Hosting a summit on your birthday either sounds like an amazing birthday gift to yourself, or like the worst. Lucky for me I was part of the glass is half full camp and decided that the timing was right and all the stars were aligned!
So yes...
I hosted a virtual summit on my birthday and I have to say it went really well!
So in this short blog post, I'm just going to quickly cover where the big idea came from, how I incorporated my birthday into the event, and then give you my thoughts on if I'd actually do it again - given the chance.
So let's get to it.
Where did the idea come from?
Earlier in the year I planned and hosted Teach Me How To Summit with my biz gal pal, Liz Wilcox. We had a great time with all the live training, and panels and meeting new people in our networking sessions.
So we decided we'd probably end up running the event later in the year, so I could basically test some new ideas and strategy, and as a HUGE bonus, we'd get to connect with a new group of speakers and attendees for even more fun!
We weren't really sure of the exact dates, but it looked like October was going to be the month of choice.
After taking some extra time to think things through and look over all the craziness I had going on in my personal life, including moving into a new home. My birthday week seemed like the best choice- so we embraced it!
How I incorporated it into the event?
Once the dates were final, I immediately got to work thinking of how I'd actually make it part of the event, and not just an afterthought...
After all, this was my actual birthday! If I was going to be working on it, I should at least be able to celebrate in the process right?
Right!
Here's how we incorporated my birthday into the event:
- Day 1 Early Bird Sale - We close our early bird discount at midnight on Day 1. So it seemed just perfect that starting the event on Monday, rather than Tuesday as we were originally planning, would provide an extra opportunity to push for birthday magic and just embrace the moment.
- Birthday Buyere's Bonus - We had a ton of giveaways... in the end, it was over $20K! So while I could have simply spread them over the 4 days of the events and made it so everyone who signed up had a chance to win all of them, I reserved a few of our larger giveaways for what I called my Birthday Buyer's Bonus. This was a special giveaway of $6K in gifts for anyone who had purchased a VIP Pass by the end of Day 1! (See how that tied in?) And we announced these gems promptly on Day 2, in our live welcome call!
- Birthday Hats on Live Calls - I wore that sparkling birthday hat on all the live calls! You'd be amazed at how much joy a simple birthday hat brings to the energy on a live call! So after we kicked the day off with both Liz and I wearing birthday hats, I kept the party going all day long! As people mentioned the hat, it gave us an opportunity to mention the buyer bonus and the early bird sale ending!
- Attendees Emails - We also mentioned it in a few of the attendee emails. Letting people know ahead of time that we'd be celebrating my birthday, gave them the chance to show up with good energy and ready for a celebration! We also mentioned the Birthday Buyers Bonus a few times to make sure everyone knew the sale was ending and they needed a VIP Pass to get entered into the extra giveaway for Day 2.
- Speaker Emails - This one was obviously less of a sales tactic, but I did want to mention my birthday in a speaker email or two for a few reasons. Firstly, it makes sure you're speakers know what's going on in the event and can join in on the celebration and also the promotion of that VIP Pass. But it also made it more personal, because in one email I was literally writing it and reminding myself to run out to Target to grab a hat.
Would I do it again?
100% Yes!
I'd do it again in a heartbeat! And I'd probably spend even more time on the birthday promotion strategy, to be honest.
It was a personal touch on a very large-scale collaboration that not only let people into my world to celebrate a special day but also to grab a great discount on something that would ultimately make planning their own event much easier and less stressful.
So if you have the chance to add a special celebration to your event, I'd say do it.
