As you’re considering your next big project for your business, have you considered hosting a virtual summit? In today’s episode, KP and Jessie of Inkpot join us to share how they found success in their first virtual summit, along with some of the important lessons they learned! Listen in as they share their goals from the summit, what their time commitment looked like, and if they’d do it again!
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Guest Bio
KP & Jessie are the duo behind Inkpot Creative®, a queer-led Showit website design studio building unconventional, impactful brand and website experiences for photographers who are leading their industry by creating something different.
Today’s episode is brought to you by DIY Template Shop! Grab the exact email, form, and workflow templates that I include inside the CRM Blueprint Course. Steal my templates and customize them to match your brand and process. Use the code PODCAST for 10% off.
Here are the highlights…
[01:12] Building Inkpot Creative
[4:07] Diving into the High End Wedding Summit
[12:55] Post-Summit Reflections and Future Plans
[21:38] Implementing Summit in a Box
[22:01] Time Commitments and Preparation for Summits
[25:00] Strategic Planning for Future Summits
[26:58] Adjustments and Insights for Next Summit
[28:13] Exploring the Impact of Sponsors and Visibility
[30:03] Summit Engagement and Accessibility
[34:29] Blogging Foundations Workshop Success
Mentioned in this Episode
The Unexpected Entrepreneur: How to Set Up a CRM with Colie James
inkpotcreative.com/blogging-for-business
Connect with Inkpot
Website: inkpotcreative.com
Instagram: instagram.com/inkpotcreative
TikTok: tiktok.com/@inkpotcreative
Podcast: inkpotcreative.com/podcast
Review the Transcript:
Colie: Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Business First Creatives podcast. Today, I think this is the first time that I have ever interviewed two people at the same time. If I am wrong, someone feel free to correct me, but I am chatting with Jesse and KP of Inkpot Creative. They are amazing website designers focused in show it.
They used to live here and then they moved to Vegas. And I don’t think I’m really jealous of them living in Vegas, but when it’s like negative 14 degrees here, I am a little jealous, hello ladies. And welcome to the podcast.
KP: Hey, thanks so much for having us.
Colie: Okay, so let’s kick off. I want one of you. And you know, if one of you talks more than the other, I’m gonna pick on the other one. I want one of you to tell me about how your business got started before we kick into the actual topic of today’s podcast.
KP: Sure thing, so I’ll do that because I founded the business. We actually graduated from college in 2020 and I struggled so much to get a job. Jesse landed a remote job, but I ended up stumbling into starting my own business. I worked at an internship role for an online course creation agency, and that was so helpful for me because actually the founder of that agency was like, you should start your own business.
So she really kind of was the catalyst to me starting my own business. I started out as a social media manager. So that’s what inkpot creative was back in the day. And then over time, it kind of morphed into website design because back in college, my goal was to work in a publishing house, a children’s publishing house designing books.
So I’m obsessed with layouts and it just kind of felt like a natural fit because websites are just an interactive layout. And I’ve really just been so happy doing that. And I couldn’t imagine myself doing. anything else. Over time we’ve really niched down a lot more into helping photographers and wedding pros.
Colie: Hey Jesse. So my question to you is since KP already said she had some graphic something in her college career, did you?
Jessie: I mean, sort of, so I got my degree in psychology. That’s what I majored in, but because KP and I were roommates and I needed to fill up my class schedule and didn’t know what else to take. I started taking graphic design courses and I actually ended up with a minor in graphic design and media arts. So I have a little bit of experience.
In those college classes, do I do any of the design work for ink pot? Absolutely not. And I don’t think anyone, I don’t think anyone would want to see my design work. It is bad. So it’s a good thing that I don’t, I handle all of the development. I can take what KP designs and I can put it on a website and I can like make it live.
I cannot come up with my own ideas or anything that looks remotely close to what KP designs.
Colie: Okay. That’s fascinating, ladies, because I literally did not know that both of you did not design websites. Okay. So I’m learning something new today. This is amazing. And I think that it’s like a yin yang kind of thing, right? Like she’s got the graphic. You’ve got the development. You guys are working well together.
This is awesome. Now, I heard when you said you niche down photographers and wedding pros. I think that’s a perfect way for us to kick into what we’re actually going to talk about today. You know, I should stop inviting website designers onto my podcast and then not talking about your website design. I feel like I do this every single time, So all of us, most of us, Have a one to one service that we’re offering our clients. And the question is, when you get tired of doing that service, what else can you do? And so I invited Jesse and KP on this podcast episode to talk about the other things that they are doing in their business, starting in 2023, and then going forward.
So first let’s talk about your summit. Why don’t you tell us what the summit was, who is it for, and when did it take place? Oh,
KP: So we hosted the high end wedding summit last fall, we’ve decided it’s going to be an annual event just because we love doing it so much, but we really just came up with the idea because we were on discovery calls with clients and almost every single photographer we were on the call with said, you know, the real reason that I want to, like, go through this whole rebrand, get a new website is because I want to raise my prices and really just Break into like that next level of the market.
So we were like, okay, this is clearly a need. We need to put on like a whole summit for this. Just to bring in a whole bunch of other educators that really know a lot about this too, because obviously like we specialize in web design, we don’t know everything about everything. So we hosted an online event in November and it went so well.
We brought in, I think, 25 speakers across a whole bunch of. And it was so successful. We absolutely loved it. We ended up with 550 people on our email list at the end.
Colie: I mean, it’s amazing. And of course you guys asked me to participate and I was like, hell yeah, where do I sign up and what do you want me to do? So yes, I was a part of the Summit listening audience. It was amazing. I’m sorry you missed it, but apparently if you did miss it, they’re going to do it again next year.
Yay! So let’s talk about those 550 people. So what’s the goal of creating the summit? I know it was to educate your leads. I get that, but like, what was your internal goal? Like why did you put on the summit and what did you hope to gain from it?
KP: So last year we really kind of shifted our focus into email marketing. I took a great online email marketing course because I had had an email list for so long. And I was like, I, you know, email them once a month because I just forget that it exists. So I was like, I really need to kind of niche down our email list because my email Publicly, we were really starting to niche down into helping photographers.
We had never outwardly said it, but I mean, even if you like, look at our stats from the past few years, every single client we have is pretty much a photographer. We have like, you know, one random industry here and there. So I really wanted to grow our email list to have more photographers and wedding photos on it.
So that was the ultimate goal. And we definitely did that
Colie: Yeah. So 550 people. That’s amazing. And I feel like I should say, I didn’t gain 550 people from participating in the summit. And I know you guys are laughing at me. But I feel like a lot of people don’t know or think about the fact that not everyone that signs up for a summit is going to sign up for like the thing that you offer as an educator, which is perfectly fine.
I am ashamed to say I didn’t look at my numbers. I probably should have. I think I got probably almost 200, at least 150, which I think is great. That’s 30 percent of the people who attended, which would be awesome. But of those 550 people, now that it is, I’m counting with my fingers guys, December, January, we’re about two and a half months out from the summit.
Out of 550 people, how many people are still on your list? Oh,
KP: 8 percent drop off.
Colie: guys, that is an incredible unsubscribe rate because, you know, you get people who come for the free stuff and you don’t know if they’re actually going to stay on your list to get the extra emails. So, as someone who participates in a summit. I will say that I kind of cross my fingers and hold my breath when I send the first non Summit related email so that I can see, you know, what percentage of those people drop off.
And sometimes you get people who opt in for your freebie and immediately unsubscribe like five minutes later, right? Jesse is just laughing. You know it’s true, Jesse.
Jessie: Yeah, we, there were, I will say there were a couple people. That signed up for the summit and got the, here’s your ticket to the summit email and unsubscribed with that email. So it definitely happens, but that just means they’re not aligned leads and you don’t want them on your list anyway.
Colie: Yeah, I mean, I’ve never thought that that was more true. I’m really hovering close to like another threshold with, with ConvertKit. And so I’m like, who can I get off my list right now so that I don’t have to pay for the next tier. If you’re not someone who’s aligned with me and actually wants my emails, like, but no, seriously, please leave.
Here’s the exit. Click unsubscribe. But I mean, I still think that a seven to 8 percent unsubscribe rate is incredible. And I want to also point out that you guys send weekly emails. So it is not that they have subscribed and that you just haven’t been emailing them. I mean, your, your Sunday series. is amazing.
I think it’s called strategy Sunday.
KP: Yes,
Colie: I’m really jealous because I was going to call my email series that and I was like, the ladies already stole it. It would be really shady if I just started calling my serious strategy Sunday. So I mean, I’m gonna let you have it, but it’s really good that I know for a fact that you guys have been sending weekly emails and you have still only left.
Lost 7 to 8 percent of the people who signed up for the summit. So talk to me about the logistics of the summit. So you got 550 people, but like, what were they actually opting into besides the 25 speakers?
Jessie: So there were a couple of different things that kind of came along with the summit. So obviously you had the 25 presentations and the way that we broke it down was there was, I think we did two presentations. So technically there are 20. Six presentations over three days. So about nine presentations a day.
You had access to those for free for 24 hours. So they dropped it. I want to say 8 a. m. PST, which was a little bit of a stretch because neither of us are morning people. So it was like 7 or 8 a. m. Getting up that early to actually launch everything wasn’t, It was, it was a little rough towards the end of the summit, but you got free access to them for 24 hours.
Most of the speakers also had freebies on their own. So different, either little templates that they had. different guides that they had, something related to what they were talking about. So all of those were free. A lot of people signed up for those, got a ton of great resources. Our speakers just went over and above with the amount of things that they contributed to this.
So it was absolutely amazing. We got all of that for free. We had a Facebook community. We did Facebook Lives every single day, with speakers from that day or with just me and KP. To kind of talk about the topics, answer questions, we even jumped in and did like a website audit live at, at, at one point, which was really fun.
KP: Then,
Jessie: if you purchase the all access pass, which. Started, I think it started at
KP: But,
Jessie: if you,
KP: all
Jessie: yeah. It was like 67, 97 and 127, something like that, depending on when you purchased it throughout the, summit. But you got all of that. You got access to all of the presentations for an unlimited amount of time.
We, we hesitate to say forever because. Inkpot may not exist forever, but for the lifetime,
Colie: exist.
Jessie: yes, for the long as we exist, you’ll have access to them. You also got all of the paid resources that our speakers sent in, which I think we had like over 3, 000 worth of resources, which understandably, not everyone is going to download every single resource, but 3, 000 worth of resources for 67 is pretty good. And then for both options, we actually did a private podcast feed as well. So we used hello audio to do a private podcast, which ironically I actually submitted, they gave, they did a little giveaway because right around the time of the summit, they launched their like public feed and they did a giveaway.
And somehow. I won the giveaway and won a year of their like premium thing. So we didn’t actually have to pay for Hello Audio for this, which was nice, but we did a private feed for both options. So the free option, it just only lasted for 24 hours. We switched out the, videos every, Every time, but the paid option, the live feed is still up for all of the podcasts.
So kind of giving people different ways to take in the information. Yeah. Um, but yeah, there was a ton of free work, free resources for everyone. And then some great upgrades. If you, if you got the all access pass.
Colie: Well, and I was just, as a participant, I was super impressed with what you guys put in. I thought that it was a really great way to like highlight what you do, because you guys put one of your templates in there, which I think was valued at 4. 99. You guys put, I don’t remember the time length. How long did people get to access the creative club? Six months. And then I think you guys also gave away the blogging course or
Jessie: I think we put blogging for business in there.
Colie: See? Yeah. So, I mean, you guys invested a lot of time and effort into putting together the summit. And so I’m just going to ask each of you to tell me, like, do you think it was worth it? You got 550 emails, but like. How are you feeling about what has come out two and a half months later?
KP: I think it was worth it, but I think we underestimated how much work it was going to be. Because there were a few days there where we were like not getting as much sleep as we should have. We should have probably hired like a VA to help us for the month, but would I do it again? Yes, because it was kind of thrilling.
We were both college athletes, so like having to like do things on the fly and stuff is something we both really enjoy. That
Jessie: I think it is something that we are still seeing benefits of today. And it is for, for a little bit, we were sitting there and we were like, wow, it’s It’s hard because we didn’t immediately see, you know, inquiries from people from the summit. And realistically, after we took a second to like step back and think about why that was, it wasn’t necessarily that the information that we gave wasn’t great because it was, it wasn’t that it wasn’t stuff that people wanted to hear.
It was more so that there was so much information that when you put it all in order, we do like website design, which is the last step of basically everything that everyone talked about. So we’re like, okay, we have to understand that it is almost, it’s a, it’s almost a longterm game for us to do this and to keep people engaged and keep giving them value.
And then once they get to that point, cause we’ve got a lot of people that are like, I’m totally rethinking everything I’m doing. And like, I’m starting from scratch and I’m going to go back and do all of this. before I even get to redesigning my brand or redesigning my website. So I think it was absolutely worth it.
I think we got a bigger community of people that are going to be more aligned with what we’re offering. And I think over the next couple of months, we’re definitely going to keep seeing the benefits of it.
Colie: I think that a lot of people underestimate and also overestimate what you’re going to get when you do that. Because just because I sent out an email to my list doesn’t mean that everyone on my list is going to sign up for the summit. But I do think that it gives you guys visibility every time one of your speakers puts your faces in front of their audience to talk about the summit.
So maybe there are some people who didn’t sign up this time, but when you do it next time. If they remember, Oh man, that was that summit that I didn’t sign up for because I was lazy. And then, you know, so and so got it and it was awesome. Let me sign up for it again this time. And I definitely think that this is one of those long term games, but as KP said, you guys are investing more in email marketing and we all know that’s an incredibly long game.
Like someone doesn’t just sign up and then immediately buy from you. Now I have started putting forth a lot of effort to figure out how long it takes someone to buy from me after they sign up for a freebie. So in my client hub in Airtable. I bring people in when they sign up for a freebie or whatever it is, and then I have my sales and then I connect them.
So like, I was really curious because I have a bunch of freebies, like I have a Dubsado quick start. I have a workflows, which is what I gave away during the high end wedding summit. And so I want to know on average, how long it’s taking someone to buy from me after they opt in. I had high hopes for the workflows, not just from your summit, but in general.
It’s the one that I think is most aligned with my offers. And it’s also the one that I feel like gives you the biggest bang for your buck. And do you guys know it doesn’t convert as well as just like a simple quick start? And I don’t know why. But at least I have the data to tell me that. So I would love to check back in with you guys eventually and be like, okay, let’s talk about your summit attendees.
And I think one thing that I’ve heard from a couple of people that do summits is that it takes more than one summit to convert them.
KP: makes sense.
Colie: guys are also going to want to look at the people who attended this time, who also attend the next one to see what kind of conversions you guys get at that point.
Jessie: Yeah. It’s definitely something that we’re excited to keep. Doing it and like figure out the balance of topics to do each year because when it is an annual and we can’t obviously do the same thing everything like we got to figure out a way to get to, you know, keep it fresh, get new topics, get new speakers, reach new audiences, because we can’t just keep tapping into the same.
Audience every single year. It’s going to eventually run dry. So it’s definitely an interesting thing that we’re, we’re playing around with and, you know, even planning on doing an entirely new summit series this year too. So we’re going to run two summits. That is a lot of, a lot of work, but this, this other one’s going to be a shorter one.
Um,
Colie: clearly you guys really loved it. If you’re like, Oh my God, I’m going to do this one again. And no, I have, cause I will say I am like, I’ve talked about it on a few podcasts already. I’m highly considering doing a summit this year. And when someone asks me, what’s the topic? I’m like, well, I have three in mind.
I just don’t know which one I’m going to do first. I mean, they all have the same audience, but like, they all have a slightly different topic. And so I am really going to be excited to see what, you know, separate summit series you guys are going to run this year, because I thought everything that you guys did last year was very well done and very well thought out.
And I did feel like none of the speakers to me didn’t belong. I know that sounds really shitty, but you guys know what I mean? Like it was very cohesive.
Jessie: yeah, yeah, we did. We put a lot of time into sourcing speakers. Thanks. And finding people who would, like, not only had audiences that would want to actually come to it. I think we learned a little bit about who are, like, good people to tap to come speak and have audiences of people that, would, you actually want to come to the summit because we could clearly like, there were times where we were like, okay, this person shared and now we’re getting a big influx of people signing up.
So like, obviously this is the type of person, the type of area that we want to be in. But I think it’s something that it’s, it’s hard to kind of nail down sometimes and, and figure it out, but I think it’s a good way to go. And there’s so many topics, everybody’s going to sign up for everything.
Colie: Well, it is. And I think I should just put it out there because if someone’s listening and they’re like, oh, well, I really want to participate in a summit, but I don’t have a big audience. I do think that it’s worth to say. As a participant, as an educator, you bring 2 different things to a summit. Yes, you can be someone who has an audience that you’re, you know, summit host can tap into and you basically bring an influx, but I also think that you have these people who are.
They really know the topic. And so it’s the education part that you value more from that speaker versus their audience. I just feel like as a summit host, you need a good mix, right?
Jessie: Yeah, yeah, you absolutely need a good mix, but that’s also why, like, we had a public application link for our summit too, and I think
Colie: didn’t know you had that.
Jessie: yeah, so we asked, so, so we didn’t actually need to push it that much because we made a massive list of people that we wanted to reach out to, to ask if they wanted to be on the summit.
KP: did it in rounds.
Jessie: We did it in rounds. We did not to We had medium expectations for how many people would say yes and like probably 80, 85 percent of the people that we reached out to said yes, like right off the bat and we were like, okay, well, I guess this is going to be a little bigger than we thought it was going to be, but I think having a public link, there were a couple of people that signed up to the public link.
There are a couple of people that we reached out to because, I mean, I’m sure you remember we had a question. On our onboarding thing for the speakers that was like, is there anyone else that we should reach out to? Because obviously we don’t know everybody. And there were a couple of people that were put there and we reached out to them and asked them and they became part of the summit.
So, I think having that kind of general area where the public can come in and say, hey, I would want to speak on this. Here’s my expertise, anything like that, or sourcing your speakers for other speakers is a great way to kind of expand your region and maybe find new people that. You haven’t heard of before, but that are really good for your topic.
Colie: let’s talk about your prep guys. Cause I, I, I don’t, I can’t remember which of you answered me, but when you responded, when you sent me my invitation to speak and I filled it out and then I immediately responded with. Did you buy Summit in a Box? Like, I felt like the email seemed a little familiar. I was like, okay.
And you guys said yes. So I just want to talk about this briefly because yes, it was a lot of effort, but you guys were also not flying by the seat of your pants. And by the way, uh, Krista is not paying me to get this kind of endorsement. Let’s just put that out there. I just happen to be a fan of Krista and I think that you guys did a great job implementing, you know, Summit in a Box and making it your own.
But. Time commitment. Like, when did you guys get the idea to do the summit and then how long did it take for you guys to like hone in on your idea and start prepping before you actually solidified a time, invited speakers, all that good stuff.
KP: We definitely went faster than you were supposed to. So I think we had the idea in maybe mid to late August. You’re usually supposed to start about 90 days out. So we, like, came up with the idea of the summit first, and we were trying to decide if we should just do, like, you know, a live class of our own or if we should actually, like, You know, invest in some in a box and put on a huge event.
And we were like, you know what, let’s just go for it. Cause there were payment plans for the course. We were like, you know, we could, we could probably at least make back what we are going to put into the course to like make it worth it. Cause we would grow our list either way. So we went for it and it definitely was one of those things that we kept like knowing what we had to do, but we waited for like the hard tasks towards the end, even though, um, when you actually buy something in a box, you get like an entire list of all the things you have to do, and it will like auto calculate all your due dates.
But we were like, oh, like that won’t take that long. Like, we’ll just put it off another week. And towards the end, I would say like the two weeks leading up to the summit. Oh my gosh, we were just nonstop doing summit stuff. We would go, there’s a clubhouse at our apartment. We would go and sit there. We would order pizza and just sit there from like, you know, 8am until midnight when they closed like every day for a little bit.
Jessie: Yeah, it is a, to at least start your first one, I will say, because there were some things setting up the website, getting all of
Colie: Uh, y’all got that. Yeah.
Jessie: reuse in years to come, so it’s not going to be as much, but this, there is a ton of like, groundwork to lay to actually get it done. Like KP said, Summit in a Box has a 90 day, uh, Like it starts 90 days out.
Yeah, we probably had the idea and start like bought Summit in a box and started it at 97 days out 100 days out from when we wanted to do it. Like it was, it was a, oh, we put it in the ClickUp and it just barely like we haven’t missed any due dates yet, but there’s one in like three days. So, Definitely think about your time commitment, what you have.
I think when we run these other ones, we’re going to put a pause on projects or take less of them on because we were doing, we were still doing full website projects through the whole thing. I was developing sites through the summit, like running, waking up, doing the stuff, doing lives and still developing sites in between everything.
And it was just. a massive time commitment to do it. So I think it’s absolutely worth it, but you need to understand how it’s going to take longer than you think it’s going to take. So you need to plan for that.
Colie: I mean, I swear, I, I don’t know if it was her podcast or if I heard her talk about it on someone else’s, but she says, you know, I tell people they need 90 days and they don’t believe me. And then they run into it. And so you guys are proof positive that, Hey, everyone should listen to Krista.
Cause I mean, That’s one of the reasons that I really wanted to do a summit in Q1, and clearly that’s not happening because we’re at the end of January when we’re recording this. So, I mean I am, I am going to listen to you guys and be like, no, that’s not a good idea, but I will say, like, there isn’t really much that you guys could have done with your timeline because you did it right before Thanksgiving.
Like, you couldn’t, you didn’t have the option of pushing it a week. If you had the option, if you pushed it two or three weeks, that would have been that dead time. Between Black Friday and Christmas and no one would have been paying attention. So then you’re talking about January. Well, in January, like there’s a whole other slew of things.
So, I mean, I’m really happy and proud that you guys could pull it off in November, because I feel like you guys did it the very last week before you just have to shut it down for at least two months and not even consider touching it again.
Jessie: Yeah.
KP: that was our whole thought process. And then we also made the mistake. We did not know that there is a huge in person wedding conference literally here in Vegas called Wedding MBA. And it was the week before our summit. So we had a few speakers who had opted out just because they were like, we’re so busy with that summit the week before.
So now we know for next year.
Jessie: Do some research before you pick it to see other summits in your niche and what’s going to happen. So we now know when Wedding MBA is going to be this year and our planning are,
Colie: marked on your calendar?
Jessie: It is marked on the calendar and we are planning our summit like a month before that. So a little earlier this year, but yeah, that was definitely a just didn’t, we didn’t do the research to, to look it up and just kind of went into it full swing.
And then we’re like, Oh, that.
Colie: Like, damn.
Jessie: because we, you never want to compete to not only with speakers, but with like the people who are actually attending. And a lot of people, if they get a lot of information, they’re not going to, you know, Continue and go back and like get overwhelmed. So it’s kind of the balance of figuring out a time that works for you, but then is also a good time for your clientele.
Colie: So I’ve heard you guys say a couple things, and I’m just going to like repeat them, and then I’m going to ask you if there are any that I forgot. So the first thing that you guys are saying is, it took a lot more work than you expected. And so when you do your next summit, you will lighten your client load to make sure that you guys are not going full force with your business plus the summit at the same time.
The second thing that I heard you guys say is that, you know, you needed 90 days the first time minimum. I do think that, like you said, you’ve already got the website. You guys, I mean, and even if you didn’t have a website, you guys website, like you guys can handle that. It’s good. You’re going to be able to reuse your funnels.
Like you’re just going to need to like swap out your email copy. And so even though that 90 days felt like a lot last time, at least if you give yourself the 90 days next time, I think you guys are just going to fly right through it. That’s going to be awesome. And then the last thing that I heard you guys say is make sure that you’re not competing with other people that would attend the same thing.
And it’s not just because it’s competition, but you want to make sure that you are not overwhelming both your speakers and your attendees by having them do back to back things because a lot of people just can’t commit to that. And so what else would you guys say you guys learned in round one that you will adjust for your next summit?
Jessie: Ooh, I think we, I don’t know if KP wants me to say this or not, but we did do sponsors this round
KP: Oh, this one, this is a good one.
Jessie: We will probably not do sponsors next time. Our sponsors were amazing and it having sponsors allowed us to run Facebook ads, which actually pulled in a lot of leads.
Colie: Okay.
Jessie: However, the way we set it up, which is totally on us almost made it feel like it was a little confusing who was actually running the summit.
So. We want it to be very clear that we are running the summit because I think, I mean, not only are we trying to educate people, but we are also a business and are trying to grow. So we want that visibility and people to be like, Oh, inkpot creative put this summit together, not these four companies that have.
Very are very different and everything like that. So sponsors might not happen or might not happen to the level that we’ve, we had them this year. We also didn’t put ourselves first on the list of the schedule. And we noticed that the higher up, because as we released videos, it was just the day. Here’s a calendar rows of three.
The ones closer to the top at the first got a ton of views and then naturally people start to kind of drop off. Um, and we didn’t put ourselves first because we put our sponsors first and I think next time we will definitely put ourselves first. And I would suggest if you are running a summit that you list yourself first.
Just so you kind of get that, that best visibility. Yeah. Yeah.
Colie: I mean, and I don’t think that I mean, as a, as a participant speaker, like, that wouldn’t have bothered me. Hey, you guys are doing all the work. I don’t care if you go 1st have at it. I will say something else that I’ve seen in other summits that might help with, um, at least viewership.
For people who didn’t upgrade to the all access pass. Have you guys ever been a participant in a summit where everything was free for 24 hours and then over the weekend, they open everything back up for another 24 to 48 hours? Have you guys ever participated in a summit that did that?
KP: I haven’t, but I do know Krista had a whole lesson on that. Like
Colie: Oh, see, I didn’t even know that. I mean, I feel like. If, if viewership and, you know, making sure that people have time, of course, you always want people to buy the all access pass if they are able, but I feel like there’s all access pass, which is, you know, someone gets it forever. I don’t think that it’s disingenuous if you do it over the weekend, just because, like, I mean, like you said, I think it also depends on the number of presentations that you have.
Now you guys said it was 26 divided by three, so about eight presentations every day or whatever, but. We didn’t talk about like the length because I think mine was longer than you guys. I think mine was 25. And so, I mean, I just can’t shut up. I’m sorry, especially about automated workflows. So, I mean, even if people had done like the 20 minutes, that’s an incredible amount of time for someone to dedicate on like a random Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, when they’re at home.
They’re probably still dealing with client work and their families and their other responsibilities. And so that’s why I end up always getting the all access pass, because I know for a fact, I don’t care what the summit is. Like, there’s just no way that I can consume all of it or even the ones that I want to consume, like in that time period.
But I do think that if there’s a concern with viewership initially, next time you guys just might want to experiment and do a week and run and see how it feels. If you do it and you hate it, don’t do it again. But I do just think it’s worth exploring.
Jessie: That’s an interesting thing to think about too, especially depending on what your audience is for it, because you also have to think like we release these during the day, but some of the photographers that like we’ve even worked with are just going full time or they still have a day job or they’re doing stuff.
So depending on who you’re working with, if they’re working. A nine to five job and have a family that they, you know, kids that they come home and kids want to, you know, play or be entertained. You got to make them dinner and like do all this stuff. Sometimes by the end of the day, they’re just like, I don’t have any, any time, any energy to sit here and dedicate to this.
So maybe having a, a weekend where. There, there’s a little more flexibility in people’s schedules could be a, an interesting thing,
Colie: And of course, the argument is always to be made, well, if they want to watch it, then they can just buy the all access pass. I’m not discounting that at all. I actually think I think that there was one summit where I didn’t sign up for an all access pass and I didn’t, I only got to watch like two or three somethings during the week and they reopened it on the weekend.
And I was like, oh, and I went back and watched one and that one was enough. And then I bought the all access pass because then I was like, oh, I’ll just, you know, I’ll just take my time and watch the rest of them. So I do. I do also wonder guys, sorry, as a statistician, I wonder if you reopened it on the weekend, what If it would actually increase all access pass because then people have a little bit more time to consume it for free to be like, Oh, yeah, no, that presentation was so good.
Like, I need it for later. Let me go get this all access pass or, you know, maybe they are then interested in, like, the podcast feed, which I’m going to admit. I don’t watch anything on video anymore. I throw it on the podcast and listen to it in the car as I drive Chloe back and forth between her schools, but, um, Just things to think about.
Is there anything else that’s on your radar that you guys are like, I would do that differently next time. And it’s perfectly okay to say no.
Jessie: not that I can think of. I, I think I’m really happy that we did the podcast feed.
KP: Mm hmm.
Jessie: it, I think the one that we did with the biggest package, it’s like a thousand dollars. It’s like 997 a year for hello audio, but I think there are different. different options for, for that.
But I do think that was really good. And obviously people learn different ways. So just having it, it was super easy to just download an MP3. That was like the lowest lift thing that we had to do when it came to kind of the intake of, of videos. Cause that definitely took a long time too. But yeah, I think, I don’t think there’s anything else that we wouldn’t want to repeat for, for our first time.
There are a lot of things that felt really good.
Colie: That’s excellent. All right. So the last thing that I want to ask you about, and literally I thought about it before we hit record, you know this. So not only did you guys do website design, main business, you guys did this summit as a way to build community, grow your list, give some education to the leads that you were already seeking, but you guys also did a blogging foundations workshop.
And so I just want you guys to tell me like how that went, because again, Your website design, even your templates are pretty high end versus this blogging workshop, which I mean was only 99 if I’m not mistaken, or maybe it was even less than that. I can’t remember. But so how did that come about and what kind of returns or rewards have you seen from doing that one time workshop?
I’m going to end there. I’m going to let you talk. And I have another question. Nice.
KP: have a lot of history with blogging. I love blogging. We actually have a whole second business called Volumes and Voyages, which is a travel blog. We have a few other random travel blogs too, like Delightfully Denver, Lively Las Vegas.
We start travel blogs all the time. So I have the experience of growing the main travel blog up to around 60, 000 page views a month. I think it’s the highest we’ve grown it to so far. So I have always wondered like the power of applying my knowledge from that to like online businesses. So we started offering blogging as a monthly service in 2022.
And then after a year of getting results for our clients, we were like, okay, so now I feel like we have enough knowledge to back up the fact that this does work for online businesses. And we ran it as a masterclass because we were always getting questions about how can I do this? Like, how do I get these results for myself?
So we ran it for 67, I think, for the class ended up being a two hour class. We had way more people sign up and turn up than we thought. So I think around 25 ish people came, which was almost everybody who purchased, which for us was huge because up until then, you know, we’ve been having like five people come to any of our live things.
So we were like so ecstatic. Everyone asked so many questions and we literally went through everything from, you know, how to come up with ideas, how to, We gave them like different templates of like, these are the types of pillar posts that you should be writing. And here’s like what you should include.
We talked about keyword research because I feel like people are always scared of keyword research, but it’s a lot simpler than you might think. Um, we even talked about what to do, like after you publish your post, just to make sure you’re really getting the most out of it. And that’s that live class.
We’ve been selling it since then. I think it’s 97 now. Um, To buy
Colie: where I got the 97. Okay. I wasn’t crazy.
KP: but since then, a lot of the people who took the course have actually come back and hired us for monthly blogging because now they know how to do it, but they’re like, oh my gosh, like it’s a lot of work. So we’ve had, I think a few of them have signed two, six month contracts each.
So we’ve definitely like made money from it.
Colie: Yes. So not only did you make, I mean, that’s a couple thousand from the initial, and then you’ve had some resales because it is now, you know, Available evergreen use that word guys evergreen on your website. And then it actually did bring in the type of clients that you want for like long term blogging.
I mean, that’s amazing. I think that there’s, there’s something that we can talk about to dissect this just really fast. So first. Those of us that have DIY products. So in your case, it’s how to DIY your blogging. In my case, it’s how to DIY your system setup. A lot of people will be like, no, you don’t want to emphasize the DIY if you want them to pay you.
And I’m always like, I don’t care if they pay me or not. If I tell them how to do it, if they’re not capable of actually implementing, they’re going to come hire me anyways. I mean, I have had a steady 10 percent upgrade from people who buy my DIY course in Dubsado. to those that hire me to pay 10 times as much to hire me to do it.
I mean, there is something to be said for people are scared to do stuff. If you show them every single step, you will still get people who don’t have the time to implement. And so now you are the expert in their eyes because they watched your DIY course. You know, they read your ebook, whatever it is. And so they see you as the expert.
They’re nodding their head at everything that you told them to do. They’re just like, I just can’t do it. Can I just pay you? And what does it cost? So, I mean, that is amazing and kudos to you guys. Do you have any, like, do you think that you’ll do it again? For like a different kind of topic or do you think that you’ll do it again as like a new launch to improve?
Because I mean, you know every time we teach something we get better So do you think that there’s a chance that you’ll do another blogging foundations? Live master class and that it will just replace the one that you’re currently doing because of course, you know blogging SEO It changes a lot. So what are your plans on that?
Jessie: I think we, we have kind of haven’t settled on if we want to do a kind of of blogging for business or if we almost want to do like a blogging for business 2. 0 and go a little more in depth and kind of expand on it. But ideally, hopefully this year, we have a lot of we have a lot of goals for this year.
But,
Colie: lot of goals for this
Jessie: Yeah, but, maybe this year in the future, we definitely want to take a look at it and, and update it. Cause you are right. Like things in SEO change. , there’s been a lot of changes in the past year. Even Google had some major core updates that, uh, do need to be taken into account in some areas when it comes to SEO.
So I definitely think we’ll, we’ll redo it. And especially as we. start to book out more with blogging to the extent where we can’t take any more clients because for all of ours, like KP and I write every single one. So there’s no, we don’t have anyone else writing for us right now. It is us. And I think right now we have eight, eight or nine clients.
I, I think we’re going to max out at 10. But it is a lot of articles for, for us to write. So it does take some time. So I think as we start to book out for that too, that’s blogging for business is also a good alternative for people who want to Want to start blogging. Don’t know how instead of hiring us, you can at least learn the foundations, and, and do it yourself.
But I definitely think we will do some sort of revamp new version sometime soon.
Colie: Guys, this was amazing. Thank you so much for coming on and just being vulnerable and sharing your expertise, because I know that this was a new thing for you. I mean, both of them, the masterclass and the summit, and you guys did great at both. And I know that you guys are going to get even bigger and better results when you do them a second time.
Tell everyone where they can find you on the internet. And also, I mean, if you just want to give me an idea of when the next summit’s going to be, that would be great too.
Jessie: Yeah. So you can find us online. Um, our website is inkpotcreative. com. We are at inkpotcreative on all of the different social media platforms. We also have a podcast, unexpected entrepreneur podcast. That you can go listen to on Spotify, Apple, everything like that. And then, yeah, when it comes to summits, hopefully our next one, a little mini summit, is going to be in May.
I think that’s our goal. Talking about maybe some marketing stuff in your, in your business.
Colie: Did you guys hear her voice? Did you hear that? That’s all right. I think everybody needs marketing advice. Let’s be honest.
Jessie: Uh, so that’s, that’s our goal for, for May and then the high end wedding summit we’re looking at probably October of this year instead of November. Um, but those are our tentative goals for summits this year, but we will absolutely post updates and everything on Instagram, our social media, our email list.
If you want to join our email list, you’ll get all of the updates on there.
Colie: I will have links for all of that in the show notes and I’m telling you I do enjoy their strategy Sunday Even if they stole the title that I wanted for my email. It’s okay It’s okay because I enjoy reading them. So guys, I’m going to have links for everything that Jesse just talked about, including my episode on their podcast, which was, I don’t know, it was like five months ago now, I think.
Um, but I will also have that in the show notes. But ladies, thank you so much for joining me for this episode. I am so thrilled that you were able to be here. Everyone, that’s it for this episode. See you next time.
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