Next week, I'm reaching out to members of The Lab waitlist for the first time since June. We've been making changes and improvements to the space, which I can't wait to roll out.
We're working on a new sales page to reflect the new experience.
If you've been hanging around here since before June, you probably saw me talk about our Membership Summit—a free, three-day event on how to build a membership in 2026.
That Summit led into a live cohort for Build A Beloved Membership, which was our biggest and most successful launch ever: $101,666.
What you may not know is that the whole summit came from a cold email from someone else.
On February 26, I got a cold email from someone named Sean. As with most cold emails, I ignored it. On March 2, he emailed again. Again, I ignored it.
On March 10, he emailed a third time (these were three DIFFERENT email threads, by the way—I didn't realize he had emailed twice before until I looked back just this week). This time, I responded. Here's what that email looked like:
I knew that $600K+ figure was REALLY optimistic. It was actually the embedded Loom video that got me to reply (you can watch it here).
That video showed he had done some legwork before reaching out—proof of time investment that warranted me investing some time to watch it. My integrator Anna, who I hired in May, did the same thing.
I met with Sean, heard his pitch (fantastic pitch), and decided to move forward with hosting a three-day virtual Summit. In the end, we had 3100+ attendees and our biggest launch ever.
It wasn't without its bumps and bruises; it was significantly more work than anticipated. Because we're so particular about our brand, our content, and my voice, I scrapped a ton of the assets Sean's team created and built our own from scratch (like emails, Telegram messages, and all three days of presentations).
But I'm glad we worked with Sean's team for this. We may have been able to do something like this on our own, but having never been inside the planning and delivery of one of these Summits before, his team gave us:
The launch structure
The web work
The 3-day presentation structure
Way more email copy than we'd ever send 😂
Daily pressure (support) to do the thing!
It helped me to notice and unwind some limiting beliefs I had around sales, launches, and pitching. His team even gave me the playbook to turn this Summit into an evergreen asset (I haven't gotten around to that yet).
While it was fresh, I sat down with Anna, and we ran through our independent notes about the Summit so that we could share:
All of the numbers from the launch
What we'd do the same
What we'd do differently
How we'd structure an 80/20 approach to this
You can listen to that full episode on the podcast this week! Links below to find it in your favorite player.
And if you want to work with Sean and the After Harvest team, you can connect with him here. I'm now an affiliate for him, so let him know Jay sent you.
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#315: Breaking Down Our $101,666 Launch: The Mechanics and Lessons Learned From Our Virtual Summit
Joining me for this behind-the-scenes recap is Anna Reich, the integrator here on the Creator Science team. This was Anna’s first launch — 3 and a half months into the job — and she was right in the middle of all of it. We ran this summit in partnership with a third-party team called After Harvest, who pitched us on the whole concept via cold email and worked on a 15% performance-based fee.
In this episode, we talk about:
The full mechanics: $101,666 in revenue, $23,300 in costs, and the exact offer stack that got us there
What we’d absolutely do the same — the VIP ticket, aggressive email volume, and the live pitch with a day-2 bonus
What we’d do differently — a simpler structure, a new webinar platform, and building the presentations before everything else
The 80/20 version: what a stripped-down, repeatable launch playbook actually looks like
By the end of this episode, you will have a clear-eyed view of how a virtual summit launch actually works from the inside — with all the numbers, the chaos, and the lessons on the table.
PS: My assistant, IzzyRodriguez, plays for the Kansas City Current and is nominated for one of the biggest awards in the NWSL. Will you vote for her? She's option "H" in the Typeform. No sign-up required!
