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The Story Engine Podcast: Where we teach you how to make marketing easier, more powerful and fun through storytelling. Each week we learn from top entrepreneurs, influencers and world-changers on how to share your story through content, copywriting, speaking and how to make your story your most powerful marketing tool.

May 21, 2019

 

Today on the show, we have Mark Wade. Mark is a serial entrepreneur that started as a physician and has slowly evolved from marketer into a software service company founder.

The success in the marketing of all of his brands and his company comes from virtual summits. Virtual summits are essentially an online conference that people can attend from the comfort of their own home. These can be really powerful tools for lead generation, for product launches, and for getting new customers. Mark is going to break down how to use virtual summits to do just that on the episode today.

 

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Key Takeaways


  • [2:04] Mark’s Story
  • [9:13] How Mark educates other entrepreneurs
  • [10:33] The difference between a one day summit and a multi-day summit
  • [10:46] Growing your list using Summits
  • [25:11] Keeping your summits evergreen
  • [26:16] Software requirements for hosting a summit
  • [27:46] Sponsoring Summits
  • [31:03] Why everyone should do a summit

 

 

Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode


Virtual Summits

American Posture Institute

Self Publishing Success School

Virtual Summit Podcast

 

Magnetize, monetize, maximize, multiply quote

Transcription


Kyle Gray:

Hello and welcome to the Story Engine Podcast. My name is Kyle Gray. Today on the show, we have Mark Wade. Mark is a serial entrepreneur that started as a physician and has slowly evolved from a marketer into a software as a service company founder.

 

Kyle Gray:

The success in the marketing of all of his brands and his company comes from virtual summits. Virtual summits are essentially an online conference that people can attend from the comfort of their own home. These can be really powerful tools for lead generation, for product launches, and for getting new customers. Mark is going to break down how to use virtual summits to do just that on the episode today.

 

Kyle Gray:

So without further ado, let's turn it over to Mark. Mark, it's such a pleasure having you on the show today, because I've seen you in a lot of different live events. I want to introduce you, but for anybody who doesn't know, doesn't know your story and how you are, I'd love to open this up by having you share a story from your own life, your own experience about some moment or story that's defined you and led you to doing what you're doing today.

 

Mark Wade:

Oh, that's a good question, Kyle. Thank you you so much. I am excited to be here on this podcast. I can't wait to dive into all the goodies and details we're going to talk about. It's always a pleasure getting to spend time with you. That's a great question.

 

Mark Wade:

I have multiple stories, but I think the biggest one, the one that immediately pops into my head that defined me more than anything has to go back to when I was 20 years old. I like to start that off with a saying that, "Nobody will remember you." Now that's what went through my head as I sat there trying to fight back tears.

 

Mark Wade:

Now you see, September 11 changed a lot of people's' lives, but it changed my life in a way that I could have never imagined. As a 20 year old pre-med student, I was pulled out of college and sent over to fight in the war, essentially. There was one day that essentially changed my life forever, like, "Bang!" Noise, gunshots, fire, chaos, everything rattling. As all the dust and the gunshots died down, I had my first experience up close and personal with death. When I was back in my tent on my cot sitting there thinking through this, everything was rushing through me, as you can imagine. I just thought to myself, "Nobody will remember you. If you die today, what have you done that will live on? What legacy have you left? What difference have you made in the world?"

 

Mark Wade:

I made a vow with myself at that moment that if I survived the rest of my tour in combat, that I would spend every day of my life building a legacy. A legacy for me, and a legacy for others. That's one of the deepest things that drives me in everything I do. I don't talk about that actually a whole lot, so I think this is the first time I've ever even mentioned that on a podcast, but it was just such a great question. But down at the core, that's actually what drives essentially everything I do.

 

Kyle Gray:

That is really powerful and inspiring. I love asking that question, because you uncover these things that people bring to their company and their business. That's just really inspiring and incredible. Now tell us a little bit about what you're doing in the field today. You've got a software as a service company, but this isn't your first company. You've got a few successful ventures. Tell us how you've brought this amazing energy to your work and to the world.

 

Mark Wade:

Yeah, so I love sharing this aspect as well. So I'm actually a health care professional by trade. I'm a postural neurologist, so I have two doctorates and 50 some odd certifications in neurology, neuroscience, posture, human function, etc. So I started out in a brick and mortar practice, and I had one of the most successful posture correction clinics in the country, but I wanted to help more people. Like most of us, I knew I had a message inside of me that I wanted to get out, and I didn't want to be confined just by the walls of my actual practice. So I started looking into the online business journey or model. Again, this is probably seven, eight years ago at this time, but I had no clue what online business was. I was a healthcare professional. They don't teach you that in med school, oddly enough.

 

Mark Wade:

I started out in the journey, and I do remember, it's quite comical. When I started telling people about this idea I had, I specifically remember my dad looking at me and he said, "Are you crazy, boy?" He goes, "You've spent a decade getting this education and building this successful practice, and now you're just going to go sit behind a computer somewhere? What are you doing?" Honestly, I think most of us can relate to this. I started to believe him and everybody else. I mean, "Am I crazy? What am I doing?" Nothing I was doing was working at the time, and so I was like, "Maybe I'm just out of my element. Maybe I just need to stick to my practice."

 

Mark Wade:

Another key moment in my life and in my journey was hearing Pat Flynn, my buddy over at Smart Passive Income talking to somebody about summits, virtual summits. I remember thinking, "You know what? This sounds really cool, makes sense, and nothing else I'm doing is working, so let's give this a try." I remember setting out to do my first virtual summit. At the time, I was relatively unknown, no authority, influence, not very many connections, so I actually was only able to get nine people to speak on my summit. Two of them were me and my partner, so only seven.

 

Mark Wade:

So I did this thing where I just ran it as a one day summit. I didn't know at the time I was doing anything special, I was just being an entrepreneur being resourceful. That one day summit actually was a success for us. That topic we did the one day summit on ended up becoming a online certification that we created which became a multi-million dollar certification that spawned several other multi-million dollar certifications. Before we knew it, we had this multi-million dollar online education system that became the world's largest provider of post graduate online education.

 

Mark Wade:

Now that business was primarily built on summits, but back in the day, I was having a hand build those summits. Eventually, I had teams, like four full-time people, because we did and still run anywhere from two to four multi day summits and four to eight one day summits every year in all of my businesses. Finally after about a year of thinking like, "Why isn't there just an easier way of doing this? You can do a webinar with no tech skill and relatively easy, why is this summit so complicated?" So then I set out to actually build it. After a year of wishing that was there and it wasn't, I set out to build it. I found one of the top development companies in the U.S. and we spent a year building it out. Then two years ago, we launched it. It's been the top and only software for virtual summits, specifically for posting a virtual summit.

 

Kyle Gray:

Now that's really impressive then. You mentioned the large team that you have to run multi day summits. I've heard time and time again, and seeing myself, how intensive summits can be. So I would love to learn maybe a retrospect from your first experience. What can somebody who's on their own in your shoes to run a minimum viable summit? You can also share how does your software just solve this problem where normally they would have to piece things together?

 

Mark Wade:

Oh yeah. So with the software, essentially it has revolutionized summits. [bctt tweet="What used to take hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars can be up and ready to run in a matter of two hours with the software - Mark Wade, Virtual Summits" username="kylethegray"] So it's changed the game. Even you have zero tech skill or knowledge whatsoever. So it's changed the game in that.

 

Mark Wade:

I would say as far as with summits in general, and I guess I should have caveated the end of my last story with so now I run full-time virtual summit software. American Posture Institute is still running. I have an entire team, a director of education, I have a COO, and all of that, but now I spend all of my time running virtual summit software. I travel all around the world teaching other entrepreneurs and course creators, etc., how to implement these type of, what I call, "collaborative marketing strategies," into their business.

 

Mark Wade:

So to answer your last question honestly the simplest answer is the virtual summit software now makes it possible that anybody can run it, whether you have a team or you have no team and a small budget and no tech skill, you can still do a summit, and you can have it up relatively quickly as well. So maybe it'd be better if we dive into an actual specific friction point, because I'm happy to give away strategies or insights into those as well.

 

Kyle Gray:

Yeah, well then I would be interested in starting with actually what are some of the skills that the people really need to bring to the table? Your software can keep things organized, but I'd imagine things like outreach and managing people and there's some soft skills involved that just can't completed by software-ified. How do people handle those?

 

Mark Wade:

I love that. I'm going to steal that term. Software-ified, that's awesome. That's a great point right there.

 

Mark Wade:

First off, summits in general, there's multiple kinds of summits. So you have a multi day summit, which you listening at home, you've heard us say these different terms. A multi day summit just means traditional virtual summit, which is anywhere from about 3 to 14 days, and goes anywhere from about 20 to 80 speakers, so it's a massive online event.

 

Mark Wade:

I would never recommend anybody take that on the first time they're doing a summit, or especially if you're just kind of getting started in the online world. Now they are some of the most powerful marketing tools out there. Summits in general are the most powerful marketing tool. It's a proven formula to quickly grow your list, launch your platform, and make more money even if you're just getting started. However, if you are just getting started, I wouldn't jump into a multi day summit, 80 person speaker. As you're saying, there are some skills that are involved in that.

 

Mark Wade:

Now another type of summit like a live stream summit. Now most virtual summits are all pre-recorded, so you do most of the work in advance, which then allows you to put on this event that you then market. You market it as this major event. All of the speakers promote it, which is why we call it a collaborative marketing strategy, because you're leveraging the expertise and the audience of all of the people that are on your summit. [bctt tweet="So it's a really great way to quickly build your list and your authority - Mark Wade, Virtual Summits" username="kylethegray"]

A proven formula to grow your list quoted image

Mark Wade:

Now the other summit, which is becoming the most popular, and one of the ones I recommend the most, is a one day summit. So this is typically anywhere from about 5 to maximum 15 speakers, 10 being right around the sweet spot. It's one day. It doesn't mean it's a full day in content, it just means it's one day. That's the amount of time that the audience has to consume it.

 

Mark Wade:

The reason this is becoming so effective is because we're overcoming one of the major issues that we're seeing right now in the online marketing world, things like that. Actually, we're seeing this across all spectrums. It's a shortening of attention span. People’s attention spans are getting shorter, so you need to get them a result quicker.

 

Mark Wade:

So as far as skills are concerned, your objective or your goal determines which one of those summits you're going to essentially want to run. If you're wanting to run a summit that brings in 50 to 100 thousand leads and does a quarter of a million dollars, which is totally possible and happens regularly, you're probably not going to do that all on your own. You're going to need or want a team, because you're probably not either the best interviewer or the best marketer or the best copywriter. There's things that you're going to need experts to help you with to get that kind of level of success. Now if you're looking for 2 thousand to 5 thousand people, you can do that on your own. You're still going to want to leverage the speakers to help you promote that, but you can do that relatively simply.

 

Mark Wade:

The other aspect to know when you're trying to do a summit is I didn't find what your end goal is. A lot of people go into doing summits and just go, "I want to do it all. I want to get a big list, I want to make money, I want to grow my authority." They want to do it all, and they don't pick any specific objective. By doing that, all of the objectives lower. So there are different strategies.

 

Mark Wade:

If you're going to focus on list building, you're going to have a different strategy with that than with a summit you're going to use as a monetization strategy. If you're going to do a summit as a monetization strategy, maybe if you already have a list, you may do a premium summit, which means you charge for it. List builders you would never charge for that, you would always do it free, because you're trying to build your list. If your goal is to sell a high ticket program on the back end, whether it's coaching or program or Mastermind or whatnot, you're going to have a different strategy on how you setup that summit and the way you make the offers on the backend.

 

Kyle Gray:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Depending on peoples' strategies, would a more common beginner strategy just be aiming for getting the leads, or do people prefer to create the product from it by having it open for one day and then selling it? Does that still perform well as a product after the fact?

 

Mark Wade:

Yeah, so that's a great question. So I called a summit ascension model, or business growth and ascension model, but you have summit, journey, and scale. The summit is where you're going to building your tribe, essentially. That's where we use a one day summit or multi day summit.

 

Mark Wade:

The journey is the customer journey. This is the post summit profit strategy. This is an area where people usually miss the boat. They're just focused on their summit, and they're thinking the summit is how they're going to make their money. Summits are what we call self liquidating offer, because they do make money, but usually what we're using them for is to pay off whatever the ads, leads, or affiliate expenses are. So a lot of time, you may make some, but you're usually going to break even or just generate a little bit of profit.

 

Mark Wade:

However, [bctt tweet="Summits are one of the only strategies where you can essentially get a list for free - Mark Wade, Virtual Summits" username="kylethegray"], because the summit pays for itself. So if you walk away, let's just say, like a 10 thousand list summit, which is pretty common, now you have 10 thousand engaged people. One of the main reasons summits are so effective with monetization on the backend is because it's doing two things, which I believe you need to have in any business. But you need to solve a problem and build a relationship. So a virtual summit allows you to solve that problem, build that relationship, which takes you to the next step, which is what we call the turn. So it's your next promotion.

 

Mark Wade:

So the way we typically suggest is essentially, it's four pieces. Magnetize, which is your summit. Monetize, which is where you're going to start to qualify your buyers. This is going to be like a medium priced info or digital product, so like a course. Then you're going to Maximize, which is going to be your high ticket, or transformation is what we call that. Then Multiply, that's going to be your membership. That's your recurring revenue.

Create a summit around that problem - quote by mark wade

Mark Wade:

So when you take people on from a summit, now hopefully what you've done is you've looked at what your problem is solved by your product, and you've created your summit around that problem, because that brings in super qualified and engaged leads, which is why it increases conversions on course sales.

 

Mark Wade:

Now specifically about your question on, "Can you still sell the summit as a product?" Absolutely. Usually the summits are free to attend, whether it's one day or three or four days. There's a period of time that you can view the information, the sessions for free. Then after that, it closes down. However, you can typically purchase additional bonuses as well, but ongoing access to that summit information. So it's usually like lifetime access or unlimited access.

 

Mark Wade:

A good summit is 20-30% of sales. That's a really, really great summit. Very, very commonly, you're going to see a minimum of like 10% of the people that opt in for the summit are going to purchase. So it still does really well. However, that's now what I would be focused on for my monetization.

 

Mark Wade:

I would be focused on right after that summit, "What offer am I going to push them to?" The best way to do that to increase the amount of money you make on this monetization step is again, this should be a single solution to a problem that directly aligns with what your summit is. A common mistake I see people make is like okay, I take them from a summit and I put them in a course that solves like 25 problems. Again, [bctt tweet="We're trying to build a relationship - Mark Wade, Virtual Summits" username="kylethegray"]. Hand raised over here, "My course completion rates aren't that great." It's because I'm trying to do too much with them. That's what most of the audience is thinking right now. People aren't finishing your courses. So if they don't get that wind, they don't really go on that next step of the journey with you to build the relationship.

 

Mark Wade:

So you really want a smaller course as that next sale, but it's going to be anywhere from 100-150% more the price point than what your summit was. So it does become a monetization step. A great example is a recent summit we did in my other company called The Virtual Neurology Summit. We had 3500 participants on that. So that's directed at health care professionals, so it's a pretty specific niche, so 3500 is actually pretty good.

 

Mark Wade:

It was something like 190 people purchased the summit, so the summit made like $30 thousand essentially. But then when we put them in that next step, we ended up doing $6900 and some change. It was like 130 people bought that course. So even less people bought the course, but we still made that. Then when we put them through our high ticket, which was a $2 thousand product, we had 50 some odd buy, and that did $102 thousand. Then when we put them through our membership, we had 40 something buy, which was almost $5 thousand in recurring revenue. So that one summit, with this post summit profit strategy, did over $200 thousand just from that summit.

 

Kyle Gray:

Do people come to you and they already have these products in place, or do you help them set up? Do you have templates? Are there qualities to each of these products that are universal that you help them build?

 

Mark Wade:

That's a great question. So I mean, yes. It is possible to frame these out. Everybody should be doing their own unique courses. We have some really strategies to make these quick wins. Most of the people that come to me already have a course or something they're selling, they're just having problems selling it. But I do have both online courses. We do live workshops, and we have an ascension model for your summit. I do the three different frameworks. So we have the Build Your Summit, so if you're focused on building your summit, which is going to be bringing the leads in.

 

Mark Wade:

Now a really important point to make here is with the software, this really revolutionizes summits, is essentially with one click of a button. It's called the Ever Summit feature. With one click of a button, it reruns your summit as if it was live ongoing forever. So one of the bigger complaints in the past with summits is, "Well, I put all this time and energy into it. If it hit, great, I did well, but now it's done and over. Maybe I'm just trying to sell it as a product. Or if it didn't hit, I did all this time and energy and it didn't hit." But with this feature now, it continues to run as if it was live. So that means all the traffic coming to it sees that it starts ... whether you want it to be weekly or twice a month or once a month that it starts at that future date, so it increases the ... You essentially can use it forever.

 

Mark Wade:

That become the beginning of your customer journey. Again, solving a problem, building a relationship, which increases the conversions for everything else on the backend of it.

 

Kyle Gray:

Now do you use a similar product or strategy actually to bring people onto your company? Are you employing the same summit strategy to bring people into the virtual summit software?

 

Mark Wade:

Yeah, so I do. I have multiple summits. The cool thing with one day summits, those are my favorite, one day summits, because they're pretty quick and easy. A multi day summit, could take about six to nine months if you're trying to do it well and right. You could probably do it in less if you don't have huge expectations. A one day summit, you can have it done it about 30 to 60 days. So it's much quicker, much more forgiving, much more flexible. I run a lot of those.

 

Mark Wade:

The reason I do those is because I can target specific problems and bring people in and talk to them on that specific problem and then drive them through the journey. So an example, I did the list builder accelerator, [bctt tweet="How to Quickly Grow Your List Without Spending Money - Mark Wade, Virtual Summits" username="kylethegray"]. So I had ten experts that are phenomenal at list building come on there and give these strategies that newer or beginners could use to build their list without having to spend a bunch of paid ad streams. Now everybody that opted into that one day summit, they're interested in building their list, so what's another great alternative to building your list is summits. So then I offer them my different offers and go through our ascension model.

 

Mark Wade:

But I will also say in the American Posture Institute, which is my other company, we also in that company run summits all the time. We do anywhere from two the four multi day summits and four to eight one day summits.

 

Kyle Gray:

Wow. So you do it, you live it, all the way through, from clients to your own process. You mentioned these summits and systems were Evergreen. Are you running them Evergreen on your own platform too and just continuously sending ads to them?

 

Mark Wade:

Oh yeah, well so the cool thing with the Ever Summit feature is yes, you can continue to do paid marketing, which is typically, in addition to having your speakers share with you, which is the expert leverage, in addition to paid marketing, which is how most summits are advertised, with the Ever Summit feature you can look at permanent or non-paid strategies. So for example, if you go to List Builder Accelerator, you can still opt into that. So I can advertise that on podcasts like this that will live on forever. I can also do blog posts. You can do essentially anything, and it'll stay live. It's not just about this limited time window that I have to get this big event often.

 

Mark Wade:

So yeah, and what we do is typically we'll have multiple. It's what I call an Ever Summit optimization strategy. So we have multiple. We'll only do like one or two a quarter. I don't want too much out there, also because we do put ads in behind it. But each quarter, we'll switch them out. So with the software, I can just turn this one off and turn this one back on. To optimize it, ever quarter when I go to do that with the new one, I'll do tweaks to it.

Just go in and change all the head shots of your speakers, it will look like something completely new - quote by mark wade

Mark Wade:

So for example, here's a [bctt tweet="Pro tip. If you just go in and change all the head shots of your speakers, it looks like something completely new - mark Wade, Virtual Summits" username="kylethegray"]. So the people who have seen it before but haven't opted in, maybe this time it catches their eyes, and they'll opt into it. Or you change the color theme, like with the branding. With virtual summit software, you can change the color scheme throughout the entire summit with like one click of a button.

 

Mark Wade:

I mean, a lot of this probably wouldn't be possible if we were just talking like having it built out on WordPress like it used to be, because it would take so much time and energy, things would be breaking, you'd have to check it every day or week, you'd get emails of people complaining of like, "This link didn't work." I remember those days. I used to have them. But with the software now, it's super simple. You change one thing, and one button click, or just type some stuff, and it really does it.

 

Mark Wade:

I would say this, too, Kyle. It sounds like I'm pushing the virtual summit software. I'm passionate about summits, and I love the virtual summit software, because it's my baby. But you could use whatever you want. I would highly recommend everybody. [bctt tweet="I believe every business should have a virtual summit. - Mark Wade, Virtual Summits" username="kylethegray"]

 

Mark Wade:

Now you can use whatever platform you want, but you should use a platform. So if you don't want to use virtual summit software, use another platform. Just make sure three things. Make sure that it is specific to summit, because I've seen people out there make the mistake of trying to use a course platform to run their summit, and it just doesn't work right, it doesn't flow right, it's not a great customer experience. Two, I would say make sure it has a speaker management tool, because if not, that's about 100 hours of work that you or a team member would have to do. That if it has a speaker management tool, it takes care of that. Then three, make sure it has some kind of Evergreen automated thing like our Ever Summit feature.

 

Kyle Gray:

Okay, yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Those are definitely key aspects that people would want to look out for. Let's take a little turn and go from the online world to the offline world, because your only promotion strategy isn't just summits. We met at a Healthpreneur, but we've seen each other at several other events. So you are traveling around the country, you're sponsoring different events, you're probably speaking and presenting as well. Can you tell us a little bit about your offline strategy. Where are you attending, who are you working with to sponsor, and how do you figure all of that out?

 

Mark Wade:

Yeah, well I would say I do a lot more speaking than sponsoring. Sponsoring you don't want to do unless you have a little bit of knowledge and experience in that space, because you can throw away a lot of money. When I sponsor an event, it's because one, I believe in the person who's putting on the event, or I obviously believe in the event. I'm not just doing it because, "Oh, this is a popular event." So that's number one.

 

Mark Wade:

But number two, you need to know for sure that the audience is your target audience. And you need to have a solid promotion that will convert, first off, otherwise you're just wasting money.

 

Mark Wade:

But speaking, in general, is a really great strategy, and I think most people can do this, even if you're not super far along. A lot of people get that Imposter Syndrome, but most of us spend a lot of time in what we do, which makes us the expert in that area. I don't know everything about a lot of things, but I know a lot of things about summits and a few other strategies. So on that area, I can provide a lot of value to people.

 

Mark Wade:

So if you reach out to event planners or you use warm intros to people that can put you in touch with them, a lot of times these people are looking for new and talented people to speak. Especially if you're willing to waive your keynote fee, there's a lot of people that would be glad to take you on. But once you get into the realm where I'm at and you have that keynote fee, you really need to make sure that you're building a relationship with people. So if you charge a keynote fee, you need to have a relationship with the person that's going to bring you on, because they are taking a big risk with you. So there needs to be, on your part, some kind of pre speaker or pre event planner outreach strategy, where you're kind of building that relationship, proving yourself, showing past experiences.

 

Mark Wade:

But I think everybody can start somewhere, so obviously bringing it right back to virtual summits, you can always start by hosting your own stage. [bctt tweet="There's stages in your backyard. - Mark Wade, Virtual Summits" username="kylethegray"]There's thousands of stages just where you're at. Whatever your expertise is, look at the organizations, associations, things in your local area. They have get togethers, they have meetings where they need to have people that speak. Additionally, I would say, for me, one of my prime areas because I love them are Masterminds. I love teaching at Masterminds, because you can spend a little bit more time with the audience getting into the nitty gritty technical stuff.

 

Kyle Gray:

That is awesome. I love that it's ... I mean, it's all about relationships on every level, where the summit is about building relationships with your audience. I'm sure there's plenty of opportunities, and I'm sure some of these people that you meet with summits become other collaborations, joint venture partners, and maybe even introduce you to the stages that you were mentioning there. So a really diverse and effective strategy, and I think there's lots of nuggets of wisdom. Do you have any closing thoughts around summits that you can leave the audience with?

I believe everybody should do a summit. I believe they are too powerful not to - mark wade quote

Mark Wade:

So closing thoughts. I'd say, first off, I believe everybody should do a summit. I believe they are too powerful not to. So [bctt tweet="Summits are the engine, the conversation, collaboration, and empowerment - Mark Wade, Virtual Summits" username="kylethegray"]. So conversation, to get your message out in front of your audience and get them to start talking about it. Chandler Bolt's a perfect example. He's going to be doing ten million, I believe, this coming year with his self publishing success school. He launched that, or he got his first success, that was off of a virtual summit. He essentially tripled or doubled his yearly income in one month from a summit. So getting your conversation and message out to the world.

Do you want to double or triple your yearly income? - quote by mark wade

Mark Wade:

The collaboration comes with the relationships you're going to make with these experts, these influencers that are going to go even further and beyond that. Maybe they become partners, but more than that, they're going to be able to introduce you to other people.

 

Mark Wade:

Then empowerment. In general, a lot of times we talk about the lead strategies and the monetization strategies or how much a company makes, because it's fun and interesting and important, but the empowerment side to me is what I think is even more important with a summit. [bctt tweet="There's people that are out there that are suffering, that have problems and challenges, that they get the solutions to that problem or challenge from a world renowned expert off of a summit that they wouldn't have otherwise had access to - mark Wade- Virtual Summits" username="kylethegray"]

 

Mark Wade:

So I have the Virtual Summit Podcast, and I interview hosts all the time that talk about this. That's one of the questions I ask is, "Have you ever heard of somebody's life that's changed from your summit?" You should just see their eyes light up every time. That's really why we do what we do is to help people, in general. That's all why we do. So a summit would be that way.

 

Mark Wade:

I would say start off by just learning more about it. Get some information, get some knowledge. I definitely wouldn't just jump into one and try to do it on my own without first getting a little bit of knowledge, but you can get tons of free information either from me over on my site, or just online in general. There's a lot of information to get you educated on how to do summits.

 

Kyle Gray:

Well then, you mentioned your site. Where can people go to learn more about you and various different kinds of content they can consume from you?

 

Mark Wade:

Yeah, absolutely. So you can go over to virtualsummits.com, which is where you can get a free trial for the virtual summit software. We have resources like the one day summit starter guide. Happy to provide links to all of those. You can also access our podcast, which is podcast.virtualsummits.com. There's essentially information on all of the ascension models. We have free information there, we also have our blog, too.

 

Kyle Gray:

Awesome. Well, Mark, thank you so much for taking some time to join us and sharing the wisdom of the virtual summit.

 

Mark Wade:

Thank you very much, Kyle. It's been a pleasure. Always a great time to chat.

 

Kyle Gray:

Thanks for listening to the Story Engine Podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes and resources mentioned on this episode and every other episode at thestoryengine.co. If you're looking to learn more about how to use storytelling to grow your business, then check out my new book, Selling With Story: How to Use Storytelling to Become an Authority, Boost Sales, and Win the Hearts and Minds of Your Audience. This book will equip you with actionable strategies and templates to help you share your unique value and build trust in presentations, sales, and conversations, both online and offline. Learn more at sellingwithstory.co. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.