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In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on what it takes to plan and host a successful summit, specifically the Neurodivergent Business Summit I recently organized. From tight deadlines to neurodivergent-friendly workflows, I’m sharing my biggest takeaways, lessons learned, and the tools that saved the day. If you’ve ever considered hosting your own summit or want a behind-the-scenes look at how to bring a massive project to life without losing your mind, this episode is for you!
Highlights:
- Why planning ahead is non-negotiable: The importance of giving yourself plenty of time and what happens when you don’t.
- Setting realistic timelines for neurodivergent teams: How to build buffer zones and flexible deadlines into your planning process.
- The tools that made summit planning manageable: A deep dive into Summit in a Box and how it saved us time and stress.
- Adapting traditional frameworks to fit your brain: Why cookie-cutter solutions don’t work for everyone and how to make adjustments that do.
- Choosing the right speakers: How to identify and secure guest experts who align with your values and mission.
- Fostering community during the summit: The power of connection and creating spaces for attendees to engage meaningfully.
- Marketing your summit effectively: What worked (and what didn’t) when it came to promoting our event.
- Lessons learned from working under a tight deadline: The unexpected challenges and how we tackled them.
- Planning for what’s next: How we’re using our first summit experience to prepare for even better events in the future.
- Encouragement for aspiring summit hosts: Why you should consider hosting a summit and the incredible opportunities it can unlock for your business.
Hosting a summit is no small feat, but it’s one of the most rewarding experiences you can take on as a business owner. From the relationships you build to the personal growth you’ll experience, a summit offers far more than just exposure or revenue—it’s a chance to create something truly impactful. If you’re ready to tackle the challenge, I hope this episode has given you the insights and encouragement you need to get started.
Take a look at Summit in a Box. And go register for the next Neurodivergent Business Summit, so you can see how we are doing!
Click Here for the transcript
Welcome to the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. My name is Angela Mondor, also known as the Geeky Girl. In this podcast, we’re going to be talking about some amazing things to help you get over overgiving.
Hi, and welcome to this episode of the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. My name is Angela Mondor. I’m also known as the Geeky Girl. Today, I want to tell you about how running a summit was so amazing for us and what we use to help us put this all together and give you some information about what that looked like for us.
Some of you know that we ran the NeuroDivergent Business Summit in 2024, and we had a lot of success, a lot of fun. We’ve met some amazing people, and it was an absolute blast. We’re going to do it twice in 2025, so buckle up. I’m going to tell you how we did it. Running a summit. Is massive. Not gonna lie.
There’s a lot of moving parts to it. There’s a lot of decisions to make. There’s a lot of things to do. There’s a lot to track. Not gonna, like, It’s, it was, it was a lot. But I did do a free challenge or a free class with Krista, and she is the owner of Summit in a Box. Now, Summit in a Box was amazing. I mean, as much as there’s a lot to do to run a summit, Summit in a Box has a lot. I was really floored actually by the value that I received with this, and I think that That’s why I want to share it with you.
First of all, I want to tell you how we did it because a lot of people ask me, that was a lot. What happened? You did such a good job. It came off so easy. It was your first time. We didn’t do it alone. We had some guidelines and some things that helped us along the way. So I’m going to share it really did help us in 2024 because it was, we were doing some major pivots and some different things inside the business and it helped to solidify some of the paths that we were taking.
It was amazing to meet all those amazing people, to meet new speakers, to, you know, engage with older, not older, but engage with people that we’ve, we’ve seen around for speakers before. Krista’s comprehensive resources made things amazingly, not simple, not easy, simple. It was a plan we could follow. So the number one thing she’ll tell you is never ever plan a summit less than 90 days from.
The time you start planning. Yeah, we broke that rule. I mean, you know, that’s how the braids work. But I will tell you, I understand what she means now. We, we, we scrambled. We worked hard. We put in more hours, or I probably put in more hours on weekends than I normally would. Those kinds of things. So yeah, doing it in less than 90 days, really bad idea.
However, we did it. We pulled it off. We made it happen. And for February, we’ve made sure that we’ve really extended it past the 90 days. And for a lot of different reasons. First of all, we are doing this for neurodivergent business owners. We also have neurodivergent speakers. Guess what? We kind of need our own timeline.
So we put some extra buffing in there. And this so far has been very helpful. So we’ve been planning since, October. We’re now talking about December and it’s not happening until February. So we gave ourselves a lot of room and so far, so good. We’ll see what that looks like and whether we made the right choices.
This is what you have to do. You have to take, take the trainings, take the things that people are giving you and sharing with you, learn from them and then choose to tweak them so that it’ll work for you, your brain, your customers, your team. Okay. So there was amazing information The results were amazing.
We had so many people sign up. We had so many people attend. It was amazing. There was copy included in templates and tech tutorials and timelines and schedules and things to help us make decisions along the way, the unbelievable resources that her program had. It kept us rolling. It kept us moving to the next thing.
But it always made it so that I felt when I hit a roadblock, or when I was stuck somewhere, I was able to go, okay, what is it that I’m supposed to do now? And I was able to go to the index that she has, And go through it and type keywords. And I was able to find things that I needed. And it really made a huge difference from getting stalled.
Cause you know what happens sometimes we get overwhelmed, right? There’s so many things to do and we end up just stalling out because we don’t even know what next step to take. So she removed that out of that for me, which was absolutely brilliant. I didn’t feel like we had stalled. I felt like I had choices.
I felt like I could take the next step, I just needed to go look and see what it was. And I knew she had my back by having all these resources for me. Absolutely brilliant. So when we thought about doing this of course our, our, our entire purpose here is we want to help neurodivergent adults.
business owners to understand that there isn’t just one way to do things and that your way is amazing and we want to help you to suss out and figure out what are the best ways for you to do what you want to do. And doing a summit we thought was the best way to do it because then we could get All kinds of different people from all different walks of life to come in and tell us about how they do things.
What works for them, what doesn’t work for them. And give you some ideas, some new ideas, some new thoughts. And that’s exactly what happened and we’re so, so excited for that. Which of course means that, you know, we want to do it again. So if you’re considering or if you’ve ever considered doing a summit for your business, then I suggest looking at Krista’s program.
We will leave the in the show notes, you’ll have all the information you need to go check it out. There will be a, an affiliate link there. You can choose not to use the affiliate link portion, that’s up to you. But I will tell you that the benefits are absolutely amazing for this. So if you’re going to run a summit, go for it.
I would suggest taking this on. Not only are there tutorials by video, but there’s also written out tutorials, so if you’re a visual learner or you’re somebody who likes to read, there’s so many different options for you to get the information as well. And you don’t need to use it all, either. Okay? So if you do order it, and you’re like, Oh, Angela, that’s like a lot of content.
You’re right. It is a lot of content. But only use what you need. Okay? So, this is a, it was a massive comprehensive approach to how to make it happen. She also has some Facebook groups as well that are intertwined with the program so that you can ask questions and seek out advice from other people. That also was very valuable to be able to put these conversations and questions up to other people who’ve either done summits before, or Krista herself has different office hours and those kinds of things.
It allowed us to run a successful summit. If we had not done it, if we had tried to do a summit on our own, there is no way that our summit would have been as amazing as it was. Now we have a great standard of how to get the summit done, and now we get to tweak it. So it’s not like the second time we run the summit we have to fix all the problems.
We didn’t have a lot of problems. We had a lot of things where we thought, Hmm, we could do better next time, but there wasn’t a lot of problems. There weren’t a lot of holes. There weren’t things that went missing or things that didn’t get or things that got overlooked. And I think the summit, the box for that, because it helped us to make sure that we weren’t missing those things.
Chris is a, Chris is a gem. She’s so good at what she does. And so this was really, really valuable for us. On another note, if you missed the Neurodivergent Business Summit in 2024, we do have one coming up in February. So if you’d like to, we will put in the show notes the ability for you to get on the waitlist so that we’ll let you know when we are open for registrations for the Neurodivergent Business Summit in February.
And we’ve got some really cool names coming for speakers already. I’m super excited. So you’ll get firsthand experience and, you know, be able to see what works for you and what doesn’t work for you using the summit, the box, but also, you know, attending ours and finding out what you like about our summit and what you’d rather change if it was yours.
I hope you have a fantastic day and like I said, if you’re looking to do your own summit, you want to get this woman’s courses because it’ll make sure that it’s much more easy for you to put together. It’s still going to be a lot of work, but it’s going to be worth it and you’re not going to have any plot holes that are missing as you put this together.
Thank you so much. I hope you have an amazing day and I look forward to talking to you next week.
