ProfitLed Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Spending money on marketing is often not an option for bootstrapped startups, at least not enough to make a meaningful impact.

Without an abundance of resources, there’s no choice but to get creative.

While found-led sales can get you off the ground, your network can exhaust pretty quickly, leaving you with the challenge of figuring out new ways to generate demand.

On this episode, Melissa and Todd share the 12 most effective zero-dollar marketing strategies that got eWebinar to $1M ARR.

Takeaways:
• Why paid marketing should be your last resort
• How to create evergreen content that lasts forever
• 12 $0 strategies you can steal to grow your own business

Contact ProfitLed

• Tweet us at @profitledfm.
• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm.

Connect with our host

• Follow Melissa Kwan on LinkedIn where she share stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar.
Learn more at ewebinar.com and find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into automated webinars that perform better than a live webinar.

Thanks for listening!

Companies like Amazon and Costco who pride themselves on customer service conditioned consumers (me and you) to think that customers are always right - but, are they?

In the faceless world of software, customer demands can be brutal, leading to soul crushing and demoralizing support. Training your customers to respect your team and product sets the foundation for healthy business relationships that make you feel appreciated.

On this episode, Melissa and Todd recount customers from hell, the things they did to try and get around paying for the service, and how they dealt with demanding and rude customers.

Takeaways:
• What happens to your business when the customer is always right
• Our customer horror stories and what they did to game the system
• How we set expectations for customer relationships
• How to deal with customers from hell

Contact ProfitLed

• Tweet us at @profitledfm.
• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm.

Connect with our host

• Follow Melissa Kwan on LinkedIn where she share stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar.
Learn more at ewebinar.com and find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into automated webinars that perform better than a live webinar.

Thanks for listening!

Launching eWebinar after 18 months was a huge milestone, but then what? On this episode, Melissa and Todd discuss what it was like to wake up from the dream that if you build it, they'll come. Spoiler alert: That didn't happen.

Takeaways:
• When reality set in after months of daydreaming
• Product assumptions that worked and didn't work
• Initial user reactions, the good, the bad, and the ugly
• Why the market wasn't as ripe as they thought
• Things that went well and things that didn't
• Realizing people didn't always understand the solution
• What to do when it's going to take way longer to hit profitability than anticipated

Contact ProfitLed

• Tweet us at @profitledfm.
• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm.

Connect with our host

• Follow Melissa Kwan on LinkedIn where she share stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar.
Learn more at ewebinar.com and find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into automated webinars that perform better than a live webinar.

Thanks for listening!

Melissa and Todd dive  into the thrilling and nerve-wracking experience of launching eWebinar's MVP.  While  many people see product launches as the end goal and celebratory occasion, Melissa explains why it's often more stressful instead because that's when the dreams you've sold become reality.

They reminisce about getting stuck in a never-ending rabbit hole of features, how frustrated David (CTO) was, and how they ultimately had to choose a launch date just to get the product out the door.  Melissa recounts the fascinating experience of seeing users (webinar attendees) interactive with eWebinar for the first time and the pressure she felt from her startup finally coming to life.

Tune in and learn how Melissa got their first trial users on board, and how they ended up converting 85% of those users at the first billing date.

Contact ProfitLed

• Tweet us at @profitledfm.
• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm.

Connect with our host

• Follow Melissa Kwan on LinkedIn where she share stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar.
Learn more at ewebinar.com and find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into automated webinars that perform better than a live webinar.

Thanks for listening!

Melissa and Todd discuss how they established eWebinar's pricing model, focusing on aligning their business strategy with their lifestyle goals and market approach. Melissa shares insights from her past ventures, highlighting her shift towards a product-led strategy to ensure the business supports a hands-off lifestyle, avoiding the demanding nature of sales-led models. Melissa explains why she’s against freemium and opted for free trial instead, and the reason they chose a low cost pricing structure to temper customer expectations about service levels.

They talk about how eWebinar’s automated functionality required a unique pricing model based on the number of active webinars instead of live concurrent attendees, a risk they took as it moved away from traditional webinar software business models. This resulted in challenges and difficulty in explaining their model to prospective customers unfamiliar with automated webinars. Melissa and Todd reflect on the importance of pricing in shaping customer relationships and the need for ongoing adjustments based on usage and user exploitation.

Contact ProfitLed

• Tweet us at @profitledfm.
• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm.

Connect with our host

• Follow Melissa Kwan on LinkedIn where she share stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar.
Learn more at ewebinar.com and find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into automated webinars that perform better than a live webinar.

Thanks for listening!

When Melissa first went to Todd with the idea of eWebinar, he wasn't immediately convinced the product was solving a much needed problem. She engaged him as a contractor to write the first version of the website which started with competitive research. During that process, he grew passionate about the idea because he identified a gap in the market for a product that could offer a superior automated webinar experience.

On this episode, Todd describes the process he went through in doing market research and how he came up with the set of launch features. Melissa and Todd also discuss how they strategically cut things down to speed up their launch date, otherwise they would've been stuck in a perpetual rabbit hole of never-ending development.

Contact ProfitLed

• Tweet us at @profitledfm.
• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm.

Connect with our host

• Follow Melissa Kwan on LinkedIn where she share stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar.
Learn more at ewebinar.com and find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into automated webinars that perform better than a live webinar.

Thanks for listening!

David, eWebinar's CTO and Cofounder, floated around for 2 years as a fractional CTO before joining the company. Previous to that, he was the cofounder for a New York telecomm startup that raised $10m, but shut down after they failed to find enough traction after 4 years to continue raising capital.

Melissa shares David's story and what his mindset was after quitting Microsoft for startup life, and how his beliefs shifted away from gunning for "all or nothing" to "how do I not end up with nothing?"

On this episode, Melissa talks about what founders should know when they're pitching an experienced CTO who has an abundance of options, what a top 1% CTO/Cofounder looks like, and how to navigate equity split when they decide to join your team.

Contact ProfitLed

• Tweet us at @profitledfm.
• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm.

Connect with our host

• Follow Melissa Kwan on LinkedIn where she share stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar.
Learn more at ewebinar.com and find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into automated webinars that perform better than a live webinar.

Thanks for listening!

Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to have a cofounder to start a company. But, that may work for or against you if you're a business cofounder, depending on whether or not you have the technical chops (or lead on your side) to manage a development team.

After two previous startups, Melissa was sick of (not doing a good job) managing engineers and thought she could start eWebinar by hiring a dev shop to build their v1 before outsourcing to a team in Vietnam.

That experience was a disaster, but it led her to her now cofounder and CTO, David, who's also her life partner.

Melissa shares her perspective on what a great founding team looks like and how to go about convincing people to join you before there's even a product.

Contact ProfitLed

• Tweet us at @profitledfm.
• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm.

Connect with our host

• Follow Melissa Kwan on LinkedIn where she share stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar.
Learn more at ewebinar.com and find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into automated webinars that perform better than a live webinar.

Thanks for listening!

People think bootstrapping is a financial decision, when it's really a lifestyle choice.  Read that again.

In this episode, Melissa talks about the reasons behind choosing to build eWebinar as a lifestyle company and how that shapes every decision they make from how they operate, to who they hire, to company culture.

Melissa and Todd discuss the benefits of bootstrapping over venture capital, what it means to run a bootstrapped company, and misconceptions about bootstrapping which include things like: they raise zero capital, founders don't want to give away equity, they have smaller exits...

Contact ProfitLed

• Tweet us at @profitledfm.
• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm.

Connect with our host

• Follow Melissa Kwan on LinkedIn where she share stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar.
Learn more at ewebinar.com and find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into automated webinars that perform better than a live webinar.

Thanks for listening!

Melissa founded eWebinar two months after her last startup (real estate SaaS software) was acquired. This episode is the origin story of eWebinar: how she finally settled on eWebinar vs all the other ideas she had, and why she was determined to bootstrap this startup over raising venture capital.

Melissa talks about the importance of choosing an idea/product that makes you happy over what you have experience in and why the traditional model of building a career on top of your education is counter-intuitive.

Todd (co-host and COO of eWebinar) tells his story of working with startups that never took off, and why he still decided to take a chance in eWebinar from day one, long before there was a product. He shares insights around what it takes to recruit your first hire who is an experienced, high-paying, seasoned executive.

Contact ProfitLed

• Tweet us at @profitledfm.
• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm.

Connect with our host

• Follow Melissa Kwan on LinkedIn where she share stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.

This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar.
Learn more at ewebinar.com and find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into automated webinars that perform better than a live webinar.

Thanks for listening!