I’ve seen many who have successfully hosted 1, maybe 2 telesummits or virtual events and are now hailed as a “virtual event expert”.

How silly is that?

I don’t mind hearing about lessons learned from those who have hosted their first or second telesummit. I love hearing these stories. I reach out to those who have hosted a telesummmit or virtual event, get them on the phone and listen as they share what went well and what could be improved.

But to say someone is a telesummit or virtual event expert because they hosted 1 or 2?

Gimme a break.

Now, this isn’t just a problem with the virtual event space. I’ve seen this happen with most internet marketing strategies. The person does it in their own business (insert whatever strategy in place of the word “it”), experiences immense success, packages what he or she did into an information product, sells it to the world and now makes money selling the shovel to those headed to the river to pan for gold.

Once is a fluke. Three times, you take notice. Five times or more, it’s a strategy worth teaching.

And three of those five times should be others applying your strategy to their own business.

Because if all your experience comes from hosting your own telesummit or virtual event, then how can you be sure that your strategy is industry or audience-independent?

For example, there’s a telesummit host who has successfully hosted a six-figure telesummit every year since 2007. She does extremely well. Her audience is artists and through her telesummit, she teaches them how to turn their hobby into multiple streams of artist income.

A terribly wonderful niche.

We chatted last year and she wanted to put together a Telesummit Blueprint self-study program.

I asked her how would her telesummit strategy work for someone who wanted to target engineers or CEOs. She said she had no clue because her experience has been with artists. Plus, she said, she’s in the business of coaching artists to become well-fed while pursuing their creativity, not in coaching business owners and consultants in creating telesummits.

So, she smartly abandoned the idea (for now).

Because of my breathe of knowledge, I know that…

• The way you price a virtual event for direct sellers or virtual assistants can’t be the same as you would for accountants or recruitment firm owners.
• The duration of a virtual event for CEOs will be different from solopreneurs or consultants.
• On that vein, the way you market a virtual event to CEOs will be different from how you promote one to consultants.
• The time of day will be critical depending on who will attend your virtual event or telesummit.

All these elements are CRITICAL to your telesummit or virtual event success.

That’s why you can’t take someone’s cookie cutter approach and apply it word-for-word to your strategy. Your audience and your business goals need a more customized approach.

And someone who has only hosted a telesummit or virtual event for their business and their audience hasn’t been exposed to dozens of different examples over dozens of different industries, audiences and business goals.

I recently coached someone who wanted to launch a virtual event for show promoters. Wow! That one was new to me. However, because of the variety of people I’ve coached and helped over the past 10-years, I knew I could design a strategy for this person that would fit his target market and business goals.

While I haven’t worked directly in designing a strategy for this target market, I understand the psychology of what they need based on my industry & audience-independent virtual event strategy.

You may like someone, you may resonate with their energy, but with the amount of time and money you’ll invest in a telesummit or virtual event, you can’t afford to go on personality alone.

Here are some questions you need to ask before hiring virtual event help:

1 – What else do you focus on in your business?
Someone who focuses only on providing virtual event and telesummit mentoring, coaching and consulting is someone who is studying what’s going on in the industry. You can trust that they’ll make you successful because they’re not distracted by other things in their business.

2 – Have you applied your telesummit strategy to other businesses and if yes, what were the results?
This question allows you to uncover the “fluke”. It also helps you to understand if they can help you with your goals. If they helped one other person double their list and your goal is to make money, chances are that person will make you successful in an area you don’t care about.

3 – Do you have references of those who applied your strategy to their own telesummit or virtual event and may I contact them?
You don’t want the person they mentored who took the advice and still haven’t launched their telesummit or virtual event. You want to speak to someone who has taken the person’s advice, applied it to their own strategy and have experienced success.

Are there any other questions you would add to help uncover the right telesummit or virtual event help?