How virtual summits can help build your podcast audience with Jenny Suneson

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by a free AI tool called Otter. Please forgive any typos or errors. Melissa Guller 0:00 Have you ever attended a virtual summit? They’re not a new concept, but ever since the start of the 2020 pandemic, these fully-online conferences have become more popular than ever. But whether you’ve signed up for a summit or not, today I’m here with guest Jenny Suneson to ask the question, “How can hosting or speaking at a virtual summit help you grow your podcast?” Now I have a feeling that question might be met with resistance, or a little bit of very understandable imposter syndrome. Who even is qualified to be a summit host or speaker? And how experienced do you really need to be to get started, and do you have to have a huge starting audience to be successful? Jenny is here to talk about not only the benefits of hosting or speaking at a summit, but also the process, and hopefully by the end of today’s episode, you’ll have a better sense of the virtual summit world and how incredible they can be to help anyone – new or experienced – continue sharing their message with a wider audience. Melissa Guller 1:30 Welcome to Wit & Wire, where we take you behind-the-scenes to learn how to start and scale a successful podcast that makes an impact. I’m your host, Melissa Guller, a Podcast Producer, Host, and Instructor on a mission to amplify and diversify voices in podcasting. No matter how new or seasoned you are as a host, I can’t wait to help you find more listeners, expand your audience, build authentic connections, and hit the charts. Melissa Guller 1:40 Today I’m thrilled to be here with Jenny Suneson. Jenny is a podcast launch strategist and manager and the founder of the popular podcast marketing agency Savvy Podcast Agency. The Savvy Podcast Agency helps female creative entrepreneurs launch and grow their podcasts and start generating leads on autopilot. She’s also an experienced virtual summit host, and that’s why I’m so excited to welcome her to the podcast. Before we get into all things virtual summit, of course, I wanted to hear more about how Jenny first got into podcasting. Jenny Suneson 2:01 So I guess we can start with my very first podcast I like listen to that kind of fueled my podcast obsession, and that was cereal season one with Adnan Syed, and then I started listening to more podcasts from there. And then when I quit my corporate job in December of 2016, and started full time with my business in 2017. I started a podcast about a year after that, because I was just bored. I was lonely, like entrepreneurship is super lonely. So I was like I want to get people on I want to interview people and talk to people and make these connections. And I’m super introverted. So I was like, well, this will be an easier way to do it versus like saying, hey, let’s have a coffee chat. Like to me It felt like inviting them for a podcast interview was more beneficial to them than just the coffee chat because coffee jobs can turn into like salesy if you’re not careful. And I didn’t want people to think I was just there to sell, I wanted to chat with them learn about their journey. So that’s kind of how I got into podcasting myself. And then from there, I just started my podcast Management Agency, about june of 2019, is when I really switched, I had a couple podcast clients, but that’s when I actually like switched to this focus. And that’s kind of where we are. Now I have a team of four people plus me and growing because we just keep getting more clients in the door. So yeah, that’s a little bit about me. And then from there, I started a second business with my friend. So we have a virtual summit business as well. And that is kind of like our new venture after running six summits in the past three years. Melissa Guller 3:28 It’s so exciting to hear how your business and businesses I should say have evolved. And before we dive into all things virtual summit, I just want to say I love that you mentioned that you are an introvert and still felt like podcasting could be a great fit for you. And the fact that it’s easier than a coffee chat. Because I do think that there are maybe some some myths around you have to be so extroverted and so talkative, to be a podcast host. But I really think that introverts thrive as hosts, I identify as being an introvert too. And I think being a great listener, makes you a great podcast host. So I just I love that you pointed that out. Jenny Suneson 4:00 Yeah. And I think for my first episode, too, like now as just a person, I’ve come leaps and bounds like I can. I used to be like scared to have conversations with people, you know, if you’re at like a gathering, I would just like hang out in the on the wall. If someone approached me, I would talk to them, but I wouldn’t be the person who went and approach them. But now podcasting has helped me connect with people, one on one, and I’ve always been better one on one. But I think it’s kind of connecting into a group setting now to which is really, really cool. Melissa Guller 4:28 That makes perfect sense. Well, speaking of connecting with people, I think that’s a perfect segue into talking about virtual summits. So when it comes to a summit, there are so many different people involved, from the attendees to the host, or the person who’s organizing it to all of the speakers, and I think it would make the most sense to start with the speakers. So what are some of the benefits to being a summit speaker? Jenny Suneson 4:52 Yeah, that’s a good question. So really, I mean, you get to get in front of a new audience a because everyone’s kind of collaborating together, and put The Summit in front of their audiences. So not only are you promoting to your audience, but you’re also getting in front of like my audience and my co host audience, in addition to all the different speakers audience, so just getting that exposure is great. You know, it helps you get better at public speaking not really public speaking. But speaking in general, you get to meet people, we’d like to do little like get togethers with the speakers. So they all get to know each other before the summit happens. And the people in our summit, we kept in contact with them and you know, worked with them further down the line, whether that’s podcast interviews, and things like that. So I would say the number one thing is really just visibility and making connections. Melissa Guller 5:37 Yeah, I love that you talked about how those connections continue to build after the summit, and how it’s not just about getting to meet people one time, but then maybe you do go on to collaborate in other ways, I found that to be so true for my business, that you meet people through all kinds of different ways on the internet, which is amazing. And then some people you really just click with, and you find so many other opportunities to have your business promoted to their audience, or vice versa, or to have them come on your podcast. Yeah, I Jenny Suneson 6:03 agree. And it’s just it’s really not every single person that comes on podcasters in the summit is someone that I speak to on a regular basis. But it’s definitely someone that I know in the future if I wanted to work with them in any capacity, or I would support them in some kind of like affiliate relationship or something like that. So it’s just like, you feel that deeper connection than just like liking or commenting on their photo on Instagram or something Melissa Guller 6:27 makes total sense. Now, let’s say that I do have the opportunity to be a summit speaker. What is the experience like or what is typically asked of a speaker? Jenny Suneson 6:38 Yeah, really just a presentation. And then just a couple promos, one email one social, some people ask for more. But that’s kind of our requirements. Melissa Guller 6:48 Yeah. And I think that the promo is important, because if everybody promotes, that’s how all of us speakers and the host as well, like, that’s how we all grow together. And I’ve been a summit speaker, it really is not too much to ask to share it with your email list a couple times, or to promote it on social media and great hosts will really help you to do that. They’ll give you suggestions about what to say in your email, and where to direct people. And I’d also love to ask, what do you think all the best speakers have in common? Or what are they doing differently compared to an average summit speaker, Jenny Suneson 7:22 they are just really generous with what they share, they go above and beyond with promotions. And what we’ve found from our six summits that we’ve run is that the people who have a smaller following like outwardly like a smaller social media, like following a smaller email, as those are the people that go hard during promotion, and they’re the ones who end up making typically the most affiliate sales, when we have bigger speakers, it’s great, because it is cool to have them on our like, graphics like hey, this person speaking, but we found that they just don’t promote as much or at all, they just kind of rely on being that bigger name, which is great, because it still gets people to sign up for the summit, even if they’re not promoting because they see this killer person, but they don’t go above and beyond in terms of promotion, because they don’t Melissa Guller 8:12 have to, if that makes sense. It makes total sense. And I actually think that’s a great point about summits. And we’re gonna transition into hosting a summit in a second, but also our podcast hosts different types of guests just serve your podcast in different ways. Because sometimes a big name guest is going to be great because it’s such high value. It’ll probably help you land other guests in the future, but they’re probably not going to promote your episode. But if you get somebody who’s up and coming or who has a smaller but really engaged audience, they’ll be so excited to promote the episode so I think just different guests and in this case different summit speakers they just serve different purposes for you. Jenny Suneson 8:45 Totally Yeah, in like I said, we love those big name people but aren’t ya are smaller people are just the ones who end up racking up the most and affiliate commission, they’re promoting more, whereas the bigger speakers don’t have to so they don’t and totally fine their time and place for both of those types of people, even in terms of your podcast. Melissa Guller 9:03 And I love hearing that too. Because if somebody is tuning in and feeling like oh, I’m too new, or my audience is too small to be a speaker, based on this conversation, we have somebody very experienced hearing that it’s so valuable to have those types of guests. Yeah. So hopefully this is maybe reassuring, like, don’t count yourself out from being a summit speaker. Because if you have something valuable to share, that’s really all you need. Jenny Suneson 9:25 Yeah. And like we don’t have really requirements in terms of following and things like that. When people apply, we do ask just so we can figure out like what the potential reach could be. For us, it’s about the topic, and if we’ve covered it before, or if they have a really cool angle that they’re going to discuss. That’s what’s most important to us, because that’s why people are going to sign up because they haven’t heard that topic before or something. They’re not going to sign up because, you know, it’s a million of the same topic that they’ve heard before. Yeah, I Melissa Guller 9:55 think that’s really helpful. Now let’s shift over to talking about the summit hosts It’s obviously a huge undertaking to host a summit. So what are some of the biggest benefits that somebody could have by hosting their own summit? Jenny Suneson 10:09 some benefits that we’ve gotten, obviously is similar to speakers. So we’ve gotten those connections as well. We’ve gotten new people on our email list new people on our network, really. And then obviously, like, since we do sell something, we sell an all access pass, we do make income too. Melissa Guller 10:26 So just in case these are brand new terms to people, what is the all access pass? And what is the power pack? And how are they different? Jenny Suneson 10:32 Okay, so all access pass basically includes free plays, on transcripts of the recordings. And if someone was hard of hearing, or deaf, we would definitely include those transcripts to them at no charge. We also include like audio of the recordings, and then we include like a special workbook, and also presentation notes, we watch all the presentations and take detailed notes, so they can learn from it if they don’t have the time to watch the videos. And they can purchase that when they’re signing up for the summit itself. Yeah. And we usually do a tripwire that is 15 minutes. So that is actually where most of our sales come from. Melissa Guller 11:09 Can you tell people what a tripwire is? Jenny Suneson 11:11 So you’re on the summit homepage, you decide this is a really good fit. Alright, cool, I’m gonna opt in. So you put in your email address, and then from there, it takes you to another page and on that other page, then it says like a 2015 to 20 minute deal, hey, you can get this for a lower price cost. So we are tripwire for the all access pass is $47. And then for the power pack, it’s $97. And then after that 20 1520 minutes goes away, then they can’t get at that rate again. So then it goes to the regular earlybird price. And then once the summit starts, we up the price one more time as well. And the powerpack is all the things in the all access pass. Plus you get some bonuses. So we have our speakers contribute some hate products, so they get access to all of those. We usually do like a hot seat call with me and Lindsey. So people can hop on that page and ask any questions, we usually do some kind of workshop that is included in the paid ticket. And then we also last year did if they bought the upgrade for the power pack, they would get the opportunity to win a VIP day and you include whatever you want in there, those were just kind of what we did. So you know, the value of the bundle was I think, like maybe 2000. It depends every year. But just paying one payment of 97 is like crazy, because they’re getting a course that’s valued higher than 187 just for that one payment, and they’re getting tons of other things, too. Melissa Guller 12:41 That’s very cool. Now, would you say there are any prerequisites to being a summit host? Like, for example, I’m sure people are worried. If they don’t have a big enough starting audience or they’re not experienced enough in business? What do you think, is maybe the right time or who could make a good summit host, Jenny Suneson 12:56 I don’t really think there is a specific audience size that you need. For us. Like when we first started hosting summits, we probably had an email list of like 200, maybe 300. And it continued to grow from there every single year that we did it so for Well, for us, it was cool, because we were able to tap into both of our pre existing audiences for our own businesses. But if you have a small list, it’s not a big deal. I think it’s just making sure you have enough time to implement it. And you’re not like rushing, I always recommend giving yourself at least 90 days to pull it off, if not more, 90 days is the bare minimum just because there’s so much going on and securing speakers is a huge chunk of that. And then you kind of realize, Oh crap, I haven’t done anything else. So I think just you know, if you’re thinking about doing it, start creating your outreach list. Now, you don’t have to reach out to them yet. But just what I like to do is I’m actually hosting us another summit in August. And I ever since my February summit, I’ve been just putting a bunch of names on the list like okay, these are people I potentially want to reach out to, just so that when the time comes, I have that list already. And you know, I might need to add a couple more names, but I have are like 20 people that I want to reach out to for this summit. Melissa Guller 14:07 I love that too. Because I think there’s this kind of like age old advice about Don’t wait until you have an event to buy a dress. Because then you’ll it’ll be harder to find one. And I think the same is true for big events like this one, just as you’re going about your day scrolling through Instagram or tuning into somebody’s podcast and you hear a guest that you really connect with or you see somebody who’s sharing really great value. Just like find a place in your life where you can keep track of those people because whether it’s for a summit or your podcast, or maybe all of the above, I think just having that list kind of at the ready before you get into the actual planning and production is going to help you out so much. Jenny Suneson 14:42 Totally, it’s really beneficial. We have like a huge air table spreadsheet that we use and it has a bunch of tabs and it’s really really like organized and we use that for the entire summit and the intake form for the speakers and things like that. And that’s we also have a list on there like potential speakers. I just play kind of add as we come across people that we think would be a good fit. Melissa Guller 15:03 Yeah, I’m a huge air table fan. And if people want to check it out, I’ll include a link in the show notes. It’s kind of like Excel. But a little bit more snazzy, there’s more that it can do, it’s a little bit more capable. I wouldn’t call it more complicated, I wouldn’t call it harder to use, it’s a little bit different. But it’s basically a spreadsheet based tool that can help you categorize things or collect information from forms directly into a spreadsheet. So we’ll include a link in the show notes, I do want to really get into a bit of the production process, not so much into all of the tiny tasks, because that’s way too much for a podcast episode. But just at a high level, what are the different phases that go into planning a summit? Jenny Suneson 15:41 Yeah, so we have really like the beginning phase, where you’re crafting your outreach list, reaching out to speakers, and you’re getting, you know, yeses, and getting noes and you know, kind of building that list. And then I think before you do any of that outreach, just kind of figure out your name, obviously, get your speaker information and speaker onboarding pages set up. So you have those ready, figure out the dates of your summit, figure out the dates that everything’s gonna be due. So once the presentations do, when do you want the intake form, do whenever you are delivering affiliate materials and graphics, just figure out all those dates, and then start your outreach. And then from there, it’ll be super easy. Our onboarding pages just has literally everything like here’s where you can submit your presentation, here’s the benefits of submitting a product to the power pack, because a lot of people don’t realize that it is beneficial for them. And then from there, after that speaker outreach phase, then you’re kind of in like the nitty gritty tech stuff, you’re editing presentations, creating affiliate materials, creating like the copy for the website homepage, setting up the speaker page, the Schedule page, figuring out the schedule itself. And then the during phase is when it all goes live. And that is really for us the fun part, because that’s when all your hard work comes to life, basically. And it’s just like, okay, now I have all these attendees, like in a Facebook group, or whatever kind of community you choose to have for the summit. Everyone’s excited, everyone’s engaging, asking questions, you have daily prompts. And that’s kind of the during phase. And then the after phase. Typically, we send out a survey for the attendees, the speakers and the purchaser. So three different surveys. And then from there, we kind of tweak everything based on everyone’s feedback. I think that’s a helpful kind of the before the during the after that all makes sense. And what do you think are some of the most common mistakes maybe that you see hosts making with their virtual summits? I think not giving themself enough time is a huge one, because then they’re scrambling and they’re like, Oh, I just got all my speakers. And you know, my summit goes live in a week. And it’s like, Oh, okay. And a lot of people at that point, I see them complaining, like, oh, people haven’t promoted, it’s like, Hey, you haven’t really been organized enough to give them the full details that they need, like, no wonder they’re not promoting, you know. So I think that is a really big thing of giving yourself enough time. And like, don’t be afraid to ask bigger people to be on your summit. If they say no, totally fine. And just kind of be prepared to hear knows, not every person is going to be a good fit for your summit. And that’s totally okay. But it doesn’t hurt to ask. And then another thing is just really leave your week of the summit, free and clear of other things. I like to I don’t schedule any calls that week, I really just tell my team like, hey, like, if you really need me, I’ll be there. But I’m in summit mode. So I really need to focus on engaging with the attendees and the speakers this week. Another thing is just trying to like do a little bit of summit planning each week. So like I said, Give yourself at least 90 days, more than that would be great, especially for your first summit. So work a little bit on each week. So set aside a couple hours each week to work on it. And then it feels a lot less overwhelming than gym packing or schedule for like a month before the summit. Melissa Guller 18:53 Yeah, I think those are all really great tips. And they all center around the very clear theme of give yourself the time. And maybe this is just my background in product management and event production speaking. But I found that things take three times the amount of time most people think that they do like as humans, we’re so bad at guessing how long things will take. And that’s okay, it’s okay that we’re bad at guessing. But I would say like even though you’re hearing Jenny, say 90 days, like if you’ve never done anything remotely like this before, try six months. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s so much better to give yourself too much time than not enough. Yeah, Jenny Suneson 19:27 and you’ll have better chances of getting those bigger speakers if you reach out in advance because a lot of time their calendars are planned well in advance. So if you’re reaching out like a month or two before the summit, they may already be committed to too many promotions at the time and they don’t want to like overload their audience with more. But another thing just to note is just speaker management is a huge time suck. So just be prepared for that because even if you’re the most organized person ever, people are still gonna be asking, Where can I find this? Where am I supposed to do this? Even though we have this page that literally says submit your presentation here people are still in inbox asking. So it’s important to really just make sure to be prepared for speaker management being a huge time consuming thing. Melissa Guller 20:09 Yeah, that’s a great point. Because it just kind of emphasizes the fact that things take longer than you think. Like, you don’t know how many speakers will need help, but it is not a reflection on how organized you will be. It’s just that we’re humans, and that they are going to have questions and they are not going to read your gorgeous page, like it is just not going to happen. Jenny Suneson 20:25 They’re going to email you instead. Some people will, but other people will be like, oh, where do I submit my presentation? It’s like, okay, it’s on the page. I usually don’t see them usually, oh, here’s the link. Melissa Guller 20:35 Right? Like we think it to ourselves, like “per our earlier email…” But then in reality, we’re like, oh, of course, no problem. Here is the link. Jenny Suneson 20:40 And if that’s something like that’s hanging you up, like, Oh, I don’t want to do all that management, like you can hire a low cost VA to help with that. I know, for me, I have someone who helps during summit week, especially because we got a lot of purchaser emails like how do I do this? And how do I do that? And like the presentations are alive anymore, can I watch the replays? So we have canned responses that I have a VA sent as well, to make sure that I stay out of the inbox. And I’m really focusing on engaging with the attendees, not customers. Yeah. Melissa Guller 21:12 Now, since the pandemic started in 2020, I do feel like I’ve noticed a huge shift in the virtual summit space, like not only are they significantly more common, but I’ve actually been running summits for years for teachable. And even now, our summits feel different, because we used to be kind of special and different. And now they are just frankly, they’re more common more people are doing them. So maybe what else do you think is different about virtual summits now compared to a few years ago, Jenny Suneson 21:39 so I’ve always operated on the free model. So opt in the summit is free for 24 hours, sometimes people do 48 hours, something I’ve seen recently is kind of like a low cost payment, like 19 to $37 to attend the summit. And then you have to pay additional for the replays. So that’s something I’ve seen. And I think that one comes more from the in person events that are translating into online events. So it’s been interesting to see like a lot of like low cost summit opt ins popping up. Melissa Guller 22:09 And I think that’s a great point that the influence of formerly in person events is definitely a factor, and teachable. We did try a paid event. And it just functioned differently for us. And to your point, I think a free summit is going to be a better fit for most online business owners, because it’s about generating leads and getting all of your speakers in front of as wide of an audience as possible. And no matter how low price your ticket might be, that’s just going to be a much smaller audience, like will they be a different level of engaged maybe, but I just have this gut feel overall that for most online business owners going with the freemium model, maybe some version of an all access ticket is paid. Like that’s just gonna make way more sense. Now, I know we’ve talked about this last question indirectly. But to wrap things up and think about our listeners who are aspiring podcast hosts or current podcast hosts, how can either hosting a summit or being a speaker and a summit help you grow your podcast? Jenny Suneson 23:03 Yeah, that’s a good question. And so what I like to do is I actually use it both ways. So I promote the summit on the podcast. But then I also promote my podcast at the end of my presentation, as well. So I think that’s something you can do. So when I post a summit, and then also when I am in other summits, at the end, I do a little ending slide like my best places to find me on Instagram, and then my podcast if you want to learn more, so I’m able to kind of direct them back to my podcast. And that is really the biggest way that you can use it to grow your podcast, but I think they really work hand in hand, you have people on your podcast, and you want to invite them to be in the summit, you already have that connection there. Before we did the summit, I actually was on several podcasts for my profitable podcast summit. And I talked about the summit. And then at the end, I also mentioned my podcast too. So that’s another good way to grow with other podcasts, not just in growing your own podcast, essentially. But those are, those are some of the ways that we’ve used in the past to kind of grow the podcast simultaneously. Melissa Guller 24:05 I like that you mentioned both directions where if you have the podcast, it’s a great way to promote any summit that you might be in. And I think being a podcast host could make you a better summit speaker because you have that audience and because you have the experience of speaking. So I think there’s a lot of boxes checked by being a podcast host. And then I think it all just comes down to visibility. I think that’s been a major theme of the benefit of summits for pretty much everybody involved. And I think as podcast hosts too often we’re looking for like, hacky strategies, like how do I grow my podcast? How do I find more listeners, but at the end of the day, it’s not rocket science to say if you put yourself in front of new audiences and find more people who might be interested in what you talk about, then those listeners will find you like if they hear you speak and they really like what you said. They’ll find your show for sure. Jenny Suneson 24:49 Yeah, I know when I really like someone I will go through everything that they have ever done and try to get in their courses and absorb as much information from those as possible. Melissa Guller 24:58 Yeah, to me, the ultra Like growth strategy hack is just to put good content out and trust that it will bring the right people to you. Jenny Suneson 25:07 Yep, for sure. Melissa Guller 25:08 Well, before we go, I know you have a great free resource for any listeners who are interested in learning more about summits called the summit planning blueprint. And you can find it at witandwire.com/jenny. But can you tell us a little bit more about it? Jenny Suneson 25:22 Yeah, so the five p summit planning framework. So it has five steps, obviously, it’s planning production, promotion, party and post. It’s just a really great resource for someone who is looking to start their summit and are kind of like, lost. In the future. We’re planning on doing like a promotional toolkit, a planning toolkit, so more in depth versions of that. So we’re really excited. We love helping summit hosts start their profitable summits, because it’s something that is just so needed. And summits are just so much fun. And we want to introduce more people to the world of summit. So yeah. Melissa Guller 25:55 And if people want to keep in touch, where can they find you? Jenny Suneson 25:57 Yeah, so if you want to keep in touch with me personally, my Instagram is at Jenny Suneson. So s u n e s o n is my last name. We also have the joint business at summit success squad on Instagram and our website is summit squad. Melissa Guller 26:15 Thank you so much for joining us this week. At Wit & Wire we help online business owners start podcasting so they can build their authority and expand their audience and their opportunities. So if you haven’t already, you can check out our programs and services anytime at witandwire.com. You can also come hang out with me on Instagram @witandwire and make sure you hit the Follow button in this app in case you haven’t already subscribed to the show. Thank you again for joining me, Melissa Guller In this episode of the Wit & Wire podcast. I’ll see you next time!