Loading summary
Transcript89 lines
- [00:08]
Rob Meyerson
Welcome to How Brands Are Built where branding professionals get into the details of what they do and how they do it. I'm your host Rob Meyerson. Thanks for listening. This episode of How Brands Are Built is brought to you by Tracksuit want always on brand metrics to deliver value to stakeholders. Tracksuit is a beautiful, affordable and always on brand tracking tools that helps consumer marketers and agencies answer the question is what we're doing working? Check them out@gotracksuit.com on today's episode. Jacob Kass. Jacob is a designer, brand strategist, educator and coach. He founded Just Creative, which is a leading branding and design consultancy that doubles as an industry leading blog and creative community. Jacob's past clients include Disney, Nintendo, Nike and Red Bull. Earlier this year, Jacob hosted the Brand Builders Summit, a virtual event that drew over 20,000 attendees from around the world. I was a speaker at the event and was blown away by what Jacob put together. For a few weeks leading up to the August event, it felt like the marketing for Brand Builders Summit was everywhere. So that's what I wanted to talk to Jacob about, what led him to create this event and how he pulled it off. Here's our conversation. Jacob Kass, thank you so much for joining me on how brands are built. It's good to see you.
- [01:36]
Jacob Kass
Hey Rob, good to see you. Likewise.
- [01:39]
Rob Meyerson
So I want to talk about Brand Builder Summit. I mean there's so much we could talk about. You're an experienced brand builder designer. You do all kinds of things. People who follow you know that you like to kind of dip your toe into all kinds of different activities. But, but today I want to focus on this Brand Builder Summit, one of the many things that you decided to try your hand at. And I guess just to get us started, can you tell me a little bit about where the idea came from? What, what made you want to do this?
- [02:09]
Jacob Kass
Yeah, absolutely. I do consider myself a bit of a creative drifter. Have you kind of touched on there to kind of go in many different arenas? So it could be like digital products, it could be summits, it could be, you know, creating a side company or like I dip my toes in many different at the cross section of all that is brand, but also design, strategy and marketing. And as those that cross section that was most interesting for me and that kind of segues into how this summit came to be. And just for context, what this summit was, it was a four day semi live event for brand builders. So designers, strategists, brand designers, logo designers, even web designers were a part of this, freelancers, even marketers. And it was four days of. With 24 speakers with prerecorded presentations, but also 24 live Q&A sessions. And then we had three live panel sessions and we had three live workshop sessions as well. So that was the event. We had a few live networking sessions and co working sessions as well. So. Yeah, and it was a very immersive experience.
- [03:16]
Rob Meyerson
I should mention full, full disclosure, I was one of those speakers, so that's. I would have heard about this anyway. And one of the things I want to talk about is the promotion for this was nuts. Like I was seeing it everywhere. And I even talked to some other people in the branding community just saying like it's, it's so pervasive online. Everyone is aware of this, which I'm sure resulted in a huge turnout and I want to get to that as well. But sorry to interrupt you. Yeah. Back to just sort of how you thought of it and now that you're talking about how you structured it, that's kind of my next question is where did that.
- [03:48]
Jacob Kass
Structurally, I want, I wanted to talk about what it was just before I got to how it came to be because there's a bit of context there. So now that you understand what the summit was and the structure and all of that, how it came to be was. Because I'd spoken at many summits before. I think my first one was maybe 2020 or 21 something around then. And then after that it just seemed like to be a snowball effect. Like you get on one leg and then you get invited to other summit. So it kind of snowballed from there. And the summit I went to back then, it was called something like simply Profitable Designer Summ. And I was like, what is this summit model? I had no idea what it was, but I joined and marketed based on their marketing schedule and my marketing brought in 60% of their revenue through email marketing. So it was a major success. And I've only just learned of this. I didn't realize like such of a.
- [04:42]
Rob Meyerson
They didn't tell you at the time?
- [04:43]
Jacob Kass
No, no, not 60%. They said. I was like, good, because. And I saw the affiliate revenue come in and I knew it was good, but not that much. Anyway, the point is that I knew affiliate marketing well. I'd run a blog and I know SEO and psychology and all of that when it comes to marketing and that's why it was successful. I also had an email list as well that I built up over time. So those are the prerequisites. So that's how I came to know about summits. And then I got attracted to other summits, I spoke at those summits and eventually I'm like well when am I going to do my own summit? And then I had other people asking me like when are you going to do your own summit? And oddly enough I talked to Matt, Matt Davies, my co host for the Just Brandon podcast, as you know and he, we also talked about doing our own conference or live event as well. And you know he's in uk, I'm in Australia so like the chances of that happening is pretty slim. We're not going to say never. We do talk about it but there's all these like inklings of like okay, you've been at a summit, you spoke at summits, people asking you and you know, maybe with the, the co host as well. But then the real linchpin or the, the thing that really got me to do this was when my, my blog and SEO crashed with Google.
- [06:02]
Rob Meyerson
I remember seeing you post about that online.
- [06:05]
Jacob Kass
So a side hustle of mine, you know, we talked about this creative drifting thing is the blogging and affiliate marketing. So I had a lot of content, I had a team of about 10 people running content and we had about 70 million people come to our site over like a decade and that was through all the content and that went really, really well up until a number of a year a couple of years ago and Google changed their algorithms. We pretty much dived. We lost 90% of our traffic, lost a huge portion of our revenue, had to let go of the team and everything.
- [06:35]
Rob Meyerson
Oh my God. That's not just you. That's not just you. Right? That's algorithm change. Affected all kinds of algorithm changes.
- [06:40]
Jacob Kass
Yeah. So pretty much like I was an affiliate driven site and pretty much all mid tier to small business business. Well small to mid size affiliate based websites vanished from Google. Yeah, just got pushed back so far. Google ended up pushing sites like Reddit, LinkedIn, like weird forums that you had never heard of before. They got pushed to the top and all affiliate sites got pushed down. So we lost our revenue. Just get, kept getting worse and worse. And like I tried to reinvest for the first like six to 12 months. It didn't work and no one really recovered any small mid sized sites. So I kind of, it was a, that was a big bummer but I tried to fix it. Didn't work. But consequently in that moment I lost a lot of leads because I had an organic search driven strategy and yeah started losing clients and well leads. I Should say. And that was drying up. And I'm like, okay, this is. This may be the time to do a summit. I was like, this was back in, like, January, February, 2024. Like, this is the time I'm going to do it. Let's just pull the trigger. I bought a program called Summit in the Box, which we'll get into, which is basically program to teach you how to run summits or live events. And I followed that program like, yes, I'm going to do it in February. And then I landed three clients in one week. I'm like, of course, of course. So that got pushed out. I'm like, okay, well, I can't do this now. I'm going to work on these client projects. I pushed the summit date out to August, which I'm very thankful I did, because it meant I could promote the event longer. I could learn how to run an event better by following that program. There's a ton of videos and resources to watch on that, so really immerse myself in how to actually run a summit. And it just made for a better experience. So that's how this whole summit thing came to be. It was just the right time, the experience, a cross section of, you know, brand design, marketing, and just a passion for facilitating, you know, conversations with people as well. This is one of my passions, running the podcast as well. So it's just like all these different bits coming together. It's like a lot of my skill sets, a lot of my passions, and the right timing. That's how the summit came to be. I know this is a longer question, longer answer than you expected, but it does give context.
- [09:01]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, yeah, it's good background. So the Summit in a Box thing that the person who runs. That you told me before we started recording, was the person who ran that first summit you mentioned, Right. Where you got 60%. You brought in 60% of the revenue or. Or of the attendees.
- [09:19]
Jacob Kass
Yes, exactly. So her name is Krista Miller. She runs Summit in a Box. Amazing program. She has a podcast. And if you want to learn more about, you know, summits, like, that's the resource I'd recommend. Yeah, well, we'll.
- [09:31]
Rob Meyerson
We'll provide a link to. So Jacob is going to be on that podcast and he'll go into more detail about his summit on that podcast. So if you really want to get into the weeds about Summit in a Box and how he implemented it in sort of very specific ways, I'll just. I'll provide a link to that podcast and you can listen to that. So the Way that you structured this though was, was really interesting to me as, as a speaker. So it was. You said some of this already, but it was free for attendees, speakers at least. I, I didn't get paid, but we had an affiliate link so we were encouraged to promote it and then people who did pay. So I should, I should revise what I said. It was free, but you could choose to upgrade for a certain amount to get all kinds of goodies, to get downloadable talks, things like that. And so through my affiliate link, if people chose to upgrade, I would get a portion of that. And so all of your speakers presumably got paid a little bit at least, or some of them quite a bit through those affiliate links. But, but it's still free for anyone who wants to attend, to attend, which is great for a global virtual summit. Well, I guess by nature any virtual summit, anyone in the world can attend. And so you're dealing with people with all different sort of levels of income, students all the way up to experienced professionals. So making it free. And it just, it's so much more accessible. Is that all part of the summit in a box model or is some of that your sort of customization of that model?
- [11:00]
Jacob Kass
There are many different models when it comes to summits. It is generally a free model and that is recommended because you get more people attending. I think we had 156 country, 156 countries represented and like you said, it's you know, across the board, students to decade long professionals, veterans. And the. The model is. Yes it is. This is why I love the model so much. It is free, so everyone can access it for 48 hours, 24 to 48 hours. And maybe next year I'll be doing it longer based on the feedback I've heard the benefits for the speakers as well is not just the affiliate side of things, but it's also the exposure to the list. So what you mentioned there, the upgrade. So we called it the Power Pass. It gets, it got you six grand worth of value for $97. So it was like a no brainer. Every speaker contributed to the Power Pass bundle and then you also got the replays and access to some of the live panels and live events as well. So that was the no brainer offer and that's how the model works. Right? If because it's such a no brainer offer, it converts very, very well and the people that bring in the speakers, that bring in the attendees, they get a cut. But the interesting point is that each speaker can set up a landing page where to Access the download or the resource, the attendee must enter their email. So it is a great email list builder for speakers. So you. Some, some of the speakers ended up getting about 4 or 5,000 new email subscribers because of the event, which is huge. And that is infinitely more valuable than getting a lump sum because then you have 4,000 extra new leads that you can sell to in the future. So there's a lot more benefits to just the monetary side of things. It's like list building. It's awareness and longer term benefits as well. And that's why I love it. It's a great one obviously for the summit host. You get the relationships, you get the email list built in, you can market to the people afterwards. I haven't done that yet, but there's so many opportunities that can come from it as well. And yeah, that's why I love the model. It's super competitive now though. Since 2001 there's so many summits so you really have to stand out. And that kind of brings us to the next point of like, how is your summit different? And we can kind of get in the structure and all of that.
- [13:24]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, I mean you also chose to do four days and I think you said six speakers per day. So yeah, talk a little bit about why you made some of those structural decisions that you made. I mean there's so many different variables. You could have done this so many different ways. And then even once you choose the structure, you then have to choose who to get on the roster of speakers and things like that. So what was some of that process like?
- [13:50]
Jacob Kass
So before I get into the process, I'll talk about the competition. Right. So the summit scene has blown up. Every month there's a new summit and often you'll see the same speakers and the same topics. And I didn't want to do that. So rather than just focus on like a design summit, I wanted to bring in some of the things I find most integral to the growth of a business or a brand. So that's brand strategy, brand design, marketing and business. It's those cross section of things that I believe can really boost a brand and boost a person's career, if you know all those things. So that's how I structured the four day event was to have six speakers on brand strategy, six speakers on design, six speakers on marketing and grow growth, and then six speakers on the business side of things. Funnily enough, the, the least sexy topic of business is always like the most people don't always attend to that. But I also think it's the most important.
- [14:45]
Rob Meyerson
It's the one they should be listening to the most.
- [14:46]
Jacob Kass
Should be. Exactly.
- [14:47]
Rob Meyerson
It's like the, it's like the vegetables they don't want to eat along with their. Totally their meal.
- [14:52]
Jacob Kass
Yeah, exactly. So I wanted to have it there. It's not necessarily like the attractor. The like design definitely is the attraction, at least from the audience and stats I've got. But I think what made this success was the integration of strategy and design because designers are feeling the pinch, right? AI online tools and just the commoditization of design in general. So people are wanting to learn more about strategy. So I think there was this. The position of the summit was focused on brand and not design and then that allowed us to break it down into, you know, brand design and strategy and then business or whatever way we want to slice it. So I think that's, that's a big part of what made it so successful is like the unique positioning and the cross section of strategy and design. But also we can get into the market a bit later. Just the pre buzz and the relationships with speakers as well were a big part of making the event of success. So if you ever wanted to run a summit or a live event of your own, the biggest tip I, I can give is rebuzz pre planning and relationships with your speakers. Like that's, that's the prerequisites.
- [16:03]
Rob Meyerson
Well, that's a good segue into just what it was like putting this together. So you've made the decision, you've done the summit in a box thing, you've learned, you're starting to learn as much as you can about how to do it, I guess. Just tell me a little bit about what it was like. I, I remember some of your posts online about, you know, maybe feeling like you had bitten off more than you could chew and just the incredible amount of work.
- [16:26]
Jacob Kass
There was so much self doubt and like so much self doubt, like. And some of my goals I kind of laugh at now, but my goal was to get 5,000 attendees as a stretch goal and smash that out of.
- [16:37]
Rob Meyerson
The triple that or something.
- [16:38]
Jacob Kass
3,000.
- [16:39]
Rob Meyerson
Wow.
- [16:40]
Jacob Kass
And I was blown away. I really was. And it just went, it just, it blew up. And I was like, you're part of the Slack channel. But I'm like, oh, we've got a thousand attendees now it's at 2,000 and 5,000. Like guys, it's up to 10,000. I'm like, what is happening? And then, yeah, the speakers started sharing more and you know, that excitement and the momentum Got building and it's like 15 grand. Then got to like 19 grand. I'm like, no, we have to get to 20. Come on. It just, just slowed down. I was like, come on, let's do one more push. We can get this to 20. And then somehow it got to 23. So it was, it was crazy. It was like it snowballed really a lot at the end. But that would definitely not have happened if it wasn't for the pre buzz beforehand and the clear communication with speakers and you know, the promotional graphics and there's a lot of moving pieces which we can get into at least on a high level.
- [17:32]
Rob Meyerson
But since it's a virtual event, I mean if that, if this was an in person event, a, you would have had a limited number of tickets. But like, if something like this had happened, you would have been kind of screwed because you would have had to go rent an entirely different ven. Since it's virtual, it seems like that shouldn't be, it shouldn't make things harder necessarily. Right. Although I guess you have.
- [17:50]
Jacob Kass
It's all scalable hosting. The only thing that's not scalable is the customer support. However, I custom trained an AI chatbot for our community and that was a huge, huge timetable for our members. So like time conversions, FAQs, where to find things. It was, it was like correct 80% of the time and the one times it wasn't correct you could retrain the answer. So it was very easy to, to create this custom chatbot. And when I say easy, it's like I copy pasted my landing page and my schedule page into a text field box and click Generate. And it like it trained it just on that. And then I monitored the questions coming in and gave the right answers to the questions and then just retrained itself. So it was incredible. That tool was called Chat Base by the way. It's like 20 bucks. Not affiliated in any way, but it was incredible. And I'm going to use them again.
- [18:42]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, so that's coming after the jobs of the person or people that you would have hired for customer support. And it's the same technology that your design attendees are afraid of coming after their jobs.
- [18:53]
Jacob Kass
But you know, some of the feedback I did have was that I moderated all the live Q and A. So maybe next time I have someone else. I did hire someone for as a VA for email support. That was fine until ThriveCart out software solution crashed on the second day. Unrelated to us, but they did a major update to their platform on that particular day and it crashed out part of our portal in thrivecart. So we had literally hundreds of emails like attendees saying we can't access it, we can't download it. So that was very distracting. I had to put out the fire during the live event and but it worked out and I emailed everyone and communicated the problem and was outside of our control and that was fine. But yeah, the email support is important and scaling with the attendees, but Chatbot, yeah, was definitely scalable.
- [19:41]
Rob Meyerson
Great. Yeah. I wanted to know about any specific tools that you found that helped you. Is there anything else that sort of at that tool and tactics level that, that you couldn't do without that you learned about because of this? Today's episode is brought to you by Tracksuit. Tracksuit is a beautiful, affordable and always on brand tracking tool that helps consumer market marketers and agencies answer the question is what we're doing working? A tool like Tracksuit helps track the impact of your marketing and find out the unique selling points your brand has over its competitors. Tracksuit is fast becoming the common language for businesses in competitive categories to measure and communicate the value of brand building. Thanks to our friends at Tracksuit for sponsoring this episode. Check it out@gotracksuit.com yeah, so I have.
- [20:27]
Jacob Kass
A whole list of the tech stack if you want me to roll.
- [20:31]
Rob Meyerson
Let's, let's, let's. Well sure, give me some highlights but then we'll just post that in the show notes if you want to, if you don't mind sending it.
- [20:37]
Jacob Kass
Okay. I literally have a whole, whole swap thing but I'll talk about the experience. So like I hosted on Circle. Live videos, calls were on circle. The live chat was on Circle, the calendar tool I used was out event. I use a quiz tool called Interact so that was helps people choose which sessions to attend. For surveys I use Formaloo Merch. I use Etsy and Printful podcast recording, Riverside podcast hosting, Spotify Automations. I use Zapier or Zapier AI Chatbot. I use chat base for all of my HR sort of stuff. I used Fiverr. I had a motion graphics designer. I had an audio branding team Drop Music branding shout out to them. They did a great job.
- [21:19]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, yeah, I had.
- [21:22]
Jacob Kass
Yes. I hired a Facebook ad specialist to help with the ads that got a 2x return which I was very happy about. I probably it was risky but it turned out for the website WordPress had about 10 different plugins hosted on Cloudways. The website builder was Elementor. The cart software. I used ThriveCart. It was a countdown timer called Deadline funnel, which was integral to the summit, that gives a bit of urgency for people converting and it allows you to turn on the on and off the pages when they expire. So this is important for summits because there is a deadline of how long people can watch for. So 24, 24 to 48 hours is the general guide for how long someone can access the presentations for free after that date. Yeah, you expire it.
- [22:12]
Rob Meyerson
Is that a, like a WordPress plugin or something or how does that integrate with the software for this?
- [22:17]
Jacob Kass
It's a, I think It's a Java JavaScript code you can put into a website.
- [22:20]
Rob Meyerson
Okay.
- [22:21]
Jacob Kass
It works on WordPress and other channels, but yeah, this is very integral for a summit because it handles all the times and the countdown timers and everything. So there's some tech behind it that is very useful for summits.
- [22:36]
Rob Meyerson
So you listed all the tech, but you also listed a few people that you hired. So it sounds like you did have at least sort of a small team of specialists that you built just for this summit. I, I guess I'm curious. And you, you did. That's similar to what you did with your blog, right? You had a team of, of 10. How do you go about finding those people? Do you have a, a methodology to finding people that you trust or that you are willing to.
- [23:02]
Jacob Kass
I, I always look for referrals and recommendations first. So Facebook ads. I, I looked at people that did Facebook ads, but then I went granular. I'm like, I want someone who does Facebook ads for summits. So I found someone that knew that and they were blessing. Like Facebook ads is hard. It, It's. There's so many moving pieces and approvals and like the budgets and everything. I like, she explained it in videos and everything. I still, it took a while to understand and it's so risky.
- [23:29]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah. I mean Google Ads is not. I, I find. Not that. Not super easy either. Like once you. It's easy to set up, but then if you actually want to be good at it, it's hard.
- [23:38]
Jacob Kass
Totally. So to answer your questions, like referrals. If I didn't have someone, then I'd go on Fiverr, for example. I looked at, I look at the value so their ratings, their experience, where they're based, the communication skills and so forth. And that was. They helped. I found a developer there and I'm going to use them for the next time. And then I use my mo. My, my current podcast editor, who also doubles as a video editor to do like the motion graphics. So it was just like prior relationships. And then I use a tool like Fiverr up, find other people. Which I didn't really do that but to be honest, like all of those things are very niche jobs that were like only for, you know, a few hours of work. Everything else like I did myself stupidly. Yeah, I definitely delegate more. But now that I know how to do things, I've done it once, I know where I can delegate. And yeah, there's a little bit of.
- [24:34]
Rob Meyerson
You have to do it yourself in order to understand how to.
- [24:36]
Jacob Kass
Yeah.
- [24:37]
Rob Meyerson
How to not do it the next time. Yeah. Anything else?
- [24:40]
Jacob Kass
I didn't even go through half that tech, but there was a few other ones that were really integral.
- [24:44]
Rob Meyerson
Oh, okay.
- [24:44]
Jacob Kass
Yeah, I do want to mention high notes. Yeah, yeah. So ThriveCart was where I hosted the learning like the course and the bonuses and down downloads and that was like where I hosted content but also my, the, the E commerce side of things. So that was, that was all integral to it. And it hooked up with ConvertKit. Now it's called Kit. That was what I used for the forms and the pop ups and the email marketing. I use hotjar for behavior analytics for the website and Google Analytics for measuring the traffic and everything. And I use this, an exit intent pop up tool called OptinMonster. So if someone was trying to leave a page, something would pop up saying, hey, don't forget your free ticket. And that caught a lot of people. So there's little tools like that can really change. I use a social proof tool called Trust Pulse which basically in the bottom left corner of your screen, it's like 15,000 people have registered to this summit, don't miss out kind of thing. So it's like it gives this like social proof to it. And on the upsell page, the VIP bundle, you would say, you know, someone just bought this or someone in your location just bought this or a thousand people have bought this, whatever it is and just gives that social proof. Yeah, ads, I use meta email G suites, I use an email tracking tool called Mail Suite. So the problem with summits, not problem, but the challenge with summits is communication. There was so many emails sent between speakers and everything and it's like literally an admin job. So having a tool that tracks emails to know when things are opened or not opened was very handy. When people have clicked on links to know that was super, super easy, super handy. For speaker management I used Airtable. So it's like a database so you could manage, you know, where you were with contracts and communications and everything. I think that was dead in the water without that.
- [26:36]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, I think that was one of the pictures he posted online. One of those what did I. What have I done to myself? Pictures with a massive airtable spreadsheet thing.
- [26:45]
Jacob Kass
Yeah, exactly. But I would. Yeah, it's. That's crucial. So if you're not organized like you need to be organized, if you. Yeah, it's everything and GIFs. I use printful and Moo and stick a mule and yeah, there's probably some more of it. That's. That's a lot of it. So there's a lot of moving pieces.
- [27:03]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, yeah, no kidding. And did you hear about a lot of that tech Stack through again, Summit in the box, or was a lot of this sort of your own research or.
- [27:13]
Jacob Kass
Some of it. Some of it was new to me, like Deadline Funnel, I had never heard of that. And so that was a huge learning curve. ThriveCard I'd never used before.
- [27:21]
Rob Meyerson
Right.
- [27:21]
Jacob Kass
And how. That was great.
- [27:23]
Rob Meyerson
ThriveCart is what I interacted with a lot as a, As a speaker and for all the affiliate link stuff and that. That worked very smoothly.
- [27:30]
Jacob Kass
Yeah, it worked. Really worked really well. But it was just learning how to set it up and how to integrate it with ConvertKit with. And tags and so forth. That was all a learning curve. Made many mistakes. I sent out multiple emails to people like saying upgrade when they'd already upgraded and stuff like that. To a small segment when I was testing, thankfully only a few hundred people got that versus thousands. So definitely did something right there, like with my testing, which was recommended highly. Very glad I did that. But yeah, what was your question?
- [28:01]
Rob Meyerson
Well, just with all, with all of. With all. Everything that went right and went wrong and all the tech that you had to use and when you think about potentially a brand builder, Summer 2025, are you excited or are you more sort of like, God, here we go again. Is it daunting or is it funny you say that?
- [28:21]
Jacob Kass
Because after the summit it was very draining. Right. I did it all in the US time zone. I'm in Sydney, so I was doing this summit from 11am to like 7, 8am in the morning. So it was complete opposite. And that was very draining. But the, the week after the summit, I, you know, we had some time off in the city. We booked a hotel and, you know, we had a couple's massage and everything, my wife and I. And in that massage, all I could think about was the 2025 summit, literally. And I planned out every single detail in my head in one hour. So, like the whole Position the tagline, how it's going to be different. Like this new theme, like, everything just in that hour. And like that next week, I pretty much put everything down. I designed the whole website for the 2025 summit, so I have all the. The new logo, the name, positioning, the messaging. It's all done and designed. Just the homepage. That's the easy, fun part.
- [29:19]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah.
- [29:20]
Jacob Kass
The rest is the hard part.
- [29:22]
Rob Meyerson
In some ways, I feel like you really got your money's worth for that massage. In other ways, I feel like you need to go back for another hour because you weren't even enjoying it. You were just thinking about the summit.
- [29:31]
Jacob Kass
All right, so there will be snoring there. I'm like, brains in overload. But, you know, that's when good ideas happen.
- [29:36]
Rob Meyerson
You know, like the second you kind of tune out. Yeah. So there definitely will be a 2025. Can you give us any hints?
- [29:44]
Jacob Kass
I don't want to say definitely. Like, I have big. I have big plans. Like, maybe those clients will drop at the same time, like last time. But the feedback I got from everything was so impactful. Like, it was so moving to hear, like, people email me saying, you changed my life. And, like, it was life changing. And we put out a survey after the end of the event and There was about 150 people that responded. 100% of them said they would recommend the summit to a friend. So that was an amazing stat. And 9.7 out of 10 was the rating they gave for the overall summit experience.
- [30:22]
Rob Meyerson
Amazing.
- [30:24]
Jacob Kass
It was great, great feedback. Obviously, that was like the very engaged people, people filling in surveys, but it was a good, good sign that we did things right. And the experience was on point. Quality speakers, presentations, like, everything. So it went smoothly. But I literally have pages of notes of how to improve next time based on feedback and reflection and so forth.
- [30:45]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, I was going to say one of the really cool things you did was you. And I saw you did this for lots of people. You cut out positive feedback that people gave on individual presentations and then mailed that to us. It was like a little envelope of confetti came out and it was all real comments that people have left. That was a very cool little gift.
- [31:04]
Jacob Kass
And, yeah, a little memorable moment. It's like a big smile on your face.
- [31:08]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah. A little ego boost. And. Yeah, it was great.
- [31:11]
Jacob Kass
I love you, Rob.
- [31:13]
Rob Meyerson
I mean, yes. But everyone else does too, apparently. That was what was so great about it. Thanks for. Thanks for doing that. So can you reveal anything if there's a 2025 event? Anything I mean, will it be significantly different in any way or are you thinking it's more like little tweaks here and there that, that you see as potential ways to improve on. On 2024.
- [31:36]
Jacob Kass
So I've got some incredible feedback and at the end of the day it's all about the experience to me and the decisions I was making. You know, just a couple of weeks out before the summit, it was like, will this improve the experience? Like, I didn't have a workbook made or anything. I didn't have a printable schedule and I was getting feedback in like, do you have anything like this? I'm like, no, it's going to add to the experience. Let's get it done. So invested in that, like, and it was so well received. So at the end of the day I'm like, how can I improve the experience? And looking at some of the sessions, like the most popular sessions, and the feedback I got on some of the sessions, like for example, the Live upgrade. Sorry, the upgrade gave you access to the live panels and the live events and these were so well received, they're like, maybe want to make some of them free next time. And people wanted more face to face interactions. And the Circle platform that I used, the. It was great. However, you could only see the speakers and the, the speakers speak. You can't see all everyone's faces. So it didn't have that community feel like, you know, you're on Zoom and you can see like dozens of faces at once. And the one session we did have on Zoom, which had breakout rooms, Circle doesn't do breakout rooms yet. That was incredible. The everyone came very scared in like the first five minutes. They're like very timid and like, what the hell am I doing here? And then you have a break room, they all come back and they're smiling and grinning and the energy is there and people loved it. Right. So I'm thinking next time we can bring in live panels and more networking sessions and make the community even better and that experience better. And then it was four days before, which was a lot. So it could be dropping down to three, I don't know, just to focus on that and having better relationships with some of the speakers. So for this first summer to had a lot of prior relationships with because of the podcast that we would run and just people I followed online and respected and want to get them on stage, but for next time, kind of want to go outside the network a little bit and branch out more. But the problem with that is you don't have relationships with the speakers and those relationships are integral to promoting the event because if they don't really know you too well and there's no connection there, they're not necessarily going to promote too much. So it's. Those relationships are so important. So I think for next time I'll spend more time building up that relationship and talking through the promotional materials and how to market, because I did this through email, as you would have received many emails, Rob. And I think next time I'll just get on a call with every, every speaker to go through things, making that face to face connection, explaining things, make sure they understand. Because some speakers, they know marketing very well and they get it. Others they have huge audiences but they may be too busy and they just don't get things done. So it's just like if you have that face to face relationship, there's a connection and it's more likely that they'll commit and do things and understand. So I think that's what I'd do differently.
- [34:40]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, that's a great pointer for anyone who's listening, who's trying to do any kind of event. I wonder how many people who run, I don't know, maybe they all do this. Who run events or things like this, whether they're online or in person. Schedule calls in advance just to kind of get to know each other and build a little bit more rapport. That's a really good idea.
- [35:03]
Jacob Kass
I'll definitely do that more. And it's hard, it takes time and it's a lot more investment. But I believe that you'll get better results because you have that better rapport and connection. So. And that's why people don't do it. It takes time. Yeah.
- [35:15]
Rob Meyerson
And yeah, it's, it reminds me of working on that designing brand identity book. So much of that was about, I mean, it's not, it's not the reason I did it, but kind of an outcome of, of doing that is just getting on calls like this and having conversations with designers and strategists and all kinds of experts all over the world. And it became, you must be one.
- [35:35]
Jacob Kass
Of the most connected authors out there with like the amount of, you know, work and quotes and input that's come into that book. Your Rolodex must be.
- [35:47]
Rob Meyerson
Well, and I'll, I'll be honest, you know, some of it did just happen through email and it's for exactly the reason you just said, just expediency. And similar to your experience with the summit. It's like this massive spreadsheet of you know, page 172, we need a new quote about X, like, let's contact this person and see if they can weigh in on it. And so sometimes that is just an email because you're, you know, we both have day jobs and, you know, we're up against deadlines, but to the extent that you can get on calls and have a conversation with someone, that's really the enjoyable part. And I think you, to, to your point, you get better results. Whether results means, you know, a speaker who really markets the hell out of the summit, or just somebody who puts more effort into the presentation they're giving or something like that.
- [36:35]
Jacob Kass
Yeah, absolutely. I fully agree with that. So those are some of the main takeaways for the granular details. As you mentioned on Chris's podcast, I get into the weeds and if you're going to run a summit, you'll definitely want to listen to that because there's so many invaluable things you can learn from people who've experienced it before and the learnings, like I spent a lot of time reflecting to get those takeaways and those outcomes to understand what can be done better, what went well, what didn't and so forth. So it's a really big part of anything, I think, is reflectionism, which we often don't do.
- [37:09]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, good point. You mentioned at the beginning that when you were first thinking about this, you were talking to Matt, your co host on the Just Branding podcast, and it sounded like you were at least thinking about toying with the idea of something in person, which would have been difficult given how far away from each other you live and work. But is in the future, do you still. Is there a part of you that thinks you might want to make part of the Brand Builder Summit in person or do something else that would have an in person element?
- [37:38]
Jacob Kass
Yeah, never. Never say never. I think it would be better to do it in the uk just because a lot of our audience are there and there's more people versus Australia. It's very far away and we have a much smaller population here. We often talk about it and one day it will happen. I don't know when, but I reckon if it doesn't happen in person, there may be something. Yeah, I don't know. Never say never.
- [38:01]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, that sounds. Well, I hope you get to do that. For now, we'll be satisfied with Brand Builder Summit. 2024 was a massive success. We have hopes but no guarantees for a 2020 20. Sorry. For a 2025 event. And it was great to hear. A little bit about what you have in store for us. I know people can go to justcreative.com and follow you at Just Creative. Is there anywhere else that people should look you up online just to. To keep track of all those various things that you're dipping your toes into?
- [38:34]
Jacob Kass
Yeah. So brand builders summit.com you can join the waitlist for 25 if it happens. Fingers crossed. Just creative.com is my main site and all my handles are on there. I do want to mention on Just Creative there is a free branding bundle. It's called the Branding Briefcase and inside is a bunch of downloads and freebies for branders, designers, strategists. You know, everything from logo inspiration to strategy questions to sales conversations to like mock ups. It's all for free in exchange for an email and I'd love to connect with you.
- [39:08]
Rob Meyerson
Great. Yeah, I highly recommend that bundle. I've. I've downloaded it. So encourage anyone listening to go check that out. Follow Jacob online and attend the 2025 summit if it happens. Thanks so much, Jacob for joining. It's great to talk to you.
- [39:22]
Jacob Kass
Thank you, Rob. And thank you for your generous contributions as well, your presentation and sharing and longtime friendship online. It's appreciated. Oh, and for the book feature as well, brand logo and that was awesome. So thank you.
- [39:36]
Rob Meyerson
My pleasure. Good to talk to you. Talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to How Brands Are Built. If you liked the episode, please leave a rating and review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about Jacob and and his work, visit justcreative.com you can also go to brandbuildersummit.com to join the waitlist for 2025. During our chat, Jacob mentioned Summit in a Box, which is a product of Krista Miller's. You can learn more at summitinabox.co. and Jacob will be appearing on Krista's podcast Summit Host hangout sometime in 2025. So if you want to hear Jacob go even more into the weeds on how he pulled off a successful brand Builder summit, check out that episode. That book feature that Jacob mentioned right at the end of our conversation is of course Designing Brand Identity. Some of his work is featured in the sixth edition, which I co authored with Alina Wheeler that's available on Amazon now. How Brands Are Built is a production of Heirloom Agency. Our theme music is by Esha Erskine Project. I'm Rob Meyerson and I'll talk to you next time.