers value their work. She believes that everyone has a unique Creative Superpower and loves helping people find it.
Typism Summit| Typism Community| The Creative Summit
Resources
- Episode 4: Discover Your Ideal Virtual Summit Audience
- Episode 59: Set Realistic Virtual Summit Goals - No Matter Your Audience Size
- Episode 120: Create An All-Access Pass That Gets Virtual Summit Attendees Hitting 'buy Now'
- Episode 162: B2C Virtual Summits: Changing Up The Cookie-Cutter Summit Strategy With Tenae Stewart
- Summit Host Hangout Facebook group
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