Behind the Scenes of Hosting an Audio Summit: Wins, Lessons, and Mindset Shifts

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Ep. 211: Behind the Scenes of a Hosting an Audio Summit: Wins, Lessons, and Mindset Shifts

In this episode, I’m giving you a behind-the-scenes look at my recent audio summit, Beyond the Numbers. I’m sharing what worked, what didn’t, and some of the mindset shifts that made all the difference – plus what I’d change for next time. Whether you’re curious about running your own summit, love peeking behind the curtain of values-driven events, or want powerful insights on navigating challenges and unexpected wins, this episode is for you.

I’ll be honest about the successes, setbacks, and lessons learned, all while staying true to my mission of helping female entrepreneurs create unstoppable finances and businesses.

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Resources:

Money Mindset Mastery Checklist – https://aimeecerka.com/mindset
Work With Aimee – https://workwtihaimee.com
Instagram – https://instagram.com/aimeecerka

Outline

00:00 Overcoming Course Purchase Habit
03:27 Integrity in Audio Summit Decisions
07:07 Mindset: Push Through Pressure
12:41 Install Hotjar and Money Mindset
13:25 Money Mindset Mastery Guide

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Behind the Scenes of a Successful Virtual Summit

What really happens behind the scenes of a successful summit. In this episode, I’m going to pull back the curtain on my recent audio summit. I hosted beyond the Numbers.

What worked, what didn’t? Some powerful mindset shifts that I made beforehand and along the way that maybe deemed it success, maybe things that I would shift for next time. So if you love seeing what goes on behind the scenes, the. Yeah, behind the scenes.

And what a real look into what it looked like to run a values driven event. Or maybe you’re curious what it would be like to create something like an audio summit for yourself. Challenges, unexpected wins, all of those things, then this episode is perfect for you.

So let’s get to it. This is the Your Money, Your Life podcast, the show where I help female entrepreneurs go from stress and struggle to unstoppable. Here we blend step by step, strategy, mindset work and emotional regulation so you can create unstoppable finances, build an unstoppable business, and truly enjoy your unstoppable life.

It’s time to take my wisdom, my expertise to help you simplify money and go beyond the numbers. I’m your host, Aimee Cerka. Welcome.

I’m so glad you’re here.

Audio Summit Insights: What Worked and What I’d Change

Welcome back to the Your Money, Your Life podcast. I’m your host, Aimee Cerka. Today we are doing a debrief of what went on, what worked, what didn’t, what I loved, what I would change for next time on my recent audio summit that I hosted, beyond the Numbers.

And the first thing that I want to make sure that we cover is because this ended up. This ended up being a thing that if I had done it differently, I would feel out of integrity. So I decided not to sell the replays.

Originally, when I was planning out the summit, I was going to offer, you know, the VIP pass. It’s kind of typical. I’ve done it in the past.

I’ve hosted a summit before. Mompreneur Mastery Summit happened in January of 2021, I believe it was. And I sold the VIP pass there.

There’s people who have lifetime access to those recordings, all those things. But I went into it originally was going to sell the VIP pass, but as things were getting closer, and some of this will probably make a little bit more sense as we dive into it. Other things that were going on at the time, but I evaluated, like whether or not I wanted to actually sell the replays.

Would this be something that would be valuable for the audience? How many times. And I know for myself, this is one of the things I was looking at, how many times have I bought the replay and then I never actually watched it.

Creating Value and Integrity for Online Summits

Now there’s courses and programs and things that I’ve revisited. There are definitely people that I do utilize that option. But overall it ends up that I’m just using this expense and then I.

It’s almost like an excuse to put things on the back burner. And it was going to add more to their to do list, which the whole purpose of the summit was to streamline to help you hear what really was right for you, to be able to hear yourself cut through the noise of everything that’s going on. If I’m adding one more thing on your to do list and one more thing on mine because I’m going to create the checkout page, all those things.

I’m currently a one woman show the business here. But it didn’t seem like it was going to serve people. So I decided not to sell the replays.

And the thing that would have been out of integrity that I would have struggled with after the fact that some of the things that I learned. And this is not about changing things to. For quotes, manipulate the system, right?

But there are ways when you host an audio summit, a lot of like we’ll do events, right? So you can host the audio summit event and then you’re supposed to be able to remove access, right? There are ways for it not to remove your access.

So if I had sold the replays and then people who didn’t purchase the replays were still able to access the replays, that would have felt off for me. So.

The Benefits of Personalized Recommendations in Summits

And I also felt like it made it more clear I gave more space to be able to listen to the interviews we talked about. Like hey, this is the recommendation. These are, this is where I would start.

You don’t necessarily have to listen to them all, but this is where things play in. I loved offering to give people specific pointers. Kylie Kelly, one of my mentors, just recently ran a second season of her Audio Summit and she had a quiz that you could take so that I guess would be the scalable option.

But I was really looking forward to and I enjoyed a lot of the one to one conversations that I had for people were like, hey, this is where I’m at. Like which, which session should I prioritize? Because we are busy, right?

We don’t necessarily have time for all the things. So I definitely love those two things that I didn’t sell the replays and then having people respond to me like hey, which one? This is where I’m at. What sessions would you recommend.

Mindset, Time Pressure, and Successful Event Planning

I didn’t feel like I gave myself enough space to be prepared. And I technically did. Like, if you look at where I blocked out, like when I started, this is the plan. I’m gonna give two weeks to work on this, and I’m gonna have two weeks to work on this.

Like, it wasn’t that I scrunched time there. It wasn’t like I said, I’m gonna write an entire email sequence in a day and a half. So I built the space there.

But then life kind of happened and then there was mindset, like things that you got to work through. And we’ll get to more of that here in a second. But like when those things happen, like life happened and I got food poisoning that put me, air quotes here, behind.

And then I felt all the pressure to be on the timeline. So much so that I got to the point it was like, this is not the energy that I want to be in when I host this summit. Like, this is not. It’s not good for me, it’s not good for others.

Lessons Learned: Removing Pressure and Embracing Readiness

And I was ready to move it. Actually, I reached out to one speaker. We were getting ready to. So we were still working on finalizing it. I was like, hey, I’m moving the dates. I had already picked them out. We’re going to push it back like about a month.

And it was. I had like made peace with it, you know, I’d already thought through like, okay, I know. I told my speakers they could promote like, this is the window.

And if the new promotion window doesn’t work for them, we’ll just have the registration page ready so they can go ahead and promote earlier. And I’ll just make sure I’m nurturing the people who do opt in then until the event now goes live. Okay.

Looked for the solution. That’s probably like a win here because when the timeline, when the pressure got to be too much, I looked for the solution. I found the solution. How could this work? Right?

But in doing so, I released the pressure and I got more done in two days. It wasn’t even a full 48 hours then you would have ever thought possible. So then I didn’t move the summit. I kept the original timeline. But that was only possible because I had taken the pressure off myself.

And I think that becomes the problem so many times. And I know it does, really. We create pressure and expectations and we’re going to get more to the expectations that a little bit.

This might end up being a two part episode again. I’ve recorded this one once and lost the audio. So we are back. But by removing the pressure, I was able to show up in an aligned way.

And that’s a lot of what we talk about, like, with the mindset and energetic and knowing when to push and when not to push.

Balancing Quality and Promises in Virtual Summit Delivery

Because I sort of kept pushing through all of that, pushed myself through the pressure. And hey, I’ve done it in the past, right? Like, that’s something that I’ve done in the past. Like, it’s just this is what needs to get done and I’m going to power through it.

Yeah, I’ve done it. But the results are so much better. And you don’t burn yourself out, you don’t stress yourself out, all of those things. When you don’t do that.

When we learn to listen to ourselves and hear clearly energetically, it’s not that, like the bad stuff’s not going to show up. Right. It’s just how do we handle it? Okay.

I did love the number of sessions. We ended up that we had about six sessions per day over a span of three days. I felt like that was a good number. It wasn’t too overwhelming.

We tried to keep them shorter. This did not make my list. But I had made the promise of how short the episodes were going to be before we had recorded the episodes. And then I couldn’t keep the. How short I wanted them to be, which was 10 minutes or less.

Was. That wasn’t feasible. Just did not happen.

And I wasn’t going to sacrifice the quality of the emails.

So then simply what I did, like, emails landing page, it’s like, hey, this was the goal. This did not happen. But I think that you’re going to love the results here. And I didn’t want to take any of the value away as we went through that.

Effective Strategies for Selling and Promoting During an Online Summit

But I love the number of sessions. I’m not sure if I’m going to keep the sales sequence the same. So I guess part of it I will.

I loved the fact that you knew what the offer was from the very beginning. It was there. It was part of the trailer. Even like the welcome one that I had recorded for you. Like, you had that information there.

It was mentioned. You knew what it was. There was a bonus if you purchased like in the beginning. But that is the way that I operate because I work in finances and money and energetics and mindset and I am not going to pressure you to. To make that decision.

I want you to know that it’s time to work with me and make the decision that it’s time to work with me. From a clear place, trusting your gut integrity, knowing, like, hey, this is now not out of. I’ve got 12 hours to make this decision or the price changes, the door closes, whatever.

Like, I’m not. You don’t. I don’t rush those decisions. I want to give you space when you know, and you can know right away.

Like, that’s the way that really your intuition works. And there can be a total process in learning how to do this again. But you can know. Like, I can make the offer and you can know now. Fantastic. I am.

Doors are open. You can come join me inside the unstoppable experience. I’d love to see you there. I’d love to support you in that way.

So that part I loved, the part that I might change next time, is what I did. We had day one, day two, day three of interviews, sessions dropping.

And then day four, I did a Q and A and integration session. And then it was kind of like we wrapped a bow on everything. And then I talked about the offer.

This is what’s available. Originally. The bonus, the fast action bonus was going to expire on Friday, the following night.

Spacing, Technology, and Improving User Experience for Online Events

And it felt. It felt too fast. So I decided to extend it and that it closed when the recordings came down, which was Tuesday night at midnight.

Everything came down at the same time. So next time, what I think that I’ll do is kind of spread it out a little bit because. And I know what I was thinking, whenever we planned this out, whenever I planned this strategy, it was about, like, you know, keeping people engaged, and they were very engaged. Like, that part was very successful.

But again, one of my goals is to make things less overwhelming. So I extended it because I knew, like, as the host, I felt the pressure.

And you have all these sessions that you want to listen to, right? Like, removing some of that pressure there. So what I think that I’ll do is I’ll. Instead of the Q and A and integration being on Thursday, I think I’ll push it back, make it happen on Monday, have the recordings go down on Monday, and then truly talk about the offer, separate them out a little bit again, you’ve got that bonus part beforehand. Like, hey, if you’re ready now, you’re there. And there’s an awareness, but giving a little bit of space, a little bit more breath so it doesn’t feel rushed. Okay.

Other thing. Hotjar on the opt in page. Landing page, I switched. I used to have hotjar installed.

If you do not have hotjar installed on your opt in pages, sales pages, those things you should. Go that installed like now because it’s free, you can use the free version and I used to have it on my site but I transferred everything like my opt in pages, sales pages, my course content, all of those things. I shifted that a little over six months ago now and didn’t install hotjar now like on my website where everything’s actually built.

So I didn’t have the feedback to see how people were engaging with the opt in page until basically registration was closed. And that’s something that, hey, it’s in place now. I’ve got it for. It’s all there, ready to go now. Next time, not a problem.

But that’s something that I wish that I would have thought of remembered to do sooner. So if you’re hosting event and really any opt in page, any sales page, this is your reminder now if you don’t have hotjar installed, at least go install it. So then it’s gathering data and you can go back and look at it when you have space.

But if it’s not installed you can’t even like gain the data.

Mindset Mastery: Shifting Thoughts for Business Success

Okay, before we go any farther, if you’re loving like these behind the scenes insights, you’re hearing some of the mindset and how it plays a bigger role in your financial success than you thought, then I would definitely grab my Money Mindset Mastery Checklist now.

Full disclaimer. This is going through an update right this moment. So the guide, grab it now and then you’ll get the updated version as well and the private podcast feed as soon as it’s ready.

But this is created to help you shift those thoughts, those habits and really your emotions as well. The things that are quietly sabotaging your progress. So like if you’re doing all the work and it’s just not working, you feel like something’s missing, grab the Money Mindset Mastery Checklist, which is also going to be the Money Mindset playbook so that you can finally build real lasting wealth and alignment and business and those things like shift that mindset for you.

It’s going to be aimeecerka.com/mindset link’s also going to be in the show notes for you as well. Think we’re going to end up splitting this into two parts, but I want to cover one more thing because I feel like this is super powerful.

So we close cart which really the program is an open door, like doesn’t do closed door programs. So the bonus ends, the promotion ended right.

Success Beyond Revenue Goals: Redefining Wins

And I didn’t hit my revenue goal by a long shot. And if that was my goal, this would be considered a failed launch. Right. By a lot of standards because, hey, you didn’t make the revenue. But revenue alone wasn’t the only goal.

I also know that. I know that. I know that. I know that. Just because it’s a not right now, that doesn’t mean it’s a no.

What if this summit was exactly what you needed to put me on the hey, I’m going to work with Aimee list, and you need six more months. So then the six months you purchase, but it was because of the summit.

There’s that expectation piece. And we were talking about this a little bit earlier with the pressure, the expectation that it has to happen right now. That takes so many people out in business and we have to show up differently.

And yeah, we’re gonna hit pause here and then pick this up with a part two next week. And we’re going to talk about the differences between. We’ll kick it off talking about the differences between the receiving and the giving and the way that we shift that energy and some of the things that we did here that makes this so much of a success, even though I did not hit my revenue goal by a long shot.

All right, so make sure to stay tuned. We’ll pick this up next week. Bye.

If you’re struggling with shame and guilt around your finances, whether it’s debt impulse, spending, mistakes from the past, or the fact that you still haven’t hit your income goal, then it’s time for you to work with me.

There are different levels of support and price points that you can use on the path to removing that guilt and shame so you can can step into your unstoppable life. After all, your finances are unique to you and your support should be, too.

Go to workwithaimee.com to get started with one of my most popular programs. Or you can book a Q and A call with me. We’ll figure out what your next step should be. And of course, all those links are hanging out in the show notes as well.