ProfitLed Podcast

Dec 10 2024 38 ep. 46 mins 6
ProfitLed Podcast artwork

On Season 2, Melissa Kwan (Cofounder of eWebinar) and Todd Parmley (COO) relive their "Journey to $1M" ARR, bootstrapping eWebinar from day one. 

Each episode goes in depth into one major aspect of the journey, as Melissa and Todd share war stories, mistakes, and lessons learned as they grew the company to a million in annual recurring revenue, over a period of 36 months from product launch.

If you’re a bootstrapper who wants a window into the day-to-day lives of other scrappy bootstrappers navigating the realities of building a successful company – the good, the bad, and the ugly! – this podcast is for you.
__

ProfitLed is a podcast by and for bootstrapped founders brave (or crazy) enough to grow their businesses to profitability without venture capital.

There’s so much content out there featuring VC-backed founders and the unicorns they ride. But everyone else? Not so much. 

ProfitLed is dedicated to sharing the hard-won experience of bootstrappers in order to inspire fellow bootstrapped entrepreneurs to grow their own businesses and propel themselves closer to the freedom they’re working so hard to achieve.

Presented by: eWebinar - https://ewebinar.com

  Business  Technology
RSS feed Share
Copy RSS


Subscribe on Podcast Addict


S2E21 When Our Startup Became a Real Business

Dec 10 2024 43 mins  
eWebinar was built in a silo for 18 months before the first person signed up for a trial. Melissa and her team had no idea if this business would become “real”, and if people were going to pay for the service.On this episode, Melissa and Todd recount stories of when they knew they were onto something, through customer interactions and feedback, outgrowing their marketing websit

S2E20 Social Selling and Personal Branding

Nov 26 2024 44 mins  
If you’ve been following Melissa on LinkedIn, you’ll know that she’s a frequent contributor on the platform, sharing lessons and stories from her journey bootstrapping three startups. What you might not know is the backstory of WHY she turned to social selling after running out of leads to sell to.On this episode, Melissa shares her “hacks” of building a content machine s

S2E19 12 $0 Marketing Strategies

Nov 12 2024 68 mins  
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,

S2E18 The Customer is NOT Always Right

Oct 29 2024 48 mins  
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 re

S2E17 You Pay Peanuts, You Get Monkeys

Oct 15 2024 35 mins  
15 years ago, Dropbox spread like wildfire with their freemium product and that gave us the impression that free = more users. It deluded companies to think that giving something away for free is a go-to-market strategy, when it’s far from that.Giving away something for free has many negative implications that aren’t often talked about. The most irritating one being the fact th

S2E16 Our $130k Mistake in Affiliate Marketing

Sep 24 2024 35 mins  
If you have a great product and offer a commission for people to promote it, they’d happily do it and you’d just make money, right? Not so fast…On this episode, Melissa and Todd recount the painful memories of spending $130k on affiliate marketing over 10 months; an experience Melissa considers the “biggest financial mistake she’s made in her career”.Takeaways:• Why w

S2E15 How We Decided on Our Roadmap

Sep 10 2024 45 mins  
Everyone says you need to measure everything so you can make data-driven decisions on your product. That's exactly the strategy eWebinar DID NOT follow, especially when there's not going to be enough data when you don't have enough users.On this episode, Melissa and Todd shares how they decided on priorities even before having a significant customer base, and the lean process their

S2E14 10 Go-to-Market Strategies that Didn't Work

Jul 30 2024 34 mins  
Running a startup is a lot of throwing things against the wall to see what sticks (and what doesn't). The hard truth is, majority of things you do won't work...but you need to do them anyway to find the few things that do.On this episode, Melissa and Todd dives into the 10 go-to-marketing strategies that didn't work for them, why, and what they learned from each one.Takeaways: •

S2E13 Owning SEO When Marketing Agencies Suck

Jul 16 2024 47 mins  
In the last 13 years, Melissa has worked with over 10 marketing agencies/contractors to execute a content strategy. Most couldn't deliver on their promise. It was incredibly frustrating. You may have experienced something similar.The vicious cycle went something like this:→ Hire company experienced in digital marketing for min 3-6 months→ Get proposal of new content strategy be

S2E12 Staying Super Duper Lean

Jun 25 2024 45 mins  
Melissa and Todd talks about how they stay super lead as a bootstrapped startup, how they decide what to and what not to spend money on, and how to avoid money mistakes they've made in the last few years.Takeaways: • What "lean" means especially for bootstrapped startups• The importance of optimizing cost versus being cheap• What to spend money on (software, people, operation