# Test Your Summit Theme With A Small Workshop Series Before You Go Big

> Run two or three short free workshops on different angles of your summit idea, then build the summit around whichever one people respond to most.

URL: https://virtualsummits.com/summit-planning/small-workshop-summit-test
Author: Steve Eriksen (https://eventraptor.com/about-steve)
Publisher: EventRaptor (https://eventraptor.com)
Published: 2026-06-12
Updated: 2026-11-01
Section: Summit Planning

You've got a summit theme in mind and a quiet worry that nobody will care about it. The cheapest way to find out is to run two or three small, free live workshops, each one teaching a different angle of the theme, and then watch what people do. **Build your summit around the angle that gets the most sign-ups, the sharpest questions and the most requests for a next step.**

This is for the coach, therapist or practitioner who's good at the work and has helped plenty of people, but whose clients still arrive in bursts. A summit can change that. It also asks a lot of you: speakers, pages, emails, promotion, an offer and follow-up. I built my first one, the Solopreneur Accelerator Summit, over two weeks with 27 speakers and no system, working 16 to 18 hours a day, and I don't recommend that timeline to anyone.

A workshop series gives you a few weeks of evidence before you start months of work. And it's far easier to recover from a quiet workshop than from a quiet summit.

## Key Takeaways

- Pick three angles of your summit idea and teach each one in a short, free workshop before you invite a single summit speaker.
- Judge each workshop by what people did: registrations, live attendance, questions, email replies and requests for a next step. Compliments in the chat count for very little.
- Promote every workshop through the same channels with the same effort, so the result reflects the theme and not a burst of extra marketing.
- Tag each registrant by workshop in your CRM, so the people who turned up for the winning theme become the first audience for your summit.
- If none of the angles pull, work on the message or the offer first, because a bigger event will magnify whatever isn't landing.

## Why A Summit Theme Deserves A Test Run

[Your theme](/summit-planning/how-to-choose-the-right-summit-theme-that-actually-sells-your-coaching-offer) decides almost everything that comes after it: which speakers you invite, what the sessions cover, who registers and what you sell at the end. If it's slightly off, you'll recruit speakers who don't quite fit and write pages that almost speak to your reader. You'll also end up with a list of people who aren't looking for your paid work.

Plenty of experienced hosts start small for exactly this reason. Brandon Olson, talking about AWeber's one-day summit on the Virtual Summit Strategies podcast, put it simply: get something small out there, see how your audience reacts, and if they love it, keep going down that road and build bigger. Tiffany Neuman said something similar on the same show. A smaller event gave her a ladder to climb, so she could bring in bigger names over time.

Sasha Bytchoff went a step further. She suggested breaking one topic into a series of smaller events across a year. In her view, when you tell people you're planning a series, they start to take you seriously, and that includes the speakers you'll want later.

There's one honest caveat. When Chris Krimitsos moved Podfest online, the first thing he did was test whether his audience would even want a virtual event. He sent his first email on a Wednesday and had 874 people registered by the Saturday launch. But he'd spent seven years building that community, starting from a meetup of 14 people. Most of us are testing with a much smaller audience, which is exactly why small, cheap tests make sense.

## What Each Workshop Can Tell You

A survey tells you what people say they'd like. A workshop shows you what they'll give up an hour of their week for. Here's what to watch.

| Signal | What it suggests | Where you'll see it |
|---|---|---|
| Registrations per workshop | How strongly the promise pulls | Your registrant list |
| Live attendance | Whether the problem is urgent enough to show up for | Your own head count on the day |
| Answers to a registration question | The exact words people use for their problem | The question you add to the sign-up form |
| Questions during the session | What they'd want a whole summit to cover | Chat and your notes |
| Replies to the follow-up email | Whether interest lasts past the hour | Your inbox |
| Requests for a next step | Whether the theme connects to your paid work | Booked calls, waitlist sign-ups |
| Peers saying "I'd teach on that" | Whether speakers will want to join you | Messages from colleagues |

The last two rows matter most. A topic can be interesting without being connected to anything you sell. And a summit needs speakers who'll get excited about the theme, so if colleagues lean in when you mention it, take that seriously.

## How To Run A Three-Workshop Test

Keep it small enough that you could run all three in about a month.

1. Write your summit idea in one sentence, then split it into three angles. Each angle should be a problem your ideal client would type into a search bar.
2. Give each workshop one clear promise and keep it to 45 or 60 minutes. Teach something useful. People should leave with a step they can take that week.
3. Add one open question to the registration form, such as "What's the hardest part of this for you right now?" Those answers often turn into your summit headline.
4. Promote all three the same way. Same email list, same social posts, same number of reminders. If one workshop gets twice the promotion, you've learned about your marketing and nothing about your theme.
5. Invite one peer to co-teach or join you for a short Q&A in at least one session. You'll see how a guest changes the energy, and you'll find out who might speak at the summit. The [authority partner map for choosing collaborators](/authority-building/authority-partner-map-for-coaches) helps you pick the right people.
6. End each workshop with one small next step: a waitlist for the summit, a short planning call with you, or a resource that fits the topic. Keep it the same type of step each time so you can compare.
7. Within 24 hours, send a follow-up email with the replay or a summary and ask one question. Count the replies.

### A Hypothetical Health Coach Test

For example, a health coach who works with busy women in their 40s might be weighing a summit on energy. She could run three workshops: one on sleep, one on strength training at home, and one on eating around a packed work schedule. Say the sleep workshop draws far more registrations, runs over time with questions, and brings in three waitlist sign-ups while the others bring in one each. She's learned that her summit should lead with sleep. The questions people asked also give her a first draft of session titles.

That's an illustration, not a real result. Your numbers will look different, and that's fine. You're looking for which angle stands out from the others.

### If You're A Therapist Or Healing Practitioner

This approach suits private practice well, because a workshop lets you teach without selling, much as [a virtual summit for therapists](/summit-planning/virtual-summits-for-therapists-explained) does. Frame each one clearly as public education, and say at the start that it isn't therapy and isn't a substitute for individual care. Keep the chat to general questions, and gently steer anyone away from sharing personal details in a group setting.

Don't use client stories or testimonials in your promotion, and check your licensing board's advertising rules before you publish anything. Inviting a respected colleague to co-teach builds trust with attendees, and it often starts a referral relationship that outlasts the workshop.

## Score Each Workshop The Same Way

Use the same scorecard after every session, ideally the same day while it's fresh.

- [ ] Number of registrations
- [ ] Number who showed up live
- [ ] Number of questions asked, and the three most common themes
- [ ] How many stayed to the end
- [ ] Replies to the follow-up email
- [ ] Requests for your next step (waitlist, call or resource)
- [ ] Peers who said they'd like to teach on this topic
- [ ] The words people used in the registration question, copied exactly

Then decide what the pattern is telling you.

| What you see | What it probably means | Your next move |
|---|---|---|
| One angle is clearly ahead | You've found your theme | Build the summit around it and use the questions as session ideas |
| Two angles are close | People care about the wider problem | Combine them into summit tracks, or run one tie-breaker workshop |
| Good attendance, few next-step requests | The topic interests people but isn't linked to your paid work | Rework your offer before you plan the summit |
| Weak results across all three | The message or audience needs work | Test your message in smaller conversations first |

If you land in that last row, it's useful information, not a failure. A [podcast guest sprint to find your best message](/growth-strategy/podcast-guest-sprint-best-message) or [a single expert roundtable to validate your offer](/growth-strategy/how-to-use-one-expert-roundtable-to-validate-your-next-coaching-offer) can show you what to change before you try again.

## Carry What You Learned Into The Summit

A good test leaves you with more than a theme. You'll walk away with the questions people asked, which become your session topics. You'll have peers who already want to be involved, and they become your first speakers. And you'll have a tagged list of people who showed up for this exact problem, who should be the first to hear the summit is open.

Test your offer as well as your topic. Jennie and I learned that the hard way. At one of our summits I was too exhausted to put a proper offer together. Speakers and attendees loved it, and it added 476 new people to our list, but it made only about $1,800 during the event. Those people will keep buying for years, so I still count it a success. It did teach me to keep my eye on the offer, and the next-step requests from your workshops are an early read on whether yours connects. The [offer framework to settle before a summit or webinar](/coaching-business/irresistible-offer-framework-coaches-summit-webinar) walks you through it.

Then there's follow-up. I've watched coaches add hundreds of people to their list from an event and convert few or none, because they had no process for what came next. In my experience, a good follow-up process might turn 10 to 15% of registrants and attendees into clients. That's my experience, not a promise, and results vary by host, offer and audience. Your workshop series is a low-stakes place to build that follow-up and see it work before the summit.

## Where EventRaptor Takes The Admin Off Your Desk

For the workshops, EventRaptor has a simpler event type called a Meeting. It gives you a registration page, custom registration questions, event times, an attendee dashboard and a Zoom join link in one place. Reminder emails go out on the event's own timing, so you aren't setting alarms to send them. The registrant list shows who signed up and when, and a growth graph shows how registrations built up. If a co-host shares a promoter link, you can see which people came from them.

Registrants sync to GHL/CRMRaptor with tags. Tag each workshop by its angle, and when you pick your winning theme, the people who showed up for it are already sorted and ready to hear about the summit. Nobody has to export a spreadsheet and clean it up at midnight.

Once you move to the summit, the heavier jobs come into play. Speakers apply, sign their agreements and upload their materials through the platform's [speaker and agreement features](/features). The schedule and speaker pages come from those records, and speakers can see a promoter leaderboard. If you need speakers, the directory lists more than 3,800 people who want to be invited to events, and Jennie's Speaker Connections meets on Zoom on the first and third Tuesday of every month.

If you'd rather teach and host while someone else runs the machinery, our done-for-you team can produce the summit for you. Between 13 summits of our own and over 40 summits for clients, we've learned where the work piles up. One thing to know up front: live sessions run on Zoom. EventRaptor has video view analytics, so you can see how your session and replay videos are viewed, and video hosting is available through CRMRaptor, so your recordings and replays don't need a separate video host.

## Frequently Asked Questions

### How Many Workshops Do I Need To Test A Summit Theme?

Three is a practical number, because it lets you compare angles without dragging the test out. Two can work if you're choosing between two clear options. More than four tends to blur the results and delays [the summit you're trying to plan](/summit-planning/first-virtual-summit-small-list-90-days).

### Should The Test Workshops Be Free Or Paid?

Free usually works best for a theme test, because you're measuring interest in the topic rather than willingness to pay for a workshop. You can still test buying intent with a small next step at the end, such as a waitlist or a short call. Save paid offers for the summit itself, where you'll have a VIP pass and your main offer.

### What If My Workshops Get Very Few Registrations?

Low numbers across all three usually point to the message, the audience or the reach. Small numbers can still tell you plenty. If five people register and four ask great questions, that's useful. Before you plan a summit, try sharpening the message through podcast interviews or a small expert roundtable.

### Can Therapists Use A Workshop Series To Test A Summit Topic?

Yes, as long as each workshop is clearly framed as public education and not therapy. Avoid personal disclosures in group chat, don't use client stories in promotion, and check your licensing board's advertising rules first. Co-teaching with a respected colleague can also build professional referral relationships.

### How Soon After The Workshops Should I Launch The Summit?

Start planning while the results and the people are still fresh, ideally within a few weeks of your last workshop. Leave yourself enough time to [recruit speakers](/summit-planning/summit-speaker-recruitment) and build pages properly. A summit thrown together in two weeks is possible, but I've done it and I wouldn't recommend it.

## Your Next Step

This week, write your summit idea in one sentence and split it into three angles. Put the first workshop on your calendar for sometime this month. Don't worry about perfect slides. Teach something useful, ask a good registration question and fill in the scorecard afterward.

If you'd like help choosing those three angles, or deciding what the results mean for your summit, [Book your Client Attraction Planning Call](/planning-call). We'll look at your theme, your offer and how people find you today, then plan the event that fits.