Duplicate Yourself With Webinars

Visit Melissa at: https://ewebinar.com/

[00:00:03]
You have found Authentic Business
Adventures,

[00:00:05]
the business program that brings you

[00:00:11]
the struggles, stories
and triumphant successes of business owners across the land.

[00:00:12]
We are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie.

[00:00:13]
My name is James Kademan, entrepreneur,

[00:00:15]
author, speaker and helpful coach to small
business owners across the country.

[00:00:19]
And today we are welcoming/preparing to learn from Melissa Kwan, the co-founder and CEO of eWebinar.

[00:00:26]
So, Melissa, how are you doing today?

[00:00:29]
I’m fantastic.

[00:00:31]
Thanks for having me.

[00:00:32]
I am excited to learn about this
eWebinar thing for a couple of reasons.

[00:00:36]
One, I know the audience
wants to learn about it.

[00:00:39]
And two, I’m kind of selfish in this

[00:00:41]
regard because I have employees
and you got to train employees.

[00:00:46]
And I’m going to say clunky,
cumbersome, annoying.

[00:00:51]
And I feel like you’ve solved
the problem that many employers have.

[00:00:55]
Arguably all of them have.

[00:00:57]
So how about you just tell us

[00:00:59]
the thousand foot view,
so to speak, what is eWebinar?

[00:01:03]
Well, I think everybody after
2020 knows what a webinar is.

[00:01:07]
If you don’t know what a webinar is right
now, you’ve been living under a rock,

[00:01:12]
and webinars are great.

[00:01:14]
That’s why companies like Zoom exist.

[00:01:17]
Right?

[00:01:18]
There’s just one massive problem.

[00:01:20]
Someone needs to be there to run them.

[00:01:24]
And as a business,

[00:01:25]
particularly a small business where
you have such limited people.

[00:01:29]
And I’ve been running a small
business myself for ten years.

[00:01:32]
Nice.
You don’t always have people running

[00:01:35]
these, like weekly or monthly
or whatever it might be.

[00:01:40]
Right.
So what eWebinar does is it takes a video

[00:01:44]
and it delivers it like a webinar,
so you can run 100 webinars without ever

[00:01:52]
needing to be there
to actually host it live.

[00:01:55]
It’s genius.

[00:01:56]
So it’s not like watching a YouTube video

[00:01:58]
because people don’t, especially for,
like, demos, training onboarding.

[00:02:01]
They don’t go to YouTube.

[00:02:03]
They want to join the webinars because
webinars have a two way engagement,

[00:02:07]
a two way communication with you
and the host that makes it so valuable.

[00:02:12]
And that’s why we created a webinar

[00:02:15]
to help people automate that process so
they can scale everything that’s

[00:02:20]
repetitive and repurpose their time for
something that’s unique and meaningful.

[00:02:27]
All right.

[00:02:28]
So when whoever is creating these Webinars
or eWebinar things are they

[00:02:35]
essentially acting or pretending like
they’re talking to a live audience,

[00:02:38]
that it seems to the audience that’s
watching them, that it is live.

[00:02:41]
So that’s a great question.

[00:02:43]
And I think traditionally, before us,

[00:02:46]
a lot of these automated webinar
solutions and they do exist.

[00:02:49]
They just never existed
for us in an elegant way.

[00:02:52]
They are always created for these Internet

[00:02:55]
cash marketers or multilevel
marketing marketers.

[00:02:59]
Not to say that those are bad.

[00:03:02]
I don’t think people are always ill
intended, but a lot of these software

[00:03:07]
before us were created
specifically to deceive consumers.

[00:03:11]
All right.

[00:03:12]
And that’s why it never sat well with me,
because when I lived that problem of not

[00:03:17]
being able to run all
my webinars on my own.

[00:03:19]
I had a tech company before this as well.

[00:03:21]
I had a team of five people,
so I was everything except for products.

[00:03:25]
So you can imagine, like, sales,
accounting, janitor, customer success.

[00:03:29]
I was that person, and I personally could

[00:03:32]
not keep up with all of those training
webinars to make sure that my own

[00:03:37]
customers and my users
were getting on boarded.

[00:03:39]
The thing is, if they don’t know your
software and you just sold it to them

[00:03:42]
and they’re not using it,
that’s your fault, right.

[00:03:44]
That’s never their fault.
Right.

[00:03:47]
So back then, I was looking for a solution
that would help me do this.

[00:03:51]
But everything that I found was like,
I mean, it was like, deceptive, right?

[00:03:56]
A lot of these companies would teach

[00:03:58]
people to pretend that it’s live,
but it’s not about that, right?

[00:04:02]
Like, we wanted to create an experience

[00:04:04]
that is so much more elevated than
a live webinar that it doesn’t matter if

[00:04:12]
somebody knows that it’s recorded.

[00:04:14]
In fact, a lot of our customers would
tell people this video is recorded.

[00:04:18]
This webinar is recorded,

[00:04:19]
but I’m managing the chat because we do
have an asynchronous chat solution so

[00:04:24]
that as people are watching the ewebinar,
they can text you with a question you can

[00:04:29]
hop into, respond live if you
feel like it, if you’re there.

[00:04:32]
But if you’re not there,
if you’re sleeping.

[00:04:34]
A lot of times, people join webinars when

[00:04:36]
you’re sleeping, that’s
the whole point of this.

[00:04:38]
And you respond to them later,
they will get your message through email.

[00:04:42]
So there’s, like, asynchronous chat
that people are already used to.

[00:04:46]
It’s no different than going to a website.

[00:04:48]
And there’s a chat bubble that’s like,
hey, James, how can I help you today?

[00:04:52]
Even if somebody don’t get back to you

[00:04:53]
right away, you know, you’re going
to hear back from them through email.

[00:04:56]
So that’s the communication
you hope you do anyways.

[00:05:01]
Yeah.
So that’s the goal.

[00:05:03]
And that’s the communication
mechanism that we’ve built in.

[00:05:07]
All right.

[00:05:07]
I don’t encourage people to ever lie,
because in this day and age, people know

[00:05:12]
they know so quickly, and
it only takes seconds.

[00:05:18]
Your reputation, it takes years to build,
but it takes, like, seconds to destroy.

[00:05:23]
Right.

[00:05:23]
And the quickest way to do that,
you could still lie to your customers.

[00:05:27]
So definitely never do that.

[00:05:29]
We did not build a solution for that.

[00:05:31]
And we even go out of our way to not build
features that help people trick consumers.

[00:05:39]
All right.
So if you look at other solutions,

[00:05:41]
they’ve got, like, a fake chat like,
you can load in like, a fake conversation,

[00:05:45]
fake sales notifications,
like, kind of fake urgency.

[00:05:48]
Interesting.

[00:05:49]
So we purposely made a decision to never
build those things in because I do not

[00:05:54]
want anybody joining a new webinar
and feel like the last time they were

[00:06:00]
in this experience,
they were tricked to buy something.

[00:06:04]
So we made a decision to do that,

[00:06:05]
and we knew that we would
lose some customers that way.

[00:06:08]
But for me, that’s totally fine.

[00:06:11]
If those are the features that you need

[00:06:12]
to make a sale, we’re just not
the solution for you, right.

[00:06:17]
It’s interesting.
I was looking at your website.

[00:06:19]
This reminded me.

[00:06:21]
I guess I perceive it as a training tool

[00:06:24]
where the new employees
know it’s not live.

[00:06:27]
But I guess you remind me of some
of the things that I want to say that I’ve

[00:06:30]
fallen for where you go to the webinar
and you can see the chat and they get you

[00:06:34]
all fired up and you throw
a couple of Bucks there.

[00:06:39]
And now I’m thinking, wait a second.
Was that live?

[00:06:42]
Maybe I got suckered.

[00:06:43]
Well, the thing is, a lot of times,
if you are joining us at midnight

[00:06:48]
for 09:00, p.m. 500, people are not
on this webinar right now, right.

[00:06:56]
But the feeling you get when you’re like,

[00:06:58]
okay, well, this is
just a fake experience.

[00:06:59]
And now I feel tricked.

[00:07:03]
As a business, you don’t
really recover from that.

[00:07:05]
And I think there was a time for this
maybe like, 510 years ago, but not today.

[00:07:11]
But today people are all about
transparency and authenticity and honesty.

[00:07:18]
Right.
But the thing is, if you think about

[00:07:24]
consuming content video.
Right.

[00:07:26]
Let’s say, like, lifestyle content.

[00:07:28]
So when I want to watch a movie, I go
to Netflix or like, Apple TV or whatnot?

[00:07:32]
Or if I want to watch a video,
I go to YouTube or video.

[00:07:37]
Sure.
Right.

[00:07:38]
And I just go there and I press play,
and I want it to be instant.

[00:07:41]
I want it to be on demand.

[00:07:43]
But isn’t there such a disconnect between

[00:07:45]
consuming lifestyle video and then
consuming business video?

[00:07:49]
So when a business says, oh,
I have a training coming up.

[00:07:54]
Oh, by the way, it’s next Tuesday at 11th.

[00:07:56]
What if nowadays, I told you, James,

[00:07:58]
you can only watch your favorite
show next Tuesday, 11th?

[00:08:03]
That would never fly.

[00:08:04]
We went back 30 years.
Exactly.

[00:08:06]
That would never fly.
Right.

[00:08:08]
But right now, when I want to watch

[00:08:10]
lifestyle video, I want
to watch it at my own time.

[00:08:13]
But when I want to watch business video,
I am dictated by my vendor.

[00:08:18]
So what we’re trying to do is bridge
that gap because we are all consumers.

[00:08:23]
And the closer we align to the consumer

[00:08:26]
expectations of when and where they want
to be communicated to,

[00:08:32]
the sooner businesses understand
that the sooner they’re going to win.

[00:08:36]
Right.
Because while your competitor is forcing

[00:08:40]
your consumer to watch this business
training webinar or this demo next

[00:08:44]
Tuesday, eleven, you’re
offering it to them right now.

[00:08:48]
Got you.
Okay.

[00:08:49]
Little countdown timer and everything.
Yeah.

[00:08:52]
Exactly.

[00:08:53]
And that’s what we’re trying to bridge is
the disconnect, because I think consuming

[00:08:59]
business content should be like,
consuming lifestyle content.

[00:09:02]
Like, why should this not
be at my convenience?

[00:09:04]
Why are you forcing me onto your schedule

[00:09:07]
when you are maybe an Eastern time zone,
and I’m in London, right.

[00:09:12]
It just doesn’t work interesting.

[00:09:14]
All right. So tell me,

[00:09:17]
can you give me some use cases that people
have had good success with you?

[00:09:22]
Yeah.
So I would say, like,

[00:09:23]
anytime people need to repeat
the same presentation over and over.

[00:09:27]
Right.
So you can think about sales demos.

[00:09:30]
So a lot of not just technology demos.

[00:09:33]
We definitely have a lot of technology

[00:09:34]
companies because we’re
a technology company.

[00:09:37]
So if you come to our website,
for example, there’s a demo you can join,

[00:09:41]
but the demo is delivered
through our software.

[00:09:44]
So just to give you a gist of the impact,
in the past year, I’ve done 1000 demos,

[00:09:50]
but I’ve never had to actually
do that demo live oneonone.

[00:09:54]
It was just all happening
in the background.

[00:09:56]
And 20% of those people went on to sign up

[00:09:58]
for a free trial without
me ever talking to them.

[00:10:01]
But it’s not just
technology products, right?

[00:10:04]
It could really be anything.

[00:10:05]
It could be an overview of your company.

[00:10:08]
I talked to a real estate agent this
morning that wanted to create an intro

[00:10:11]
video for the services in the
neighborhood that he sells in.

[00:10:15]
Right.

[00:10:16]
But also, as you mentioned,
a lot of training and onboarding.

[00:10:21]
Again, not just for technology products

[00:10:23]
and not just for customers,
but also internal,

[00:10:26]
like staff training and onboarding,
but also other types of Legion

[00:10:32]
and marketing content,
like customer interviews.

[00:10:35]
We all get these marketing emails like,

[00:10:37]
hey, watch my interview with my customer
and see how they’re using my product.

[00:10:41]
Why should that only
happen once a quarter?

[00:10:44]
Why shouldn’t you record this as
an evergreen video, deliver it through any

[00:10:49]
other automated webinar solution
and run that every single day?

[00:10:55]
Why should your Legion be
limited to your own schedule?

[00:11:00]
Like your own availability?

[00:11:02]
You should be delivering content
and making that available when your

[00:11:06]
prospects and your customers are
available, not the other way around.

[00:11:08]
So those are just some
most popular use cases.

[00:11:11]
All right. Are the clients that you have?
Are they hosting their videos on their own

[00:11:18]
after they create them through
you? Or are you hosting them?

[00:11:21]
So by the time somebody comes into your

[00:11:23]
webinar, they already have their videos,
so they would record it through?

[00:11:26]
I don’t know.

[00:11:26]
Maybe it’s QuickTime, maybe it’s
Bloom or descript or whatever.

[00:11:32]
A lot of times it’s not produced.

[00:11:34]
It’s not a T like that’s.

[00:11:35]
The thing about webinars is there’s,
like a rawness to a webinar, definitely.

[00:11:40]
Yeah.
That people appreciate.

[00:11:42]
You know, there’s
an authenticity to a webinar.

[00:11:45]
So I feel like I’m getting
to know the real you.

[00:11:48]
So a lot of times people just record their

[00:11:51]
screen,
and then they just upload the video inside

[00:11:54]
your webinar, but they always record
it through a third party software.

[00:11:57]
We do have some companies that produce it,
but it’s a different feeling, right?

[00:12:01]
When you produce something.

[00:12:02]
You now have to get other
companies involved.

[00:12:06]
You now have to get it scripted.

[00:12:07]
And it’s an expensive production.

[00:12:09]
And then when you want to swap it out,
you have to do the same thing.

[00:12:13]
Something beautiful about just like

[00:12:14]
recording your screen here’s,
like a 15 minutes, 30 minutes thing.

[00:12:18]
You load it into eWebinar,
and then you create that experience.

[00:12:21]
But once you upload it,
we host it ourselves.

[00:12:24]
And then we deliver that experience.

[00:12:26]
So the other problem that we solve

[00:12:29]
that nobody really thinks about
is the connection problems.

[00:12:32]
Right.

[00:12:32]
Like, just before we
started this recording,

[00:12:37]
we lost a connection

[00:13:01]
that’s the other thing is like when you’re
delivering an automated webinar because

[00:13:05]
it’s a video, you don’t have
the issues that plague a live webinar.

[00:13:13]
Right.

[00:13:13]
Like losing the connection,
which just happened.

[00:13:17]
It also happened before we started this.

[00:13:20]
And you don’t have
to manage the chat at that.

[00:13:23]
Going when you’re trying to present, like,
a lot of bigger companies,

[00:13:27]
when they run live webinars, they have
multiple people running the same thing.

[00:13:31]
They have, like, one person presenting

[00:13:33]
and they have, like,
two other people responding.

[00:13:35]
All right.
I can totally see that.

[00:13:37]
But a lot of companies don’t have it.
Yeah.

[00:13:40]
When I’ve done live webinars and you’re
trying to keep track of chat

[00:13:43]
and communicate with people,
I contact all that jazz.

[00:13:46]
Like, Whoa, this is feedback.
There’s no feedback.

[00:13:50]
So then you’re like, Am I still there?
Right.

[00:13:52]
And then the chat is not there.

[00:13:54]
So you have to kind of secretly press

[00:13:55]
the chat button to make sure
people are still asking questions.

[00:13:58]
Right.
And that’s the thing when you automate

[00:14:00]
your webinar, everybody gets a response
because it’s all, like, text based.

[00:14:04]
Got it interesting.

[00:14:06]
So with your platform,
is it essentially just one video for,

[00:14:11]
like, let’s say I want
to sell a vacuum cleaner.

[00:14:13]
And I got my one presentation
for the vacuum cleaner.

[00:14:17]
Or is it kind of a choose your own
adventure where somebody wants to ask

[00:14:19]
about the stair section
or something like that.

[00:14:22]
So they go to a different
video and move on like that.

[00:14:25]
Yeah.
It’s one video, one webinar.

[00:14:28]
Okay.

[00:14:29]
But then within the webinar experience,
within the EU, in our experience,

[00:14:33]
at least you can program in these things,
like polls, downloads, questions.

[00:14:42]
You know, how when you join a webinar,
someone’s talking at you and

[00:14:47]
you’re basically playing with your phone,
like losing people to Instagram.

[00:14:51]
And it’s like, basically, like,
all webinars lose people to Instagram.

[00:14:56]
But when we were creating the ewe webinar
experience, we’re thinking,

[00:14:59]
how do we keep people on
how do we make the ewebinar experience

[00:15:05]
less like a webinar,
but more like interactive TV.

[00:15:09]
So that was actually the design
concept behind Ewebinar.

[00:15:13]
So when you watch an Ewebinar,
not only are you watching the video,

[00:15:17]
there are things that encourage
you to participate.

[00:15:20]
So there are, like, you could be,
like, where did you hear about this?

[00:15:23]
Vacuum cleaner.

[00:15:24]
So now you’re collecting
data from your customer.

[00:15:28]
Maybe you’re spending money on different

[00:15:29]
marketing channels and you want
to know which one’s most effective.

[00:15:33]
And the more you run the webinar,

[00:15:34]
the more people answer these questions and
the better data that you’re going to get.

[00:15:38]
You can ask questions.

[00:15:39]
You can deliver help articles.

[00:15:42]
So you can say, hey,
if you’re wondering about, like,

[00:15:44]
Stair suction, click on this
link and the links can pop up.

[00:15:50]
So the whole experience is more

[00:15:52]
interactive and participatory
instead of just like this one video.

[00:15:57]
That where someone’s talking at you.

[00:15:58]
So it’s kind of funny.

[00:16:00]
All right.

[00:16:02]
I think of in the case of training
employees, the Webinars videos that we’re

[00:16:07]
trying to put together,
we’re trying to cram a lot of information

[00:16:10]
into a short period of time to keep
the attention of the employees.

[00:16:15]
I always picture someone getting hired
at McDonald’s and just like,

[00:16:18]
sitting this chair in the back room and
watch these videos on customer service.

[00:16:22]
And there’s a little guy with a mop
and all that kind of stuff.

[00:16:25]
I’m like, oh, my gosh.

[00:16:26]
That seems so boring.

[00:16:28]
So I’m trying to figure out different ways

[00:16:31]
to keep the content interesting
as well as educational,

[00:16:35]
because in the end, the goal
is not to entertain the goals.

[00:16:38]
Inform, teach.

[00:16:39]
Yeah.

[00:16:41]
I guess. Do you find people
having a challenge doing that?

[00:16:46]
I get this question a lot. Like,
what’s the optimal length of a webinar?

[00:16:50]
Okay.

[00:16:51]
And I always thought
that the shorter was better.

[00:16:56]
I always thought this.

[00:16:58]
But we have a lot of coaches, trainers,

[00:17:04]
whether it’s a sales webinar,
or whether it’s

[00:17:07]
like a workshop.

[00:17:09]
For example, we have a lot
of people running workshops.

[00:17:12]
They could be like an hour long,

[00:17:13]
an hour and a half long, and their watch
time is still like, well over 90%.

[00:17:18]
Wow.

[00:17:18]
So what I’ve come to learn
is that it’s less about

[00:17:23]
the length of the webinar on the video and
more about the energy of the presenter.

[00:17:30]
All right.
And the content of the presentation.

[00:17:33]
Yeah.

[00:17:34]
The energy of the presenter
and the content of that presentation.

[00:17:38]
All right.
And that takes practice.

[00:17:40]
Right.

[00:17:41]
But I do think that
practice makes perfect.

[00:17:46]
But that’s why we built in a more
interactive PC webinar to kind of help

[00:17:51]
out, because not everybody
is a great presenter, right.

[00:17:53]
I’ve been in sales for over 15 years.

[00:17:56]
A lot of this stuff comes really natural

[00:17:58]
to me, but it’s not natural
for a lot of people.

[00:18:01]
So we wanted to build an experience
where even if it’s like just

[00:18:09]
some old, boring training video,
it’s still kind of exciting because you’re

[00:18:12]
in this experience that allows
you to participate.

[00:18:15]
All right.

[00:18:16]
So the idea is that they’re
interacting somehow.

[00:18:19]
Yeah.
All right.

[00:18:20]
Whether it’s pushing buttons,
answering a question,

[00:18:24]
I mean.
You can imagine, like,

[00:18:25]
think about watching an Instagram Live
or Facebook Live, right.

[00:18:30]
You’re seeing people comment,

[00:18:31]
they’re cumulative over time,
even if it’s not real time, they are.

[00:18:35]
Those comments are appearing
at that point in the video.

[00:18:39]
But as a person who’s watching it later,
you’re still hitting the thumbs up, right?

[00:18:44]
You can still comment.

[00:18:45]
So the concept is the same.

[00:18:47]
It’s like an asynchronous type
of communication and interaction.

[00:18:53]
So it already exists
in other aspects of our lives.

[00:18:58]
It’s just we’ve put this into business

[00:19:00]
context where
this traditionally has existed in more

[00:19:05]
like consumer friendly
applications got you.

[00:19:08]
So how did this idea come about? Was this
a problem that you’re trying to solve

[00:19:12]
that you had or just a problem that you
saw that you’re trying to solve?

[00:19:16]
I mean, it’s both.
Right.

[00:19:18]
So I’ve been in service for ten years.

[00:19:20]
My previous company around for five years.

[00:19:22]
It was a real estate technology company.

[00:19:25]
And as I mentioned, I always had a really
small team, and I was the person that was

[00:19:30]
responsible for, like, demoing
to new customers, closing them.

[00:19:34]
Once they sign up, I would have to train

[00:19:35]
all the new users
and then get them on boarded.

[00:19:38]
Because if you’re selling software,

[00:19:40]
if you have new users coming on board,
they don’t use your product.

[00:19:43]
People don’t continue.

[00:19:45]
So getting people to sign up is step
one of the rest of your life with them.

[00:19:51]
Right.

[00:19:52]
And so getting adoption is like the key to
lowering turn and increasing conversion.

[00:19:57]
So I was the one that was running these

[00:20:01]
trainings and onboarding
and demos every single day.

[00:20:03]
But I realized no matter how many I was

[00:20:06]
doing, it was never enough because people
are busy and they don’t always show up.

[00:20:09]
They sign up.
But they don’t always show up.

[00:20:12]
And because I only had it at a fixed time.

[00:20:14]
But I was serving six
different time zones.

[00:20:17]
So I was running it at my time.

[00:20:20]
But now we’ve got people from Hawaii,
but also New York that want to join us.

[00:20:24]
But it just doesn’t work.
Right.

[00:20:26]
So I had always envisioned this perfect
product that would allow me to take

[00:20:32]
a video because all these
trainings are exactly the same.

[00:20:35]
It’s not like they were
significantly different, right?

[00:20:37]
It’s like my onboarding to my software.

[00:20:40]
So you’re telling the same jokes.

[00:20:42]
And even when two people show up or 100

[00:20:44]
people show up, you’re
doing the same thing.

[00:20:46]
So it’s not hard work, right.

[00:20:48]
But it’s like mentally draining
and you have to be on all the time.

[00:20:54]
I can imagine it takes a lot of time.
Well, yeah.

[00:20:56]
Like a 1 hour webinar would take,
like a couple of hours to prep and then

[00:21:01]
to decompress, and then
it’s like half a day.

[00:21:03]
Right.

[00:21:06]
On some days, I remember having done
these, like five to six times back to back

[00:21:11]
for different companies,
but they were the same thing.

[00:21:14]
I always envision this product that would

[00:21:17]
allow me to take a video,
deliver it like a webinar.

[00:21:21]
So essentially, to help me do my job
without me actually being there.

[00:21:26]
So Ewebinar is actually a product that

[00:21:29]
helps people run webinars when
they hate running webinars.

[00:21:33]
So if you never want to run webinars
again, this is the product for you.

[00:21:38]
I would assume that would be most people

[00:21:40]
because there’s been a lot of talk of Zoom
fatigue for the past year and a half.

[00:21:45]
I joke about this, but I stole
another joke and I changed it.

[00:21:49]
But I always say there are two
types of people in this world.

[00:21:53]
There are people that love, like
the people that hate writing webinars.

[00:21:58]
And then there are people that,
like, lie about it’s true.

[00:22:05]
That’s awesome.

[00:22:08]
It’s not that we want
to replace them, right.

[00:22:10]
Because what we’re doing right now,
this conversation that’s not going away.

[00:22:15]
And that’s not what we’re
here to replace, right?

[00:22:18]
The thing that we want to replace is
that all that repetitive stuff,

[00:22:23]
like the demo that you have
to do over and over, right?

[00:22:27]
Yeah.

[00:22:27]
The pitch, like, you don’t want
to do that over and over, right.

[00:22:30]
But it’s important for your business.

[00:22:32]
Very like your business
can’t exist without it.

[00:22:35]
And you can’t say that it’s
not important work it is.

[00:22:38]
But why can’t we automate everything

[00:22:41]
that can so we can spend time to do
things that cannot be automated?

[00:22:48]
And that’s the most important
thing for businesses nowadays.

[00:22:51]
As margins are Slimming,
it’s harder and harder to hire people.

[00:22:55]
So we need to automate the tasks
that can be automated.

[00:22:59]
So not only can we cut down on the cost,

[00:23:02]
but we can spend our
time more meaningfully.

[00:23:05]
Yeah.

[00:23:05]
I like it times commodity
that we don’t get more of.

[00:23:08]
You can’t do anything
to necessarily get more time.

[00:23:11]
You can always find money.

[00:23:13]
But time is a limited supply here.

[00:23:16]
So that’s awesome when you’re
essentially bringing more of that.

[00:23:19]
That’s cool.

[00:23:20]
So what have been some of the greatest

[00:23:22]
successes that people have
found with your business?

[00:23:24]
As clients go.

[00:23:28]
I think it’s easier to say like, oh,
my company saved 100 hours a week, or

[00:23:33]
I was able to delay hiring
another salesperson.

[00:23:37]
Those are, like, obvious things,

[00:23:40]
but that’s not the thing
that gets me going personally.

[00:23:45]
As a founder, I think that’s cool.
There’s business value.

[00:23:48]
And that’s why people sign up.

[00:23:49]
But I’ve gotten messages that are like,

[00:23:51]
oh, I’ve been able to take my first
vacation because of you guys.

[00:23:56]
I love that to me is super cool.

[00:23:59]
You’re having a real
impact in someone’s life.

[00:24:03]
Right.

[00:24:04]
So our mission is to give
people their time back.

[00:24:08]
And, yes,

[00:24:10]
business speak to be like,
I love to give you your time back to do

[00:24:14]
something else that’s
important for your business.

[00:24:16]
But that’s not why I created this.

[00:24:19]
I created this so I could go out and have
fun while this runs my business.

[00:24:25]
So I want to be able to say like,
yeah, okay.

[00:24:28]
I want to give your time back, but you
don’t have to do something with it.

[00:24:33]
What if I gave you your time
back so you can do nothing?

[00:24:38]
I know what that is.

[00:24:40]
But that’s amazing to me that this product

[00:24:44]
has a personal impact for people that they
could use more vacation time,

[00:24:49]
or they could have more time spent
with their friends and family.

[00:24:52]
That’s the kind of thing that I find is,

[00:24:54]
like, at least for me,
my greatest success.

[00:24:58]
I get that.
That’s cool.

[00:24:59]
It’s funny you mentioned the nothing thing

[00:25:00]
because my wife and kid were at a friend
of my kid’s birthday party, and I’m like,

[00:25:08]
okay, I have 2 hours of knowing
around and it’s the weekend.

[00:25:14]
I couldn’t even think.
I’m like, it’s going to take me 2 hours

[00:25:16]
to figure out what I can do
because you’re so used to it.

[00:25:20]
Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.

[00:25:21]
You’re so used to just going
flat out 5 million mile an hour.

[00:25:25]
That it was weird to pause.

[00:25:27]
Yeah, we need that.

[00:25:29]
Oh, totally.
Yeah.

[00:25:31]
We need more birthday parties.

[00:25:32]
Yeah.

[00:25:34]
As far as that goes. So what do you
see for the future of Ewebinar?

[00:25:40]
I see for the future of Ewebinar.

[00:25:43]
Well, personally,
I would love to retire off of this.

[00:25:48]
Nice.

[00:25:50]
This is my retirement plan,

[00:25:53]
but from a business perspective,

[00:25:55]
I would just love to see this being
like, the standard, right.

[00:26:00]
You know how right now you start
a business and you sign up for MailChimp

[00:26:05]
for your newsletter,
you sign up for Intercom for your support

[00:26:09]
for Zendesk, or you sign up for Zoom
for your meetings and your webinars.

[00:26:14]
I would love for Ewebinar
to be the other standard.

[00:26:18]
You sign up to automate.

[00:26:23]
Yeah.

[00:26:24]
And I think there’s
a path for that, right.

[00:26:25]
Because

[00:26:27]
everyone’s using Zoom in their business.

[00:26:29]
But yeah.
I mean, the thing is,

[00:26:33]
I think what people have realized
is remote work actually works.

[00:26:37]
People are more productive, and I don’t
have to have everybody in the office.

[00:26:41]
Right.
Right.

[00:26:42]
And what that’s created is also,

[00:26:45]
I think outsourcing was already a big
thing, but now companies that’s never done

[00:26:51]
it before are starting to think maybe
that’s not a bad way because I can cut

[00:26:57]
a lot of costs and I don’t have
to deal with maybe HR or whatever.

[00:27:03]
Maybe it allows me the resources
to run a business I couldn’t before

[00:27:09]
we actually outsource our entire company
because we’re not venture back.

[00:27:14]
Nice.

[00:27:15]
I don’t have the luxury
of hiring ten people locally.

[00:27:19]
I would love to be able to do that,
but I’m not in that position.

[00:27:22]
All right.

[00:27:23]
But now companies that didn’t
used to do that are doing that.

[00:27:27]
So what has us created is the need
for asynchronous communication.

[00:27:32]
Your night is my day and vice versa.

[00:27:34]
So I would love for Ewebinar to be

[00:27:37]
the standard to deliver that asynchronous
communication, but longer form.

[00:27:42]
Right.

[00:27:43]
Not like here’s a loom video here’s 30
seconds, but here’s an actual onboarding.

[00:27:49]
Here’s a series of training,

[00:27:50]
and if you have questions,
type them to me through the chat.

[00:27:54]
I would love to see this be the standard.

[00:27:56]
We’re not there yet.

[00:27:58]
But we are also in a world
where things can flip right so

[00:28:03]
very quickly.

[00:28:05]
Tell me when you decided
to start this business.

[00:28:08]
Did you do the coding or did you get

[00:28:10]
someone to do the coding
or how did that work.

[00:28:13]
No,

[00:28:15]
this is kind of an interesting story.

[00:28:19]
I spent, I would say, about eleven years
in startups for eight of those years.

[00:28:25]
I have one cofounder and then EWEB
and I have another co founder.

[00:28:30]
I was so sick of dealing with developers,
like, I’m not a developer myself.

[00:28:36]
I’m everything and everyone but code,
and anyone who’s managed a developer

[00:28:41]
before is probably laughing and in a sad
way, like, you probably know what I mean.

[00:28:47]
I was so sick of it that I’m like,
you know what?

[00:28:50]
I can start this business
with no CTO, no co founder.

[00:28:54]
I’m just going to hire a development shop.

[00:28:58]
They’re going to build and have them
be my CTO and PM and everything.

[00:29:01]
And I was going to do all the things I was

[00:29:03]
good at, like, sales,
developing the business.

[00:29:05]
So actually, what I did
was I did hire a Dev shop.

[00:29:10]
And anyone who’s hired a Dev shop will

[00:29:12]
eventually realize that
because they’re, like, a tech company.

[00:29:19]
Not having a CTO co founder is almost like

[00:29:20]
a restaurant not having
a chef as a partner.

[00:29:23]
It doesn’t really work
like it works kind of.

[00:29:26]
But it doesn’t really work.
But the reason why it didn’t work is

[00:29:29]
because I’m not an engineer,
so I cannot go and critique that myself.

[00:29:35]
Like, I can’t manage that process.

[00:29:38]
A Dev shop also goes
by the hour or by the project.

[00:29:41]
So they’re kind of motivated
by creating more work.

[00:29:48]
They’re all doing that right now.
They’re like, we don’t do that.

[00:29:50]
But you know what?

[00:29:52]
Let’s just say that was my experience.
Sure.

[00:29:55]
Fair.
And

[00:29:58]
my life partner, David,

[00:30:01]
is a cofounder back then,
he’s a CTO cofounder for another startup.

[00:30:06]
They had sold that,
but he wasn’t doing anything.

[00:30:08]
And he is an investor
in this company as well.

[00:30:10]
And he was going to manage

[00:30:12]
that development process until we
switched to another Dev shop.

[00:30:16]
And back then, he was like, oh,
you know, they’re not doing this, right.

[00:30:19]
They’re not doing this right.
I was like, you know what?

[00:30:21]
I can’t go in and change it.
You’re a CTO.

[00:30:24]
Why don’t you go in and change it?

[00:30:26]
So then he started, like,
coding and fixing things.

[00:30:29]
And then I realized I’ve been with this

[00:30:31]
person for six years, and I did
not know he could code as well.

[00:30:35]
So then I was like, wait a second.

[00:30:36]
Why am I paying this Dev shop
and you’re coding for free?

[00:30:41]
Why don’t I just not pay them
and make you my co founder?

[00:30:46]
Because then at that point,

[00:30:47]
I realized I actually needed a co founder
because you actually need someone thinking

[00:30:52]
about this, not because they’re paid
to you need someone thinking about this

[00:30:56]
when you’re starting the business
because they just love it.

[00:30:59]
All right?
Because they want to be a part of it,

[00:31:01]
just like you,
I need to think about the business

[00:31:04]
and they need to think about
the technology, right?

[00:31:06]
That’s how co founders work.

[00:31:11]
Basically, the business has
been around for three years.

[00:31:14]
Product has been alive for a little over
a year, but he came in kind of halfway.

[00:31:18]
All right.

[00:31:19]
So now not only is he my co founder,
he’s also my life partner.

[00:31:24]
So it’s like next level cohabitation.
Wow.

[00:31:29]
I don’t know if it’s good or bad.
It’s difficult.

[00:31:32]
It has its challenges.

[00:31:34]
But I think when it works, it’s awesome.

[00:31:39]
You could build a company together,
build a life together.

[00:31:42]
If you do sell this company,
you’re basically owning majority of it.

[00:31:46]
So if it works, it works so far.

[00:31:49]
So far, I would not have it any other way.
All right.

[00:31:52]
But that’s kind of the original story.

[00:31:55]
So tell me, is you and I guess
eventually him were building this.

[00:32:01]
What are some of the challenges

[00:32:02]
that you’ve run into that you
didn’t necessarily anticipate.

[00:32:07]
Yeah.
So I think the biggest challenge is less

[00:32:11]
about the build because
he is really like a wizard.

[00:32:18]
Like, he’s just like a code wizard.

[00:32:19]
Oh, nice.

[00:32:21]
Anyone that’s tried the product, they will
be surprised at how small our team is.

[00:32:25]
And the only reason for that is because
he’s just so good at what he does.

[00:32:29]
There’s just a huge difference between

[00:32:33]
there are really good coders,
and there are really great cream,

[00:32:38]
the crop coders that work
for Apple or Google or whatnot.

[00:32:41]
And I didn’t really know
the difference until now.

[00:32:44]
I work with one.
Okay.

[00:32:47]
So the challenge is not about for us,
at least, is not about the product.

[00:32:52]
I actually didn’t know that I could build
a tech company with barely any bugs.

[00:32:58]
He’s the only reason we have weekends,
things never break down.

[00:33:03]
It’s really crazy.
Like the product just kind of works.

[00:33:06]
The thing that I did not anticipate
was I really underestimated

[00:33:17]
how hard it was for someone to understand
the idea of webinar automation,

[00:33:23]
because I lived with this
problem for so many years.

[00:33:26]
I thought, well,
people are already running webinars

[00:33:29]
on Zoom, and they’re
probably exhausted doing it.

[00:33:33]
And I am right on that front.

[00:33:35]
But what I thought was they would see this

[00:33:37]
product and immediately
make the connection.

[00:33:39]
Like, okay, this is life.

[00:33:41]
This is not live like this takes a video.

[00:33:44]
Yeah, but I always underestimate how
little people can actually adjust

[00:33:52]
to innovation, even when that step
doesn’t seem to be very big.

[00:33:57]
Yeah.
You know, it’s so funny that you say

[00:34:00]
that because when I started
calls on call, right?

[00:34:03]
Phone answering for small business.

[00:34:06]
I started the business after I tried

[00:34:08]
to find a business that already existed
to solve the problem, I couldn’t find it.

[00:34:12]
So I started it.
Whatever.

[00:34:13]
And I thought the same thing.

[00:34:14]
This is what so many
small businesses need.

[00:34:18]
I’m going to put my little shingle out

[00:34:19]
there, and businesses are
just going to flock in.

[00:34:22]
And I was having the hardest time

[00:34:25]
explaining to people, no,
we’re not in your office.

[00:34:29]
We’re taking calls that you send
to us forward, blah, blah, blah.

[00:34:33]
And I remember talking to this person.

[00:34:35]
I was like,

[00:34:36]
this seems like two dots that are very
close together, and they’re having a very

[00:34:40]
hard time connecting them,
which means that I’m making a mistake.

[00:34:44]
Somehow, in my presentation,

[00:34:48]
I could not figure it out.

[00:34:49]
I suppose it took a pandemic for people
to realize, hey, these two dots are easy.

[00:34:54]
You know, it’s so strange.

[00:34:55]
Like,

[00:34:58]
the part that people can’t really
understand is the asynchronous chat piece.

[00:35:04]
So they’re like, okay,
well, for a live webinar,

[00:35:08]
I’m there.
I’m answering chat.

[00:35:11]
How does your system work?

[00:35:12]
What do you mean when
someone sends me a chat?

[00:35:14]
I can respond later.

[00:35:16]
But if my webinar is on 24/7,
do I need to have support staff 24/7.

[00:35:21]
But what they don’t understand is they’re

[00:35:23]
already using this mechanism of chat
in intercom, right on their Zends.

[00:35:27]
They’re already using it in support.

[00:35:29]
We just took the exact same
thing when we put it here.

[00:35:31]
Yeah.
But they think webinar live chat.

[00:35:36]
Yes.
Intercom later chat.

[00:35:39]
All right.

[00:35:40]
But it’s the exact same thing.

[00:35:42]
So it still takes a conversation,

[00:35:45]
or they just need to be in my demo,
and then they’re like, okay, now get it.

[00:35:50]
But verbally, like, verbally,

[00:35:52]
it’s so hard to explain to someone or,
like, when they’re reading about it.

[00:35:57]
It’s so hard to explain to someone.

[00:35:58]
And that has been the biggest challenge

[00:36:01]
because this product previous to us was
only made for marketers like,

[00:36:05]
your course creators, your life coaches,
your Internet cash buyers.

[00:36:10]
Right.

[00:36:12]
So for the first time,
we are now delivering a product

[00:36:15]
that companies like Stific
would use for their training.

[00:36:19]
Companies like agorapuls, like,
real big companies are integrating this

[00:36:24]
into their process where
they never had one before.

[00:36:29]
So when a marketer comes in,
they’re like, oh, yeah.

[00:36:32]
I’ve seen something like this.
It was worse.

[00:36:34]
This is better.

[00:36:35]
And that’s why I think a lot of times
people say competition is good for you

[00:36:39]
because competition gives you
the ability to differentiate.

[00:36:45]
Competition means they are
educating the market for you.

[00:36:48]
Yes, huge.
Right there.

[00:36:50]
But for me,

[00:36:52]
the greatest opportunity for eWebinar
is not to sell to marketers, right.

[00:36:57]
Or not just the marketers.

[00:36:58]
We, of course, have a lot
of marketers as customers.

[00:37:00]
But our biggest opportunity is to sell

[00:37:02]
to enterprises that would incorporate this
into all of their training and their

[00:37:07]
onboarding incorporate in all
their sales and marketing demos.

[00:37:11]
But those companies are
not using that today.

[00:37:15]
So it still takes a conversation.

[00:37:18]
But like, you, I was like, yeah,

[00:37:20]
they’re going to do this and be like,
yeah, it’s so obvious.

[00:37:22]
And we have some of those.

[00:37:23]
But I still think we’re, like,
a little bit bleeding edge, but I do think

[00:37:29]
either the world is going to flip and be
like, I am sick of running these.

[00:37:34]
I’m Super Zoom fatigue.

[00:37:35]
I don’t want to run these all the time.

[00:37:37]
In fact, I don’t even have
people running these.

[00:37:39]
So either the world is going to be like,
how can I automate this process

[00:37:45]
and we take off
in a real way or they don’t.

[00:37:50]
And we’re still going to be
like one customer at a time.

[00:37:52]
Yeah. Just trying to educate,
pulling your hair out, don’t you get it?

[00:37:56]
Yeah, but it all starts that way, right.

[00:37:58]
You think about Airbnb?

[00:38:01]
What did they have to do, right?

[00:38:04]
Like somebody in your house, right?

[00:38:06]
Somebody is looking at your house.

[00:38:07]
How does that work when they steal stuff?

[00:38:10]
How’s the insurance going to work?

[00:38:11]
So I think there’s always
some heavy lifting.

[00:38:15]
Yeah.

[00:38:17]
When you’re first to market,

[00:38:18]
I always tell people,
imagine the first massage therapists or

[00:38:21]
imagine the first pizza place
before people knew what pizza was.

[00:38:25]
Now it’s everywhere.
We get it.

[00:38:26]
You don’t have to explain it.
We understand it backwards, right?

[00:38:30]
It’s so obvious backwards.

[00:38:32]
Yeah.
But yeah.

[00:38:34]
I think the good thing is,
the idea of webinars is already there.

[00:38:37]
And once we do have that conversation,

[00:38:40]
and once people do come and to attend an
experience, they then get it immediately.

[00:38:46]
So that’s the good part.

[00:38:48]
But the part that’s a challenge is like,
what do you mean, you don’t get it?

[00:38:54]
Keeping your calm to me.

[00:38:55]
How obvious can I be?

[00:38:59]
Do you hate doing this? We
can help you do this, right?

[00:39:02]
You know how you did 100
Webinars just to multiply it.

[00:39:06]
Tell me about marketing this because

[00:39:08]
you’re marketing to people that may not
necessarily be looking for it or know

[00:39:12]
that they need it or even
know that it’s a thing.

[00:39:15]
Yeah.

[00:39:16]
That is a big challenge.

[00:39:19]
So this product went live July of 2020.

[00:39:24]
Okay.

[00:39:26]
People are like, oh, it’s perfect timing.

[00:39:27]
You created this because of the pandemic.

[00:39:30]
Not true.
Right.

[00:39:31]
Like, any technology product that you see,
or maybe any product that you see,

[00:39:37]
take the launch date and go
back like, a year and a half.

[00:39:40]
I was just going to say if you could
put this together in a few months.

[00:39:43]
Yeah,

[00:39:46]
the timing is what it is.

[00:39:47]
But

[00:39:50]
really, I was thinking about this
for probably the last five years, right?

[00:39:54]
When I decided that this is what I wanted
to do, it was just about

[00:39:59]
conceptualizing it and branding it
and figuring out what it could look like.

[00:40:05]
But Ironically, when we were starting it,
I did what any company had to do, right?

[00:40:10]
I basically made a list of everyone

[00:40:13]
in the past that I had worked with all
my customers, all my friends,

[00:40:17]
and I’ve been in technology for,
like, eight years before.

[00:40:20]
That right.

[00:40:21]
So I just took an Excel sheet and I
wrote every single person nice thing.

[00:40:25]
There was like a couple of hundred

[00:40:27]
because I realized that this
wasn’t a problem that I live with.

[00:40:31]
Uniquely.

[00:40:31]
I wouldn’t build this
if that was the case.

[00:40:33]
Right?

[00:40:33]
Like, a lot of my friends and their
companies also had this problem.

[00:40:38]
And so and then I just went down the list

[00:40:41]
and I, like, called emailed
every single one of them.

[00:40:44]
And I just said, hey,
this is what I’m doing.

[00:40:46]
Let me show you what
I’m doing. Ironically,

[00:40:50]
our tagline is, Are you sick of doing

[00:40:52]
the same presentation over
and over again? Right?

[00:40:55]
That’s easy enough.

[00:40:57]
So Ironically, for the first two months,
I was doing the exact same demo

[00:41:02]
over and over again.

[00:41:04]
But I had to just to get this off

[00:41:06]
the ground because I also had to learn,
like, what do you think about this?

[00:41:10]
Because it was brand new.

[00:41:11]
Like, you can’t just
open the gates, right?

[00:41:13]
It’s almost like a restaurant.

[00:41:14]
What do you think of this menu?

[00:41:15]
Should we add anything?

[00:41:16]
What do you think of this UI?

[00:41:18]
What else would you have?
Right.

[00:41:20]
So I did that for two months.

[00:41:21]
So I would say our 1st 100
customers was just me.

[00:41:25]
I probably know all of them personally

[00:41:27]
because I had reached out to them,
nurtured them, got them signed up.

[00:41:31]
And then we now

[00:41:34]
have partnerships with companies like

[00:41:36]
Scientific, which is like a course realtor
platform to deliver their courses

[00:41:41]
with companies like Bomb,
which is like video messaging.

[00:41:43]
We have a number of integrations
that we do co marketing with.

[00:41:47]
But I will say

[00:41:49]
that I wanted to build a business
where that was 100% sold to the Internet

[00:41:55]
before I even started this,
before I even built a webeowner.

[00:41:58]
I was like, what do I want?

[00:42:00]
How do I envision my life?

[00:42:02]
I wanted to build a business
where every sign up was self serve,

[00:42:08]
because in my previous business,
I sold enterprise.

[00:42:10]
So every single deal I had to hand hold,
I had to call a knock on the door.

[00:42:15]
I had to go to conferences.

[00:42:16]
I had to set up booths.

[00:42:17]
That was my life for the past ten years

[00:42:20]
and moving into the new phase because
my previous company was acquired.

[00:42:23]
Moving into the new phase.

[00:42:25]
I wanted this company to be like
a MailChimp, and that’s the Holy grail

[00:42:32]
of companies.
Totally.

[00:42:33]
Yes.

[00:42:34]
And I will say that we have not figured
out a marketing channel that is scalable.

[00:42:39]
And repeatable, we have not figured
out something that works really well.

[00:42:45]
We haven’t found that magic thing.

[00:42:49]
We do, like retargeting ads.

[00:42:51]
We try to at least capture
people that land on our site.

[00:42:54]
So we do retargeting ads on,
like, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn.

[00:42:58]
But that’s really just for like,
that’s the low hanging fruit, right?

[00:43:01]
That’s just to capture people
who already know about you.

[00:43:04]
We’ve tried

[00:43:06]
doing co marketing webinars with other

[00:43:09]
products that are kind
of parallel to ours.

[00:43:12]
Oh, sure.

[00:43:14]
We actually just brought on somebody

[00:43:16]
who spent ten years in, like, technology
partnerships and affiliate marketing.

[00:43:23]
So he’s just been with us
for a couple of months.

[00:43:25]
So I think his efforts are going to start.

[00:43:27]
We’re going to start seeing his efforts
come to fruition in the next month or two,

[00:43:32]
but we haven’t seen a lot of that yet
because it’s also, like, year end.

[00:43:37]
But at the same time, we have
people signing up every day now.

[00:43:42]
Nice.
And we have no idea where they come from.

[00:43:47]
Do not be discouraged.

[00:43:50]
If you hear about people saying
I measure this, I measure that.

[00:43:54]
Everything’s data driven.
I don’t know.

[00:43:57]
I don’t know how other people do it.

[00:43:59]
I have not been able to figure it out.

[00:44:00]
It’s really hard.
We’ve been trying.

[00:44:03]
We’ve tried multiple different marketing

[00:44:05]
agencies that say they’re
really good at this.

[00:44:08]
Not a single one have actually delivered.

[00:44:12]
And it’s just kind of a black hole.

[00:44:14]
So we have scaled back on a lot of
advertising efforts because I also

[00:44:22]
recognize that we don’t
have a recognizable brand.

[00:44:26]
Just as I mentioned, people don’t see
this, and they don’t immediately click.

[00:44:31]
So our advertising efforts are

[00:44:35]
probably weren’t converting because
people are probably seeing it.

[00:44:38]
And they’re like, Well,
how does it actually work?

[00:44:41]
Got you right.
So we’re not, like a Zoom.

[00:44:43]
We’re not a MailChimp.
I think advertising for those companies.

[00:44:46]
When you have a product that’s natural

[00:44:48]
when you have a product that people get
right away, that probably works better.

[00:44:52]
But for us, we still require,
like, a demo or a conversation.

[00:44:58]
So we scale back on those and then we’re

[00:44:59]
going to repurpose those dollars
towards affiliate marketing.

[00:45:02]
Got you.
Okay.

[00:45:04]
Where maybe a partner or
an affiliate is talking about it.

[00:45:07]
So that’s the long answer.

[00:45:11]
We just haven’t really figured it out.

[00:45:13]
That’s fine.

[00:45:15]
That’s probably the most honest
marketing answer I’ve ever heard.

[00:45:19]
Yeah, we don’t know what we’re doing,
but people are selling that’s cool.

[00:45:22]
No, it’s so interesting,
because what are we talking?

[00:45:26]
2025 years ago, there was this
whole promise of the Internet.

[00:45:30]
As far as marketing goes,

[00:45:31]
that you’re going to be given all this
data as a marketer, and you’re going to be

[00:45:35]
able to tell exactly where
to market your business.

[00:45:37]
Yeah.

[00:45:38]
And though you get a lot of numbers
and a lot of data, I wouldn’t say that.

[00:45:41]
It’s very clear.

[00:45:42]
As far as black and white, this is
where you should spend your money.

[00:45:45]
I will see the thing is,

[00:45:46]
I still do outreach, and the thing is,
our product starts at like, $50.

[00:45:50]
Right.

[00:45:51]
So in the long term,
it actually doesn’t make sense to do one

[00:45:55]
on one outreach,
but I’m still a pretty new company.

[00:46:00]
Yeah.
You’re still building a snowball.

[00:46:02]
Yeah.

[00:46:03]
Actually,

[00:46:04]
we do see successes in really specific
use cases and industries right now.

[00:46:09]
And I always have people
that refer their friends to me.

[00:46:12]
So when they refer their friends to me,

[00:46:14]
I’m not going to be like, oh, well,
just go to our website, look at our demo.

[00:46:18]
So when they refer friends to me,

[00:46:19]
I still connect with them one on one
because that’s what I have to do.

[00:46:25]
But I would love some time in the near

[00:46:27]
future for this to be, like,
100% self generating machine.

[00:46:31]
But for now, I still do outrage.

[00:46:34]
That’s probably half my day.

[00:46:36]
And I’m going to be doing
that until we’re profitable.

[00:46:42]
Wrong one or two isn’t necessarily
the same as wrong 13 or 14.

[00:46:46]
So you’re just building up.
I get that.

[00:46:49]
Yeah.

[00:46:52]
That’S what you got to do.

[00:46:53]
You just build the business.

[00:46:55]
Well, either you do that and you make it
work, or the flip side is you don’t do

[00:46:58]
that and it doesn’t work,
and you go work for someone else.

[00:47:01]
Yeah, that is significantly worse off.

[00:47:06]
Terrible, terrible.

[00:47:08]
Melissa, we’re kind
of running out of time here.

[00:47:10]
So tell me, if you had some advice
for someone that was considering starting

[00:47:13]
their own business,
what are some of the things that you’ve

[00:47:16]
learned that you would give that person
that was thinking about starting your own

[00:47:18]
business, venturing off to not
work for someone else anymore?

[00:47:22]
Yeah, I would say that
number one is do what you know,

[00:47:29]
do what you intimately know,

[00:47:32]
like what you are uniquely good
at because ideas are dime a dozen.

[00:47:37]
There are lots of amazing ideas out there,
like I one am fairly upset that I

[00:47:43]
don’t know how to capitalize
on this NFT trend.

[00:47:47]
So there’s people making
millions of dollars overnight.

[00:47:50]
There are a lot of ideas that are viable,
but they are not viable for you.

[00:47:56]
All right.
Fair.

[00:47:58]
So I have

[00:48:01]
been a victim of that, like,

[00:48:03]
years ago when I’m like,
I can do this and I can do this.

[00:48:06]
And then when you start doing it,

[00:48:08]
you start realizing, I actually
don’t know very much about this.

[00:48:12]
But it seems like a really good idea.

[00:48:14]
Like when you don’t know something
intimately,

[00:48:15]
you also don’t know the customers
intimately, and you don’t know how

[00:48:17]
to solve their problems
and even speak to their values.

[00:48:21]
And then you don’t even earn the respect

[00:48:24]
of your peers in that same industry
because you don’t know what you’re doing.

[00:48:28]
Fair.
So I would say the number one thing is,

[00:48:31]
of course, think about as
many ideas as you can.

[00:48:34]
But as you narrow down,

[00:48:36]
think about where you have a unique
advantage and then just focus on those.

[00:48:42]
And I would say the second
most important thing.

[00:48:46]
Or maybe that’s the most important thing.

[00:48:47]
But second important thing is start from
by asking yourself, what makes you happy.

[00:48:56]
And I don’t mean, like,
what job makes you happy, right?

[00:49:01]
I think a lot of people,
they think they have to start a career

[00:49:04]
because they were educated
in a certain way.

[00:49:07]
Say, I got a commerce degree.

[00:49:09]
So I’m going to go be a banker,

[00:49:11]
and then I’m going to find
happiness in that lifestyle.

[00:49:15]
But that’s actually the reverse.

[00:49:16]
And I have to learn this the hard way.

[00:49:17]
I think for a majority of my startup life,

[00:49:19]
I was fairly miserable
without really knowing why.

[00:49:22]
But if you think about if your starting

[00:49:25]
point, if the foundation
of everything that you do is happiness.

[00:49:29]
So what could that be?
Right?

[00:49:30]
It could be I want to work remote.

[00:49:33]
So you don’t go and find a job and then

[00:49:35]
convince your boss that you
want to work remote.

[00:49:37]
Right.

[00:49:38]
You make the decision to say, I want to
work remote because that makes me happy.

[00:49:42]
And then you create a career.
On top of that,

[00:49:44]
you only look at opportunities
that allow you to work remote.

[00:49:47]
Right.
Because if you think about, like,

[00:49:51]
think about just like this
decision as a triangle.

[00:49:54]
If the bottom layer is education,

[00:49:56]
like the first scenario education,
the middle is career.

[00:50:02]
The top is happiness.

[00:50:03]
Your happiness is then dependent on your
career and dependent on your education.

[00:50:09]
It doesn’t work.
Right.

[00:50:10]
But if you inverse a triangle where

[00:50:12]
the foundation is happiness,
the middle part is your career.

[00:50:17]
Say your idea and the top
is your education.

[00:50:20]
Your knowledge knowledge can be acquired.

[00:50:23]
Absolutely.

[00:50:24]
And when your career and your knowledge is

[00:50:28]
based on your happiness,
then no matter what you do and how hard

[00:50:32]
things get,
you will always be serving you.

[00:50:36]
Oh, I love that is the most important

[00:50:39]
thing for sustainability,
because that’s what it takes.

[00:50:42]
This is a marathon, not a sprint
to do what makes you happy.

[00:50:48]
But start with that clarity
of what that is.

[00:50:51]
I love that.

[00:50:53]
And then it’s not trained normally.
Not that I’ve seen.

[00:50:55]
Anyways.
No, it’s something I can do.

[00:51:00]
But then when I sold my company,

[00:51:02]
I had some time to think
something was just off.

[00:51:06]
Like, why was I always a little bit
miserable and frustrated, right.

[00:51:12]
Because I started
my career in real estate.

[00:51:14]
And then I thought I always
had to stick in real estate.

[00:51:17]
And it just wasn’t really me.

[00:51:20]
And so when I sold that company,
I was like, okay,

[00:51:23]
what are my non negotiables and what
can I do to feed my happiness?

[00:51:28]
And then I came up with the idea

[00:51:30]
of the webinar and that’s part
of the other part of the origin story.

[00:51:35]
That’s cool.

[00:51:36]
That is super cool.

[00:51:38]
Melissa, you have so much to share.

[00:51:40]
This is cool.

[00:51:42]
Thank you.

[00:51:43]
How can people find you?

[00:51:46]
The best way to connect
with me is through LinkedIn.

[00:51:49]
So my name is Melissa Kwan, K-W-A-N.

[00:51:53]
And if you add me as a contact, the story
I just told is pinned at my profile.

[00:51:59]
Oh, nice.

[00:52:00]
Yeah, very cool.

[00:52:02]
And then as far as eWebinar,
where can people find that?

[00:52:05]
Just go to ewebinar.com.

[00:52:07]
It’s exactly as it spells.

[00:52:08]
We really lucked out on the URL.

[00:52:10]
I was just going to say no
dashes or anything like that.

[00:52:13]
No, it’s just ewebinar.com.

[00:52:15]
That’s it.
How in the world did you get this?

[00:52:19]
Do I have time to tell this story?
Because it’s a pretty interesting one.

[00:52:22]
Sure.
Totally.

[00:52:23]
We’ll make time for this one.
Yeah.

[00:52:25]
So I have a friend in Vancouver
where I’m originally from.

[00:52:29]
He is super savvy.

[00:52:32]
He’s had multiple businesses of his own.

[00:52:34]
But one of the things he’s
really good at is naming things.

[00:52:38]
And he had a furniture company.

[00:52:40]
And now he has a luggage company.

[00:52:42]
And he’s just really good at naming
colors and naming product lines.

[00:52:46]
And basically, one time I was like,

[00:52:48]
Victor, I have this idea,
but I don’t have a name for it.

[00:52:52]
Can you name it for me?

[00:52:54]
If you come up with a name,
can you let me know?

[00:52:57]
Didn’t hear from him.

[00:52:59]
And then out of nowhere,
I think it was like, a Saturday morning,

[00:53:04]
he sends me a text and he’s like, hey,
buy this domain now, like, ewebinar.com

[00:53:11]
and he’s like, oh,

[00:53:13]
he’s like, I want to say he got it
down to, like, $2,000 something.

[00:53:17]
And he was like, It’s a really good deal.

[00:53:20]
Just buy it, like, buy it before
this person changes their mind.

[00:53:23]
Right.

[00:53:24]
And I looked at it and I’m like,
yeah, it’s like, $2,000.

[00:53:28]
That’s so expensive.

[00:53:29]
But of course,
I’m going to trust this guy.

[00:53:31]
So then I buy it.

[00:53:33]
And of course, if you think about
eWebinar, it’s like, mail versus email.

[00:53:36]
Right.

[00:53:37]
So, like, Webinar Live Webinar vs.
eWebinar automated.

[00:53:40]
So the name grew on me,
and then it became a thing.

[00:53:42]
So then a couple of years later,
I run into this person on a conference

[00:53:47]
that was like, what he does is
he trades domains for a living.

[00:53:53]
And then he was like, man,

[00:53:54]
if you paid less than 50,000
for that domain, it’s a deal.

[00:54:00]
That’s awesome.
And I paid, like, 2,000.

[00:54:03]
Nice.
It was just like, my friend being savvy,

[00:54:06]
and he was just thinking of names
and trying them on GoDaddy.

[00:54:09]
And then this, like.
This one came out. Oh, that’s genius.

[00:54:12]
Yeah.
That is genius.

[00:54:14]
Anytime you see domains like that, you’re
like, did you get that 20 years ago?

[00:54:19]
How did you pull that off?

[00:54:21]
That’s amazing.
Yeah.

[00:54:22]
I mean, we’re all sitting on some
domains we’re unwilling to let go of.

[00:54:26]
Right.
Because of that.

[00:54:27]
Yeah, I get it.

[00:54:29]
That’s the GoDaddy business model. For some people it works.
That’s cool.

[00:54:33]
That’s very cool.
Awesome.

[00:54:36]
Melissa.

[00:54:36]
Well, thank you so much
for being on the show.

[00:54:38]
You shared a lot of information here.

[00:54:39]
I’m impressed.

[00:54:41]
Thanks so much for having me.

[00:54:42]
This is fun.
Indeed.

[00:54:44]
This has been Authentic Business Adventures,
the business program that brings

[00:54:50]
the struggles, stories, and triumphant successes of business owners across the land.

[00:54:51]
We are underwritten
locally by the Bank of Sun Prairie.

[00:54:55]
You’re listening or
watching this on the web.

[00:54:56]
If you could do us a huge, solid,
give it a thumbs up,

[00:54:59]
share comment and especially
share it with all those entrepreneurs you

[00:55:03]
know, that need this because
webinars can be tough.

[00:55:06]
So Melissa’s got a great thing going on.

[00:55:08]
And then is that eWebinar.com,
arguably one of the coolest domain names

[00:55:13]
ever to exist that matches
the business so well

[00:55:17]
That’s awesome.

[00:55:18]
You’re so used to tech companies
just coming up with some crazy word.

[00:55:22]
Just make something up because it would
probably be easier to find a domain.

[00:55:25]
So this is genius.

[00:55:28]
I love it.

[00:55:30]
My name is James Kademan
and Authentic Business Adventures is

[00:55:33]
brought to you by Calls on Call, offering
call answering and receptionist services

[00:55:37]
for service businesses across the country
on the web at callsoncall.Com as well as

[00:55:42]
Draw in Customers Business
Coaching, offering business coaching services

[00:55:45]
for entrepreneurs looking for growth
on the web at drawincustomers.com

[00:55:49]
and of course,
The Bold Business Book, a book

[00:55:51]
for the entrepreneur in all of us
available wherever fine books are sold.

[00:55:55]
We’d like to thank you,
our wonderful listeners,

[00:55:57]
as well as our guest, Melissa Kwan,
the co-founder and CEO of eWebinar.com.

[00:56:02]
Melissa, thank you so much
for being on the show.

[00:56:05]
Thanks so much for having me, James.

[00:56:07]
Past episodes can be found
morning, noon, and night.

[00:56:09]
The podcast link found at drawincustomers.com.

[00:56:11]
Thank you for listening and we
will see you next week.

[00:56:13]
I want you to stay awesome.

[00:56:14]
And if you do nothing else,
enjoy your business.