How Jan Koch overcame overwhelming stress, started his own business and more

Todd Jones  0:02  

Hey, everyone, welcome to the storyteller cafe today, and I am with Jan Koch. Did I say that correct? 

Jan Koch

That was pretty close. Yeah, pretty close. 

Todd Jones

And I won’t tell you all the different ways I said your last name over the last four or five years. But anyway, Yon I’ve known for a while in a he kind of he’s in the WordPress community like I am, but he’s also in the digital marketing space and very big and live streaming as well. And what we’ll get into that in just a little bit beyond, I want you to, I would like for you to introduce yourself and tell us what you’re drinking today.

Jan Koch  0:39  

Thanks so much for having me, Todd, I am having black tea today. I’m on a coffee diet. More about that later on. I am a virtual summit host. I want to say educate on the virtual summit hosts from Germany started as a WordPress developer, originally in the traditional career path, and I was employed, I was working as a business consultant. Then I switched to being self employed because of a mental breakdown, blah, blah, blah, some hard things to go through. And then I started my own business as a WordPress freelancer. In 2015, I ran my first virtual event, the WP summit. And ever since then, I was hooked on this idea of bringing people together on the online world. And I mean, we’re doing this podcast right now we’re sitting on the exact opposite edges of a word, essentially, multiple 1000 kilometers on miles apart. And this is just a beautiful thing. So I’m very grateful for the opportunities that we have. And I’m looking forward to the conversation today.

Todd Jones  1:39  

Yeah, some of my best friends right now aren’t even on the same continent with me. Yeah, I mean, you know, I have a really good friend in Toronto, a really good friend in India. And then another one in Minnesota. I mean, it’s not that I don’t have friends here, I do. But people I talk to every single day that I work with, and bounce ideas off of. They’re all over the country and all over the globe.

And so now, how long ago was it that you started your very first thing was consulting with the IT company? Is that correct? 

Jan Koch  2:09  

The very first thing was doing a integrated again, business informatics when I was employed, working as a business consultant, as an employee for that company, doing a Masters on the site in IT security, which was kind of an I don’t want to say elites to the studies, but we had 12 people enrolled across all of Europe. So it was somewhat selective. And after four months, I knew that wasn’t the right thing for me to do. I had a mental breakdown at that stage. And I decided it couldn’t get any worse than where I was from the situation. And I founded my own business on the side of working as an employee as a business consultant, and eventually made my way out of the employee position to running my own business.

Todd Jones  3:07  

Now, the first job where you were doing the business consulting infrastructure work, how long ago was that?

Jan Koch  3:15  

I quit that job in 2012- 9 years. Yes. So all that’s been within the last decade. Yeah, that that was my first and only full time employment that I had.

Todd Jones  3:26  

Okay. I didn’t know how long ago that was, you know, I have some friends that did IT. And 20 years ago, and you know, it’s just kind of hard to tell where people are trying to figure out where people are and the situation I was doing. Well, between 200 and 2010, I was working in a bookstore when I started Oh, I didn’t know that. Yeah. You ever heard of Borders Books? Nope. Yeah, it was a popular American chain. Second to Barnes and Noble, and doesn’t exist anymore. But I was doing that. And that’s along the way when I started playing with tech and computers and, and website design and all that kind of stuff. It kind of just anyway, some of that stories and the podcast with Joe (Howard WPMRR Podcast), how I got started with WordPress and all that kind of stuff. Okay, let’s go back to 2012-2013. And you said it. You had to get out. You had to stop doing what you were doing.

Jan Koch  4:30  

Yeah. Yeah, well, it was a tricky situation because I was really passionate about the smart stuff studies at the time. I was really, I don’t want to say deep into it security, but it was a fun topic that I enjoyed tinkering around with and spending time with. But I joined this master’s program only for the money because where I live, it’s a small town called Emden, it’s like 50,000 people living here. And the wages are quite low in the area where we are right now. And I wasn’t earning that much as a business consultant as I wanted, I essentially, at that time, I had to decide, do I want to rent an apartment on my own or do I want to have my own car. Then that’s how the money I was making back then. I couldn’t afford both an apartment and a car. So the studies promised to give me a six figure salary once I finished because of the qualification, I will get the potential drops and stuff like that. Turned out that working 40 hours a week as a business consultant plus spend 30-35 hours a week on top of that, for a master’s program, which I didn’t care about deeply. I just was into it, because the topic was fun. And then it was for the money. But as soon as I saw things like I had to learn cryptography, I had to learn how to encipher and decipher stuff by hand, doing all the math calculations by hand that are the underlying principles of, of cryptography and stuff like that things got really, really messy, got really hard. And at some point, I remember what was a Friday was like four months in. And I was in the office at my day job. And I literally, I threw up in the office, man, it barely made it to the toilet I threw up there, I drove home. And I don’t know how I arrived at home, it was like a 30 minute drive with a car. Drove straight to my parents while I was laying down in bed. And I wasn’t able to move essentially, because my body was just shutting down from all the pressure. And they brought me to a hospital, I stayed there for two days, they got me some meds to calm down. And at that time, I decided like, there’s no way I’m going to continue this path. There’s no way that I’d be able to go two years under this pressure. So I quit the Master’s back then I think I sunk around 6000 euros into the program by then I just wrote them off as an investment that failed. I had to stay for another two years with my employer. But luckily, they agreed that they would let me run my own business on the side, as long as it didn’t compete with what they were doing. I was allowed to do this. So with a friend of mine, who’s still my best friend to this day, we started a company doing web design with WordPress and stuff like that. And that’s how I got into the space really.

Todd Jones  7:41  

So when did you and your friends started that, was that about 2014, 2013. 2013. And so were you. Were you reaching out to local customers? Or were you going like, okay, so like local businesses and that kind of thing.

Jan Koch  7:58  

Yeah, mostly local businesses that I was friends with. Like I had a few relatives that could refer clients to me and I had a few people I knew from friends who ran businesses. And then I also took a course called Internet Business Mastery, which was like one of the leading causes I think was recommended by Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income. And back then in that cause I learned how to do online marketing. I had no idea how to do this before no no touching points with that. And I started a blog in English.  

So I was doing internet business mastery back then, which was an online course teaching how to do online marketing because I had no experience with never done this before. And that was when I met Navid Moazzez. Good friend of mine runs which was around virtual summit mastery. And for two years, I was blogging to an SEO trying to grow my email list with trying to make money with AdSense and selling affiliate products on the blog and stuff and they never really worked out and never was like enough to fully cover all expenses. I was stuck at around 600 email subscribers and like maybe $1,000 iF 1000 euros a month in income. So I ran this summit in 2015. With Navid coaching me after he finished his first event and he made I think around 60 grand on his first event he had I think 16,000 attendees, something like that. I saw how well it worked for him. I was reading I was desperate in that situation. So I wanted his help and he coached me through the summit. It was a five figure event on the first try, and had like 3000 people added to my email list, which was 5X what I did in the past two years. And that is how I got into this whole interview live streaming video marketing space. 

Todd Jones

So what was your first summit about? 

Jan Koch

It was called the WP summit? was essentially about how to use WordPress. And that was the biggest mistake that I made. I mean, imagine running the WordPress summit. Who’s it? Who is it for? That was the entire mistake? Yeah, exactly. That’s the exact reaction like shrugging shoulders and not knowing who you are speaking to. That was the mistake that I made back then. Which is why only in air quotes had 3000 new subscribers, would you still have success compared to what was? Yeah, of course. Yeah. That’s why I continued that path.

Todd Jones  10:51  

Yeah. So what I mean, you said you got 3000 subscribers, were they good subscribers for you? 

Jan Koch

Yep. Okay, so you did have some success? Um, what would you say on that first summit was your biggest problem, your biggest adversity?

Jan Koch  11:12  

Frankly, not being a native English speaker. Because I was really intimidated to do these interviews with people like Rand Fishkin with people like Ollie Gardner from unbounce, Jason Cohen, co founder of WP Engine, I’m still surprised that they said that they took the time out of their calendars to go on an interview with some random German dude who they didn’t know about. And then right now, when you’re listening to this conversation, I am quite comfortable speaking English. I dream in English sometimes because most of my day I read English, I listen to English audiobooks, I listen to English podcasts and videos and stuff. So the only time I speak German is with friends and family, everything else is when I take notes in English. That’s how crazy it’s becoming. Yeah, back then. I was still in the early phases, I wasn’t as used to speaking English and stuff like that. That is what I learned in the process is that you put these limits on yourself, where you feel uncomfortable, and you don’t want to go in that area. You don’t want to do the things that make you feel uncomfortable. And this is like woo woo stuff. And this is so cliche that comfort is on the other growth is on the other side of comfort and all these sayings. But it is so true. And unless you tap into these areas, and unless you do the things you don’t want to do, you cannot grow so much as a business and of course, as a human being as well, because they opened all sorts of new relationships for me.

Unknown Speaker  12:48  

Yeah,

Todd Jones  12:49  

so when you started this in 2015, I would assume there were not very many online conferences going on at the time, most people were still meeting in person, you have large marketing, I can remember a few years ago, a friend of mine, who was a well known blogger really was at that time, wrote out wrote a an article which had, like the top 20 or whatever marketing summit, you know, that that are out there. And, and you know, and I listened to some of these people today, and you hear him saying, Well, you know, we want to get back to being in person. But they always seem to make an allowance for online options because of what’s happened with COVID and everything. But you were kind of ahead of the curve, especially in the WordPress industry. You know, we have work camps all over the world. Did you have a sense that that was something that would last that would keep going? Yeah, obviously not knowing COVID was going to take place. But

Jan Koch  13:50  

Yeah, it’s easy to say yes. Look, in hindsight, it’s easy to say that but back then what was motivating me was one thing that Navid ma said and the branding summit, which was in related space, was in personal branding, digital marketing. But then also, TELUS summits were thing for like 20 years already. So you had a tele summit in the health industry in fitness and nutrition and stuff. So it wasn’t an entirely new concept. It was just something that hadn’t been done in the WordPress space before. And I figured that when you bring together people online, from the comfort of their homes, make it very easy for people to attend something just by sitting in front of your computer or holding your iPad or phone or whatever. The barrier to entry is really low for those attendees. Whereas when you’re not knowing how to organize a conference, competition can be can have a huge barrier to entry back then at least now there’s things like open and hey summit and stuff like that, which is a mastery obviously is becoming really, really big Nowadays we see Justin VSM. We have hundreds of students who run some ads every single day. But back then it was, I want to say an established concept just taken into a new market. Right? So what how is the teleconference summit different than an online like what you do? How is that different than 20 years prior you said, the teleconference, the media was different back then there was no video interviews, it was just audio you had like phone call conferences, where people could join in and now you know, you have video calls and live chats and stuff. Okay,

Todd Jones  15:39  

That’s what I was wondering, I can’t imagine doing a virtual conference without some video component now that I’ve been through several in the last couple years. And I’ve attended more summits, or whatever you want to call these things the last two years, because they’re online than I ever did, personally, physically. And not only that, but the guys at Tulsa word meet can’t press beta. They had me on to do a presentation in December 2019. I believe it was before COVID. Camp is named Stuart (Doug Stewart). That I think is his last name. And I hate to say this now and he’ll probably if he’s listening, but those guys really and also, the other goblins also James Bullis, I think, but they reached out to me or the spirit guy did and he was he started doing these virtual because the nature of a WordPress meetup is local meat. Right. But he wanted to expose them to other people. people outside of Tulsa, you know and fly in for us meetup is really not feasible, is different for an online summit or a summit. But you know, so he had and I know I remember him telling me at Chris lemma on E pipe demand via zoom, and he brought me in. And then I’ve been through, obviously all most of the WordPress summits in the last couple of years. I also had the privilege, the Honor, I guess, to sit in Selena Soo’s Impacting Millions last year. Yeah, I didn’t go to all of it. But it was kind of fascinating to watch how she did that. And the first one of the reasons I wanted to, well, a friend of mine was working for her at the time, so I got a ticket that way. And so she had some really good speakers including Rami seven. Does that say his name Ramit Sethi Rami, I Will Teach you to be Rich. Yes. And I wanted to hear him. And I think I heard somebody else as well, that was a high up like that. And of course, Selena herself was a very engaging lady. And then Jennifer Bourn has done her Content Ccamp online for the last couple of years. So I got to be a part of that, as well as one of her interviewees, a power content user, whatever she called it. So I’m curious to see. And we’re not over COVID yet, at all. But I’m curious to see once you know, all that behind this, which may be a year or two years from now, completely behind this, if we’ll have the online sessions, or some people will do like a hybrid model. I think that it’d be the model to go forward. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the physical would be like the VIP experience, right? Yeah. Because you you get the you get the packet you go to, you know, you go stay somewhere, you get to actually meet, you know, Rami said said, and Selena, Soo and Jennifer born and you know, that kind of stuff, where’s your online, you get to watch presentations and maybe interact. So it’s going to be interesting to see how that changes going forward. And so can you give me an example obviously, we’re talking about here, the virtual summit, we’re talking about the big ones, you know, impacting millions of content camp and WPS summit and all that kind of stuff. But can you give me an example of a smaller way one of your students is using it in a smaller setting, but really making an impact on their business? Something we may not have even thought about?

Jan Koch  19:31  

Tons of examples. How many do you want to have? There’s one one lady in Virtual Summit, Cynthia, she runs the Fed and chi summit, which is a yearly event teaching elderly people how to stay mobile, how to move properly, how to stay healthy, okay, how to keep flexibility in your joints and stuff like that. And I was really surprised she regularly has over 20,000 attendees for her events. I won’t share the revenue with you. I’m not sure if I can do that, but she regularly has 20,000 plus people. Then we have another student mayurbhanj who is one of the All Stars and bsm. She runs a tennis instructors summit. So not so much for tennis players, but for tennis coaches, instructors. Yeah. Yeah. And he has well over five, five figure attendee numbers as well. Every single year, then there was Go ahead, sorry, sorry. Um,

Todd Jones  20:35  

So do they do those once a year or once a quarter? Once a month? Once a year? Most of the time? Okay. Do you have examples of people who use them more often, like maybe once a quarter or something like that? And

Jan Koch  20:47  

Yeah, there are some people here in Germany in the health space, they sell physical health products as well. And then they use the summer to build the list for that. They sell kombucha and pills and stuff, supplements and stuff like that. And they do a summit once, and then they relaunch it every quarter with the exact same content. So just launched the entire event.

Todd Jones  21:12  

So I’m trying to, I’ve been thinking about this a little bit for myself, like, Okay, is there a way I can use this, and obviously, you have the big deal, and you have 20,000 attendees, and takes a lot of the infrastructure you need for that

Jan Koch  21:25  

It’s not so different than having 2000 attendees. Okay? infrastructure, because what you need is you built a platform, probably, in your case, WordPress, you need an email marketing service, to store all the data activecampaign ConvertKit, whatever, MailChimp you need a video host, where you upload the sessions to Vimeo, Wistia. So on, you need the one thing you do need, or what I work through what recommend is a tool like Deadlinefunnel.com, where create the urgency so that the sessions actually expire automatically, and then redirect to an upsell page and you have like one time offer somebody signs in, they get a 15 minute offer where they can grab the replays at a discounted rate, something like that. And that’s really it. And then others related to it as ad tracking and paid traffic campaigns and stuff.

Todd Jones  22:23  

So let’s say you’re a company, and the whole idea is to promote, I mean, your ultimate motive is to promote your services, your products, whatever. Do you do all the presentations yourself? Or do you bring in speakers for that? Or, you know, how do you do that in a way where it also puts the emphasis on your own? That sounds so narcissistic in some way? Hey, I’m really. But you know, like if I was doing one for Copyflight, and it was about content copy, and I guess I can invite people to go and speak. And I guess it could be pre recorded or it could be live. There’s so many options, I guess.

Jan Koch  23:15  

Yep, it is. And the thing is, you have a win-win-win scenario with the summit you the first win needs to be for the attendees. So when planning the summit, you need to exactly understand who’s coming to the event, what pain points do they have, what transformation do they want to go through? What are they dreaming of, then you have the second witness for the speakers. So you need to make it worthwhile for somebody to speak at your event by promoting their office, for example, by creating such a good event that they are proud to share it with their audience. So they look good when sharing the summit, by giving them financial rewards in setting up an affiliate system and letting them participate in the sales as an affiliate. And by building a valuable relationship with them and being serious about becoming friends with them, getting to know them and doing things in the future as well, not just when the event ends. And if you nail these to the third one for yourself comes automatically because by then you’ve built a stronger network of industry leaders who appreciate being in touch with you. And the attendees know that you care more about them than you care about your own financial results. And you’ve made the summit so good. You’ve made the sessions exactly on the pain points. The speakers are sharing the exact details that they need to hear to go through the transformation that they upgrade to the All Access pass, they catch the replays. And as soon as they buy for you once it’s easy to sell them again. It’s easier to have somebody who bought from you once to buy from you again then to getting that first sale. So this is how the summit Like you, in your case, when you do something for copy flight, identify who you’re working with right now, what pain points are you solving for them, invite speakers that can speak on those pain points that can bring on new perspectives onto the topic that you are working on with the customers right now. And it becomes about you immediately, because when you do interviews like this one, you are obviously part of the interview. But also, you are facilitating all the conversations at the virtual summit, you are essentially just serving as a moderator at the event, you don’t need to be the ultimate, no all expert in this case, you just need to be curious, ask the questions that attendees would ask the speakers and be present. And then immediately, you’re building that authority. And that is what I saw after the WP summit in 2015. Suddenly, people were coming to hire me. I’d never heard that before. I always had to pitch. Suddenly, clients came to me and said something like, Hey, I saw the WP summit. I want to work with you because you did a cool event. The same way as a web agency summit later on.

Todd Jones  26:09  

What were they asking you that? Or were they want to hire you to do other summits for them? Or?

Jan Koch  26:14  

Or to do what mostly WordPress development services? Okay, then because back then I wasn’t so professional. Maybe I wasn’t professional enough to run some ads for other people. And other people didn’t understand that someone’s will work for them.

Todd Jones  26:29  

Right. Okay, so that makes sense. And no, I know enough about your, your history, I believe that you know, even because I’ve looked I’ve scrolled through your book last night, I got it for the being at something, a summit or something. And you gave way out always the whole book or part of the book or whatever. But when I look at what’s involved in you running a summit for someone, one of the things I noticed is basically you have to build a website. I mean, I really don’t think about that. But you basically even if it’s on a subdomain or whatever, but you have to build a website to kind of be the hub. So you’re still in website development. You’re still a WordPress developer, you just this is an incredible niche. If you know we are always looking for that niche, right. In our industry, we’re always looking for the niche. And I tell people, because I think it’s true for most people, it’s an evolution. Right, you don’t really start out and you don’t really start out knowing what your niche is, you kind of tinker around for a while till you hit, which you did in 2015. Right? Well, I mean, it took a while to get to the point where you’re actually building summits for someone.

Jan Koch  27:43  

But right now that the focus has shifted, you’re right that it is a niche to build WordPress websites for summits. The focus is from a different perspective, though, the focus is from teaching how to run summits to building an email list for coaches, experts and consultants. Right. And the WordPress Deaf as a part of that.

Todd Jones  28:06  

So you said teaching coaches experts and what was the other? It was consultants, consultants? Is that the perfect target audience to do a live stream? Or is it good for any kind of business? What do you think about that?

Jan Koch  28:27  

I’ve seen it work across, I want to say easily 100 plus markets from the examples I gave this morning parenting, there’s more on health and fitness. There’s more in music, like the great Diana Rowan, who ran the vitriol hop summit, making six figures on a first event connecting hop players. And I’ve seen it work across all stages of business as well. So from somebody who’s just starting out as a one man, one woman army, to well established six and seven figure businesses. And the key is you have to be able to sell something online for a virtual summit to work. And there needs to be a good community around us. You need to have a valid target market and another target audience for that. If you have those two things. And if you can identify a few magazines or podcasts where you can source your speakers from, you’re in a really good position.

Todd Jones  29:26  

I had a question. And I lost it somewhere along the way. Maybe it’ll come back around. But so Oh, I know what it was. If you are a new person, consultant, coach, whatever, you don’t have very much resources. You’re just trying to get people to sign your contract to put money in a bank. How I mean, I get, you know, everything I’ve seen has been a pretty big undertaking. Do you have people is it possible to do summons with you know, Lower, you know, lower end, if you will maybe to get out as much expense and keep it from breaking the bank. I mean, somebody didn’t have the money. Just curious.

Jan Koch  30:11  

Yep. Yep. That’s a very good question. And I would say for those people, it is important that you have a little bit of cash on the site. So if you’re just operating on $500, or $1,000, you will have a really hard time. But what you can do is with virtual summit mastery for some not not trying to turn this into a pitch, but here’s how we teach this in VSM. The cost is $1,000. Right now. So that’s what what you would budget for, you need the hosting, you need an email service, you need that line funnels, I’ve told her that up in one of my podcast episodes, I ended up at around $300 per month in services, then that is assuming you get 3000 attendees to your event. What you can do is if you if you’re just starting out, you don’t have an audience either. You don’t have 5000 people on your email list, you maybe have 50, you have 50 Twitter followers or something. So there are ways you can connect with influencers, even at that level. For example, take Brian Dean from backlinko. For example, the SEO guy has these extensive blog posts 15,000 words or something like that, where he breaks down the SEO strategies that he’s using, implement them, report back to them become a case study, become a tool that an influencer, you want to interview can use to sell more, essentially, write Epic Reviews for them do video reviews of everybody does written reviews on Amazon for certain book, be the one person who does a video review. You have to stand out in their market and you build the relationships that way. Even if you don’t have a following you help other people look good, you make other people look good. And then what you do is, as soon as you have a few speakers signed up can just up and comers who are on a similar status as you are but they have a good message to share. What you do is you reach out to relevant companies in the space as sponsors, you try to get companies to pay you to run the virtual event for you. And I’ve seen for the first time events I’ve personally seen anywhere from 5000 euros to the biggest one I helped organize was over 45,000. So you can make money before the summit starts, and then use that to cover the expenses that you have and to pay for the time that you invest. And then obviously there’s the all access pass sales afterwards. 

Todd Jones

How would you define the difference between a webinar in a summit summit or webinars on steroids, summits are not just one webinar summits are 20 webinars over the course of five days or 50 webinars. 

Jan Koch

The summit put a ton of emphasis on community. If you do them properly, you offer people to get in touch with each other via standing video calls in networking areas via live chats. You bring them together with the speakers properly. And by doing that, and fostering a relationship as a submittal, making yourself available as a summit host. It’s an easy way to get a flooded inbox. But it’s also a brilliant way to get feedback from your target market and help refine your messaging and stuff like that. And with a webinar, usually what happens is, you sign up for a webinar, you show up 15 minutes late because you’ve missed it even though it wasn’t a calendar because it didn’t have any priorities right now. And then you are watching it on the side while you’re doing the dishes or while you’re cooking something like that. And summit’s A few years ago, it was that you would take a week off, if you had a week long summit, you would take a week off from work to just engage with the summit because it was just like a physical conference with the same priority. doesn’t have that anymore, you still do something, you watch the summit on the side and do something else in the meantime, but you are chatting with other attendees, you’re not just watching the sessions. you’re connecting with like minded people who are on the same journey as you are. And I will say that is the biggest differentiator against a podcast, event or webinar.

Todd Jones  34:27  

Yeah, so I guess my point I’m getting at is if you’re at a place where you can’t really run a summit, you could probably I don’t want to use the word practice, but you can kind of test things out by doing a webinar and maybe even a series of webinars, which I think that’s kind of what you’re doing now. Right. Basically, trainers.

Jan Koch  34:47  

What I’m doing now is kind of like a Product Launch Formula style launch for virtual summit mastery from Jeff Walker.

Todd Jones  34:54  

Okay, so, yeah, so I always said that, you know, I did my copy. So last year, which this has taken precedence now, but I had always told people that I practice by doing lives, Facebook Lives. And sometimes I would even do them without telling anybody I was doing them, just so I wouldn’t have anybody there to watch so I can make all the mistakes I wanted. And then maybe one or two friends would watch. And then we kind of, you know, in and then, I mean, I knew I could do this, but it’s kind of you still kind of like, even the podcast, I knew I could do the podcast, I was like, I’m gonna do the podcast, I’m gonna do this podcast, but, you know, things happen. And, you know, and like I told Jen Bourn, when she tweeted out my first podcast episode, I said, cuz she was, she was basically giving me kudos for launching something, you know. And I was like, that’s one way I could do it, I can only launch something by just doing it, sometimes quietly. Because I don’t know why I just do better that way. Some people like to announce, hey, I’m gonna launch this and you know about it, or three weeks ahead of time, and they’re telling you every day, I feel like if I do that, I’m not working on the thing I’m gonna launch. 

So you know, it’s a tricky balance. And now, if you’ve already got it, and you’ve already launched it, and you’re gonna do it again, you know, do his thing. And you don’t have to really do much like preparation or whatever, then yeah, you can definitely generate the buzz for it. So um, so let me ask you this, because we are the storyteller cafe. And we’ve heard the story, the virtual online summit, your progress with that, and all that kind of thing. Where does storytelling fit into the virtual online summit game?

Jan Koch  36:48  

Essentially, what you are doing is you need to structure the entire event, kind of like a good story, because similar to how work camps have these various tracks that you can tune into with a summit with a good structured summit, what you do is, you come back to those pain points that you’ve identified for the target audience. And then you structure the sessions, maybe talk one day about pain point A, one day about pain, point B, one day about pain point C. And by doing that, you take the attendees on a journey through this transformation that you want and want them to go through. For example, I’m working on building school three right now, which is an email marketing focused summit, talking about building an email list, nurturing and selling via email. I start with the mindset and the preparation. Then I go over CRL, building an email list, what do I do to get people onto my list? And then there’s a track focusing on nurturing and then there’s a track focusing on sales. So there is still this narrative that you have to follow through with the event. And then obviously, attendees will pick what sounds most interesting for them.

Todd Jones  38:08  

What have you learn about yourself about your business? As it relates to storytelling?

Jan Koch  38:19  

That’s a great question. I’ve never really considered myself a really good storyteller. If I’m honest, I’m probably because of that language barrier, being subconsciously still present. And I still feel like I’m not the best copywriter. And I don’t know all the nitty gritty details of the English language and how to have perfect grammar and the right words all the time and stuff. But what I’ve learned is, if I just share who I am, what I do and why I do stuff, people resonate no matter what. And suddenly people say that you have a funny German accent. And it’s really, really cool. I really enjoy listening to you. And I don’t recognize that of course, for me, it’s just normal. And I hear the different accents when I speak to Australian people or to English people, or people from South Africa, of course. But I don’t know that I have a funny accent, right? I could, I couldn’t care less about that. But when I tell the story about why I became an entrepreneur, that was that mental breakdown we talked about earlier when I told the story about how my first summit almost failed because the messaging was off. And I still made a life changing impact with that event. When I talk about the story of Diana connecting her players across the entire globe and making 460 sales of a first event. When I talk about how we connected it through one of the summits and now we are in touch for a couple of years by now. Those are all these little stories that I’ve taken inventory of over time, and I can pull them out of my memory by now and I know to understand I understand how to identify the situation. When to pull out the right story, so that I can build a relationship with the person I’m speaking to, and I’m still uncomfortable selling, I’m still uncomfortable promoting myself way too, way too much, I should be way more focused about promoting way more way more out there way more straightforward. I’m learning that. And this is part of my journey. And that’s another story that I can share that will resonate with people who are in a similar space than I am. So yeah, that is just.

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