Virtual summits are amazing opportunities to learn and have fun. On today’s podcast, Scott Carson interviews the Founder of Virtual Summits Software, Dr. Mark T Wade, about his Summit Talks Summit and how he is helping real estate and other entrepreneurs expand their reach and influence through virtual summits. Mark shares some of the things that he has learned from interviewing over 120 virtual summit experts who are sharing their strategies and secrets at his online summit.

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Expanding Your Reach And Influence Through Virtual Summits With Dr. Mark T Wade

I’ve got a special guest on here who’s joining us from Tampa. He is not only becoming a good friend of ours but somebody who’s doing some amazing stuff out there. We had him on the show a while back. I was honored to be a guest on his podcast and also his event that he did in New Orleans. It’s hard to believe how the world has changed. I honestly believe what this guy is doing is not only changing what he is doing, but it’s changing the world for investors like you and me all across the country and all across the world. I don’t think there’s a more opportune time for what he is doing and providing the entrepreneurs like you and me with some great resources out there. We’re honored to have the legendary, the number one Kansas City Chiefs fan, the fan of Gumbo and New Orleans, Dr. Mark Wade. How’s it going, Mark?

What’s up, Scott? You got it. My homies for life. If I can get into New Orleans, I’ll be there.

You’re in Tampa. The world has changed, hasn’t it?

Me and you talk all over the place. The first time I recorded the episode when you’re on my podcast I was in Puerto Rico. We hung out in New Orleans at my Summit Fest Live. When we recorded the episode for Summit Talks, I was in Sun Valley and now I’m here in Tampa. You and I are still getting around. We’re making it work.

We’re making it around, but not like we used to and that’s the thing. The world has changed, especially in our real estate niche. I’ve been doing virtual events for years and you’ve launched this amazing thing. You’ve been a big advocate of virtual summits because of your history and background. Let’s dive into that how you got to where you’re at and then the big news. We’ll save that for a little bit here.

How does a doctor get into summits? I like to say I am probably the biggest nerd on this stream. That’s where the doctors come from, two doctorates there. I was running a brick and mortar practice for about a decade and I wanted to help more people, but I didn’t want to open up more clinics. I thought I’d venture out into the online space thinking, how hard can it be? Reality quickly slapped me in the face and let me know how difficult it could be. I was about ready to pack it up and head back to the clinic and say, “That was a nice little effort there,” until I heard my now good friend, Pat Flynn, from Smart Passive Income talking about a virtual summit.

That was a podcast, which is why I love podcasts. There’s great information there. I was like, “I’m going to give this one more shot. Let’s see if this works and then I’ll make my decision.” Luckily, I did because we had some success with it. We generated around 5,000 leads and around $32,000, which was the first success we had had at that point. Even better, the backbone of that summit went on to be a certification we created, which became a million-dollar certification. That company was and still is a multi-million-dollar company in the health space. As dense as I am, when I find something that works, I like to stick with it. I doubled down and we were running 2 to 4 multi-day summits, 4 to 8 one-day summits in that company.

I still do it in all of my companies, but I was frustrated. I was like, “Why is it hard to do a seminar?” You got to hire a design and development team and it takes much time. At my first summit, the one I was referencing, I had seven different pieces of software, 26 plugins, all Frankensteined together. It took over 100 hours. It still looks like a third-grader built it. That’s what took me on to the next part of the journey, which I decided to create the first-ever platform for hosting virtual summits called Virtual Summit Software. Once I got a taste of helping people get their message out to the world, I was hooked. The past few years, I’ve been full in on that. I’ve got the Virtual Summit Podcast. I’m a podcaster too. I got the Summit Fest Live in-person conference, I created the One-Day Summit CEO of the Viral Summits Agency. Let’s say when it comes to being a nerd, both in real life and in summits, I’m in.

I like what you said, your first one, you generate 5,000 leads. The thing about note investors is we’re a smaller niche than your fix and flippers, your landlords, your wholesalers, which are all mostly local-oriented. You’re in a big community in Tampa, Orlando, or in Miami. They’re centrally located focused. “We’re going to focus on what’s going on in Tampa.” With a note investor, we’re nationwide because we’re buying in multiple markets and that’s what I love. I don’t care wherever you’re at, you can be connected.

As Mark said, 5,000 people or even 100 people can be a success. Fifty people could be a success. The first virtual summit I did, I had 73 people on. It was a huge success for people from all across the country that came together to find deals, to raise capital, or to fund deals and made sense out there. With COVID kicking in, it put a big kibosh on the conference space, the exhibitions, the expos, your hotel meetup groups because that’s what everyone’s used to going to. One night a week or one night a month, I’ve gone to a meetup group to rub elbows with everybody. That came to a stop overnight.

Looking at that stuff, that’s what I love about what you’ve done. You’ve systematized that down to summit in a box. You’ve done such an amazing job. You’ve even gone way above and beyond. You almost killed yourself. You were looking pretty raggedy on what you were working on. I want to dive into that a little bit and then bring up some questions that people have asked me and throw them your way for way too.

You bring up a lot of great points there. You and I both agree on the topic that is not about the size of the list, for example.

Are you saying size doesn’t matter, Wade?

It doesn’t matter, ladies, at least not with the list. That’s contradictory to what we’re normally told. Everybody thinks, “Money’s on the list. It’s about the size of the list.” Unfortunately, most people that have those big lists, their lists suck anyways because it’s unqualified, unengaged people. I would much rather have a list of 1,000 highly qualified, highly engaged audience members or fans than anything else. The same with what you said, my first $136,000 launch came from a list of 900 people. I’m a big proponent of engaged and qualified, which is another reason I love virtual summits. That’s what they do. They bring people who are qualified names because they’re attracted to the problem you’re solving and they are engaged because they have to show up to participate in the information, which benefits them because then they get the knowledge and then they get the success and then they’re happy with you.

It’s a win-win. What I decided to do is I’ve been helping people with the summits for years. We have groups and I’ve got my shows and things like that. When COVID hit, I was like, “The time is now. Everybody needs this.” I was getting calls left and right. I was going from 6:00 AM to 10:00 PM trying to help people, some of the biggest names, brands and entrepreneurs whose business almost went under overnight. I was like, “Let’s create a resource for everybody to get this knowledge and information.” I personally know that it will save your business or expand your business, either one, whichever one needs to happen. I didn’t want it to be The Mark Show.

 

I didn’t want it to be me teaching how to do summits. I get lots of questions. The number one question I always get after I’ve talked about a summit is people like, “That sounds great, but can I do it in my X niche?” I know a lot of our readers are going, “What is this crazy thing you and Scott are talking about?” Here’s the thing. I thought, “What if I brought in all of these amazing entrepreneurs and even non-entrepreneur?” Some of them are like doing it because they’re starting a movement. All of these people share their insights, their experiences from the summits they’ve hosted. Now you get to hear from people in the notes industry, you get to hear people in the music industry. We have a dog whisper summit host as well.

It’s crazy how many unique niches and industries are represented and you get to tap into their wisdom and their experience of what worked, what didn’t and the successes they had. That’s the overall. It is a monster. We brought in over 120 of the best summit hosts, but also some of the top summit coaches to teach tactical strategies. We’ve filtered it down too because if you’re going, “Mark, did you say 120? Nobody’s got time for that.” You’re right. You’re not intended to watch all 120. The point was to bring something there for everyone. My forte is the One-Day Summit. I’m a one-day summit guy. What I did is I made this a series of one-day summit. It’s ten one-day summits put together and we’ve broken it down so that any summit that you’re interested in is represented.

Maybe you want to be like a crazy man like Scott over there, and go, “I’m going to the moon. I’m going to do a 24-hour, non-stop, full-throttle multi-day summit with X amount of speakers.” Maybe like, “I want to dip my toe in it and see how this feels.” We got the One-Day Summit. Every summit is there for you to take a taste of and see what fits your needs in your business. We broke it down even further. We said, “What is the specific goals and objectives of each of these?” You can go in and go, “I’d like to know about this summit, but I’d also like to know,” for example, for our creators out there, if we add any like course creators or content creators, things like that. They could watch those sessions and see how those summit hosts who were creators were able to do it.

If we have our audience. Are you looking to grow your audience? This can be local or national. For those of you in the local community, we got brick and mortar business owners that are doing these one-day summits using speakers in their local community and almost creating celebrity-like status in their towns. You can hear from those. There are other ones I won’t bore us with all of those specific details. The main point I wanted to get across is there is something there for you to get you to understand, to help you understand that you can do a summit and what your topic should be. The strategies on how to do that summit and then the tools or items you need to get started taking action on that. I got to say, for sure, Scott was one of the top four best talks we had. When you do tune in there, make sure you check out his talk because it was phenomenal. You’re going to walk away inspired, motivated, enlightened, maybe shed some tears, but definitely walking away with the how-to get it done.

A lot of people have avoided doing this aspect of things, business was normal. When we first started doing virtual sessions years ago, we were the first in the industry for us to do it. There were a few real estates once a year, their immediate groups. The largest one we did was 1,500 people back then. These days, it was funny in our niche here, Mark is that there are basically 4 or 5 conferences that take place year-end. Some of them have been around for years. They’re great. They’re doing their first virtual summit like our Paper Source Convention with Bill Mencarow who’s been a guest on here before. He’s doing his first virtual summit. He usually does it in Vegas. It has 400 people show up, but then you’ve also got a couple of others that have popped up.

The one thing that cracks me up a little bit, you’ve got all these people that are trying to do the same type of summit within a month period of each other. It’s like four weekends in a row. I’m like, “You’re watering down your message if you spread it out a little bit.” Would you give some advice to somebody thinking about doing a summit, how to research the best times or dates or stuff like that? I’m sure you had somebody talk about that on the summit a little bit. That’s one thing people want to do it, but they don’t research what’s going on and they worry about it flopping.

You’re spot on there. A lot of the summit hosts that are thinking like, “I’m going all out. Multi-day summit, big multi-speaker. I want a national audience, etc.” Pay attention. Why compete with another industry either Goliath or something that’s already established? Take the lower hanging fruit. Go the opposite of that, research. There are strategies. I don’t know your industry well enough to say this is the month and the date, but definitely, in different industries, there are better time periods to do it. It’s not just one. There are polar sides to that. I’d even say more so for a lot of the people reading, you’re probably not even going, “I want to compete with that mega Vegas event.”

You’re probably going like, “How do I get more people in my local community or around me to me?” It is the ultimate goal of the summit. It’s to bring qualified people into your world to become a part of your audience who then either become customers and/or refer customers. With that, you can slide completely under that radar. It’s the same concept you do want to look in your local area. Are there other events or things going on? When I say local, it could be your city. It could be your region. It could be your state. Whatever local means to you. For sure, check that out and don’t compete with it. Not that you couldn’t compete with it but start off easy. With that being said, if you are starting off in your area, there are two ways to look at this.

What I was going to say here is there are two things to think about this. One is you’re trying to bring people into your audience. From a timeframe perspective, you’re either doing this because you have something you need or you’re doing it to fill something that’s coming. When we do a summit, like what we say, a summit is our relationship-building strategy. Yes, we will monetize. We will make some money off of the summit, but the real money happens after the summit. After you’ve built this relationship, now these people know, like, and trust you, and then they’re ready to go to the next step. We call that the post-summit profit strategy. For example, for me, what I’m familiar with is digital products. Online courses, things like that.

If I’ve got a course I want to sell, I’m going to go and I’m going to put a summit, either multi-day summit, one-day summit that’s relevant to that course on the front of it. I’m going to do this summit. I’m going to bring these people in who now know me, like me and trust me and say, “Mark can help me. What’s next?” I point them to my course. In any business or industry, one thing has to happen or you have to have to be successful. You have to have an audience. If you need more people and you need them to know you, like you and trust you, that’s why we’re going to do a summit. In your industry, your niche, here’s the other cool thing with this. I nerd out. I’m pulling my cord and I’ll run. I’m fired up on this because it’s underutilized.

I would say I can count less than 50 that have ever been done that I know of in the summit space for brick and mortar businesses or local areas. This is what is completely underutilized and under-tapped. It has the biggest opportunity. Whoever gets there first is going to win. The others will come like Scott started this in his industry. Now there are others that are trying to compete because it’s a smart strategy, but whoever’s there first has the established authority. None of them will ever be as good as Scott because he was there first. He’s learned, he’s created the relationships, he’s built the value, all of those things. Think about this from your perspective in your local area. What I love about it is how does a summit work?

Ultimately at the core, a summit is a collaborative marketing strategy. It’s where we bring other people together. We take a problem. If you’re thinking of whatever your niche is, whatever your business is, who are the people who need you? Why do they need you? They have a problem that they’re hoping you’ll solve. Take that problem. That’s what you’re going to build your summit around. That’s the core. Now, who are other people in your community, in your town, in your city, in your state that could help solve the problem? Not directly, not in the same way you do, but they could add advice or complimentary advice is even better. I’ll stay in my lane over here. If this was a health one, I could bring a trainer on. I could bring a chiropractor on. I could bring a nutritionist. They’re all giving health advice, but they’re complementary, not competitive. What you can do with that in your local community, we’ve got a perfect example.

We helped a chiropractor put a one-day summit on. She brought on other local health experts. Her local news channel picked it up, ran a front-page article on the summit. She now says she goes to the grocery store, she feels like a celebrity. The cashiers and the ladies are like, “I saw you on the news and on this thing.” That’s the power these things have. The audience comes from the people on it sharing it with their audiences. Who would be great referral sources? Think of your best clients, where are they hanging out at? Who there could you bring onto your summit to share? You’ve got a gold mine waiting to happen.

It makes me think about in the real estate space. We’ve seen this done before locally where maybe a realtor has a home buying expert and they have a mortgage broker that comes on to get qualified. One thing that comes to my mind is if you’re doing a real estate investment one where you’re every realtor, you have a mortgage broker, maybe a hard money lender, a title company for closing. Maybe you have a property manager talking about that. Maybe you have your general contractor. Basically, you bring on the people that you work with or maybe your referral sources as your vendors and sponsors for the event as well for you too.

The thing that you want to look at is thinking about who you talk to. We’ve heard people say upstream and downstream referral sources. Our friend, Jay Fossett, talks about bringing those people on around you, that’s your speakers. It could be a one-day thing, but you’re exactly right. That centrally focused, city-focused aspect is missing these days. You have meetup groups that are doing Zoom calls. That’s not the same thing. You can count it, but it’s not the same thing when one person is speaking the entire time.

 

Let’s clarify that because a lot of times people go, “Someone has a course, a webinar or Zoom.” Kind of but not really. Also, for anybody that’s sitting there going, “I need to devote an entire day.” No. These are historically or traditionally prerecorded. You do most of the work in advance. You’re not sitting there at a hotel lobby all day. Another benefit is this can be happening while you’re not even there and your speakers too. They don’t even have to be available necessarily during the time that the summit happens. There is that benefit. You can do most of the work in advance on your own time, on your own schedule, record it. It goes over the course of the day. It doesn’t need to be a day in length or full days in length. It’s what time period does your audience get to consume it? I wanted to clarify that.

The difference between a summit, courses and webinars, for example, is the way the content is consumed and what the content is for. If I want to be certified like I want to take my knowledge and be recognized and have some title. I’m going to go take a course or a program. It’s going to take me a couple of months or a year. I’m going to get taught by one person and that person’s going to give me their knowledge and then I’m a certified whatever. If I want a massive amount of knowledge quickly and currently like current information from a variety of sources, that is what a summit is.

The host does all the work. They go and they find the best experts or people to deliver that knowledge on a specific topic so that then the audience can come and get all this up-to-date in real-time, valid quality information. For example, I love podcasts. When I want to know something now and I have 1 or 2 weeks, I want to have everything I need to know, I jump into a summit. I can get 5, 10, 15, 20 different experts giving me their advice or opinion in a short amount of time. It would be like reading 15 or 20 books a week. That’s the difference. For your audience, I know this may not be as relevant in this audience. I know sometimes in my space where we see lots of summits, people are like, “Why are there many summits?”

Technically there are not many summits and you don’t want to sit on a summit. Go watch Netflix if you want to be entertained. If you’re serious about getting that knowledge, most of the people that are brought on, like the people Scott brings onto his summits, you’d have to pay them a pretty penny to access them, to be coached by them, to be mentored or whatever. To get access to that for free is an incredibly valuable resource. In your niche and industry, these things are almost nonexistent. When you got that opportunity, the first time these things happen in any niche or industry, it’s like wildfire. It’s incredible. We always say it’s like the first come first serve. The other ones will do well, but the first one’s going to reap all the rewards.

That’s the thing. Whether you’re doing it city-wide or state-wide in our real estate space, there’s a huge opportunity for that. That’s why when I saw what you were doing, I was like, “We got to get you on here to talk about it.” If you’re following me on social and see some posts and emails on. You brought 125 people together from all sorts of niches, all different experts sharing their golden nuggets. It’d be interesting to see how many total summits combined all of these people have done. I don’t know if you were calculated or figured that out. It’d be in the thousands for the most part.

I don’t have the number in my head, but we did have everybody submit what summits they were on. What I love about this too is you’re going to get knowledge and information to do your summit, but you’re also going to get some inspiration. There are people on here that were down and out, like about ready to give up on the business on life and they’re sitting there telling their stories. There’s tactical stuff, there’s business stuff, which is amazing, but there’s some inspirational stuff. Some of these people have built empires. Some of them have changed legislation and regulation because of their summit. Others have started movements like entire causes and charities. What you do your seminar on? For me, once summits enter my life, everything became possible because I’m like, “I could do a summit on that.”

Now it becomes going like focus on a few of the summits, not all of the summits. When it comes to business and for everybody reading, what it boils down to is the audience. You need people who are qualified, engaged and know, like, and trust with you in order for your business to grow and scale. The bigger your audience gets, sometimes it’s even harder to keep that know, like and trust and keep that qualified, engaged audience. What we ended up seeing is the people who run summits, they end up doing that same summit, for example, every year. Now it’s like every year we bring these speakers back, these relationships continue to grow and expand. The audience comes back. They’re excited. The ones who are there for the 2nd or 3rd time, they’re like, “I know what’s going to happen.”

They’re like the veterans in there. They’re telling the newbies how it’s going to happen. It’s powerful for your business in all regards and all accounts. With that being said, I also want to let you know, me and Scott, we’re like visionaries. We’re like, “One hundred twenty-five speakers, we could do one intergalactically or something.” You don’t have to start off like that. I don’t recommend starting off like that. Start off with simple, easy, but you can do it. There’s technology now that makes it virtual summit software that you can have a summit up and ready to rock within a few hours from a technical standpoint, no tech skill needed, no team needed. If you’ve got a message or you’ve got an audience that needs to be served, then a summit will for sure be beneficial to you.

I went through the Tony Robbins Unleash the Power Within Summit with 30,000 people from across the country. He dropped $9 million on the thing, he said. That’s not the side of 99.9999% of people. He put everybody to shame. That’s the biggest thing. Sometimes sitting here in front of your laptop, communicating, and you’ve done a great job with the Virtual Summit Software. You make it simple for people to use. Step-by-step, you’re literally holding people’s hands. “Here’s what do now, here’s what you do next. Here’s where everything goes. It’s a one-stop summit shop. I like that.” We should talk a little about that there for those out there that are looking.

There’s a variety of ways to do summits. If you are a developer or a coder, you can build it from scratch using WordPress, things like that. It’s going to take you quite a bit of time and there’ll probably be a lot of little technical glitches you’ll experience during your summit. For those who want it simple and easy, there’s the Virtual Summit Software. We’re not talking thousands of dollars. We’re not even talking hundreds of dollars. This is inexpensive and practical for most people. The whole philosophy behind it is the quickest and easiest way to host a summit. The most important thing, when you’re running a summit, you should let your strengths shine. You should be communicating with your audience, talking about the purpose of the summit, connecting with your speakers. With the Virtual Summit Software, if you can copy and paste or type, then you can run a summit. That’s essentially what it takes.

The software handles it, it runs it, it hosts it, it’s got pages built inside of it automatically. It auto-populates a lot of that. It even has a feature in it, the speaker management tool, which is like having a VA on your team because it manages the speakers. It reaches out to them or reminds them if they need to send their bio or things like that. The goal with that is to make it simple and easy so you can focus on what you shine at, which is probably connecting with the speakers, connecting with the audience and getting it done. You could always build it from scratch if you want. My goal here is not to convince you that you have to use Virtual Summit Software. My goal is to convince you that you have a message that matters and an audience that’s waiting to hear it and a summit is the best vehicle to get that out there.

It’s the old school of one-on-one marketing of talking and spreading the word one time, one handshake, one conversation at a time. It’s that massive conversation leading to targeted connections, targeted relationship metrics, but you systemize it. Everybody gets so bogged down in everything they have to do. You’re one-stop, it guides you along the path and affordable for every budget. That’s the beauty of what I love. What you’ve put together, Mark, is that your software is affordable. Let’s talk a bit more about the thing coming out here. Let’s dive into these 125 speakers and your big launch. Let’s rock everybody’s world talking about that. You got Pat Flynn, John Lee Dumas from EO on Fire and some other big guys.

We have some big names in all different industries, which is cool. Sometimes I name some names and they’re like, “Who is that?” I’m like, “That’s the number one person.” The point is its top names, top influencers all the way down to people who are literally getting started. I don’t want to paint this as you got to be an influence or anything to get it. We have them there. They’re going to give you insights. They’re going to give you tactics. It’s not talking-head style. I went full out. We recorded this like a TV talk show style so there’s an entire set. It’s not just interviews. Every single host does a summit show and tell, so they show you behind the scenes of their summit.

You’re seeing all of these different variations. You will have a very good idea of what you want it to look like or not want it to look like. We have a mixture of types of sessions. We have interviews. We also have a masterclass session. We also have some tactical teaching sessions, and then each day we’re doing live stream sessions too. It’s not prerecorded. Jump in, get the items you want to watch at that moment and then tune in for the live stream. Every day at 1:00 PM Eastern during the day, I’m doing our Summit Builder live. I’m teaching a different component of how to build out your summit from summit idea, offer creation, promotion, speaker recruitment, all done live with you in real-time so people can ask questions. I can answer them.

In the evenings, Scott knows. We don’t hold Summits Fest Live in New Orleans because we don’t like to party. We like to party. We’re going to party virtually with each other. Each evening at 7:00 PM Eastern, we have live streaming components that’ll be happening. We have a kickoff party on the first night. We have live stream panel sessions. We’ll probably have Scott on there so you’ll be able to hang out with them, talk with them live. We’ve even got a mastermind built into this. One night, we’re going to be doing a mastermind where if you’re ready to take action, you hop in there and you’re broken out into these groups and you will literally be building out your summit in real-time. We’ve created this to be the thing. If you want to have a summit anytime in the next near future, this is the quickest, fastest, most effective and insightful way to have a successful summit done.

 

The best way to get successful at anything is to surround yourself with individuals. If you want to upgrade your game, you can now have the opportunity to surround yourself with 125 people doing it. That’s what I loved about New Orleans. It was great people. People from all different niches, I was an oddball there, but I fit in. There was a room full of different oddballs that have the passion and purpose to not only get their message out to their tribe and their audience but to grow some things. You have taken that to a whole different level.

You have taken the time to create custom landing pages, custom artwork. You’ve done a great job of becoming the experts in a space. Chiropractic back when you guys rock and roll the Posture Institute of America. What you’re doing now with everybody, you’ve blown it out of the water, Mark, with things. You’ve got this launch. It’s kicking off. Let’s talk a little about that and how people can get tapped in. I took the link that you sent me and put a Bit.ly so it’s easy for everybody to use on that as well here for everybody. Let’s talk about that big launch.

Definitely check out that link that Scott has there. It’ll take you right over to it. We’re doing several things we’ve created it as a one-day summit. It goes for ten days. Any day you come in throughout that, hop in there, the information you need will be there. If you’re reading this after the fact, still check out the link. I’m sure we’ll have like a highlight reel or some bonus or something that you can still get access to. The point is when you hop in there at any point at any time, we’re going to have what you need. On top of that, for signing up, even if you’re like, “I got busy this week. I couldn’t hop in on these days.”

By signing up, we’re giving you access to our Virtual Summit Starter Kit, which we sell internally for $500. We’re throwing that in as a bonus. If you sign up immediately, in your email, there’s our $500 Virtual Summit Starter Kit. You can even get started right away. No matter when you come into it, hop in, you’re going to get access to the information, the people, the host, the summit style, the gold style. Whatever you want is going to be there sitting in. I break it down for you so there’s no confusion. We don’t leave anything up for chance. We make sure you are well-curated and taken care of and have the information you need.

It is phenomenal about everything over the ten-day period. For those that are curious about the link, it’s easy. It’s Bit.ly/scottsummittalks. That’ll take you directly to the registration page and that way you can get rocking and rolling and see everything involved with it. I made it simple for you. You can click on check all that stuff out there. If once people get signed up, will they have the ability to go back in and watch it for a period of time?

We have a couple of things available. It’s 1,000% free to attend, go in, enjoy and consume it, but we know how this is. There’s always a few people that are like, “I don’t have time to do it right now or I want to be able to reaccess this when I go to do my summit.” We definitely make some things available there. We have what we call our summit pass. It’s an all-access pass, a VIP pass. That gives you several things. We’ll be streaming all those live sessions into our summit talks group, but that gives you the ability to come hop on the Zoom with me and the speakers. You’re going to get some VIP access. A few of you will be sitting there with me and Scott. We’ll probably have a beverage in our hand or something. Who knows?

It also gives you access to a few other things including a comp ticket to our virtual event revenue class, which we’ll be holding right after the summit. That’s going to show you exactly how to build out six figures in the next year with four simple, specific virtual events. Only people who have a ticket to that will be allowed. It has on-demand access. Meaning, you get to keep all 120-something video sessions, plus all the live-streaming sessions, plus any other sessions that come out. The mastermind aspect, the summit builder live, all of that goes into a bundle and you’ll get to maintain access to it. We have ten summit coaches on that teaching their strategy. They’re some of the top summit coaches in the world. Each one of them charged a couple of thousand dollars for their course on how to do it. We have them teaching it on the summit. If you wanted to buy that summit pass right there after you register, it’s $47. You can get all of that. Of course, you don’t have to. It is free to attend, but for anybody who wants to step up to that next level, that is there and available.

That’s ridiculously cheap. $47 for all the replays and stuff like that. Plus, the bonuses that you throw in is well worth it. If you want to come for free, great, but if you want to take it with you and digest, it free and has no value. God knows we’ve got enough replays and stuff, but on the ones that we value, the ones that we have purchased and paid something for because there’s an investment in our part. We make sure to watch it. That’s the thing. You’ve got coaches, you’ve got experts, you get people in all niches killing it. I would say the biggest mistake, I guess probably every summit coach would say, what would you think it would be, Mark? Have you asked them was there a mistake that you heard throughout from people?

There are multiple mistakes that can happen. It’s hard to judge which one is the biggest. Personally, one of the biggest mistakes just because it’ll cost you in lack of revenue generator, you could make so much more, is not aligning your summit with your post-summit offer with the thing you want to take. If you’re bringing people into it, like you have an audience that you’re wanting to sell something to, make sure the summit that you’re creating is bringing in the right audience so you then have an easy sell after that summit.

I would always say, I wish I’d had started mine sooner. I put it off for a little bit. A lot of people have put it off and to the point now it’s like, “I shouldn’t have put this thing off.”

There are people out there now that are like, “Thank God I had virtual events.” Especially some of my friends in the in-person event companies are like, “Thank God I had masterminds or virtual,” whatever because that saved them. Some of the other ones that have survived, a perfect example of this is my good friend, Pete Vargas. He’s the master of winning stages for speakers. There’s not a whole lot of speakers speaking on stages. His in-person event was happening essentially two months after COVID hit. He was looking at almost like a cataclysmic disaster, out of business style. Pete, he’s resilient and he did not throw in the towel. He goes, “How can I fix this in the next 30 days?” They changed their in-person event, turned it into a virtual event.

In 2019, they did $3 million or $4 million. He was going to be losing $5 million because of everything that was invested. He went on to generate almost $12 million from his virtual event. Most of us are not going to do that on our first or second or third virtual events. The point of it is now is the time. Things are not going to go back exactly to the way they were. Even if they did, would you ever want to be in the position to be like that? I almost look at it like this. For anybody who’s not online businesses, if you’re a brick and mortar or you’re primarily in-person anything, your virtual revenue source, that’s your insurance, that’s your lifeline.

You mentioned I live in Puerto Rico years ago. We had a big hurricane that rolled through there. I’ve got some friends that were chiropractors. Most of them went out of business or almost went out of business because they couldn’t take clients. They couldn’t help people for 7 or 8 months. Most of us do not have those reserves to last that long. If you have virtual revenue, virtual anything, that is your lifeline. That is your insurance. It’s also a way to scale and grow.

That’s the big thing. It’s scaling and growing it. You start off small, but at least start investing in that virtual summit. We live in a whole different society now. Over the next couple of years, we’re going to see a huge impact not only in more virtual events but also that the way it used to be being different. Hotels, convention centers, expos, a lot of those going into the online. Once they figure out how to do it online, it makes a whole lot more sense. It’s easier for everything. People don’t have to travel. They can do it from their house or from another event where a lot of speakers that have been on ours that are speaking at another event and jumped on our event in their hotel room. They did better at our event than they did in the person event. It’s much more cost-effective budget-wise, no travel. You can do a lot of those amazing things. You can bring in experts from everywhere.

You usually don’t have to pay for those experts.

If you’re thinking of getting Gary Vaynerchuk, he’s charging $100,000 an hour of wherever he’s at. I’ve had that conversation with his team, but that’s the real thing. You get a lot of people that would be, “It’s an hour? I can still talk to a ton of people. Sure. I’ll do it. I don’t have to travel. I can be business from the waist up.” It’s like the virtual mullet, business in front, party in the back out there for you. That’s the thing. Guys and girls out there, you know what you don’t bring people along here. We do very few offers here in our show unless we truly believe in the event, we believe in what we’re doing and we’re also an active participant in it and something we truly believe. You all know that I turn things down that I don’t believe it on a regular basis.

 

This is one event that can be truly revolutionary for all of you. For those of you out there that are relatively new investors, a great way to get yourself out in the community is to do a virtual event, bring on the people that you look for. Bring on your local real estate club president, bring on your HOA, bring on your realtor. Bring on the people that you use and start your virtual summit. A great way to get business is to provide referrals that way where people are like, “Thank you for helping me. How can I help you?” That’s been one of the most powerful things of Note Camp and the virtual note buying workshop that we’ve done. The people that we’ve had on it has become lifelong friends. You’ve done that too, Mark. You’re such great friends with everybody you’ve had on your summit, new people and people you’ve known for a while, neighbors and stuff like that out there as well. It’s a great way to get the word out in the community.

You nailed it on the head there with the opportunities. As we’ve mentioned multiple times, 100-plus summit hosts on this summit. I ask all of them the same question at the end. You and I, we like to talk leads revenue. It’s the fun thing. It’s fun to talk about. I ask everybody, I said, “What was the biggest positive impact you received from hosting your summit?” Even the ones who have made millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of leads from their summit, all said something other than leads and revenue. For example, they said, “It was the relationships I built with the speakers. One person who was my mentor is now in my speed dial,” or opportunities. It never fails that when you host a summit because of the attention, opportunities, doors open left and right.

The biggest one that most people had said was the impact they made in people’s lives. I don’t care what niche, industry or business you’re in, you can impact and help somebody. You can change their lives. When you put on a summit like this, you’re giving people access to information that could change their lives. It could help them in a way that they need at that moment who couldn’t have had access to that information otherwise, so you are making a difference in the world. That’s the thing at the end when we get done with a summit. This is not a get rich quick scheme. You’re not going to go to sleep and have the summit done tomorrow. You’re going to put some work in. There’s going to be some time, there’s going to be some energy. At the end of it, you look back and it’s like birthing a baby. You’re like, “That was probably one of the coolest things I’ve done.” That feeling of pride, power, success and feel good of making a difference in the world on top of all of those other benefits, it’s hard to describe.

Sometimes, it’s a lot of the intangibles, the things that you can’t see. It’s the emotional envelopes. The emails you get from somebody who you’ve inspired and 3 to 6 months later, they reached back out to you and said, “Thank you for what you taught me. I was able to do this and impact things.” That’s the thing. You are the pebble in the ocean, Mark. You’re dropping in and the waves, the butterfly effect across the world with the summits that you’re helping everybody out there for you. What’s the best way for people to find out more and the best way to go to?

I’m going to say check out the link that Scott’s got there. I’m across all social platforms if you want to reach out to me, but Scott’s got all the information. He’s got access to the Summit Talks, which is what I highly recommend. It doesn’t matter when you’re reading this, we will have something available for you there. He also has access to our Virtual Summit Software as well.

It’s a great piece of tool for everybody out there for getting started. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Tony Robbins may have had 35,000 people, but he started off talking to people one at a time in small events. He reached out to the likes of Pete Vargas. I know that Pete has reached out to other people, other mentors to help him out with things like that. That was one of the great things. You’ve got many relationships out there, all of our guests, including Mark here. A lot of people have been a part of that. I highly encourage it. If you’re struggling in business and you’re like, “What am I doing?” Throw in a summit, get other people, other peers. You’d never know what nuggets you’ll hear from your speakers that not only impact your audience but impact what you’re doing on a day in and day out basis. Mark, you’ve done an amazing job with that.

Thank you. Check out Scott’s talk. It was phenomenal. It’s one of my top five out of all of the shows.

You said I was top four. Now I’ve fallen down to top five?

You’re still in the top. I can’t remember. It’s definitely in my top 5, top 4. It probably was top three. I dumped everything out here and I’ve left it all on the table, Scott. I came to play.

That’s why we love having you on. I can’t wait to see you and have some gumbo and have a little bit of single-malt and have some fun in New Orleans the next time we hang out or sometimes sooner there for you.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

You and Chris will be safe out there in Tampa. Have some fun and we’ll see you here shortly. Take advantage of this special offering for you. The 125-plus experts, you can tap into it, starting soon for basically nothing. If you want to take the replays and download everything else along with it, it’s a small investment, less than a cup of coffee for a week. Go out, take some action, and we’ll see you all at the top.

Important Links:

• Dr. Mark Wade
• Summit Fest Live
• Summit Talks – Previous episode
• Smart Passive Income
• Virtual Summit Software
• Virtual Summit Podcast
• One-Day Summit CEO
• Bill Mencarow – Past episode
• Jay Fossett
• Unleash the Power Within Summit
• EO on Fire
• Bit.ly
• Bit.ly/scottsummittalks

About Mark T. Wade

From Brick & Mortar to Multi-Million Dollar Companies, Mark T. Wade has mastered the art of scaling companies, but not just from his success. After building a 7 figure company Mark lost it almost overnight from failure to scale. Having learned his lessons he went back to the basic using virtual summits to build that business back up to legendary heights.

His first company, the American Posture Institute remains to this day one of the TOP companies in the world for postgraduate online posture education.

Mark now helps side hustlers scale their business at Hustle & Scale becoming 6 Figure, then 7 Figure Scalers. Using the Hustle To Scale blueprint Side Hustlers build out a scalable business using the Hustle Funnel which all starts with a successful Virtual Summit.

Mark also founded a first of its kind SAAS company called Virtual Summits Software which now makes hosting a virtual summit easier than ever before. With no tech knowledge needed and for a fraction of what it use to cost entrepreneurs can have a Virtual Summit up and running in less than 30 minutes.

With guidance, and assistance from his world class training system ‘Summits For Side Hustlers’, anyone can now quickly, easily, and successfully build out a virtual summit and scale their business.

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