Getting REAL about running online events with Clarice Grote of Ampilfy OT

In this episode, Jayson and Clarice Grote discuss the intricacies of organizing an online conference for OT practitioners. 

Clarice shares her experiences from her first summit, detailing the planning process, marketing strategies, and the importance of speaker diversity. Together, we explore the challenges faced during the execution of the summit and the lessons learned for future events, emphasizing the need for thoughtful conversations around policy and advocacy in occupational therapy. 

Clarice also touches on the emotional aspects of running a conference and the importance of setting realistic expectations for success.

If you are thinking about running an online or in-person event, do not skip this episode.

View the full show notes, including the resources and transcript, here.

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Transcript

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Have you ever considered starting an online conference or summit? Well, if so, you are listening to the right episode. I have run an online conference for several years now, and today I'm joined by a fellow occupational therapy practitioner who has run her first summit and is getting ready to operate her second summit. So together, we're gonna talk about what we've learned, things that went well, and things that we need to improve. So stay tuned and keep on listening. Are you thinking about starting an occupational therapy business, but don't even know where to begin? Whether you're starting something on the side or going full time in your business, the OTpreneur podcast is what you need. This show will help you get in the right mindset and give you actionable tips to go from just an idea to OTpreneur. Let's go. Hello there and welcome back. My name is Jason Davies and joining me today is not Sarah, but instead it is the one and only Clarice Grote, former AOTA Level 2 fieldwork student and current founder of Amplify OT. Clarice, how are doing today? doing great and I'm so excited for this conversation. I feel like we've danced around it for months and we're like, need to do this. And now we're finally here, which is always exciting. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, we are going to dive into summits, which you just or conferences, I use them interchangeably just heads up. might use it interchangeably throughout this podcast, but you just hosted your first one. And so we're going to dive into that and learn all about the great, the good, the bad, the ugly, and what you might do differently next time. But before you do, I actually want to give you a second to actually share what you did at AOTA as a level two, because whenever I think about field work, I think about like hands-on in a clinic, hospital, like that type of thing. So. ah I would love to know what it actually looked like to have a level two within AOTA. Yeah, so it was actually my third level two. So I went to Columbia University in New York and at Columbia, you have the option to do an elective third level two in like a specialty area because one level two has to be in mental health and then the other level two has to be in physical disabilities. So if you wanted to do pediatrics or if you want to do hands, like you could do an elective third. So I chose to do an elective third level two in policy. So with AOTA, I ended up moving and living in Washington, DC for three months, going to AOTA's headquarters, which was at the time in North Bethesda. Now it's moved to a different area of Bethesda and Maryland. Had my own little cubicle, went into office every day. I was under the supervision of Heather Parsons, who is the vice president of federal affairs at AOTA. She's an occupational therapist and I believe her background is actually in school-based OT before she went and worked in politics. But so she was my supervisor and basically I just did a lot of policy and a lot of advocacy. So I worked with our lobbyists, which are Abe Saffer and Andy Boap and learned from them, went to congressional meetings with them, met with staffers who work for representatives and senators. I met my senator, which was really great. I learned more about kind of like the role of advocacy in our profession, as well as the impact and importance of it. Learned a lot more about how kind of our government system actually works. So what it actually looks like to try and create and structure and pass legislation, how many behind the scenes conversations happen and how different they are from like what you see on the news and those sorts of things. And so was a really incredible. experience. also worked on kind of just like researching different pieces of legislation, looking at different policy changes. So kind of looking at how both the regulatory side, which is kind of what happens after a bill is passed, as well as the legislative side and seeing how those kind of play and interact with each other. And then also I was asked to research about accountable care organizations, which were a fairly new concept at the time. Accountable care organizations are basically like systems get together and collaborate and take accountability for an individual's health. So it's between like primary care, specialists, hospitals, those kinds of, it's a value-based care model and there's a role for OT within it, but we weren't sure exactly what it was. And so I ended up diving deep. I developed a like 40 page comprehensive report on accountable care organizations and the role of OT within it, which is then what led me to writing an article for AJOT. policy perspective as a new grad, which was awesome. So my one, probably my one of my one and only publications that will ever be an AJOD about OTs role in ACOs. I kind of did a capstone project, even though I was a master's student. And I just found that I really loved policy. I grew a lot of passion for AOTA and understanding the importance of AOTA and like how it actually works. And so yeah, I did a lot of different things. uh I always say experiences with AOTA are kind of a choose your own adventure and you get out of it what you put into it. So if you just kind of do the bare minimum, that's kind of what you're going to get out of it versus if you have a project and take leads and have initiative, then you're going to get a lot more out of the experience. So I got a lot out of my experience. especially when you're surrounded by so many influential people at AOTA. You talk about having resources to bounce ideas off of nowhere else are you going to have as many resources than at AOTA. That's awesome. This is a perfect segue because I know this directly led into Amplify OT and your niche over at Amplify OT. Just briefly, mean, you just talked a lot about what you did at AOTA, but is that pretty similar to what you're doing over at Amplify OT now except on your own terms or, yeah. Yeah, it's very similar. So Amplify OT, I started in October of 2020. Actually, I learned how to build my website and do those sorts of things from another famous, you know, therapy entrepreneur, which is Meredith Casten, who did non, she's a non-clinical PT. And she had a course that she put out with Shanda, I can't remember her last name, but she has the blog Pink Oatmeal. They put out a course together called Therapy Blogging 101. And I was like, well, It was like 150 bucks at the time because it was their kind of beta. And I was like, well, I've spent $150 on a lot of worse things than something that could be an investment in my future. And so I took it. I learned how to build a website. everything that people see, I've mostly built myself through my website and through my membership platform and courses. I'm predominantly self-taught. But anyways, back to the point of what you asked me, amplify OTA, provide educational resources on Medicare policy, billing, and advocacy. So I really focus on the Medicare perspective, the federal perspective, but I'm also able to, because I'm independent, able to insert a little bit more of like kind of my perspective and opinion into what I'm presenting. So I started out with blog posts and emails. Then I eventually started the Amplify OT podcast, which is one of my favorite things to do. I love interacting with people on social media, but basically trying to help folks understand. what the policies are saying and what that means for occupational therapy and what they can do about it. So kind of trying to connect the dots for folks of not only what the policy and regulation says, but what it means for you in your daily life and what you can do about it or what you can do to take advantage of the structures that exist. So kind of trying to say that you learn how to use policy to work for you versus against you because there's a lot more opportunities out there than we really understand. That's great. To keep my mind from going off track, I'm going to stay here. I'm going to stay on track here. I want to ask you, because we want to talk about summits, conferences, all that good stuff, how did this summit come to be and how did it fit into your business model? It's funny, I kind of had had an idea. Like I love going to AOTA conference. I've gone to ACRM, which is the American Congress of Rehabilitation, which is also a great conference. And I just, I've always felt like there's not enough policy for me, you know, especially like I go to AOTA conferences, honestly, really for networking, especially because I don't work in the clinic anymore. So I attend really only the policy billing courses, those sorts of things. But I was like, I really wish there was a place where we could kind of get together and actually have thoughtful conversations around policies, how to take advantage of them, how to amplify the role of occupational therapy in these areas. And then also kind of discuss like, what would we want policy to look like if we could create it? Because a lot of these things are really challenging. There's kind of complex topics of like, there's benefits if we do something, there's also benefits if we don't do something. AOTA is often making these, you know, have making these decisions and having these conversations. And I wanted to create a space where more everyday practitioners feel like they're able to have a voice and able to hear kind of what's going on. Because a lot of folks are interested in policy, even if they don't know it, but they feel intimidated or they feel there's kind of that barrier there. So because a lot of the issues that we complain about within our profession are directly related to. and regulation. And so if you want to change those things, you have to kind of learn how that world works. So basically I wanted a place for people to come together. Ideally, I would love for it to be a triple discipline. So OTPT and speech coming together, which is why it's called the Amplify Therapy Summit versus Amplify Occupational Therapy Summit. But anyways, I kind of bought, was like, I think this is a cool name. I made sure that other people didn't have it. I was like, this will be a future thing that I would love to do. And I bought it. uh I bought the domain when someone talked to me about how they had a bunch of domain names to kind of make sure that people couldn't copy their company or something. So I bought up amplifyot.org, clareescrote.com, all of those. And I was like, I'm just going to go ahead and buy amplifytherapy.com because eventually this is going to happen. And so I decided that I would do it. I knew it would be good for visibility. was really hoping it would be a big revenue driver, but we'll talk about how that didn't quite pan out later. But it's, yeah, I just really wanted a space to meet with other people, learn from other people, and have meaningful conversations around policy and advocacy, and hopefully inspire people to get involved and, you know, solve the problems of healthcare. Yeah, definitely. When it comes to summits or anything really we do for our business, there's kind of two objectives, right? There's the objective that we want our clients to have. And you kind of related to that just a moment ago, right? Like a place for people to come together to learn more about Medicare, how they can use the system for them as opposed to against them. That's kind of that objective for your clients. But for you as a business, I think an easy way might be to to you complete this sentence. As you were leading up to the conference, thinking about the conference, in your mind, how would you finish this sentence? This will be a business success if... Oh gosh, there's, I mean, there's a lot of answers to that. Ultimately it ended up, this will be a business success if it brings more awareness to my business and my existence as well as the importance of policy. in Yeah, so marketing, which is part of why, in terms of strategy, why it was free to attend. Okay. And what about numbers? Did you have an idea for numbers at all? Yes, I did have an idea for numbers. My goal, which was audacious, was to have like 2000 individual signups, like 200. I had VIP ticket sales. So I was hoping I would sell 200 of those. And then I was hoping that I could generate around $17,000 in gross revenue. I did not hit any of those by a landslide. But those were kind of like the general goals that I. But again, like this is my first time hosting anything like this. And so I just had to kind of come up with numbers. Yeah, and that's really all you can do. I remember my first conference, I kind of did the same thing, right? The numbers are just arbitrary. You kind of look at your email list, you kind of think, okay, maybe 1 % of my email list will show up or whatever percentage you decide to use. And it sounded like you kind of went with that. You started with, you said 2000? Yes. Yeah. So 2000 total free signups. And then from there you went. backwards to get to 200 potential paid signups. Then that, of course, generates your revenue target. There's no one way to do that. Exactly. I mean, I used, don't know if we'll talk about this more in depth later, but I had started seeking out resources on how to host summits. I looked at your sales pages to kind of see how you structured them. I looked at Learn Play Thrive, who has a summit, believe. Look at Lindsay Vestal, right? Who pelvic health. She has a summit. And so kind of like looking at those, like what's happening in the therapy world and how they're doing it. But I also ended up purchasing a package from a company called Summit in a Box. which she does, you know, all kinds of summits, but it was really attractive to me because it laid out exactly kind of step by step how to do it came with Asana templates came with like a workbook and things. And that really helped me structure it. And so that's kind of how I started coming up with those numbers by, like you said, looking at my email list, my social media followers, my LinkedIn connections, and kind of trying to figure out what what that might look like. But again, it was all to an extent, it was a slightly educated guess. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes you hit it right on the mark. Sometimes you go beyond it. Sometimes you don't even get close to it. That's part of business. Two things that keep popping into my mind as we're talking, you talk about spending money. We are spending money to do a lot of this. Yes. But I just want to point out something that Sarah and I have said on the podcast a lot. An MBA is much more expensive and doesn't have the actual outcomes that we're spending money on. When you're spending money on these templates for your sales page and You're spending some money on how to learn how to set up your website. Those are all complete investments directly in your business. Okay, so we talked a little bit about the numbers and maybe it sounds like you didn't quite hit them, but you also talked about the marketing. What about that? How was that? mean, if you had to put a letter grade on that, would you say it was like an A plus for your business as far as getting your name out there? A B, a C? What do you think on that? Well, for anyone who can't see the video, I gave myself an eye roll because it was far from an A. mean, the vision of it, Jason, was beautiful. The outline that I created in my head, the post-it notes that had been laid out beforehand, gorgeous. It was a solid launch plan and marketing plan. The execution, though, was like a D. Things just, mean, per usual, I am... notorious because I have a business coach. use Melissa LaPointe to kind of help me think through my business and those sorts of things. But anyways, I am notorious for being like, I can accomplish these 1000 tasks. And she's like, when and how? I don't know, but it's going to happen. Shocking every time it doesn't happen. Right. And so I had this beautiful vision of how it was going to work. But life gets in the way. Things don't go as planned. And so it ended up kind of just being a good enough. So again, like those numbers that I had come up with were probably much more reasonable had I been able to execute the plan like I had hoped to. unfortunately, just again, things kind of built up, they got in the way. I ended up having more work in May and June than I had anticipated having. um And so that kind of pushed everything back. So I really wasn't even able to start marketing the event until kind of like, very late June and really I wasn't able to push it until mid July, which the dates were July, like kind of 24th, 27th, which ideally what I would have had was really kind of a uh good lead up through May and June and then had a hard launch in the start of July. And instead it was kind of like miscellaneous, somewhat planned emails that were going out. again, like I had templates that was helpful and then able to adapt. And now that I have some of those things, it's going to be much easier. next year. But this year was, yeah, that the plan was beautiful. The execution was definitely lacking. It's your first one. It's your first one. Exactly. Right. There's so many things that you learned and we're already, I was going to ask you like, what did you learn from this? But I'm not going to, because you're just, you're every question I asked you, right? Like you're sharing that. ah I want to ask you about your presenters, because one thing that I love about summits and conferences is that you don't have to do it all yourself when it comes to the content, right? Like I can put together a two hour presentation, but I'm not going to go put together. six two-hour presentations for one event. Conferences are nice because you can, in air quotes, delegate to an extent. How was that process for you? Did you already have people in mind? I know you're connected. We talked about AOTA a little bit ago. Did you already have people in mind? Did you just cold email people, a little bit of both? How'd that go? both. So I really only ended up cold emailing one group who I had no connections with didn't know anyone who knew them and hadn't talked to them before. I did at least have my stuff together enough that I was able to somewhat advertise it during a OTA inspire. So I had papers lined out for like speakers, so people so I was kind of paying attention and inspire of like, who's giving what kind of sessions. And if there was something that I thought, I might want to have at my summit. would try and attend that event. I also had business cards made up that had the summit on it. So anyone who came up and talked to me, I would hand them a business card specifically advertising the summit. And so I kind of did an OT month pre-launch. And so that helped get awareness out of it, especially being able to try and highlight on AOTA Inspire, as well as I had a platform because I was fortunate enough to receive the Gary Keilhoffner Emerging Leader Award. at this year's Inspire. So was kind of like trying to build off of that platform and build awareness. I did have kind of like an open call for speakers. That process actually went fairly well at the beginning. um Again, like the to-do list really kind of backed up, but I had quite a few people apply and say they wanted to speak at my event. I primarily advertised it on Facebook and LinkedIn because I knew that's kind of where most folks were. And so again, there people who I generally already had connections with. I knew what topics I wanted to touch on. So I knew I wanted to touch on policy on like home health policy on Medicare Part B. uh The planning of the timing of the summit was strategic because the uh final rules for skilled nursing facilities, inpatient rehab and hospitals is finalized kind of in June, July. And the proposed rules for Medicare Part B and home health are published early July. So I wanted to have it at the end of July so there was enough time for people to read those policies that just came out and be able to put them into a presentation. But also it was during the time where people would be able to actually take action on that stuff and be able to comment on the proposed rules, as well as then being able to prepare for like the sniff rule is published, you know, June, July and goes into effect in October. So kind of like trying to strike that balance of timing so there was strategy and why I that time. And so people applied, so I kind of would do some research. I had like a form that they could fill out just asking for their name, where they worked, their topic, and kind of like a loose idea of what they wanted to include. Most of the folks I ended up knowing. And then other ones I went through, honestly, I went through Ajot. and looked for the big thing that I was, the one that I had the hardest time finding was for productivity. I really wanted to have sessions talking about productivity, but there's not a lot of research around productivity and there's also not a lot of, productivity is much more contentious. And so there's not as many people who are comfortable open to talking about that. So I did find an AJAW article, fortunately, that had been published like a few months before my summit started. And I contacted the, people who authored that. So that's the only cold outreach I did was for that specific topic. And fortunately they were willing to present and gave an amazing presentation on productivity and the research that they're doing behind productivity. And so that was kind of the cold outreach. But yeah, a lot of it was connections and people I knew. The biggest thing that I ended up realizing as I was putting things together is that I really lacked diversity in my speakers. uh We had great diversity in terms of location and practice area. but not so much diversity in terms of different backgrounds as well as like OTAs versus OTs. And so that was kind of something that I then tried to make a conscious effort to reach out to some different folks uh to try and help improve the diversity of speakers and something that I'll make a much more conscious effort for next year to build those connections and bring in some more diversity of those different topics. Yeah, those were some great points. mean, that is something that um I really hadn't thought about either the diversity aspect until someone left feedback at the very first conference that I provided. And ever since then, yeah, it's definitely something that I think about as I'm reaching out to people. Were there any wild cards? Like you knew that this person could talk, you knew that maybe they had a research article out in Ajot or somewhere, but you're like, come the day that they show up for the actual presentation. whether it be live or recorded session, you just like weren't sure. And you just kind of had to hold your breath and hope that everything would go okay. the live panels. So all of the live panels, especially the productivity panel. So I really wasn't worried about the speakers because I had so majority of the sessions were pre recorded. So I already kind of knew what was going to happen. And I already had conversations with them about what tone I was going for. Because I really, I told them that like, yes, I want this to be, you know, evidence based and based in fact, however, I really want the tone to focus on implementation and actionable items. So please insert some of your perspective and opinion. I don't just want a repetition of facts from your latest publication. And again, most these people I know, so I have a relationship with them. So I know kind of how they present and what they're going to say. But I was very nervous for the panels where there would be other people attending how that would go, especially around the productivity one. just was not sure. how that conversation was going to play out, what questions people would ask. It ended up being a fantastic conversation and with some really actionable takeaways that helped us think about productivity differently from both perspectives. And then same thing, I was a little nervous about how the home health conversation would go because of the kind of the crisis that OTs are in in home health. But again, that conversation ended up going very well. But also those events were limited to people who had purchased a VIP ticket. So there inherently is already some filtering there of you're not going to get people who registered just to cause problems. You're getting people who have taken a choice to pay and prioritize this kind of conversation. And so they're showing up to the table willing to participate versus just interested in kind of causing problems. Yeah, I have found that people that are willing to pay for occupational therapy information tend to be uh fabulous people that want to genuinely participate. people love the content that my speakers provide in my conference, but they actually love the chat, the live chat that's going on even more. People want me to give them the transcript from the chat because all of the shared resources and everything that are shared in the chat. Yeah, people that come to conferences that are willing to pay for conferences are just amazing. So yeah. One more thing about the speakers and your presenters. Did you have a pay structure that you planned? Was it kind of affiliate marketing where they can make money if they brought in participants? Was it a flat rate? You don't need to go into the specifics of numbers, but just kind of what was your structure, I guess. Yeah, so I had initially really wanted to pay speakers, but again, because this was kind of my because it was my first event and also because of the stage of business that I'm in, I didn't have like a ton of reserves to be able to pay individuals. ah So my goal was that, OK, if I hit so I kind of. told them like, if I hit these numbers, then I'll be able to pay you this much. I had, my goal was to try and pay anywhere from 100 to $200 per presentation. That would be my dream to be able to pay people that much because I know that people aren't paid. I'm usually not paid for the presentations that I do or not always. And we deserve to get paid for our expertise. And so I wanted to be able to do that, but unfortunately just due to the current stage of my business, I'm not able to. I was initially planning to try and do affiliate marketing, but again, because it was the first time, because I really couldn't promise results. And also too, because most of my speakers are faculty or some of them worked for AOTA, they have limited networks. And so they're not really able to capitalize on like affiliate marketing. So it would have cost me more money to set up affiliate marketing than I would have received probably in return. And they maybe would have gotten like, one or two conversions. You know, so it really wasn't worth it. So what I offered them instead was like, you know, obviously that you can put your bio, like your, we'll have a speaker page for you that will include your full bio. And then you can advertise like either a product, a program or a resource, whatever in your, on your speaker page. Again, like these were promises and we did our best to execute it, but just due to the time and most of this was done by myself. Some of it worked out, some of it didn't, but everyone is very understanding. um And some people requested a fee and I said, unfortunately I'm not able to do that. ah I understand if that means you can't participate, but just know that we would love to have you if you're still willing. And people said they were willing to waive their fee and participate. So just kind of that open conversation, communication, I did give them all free VIP tickets so they could receive. CEUs from the event and also so they could attend the live sessions uh and also have extended access to the recording. So that was really kind of my big trade for them was like, you can have access to the whole thing and access to all the recordings through the end of the year. So. Yeah, that's what's nice about conferences is you can get really creative in how you compensate if you compensate, right? It's really interesting in the OTs space especially because you think about how many, all of us, most of us are used to AOTA and our state conferences. And I think we all recognize that almost no speaker at a state or AOTA conference is getting paid. They may or may not be getting free or discounted. participation at the conference. I think people understand that. and then so when it comes to a private company, like you or I, right, reaching out, like, there is an expectation to some, to some degree that the people should be making money off that presentation. Some people refuse to take money for a presentation. Some people will ask you to double what you initially say. Some people would rather do affiliate marketing because they do have 30,000 people on their email list. Everything is a little bit different. What's nice about the conference too is that you often don't pay until after the presentation and therefore you have that lead up of ticket sales so that way you actually have money to pay them later. Again, that's all dependent on assuming that you sell tickets, which isn't a given. Yeah, and fortunately for a lot of these things, I mean, kind of like why anyone gives presentations at Inspire or your state conference is because these are true passions for them. And so they are truly driven by that passion and that desire to get people involved and informed, which is like the same thing as to why I do what I do. You know, I am driven by a passion and interest in trying to get people involved. And so I am willing to do that for my profession. as long as also I'm able to get paid every now and Because also, mean, in this event, I also did not make money. I did not pay myself for the hours of time spent creating this program. it's hard to... It was one of those where, yes, I know my speakers didn't get paid and I'm a for-profit company and I would love to do that, but also I didn't make any money either. Yeah, yeah. And to be fair, that kind of goes back to your original goal though. When I asked you about your goal, it wasn't about finances. It was about getting your name out there. Oftentimes on social media, if you follow some of the entrepreneurs, they'll be like, which would you rather have, a million dollars today or I won't use a million. Let's say like $500,000 today, an email list of 30,000 or Monday's off for the rest of your life. Would you rather have the 500,000 or the 30,000 email subscribers? Me, I'd rather take the 30,000 email subscribers because I know the value of that 10 years from now versus $500,000 today. You cannot underestimate marketing and getting your name out there and having the ability to send an email to someone or social media, if that's your game. Having 30,000 really isn't anything these days on Instagram, but it's hard to get in the OT space. It's really hard to get anything more than, know. around that number. that contacts are worth their weight in whatever you want to weigh things in. ah yeah. All right. What was some of the feedback? And then after we get some of the feedback, we'll talk about some of the things you plan to do next year, assuming you plan to do another one next year. I think so, but we'll talk about that. What was some of the feedback that you received? Maybe the top one or two great things and maybe the one or two things that really made you kind of like, yeah, I should have done that. uh Yeah, so unfortunately, again, getting like really good feedback has been a challenge. People don't always want to fill out surveys. So I have gotten some feedback. I would have loved to gotten more. Overall, the feedback has been positive, right? People said that they had not been aware of these issues, that the speakers were engaging, the sessions were the right length, because purposefully I did intend for them to really be an hour or less to try and help keep people's attention for sometimes some dry topics. people loved the live sessions and said they would like to see more live sessions. And so that's something that I'm going to try and figure out next year, how to try and do kind of like the pre-recorded sessions. Because again, like most of the people attending are full-time practitioners who can't attend a session in the middle of the day, you know, and so trying to have something that's pre-recorded, but then also structure in some sort of live like Q &A with some of the speakers. So trying to incorporate more of that conversational element is what folks were interested in. The other big feedback that wasn't really about the summit itself in terms of topics or ideas was in terms of technology. That the platform was difficult to log in, that they had difficulty resetting their password, they were confused how to find the sessions, they weren't really clear on where things were located. And so that was... Good feedback, again, as with technology, of course, things are working fine until the day you open cart and then it doesn't work. And so you're trying to solve, put out fires and solve these things. People weren't able to reset their passwords. It was taking them to the wrong link. And so that's really my biggest thing that I plan to improve for next year is figuring out how to make the summit more accessible and how to make it easier to navigate. I think eventually we kind of got there once I was able to add enough links to different pages because I learned where people were going, uh which a pro tip for anyone if you haven't used the software, I use a software called Hotjar and that was recommended by Summit in a box and that actually will record sessions. So when someone visits my website, it will kind of record their clicks and where they go and what they look at. And so that's been incredibly helpful. for me, it's anonymized, so I don't know who it is. It tells me kind of generally where their location is, but it was helpful to see like, okay, where are people clicking? Where, you know, what forms are they interacting with? Where are they getting stuck? So that was really helpful for me to kind of see like, you know, or it works for me because I'm an admin and I have access to every single page, but then when someone else would try and access it, it wouldn't show up. And I didn't know that. So. There's a lot of the feedback in terms of things to improve. mean, more live sessions, which we're gonna try and figure out, but really the tech and the platform is one that we really need to investigate. And to be fair, it's the most traffic I've ever had on my website at one time. you know, sometimes things work the way you want them to, and sometimes they don't. ah And so all we can do is try and make it better next year. Yeah, that's exactly right. You can't give up on these things. They're all learning experiences, If you gave up for every failure that ever happened, you'd get nowhere, right? Right? I've been doing this conference, the Back to School Conference now for four years, and every year you learn something new. One thing you touched upon earlier was like, things got backed up until July and then you just talked about it right now, right? Like things were going on. People were having struggles with getting to the right page and whatnot. And I think a lot of times people assume that, ah if I email whatever at AmplifyOT.com, it's not going to be Clarice. I'm not taking away Clarice's time. It's going to be an assistant or something like that. And oftentimes, no, it's Clarice or it's Jason. Exactly, right? but we have to anticipate that. so I guess my question for you is, you have a little bit, did you build up a support team to an extent during the conference that maybe you don't always have? Did that work out for you or did you still find yourself just like at the end of the day, it you responding to everything? Again, there was a plan and the plan was lovely. um I did do some prep, so I do have some support. So I have a virtual assistant who actually lives in Africa and she does some great work and helps me out. And then I have an OT, Lindsay Bright, who does a lot of work for me from St. Louis. And she was also kind of available to help. So she was really helpful in terms of like. helping me with the live session. So she helped manage the weight room and manage the chat. that way I could really focus on, you know, supporting the speakers and being there. Initially, my plan again was to have my VA edit the videos and those sorts of things. But because things got backed up, I wasn't getting the video recordings until like I had hoped to get them kind of early July. So we'd have plenty of time to edit them, publish them, put them into the website, all that kind of stuff. Because right, it's not just We get the videos, we put them up. We get the videos, we put them into a software. We then put in the intro video. We make sure that there's no kind of like super weird gaps or audio. Then you have to download that, then you upload it, then you put it into the website, but you have to create the course for that website, you know, for that video to go into. So there's like 60 steps for each individual course. And while we had done some of that ahead of time, It becomes a challenge between, it going to take me more time to communicate what I want to happen to someone else? Or is it going to take me more time to do it myself? uh And unfortunately, throughout the summit, I was up till around three, four o'clock in the morning each night trying to get the videos kind of downloaded and uploaded and make sure things were set to open at the right time so that come eight o'clock in the morning when people would be able to access the stuff that it would be there. which means I usually wasn't getting to the computer until noon because I'd been up until 4 a.m. But in terms of if someone's trying to figure out what it looks like behind the scenes, that's what it looked like was me sitting on the floor until 3, 4 o'clock in the morning trying to make sure that emails were scheduled, Zoom links were set up. Unfortunately, my speakers were very nice in understanding that they didn't get the panel Zoom link until two hours beforehand because we just hadn't had time to set that up. There's a plan and again, like next year we now know kind of like how much work is involved. I really underestimated how many steps there would be and how many systems I need to have in place for someone to be able to do that. But two, like for your first one, you're kind of creating your vision of like, how do I want this to look? How do I want it to flow? And that was kind of things that I had to play around with and figure out for myself. uh And now I kind of know what I want it to look like. And so it'll be much easier next year to offload that to someone else. And you did a pretty darn quick turnaround, right? Let's not say from the moment you had the thought, but from the moment you started to put down on a Google Sheet or a sauna, whatever, ideas to the time of the actual conference, what was the time frame there? So I started loosely thinking about it in January. That's when I purchased the Summit in a box and kind of started trying to build out some timelines. April, I started thinking about it a little more seriously. Like again, I kind of got things enough together for um my, like to put out like a postcard, you know, to get the business cards and stuff for Inspire. So I kind of had like some of the basic structures in place, but hadn't really. And I was like, oh, I'm off to a good start, right? I kind of have like an idea of a mission and like topics that I want. had like the website that was like, you know, just basically a basic landing page that was up. But then in terms of actually like contacting the speakers, getting their paperwork, most of that stuff didn't happen until early July. So I Wait, early July you were contacting speakers? So, well, I contacted them in April and May. So in May I contacted them, but there were a few that I contacted like the week before the conference to try and kind of like, some people had been interested, but also to try and improve some of the diversity of stuff. And so I contacted them a week or two before and was like, I know this is last minute. Do you have time to, you know, do a zoom call with me for like an hour to talk about this topic? And so. Those were kind of things. I gave a presentation on the first day that I finished writing that morning, you know, because why not punish myself with more work? But yeah, so a lot of it was turned around within like three and a half weeks. So the general structure had been kind of laid out, but I really underestimated the actual amount of work that it would take uh to do all those sorts of things. Yeah. mean, three months really is kind of what you gave yourself it sounds like, and that is very fast. I I start planning in around January, February, and my conferences in August, the end of August typically. I start sales in like April. Yeah, it just takes a long time. And mine is strategically planned as far as the dates like yours is. Mine's back to school conference, right? So it has to be like in August, and yours is strategically planned as we talked about earlier. But yeah, it takes longer than you think it's gonna take. And that's the cost of putting on a good conference. I think that's something that you're gonna start in December now or something, right? I've already I've already talked to a few people like I think that would be a good session next year. So are you interested? Exactly, right? And so you're constantly thinking about it all year round now as opposed to just three months in advance. And next year is going to be so much better. You're going to start selling tickets earlier, I'm sure you're going to do. Yeah, so much. So no, thanks for sharing that though. I really appreciate it. And I think this will give a lot of people insight, whether they're already running a business and they want to add a conference component, summit component, or if they're just got an idea and they want to think about it. So Clarice, thank you so much. Is there anything else you'd like to share about your conference experience before we sign off for the day? Just that I know we didn't talk specific numbers of how things came out. And so I'll go ahead and share those. I ended up having a little over 300 people sign up. So a far cry from my 2000, but still really fantastic because most of them were new people to my business. So that was a big win there. Ended up selling, think about like 13 VIP tickets overall in terms of revenue. It turned out to be around. I think it's around like a two thousand dollar net loss. So I lost money on this event, unfortunately, but again, like I now have those contacts and that awareness that can then be converted later on and can be converted hopefully into my collective. My biggest takeaway is that it's really hard to separate yourself from the emotions. It's definitely taken a month for me to kind of look back on the summit and see it as a success versus initially I was just like, gosh, I had hoped this would go differently. I had hoped I'd generate more revenue. and it just didn't quite, but also too, the exhaustion didn't help. So definitely give yourself time to kind of recover and then look at it from a more objective lens versus the emotional lens while you're in it. And also know that there's different ways to measure success. kind of the like, oh, I generated $50,000 in a weekend and you can do it too. Understand that those come from different places. If you already have a really solid following and email list, maybe that's possible. Again, I've been a business for three, almost four years, and I still lost $2,000 and have a good amount of engaged followers and email list. So if you're new to this, don't let it stop you from doing it, uh but know that, set your expectations a little more reasonably and know that there's multiple different ways to do it. Even if it's just a list of YouTube links where you get a few recordings and put them in a YouTube links and send them out that way, that's also a really fantastic, and a Facebook group, That's the summit right there. You don't have to have a really expensive platform. So if there's a topic you're interested in, guaranteed there's at least two or three other people who are also interested. So that can be a really good foundation. Yeah, absolutely. And I just echo exactly what you say. And to be honest, everyone listening, we're going through that or I'm going through that right now. mean, Sarah too, we, Sarah and I both have existing businesses that are doing well, relatively well. But those businesses have both been around for mine. We're not at a decade yet, but we're getting up there and Sarah for a decade. starting over to a degree with the OTpreneur is it's a challenge, right? Like we didn't, started with a zero email list of zero. We started with a social media of zero and it's hard to sell to nobody. Um, so it takes time and you know, at the OT schoolhouse, the podcast was going on for like four years before we sold a single product and those reps matter. Like you don't have to sell something. to start developing a profitable business. doesn't happen overnight. You lost $2,000 this year, but I'm sure you will make that up next year just based upon everything that you learned this year. All right, Clarice, I've got to cut us both off, but thank you so much. I really appreciate this. We'll have to do it again. Maybe we'll have to do it on membership communities next time or talk about something else. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it and we will definitely stay in touch. Thank you, Jason. Looking forward to our next combo. All right, that's going to wrap up our conversation with Clarice this time. Thank you so much for listening in and I hope this episode was super insightful for you. If you are thinking about starting an online conference or summit, both myself and Clarice, as I mentioned at the top of the show, we have some experience with the thing and we are constantly learning. So if you would like to learn more about how to start your own online conference or summit. please join us inside the OTpreneur community where we will have conversations about this very topic. Thank you again for tuning in. Thank you Clarice for coming on the show and we'll see you next time on the OTpreneur podcast. We appreciate you listening to today's episode. Be the first to hear about any OTpreneur news and grab our free guide to OT business models at otpreneur.com. OTpreneur, it's where occupational therapy means business.