After building and exiting two Blue Ocean startups that, in her own words, were painful, my guest, Melissa Kwan, figured it out.
"It's important to know what you want to do, but even more important to know what you don't want to do. And I had two startups, as you mentioned, that were quite painful in the sense that I didn't think I was very smart or very strategic in choosing the actual idea and choosing the product. But these aren't things that you just know right off the bat. You have to learn these things through experience.”
She and her partner built eWebinar in a way that required little overhead and allowed them to travel and work from anywhere.
With no one to sell but herself she picked up the phone and called the people she knew and that got her started, but it wasn’t enough. She took a course and quickly learned that sharing content on LinkedIn about her journey as an entrepreneur would drive traffic, but she didn’t do it for that alone. She recognized that her story would help others. I’m not talking about a little self-promotional post here; I’m talking about taking hours to determine the right content and write and edit it before posting to ensure the maximum impact. It worked.
Along with that she learned that appearing on podcasts to tell her story would be a great way to get the word out and she’s now been on over 100 podcasts. She also hosts her own podcast called, ProfitLed.
Melissa's journey is a testament to innovation and adaptability. It's a reminder that success lies in solving real problems.
Chapters
01:22 Melissa explains what eWebinar does
07:41 Melissa's strategy of introducing a validated business model in a blue ocean market
09:43 The skills needed to build a successful business can be acquired
12:12 Building a better product by improving existing solutions
17:28 Founder-led sales to get initial customers
19:56 Transitioning to marketing and SEO for growth
24:11 Using the eWebinar software as the demo experience
26:21 Attribution is difficult due to dark social, multiple strategies required
28:39 Podcasts as a marketing strategy for building brand and exposure
30:22 Initial experience with podcast agency and decision to self-place
36:40 SEO and content generation as the top lead generation method
39:16 Lack of high-quality leads in companies
42:37 Rethinking sales strategies to adapt to changing buyer behavior
About Guest
You know webinars right? They're amazing and people love them. It's the only way to get in front of all your customers without hopping on a plane.
But there's a massive problem: someone has to be there to do them live.
Which makes them completely unscalable, especially if you have customers in different time zones.
eWebinar automates this process by taking a video and delivering it like a webinar, so you can do hundreds of the same webinar without ever needing to actually be there in front of a camera to do the webinar.
Our chat feature lets attendees ask you questions even if you're not there. You can hop in to respond live if you want, but if you're not there, you can respond later via email. This works just like any support chat system (chat bubble you see when you land on a website).
eWebinar saves people from doing the same boring demo, onboarding, and training webinar over and over again by turning any video into an interactive webinar that they can set on a recurring schedule or make available on-demand.
Companies are using eWebinar to deliver hundreds of webinars to customers and prospects every month without a live host. Resulting in happier team members and most importantly, delightful customers.
"On live webinars, it's hard to answer every question before the session ends. Now we run over 100 webinars a month and only spend an hour a day answering every message." - Anett Vándor, Customer Eng