ProfitLed Podcast

Melissa Kwan
  • 5.0 (4)
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On Season 2, Melissa Kwan (Cofounder of eWebinar) and Todd Parmley (COO) relive their "Journey to $1M" ARR, bootstrapping eWebinar from day one. Each episode goes in depth into one major aspect of the journey, as Melissa and Todd share war stories, mistakes, and lessons learned as they grew the company to a million in annual recurring revenue, over a period of 36 months from product launch.If you’re a bootstrapper who wants a window into the day-to-day lives of other scrappy bootstrappers navigating the realities of building a successful company – the good, the bad, and the ugly! – this podcast is for you.__ProfitLed is a podcast by and for bootstrapped founders brave (or crazy) enough to grow their businesses to profitability without venture capital.There’s so much content out there featuring VC-backed founders and the unicorns they ride. But everyone else? Not so much. ProfitLed is dedicated to sharing the hard-won experience of bootstrappers in order to inspire fellow bootstrapped entrepreneurs to grow their own businesses and propel themselves closer to the freedom they’re working so hard to achieve. Presented by: eWebinar - https://ewebinar.com

  1. 1 HR AGO

    In Pursuit of Freedom | Chris Walker, S3E2

    Chris Walker bootstrapped Refine Labs from $3,000 to over $20 million in revenue in three years, becoming one of the most influential voices in B2B marketing. He had the audience, the recognition, and the revenue. Then he walked away from all of it. In this episode, Chris and I go deep on what happens when you do everything you're supposed to do and it still doesn't feel the way you thought it would. We talk about how he rated himself a 2 out of 10 on mental and time freedom while his business was thriving, the self-doubt he carried for 33 years behind a confident public persona, how his sense of identity and purpose shifted as he came into financial success, and why he sold two companies for a fraction of what they were worth to buy back his freedom. We also get into his 10 Dimensions of Freedom framework and how he uses it to make decisions that protect all ten, and what he's building now with ENCODED.ai. This is a conversation about the gap between achievement and fulfillment, and what Chris did to close it. If freedom is a priority for you, this one's for you. _____ (01:08) What success looked like in Chris's corporate years (04:32) Starting Refine Labs with $3,000 and $62K in student debt (06:30) The freest he ever felt (07:42) When passion turned into proving he was smarter than everyone (09:32) The Success Game: the six-step hamster wheel (14:00) Why believing success requires suffering creates it (17:14) A 2 out of 10 on mental and time freedom (18:35) Realizing $100M in B2B marketing was purposeless (20:42) "This is just who I am" (22:11) The biggest breakthrough of his life (27:30) How self-doubt and public confidence coexist (28:30) Frequency: identity, beliefs, and intentions (31:55) Money as the goal vs. the byproduct (34:30) Why $100 million would never be enough (39:00) Selling Refine Labs equity at 20% of its worth (40:38) Selling his Passetto shares for $18 (43:12) The mission behind ENCODED (45:30) Frequency training as a daily practice (47:50) The 10 Dimensions of Freedom (49:42) Isn't life about trade-offs? Show notes: Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. Connect with our host: Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar: Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

    52 min

  2. 1 HR AGO

    The Intersection of Passion, Profit, and Purpose - Intro to Season Three | S3E1

    Hey, it's me again, Melissa, back for Season Three. I'm the cofounder and CEO of eWebinar, and your host here at ProfitLed. This episode is the backstory behind this season's theme: Passion, Profit, and Purpose, and how those three things shift as founders come into financial success. About a year and a half ago, after 14 years as a 3x bootstrapped founder, I hit a wall. I lost my inspiration, my motivation, and somewhere along the way, myself. From the outside, everything looked great. Profitable company, loving partner, life on my own terms. But inside, I was unraveling. What I went through forced me to look at a part of the founder journey we almost never talk about. We spend so much time on growth strategies, marketing hacks, and the numbers, and almost no time on the person running the company. But the most important variable in any startup's success is you. And what you want, what drives you, and what success even means to you doesn't stay fixed. It shifts as you evolve. Your business stays constant and demanding, but you don't. That's what Season Three is about. The conversations we don't have enough of. The ones about what happens after you've built the thing, found some financial security, and look up and ask, now what? If this resonates, and you're curious how other founders have navigated this human journey, this season is for you. Show notes: Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. Connect with our host: Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar: Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

    8 min

  3. 2025-03-25

    The 12 Most Shocking Surprises on Our Way to $1M ARR | S2E27

    It took eWebinar 16 months to go from idea to product launch, then another 36 months to hit $1M ARR; this is the core theme of this season. That's a total of 52 months from incorporation date. You might have read about companies that get to $1M in a year, much less now with AI startups and the world riding that wave. Those are outliers and not the norm. 36 months to $1M is actually the median, even for funded companies. “Normal” is not newsworthy and doesn’t get the media spotlight it deserves so you might feel like you’re moving too slow even when you’re in the right place. On this season finale episode, Melissa and Todd dive into the 12 most shocking surprises on their way to $1M ARR after everything they tried, learned, and failed, which formed the foundation by which they continued to iterate on the business and product. Thank you for tuning into Season 2 of ProfitLed!! Your support is deeply appreciated. If you enjoy this podcast, please consider leaving us a review as that will help us continue to make episodes for you.  Takeaways: • Things they thought would have a huge impact, but didn’t • Assumptions that made them think they’d get to $1M faster • Things that took a lot more effort and time than anticipated • Why you don’t need fancy metrics to prioritize roadmap • Why $1M is not the magic number even though it seems like it is Show notes: Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. Connect with our host: Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar: Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

    47 min

  4. 2025-03-11

    9 Most Important PLG Lessons Learned | S2E26

    When Melissa cofounded eWebinar, she had no idea it was going to be “product-led”. Before becoming an entrepreneur, she had always been in B2B sales and biz dev roles. She was always a sales-led founder as both her previous startups were enterprise SaaS. The word “product-led growth” didn’t even exist in her vocabulary! When she ran out of leads to sell to in her network 9 months after launching eWebinar, she asked other founders for help. You can imagine her surprise when she learned that low cost, self-serve SaaS products were sold in a completely different way. Turns out, people don’t pick up the phone for $99/month products; they prefer to do their own research and sign up at their own pace. On this episode, Melissa and Todd dive into the 9 most important PLG (product-led growth) lessons learned as they powered through and figured things out by trying everything under the sun from playbooks, experts, and friends. Takeaways: • Marketing strategies that worked, and ones that didn’t • Why you should invest in high quality, engaging content • Why customers aren’t always your greatest source of info • Hardships and beauty of making a self-serve SaaS startup work Show notes: Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. Connect with our host: Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar: Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

    45 min

  5. 2025-02-25

    What Lifestyle Business Means | S2E25

    “This is fine as a lifestyle business.” Says every VC with a slight look of disdain after you pitch them your brilliant idea they don’t want to invest in.  The industry has given “lifestyle business” such a bad reputation by commonly using it to describe non-venture scalable businesses with less ambitious founders. Only 1% of startups are venture funded, which means the other 99% are bootstrapped and by industry standard, lifestyle businesses. If anything between zero and unicorn is “lifestyle”, I’d happily take it. eWebinar was founded intentionally as a lifestyle business, and that means choosing happiness over revenue for all decisions as it relates to the wellbeing of every team member, product, pricing, customer support, operations… On this episode, Melissa and Todd discuss what a “lifestyle business” is for them, and the things they do to achieve the dream company that gives everyone involved (not just the founders) a great lifestyle. Takeaways: • How the industry and VCs (negatively) perceive lifestyle businesses • Melissa’s 10 non-negotiables to happiness that led her to found eWebinar • Intentional decisions we make to achieve our dream lifestyle business • How choosing happiness over revenue impact product, operations and team • The culture we try to create at eWebinar and what it’s like to work here Show notes: Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. Connect with our host: Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar: Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

    45 min

  6. 2025-02-11

    5 Pricing Decisions that Turned Out to be Costly Mistakes | S2E24

    Should you “do right by your customers” at the expense of the company, your team, and your own wellbeing?  Your answer might be “yes”, until you realize a small change that customers would barely feel could mean instant profitability for your bootstrapped startup. Having said that, hindsight is always 20/20. There are some mistakes that you just have to make yourself, no matter how many warnings you get. On this episode, Melissa and Todd share the five pricing mistakes they made, why they were so costly (including one that would’ve given them $30k/month overnight), and what they could have done differently. Takeaways: • The pros and cons of not offering annual plans • Why you need to put usage limits on your trial period • Why “being fair” has little to no impact for your customers • Why you shouldn’t grandfather and increase pricing across the board • The importance of understanding every cost that drives your platform Show notes: Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. Connect with our host: Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar: Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

    46 min

  7. 2025-01-28

    Why We Stayed Away from Enterprise | S2E23

    Most companies think the answer to more revenue is to sell enterprise, but they aren't aware of the massive hassle and costs that come with going upmarket. There's no such thing as free money. The bigger the deal, the more attention you need to give your customer. The more customizations you offer, the more versions of your product you have to maintain. Many founders think the air is better up there because they think it'll solve their money problems. Spoiler alert: It won’t. On this episode, Melissa and Todd discuss all things enterprise sales and why they stayed away from it, and why they think you should too if you have a good thing going with self-serve SaaS Takeaways: • What we learned from spending a decade selling to big companies • The not-so-hidden costs of enterprise: sales, operations, product • Why going upmarket is not always a path to more revenue • Things you should consider before going upmarket Show notes: Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. Connect with our host: Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar: Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

    57 min

  8. 2025-01-14

    5 Wrong Hires that Ended Up Costing $450k | S2E22

    Hiring is one of the biggest challenges every company faces. For bootstrapped startups, this challenge is even bigger as we have to compete against funded companies and tech giants. Part of building a startup is trial and error, throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. Hiring is no different - it’s a learning process that can sometimes get expensive if you don’t “fire fast”. On this episode, Melissa and Todd dives into their 5 most costly hiring mistakes, what happened, and what they learned from each experience that helps them better define job requirements and run interviews in the future. Takeaways: • The profile of people startups should never hire • Why marketing agencies can’t take a company from 0-to-1 • When dev shops make sense (and when they don’t) • What “firing fast” means and why it matters for startups • Hard lessons we learned about hiring and firing Show notes: Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. Connect with our host: Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.Follow @themelissakwan on Instagram and YouTube where she shares short videos of business advice and other truth-bomb sound bites.This podcast was brought to you by eWebinar: Find out how you can turn pre-recorded videos into interactive experiences with chat so you can run your demos, onboarding calls, and training sessions on autopilot, 24/7, without being there. Hop into a demo at eWebinar.com, no salesperson required.

    58 min
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About

On Season 2, Melissa Kwan (Cofounder of eWebinar) and Todd Parmley (COO) relive their "Journey to $1M" ARR, bootstrapping eWebinar from day one. Each episode goes in depth into one major aspect of the journey, as Melissa and Todd share war stories, mistakes, and lessons learned as they grew the company to a million in annual recurring revenue, over a period of 36 months from product launch.If you’re a bootstrapper who wants a window into the day-to-day lives of other scrappy bootstrappers navigating the realities of building a successful company – the good, the bad, and the ugly! – this podcast is for you.__ProfitLed is a podcast by and for bootstrapped founders brave (or crazy) enough to grow their businesses to profitability without venture capital.There’s so much content out there featuring VC-backed founders and the unicorns they ride. But everyone else? Not so much. ProfitLed is dedicated to sharing the hard-won experience of bootstrappers in order to inspire fellow bootstrapped entrepreneurs to grow their own businesses and propel themselves closer to the freedom they’re working so hard to achieve. Presented by: eWebinar - https://ewebinar.com

Information

  • Creator
    Melissa Kwan
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    46
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 ProfitLed Podcast
  • Show Website
    ProfitLed Podcast