My First Year In Business At The Summit Host - All Work & No Play

I decided to finally start a website dedicated to planning and hosting virtual summits the day before New Year's Eve back in 2021! I was planning and creating the ultimate game plan for the upcoming year and knew I wanted to take a leap and actually launch my system for planning and producing virtual events, but was a little hesitant and a lot unclear as to how that would look and actually work. 

In this blog post, I want to recap what the first year of business at The Summit Host actually looked like. 

My 1st Move

So I decided to sign up for a free trial of Kajabi, the all-in-one platform, I'm currently using to manage the Summit Host brand. I'd been researching it for a few months and knew this was the answer to my dislike of linking up a ton of tools and widgets inside WordPress. 

I mean I love WordPress and still use it for simple sites, but The Summit Host would be bigger and more complex than any of those, and I wanted to be able to use one system that would provide me with all the data I'd need to make big moves and decisions. 

Getting Started On Kajabi

I signed up and was now overwhelmed by how different it was from WordPress and immediately started regretting my decision. 

So I sought out some starter templates to get me going and help me learn how to actually use this system that would be fueling The Summit Host brand. I purchased a template pack from Meg Burrage, and it was a lifesaver! 

Meg's templates were a great starting point, but the real winner was the training library she had offered as part of the deal! It basically taught me everything I needed to get set up and going, plus manage the site moving forward! 

I took my time getting the site setup!

And by taking my time, I mean I played around with it for months, setting up small pieces here and there in my free time. I'd add a landing page, get sick of it, and then redesign it to something completely different... I do this with all my sites, so this was nothing new, but with the price tag of using Kajabi at about $200 a month, I was eager to get going and actually sell something! 

But I needed to be patient, give myself some grace, and actually learn how to use Kajabi, before launching anything. I mean, can you imagine how tough that would be to put a product out there, not knowing how the back end would work? #nightmare

So that's what I did. I took my time and continued to actually work on getting my system to a place where I felt confident in other people being able to use it.

I actually, took that baby for 3 test runs during this time, with 3 separate co-hosts, so I could see how different people, different personalities, and different styles of events would work with it. 

It Took Me A Year To Actually Launch

When I say I took my time, I really did! 

It took me a year to get the system to a place where I was comfortable with launching a Beta version. In that year, I did plan and host several events as mentioned, but for the most part, I was learning and getting things set up to host the event I really wanted to host, which would come to be known as Teach Me How To Summit! 

Because after all, if you have a system to plan and host virtual summits that you want to share with the online business world, then what better way to launch that program than by hosting your very own virtual summit? 

So that's what we did! I hosted a 5-day virtual event using HeySummit, a platform that's built to run your events, which took a lot of the heavy lifting out of the setup. 

To be honest, after the idea came about, all I could do was think about how amazing it would be to launch this new brand and the system I'd been using to plan and coordinate my own events, with a virtual summit that showed how I like to do things. 

And that was exciting! 

Here's What I Focused On In Year 1

• Getting the courage to say, you know what... I'm going to publish my summit system and teach people what I've been doing to grow brands, sell tickets, and launch digital products over the past 3 years! 
• I got the courage to step outside of my comfort zone and adopt a new website platform that was wildly different from the one I was used to. 
• Taking the time to actually learn the new platform and get comfortable with working in it to do things I'd need to be successful including, creating landing pages, setting up digital products, sending emails, and setting up automations. 
• Setting up the business foundations I'd need in place to effectively launch and grow the brand. 
• Creating assets and making key decisions about the front-facing brand. 
•  Trying to push myself to get back on social media and actually start posting! 
• Writing and publishing blogs about planning and hosting a virtual summit so that by the time people come to my site, there would be good information for them to read. 
• Circling around the idea of launching a podcast to make content creation easy with short thoughts, and FAQs. 
• Deciding what format would be the best delivery for what I decided to call my Starter Kit. I wanted this to be the starting place for future and repeat Summit Hosts, looking for the basic building blocks and steps they needed to complete. 
• Deciding what to do with all the templates I'd created. And if publishing them inside a membership or digital course library would be the best route. 
• Setting up each of the programs I'd be launching in the next year, and testing what the experience looked and felt like for buyers. 

Sill All Work & No Play?

I'd have to say no. 

My 2nd year in business at thesummithost.com was full of activities and growth. In fact, we ended up hosting not just 1 event, but 2. Creating a free bundle that we'll launch each year or possibly twice a year. And collaborating with other Summit Hosts and bundle hosts, which collectively led us to go from having 0 email subscribers to having about 3300. 

So far so good, I'd say! 

Stay tuned for another year in review for 2023.