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As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the 2x Webby Award Honoree Be A Marketer podcast!
Dave Charest: Today on episode nine of the Be a Marketer podcast, you'll hear from a founder that found success only after failing. And I'm sharing why you should stop selling to sell more. This is the Be a Marketer podcast my name is Dave Charest, director of small business success at Constant Contact, and I've been helping small business owners like you make sense of online marketing for over 16 years. You can be a marketer, and I'm here to help. Hello. Hello, friend, and welcome to another episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. As always, grateful to have you here with me today. Today I thought I'd share one of the things that actually is a philosophy that I've followed pretty much throughout my career as I've gotten into online marketing and started learning more about this and having some time running my own business and of course, spending some time at constant contact. Formerly director of content marketing, which is really kind of where I grew up in marketing. And, you know, one of the philosophies that I always shared with my team was that all good things come from focusing on the people that you're trying to reach and helping them become more successful. Now, why did I think this, or why do I propose this philosophy to people? Well, really, I believe that if you start to approach your business and your marketing in this way, things start to take on a different energy. Instead of this idea of trying to sell people get somebody to take an action that you want them to take. Ultimately, people don't like to be sold to. And instead, if you can focus on what you can provide to help someone achieve the thing that they're trying to do, what you're really doing is you're helping them make the best decision for themselves. And this is when the marketing that you create and the things that you're doing really start to add value to people, and your marketing starts to become this thing that people are searching for. It's what people are consuming and it's the things that actually people want to share. And so it becomes this thing of value to them rather than a thing that's interrupting them in their day. And so when you start to think about that, at the end of the day, what you end up with is more people that are raving customers and happy with the purchases that they've made from you rather than regretting them. And so this is an important distinction. And I think sometimes we can get stuck in our marketing brain where we have to do things a certain way. And if we can just shift that thinking again to be focused on the people that we're trying to reach and helping them become more successful. Everything takes on a different energy. Well, friend, today's guest is no stranger to the idea of helping potential customers see for themselves if your product or service is a good fit for them. In fact, he believes teaching is the new selling in today's modern business world. Omar Zenhom is the co founder and CEO of webinar Ninja, founded in 2014. Over 2 million people have attended a webinar on webinar Ninja, and it was named one of the fastest growing SaaS companies in 2018. Now, Omar is also the host of the iTunes Best of 2014 podcast, the $100 NBA show. Now, with over 200 million downloads and over 2000 episodes, the $100 NBA show is ranked as a top business podcast in over 30 countries. So how did he get there? Well, it all started after Omar didn't get that promotion at his teaching job. He realized he didn't have much control over his career or his ability to move to the next level. This became a defining moment in his life because his frustration of his situation outgrew his fear of leaving his job of 13 years. Now, he had been building online businesses on the side for about ten years, and he came to the realization that if he dedicated as much energy and focus to his business as he did his job, he should be okay. And that's the moment he decided to go out on his own. He moved to New York City with his then girlfriend, now wife and business partner, and he started a small business consultancy firm. Let's pick up the conversation there.
Omar Zenhom: So when I was making that leap and I moved to New York, the first thought was that, let me just create a small business consulting firm, because I would get questions from my friends and family about how to start a business, how to build a website, how to market, how to set prices, all that kind of stuff. So I created a service based business where I would help build people's websites and get their business and logo up and all that kind of stuff. Stuff. It was called Business Republic. And I just, yeah, I started there when I was in New York, and this is circa 2012. And eventually I wanted to take what I've learned about building businesses over the years and what I've helped with all my clients and put into a course. And that's where the $100 MBA started in 2013. In 2013, I used to run a lot of webinars to be able to sell my course and sell my services and all that kind of stuff, because I thought it was, this is a brilliant idea. I can, like, teach to 100 people at one time. The only problem that was that I hated all the tools that are out there. They're very clunky. They were really built for meetings and not really for teaching. So I wanted to create something that scratched my own itch. And that's where the idea of webinar ninja came out.
Dave Charest: Where did all the marketing knowledge, the business knowledge, was that your background to begin with? Is that what you studied?
Omar Zenhom: No.
Dave Charest: So where did all that come from?
Omar Zenhom: Yeah, I would say a combination of things. So the first thing was, my dad was in sales. My dad is an engineer by trade, but in the seventies he lost his job, and due to the economy and in the pursuit of putting food on the table, a friend of his told him, hey, why dont you come and work for us as a salesman until you get on your feet? A car salesman. And he just fell in love with it, and it became his forte, became his thing. I remember from a young age going to work with my dad on Saturdays. I used to work at the wash bay, at the car dealership. And as much as I resisted that world because it was intimidating to me, the idea of just talking to strangers and selling them something. And I think some of that stuff seeped in just by being around my dad. And what I realized is that my father was very good, what he did. He was like the best salesman at the dealership. For every single month, they would have a plaque on the wall saying salesman of the month. And my dads name would be every single month, even the months he took off. He would come back the last day of the month and have all his appointments scheduled in one day. But the point was that he really wasnt somebody that tried to sell anybody anything, would try to figure out and ask a lot of questions, what are they struggling with? He would ask things like, what do you don't like about your car right now? And he would highlight the features of the car that he was selling to them that would fit their needs or fit really what they're looking for, rather than kind of saying all the stuff that goes over their head, like wishbone suspension, like they don't care about that stuff. They really just care about a better stereo or something like that. So I think that stuff kind of seeped in. So I would say that's the first thing, just being around my dad and learning that as a young kid. But the second thing is that I started dabbling on the Internet, learning about business in 2002. And if you can remember back then, listeners and Dave, there wasnt a lot out there. And most of the people that were teaching online business and online marketing would be considered sort of like hardcore Internet marketers and maybe even like scammers today. And I didnt throw out the baby out with the bath water. I would learn what you had to do. And I learned from some of these Internet marketing gurus and left what didnt feel comfortable. But I learned the basics. And at the very least, the things they would mention, the books, they would mention the 22 immutable laws of marketing. That book really helped me a lot. Marketing books by Ogilvy and just understanding what copy is all about, understanding the communication. And honestly, I would say that my teaching background helped me tremendously because teaching is really just the art of communication, the art of being able to convince somebody of something. One of the things people don't realize is, as a teacher, I am given an assignment to make sure that I have 30 bodies in the room. I got to make sure they understand a certain skill set. They have to be able to pull off something by the end of the semester so they could pass the exam, or my job's in jeopardy. So there's a lot of pressure to be able to first convince them that they should learn this. Right? Like, hey, get them on board. Whether that's being likable, whether that's just being a good teacher, whether that's understanding what motivates people. So a lot of that, a lot of those skills are transferable, and I think that really helped me a lot.
Dave Charest: Yeah. So I kind of got started in this around 2006 and quite similar. You go down these paths that like, oh, wait, this doesn't feel right. And you kind of take what, like, the key pieces of things, but like, okay, let me go this way and find somebody that's doing something in another way. And I love this idea of, like, even the story with your dad. Right? Like, yeah. What are the things that you don't like in finding and probing and understanding? You know, what are the things that people are really looking for? Versus, like, you, you said the things that they don't really even care about or know about. Right. First question is this. So webinar ninja, right? Like, I mean, do you know anything about building the software? Like, did you have to find people to help you do that? Like, how did that even get.
Omar Zenhom: Yeah, so a lot of people, they look at my businesses, they look at my story, and they think it's just a bunch of, like, one success after the other. Everything I've done has starts with failure I've failed so many times it's not even a joke. Some of the stories I don't even share because it's just laughable how bad it is. But even the podcast, even the software. So webinar Ninja for example, when I was running webinars to sell my products and services, I would have to hodgepodge this whole setup. I would create landing pages with the landing page software. I would automate the email notifications to remind people. With my email marketing software, I would have to embed their streaming video software into a page and then have to make sure my attendees can see it. And then I would have to make sure I install some sort of chat software on the page so they can communicate with the audience and give calls to action. I would then have to make sure I record that video and then send it out in the replay via email on a different page. And I had to make sure that that was only available for a certain time. I would make sure the time zones got converted, there's calendar, all this stuff. So I'm basically hodgepodging maybe 15 or 16 pieces of technology to run a webinar that we kind of take for granted today. And I thought it takes me like 2 hours every single week to do this. And I did it because it was helping my business and it was getting me sales. So I created a course and a guide called the DIY webinar Guide saying hey im going to show you step by step how to put this all together so you could do this for your business. And Nicole and I worked on that for like four months and shot the videos and published the PDF and everything, right? And we launched this thing, crossed our fingers, its going to be amazing and I kid you not, I had two sales on the launch and one of them was a chargeback, the other one was a sympathy sale from a friend of who's starting to support us. But it reminds me of a quote by Ben Horowitz from the book the hard thing about hard things. And he says sometimes you got to create a bad product to create a great one. What I realized in that moment, in that big failure and waste of four months, and by the way, just so everybody's understanding, I can't afford not making money for four months. I'm in a tight situation financially, personally. I want to make sure that I can pay my bills. I just quit my job in teaching. I'm trying to prove everybody wrong. I didn't make the wrong decision by leaving my career. All this stuff, this is hurting bad, this failure but what I learned after I wiped my tears is people don't want to build the solution themselves. They want a turnkey solution. They want to just show up and make it happen. They don't want to have to do the work. And most people are not tech savvy enough to the point to even follow the instructions that I'm giving by putting all these tools together. So in that moment, I realized, okay, I need to create something simple. And at the time, because I know how to my way around WordPress and a bit of PHP and HTML, just self taught because of the years of building websites and things like that. I'm nowhere near an engineer, but I did an MVP version, which was at the time a WordPress plugin. And we were plugged in for about six months until we launched and I proved the concept. Well, basically what I did is because of that big flop, I was like, all right, I gotta prove to myself first that people actually want what I'm creating, this, this MVP software. And before I even wrote any kind of code or anything like that or, or sold anything, I presold it. I actually created a landing page and I emailed my list, I emailed all my friends that I ever met. I went to a conference in 2014, January 2014, called New Media Expo. I think every entrepreneur goes to one of these conferences, that kind of light bulb moment where they see people doing things that they want to do. Being the entrepreneur, they dream to be all that kind of stuff. And for me it was just like, wow, that blogger is making $10,000 a month. That's crazy, man. I would love that. I always tell entrepreneurs that are always high achievers that we would probably be jealous of who we are today. Ten years ago, we forget how much we've grown. But the point here is that conference, I met so many great entrepreneurs and I really made an effort to write down everybody's email and connect with them on Twitter and stayed in touch with them. And then when I launched this pre sale of webinar and intra, it was basically just a landing page with mock ups of the design in Photoshop, basically my horrible designs skills. That page doesn't even exist on the Internet anymore because it was so hideous. It got me my 1st, 150 beta users. We sold out in 48 hours and we thought maybe let's see if we can sell another 100 spots. We opened it up for 24 hours that got sold out. So we're like, okay, we've got 250 users. They don't have anything yet. They just have the promise of a software that's going to help them teach online with webinars. And it was just enough money for us to hire a real engineer to build out the software. I really didn't know what I was doing. People asked me this question. I was just hoping that this engineer would build something good enough for me to give to my customers. Of course we launched, it worked. There were bugs, of course, but these people were so amazing. I know these people by name, this 250 beta users that we had. And what we did in that first group is we gave them lifetime access because I said to them, hey, listen, I want to commit to you, you commit to me, I want to be reciprocal about it. And I want them to give me feedback, want them to be honest, because they're like, hey, I have the software for life. I want to make sure that it gets better and better. And they're our biggest fans. They brought us a lot of customers just by sharing it with their audience. And a lot of people ask me, well, how do you fill those spots? How'd you get, how do you market? That's not easy to get 250 spots. And the answer I always give, people just don't like, they don't like this answer. But this is the truth. What happened is I basically did things that people don't, are not willing to do and which, nothing illegal or bad, but I was willing to email every single person I met at the conference. I was willing to dm them and I didn't ask them, hey, could you buy my software? I said, hey, listen, here's the landing page. This is what I'm building. This is my latest project. If you think it would be helpful to your audience, can you share in your newsletter, can you share it even just as a PS because that's more powerful to me. Their audience leveraging their audience is more powerful than them buying it. Like, it'd be great. They bought it, but they didn't. I'd rather them share it. And of course not everybody did it. I emailed about, I would say close to 80 people and about 56 of them did something, whether they shared it on social or their newsletter. Some of them did a webinar with me later on the line and helped me launch. They want to kind of see if it had legs first, which is fair enough. And that was enough for us to get over the line because my email list at the time was puny. It was like 500 people or something, 500 contacts. But it got us off the ground.
Dave Charest: It's funny how your whole demeanor changes when your backs up against the wall kind of on this, where it's like, okay, these are all the things that I need to do. You start thinking to your point, youre doing the things that many people arent willing to do, and a lot of times its just taking action. I love that story. I dont know if you share these numbers, but 250 beta users. Fast forward, where are you today?
Omar Zenhom: We have over 30,000 users, which has been incredible. Its been a long journey. Its been a little over eight years now. Theres never been any Hakasick growth. Its always been small incremental growth. I have to say I cant just give credit to me and my team. The nature of the software itself helps us grow because when somebody runs a webinar with their software, theyre exposed to it. And if theyre interested in running webinars to be like, okay, what is this software? This is interesting, let me look it up. So at least gave us some brand awareness. But one of the things that really like to leverage in terms of marketing, in terms of helping the software grow, is just an idea of brand affinity. Dont really look to make sure everything converts with every single metric and tracking every single thing. As we know now with iOS updates and all that kind of stuff, its really hard to track and have precise numbers. What we like to do is really have three big numbers that we track to see if our marketing is working. And thats basically just trials, trials, conversion and our churn rate. Thats really what we care about. And as long as those numbers are where they should be or moving in the right direction, we're going to be all right. Because if people are not leaving us, if more customers are coming in and more people are converting, we're doing our job. And this allows us to exhale a little bit and say, okay, we can have a little bit of fun, we can try to be helpful. We can do webinars for the sake of helping people. Like I've had people come on my demo, webinar sales webinars five, six, seven times and still not buy. And then on the 8th time they'll buy. Just because they love the content, they love our team, they enjoy it. And we've had a lot of inspiration along the way. One of my friends in the business is Chris Savage from Wistia, who is the founder of Wistiae. And ive always told them I admire what they do in terms of branding and content marketing. And thats one of the models that we built around our business. So just helpful articles, blogs, and just giving them as much help as possible. And maybe that goes back to what my dad used to do, is just understanding that people need help. My job is not to make them buy anything, because heres the secret a lot of people dont want to talk about. You cant make anybody buy anything if you try to do that. And we've all kind of fell into that somehow, somewhere. We have buyers remorse. We either refund it or we're not happy with the company and we don't buy something from. But what you can do, if you can't make somebody buy anything, you can help them make a decision. And that's really what my job is, is to help them make a decision, to say, hey, this is a good fit for you. My lowest plan is a good fit for you. Not having a plan right now. Maybe you should just consume the content because you're not ready in terms of the content or your business, or maybe you don't have a product yet. Some people are like, I don't have a product yet. Can I use the webinars? Yes, you can, to grow your list and things like that. But if you want to make sales, you need a product. So it's okay to not sell sometimes and just help them make a decision.
Dave Charest: There's so many good things here that I'm loving all of this. I want to take a moment, though, to just say, okay, 250, 30,000 users. How does that accomplishment make you feel?
Omar Zenhom: Tired. Honestly, that's the first thing that I think of is, like, what it took to do that. When I started this journey, I had long, dark hair. You know, this is how I earned my gray hairs. I dont like to sugarcoat things. It was a lot of hard work, and my life has been hard. Ive been working a lot on this business, and a lot of it was the sense of, I want to be able to look back on this and have no regrets. I dont think ill be doing this forever. Im in my early forties, and I see entrepreneurship very much like american football. You cant play every day. You have to play once a week. You know, its such a high contact sport. Its very taxing on you. At some point, youre going to have to start playing golf. You just cant burn the candle on both ends forever, especially in a software business. Software business is not a lifestyle business. Its not a content business. Its one of those things that you cant build alone. You got to build it with a team and rely on other people. And theres a lot that can go wrong. The stakes are high, especially with a software like webinars, where people, if things go wrong, like it's high stakes for the factual user because they're live in front of their customers and they want to make sure everything goes well. So for us, we really pride ourselves on making sure the quality is there before trying to expand and make sure that everybody's doing well and they're getting a win, because if they get a win, they'll tell others. So that's the first thing. It's a long journey. It's been tiring, but I am proud of myself and my partner, Nicole and the team, and I think we've done a great job, but we have a lot more work to do. Because the reason why I love entrepreneurship the most is because it forces you to become a better person. It forces you to get better every day. It's the best personal growth program I've ever seen in my life. Because you can't rest on your laurels. You have to keep improving because the market keeps changing. The demands of the market change if you don't change, if you don't change your perspective. And this is the thing that really gets to me, that really, like, when I say gets to me, it's a real gut punch. One of my favorite ways to improve as an entrepreneur is to read biographies. I love reading biographies of other entrepreneurs. Like, a good example of this is shoe dog by Phil Knight, which is the memoir of Phil Knight, the founder of Nike. And when you read this book, the book actually ends when he starts becoming successful. Like, when he starts, he signs Michael Jordan and the business take off. But the first 20 years, hes eating glass. For 20 years, hes in pain every single day. When he wakes up one, you realize, oh, am I ready to do all that and sacrifice all that to have a business that significant? So you start asking yourself questions like that. The other thing you realize is, wow, if I want to be the person that produces this kind of business, I have to be willing to change. I have to become that person. I can't be the same person now with the business I have now. If I want, like, the business, I was going to manifest itself and get lucky. That's not how it works. You got to become a person that produces a business of that caliber. So it forces you to realize, I got to get better, I got to change, I got to get coached, I got to learn, I got to start having an open mind and stop being so stubborn every time somebody confronts my ideas. All that is what really keeps me in the game, because the sense of improvement and I think that just comes from my experience as a teacher, is that when I saw that light bulb moment for my students, sometimes I was jealous. Wow, theyre learning this for the first time. This is such a beautiful moment. And thats my life now as an entrepreneur. Every day Im learning, Im realized, damn, I didnt know that or Im not as smart as I thought it was. So, yeah, that journey really taught me a lot.
Dave Charest: Jeff. Wow. Lots of amazing things here. And I had two other questions, and you answered them both in that conversation, which is great. Im like, oh, okay, here we go. We dont have to answer that. Do you have a typical day? What does a typical day look like for you these days?
Omar Zenhom: Yeah, I like to wake up in the morning. I like to have a slow morning. Im an early riser, and I wasnt always early riser. I just started to do this, I would say the last five years, and id get up around, id say 530 to six is usually the time, usually closer to 530. I like to have breakfast. Like, that was just a slow morning. And what I like to do is have breakfast. I journal, and I had a very hard time learning how to journal, but I start because I thought journaling had to be a certain way. But then I just told myself I could do anything I want. This is my journal. And sometimes I doodle. Sometimes I just write my to do list in my journal. Sometimes I just write down what I want to do this week or whatever, or what's worrying me. But what's really useful is I not only write my journal in the morning, I read back like maybe a few months ago, and I start to look at patterns and see, oh, the last three months, I keep saying I'm worried about this thing, or this is bothering me. This is a problem. I need to kind of address this issue or outsource this problem with somebody else. So thats really helpful. I have breakfast. I like to read a little bit.
Dave Charest: Preston, how long have you been journaling consistently?
Omar Zenhom: I would say about two years.
Dave Charest: Okay. And obviously youre doing it for a while now, right? You find that to be valuable, Jeff?
Omar Zenhom: Incredibly valuable, because I think that people dont realize that entrepreneurship, because its so hard, because its such a personal gain, youre basically trying to beat yourself. Youre trying to get better and better. Youre prone to a lot of anxiety. Youre prone to, a lot of people want to talk about its mental health challenges because things are bottled up in your head. And sometimes you need to write things down and just put it, detach yourself from it and say and look at on paper. Okay thats not that bad. I can deal with these things. Let me take these step by step and just journaling and writing and just realizing, oh, ive actually done a lot this year. Sometimes were so hard on ourselves and say like, oh, I didnt get anything done and accomplished, Jack. And just by looking back at it be like wow, actually I did a lot. I actually made all these hires and weve implemented these new systems and I spoke on these stages and we kind of just see as work and we don't realize, oh, I've done okay. So I think it's a great self help mechanism, but it's also a great way for you to document and review your progression. That's most I get out of it and I like to read in the morning just a bit. Books have been like a big inspiration for me. When I first started I didn't have a lot of money, so books were like my number one way of getting improvement. I try to read about 50 books a year, so I read about 15 minutes to 20 minutes in the morning and then 15 minutes at night. And then when I work out I listen to an audiobook. So that kind of covers about a book a week. Yeah. So after my slow morning for an hour, I usually get started at work in the morning. I like to get all my meetings done so I can have a quiet time in the afternoon. So I usually have like a couple meetings in the morning with the team, whether they're management meetings, whether they're product meetings. And then I usually take about a two hour block in my calendar where I get to have focused time to work on the things im working on with our ninja, whether its a new marketing campaign or maybe were launching a new product. And I want to be able to start documenting what kind of language were going to be using, what kind of branding were going to be implementing, all that kind of stuff. And then I have lunch and then I spend the afternoon working on the podcast where I have a dedicated time to plan and record. The podcast usually stop working around 03:00 so my workday is around I would say eight to three and then I go to the gym. I work out. I like to do that I used to do in the morning, but it was really hard to do it in the morning because I would not have a chance to journal or read and I'd like that slow morning and I just stopped resisting that. So I just started going when my brain stops working anymore, like it just locks up after a certain point and it's like, okay, time to use my body, use my brain for long enough so I go and work out at the gym. I play basketball twice a week. That's kind of my safe space. I love basketball, and, yeah, that's typically my day. I used to work through the weekends. The last year or so, we stopped doing that and use Saturday Sunday to recharge.
Dave Charest: Love that. Love that. The reason I asked about the journaling earlier and then some of the things you're talking about now, because this is a year for me that I've been also, like, near the end of last year, I've started journaling every day and doing things like that just to figure out. And then now I'm trying to work within my rhythms a little bit more in terms of, like, when it's the best time for me to do something creative versus working out, like, all of that stuff. So I love. I think it's fascinating when you start to find those things to, I mean, for lack of a better way, like, kind of optimize yourself. Right. In some ways, it's very fascinating to me. I want to talk a little bit about the podcast before, and then I want to spend some time talking just about some webinar tips you might have for people, because I think those are such a valuable thing. But in terms of the podcast, so much like the business, like, when did you start to see things take off with the podcast?
Omar Zenhom: So the podcast again started with a failure. I had another podcast before it. It's called people who know their shit. It was an interview podcast. The funny thing is, is that, yeah, I started it actually around the same time as webinar Ninja April. We ran it for about four or five months. It was, you know, about 46 episodes, I believe. We had some really great guests. Somehow I wrangled a way to get, like, Gary Vaynerchuk on our. On our pot. It was that time where he was doing saying yes to everything, and I got lucky. I was living in New York, and I was able to get him on the podcast. One of the things, the reason why I started the podcast is because I was at a speech that Seth Godin was giving in New York, and he said something tongue in cheek that kind of stuck with me. He said, if you want to be successful as a marketer and in business, the easiest way to do it is become famous. And he kind of said it just as a joking, and he was kind of referencing Kim Kardashian and all that stuff. But he was right. To have an audience really is really easy. And I wanted to have an audience that I can serve, really. I didnt care about selling it to them. I just wanted to be able to have somebody to talk to so that I can show my value and help them in some way. And then if I have something for sale that they can help them, theyll find it somehow. Thats how I buy things. And that podcast, the first one didnt really have like the best podcast episode we had was 400 downloads, and it was great and all, but we really didnt move the needle. And again, I did something that not a lot of people usually do, and that is be brutally honest with yourself. Nicole and I were on a road trip from San Diego to New York. She was still doing video gigs, and the gig was in New York. So we decided, let's just drive and think about why is this podcast not working? So what we did is we actually, we looked at the top business podcasts at the time in iTunes, and we said, okay, we got Tim Ferriss, who has like, what, five New York Times bestsellers. All this guy does is win. How am I going to compete with Tim Ferriss? How am I going to compete with Jordan Harbinger? His podcast at the time was art of charm. They started podcasting before the iPhone, right? Like, how am I going to compete with that, with that head start? How am I going to compete with John Lee Dumas entrepreneurs on Fire, who invented the daily podcast? And the guy was on fire constantly. The guy is incredible, great inspiration. How am I going to compete with these people? I had to be honest with myself. They have something that I don't. So then I ask myself, what do I have that they don't? And I thought, hmm, I'm probably a better teacher than all these people. You know, I have a master's education. I have multiple certificates in training and assessment. I used to do five matinees a day, which is, I used to teach five classes every single day, five days a week. I know how to teach. And we realized in the moment, Nicole and I, like, I should be teaching on the podcast. I shouldn't be interviewing people. This is my skillset. This is where I can really compete. And the second thing we realized, because we're connoisseurs of podcasts, we love podcasts as listeners. One of Nicoles favorite genres is language learning. And one of the podcasts she loved was coffee break French and coffee break Spanish, which is language lessons. And we thought to ourselves, well, no ones really doing this in the business space. No ones actually teaching a lesson in business every day, showing somebody how to get better 1% every day. Whether its and talk about topics that not everybody talks about, our podcast really delves in a lot of the stuff that is hard to talk about, like how to fire an employee, or how do you tell one of your teammates that you can't give them an increment because your budget, whatever it is, or how to get started with a very limited budget on paid ads. What if you only have $500 a month? Where do you get started with that money? Do you go to Facebook ads and burn it at all? Do you sponsor a newsletter? What do you do? So we thought, okay, we need to rethink this whole podcasting thing. So we launched the podcast $100 MBA show with the same name of our program, the $100 Baezenous, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's a $100 MBA education. And we thought, okay, we're going to make this the best possible podcast ever. We're going to focus on our strengths. I'm going to teach every day a daily lesson, and I'm really going to try my best to give as much value as possible in the way I know how to do it. And it was kind of liberating, but at the same time, really risky starting over. But we actually said no to all our clients for about two months to build out the podcast to, uh, record the first. We recorded the first, I believe, 30 episodes before we launched. I recorded like episode one, maybe twelve times over, because I wasn't satisfied with it. I still cringe when I listened to the first hundred episodes. Like I. And usually if you don't have cringe worthy work, you probably started too late. So we launched a podcast in August of 2014. We just had our head down and we just like, we gotta make this. As I really threw myself into it, I said, I am now a podcaster. I am now part of the mediaev. I need to get better at this. If I want to compete with the best, I got to become the best. And what I really invested in it, meaning I got voice lessons, I took public speaking lessons, I learned how to speak on the mic without sounding like Darth Vader, you know, not knowing how to control my breath. I really tried to make sure that the production was great as possible. We upgraded our equipment a bit, you know, all that kind of stuff. And we just really went to down with the podcast and we, we looked at our numbers from time to time. We knew at the time it was called Apple Podcasts now, but it was iTunes at the time where the podcasts were living there was a new and noteworthy section and you'd be part of new and noteworthy for about eight weeks when you launched. And we were number one in new and noteworthy for eight weeks. And we're like holy, this is crazy. We're having great, this is resonating with people. But we knew that a lot of podcasts after eight weeks, after their stop getting exposure on the homepage of the business section, they would just like fall off a cliff. So like the real truth of the success of the podcast happened after eight weeks. So we took a little bit of a dip but we bounced back. And just to share a small story at the time we moved to San Diego and our neighbors, very close neighbors were John Lee Dumas and Kate Erickson from entrepreneurs on fire. And John is a very generous person. People know him personally. He's a very generous person, very nice guy. He's the first person who called me when I got to San Diego and invited me for dinner over his house. And by the way, like I don't really have any success at the point. Like Webinar news didn't take off yet, the show hadn't take off yet. But we met at the conference, new media Expo again, that conference that started it all for me and I took seriously and he just said come on over and we'll have dinner. And by the way, he called me on the phone, I never give my number. I don't know how I got my number. Guy is super connected. But he called me, we went to dinner and we got to know them and every time we'd go to a meetup or conference where John was speaking, John would, in his bio they would say he won best of iTunes which is an award that Apple gives out. Its like an Oscar. It was like the top twelve podcasts of the year. And every time he would say that, Nicole, my wife and business partner, she would lunge into me and say oh that sounds amazing and were going to win it one day, dont worry. And I was like what are you talking about? We have no control over that. Can we just launch this damn podcast and worry about winning best of iTunes, winning an Oscar? We launched in 2014, in December of 2014 when they announced these awards, we were in Australia where Nicole is from and Im waking up in the morning, its around Christmas time and my phone is blowing up with tweets from people I dont even know, people like Alex Bloomberg from startup the podcast and gimlet Media and Im like why is Alex Bloomberg tweeting at me like I dont know Alex, hes a big time guy. Im a nobody. And he was saying congrats to me because we won best of iTunes. They announced it were one of those podcasts that won best of iTunes. I leaned over and showed Nicole on the phone, look what happened. And she was like, the first thing she told me was like, I told you, see, we won. I was like, okay, it was funny. It was funny. But we did win best of iTunes, and that helped us really propel our growth. We went from about 10,000 downloads an episode, and that kind of took us incrementally higher, about 20,000. And today, eight years later, we do about 125,000 downloads an episode, which is incredible to have that kind of reach. But I also feel like a sense of responsibility of like, I have this audience. I need to make sure that every time I deliver a lesson, an episode or have a guest teach a lesson, I need to make sure it's high quality and good caliber because they trust me. They trust me to give them direction where they're going.
Dave Charest: Wow. Well, what's the role that you see? So webinars, right? Like, depending on who you're listening to, right? Oh, webinars. People today like, downplay them a lot, right. But I think theyre amazing. I know we use them at constant contact all the time. Whats the role, from your perspective, of a webinar in somebodys business today?
Omar Zenhom: The role of a webinar in your business is its actually the best way you can get anybody to learn anything. Think about it this way. If I told you, would you like to learn how to play the piano with an on demand course with a bunch of videos, or would you like me to teach you live on video? You choose live. I'd like to learn how to live. Why? Because you're like, well, they can course correct me. They can tell me when I'm pressing the wrong. No, I can ask questions. There's interaction. But the real reason is because as the consumer of the knowledge, consumer of the skill and the content, you perceive you have a higher likelihood of success. If it's live, I would learn how to ski from an instructor and not from a video because I have a higher likelihood I won't die learning how to ski. That sounds safer, right? So this is why webinars are so powerful. And you can call them webinars, you can call them workshops and call them live video. You can call them whatever you want. But for me, it all goes back to teaching. If I want to teach somebody, like, again, I had a lot of pressure as a teacher to teach somebody at 40 minutes every single day with these students, to teach them a concept they have to build upon and grow upon every single day so that the end of the semester, they pass. So if I I'm commissioned to get somebody to learn something about me, my business, and give them enough for them to say, hey, these people know what they're talking about. What's the best way for me to do this? A way for me to interact, right? A way to do it as close as possible to approximate being in person. And for me, live video is the way. And for me, it was a light bulb moment for me back in 2012 because it was the closest thing to teaching in the classroom to me, when I started doing webinars. So that's the first thing I would say. Your role in your business is really to prove to your audience that you have something of value, and webinars are really an audition for you, just like if you're on, you know, American Idol or the voice or whatever, right? You're auditioning to see if, because they're giving you their time and their email address in exchange for some value. If you do well in this audition, they're going to be like, wow, there's a good chance if I give my money, they're going to deliver, too. So it's hard to do that in any other way other than in person. Unless you want to fly out to every single customer, it's very hard to do that. So my question to people is, if you don't do webinars, if you don't sell via live video, how do you sell? And is that the most effective way to sell at scale? Whether it's like one on one calls or emails that may or may not be open, if somebody's on a webinar, you have a chance to really transform the way they think about you and your business. And to me, that's just pure gold. What are you talking about? I get a chance to be right in front of the people that are perfect for my product or service. So we help our customers integrate webinars in a lot of ways. One is to grow an audience. So to grow your email list is, a lot of people say, hey, I'm not really ready to really do demos or sell. How can I help my audience with webinars? And the first thing we say is that just your job is to really solve problems as an entrepreneur. And the easiest way to find out what problems go up, like what I write about my blog, what podcast episodes should I do. And they start thinking, you know, they have to come up with the answers like, no, all you got to do is ask your audience. So the first thing we recommend is just run an ask me anything webinar, right? Just sort of open q and a. Hey, im the fashion guru for men over 40. Come into my webinar and let me know if you have any questions about, you know, how to pick out a new wardrobe or what shoes are in style this season or whatever. Ask me any question you have. And in webinar Ninja, our software, one of the things, again, we built it so that its conducive to this type of growth in your business is we have a way to upvote questions. So then we'll submit questions. They can upvote it, say, oh, I have that question too. That's a good question. They upvote that so that you can know which questions are most popular, the hot questions are not, and all that gets saved in your data inside your account later on. But the point of the ask me any question, anything webinar is one, you're serving your audience or helping them directly with their problems or their questions and you're coaching them live. But two, you get a chance to know what the biggest pain points of your audits are and now you have like the top five questions. Are your top, your next five blog posts or your next topics for your webinars to run as workshops. So this is a very easy way for you to serve your audience but also serve your business.
Dave Charest: What would you say is the biggest mistake you see people make when it comes to running a webinar?
Omar Zenhom: This is not any particular business or person's fault. A lot of people think like webinars are like this high pressure sales. I have to have this like perfect webinar formula that stacks a certain value and puts them in a state of like, oh, I got to buy this thing or I'm stupid. A lot of people uncomfortable with that. And a lot of people don't do webinars because they think they have to do that to be successful. We don't teach that. What we teach is like, hey, listen, your job is to show them that you're a value. Your job is to teach them what you got. So for example, when I sell webinar ninja sell webinar Ninja on my webinar, I don't just sit there and say, hey, listen, this is like, you got to buy this now and this is all the bonuses you're going to get. The first thing I do is I ask some questions. I say in the chat, let me know. Why haven't you done webinars already or what you don't like about your webinar software right now. Put all these questions down. I'm going back to what my dad used to do. They put all these things. They say, well, I want something simple that's easy to use. I don't know how to create a page to track my customers or track registrants to my webinars. I want to be able to run automated webinars with my live webinar. All this. So people are putting all these things and instead of me just going in with this like set demo and saying, okay, look at all the things you can do. And most people when they do this, their audience get overwhelmed. This is all good and all, but this, I don't know if I can do all these features. I don't know if I can have time to implement all these tactics and all these features that are on this product or even with a course. Like, I don't know if I have time to consume all this content. So instead what we do is we just address the things that they said they are worried about. So most people have one or two reasons why theyre not buying. They have a couple of blockers in their head and as long as you address those things, they dont have a reason not to buy. So then I just show them like, hey, you said youre worried about this. Let me show you how webinar ninja solves that problem. In our product. You said, im not sure if im using best practices on my landing pages. Well, part of webinar Ninja we have a community called Ninjatown and you can share your registration pages with the community and they can give you feedback. Oh, thats cool. I guess theres no reason for me not to buy now. So really just addressing the pain points is really important and not trying to overwhelm people. And we teach this as well. People that are coaches and selling courses, instead of you saying, hey, we got 85 modules and each module has 37 courses and inside the course theres 18 videos to them. Thats super overwhelming. If you said, hey, learn how to play the piano in three videos, I would pay more money for that than for 300 videos. So it's not about the number, it's the outcome. So really you just have to ask them, like, what stopped you from learning how to play the piano? Well, it's kind of boring and it takes a long time and I just want to learn how to play a song. Right. Can I learn how to play candle the Wind by Elton John. It's my first song. I want to learn how to play that. Right. So that's their problem. That's awesome because in our first orientation course, we show you how to play Ferrajaka. And in your first session you'll learn how to play a song. And they're like, oh, wow, I can play a song in just my first session. Let me get started right now. That's really what you want to do on a webinar, is not this set. This is the perfect webinar. And then you got to stack the value and then you got to pull the scarcity thing on them and then you got to tell them, this is worth a quarter million dollars, but you're only going to pay $9. That is just people are over that. And at the same time, theres no science behind that that people actually are going to buy off that. And I know statistically that doesnt work because ive tried it actually in my early days and it doesnt work. And what does work is having the mentality of I dont want a startup, I want to stay up, I want a business that I will have customers for life. I want to be able to earn trust with my audience so that if theyre not ready to buy now, when they are ready to buy, theyre not going to go shopping around, theyre going to come back to me because theyre like, this was a pleasant experience. Im going to come back to Omar and his business and these people are cool. So yeah, thats the biggest mistake people make. They think they have to have this huge hype production in order to sell rather than just using basic human skills.
Dave Charest: This has all been amazing. Omar, I really appreciate it. What would you say would be your best piece of business advice?
Omar Zenhom: My best piece of advice is the beauty of entrepreneurship. The beauty of building a business is that it could be whatever you want. Its what Derek Sivers says in his book. Anything you want, it becomes your own utopia. You can make the rules, you can change your leave policy to wherever you want as long as its legal right. You can change your product, you can change the way you work, how you work, where you work. You can change the way you sell, the way you market. You have to do something that fits your life and fits who you are as a person so that you can continue to do it. If it doesnt fit you as a person, its too long of a road, its too much work for you to put up a charade and try to do something that doesn't feel comfortable. I learned this very early on because I had a little bit of imposter syndrome when I started because I was like, I'm just a teacher. Yeah, I built some businesses on the side, but I'm not like these fancy marketers out there in the world that I learned from. And I realized, wait a minute, I don't need to be that. I could just be myself and I can just give the value the way I can. So that's kind of my advice is that like, you know, try to do something that whatever you choose, how you market, how you sell, the product you sell, make sure its aligned with what you believe because people can tell when you dont really feel what youre doing. People could tell when its not authentic and when you are passionate. And Im sure there were moments in this talk where you saw me get animated is because I really believed in it, I lived it. And you want to tap into that as much as possible to give you a fighting chance. Entrepreneurship is hard as it is. Dont make it hard on yourself by trying to be something you're not. That's just doesn't work. So I know that's kind of hard to hear sometimes in the beginning when you don't have traction, but it's something that I keep reminding myself even till today, after building businesses for the last 20 years, anytime it feels a little bit uncomfortable, I tell myself, you know what, let me see how I can make this my thing rather than something that doesn't feel comfortable.
Dave Charest: Well, friend, I hope this was one of those conversations you may want to go back to and take some notes. Omar was so candid in sharing his experience and I know I got a great deal from it. I do want to recap some items from that discussion for you. Number one, help your potential customers make a decision. As I mentioned at the top of the show, no one likes to be sold. Instead, think about how you can help them make the best decision for them. Act as their guide rather than someone trying to pressure them into something they may not want to do. Number two, be willing to do things that other people won't. Now, time and time again, you're going to see people moving forward, businesses moving forward, people in businesses that may be less talented, they have lesser products and services. You know, what is it really that's getting them to that next level? Oftentimes it's because they're taking action and they're willing to do things that other people won't. Now, I'm not talking about doing anything illegal here what I'm saying is, don't be afraid to step outside your comfort zone. Take a chance that may just bring the progress you've needed to reach a new milestone. And lastly, build your day. Pay attention to your natural rhythms. What does the day need to look like for you to be your most productive? Do your best to build your day around getting things done and moving forward. Lastly, I'm going to leave you here with an action item and it revolves around this idea of acting as a guide rather than a salesperson. If you're not doing so already, go and take a look at your website and review how you're presenting your products and services. Is there something you can do to provide enough detail to help people make the right decision for them? And if you're not doing that, try revamping things with this helpful guide mentality and see how that changes things for you. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the VMRhichead podcast. If you have questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me directly at dave.charest@constantcontact.com. If you did enjoy today's episode, please take a moment to leave us a review. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. Well friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.