← ProductLed Podcast
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- [00:00]
Melissa
Building a product like company is that much harder for us. But I do think that the lifestyle is also 10 times better. I think we all start off wanting to be rich, but we actually just want to be free. Right? I mean time is the most expensive currency. And I would say that E Webinar was conceptualized in my last startup because I was constantly tied to my computer doing these demos, onboarding trainings over and over again.
- [00:30]
Espen
You need to still be a human, still need to be out there. It's very few businesses that can succeed without creating trust that way. Right.
- [00:38]
Melissa
It's the biggest lesson that I'm living right now is.
- [00:44]
Host
Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode on the product led podcast. Today we have Melissa who is the co founder of E Webinar and they are just under 2mil ARR and are doing some really amazing things. But what I loved about this episode is, is three things. So first, Melissa was super open, just about burnout and what are some of the things that actually she didn't even recognize when it came to just what was contributing to that burnout. And so if you ever struggle with burnout, I know I have as a founder too, it's really great to just learn from other people. And she has some very practical tips of here's how to actually address it and solve it long term, which is amazing. The other thing is really just Melissa is fantastic at creating social communities, founder circles for herself so that you don't actually have to go alone on your journey as an entrepreneur. So if you ever feel like, hey, like I'm the only one or I feel lonely as a founder, this is awesome for you because the wait till the end, those are where the tips are shared. And the other thing we talked a bit about is just the vision you have for your business. So are you designing your business for you or not? And so I hope you get as much as I got from this episode as well. Let's get right into it. As far as where your company's at right now, are you okay like sharing any sort of like stats and stuff like that? Like I know in the past LinkedIn post as well, you shared like you're at like around a million ARR.
- [02:09]
Melissa
Yeah, we're like just under 2 million right now.
- [02:12]
Host
Okay, cool. That's awesome. And then what does the the team look like as far as like number of people? I know you have a co founder as well.
- [02:20]
Melissa
Yeah, the co founder. Everyone's a contractor, so it was designed to be that way. So no employees. We hire everyone full time, but everyone's outsourced in the country that, you know, we can, we can afford. So we've got I think 13 full time and then like a few kind of part time as needed.
- [02:38]
Host
All right, and then how do you have those people broken down? Is it like most of them are developers, marketers? What is that kind of look like?
- [02:46]
Melissa
Yeah, we've got, so including our cto, we've got five people in Vietnam who are all developers, one kind of half tester, and then we've got a couple in support and then my COO and then content, myself, design. Yeah, but we still do a lot of stuff ourselves, unfortunately.
- [03:12]
Host
Okay, that's all good. Completely normal as well. And is there anything specific you want to focus in on as far as like where you think you could provide the most value to other product led founders that are like on this journey as well? Like what are maybe some of those big lessons where you're like, yeah, I could definitely tell a lot of people or prevent a lot of people from having pain in this area.
- [03:36]
Melissa
I mean, I think a lot of the biggest learnings have come in the last half year. So a lot of the stuff that I've been writing about, a lot of stuff that got a lot of traction was like a couple years ago when LinkedIn like gave me a lot of love. And the algorithm's obviously very different right now. And part of the reason why I stopped putting a lot of that content out there is because it's, it feels a little bit repetitive and it was like a little bit too rudimentary for where I am today. So I think a lot of the learnings are. So in the last year I just went through like a huge burnout period, like my first ever. So not knowing the signs, I didn't really know how to manage that. But I think the learnings now is like, honestly, I kind of tried to retire a bit too early and I took a lot of the growth that we had pretty early on, which was consistent, for granted. So a lot of the social, a lot of the SEO, a lot of content was working. And you know, there's a domino effect when all the, all that stuff is working. Right. And you know, of course, like, as a founder, your energy's high, right? Cause everything's working. And then it felt like it was okay for me to pull myself back. And as I did that, I was also kind of, because of the period I was in, I was kind of negotiating my with myself on like, do I even want to do this? If I want to do this, why Am I not so inspired? Like, how come I don't have any motivation? So I was kind of like, then negotiating myself by saying, like, okay, what's the least amount I could sell this for? For me to be comfortable and not work again and kind of just, I guess distracted myself away from. From the business. Because I had to kind of, at the time I had. I had to work on myself. There wasn't really another choice. But I guess that went on for a little bit too long. And when I started coming back, really, like four to six months ago, the whole world has changed. Like, especially with AI, like, none of our marketing's working. Our trials are cut down by half, right? So, like, con, like, you know, I'm not. I'm not getting the love that I used to get on social media. It's incredibly hard now to get attention anywhere, right? Everyone's doing something amazing. You don't know if it's real or not, but it doesn't matter, right? Because that's what they're putting out there. So I went from like, everything's working okay. Let me pull myself back to, okay, nothing's working. So realizing, like, okay, maybe I tried to retire a bit too early and taken that growth for granted and didn't really put in enough measures in place to make sure that the company was in a good place before I took that step back. So, for example, like, this is still my first real product company. Like, the last one was, was a SaaS product, but it was like enterprise SaaS. It was sales led. And that's a very different beast, right? You basically, like, you call someone, they say they'll buy or they not buy, and you move on to the next person. So there's a lot of this product LED stuff where people have to come in on their own. You know, you have to kind of nurture them without talking to them. They have to convert, and then they have to stay. Like, that is really a very tough nut to crack. So one of the things that I didn't realize I needed because this was still kind of my first product company, I didn't realize we needed a customer success motion. We don't have customer success. We let people come in, we let them sign up. We try to make our product as easy as possible. But over the years, it's gotten complicated, right? We've got, like, one onboarding that we haven't upgraded in a few years, like three years, like, since the beginning that we made them. And we expect people to know how to use the features that we think are Pretty straightforward, but they don't know how to use that. So what happens, right? So then you just have a consistent stream of people leaving, and then you're not keeping the people that you're winning, right? And of course you read about these things, but when you experience them, that's a whole different thing. Then you're like, oh, okay, I actually should be using my own product to onboard people, to teach people. I'm not even doing that and yet I'm trying to sell my product for people to use it for that purpose.
- [07:54]
Espen
Right?
- [07:56]
Melissa
So I think just being more aware that, like, there's so much more than sales and there's so much more than building a product that quote, unquote, sells itself. Because frankly, nothing really sells itself. Like, I think that's, that's really the biggest lesson. And now, now I'm feeling the pains of that.
- [08:14]
Host
How do you say it's 10x harder to build a product led company than a sales led one. What are some of the things you mentioned? Like, the customer success motion is like one piece of it, but what are those other things where as you have started to build a product that company, you're like, ah, yeah, there's a lot more to this than meets the eye. Because, I mean, we tell our clients this all the time. They come to us. Usually one of the taglines our implementers came up with is, I don't know if you're familiar with like some plumbing and not plumbing, but it is a plumber that we got this idea off of. They're like, we fix what your husband's fixed. That was kind of their tagline for like my handyman stuff. And it was like, I'm like, oh, that resonates with me because, like, I'm really not handy at anything. So, like, anything I try and fix usually break. And then you gotta hire like professionals. So I'm like, yeah, we fixed the free trial. You fixed there's usually. Because it's like, people go into it, they think it's just a free motion. And then it's like, oh, you gotta get people to value quick. You gotta do all these other things. And so there is so much more to it than meets the eye. So what was your experience there? And like, why do you say is like 10x harder than building a sales company?
- [09:22]
Melissa
I mean, sales is not hard, right? Sales is a science. Everybody can learn it. You pick up three sales books, you can probably sell something, right? If that's your only job. And the thing you have to get good at is probably like, Crafting messages, cold outreach. Maybe you go to a few events, you talk about, you know, you talk about what you sell and people give you instant feedback, right? I like your product. I don't like your product. Your pricing is off. I'm going to buy if you do X, right? And then there's a reason why your sales led is because your ARPU is high, right? In my last company, our like minimum contract value was 10,000 like for the year. So it made sense to go out and sell like that. And the customers that you're going for, they expect to be sold that way. But the reason you're product led is because you probably have a self serve product that doesn't make sense to be sales led. It's probably low cost, free trial, freemium upgrade on your own, it's probably under, you know, a thousand dollars a year, right. Somewhere in that range. And then maybe you have add ons to make more money. The problem is you're trying to guess every step of the way. You're trying to guess what people react to. Guess the language by testing it or not testing it because you don't know how. Like in our case, we don't really know how. And somebody comes in, you're trying to guess what they're doing. There are like, you know, screen recordings and things like that, but you never, you don't really get to talk to them. And the thing is, in this day and age, no one wants to talk to you. Nobody responds. I am shocked by how little responses I get given the fact that I used to be the top inside salesperson in my region at SAP. Like I don't have issues getting people to respond to me now. Like nowadays I can't get my own customer to respond to me and they've been paying me for two years. Like even for feedback, even to connect, even for an account review. Like that's the state of the world that we're in now. So I think in product led you're trying to debug something constantly with having no logs, right? You're just guessing the whole time. And then if you don't have money, that's even worse. Like we don't have extra money to throw at ads or hire extra people to figure it out for us. And I think it's like this motion is particularly hard for us because nobody on our team has any knowledge of marketing. Like there's my cto, there's myself who was in sales, and then my COO who's a product manager. So everything that we had to Learn about marketing. We had to learn from the ground up a year into the company, because I had to, like, I had to get this company off the ground with founder led sales. I think that's really the only way to get anything off the ground. But after I ran out of leads, somebody was like, oh, you should see what people are doing on LinkedIn. Because that's, that's where people are building audience. That's the only reason I went there and started studying this kind of inbound motion. And then I hired Grow and Convert, which is a marketing agency to teach our COO how to do digital marketing, how to write content, how to do keyword research. Because we couldn't afford them. We could only afford for them to teach us. Right. So everything was kind of learned. So I think for us it was particularly hard and it still is because we just don't have that brain. And I think you say product led, but it's not just the product, it's customer led, it's marketing led. Right. It's, it's, it's everything, right? Is also founder led. So I think the hardest thing is you're just always kind of shooting the dark and you're just learning by failing a lot. And those failures make you feel like you're never progressing totally.
- [13:07]
Host
So I want to do a contrarian take here. Since Esmen, you have built COBALT to like 200 people, that was all sales up for the most part. And then user flow, three people did just under 5 mil. So what we're doing, would you say it's still 10x harder to go product led or what's. What's the difference there? Because I like, in my mind, I'm like, okay, in some ways, like sales that is much easier to get started with, much harder to scale. Whereas product LED is very hard to get, like started, get it working. But then there is the benefit of it can be a lot easier to scale. So as I'm curious to hear your take on that stuff, I've kind of tried both.
- [13:48]
Espen
Right. So I've been in an organization, Cobalt, which, where we were only sales led, or we started in the very early days we were product led, but then became sales led. And the problem we faced there as we grew was you want to retain your small customers, but they're getting more and more economically. Wait, how you can put it bad if you want to use a sales LED motion, right? Because you're basically using the same, not exactly the same, but a lot of sales energy on a customer that pays 10k versus one that pays 50k and that's just not good economics. Right? But it's insanely hard to become a product led company once you become a sales led company. So I think that's one of the things I always think about when if you say like product led is 10x harder, maybe in the beginning and so on, but in the long run I think the best companies are really always product led as a foundation and then can layer sales on top because the opposite is close to impossible. Starting as a sales led company and becoming a product led, at least I've seen many companies fail at doing that. So yeah, maybe it is harder sometimes to build product led companies, but also as you're saying, Melissa, it's also where the world is. You need to be product led because people don't want to speak to you. So you need to solve it in a way that is product led. So you don't really have a choice anymore. You need to build for the modern buyer, you need to build for the modern user. And that's basically being product led.
- [15:20]
Melissa
I mean, I think it's one of those cases where like the grass is always greener on the other side, right?
- [15:24]
Host
Yeah, for sure.
- [15:26]
Espen
And for me who have tried both, I just think, I wish that we had kept, at least kept we needed to go sales led with Cobalt because we needed to educate the market. It was not like a red ocean in that sense. But I wish that we had not pivoted 100% into being fully sales led, that we had kept that open product led channel that we had in the beginning. Because I think most startups actually start out by being product led because it's the easiest way to get started. Just have a sign up form and get people into your product. It's maybe not the easiest way to get customers to pay, but it's at least a way to show your product. Right. And yeah, I wish we had, we had kept that because in the long run it became a challenge to, to serve the smaller customers especially.
- [16:14]
Melissa
I mean, don't get me wrong, like, I do think that building a product like company is that much harder for, for us. But I do think that the lifestyle is also 10 times better because I'm not hopping on calls every day back to back, right? And especially for me, like we travel 10 months of the year in different time zones and when I'm there, like I want to enjoy my life there, like, and I have a schedule where I'll wake up at noon but sleep at 4am and I like to keep that schedule. So the business that I have today is not disruptive to my lifestyle. Whereas the sales ed company that I had in the past was very disruptive because it also, because of the industry that we were solving. It also required me to be at in real life conferences the first quarter of the year because that's where all our customers were. So we had to be there. So every two weeks I was like at another conference, setting up a booth, trying to network. And that's not the life that I wanted. But for some people, like, maybe, maybe they don't mind that, right? Maybe the contract value was so big that that's just part of the business. But I prefer the life of a product led company way more. And that's where it kind of brings it back to ultimately it's the life you want to lead that dictates a company that you're building.
- [17:31]
Host
Which kind of gets to our next question here too. Which is fun, which is like, what is your ultimate goal as being an entrepreneur and do you feel like you're, you're achieving that?
- [17:39]
Melissa
I mean, honestly, this is something I think about so much, especially after like in the last year I went to two self development retreats, which I've never gone to in the past, and started understanding myself better and like untangling myself better. And this is something I still think about is like, what am I doing this for? Like, there's so much pain in this journey, there's so much hardship, there's so much uncertainty. Especially when you're at the revenue that we're at, right? There is no extra room for you to, you know, just kind of go and have fun and do this early retirement thing. Right? So I would say that right now I have the life that I left my cubicle for 15 years ago and you know, I don't wake up with an alarm clock. I work and travel whenever I want. You know, my, my co founder is also my life partner. We have the exact same schedule. We're the yes people that say yes to every wedding, every birthday. Like, like our, our lives are full of fun and joy and friends and community. And that's something that I'm really proud of. But it's one of those things where you realize, oh, it's actually, it's enough and not enough at the same time, like if that makes sense. But at the same time I do think that it takes a little bit of discontent for a founder to keep going because if I was fully content, I would get complacent. So I would say that I'm proud And happy with where I am today. But I'm still discontented because there's still farther I want to go. And there's a lot of uncertainty in how to get there. And the biggest question I have for myself now is how badly do I want to win?
- [19:24]
Host
There's a quote. I don't think it's Nathan Barry's, but he shared it. And then I was like, oh, this is so good. It's like, you can have anything you want in life if you're willing to pay the price. It was like, touche. Because it's so easy to be like, oh, I want to build a billion dollar company and all that stuff. But it's like, are you willing to pay the price? Like, there's, there's a lot there and it's worthwhile to kind of check it with. What are the conditions of what I want to be able to do? Like, hey, if I want to travel 10 months a year, it's going to mean some things. It's like, it's a trade off of some parts. Maybe it's also an amplifier too, if, if it works in flow with what you're doing too. So like an example, it's like you're a travel influencer or something like that. It's like, and if you're not traveling 10 months a year, that's bad. It's not gonna be in. In line with where you want to go. But other people, it's like, hey, I just need to be like, locked in everybody in person, one team in like, I don't know, Canada and winter to get everybody working.
- [20:29]
Melissa
There's that other quote, Right. You can have everything, just not all at once.
- [20:34]
Host
Yeah, that's fair too.
- [20:36]
Melissa
Except for Essman.
- [20:39]
Espen
I mean, I want to add, I think there's also something about as you grow as a person, you change your desires or needs. Right. I definitely, I think I started my career, you know, wanting to be a CEO of a big company. And then it became, you know, wanting to be an entrepreneur building a unicorn. And then it became bootstrapping the smallest company possible just to get financial freedom. Right. So I think there's definitely different aspirations in different parts of life. And I definitely see that when I, for instance, do investments. A lot, a lot of these younger entrepreneurs, they all want that unicorn thing. And I'm trying to tell them maybe that's not what you really want. But they don't listen, right? And maybe they shouldn't listen. Of course they need to learn that themselves. But yeah, I think I'm also In a pretty good spot right now. Enjoying life. Got that freedom I ultimately we're seeking.
- [21:33]
Host
But I guess on your end has been how did you kind of change those horizons? Because I think some people there's this book, I don't think it's actually, it's called like wanting or something like that, but it's basically like goes to prove. Most people, they set their life vision and it just comes around like through mesmetic desire. They see somebody who's successful, they're like, oh, they got that private jet or whatever, they got that billion dollar outcome or valuation and then they're like fixated on like I need that. That is winning, that is success. And especially in like North American culture is like very much so like okay, it's success is measured monetarily a lot of ways too. So there is that big focus and of course the Spanish freedom. Like definitely things you do need to have. But I'm curious, how did you kind of like reevaluate those horizons of where you defined success and then just kind of went back and forth on that says come to something where you're like, okay, this is much more aligned with what I actually want.
- [22:31]
Espen
I think. And Melissa can also chime in on this. It's really by learning, right? Like when I was, I started my career in consulting where you work a lot but you are young so you don't notice, right Then when I started building Cobalt, you just worked all the time, you were in meetings all the time, you never had any freedom to do anything, right. And you were building a great business but you didn't feel like you were like having fun or being able to enjoy life on the side really right then that, that eventually led to me actually leaving Cobalt because I didn't feel like I was having fun anymore. And when as soon as we did User Flow, I had this amazing experience where we were suddenly we were not working a lot and we were growing and things were just kind of like self service amazing pure product led. You know, everybody had read Tim Ferriss book about the four hour work week. And that was one what many were aspiring to when they initially started out as entrepreneurs. But in the long run they ended up working, working, working, right. And I just found out by, by realizing that's not really what I wanted, right with entrepreneurship I wanted freedom. I wanted the freedom to go travel, to go skiing when the snow is there, you know, and not feel obligated to be on a lot of meetings. And I think that is the ultimate power of a pure product led Business as you can actually do that.
- [23:55]
Melissa
I think we all start off wanting to be rich, but we actually just want to be free, right? I mean time is, is the most expensive currency. And I would say that E Webinar was conceptualized in my last startup because I was constantly tied to my computer doing these demos, onboarding trainings over and over again for customers. Sometimes they don't even show up. I, I'm 4am in Kyoto in the hotel lobby waiting to do a demo and then they don't show up. That was my life. And exactly as Espen was saying, like the more successful I got, the more meetings I got because we were also bootstrapped. So I was the one that was doing all, all the, like anything except for development. And I was just dreaming of this product that would free me from my computer. And that was kind of the path, right? And, and even when we started E Webinar I made a list of, you know, These are the 10, 10 non negotiables that would make me happy. And that's how I chose the business. That's how I eliminated a lot of different ideas. But one of those things was no more live demos, no live calls. And so coming into E Webinar, it didn't matter how big you say your company is, because everybody starts off at $99, I don't take it, I don't take the call. And it felt so good to be like, yeah, like just here's the demo. You can hop in on your own time if you have any questions. There's chat and email. I'm here to help. And yeah, I think like 5% of people get pretty upset about that. But then you get your time back. However, that's a double edged sword because as I'm, as I was talking about, you know, kind of earlier today is I kind of let my, I didn't let my business grow enough before. I kind of let that go because some companies are just used to talking to someone. They can see a demo but they still want to know there's someone on the other side on the phone, not on chat. And these are like a lot of these big companies, right? So now as I'm coming back into the business, as our marketing doesn't work anymore, as our, you know, trials are slashed in half, I kind of have to go back to like a half kind of sales led motion. If someone wants to get on a call, I'm talking to them, right? Somebody signs up, I'm asking them if they want help onboarding, right? And this is Something that I didn't want to do, but it's like some of the things that you have to do because you want to get back into growth mode.
- [26:21]
Host
Now, you mentioned you struggled with burnout as a founder as well, and, like, you initially struggled a little bit with identifying, like, what were some of those symptoms of burnout and then what you had to do to overcome it and then come back like you are today. Like you said, like, the last four to six months, you feel like you're, you know, boots on the ground, coming back to it full force a lot more. And you've worked through, like, a lot of the personal side of, like, okay, how do I address this internally? And so could you maybe share a little bit more about that? Because I know you're definitely not the only one that struggles with burnout. There's a lot of times where founders have come to myself or, like, product lines, just like, you can see it, and it's like, okay, this has been a long slog. And it's one of those, I guess, the challenge of entrepreneurship. It's like running a marathon where you don't know which kilometer you're on. So you're like, AM I at 2k, 42k? There is no real finish line. It's an infinite game, but you're like, are you enjoying it at the time? And is this pace sustainable? And there's times where it's faster and you. You're like, okay, I gotta hunker down. But there is other times where there is that burnout, and. So curious to hear your. Your take on that.
- [27:33]
Melissa
This is my third business, and it's my 15th year, so I guess in my 14th year, it didn't show up. Like, I was physically tired. I think the word burnout makes people think, oh, you're exhausted, you're tired. But it didn't show up like that. It was like a gradual decline of. Didn't really have any inspiration, couldn't really write, didn't have motivation, couldn't be consistent. Right. One of the superpowers of being a founder is, like, you keep doing things even if you don't feel like doing them. Like, I never really had a problem, but. But at that point, I just didn't want to do anything anymore. It was like everything was kind of mediocre and not interesting. And I gave myself a couple months to kind of take a step back. Still, like, kind of maintain my emails and things like that. But I thought I would come back, you know, after a couple months, taking it easy. But at the Same time on my social life. Like we have a thriving social life. So it wasn't that I wasn't enjoying my life and having fun, right? It was just for work, I couldn't show up. And then after a few months I wanted to come back again. I had my, like, my list of things I was going to do per day, you know, the thing I was going to Write on, on LinkedIn or Substack, but it just wasn't happening. And so that went on for a good, I think like six to nine months. And in the meantime, because I wasn't showing up for myself, that's what I was to learn later. I wasn't showing up for work, I wasn't showing up for my friendships and my relationship. So actually my personal relationship with my partner also got really bad and I couldn't really figure out what the problem was because on the outside there was nothing wrong. Like the business is fine, like it wasn't growing so fast, but it was fine. Everyone's getting paid, we're having fun on the weekends, we're traveling, spending, you know, winter in Mexico. Everything seemed fine, but something was still off. And it was then that I was talking to a friend about this and she said, oh, you need to go to Hoffman, the Hoffman process, which is a pretty popular self development retreat. And I was like, oh, what is that? And she's like, well, it connects who you are and like why you are the way you are with your childhood and your parents. And I'm like, well, who cares about that? And she's like, well, everything's connected. So at that point I was so desperate for change that I, you know, I cut my winter trip in Mexico short, went to Hoffman in the UK because I think in the US there's a nine month waiting list. And that was really the beginning of unraveling myself and why I was procrastinating and why I didn't show up for anything. And, and my core of, I mean the core of everything is I just had a lot of self doubt and a lot of like, you're not good enough, you're not good enough to do this. And I would say all my life, including my parents would tell me, you're, you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't be a founder, you shouldn't be an entrepreneur, you should be a doctor, investment banker, accountant, something that they could be proud of. So I think just years and years of that and on top of never seeing the professional success that I've always envisioned. So then of course you're Seeing all the founders around you, you know, have their successes, their exits, raise massive rounds. You know, at least outwardly being successful and you're not that person. Right. And that does something to you. And you know, you start to ask yourself, if I'm so good at what I do, if I'm meant to be successful, then why am I not right? And, and all of that, you, I think you just crumble slowly under that pressure and you start to tell yourself these stories like you're not good enough to do this, so you should just give up now. I think that that in a nutshell was, was what happened. And I think going like just getting to know myself was really important and just getting to know that like these, this negative self talk and these internal voices are not real. Like that's just child Melissa talking to adult Melissa. And how do you be aware of that and how do you like move on kind of despite of that is, is something that, that was really important for me.
- [31:37]
Host
That's awesome. Definitely sounds like a transformational kind of seven day retreat as well. So that's definitely put that show notes Hoffman process. Check it out for other founders that are thinking about that. Interesting. And so now that you're back though, what has changed about like your energy, how you show up at everything else? Because there is a lot of founders that struggle with the negative self talk and that is like you can, you can just see how it goes down this rabbit hole and lower and lower frequency of energy and everything else versus if you can combat that in a positive way. It's like you, you have different possibilities, you see different solutions to the same challenges that you have and you can move a lot faster without actually working harder.
- [32:21]
Melissa
Yeah. I mean I think the first thing that I had to ask myself was do I still want to do this?
- [32:26]
Espen
Right?
- [32:26]
Melissa
Like, and that's a really important question. Yeah. Like why, why do I put myself through this? Right. And, and a lot of it I think is to do with like the people I made promises to. Right. You, you feel like you, you owe them, you owe your team. This is your vision. Um, and I think that's a big part of what keeps me there. But at the end of the day when I really got to know myself, like I always remembered myself being ambitious like as a five year old kid, right. Staring at a building in Hong Kong thinking one day I'm going to build one of these for no other reason than I knew I could. And somewhere along the way I lost that. Right. And I had to come back to terms with really knowing that, yes, I do want to build a company, but not just a company. I want to build a big company and I think I can do it. So I think that's the main difference is, like, just. It's not changing into someone you're not. Right. All this work just brings you back to yourself to remember who you are. And I think that's kind of the energy. Change is like, okay, this is hard, but I still want to do this. And there is no reason, like, I just want to. Right. I think, you know, like, building a company as in itself unreasonable. If you can make the same amount of money, have the same amount of success by working for someone else, like, why would you go build a company? Right? It's. There's something in you that you want to satisfy. So I think that's kind of the big shift. And the way that I want to approach. The way that I approach my company now is less about, like, I want to prove it to someone else that I can do it. Like, I want to get on the COVID of something, like, all about this ego. And now it's realizing there's only so many things I can do in a day and realizing that progress doesn't always feel like winning. Progress is quiet. Winning is loud. You get one press release, everybody, everybody likes it, everyone comments, and then it goes away. But progress is what you do every day, and it's quiet. And sometimes you go backwards two steps, and sometimes you go forward one step. But there's only so much time, and there's only so much that you can do every day. And you have to be okay with that, right? You can't give yourself a hard time for not doing enough because there's not enough hours in a day. So I think that's the, that's the big approach shift is like knowing that it's going to happen. I am the person to do it, and whatever I accomplish today, that's enough, and I'll get back to it tomorrow.
- [34:54]
Host
Yeah, I love that. Especially progress is quiet, winning is loud. Because I think a lot of product led founders too. The thing that I see the most is, is they're just making little progress here and there that you hear the big stories of like, oh, look at this company. Went from zero hundred million really quick. And it's like, yeah, that, that's the loud moment. But it's like what actually helped them get there was all of these days of like, small little progress here and there to. To build something great. And I just want to add to even what you were saying about what's helped you really get back into the day to day and flow. I was listening to the founders podcast recently and one of the things that I reminded myself of that has changed the energy and how I show up for the long haul is really just focusing not on, like you said, the egotistical stuff and everything else, but it's like I just want to do great work and make a big impact. And when I focus on what are the things that only I can do and what is that for me, it's like it's books. When I'm writing, I'm creating, I'm in my flow, I'm doing the things that only I can do. And when I have that energy put towards doing the best work I am capable of doing, everything changes because it's not about the other person. It's like, I am going to make this the best damn book ever. It's just like the work itself is art and you can create way more amazing work that way. When the energy is shifted towards I'm just going to whatever, make this the best I can versus just feeling like I'm going to sell a million books. Like, I don't care. I'm going to make this the best damn book. And if it sells a million, who, like, that's awesome. That's. That's the winning loud part. That's like awesome. But it's not what I'm going for. And it actually takes so much pressure off of the whole process because you're just like, listen, I'm going to do something that's going to help a lot of people and provide a ton of work here. But yeah, the energy part of that is really fun to kind of just change.
- [36:55]
Espen
You covered it beautifully. Yeah, it's a really tough thing that many thoughts founders go through. So very important topic. Cool.
- [37:02]
Host
And now, Melissa, anything you would share with other women founders? Because this is one of the things, we're always trying to interview a lot more women founders on the product podcast, but there's, there's absolutely a lot less of them. And so we want to make this like every opportunity we get when we interview a woman founder as well to just be like, hey, what would be your advice to other women founders that are listening to this podcast to whether it's get out there, great, amazing companies. Because yeah, I would love the ratio to be like exactly 50, 51 day. Or maybe that's totally unrealistic too. But what would be your advice to other women product led founders?
- [37:37]
Melissa
I mean, I don't really think of myself as a female founder. So it's a tough, tough question to answer. I just think of myself as a founder. So I think that's my biggest advice is like, I mean, I, it's, it's so hard to say these things kind of publicly because you don't really, really, it's like a sensitive topic, but I kind of equate it to like, you don't, I don't know if it would be different if I were building this business as a man. Like, I have no idea.
- [38:07]
Host
Right.
- [38:07]
Melissa
Because I've only been me. And maybe it's insensitive to say that I've never felt disadvantaged as a founder, but it's true that I've never felt disadvantaged as a founder. Like, I just do what I do. Maybe there were, you know, times where it mattered, but you just kind of ignore that. Right. And if there were times, if there are, if I'm put in a situation where I could stand up for someone in that position, like, I would. But I think as a, as a founder in general, like, I would focus on my strengths and not my shortcomings, and I would not amplify my shortcomings. Right. I feel like it's almost like every Olympic athlete is built differently. Right. You run a 100 meter dash, some people are taller, some people are shorter, but then, you know, some people just have to work harder. And maybe that's our reality. Like, I don't know, but I just don't think of myself as, as any different.
- [39:03]
Host
Yeah, absolutely agree. Like, focusing on your strengths, that's probably the best advice ever. And on your, like, best key fatter characteristics, what would you say those are? Like, this is what makes Melissa an awesome founder. What are those key product characteristics? This is your humble brag moment.
- [39:24]
Melissa
Wow. I don't know. I mean, I think that what's helped me the most in my journey is I'm just very good at surrounding myself with really good people. And I do that in my, in my social life as well. Like, I built like, like I, I would call myself a community builder. So I surround myself with a lot of people who I can go to for advice or founder therapy if I just wanted to vent over something, if I wanted to see what was the best, you know, tool for this or how do I navigate this, you know, the situation I'm in, I can probably get a response within two minutes. And I've always been that person. I don't believe that this is a journey you're supposed to walk on alone. I know they say like the founder journey is very lonely, but it doesn't have to be, right? Especially in this day and age where like communication is so easy, meeting people is so easy and you don't need to meet someone in real life to feel like they're a friend, right? There's tons of people, you know, in a founder group that I'm in, that I've met just on LinkedIn and you know, referral through friends that I feel like are my friends and I can go to them for anything, but I might never meet them in real life, right. So I think that's, that's my best characteristic and advice is I just surround yourself with people who can help you.
- [40:38]
Host
So if you have five minutes, do a little masterclass on how you do that, what would that look like? Because I think there's a lot of founders here, especially product founders, probably are, I would argue, a lot more susceptible to this where they, they build a loan because they love their product. They're a little more introverted than, you know, the typical sales that founder that rah, rah, rah, they're, they're listening right now. What is the, your five minute masterclass? Here's how to like not go it alone as a founder. Build an amazing founder circle community. Because I definitely feel like you're, you're fantastic at this and then a lot of people can learn from you on this.
- [41:12]
Melissa
I mean, I think first you gotta put yourself out there, you gotta build credibility, right? And the reason you want to do that is because you need to offer something in return. You can't just be the person who asks for things, right? You gotta be a giver first and, you know, building credibility, you know, writing publicly, whether it's on LinkedIn, substack, sharing what, you know, just be a real person on the Internet, I think is step one. And just that, that, that just makes you real, it makes you more approachable, I guess, right? And as you start to do that, people start to comment. You have kind of regular followers and, and people you exchange ideas with. You look at their profile, they might be, you know, at your stage or a little bit above or a little bit like ahead of you. And that's how you build these kind of friendships and just start offering things, right? If they need help, if they will have a connection, if you can help them in their business, always do it. If you can help someone in their business, why would you not do that? You don't need something in return. You don't need an affiliate, right? You don't Need a special thank you. Like just go and help them and eventually I think that comes back around. But also like have a place. Like if you want to build a founder group and a community around you, you need to be kind of the administrator of a place, right? Wes, I know you have a slack group, but for myself like I've got a WhatsApp group where it's kind of invite only. It's very intimate. It's all kind of founders who are doing real things, who kind of know each other, who actually all have a presence like online people that I probably have, you know, exchanges with in the past. And I just tell them exactly what this is and it just. And part of being part of curating a community is really curating. You have to make sure that everybody in the community that you curate is of high quality because otherwise another high quality person is not want to going to want to be in there. And that, that takes time. But it all starts with giving and making yourself known, building credibility and making sure it's easy for people to approach you and know what your expertise is so that when you offer help that like what you offer is also valuable to them.
- [43:29]
Espen
I think one thing that's interesting when it comes to being product led is people often think that means self service, you know, product first kind of being behind the scenes. Nobody knows who you are. Like that's how some people think about product led, right? Like nobody should know that there are people behind the product. But reality is that the most successful product led companies are the ones where the founders are very visible. The founders do founder led branding, Right. Similar to what you're doing, Melissa, I think that's really one of your modes, right. Is your, your ability to write and ability to be out there on LinkedIn as a person. Right. And I think we're seeing many examples of this. Adam Robinson is another example of somebody running a product led business but being very salesy or social online. Right? Like everybody knows this is Adam selling this product. So you're kind of doing sales at scale, right? And you need that to build a great product led business. You need to still be a human. You still need to be out there at least. I think it's very few businesses that can succeed without creating trust that way. Right. So I think it's interesting that some would say you build a product led business because then you can stay behind the scenes and it runs on loans, but really the reality is probably the opposite. You just need to do it on a bigger scale. You don't have to do it individually with person and person. You need to maybe be out on social platforms and so on. And then also take the small conversations because. Because that's where it starts. Speaking with customers, being very authentic and so on. So yeah, I think that's an important message to all product LED founders. You cannot just sit behind your computer. You need to get out there and show yourself.
- [45:16]
Melissa
I mean, I think they say product led, but it's more marketing led. But if you don't have a product that keeps people there and sells itself, then all your marketing goes to waste. Right. And I will say that like it does help when people do research for a product like ours and they look me up on LinkedIn and they can message me and I'll respond or they, they see that I've written something a few days ago. It just gives them this feeling of familiarity. Like I have people messaging me that says they don't even look at competitors because they know that this is what I do. And it could be someone that's followed my content for two years. Right. So imagine like two years to get a free trial. Like is that worth it? Like, I'm not sure. But you also have to be doing it because you love it.
- [46:01]
Espen
Yeah. I think the reality is that in sales led motions that's what it takes for. Let's take an individual salesperson trying to sell to some company and they sit and wait for two years. Follow up, follow up, follow up. Right. That is equally a waste of time. It's much better spend time that you go out and brand yourself to many more businesses. So the likelihood of you getting customers are larger than just you trying to hit one individual customer with follow ups all the time. Right. Because the time it takes for them to get the need is maybe two years no matter what. Then I at least would say it's much better to go wider instead of doing the sales LED approach which is very narrow and kind of targeted towards individual customers.
- [46:48]
Melissa
I forgot who said this, but it was like someone famous. He said if your product fails, you do marketing. If your marketing fails, you do sales.
- [46:58]
Host
That is so good. I think like the, the equation here is like at the end of the day you still have to build trust whether you're a sales at a product led. It's just the ways you go about doing it are like, as been mentioned, a little different as like okay, if you're sales that it's, you're building all that trust on the sales call. But you still gotta be authentic, you still gotta build that trust. Whereas what you're doing on the product LED front is like, hey, it's the marketing has to do a lot more of the heavy lifting of building that human authenticity. They know that hey, if you have an issue like there's the face to the company too, that makes it a lot more human. And then on the product side that actually delivering on the value quick is the fastest way there to get people to value there as well. So to wrap up here, what would be your like one liner or it doesn't have to be a one liner but like one big piece of advice you'd have to any other product led founder if they're looking to scale to 1 or 2 million RR. Like what would you say is like you gotta do this. What would you say?
- [47:59]
Melissa
It's the biggest lesson that I'm living right now is don't forget your customer success motion. Like you got to keep your customers signing up and trying. It is not enough. Like that is the first day of the last day with you. So yeah, like I think, I think teaching, teaching customers how to use the product after they come in is probably more important than try to cast as wide of a net as possible because if they don't stay, then you don't have a business.
- [48:32]
Espen
Totally.
- [48:32]
Host
Yes. That is probably the most important advice for the bed founder. Create something that people want to come back again and again. Get value.
- [48:41]
Melissa
Yeah, it's like, it's like you can have like the most beautiful invite to like invite people to your party, but if your party sucks, then they're still gonna leave.
- [48:49]
Host
Yeah, that's good. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on Melissa. This has been a blast going through this with you and thank you for being vulnerable too about going through, you know, burnout and your journey as well. Because every founder struggles with this at some point. So it's great hearing with other people just like, hey, here's how I dealt with it. Went through it because yeah, it's, it's all part of the journey.
- [49:10]
Melissa
Thanks so much for having me.
- [49:16]
Host
And to wrap things up, thank you everybody for listening to this version of the product podcast. Make sure to rate review this on wherever you listen to podcasts, whether it's Apple, Google, you name it, Spotify, I'm going to read every single one of those reviews and that's how I know how to improve this. Also, if you want to stay in contact with Bean and learn what is going on in the world of PLG and every single week get the best actionable deep dives on product led growth, make sure to head on over to productled.com forward slash newsletter. I am personally writing each of these deep dives every single week and you're going to get a ton of it. So make sure to head on over there to product led.com com newsletter.