ProfitLed Podcast
Most startup advice is built around venture capital, hypergrowth, and unicorn exits. ProfitLed is for the rest of us. Hosted by Melissa Kwan, 3x bootstrapped founder and CEO of eWebinar, ProfitLed explores what it's really like to build a company on your own terms, without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.
Season Three goes beyond strategy as we explore the intersection of Passion, Profit, and Purpose and what happens when founders evolve and come into financial success.If you're building something real, this one's for you. **Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com**Brought to you by eWebinar.com**
Episodes
46 episodes
In Pursuit of Freedom | Chris Walker, S3E2
Chris Walker bootstrapped Refine Labs from $3,000 to over $20 million in revenue in three years, becoming one of the most influential voices in B2B marketing. He had the audience, the recognition, and the revenue. Then he walked away from all o...
The Intersection of Passion, Profit, and Purpose - Intro to Season Three | S3E1
Hey, it's me again, Melissa, back for Season Three. I'm the cofounder and CEO of eWebinar, and your host here at ProfitLed. This episode is the backstory behind this season's theme: Passion, Profit, and Purpose, and how those three things shift...
The 12 Most Shocking Surprises on Our Way to $1M ARR | S2E27
It took eWebinar 16 months to go from idea to product launch, then another 36 months to hit $1M ARR; this is the core theme of this season. That's a total of 52 months from incorporation date.You might have read about companies that get ...
9 Most Important PLG Lessons Learned | S2E26
When Melissa cofounded eWebinar, she had no idea it was going to be “product-led”. Before becoming an entrepreneur, she had always been in B2B sales and biz dev roles. She was always a sales-led founder as both her previous startups were enterp...
What Lifestyle Business Means | S2E25
“This is fine as a lifestyle business.” Says every VC with a slight look of disdain after you pitch them your brilliant idea they don’t want to invest in. The industry has given “lifestyle business” such a bad reputation by commonly...
5 Pricing Decisions that Turned Out to be Costly Mistakes | S2E24
Should you “do right by your customers” at the expense of the company, your team, and your own wellbeing? Your answer might be “yes”, until you realize a small change that customers would barely feel could mean instant profitability...
Why We Stayed Away from Enterprise | S2E23
Most companies think the answer to more revenue is to sell enterprise, but they aren't aware of the massive hassle and costs that come with going upmarket.There's no such thing as free money. The bigger the deal, the more attention you n...
5 Wrong Hires that Ended Up Costing $450k | S2E22
Hiring is one of the biggest challenges every company faces. For bootstrapped startups, this challenge is even bigger as we have to compete against funded companies and tech giants.Part of building a startup is trial and error, throwing ...
When Our Startup Became a Real Business | S2E21
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...
Social Selling and Personal Branding | S2E20
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 ...
12 $0 Marketing Strategies | S2E19
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 y...
The Customer is NOT Always Right | S2E18
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, lead...
You Pay Peanuts, You Get Monkeys | S2E17
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...
Our $130k Mistake in Affiliate Marketing | S2E16
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...
How We Decided on Our Roadmap | S2E15
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.
10 Go-to-Market Strategies that Didn't Work | S2E14
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...
Owning SEO When Marketing Agencies Suck | S2E13
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 vic...
Staying Super Duper Lean | S2E12
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: • ...
Leveraging Customers to Sell Our Product | S2E11
Melissa and Todd talks about how (and why) they leveraged their best customers to sell and market eWebinar by using the language they used to describe value propositions and how the product solves their problems.Takeaways: •&nbs...
Importance of Founder-Led Sales | S2E10
Founder-led sales is the ONLY way to get your startup off the ground. If you can't sell your own product, how can you expect someone else to? On this episode, Melissa digs into why every founder needs to be the first to sell their product, and ...
Product Launched, Now What? | S2E9
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:...
Launching Our MVP and Converting 85% of Trials | S2E8
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 stressfu...
Coming Up With Our Business Model and Price Point | S2E7
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 ...
Going from Idea to Product Launch in 16 Months | S2E6
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 r...
Recruiting a Top 1% Cofounder and CTO | S2E5
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 eno...