This week, we're continuing with the Behind the Summit series, where I'm sharing the behind-the-scenes of my summit planning process in real-time as I prepare for my next event. 

Registration for the summit is drawing near, which means I've had a heavy focus on organizing and incorporating my sponsor activations into the event. 

I finally got all of my sponsor information this week,...

You've got the perfect speaker lineup and you're ready for your summit to happen...but then....someone drops out. 

Having a speaker drop out of your summit causes many first-time summit hosts to panic, but it happens more often than you might think. 

There are all kinds of reasons that speakers might drop out, such as...

• They got excited about the event initially and later realize...

I have an exciting announcement!

We’ve had our Summit in a Box® program for two years now and have helped about 500 summit hosts plan and launch incredible virtual summits. Even though I still believe Summit in a Box is one of the very best courses out there, I’ve been really craving a way to be able to offer coaching, critiques, feedback, and support that we just can’t...

We’re moving right along with our Behind the Summit Series, and this week I’m taking you behind the scenes of my event schedule planning process.

Like most aspects of an online summit, a lot more goes into this than you might initially think. 

I knew this would be a big project with a lot of moving pieces (35 speakers slots and even more live sessions over 5...

If you’ve been following along with my summit planning journey, you know that I had no plans to pursue sponsors for my summit this time around. 

The last time I tried to get sponsors for one of my summits, I didn’t have much success, and I didn’t enjoy the process. So I wasn’t planning to try again. 

I was expecting this week of summit planning to be pretty...

While a lot of summit hosts send all their speaker pitches at once, I like to break them up into groups and send my pitches in rounds.

This helps me get some easy yeses right away from speakers I feel pretty sure will say yes, and it also gives me a confidence boost before reaching out to people I don’t know as well. It also gives me some “social proof” I can include in my...

Believe me, I know how tempting it is to send out your speaker pitches as soon as they come to mind, but that’s not the best way to go about it. 

Last week I shared all about my speaker brainstorming process that I use to strategically determine which potential speakers to reach out to, but there are still a few more steps to go before sending out those speaker pitches.

Between...

When it’s time to pitch your summit speakers, which approach do you take?

Do you…

1. Send your pitches on the fly as potential speakers come to mind?
2. Pitch the people you know will say yes and let that determine your speaker line up?
3. Strategically plan who to pitch based on the topics you want to cover and the transformation you want to create through your summit?

...

Welcome to the first part of our new behind-the-scenes series where you can come along with me as I plan for the 6^th round of my original virtual summit. Instead of throwing a bunch of strategies at you each week, like I normally do, I'll walk you through everything that I've been doing in my summit planning process and make it actionable in the process.

To set the stage,...

You'd think that someone with a business called "Summit in a Box" might think there is one cookie-cutter way to host a summit, but that's not at all the case. The "box" is meant to make your first summit as easy as possible and to allow you to expand and customize from there.

Find a part of the process that doesn't feel good?

Think your audience will respond better to something different?

...