63 - Launching A SaaS Product

Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.

Verbatim text

Lee Matthew Jackson
Welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast, the podcast for web designers and design agencies exploring the world of WordPress and online business. And now your host, Lee Jackson. Hi and welcome to episode number 63 of the WP Innovator Podcast. This is Lee, and today we’re going to be talking with David Abrahams from Demio, a webinar product. It’s quite a new product, but don’t worry, you know, we’re not straying too far from WordPress because thankfully David does have a really good history and grounding in setting up an agency and working with WordPress. And now he’s diversified— that’s quite a big word, I’m quite proud of that one for Monday morning. Anyway, he’s diversified and has launched with his co-founder a really exciting webinar platform. And it’s a great storey learning how they’ve gone from agency to launching this platform growing an audience even before it’s finished. So sit back, relax, enjoy the ride, and don’t forget, come and join the Facebook group over on LeeJacksonDev.com/group. Let’s get some more cat pictures in there or just general funny memes. But also on a more serious note, of course we talk about agency life, we talk about WordPress and all of that good stuff.

Lee Matthew Jackson
So see you over there. I’m gonna shut up. You’re gonna enjoy. Cheerio.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Hello and welcome to Smooth Classics at 7. Actually, no, it’s the WP Innovator Podcast. Sorry guys, I was trying my sexy voice. I got a bit of a cold, didn’t really work out for me. This is episode number 63 and we are live and unedited. That’s also a lie. This is prerecorded with David Abrams from Demio. Mate, how are you doing?

David Abrams
I am doing great. I’m laughing because you are hilarious and that was awesome.

Lee Matthew Jackson
But we also, we also, I accused you as well, didn’t I? Accuse you, but I asked you if you had Tourette’s as well at any point. That would have been great, just like you effing and jeffing suddenly halfway through the episode, and I’d have been like, what?

David Abrams
I mean, I can have voluntary Tourette’s. That’d be the most interesting podcast episode ever.

Lee Matthew Jackson
It would be great if your Tourette’s had like a theme, you know, like some people have Tourette’s which is swearing. And just for the record, if you have Tourette’s, we love you, we appreciate you, and we value you, but we’re also making fun. Sorry. So yeah, um, yeah, so if someone had Tourette’s, it would be great to like have a WordPress kind of themed Tourette’s, like you just randomly started shouting plugins or something like that, or update PHP.

David Abrams
PHP.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Whoa. Okay.

David Abrams
Code-related Tourette’s. Yeah.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Code-related Tourette’s. Okay. Right. Well, before we carry on being idiots, which is— I love this. This is perfect. But guys, David is from Demio. It’s a webinar platform. I’m not going to say any further other than Dave, do you want to introduce yourself and tell us who you are, what you’re all about?

David Abrams
Yeah, absolutely. So my name is David Abrams. I’m one of the co-founders of Demio, and we are a smart webinar platform on a simple mission. Really, we’re a newer webinar platform that’s come out here in kind of later 2016, but we’re really built to be a simple webinar platform for marketing and sales. We were business owners ourselves, and we just really were looking for a better scalable way to bring in leads and sales to our business, and we found that webinars were the best way to do it, but we were super I guess just frustrated with the solutions on the market. So we like, we looked at each other, we’re like, let’s build this thing. And the naivety of that moment has been just explosive over the past couple of years. So it took us 2 years to basically build this all out. And we launched at the end of 2016 in November as our grand opening. And it’s just been an absolute journey to get there. But we really do feel that we have just the best, simplest, most powerful webinar platform on the market for marketing and sales.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Obviously, there is slight bias in there, though.

David Abrams
A little bit.

Lee Matthew Jackson
I’m messing with you.

David Abrams
Very little bit.

Lee Matthew Jackson
I am totally messing with you, man. I always tell people I’m the best web developer in the world, but I don’t think—

David Abrams
There’s no bias.

Lee Matthew Jackson
There’s no bias. No, it’s true. That’s right. Thank you, buddy. I just know we’re going to get on. I can just feel it. If you could give us a little bit more background then about yourself as well, then I guess what is your background? Before Demio, what were you doing? Demio’s a young product, you’ve been developing it for 2 years, what was life like before then?

David Abrams
Yeah, I mean, I have a pretty interesting background storey and probably very relatable to a lot of people listening to this. When I graduated college, and I’m gonna go real back, but I’ll like kind of make it a simplistic version of it. Like when I graduated college, I had no idea what I wanted to do and I was just kind of like stumbling around, like serving tables and stuff like that. I was like, I’m just gonna go travel. So I kind of quit my job in a terrible way by telling my boss to go, to go to hell, basically.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Was there an F in there, was there, or something?

David Abrams
There was, there was an F in there.

Lee Matthew Jackson
You can swear, we’ll just put explicit on the podcast if you need to. I know you’ve got Tourette’s and that, so.

David Abrams
I do, I do, I forgot to mention that. But yeah, I did that, I was like, I’m gonna go travel, so I just like, I like saved up some money, went and travelled for a little bit, came back dead broke, moved across the world from Tampa to Phoenix, Arizona, was living on my friend’s couch, and was like, I want to do something different. So I went and got an internship at a marketing company, an unpaid internship, spent 3 months working unpaid, took a loan out from the bank just to kind of make ends meet, literally eating ramen every day for like 3 months, had no money. It was fun. And basically got hired on there, became the internet marketing director, worked my way up and just learned about marketing online, online marketing, WordPress, websites. How all that stuff worked together, autoresponders. And one day I woke up and I was like, I could basically do this stuff myself. And jumped out of that company and went on my own for the first time. And basically created like, at first I was just a pure contractor. So I was doing things for like $20 an hour, just helping people with websites and WordPress and graphics.

David Abrams
And then it became an agency called Paint Your Brain. And we were a web development and design agency. And I kind of realised that I could, put together really good packages. I put together higher-priced packages for WordPress, doing a lot of responsive stuff, all custom WordPress sites. And I started selling between like $5,000 to $25,000 websites. Was doing like corporate sales and stuff like that. So it was really, really cool. Kind of grew really fast. But like many of you, it was brutal. It was long days. It was extremely tedious. It was working with clients. And we were making money, but I literally kind of hated every minute of it. And I just really wanted to get out. So I basically ended that and turned around and started doing consulting on marketing funnels and helping people build marketing funnels, which somehow ended up with me being back into client work and building marketing funnels for people. And like a year down the road, I looked at what I was doing. I was like, I’m doing the exact same thing. I never really left. And I think for a lot of us, we find, especially when we first start like an entrepreneurial journey, we find so much security in doing services because it’s literally offering like, I’ll do the service if you pay me.

David Abrams
So it’s like you’re kind of creating your own job for yourself. So there’s like some level of like still quote unquote like job security or financial security there, but you still have all the headache of being an entrepreneur, all the long hours, building your team, you know, managing expenses, all that kind of stuff. So you have all the extra with it. So I really started getting into software about, 3 years ago, and I started building my own software. I would take money from the agency and I would fund it into smaller softwares. And they started to grow, started making money with those, sold a couple of them off. And then me and my partner, co-founder at the time of Demio, got together and we’re like, let’s solve this webinar problem. We were starting to use webinars more often for marketing and sales. And we just knew that there was such a big need out there. There’s just a big pain in the market for a webinar platform. To really have all the power that we’ve built into Demio, but we’re like, let’s do this, let’s build it ourselves, not knowing how big and hard this project would be.

Lee Matthew Jackson
I get you. So there’s something that kind of speaks to me here. You’ve got this agency, you’re doing crap tonne of work, you own your own job essentially, I think is probably to coin a phrase there, where you’re working kind of 9 to 5 and beyond. I love it when people say screw the 9 to 5 because what that usually means is actually, yeah, screw the 9 to 5, let’s start working 6 AM till midnight.

David Abrams
Exactly. Giving up a 40-hour job for an 80-hour job.

Lee Matthew Jackson
For an 80-hour job. This hashtag, the struggle is real.

David Abrams
Uh, although— oh man.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Although nowadays, thankfully, with the way we’ve structured our business, we don’t have to do that anymore. You know, we’re not working late hours, but there certainly was. But, you know, you said, you know, your head wasn’t in that anymore. You don’t want to be doing client work all the time. And a lot of us are kind of attracted by that idea of productizing something or product— even if it’s a service like being a consultant where you’re a very highly paid consultant not having to do too much, or be it actually create a product like Demio and software, etc. I assume that you did not just pull the plug on Paint Your Brain and decide to spend 2 years making Demio, because that sounds like it would be an ideal scenario, but how would you even get paid or live? What was that process from the point of realisation of Paint Your Brain needs to stop and I need to move. How did you finance yourself and finance Demio and get to this point?

David Abrams
It’s a really good question. It’s a really, really good question. Actually, Paint Your Brain was my web design development agency. So, when I closed that down, I slowly cut those clients and killed those clients, giving them new providers.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Okay, you didn’t kill the clients because you just said kill the clients. I’m going to cut that out and—

David Abrams
I may have done that.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Send it to the police.

David Abrams
Please don’t arrest me. No. No, so I kind of closed those client accounts off very slowly, but did it in like a good way to keep the relationships great. And then that second kind of funnel agency was called Systemizely. And when I got into Demio, Systemizely was really more on the lines of automation agency. So there was some consulting, there was some marketing and sales funnels being built. And with that, I actually had to keep it open for like the first year of Demio, because that really was like you said, the financial backing to my life. So we were putting a lot of money into Demio itself, and my partner had his own internet marketing business too. So we were funding the company from our businesses, but also living off of it. So it really was hard at first to have this split. Now the second year of Demio, we literally looked at each other and we’re like, okay, this is the year we’re going live and we’re launching this thing. We can’t split our focus. And like one of the biggest like key takeaways that the Demio journey has taught me is that focus is so integral to building anything great.

David Abrams
And so we basically were like, okay, well we have to get out of our businesses and it’s gonna hurt. We’re gonna be taking a step backwards, probably not have the money that we have coming in. And it has been really hard because where we expected to be, like we expected to launch in March and we gave up and like kind of closed down the businesses. In January, it literally took us to November to launch. So we had this very long extended period of time. But what happened was, is like, so we basically didn’t want to get back into old habits and bringing back in stuff. So we literally looked at each other and said, what kind of low, or what kind of high leverage, low time things can we do to bring in money? So we ran a bootcamp, we did some, you know, more consulting. We did more email marketing and stuff like that. We went to like, spoke at events and sold products at events. So like we tried to figure out other ways to make money and that really became like our lifeblood. And I also sold, I sold off a couple of softwares which kind of helped to give me a little bit of room in the bank.

David Abrams
But really it’s been bootstrapping. And what that taught me more than anything was how to manage a team correctly with money, how to manage like, and give away equity in return for payment and stuff like that. So there was a lot of lessons to be learned with that bootstrapping thing. But I think for anyone kind of leaving their agency or stopping the agency, there is gonna be a really fine balance between when you kind of put total focus in your new product and your new area and the balance of how much you’re making and kind of the sustainable income. And I probably, made a mistake in ending it too early because there was added stress there. But I also don’t know if we would have done as well as we did with kind of getting the product to the market and stuff like that without total focus and being kind of split attention there.

Lee Matthew Jackson
I think what I’m taking from this as well is with Demio, by taking that cutoff point of like, okay, we are now Demio and we need to make this work, etc., that gives you that drive, that ambition to do absolutely everything that you need to do to make it work. Whereas if you’ve got money coming in on the side, it kind of helps you take the foot off the pedal a little bit. And that’s something I’ve experienced in the past where I was developing a product essentially for like two— well, it was just a year. I spent loads of time developing a product but didn’t really have a strategy with it. I was already earning money, so it wasn’t essential that I sold it, and I never even— I think I sold like one licence ever. It was ridiculous. But I didn’t make that cutoff point. I was too busy earning money in other ways as well. The other thing that I’m taking from this as well, which is quite inspiring, is the fact You know, if people are thinking of either leaving their agency or productizing something, etc., and they do need to try and buy some time, what you’ve pointed out is very true.

Lee Matthew Jackson
There are all sorts of ways of making money. It’s not just about, oh crap, I now need to do more of what I’m doing, i.e., more client work so that I can afford to invest in that other thing. There are actually other ways, you know, those higher-paid consultancies, doing a workshop, those other sorts of things. Crap, even selling like your old Game Boy or whatever it is, you know, just to bring in some cash so that you can put to put food on the table so that you can get whatever the project is going. So that’s really inspirational, buddy. I applaud you.

David Abrams
Thank you. Well, I think you’re absolutely right. One of the things that we would always say was, let’s burn our boats. Let’s kind of give ourselves no other way out besides either succeeding or failure. And that’s the biggest motivator.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah. And just for the record, if you live near the ocean, please do not go and burn a whole load of boats. This is a metaphor.

David Abrams
Oh, no, we literally burned boats.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Oh crap. I remember that in the news now, that was you.

David Abrams
That was Tampa Bay, that was me, yeah, I was burning boats, yeah, that was me.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Speaking of Tampa Bay, are you back in Tampa Bay then or are you over in Arizona still?

David Abrams
No, I moved back to Tampa about 4 and a half years ago, so after all that went down, I moved back to Tampa after all that, yeah.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Sweet, ’cause, well, it was just a thought. We’ll have to meet up because in a few months’ time we’ll be in America, well, we’ll be in Orlando, which is not that far from you for a couple of months. So it would be great to catch up and meet up as well.

David Abrams
Let’s do that. Definitely.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Why the hell not? Everyone on the podcast witnessing us arranging a get-together. So if anyone else is in the Tampa area, let’s go out, go for beers. Woo! Because America is famous for great beer like Coors Light.

David Abrams
Well, that’s the best beer. Seriously? It’s like Coors Light, Natty Light, good stuff.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Really? Are you being sarcastic?

David Abrams
Totally sarcastic.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Oh, I thought you meant it for a minute. I was like, oh crap, he thinks it’s good beer. What do I tell him?

David Abrams
I’m trying to hydrate my body, get a lot of water in.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Okay, fair enough. Yeah, well, if you need to hydrate, then Coors Light is probably all right, isn’t it? There’s plenty of water content on that.

David Abrams
Exactly.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Oh dear, this is not an advertisement for Coors Light. Oh, sorry, got a cold here as well. All right, buddy. We’re fast-forwarding now. You’ve survived the stress of releasing a product later than anticipated, but you hustled, I guess. I don’t really like the word, but I guess essentially you managed to find ways of creating income to continue to survive so you could get Demio out the door. You burnt a few boats, i.e., you put yourself in a situation that meant you had to just go all in and get this thing to market. There’s a big question in itself. If you’re making a product, you don’t necessarily have a humongous audience unless you were lucky and already did. How the hell did you get Demio to an audience for it to start paying for itself when you launched it? The end, was it November of 2016? Yeah. How do you go from zero to clients and income stream for Demio to pay its way?

David Abrams
Well, I think it’s a really, I mean, that’s the toughest part of building a business, right? Is actually getting the customers and marketing and stuff. So, There’s a really good book, Traction, which talks about like when you’re building a product, 50% of your time is actually on product development, and the other 50% has to be on the actual marketing traction and sales traction to build the business. ‘Cause it doesn’t matter if you have the best product in the world, if you don’t get it to an audience, it doesn’t matter. No one’s gonna see it. And you can have, you see all the time crappy products go out and, you know, do really, really well with marketing. So they do really good. So for us, what we did was kind of a combination of things. One, we had like a behind the scenes show that would go on. We had like a videographer kind of record the process of building Demio, and we put that out. So we’re trying to build an audience that way. We did a lot of pre-marketing. So we came up with some video marketing videos and pre-released them like months and months and months in advance.

David Abrams
We would just kind of drip them out like $5 a day, literally getting views for like a penny, which built us up a pretty large pre-launch list. Then we did 4 months of beta for free. We opened up beta for free, which brought in almost 900 testers.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Wow.

David Abrams
Every time webinars were run, that was getting it in front of more people and more people, so we were getting this exposure. Then taking all that, we moved it into doing a launch. We got some affiliates promote for us. We didn’t get gigantic affiliates. We didn’t do a huge grand opening push, but we did have some really great affiliates. Honestly, about 60% of our sales at launch came from our own internal list from those either beta customers or from our pre-launch list that we opened to. And when we did our grand opening, we did reduced price grand opening packages for annual payments. So we did do like a yearly payment.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, that’s a really— that’s so simple. You’ve made it sound so simple. There you go, guys. Launch in a box. So that was Traction, the book Traction. Is that— that’s how any startup can achieve explosive customer growth. Is that the one?

David Abrams
Yeah, I think it’s from Justin Mars.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, there you go. Justin Mars. All right. So we’ll get this in the show notes as well because I’ve not actually heard of that book. So I pricked my ears up when you said that. Yeah, it’s a good one. No, that’s great. But getting 900 people as beta testers is pretty damn impressive. And I love the idea though of you kind of drip feeding content over time, getting people involved in the storey so they can see the narrative of how this product is beginning and how it’s evolving and then getting people as well involved in essentially the creation of it because those beta testers are essentially your R&D team, aren’t they? They’re helping you find bugs, they’re helping use the system, give you ideas for features, etc., that you may not have considered, etc. I assume that happened during that process?

David Abrams
100%. In fact, what we did, which was kind of— we want to have a focus on simplicity. We want to be a simple platform but have a lot of power. So what’s interesting is we actually when we were going in, we stripped out about 50% of our features and functions and stuff like that before beta even opened. So we went super minimalistic, but it helped us because we got to see that the core items were what people wanted. We got to hear what they, what they needed. And so we came up with these very large, like, feature request lists and stuff like that. So we built in what people wanted. Now we still do that every single day. Like, we’re only 3 months old, but like, I still put in feature requests every day. Everything that we’re building is based on what our customers are needing. We talk about it internally as a team, like what should be the next items that we work on for our customers. And we try to put out new things about once a week or once every two weeks, customer-based issues or customer-based requests and stuff like that. So our product is really built for them.

David Abrams
It’s not something that we think that they want, it’s really what they do want. But we also try to find ways to keep it very simple in there. So yeah, that was a really, really big, key thing there. And the other side, just to answer the other part you said about the show, the show was really cool. I think what I learned from that is people really love transparency and being a part of a narrative, like you said. So like the videos that have worked best for us have been kind of mission-driven or purpose-driven videos that kind of, that aren’t just like, here’s the software. It’s like, here’s who we are, here’s our story, here’s why we did it. Here’s kind of the struggle that we face. You know, we’re relatable, like the same entrepreneurial struggle, and we’re trying to do something for you, like with you kind of thing. And those have always been the best kind of videos and marketing. And I think that’s kind of how you can take on bigger companies because you can really have that personal feel. And I do a lot of like one-on-one sales calls and I do like a weekly free show.

David Abrams
And I really try to be like involved with our customers and involved with our prospects. So it’s not like you’re just dealing with a software company, like I’m, I’m just David from Demio, like, come talk to me, ask questions, and I’ll help you as much as I can.

Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s freaking awesome. I love it. And with that as well, you know, people are, I guess they’re happier to spend their money with you because they feel like they know you, they’ve got that connexion with you guys, etc. I mean, I remember having a look through the videos and having a laugh at some of the things you were doing, and if you scroll back further down, buddy, you look 12 in one of them, like this young and fresh guy. You look really young. I didn’t mean that as a negative, by the way.

David Abrams
Yeah, I’m very hurt, by the way.

Lee Matthew Jackson
I meant right at the beginning, you’re like young and fresh-faced video.

David Abrams
And can you believe I’m almost 30? That’s the sad part.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Really?

David Abrams
No way.

Lee Matthew Jackson
I’m so jealous. I started losing my hair when I was 18 and you’ve got an incredible hairline. I’m 34. I’m so jealous.

David Abrams
Yeah, well, I’m just finally getting facial hair, so I guess I just hit puberty late.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Oh mate, you’re freaking awesome. So jealous. That’s a good thing. But you know, you know, we— but, but kind of my main point though was just like, like, it’s so— it’s fun looking at these videos. It’s fun seeing you guys for who you are and thinking, you know, crap, I would rather spend my money with, with guys like you who are passionate about what you’re doing than, than potentially two faceless on Zoom, for example. You know, like, I’ve got a Zoom account, it’s a great little product, but I don’t know anyone at Zoom. I don’t know who’s behind it or anything else like that. Um, and you’re totally right, if you want to be able to compete with those, you know, with the bigger guys, the bigger players, sometimes it’s great to, to have a face, um, you know, to be in front of, you know, to both of you and your co-founder to be visible, to be a part of it. Because a lot of people make the mistake, including myself, of trying to launch a product, um, without there being people there, you know, not involving people in the process, um, like you did with the beta guys, but also not being involved in being visible, and I think that’s something you guys have done really well.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Putting yourselves out there, being visible, being vulnerable, having fun at the same time, and really attracting people to you.

David Abrams
Yeah, absolutely. I think looking at other great companies, it doesn’t have to be you. I just, for us, it’s like we’re kind of just a smaller bootstrap team, so it’s just as a founder, it’s like that’s your responsibility is to do whatever it takes. So we were able to just do that because there’s no cost. But you look at great companies like Wistia, and they’ve done an absolutely amazing job at this, but they’re not, I mean like the founders no longer are the face, they have content teams, but they do an amazing job of being relational, fun, you know, and I guess, you know, creating conversations. But I think that’s just such a key thing these days.

Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s awesome. So how are things going at the moment? Are you hitting targets with regards to the amount of accounts you need to sell, or do you, you know, how are things going?

David Abrams
Yeah, things are going—

Lee Matthew Jackson
You said it’s going nuts, but tell us a bit about what nuts means in your life. Does it mean you’re busy again? Or are you living the dream?

David Abrams
No, at this point we’re only 3 months since launch, so it’s still super busy. For us right now, one of our key selling channels is actually direct sales, so a lot of my day is actually on demos or doing one-on-one sales. And we haven’t reached really a point of scale yet, which is fine, we’re still young, we wanna take it the right way. So, you know, support and still, stuff is still in my hands. So there’s a lot of like day-to-day activity. So I’m still very much in the business all day, you know, working with the team, which is great. It means I’m very attached to everything that’s happening. But I think, you know, probably within the next couple years when we kinda hit mass, mass, I don’t know, growth and stuff like that, I’ll be able to kind of step away a little bit more, be more operational, which I love. I love being in operationally like, you know, structured business. But early on in the SaaS process, it’s what’s called a lot of times like the long cold winter, which is, you know, building up that MRR, building up the traction to have, you know, enough of a team there to kind of have the sustainable growth.

David Abrams
The beginning stages are always the hardest because you’re just building the momentum over time. But once you have that snowball rolling, then you’re kind of in a good place to build operational foundation of the company.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Wise words. I like it. And I’m going to be intrigued to see as well how you guys progress, especially as you grow, keeping that personality going as well. Like you said, I think Wistia have done quite a good job, haven’t they? And I’m fascinated to see where you guys take this. So tell us about the product then, because there are— well, there’s not a million, but I know of a lot of webinar platforms kind of Who is your target for your solution and what is the benefit of your solution for that target?

David Abrams
Yeah, so I think for us, anyone that wants to build relationships or connect with their audience is really our target market. So businesses, solopreneurs, agencies, stuff like that. If you want to connect and sell better, I think webinars are by far the best way to connect and do that because you can have like a one-on-one conversation in a one-to-many setting. Now there are other platforms out there, some that focus just on like the video conferencing side, and some of them are built on like older technologies, and there’s some that are focused on like marketing and sales, but they’re built on things like Hangouts, YouTube Live, and stuff like that. So what we kind of wanted to do was build a technology that was in the middle, that gave you a real-time conversation that was like no latency, really nice and easy to use, really beautiful in the browser, but also gave you instant integrations with your CRMs, your autoresponders, It gave you automation rules where you can set up specific events to happen based on what happens on the webinar. So for instance, if someone does not attend the webinar, you can instantly have them tag something in your CRM.

David Abrams
If they complete, they can do that. If they leave early, if they, you know, stay till a certain time. We also give you like really actionable analytics so you can see exactly what’s happening over time. And again, really nice, clean, simple UI. Everything is connected to your autoresponders, and then we have our like live replays coming out in about 3 weeks, where you can actually take a webinar that was done live in one of our rooms, with one click, launch it like live. So the chats will come in at the same time, handouts will appear at the same time, call to actions at the same time, and you have all the beautiful experience of the Demio room, but in an on-demand automated fashion.

Lee Matthew Jackson
[Speaker:TYRONE] Oh, so like, because sometimes I wonder, when I watch a webinar, I actually wonder whether it’s live. So do you mean it’s like that? So instead of one poor soul doing 1,000 webinars at every single hour that God sends to cover the entire globe, that’s kind of a way of being able to allow people to access that content as it happened, do you mean? Kind of on multiple time zones?

David Abrams
[Speaker:TYRONE] Exactly. So a live webinar I think is still the most powerful thing that you can do for marketing or sales because it’s like, it’s real. You’re having the conversations. But let’s say you do a really powerful presentation and you want to make that go on demand. So with our system, we kind of took a step back and we didn’t really love the idea of like these quote unquote evergreen webinars that had like fake chats, fake people in there, and they’re trying to like sell the fact that it was a live webinar, even though it’s like clearly fake. So what we wanted to do was make it so that you could enjoy all the benefits of a live webinar without having to like deceive your audience. So with this, it’ll say, previously recorded, but you can actually go watch this replay in the webinar room and get all the exact same benefits of watching it like it was live, but it would be on demand. They can sign up at any time. You can reply to chats and stuff like that. So it’s still all the power that you had in the live webinar.

Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s cool. It kind of makes me think of Periscope, because if you watch Periscope, you can watch a broadcast as it happened, and you see the chats kind of running up the screen as well at the same time as it happened. So, you know, exactly the replay. But at least that way you’re not being tricked, as it were, into thinking this is live. You know, you’re watching a replay. So I like that because it is something that does bother me, you know, the automation where I feel like I’ve been tricked in the past by people into thinking that it’s a live webinar and the guy calls in and they make it like— they almost make it too— like they always go too far to make an effort to make you think it’s live. Do you know what I mean? Which makes you start to suspect because they then start saying, hey, type in a comment of where you are. And stuff like that, and all that sort of thing. All right, so in my head, webinars, all right, I’m thinking most of the webinars I usually get hit with is a webinar where somebody’s saying, hey, we’ve got this amazing system, and, you know, come and learn the 3 points of how to make a brilliant website.

Lee Matthew Jackson
And I’m making this up now, uh, it’s free. And, uh, it will then be that person, they might do the, hey room, how you doing, say hi, and then they’ll kind of launch a presentation where they’ll add a little bit of value, uh, and then you know, it’s coming. They’re going to then be selling you something at the end of that. And, you know, those are the sorts of webinars I kind of get hit with a lot. And I’ve got to admit, I’ve kind of fallen out of love with those sorts of webinars and tend not to go to them anymore. So talk to me, I mean, something that piqued my interest when you said it’s a way to be relational and to have conversations with people and one-to-many setting, etc. Tell me in your mind, what what is a webinar, what defines a webinar, or what might define a better webinar than what I’ve just put out there as the kind of cookie-cutter stereotypical webinar that I’m just kind of bombarded with in my inbox.

David Abrams
Yeah, well, I would say first and foremost, there’s, you know, a multitude of ways to run webinars. So it could be live Q&A, it could be onboarding webinars to your, to your new software or company, it could be, you know, a weekly a weekly training, but you’re speaking specifically about sales webinars. And I think people have fallen in love with templatizing this. Like here’s the exact formula I’m gonna run through my pain point, my introduction, I’m gonna give you like 5 minutes of content, and then I’m gonna switch to a pitch at the end. And I’m gonna just try to get as many people on here and just try to pitch them. So it’s like sitting in, going to an event and just sitting in a pitch fest. Like no one wants that. No one wants to have that experience. It’s painful, it’s crappy, it’s terrible. So really like the way, if you’re gonna do something like that, the kind of the way that I’ve flipped it as kind of on its head is I’ve really focused on making sure I’m giving a lot of valuable content. So if you are coming, you are getting a lot of information that you can actually take away from and utilise directly in your business.

David Abrams
Now it may be like a process that takes some time or it’s a manual process. But at the end of the day, whatever you do, whatever you take away from this, you’ll have valuable— a valuable win. So for instance, you might come to a webinar and I’ll teach you, you know, the 17 steps that you need to do to set up an effective webinar. Okay, so at least at the end of this webinar—

Lee Matthew Jackson
Really?

David Abrams
17.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Oh man.

David Abrams
75.

Lee Matthew Jackson
I’m just kidding. Oh my gosh. Like, tell me it’s 3 and I’ll be happy. Carry on.

David Abrams
I have 2 effective steps. 1, you run the webinar. 2, you sell on the webinar.

Lee Matthew Jackson
All right, cool. I like it. I’m in.

David Abrams
Now you can make your first 7 figures.

Lee Matthew Jackson
All right. Brilliant.

David Abrams
So I think, you know, one, you want to have that valuable content. You want to give them something they can walk away with. And the second thing is, is that a lot of times people just want to like talk at people. And really what webinars are is they’re a conversation. So what I like to do is I like to really try to engage with the audience. I like to talk to them, ask them questions. I like to find out where they are in their business. I like to give personal information back to them. So even if it disrupts any type of flow, like some of my best converting webinars have been me just talking to the audience and like asking them questions and just having direct conversations almost in a one-to-many setting. And then transitioning to here’s a solution that I think is best for all of you guys. But, you know, having these conversations kind of going off the cuff and like away from this templatized formula is a really powerful way to have a conversation. I think At the end of the day, what people want is they want relationships, they want transparency, they want to know value, they want to know trust.

David Abrams
And when you just talk at people, it doesn’t create those things. But having conversations and learning about people and being real and being transparent, those actually do elevate status and give you all those values.

Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s good. I’m kind of picturing as well, what’s resonating here is obviously Blab, which may it rest in peace. I miss Blab a lot. I was an avid Blabber. I still have a t-shirt of Blab as well. Do you remember Blab before I came?

David Abrams
I do remember Blab. Yeah.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Brilliant system. But the idea there is exactly this. You had maybe 1, 2, or 3 people who were actually conversing, but also there was the entire conversation thread going on in the right-hand side as well. And I actually generated business out of Blab, believe it or not, just by being on, doing question and answer sessions, etc., and all sorts of stuff like that. In a setting where I clearly was not there to necessarily sell anything. I was there to just have conversations and give some answers to questions that might help people, etc. And in the end, it also led to opportunities, which is quite interesting. I had never thought of that. It’s just as you were describing that, I thought, crap, I think I’ve done this before.

David Abrams
Yeah, exactly. It’s funny how just giving value and helping people turns into business sometimes, right?

Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, it’s funny that.

David Abrams
That’s awesome. But yeah, that’s kind of like, again, we wanted to have real-time communication on our platform, because I think, you know, when you’re talking to people, you want to have that engagement back. And that’s what’s so cool about webinars, is you have live engagement, and you’re having those conversations. And I just, you know, people, like, I just feel like there’s so much noise online these days, and there’s so much competition in any space. You know, the more real you can be and really kind of break down those barriers of, can I trust this person? These are just objections that normal people have. Can I trust them? Is their company going to be valuable? Is it going to work for me? I’m unique. It’s not going to work for me. It can work for them, but it’s not going to work for me. So when you kind of have these conversations, you can break through some of those objections faster. And, you know, it really is just a powerful way to sell and market. Qualify leads. So a lot of people are using webinars not even to just sell at the end. They’re having these training webinars or these conversational webinars, and that’s just like a relationship builder.

David Abrams
So maybe down the road, maybe in a week, 2 weeks, or whatever, they’ll actually present a selling opportunity. But these upfront ones are just about giving value and, you know, becoming a person of value to that business or to that person.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Exactly, setting yourself up as, you know, as a be an authority in a particular industry, etc., inviting people along to get free value, etc. And then at some point, um, you know, monetize— it sounds bad, but monetizing, but you’re offering something else that’s of even more value that people will be happy to pay for because they know, like, and trust you, etc., and you’ve already established and grown that audience. With regards to audiences then, um, you know, do you guys have any tips for actually getting people to sign up for webinars? Because, you know, as you— or even to attend webinars, because as you imagine, you know, for me my experience has been to kind of roll my eyes sometimes when I see some of these automated webinars coming out of me. Any tips for, you know, helping get people onto a webinar, to attract people to a webinar?

David Abrams
I mean, I think the key thing for, like most marketing messages, the key thing is like your big promise or the hook that you’re going to get people with. So like, what pain can you solve for people that they would want to join live and listen to? So sometimes, And oftentimes when you see low either registration rates or low attendance rates, you can read a lot of that back to you. Like, what am I actually doing on this webinar? What content am I giving away? What am I promising to help people with? Am I solving enough of pain? Am I doing something new enough? Is it sexy enough? So a lot of those things are easy to fix. It’s just testing, you know, just change the angle, change what you’re going to talk about, change how you can help people. A lot of people also want to, like teach what they think people want, or like kind of talk like, they’re trying to angle their product the right way. So they’re trying to find a little piece of content that they can put in front of their product to pitch their product. But they’re not really thinking about what does my prospect or my avatar actually need, right?

David Abrams
Like what do they really desire and need? And if I could teach that, then you’ll see a rise in registration. Now getting people on the webinar, I think, you know, using videos, to kind of build that transparency even before the webinar, so on the thank you page and the emails are always great. Having those retention strategies, or like talking about what you’re gonna give away for free, like you could give away, like for us, right, we have a funnel where we give away 20 webinar ad templates, and then if you sign up for the webinar, you can win, and on the webinar we’ll give away a couple of things, but one of the things is you can win $50 in Facebook advertising live on the webinar. So we’re not only going to teach you how to run the advertising, all that stuff, but you’ll also have some real takeaway that you can use in your business. So you can have little strategies and stuff like that to incentivize people for showing up. Another thing that I’m doing now is my live webinars. I do a lot more in-depth. I have all the personal conversations and my replay.

David Abrams
Honestly, I just send out like the straight content piece. Like they don’t get any of the personalised stuff. They don’t get any of the bonuses. So they miss out by not coming live. And I try to make that very clear to them that if you don’t come live to this webinar, you’re not going to get everything that everyone else gets.

Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s a good way of incentivizing the webinar by— the live webinar, sorry, by encouraging people with potential prize, but also the templates that they’re going to get. So, free to attend. Is that something that they get right at the end as well, or is it that they can rock up for 10 minutes and grab the free items?

David Abrams
No, I typically— one of the first slides I’ll go through is I’ll do the retention slides. I’ll say, if you guys stay till the end, here’s what I’m going to be offering you, and I’ll take the time to talk about them. I’ll be giving away, you know, this template, this is what it’s going to do for you. I’ll be giving away this, this is what it’s going to do for you. That’s going to be the end, so I don’t want you guys to leave. You all get access to that, just stay till the end of the webinar. And I’ll also be talking about something really amazing at the end that you guys are absolutely going to love. And that’s kind of like a little psychological trick by kind of setting the scene and telling them that, yeah, you might be pitching something and you might be showing them something at the end, and you’re kind of getting a micro-commitment there that they’re okay with seeing that at the end.

Lee Matthew Jackson
But also at the same time, you know, you’ve carefully picked the topic, the problem that you’re solving. Because again, I think a lot of the time, a lot of the webinars that I tend to get that I tend not to therefore attend, you know, is very much these kind of higher-level kind of vague promises and phrases like, you know, like how to generate loads of money doing this type of thing. And it’s not really a problem I have right now. It’s quite vague, it’s quite high-level, whereas if someone was going to come to me and, you know, and talk about maybe something specific to do with project management in my niche or time management or something. The 3 keys to avoid burnout would probably be a good one for me last year because I was so freaking busy. If someone had sent me that, I’d have been on that podcast like— sorry, on that webinar like a catapult.

David Abrams
100%.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Definitely something in picking wisely what those subjects are.

David Abrams
Well, I think it all comes down to understanding your avatar. That’s one of the things that most people skip. They just like, oh, I have this product, I want to sell it, but they don’t really get dialled in on their avatar, the pain points of their avatar, or really thinking about like, what does that person need? And when do they need it? And how can they get it? So there’s a lot of things that like the avatar actually teaches you. And the other thing I would say is like when people run webinars, a lot of times they’ll run a webinar and like maybe they’ll get a bad show up rate or they’ll, you know, have okay conversion, maybe not even great conversion. And they’re just like, no, this won’t work. And they just throw up their hands. But it’s like, you can tweak this so easily. Change the registration page, change your big promise, change a little bit of the content. You don’t even have to change all the content, just tweak how you talk about it. And you can start seeing incremental changes. And the cool thing about these is, I mean, what are you really doing?

David Abrams
It’s just your time. So you could run it multiple times a week. You could run it multiple times a day if you wanted to, but gives you real-time feedback of what’s actually happening. Am I talking to them the right way? And then once you start dialling that in, then you’re just getting more, you know, then you’re just tweaking more of the objections through the presentation. You’re tweaking your close. So you could run a webinar for an entire year and just have an amazing sales system and it’s just people want to quit so easily. It’s just you got to kind of persevere through that a little bit.

Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s quite interesting you should say that because I can just imagine like feeling like it’s going to be effacing in regards to maybe doing 3 webinars a week or something like that. And it sounds like you’re doing a lot of webinars yourselves or online calls through your system. How do you keep yourself motivated?

David Abrams
Well, I think that’s a tough question. I think that’s more of like an entrepreneurial question. I think for me, I really have like core values that I really want to accomplish. I kind of have this vision of like who I— like not just goals, but like who I want to become. And I know that every day, no matter the grind, I have to step up and do the actions that will lead me to who I want to be and base those off the values that I have. Every day, like every entrepreneur, I probably face moments of, and I do face moments of like, “Oh, I don’t want to do this,” or, “This is going to be hard.” But I just kind of let those thoughts go out of my head and I just do them. And I suck it up and I do them. And some days are really hard, some days are really long. You got to balance it with exercise and you got to balance it with whatever you can do to not burn yourself out, whether it’s taking breaks, meditation, whatever that stuff is. You know, you got to have a vision of what it’s all for.

David Abrams
Otherwise, doing all the hard work and all the hard times and all the moments where you just are down and burnt out and busy and crazy, you just, you kind of question what you’re doing it all for.

Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s so true. It’s like knowing what your why is, your purpose, your values. That’s so inspirational. I appreciate that. The reason why I ask a lot of these questions is quite frankly, I’m intrigued how other people cope because sometimes I do, I hit that day where I’m like, you know what, I don’t want to do a podcast interview, I’m tired, or I don’t want to build this website, I don’t I don’t want to rock into the office because I’m exhausted and then I kind of have to sit down and give myself this pep talk. Why am I doing this? What am I in this for? Is this just about earning money? No, it’s about adding value, about teaching people, about having fun and all those sorts of things. That kind of gets— that little self-pep talk, that kind of little self-slap really, really does help knowing your why.

David Abrams
It [Speaker:TYRONE] really does. I think a lot of entrepreneurs, there’s kind of like this facade that everyone like, oh, look at all these people, they work so hard, they don’t face the same problems I do. Like, there’s like a little bit of like fake vulnerability. Like, all of us as entrepreneurs face these exact problems. Like, I felt burned out last night. I did 14 sales calls plus support all day. I actually had like a 16-hour day on talking all day. I felt really burnt out last night and I kind of went through and thought about it. And like, we all go through those ups and downs. That’s part of our journey and that’s what makes us entrepreneurs. This isn’t always for everybody. There’s going to be really tough times and not everyone makes it through it. And you just got to, again, have a very solid foundation of why are you persevering. And if you don’t have that why, you don’t have those values, then you probably won’t persevere and maybe it’s not right for you. And that’s fine. There’s no— it’s not like a judgement for not being an entrepreneur.

Lee Matthew Jackson
No. But it’s good though. And it’s good for us, I think both of us to have this conversation because right now we’ve just shared a vulnerability on both sides. That’s encouraged me. I’m hoping that’s encouraged you. But also, for people who are listening, you know, I’ve often fallen into the trap of looking at different people and thinking, putting them up on a pedestal, you know, thinking, oh, they never have a bad day, they’re always on it, they’re on their social media marketing, they’re always on Snapchat, they’re always doing their videos, they’re keeping on point all the time, they must never have these problems. But, you know, we’re all human, aren’t we? And, you know, crap, we always have our bad days, we always have our stress days, etc. It’s perfectly natural and normal just to remember that why. And if you don’t have a why, let’s take some time out and work out a good why, something to strive for. I feel like me and you should maybe tag team it on some sort of like self-help show now. I think we could do it. I think we’d be pretty good at this, won’t we?

David Abrams
I think so. I mean, I think we have a— we could take down Oprah.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, totally. Uh, I could do the Ellen dance because I’m terrible at dancing, so, you know, kind of a combination of Ellen and Oprah.

David Abrams
There we go. Yeah. The Ellen and Oprah Show.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah. I’m pretty sure we’d be sued. Just saying.

David Abrams
I’m okay with that lawsuit. I would take it.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Hey, quick question. How did you come up with the name Demio?

David Abrams
It was actually my co-founder Wyatt was the one that came up with it and he actually purchased it. And it comes from the word demo, but kind of the video communication side there.

Lee Matthew Jackson
I get you. I kind of figured it was from demo. Was just interested. Nice, neat, short domain as well. In this era, to be able to get like a 5-letter domain is pretty cool.

David Abrams
Yeah, he paid some, you know, some money for it.

Lee Matthew Jackson
I’ve got a 4-letter domain, jxns.com. I bought it like in ’99 or something ridiculous when I thought that was going to be my company name. I’ve never got rid of it because it’s 4 letters and I get probably 8 emails a week asking to buy it.

David Abrams
Wow. Ridiculous.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, I know. And it means nothing to no one. I don’t know why people want to buy it. I’m holding out though for the million pound offer.

David Abrams
That’s crazy. Yeah, I actually just heard a friend of mine owns a SaaS and he said that it’s proof, like he wanted the word proof and proof.com was 7 figures and it’s just like, man, let’s go back in time and become domain brokers, man.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, exactly. I wish I’d bought more domains. I remember once I sold a domain broadband.com, but it was with a zero for the O.

David Abrams
Okay.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, because back in the day, that’s how we all thought we were going to make money. Well, at least I did. I was like, yeah, I’m going to buy domains. And I had so many ridiculous domains that I never sold. I only own 10 domains now. That’s pretty good because I know a lot of people that get addicted. They’ve got a budget for buying domains.

David Abrams
I have seen that before. I’ve seen people do that. I’m like, I think I have 3 domains. I don’t know. Wow. Yeah, I’ve seen it before.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Wow, look at you cutting the domains out of your life. I’m proud of you.

David Abrams
I’m a domain minimalistic kind of guy. What can I say?

Lee Matthew Jackson
Look at you. And then there’s all of us seeing the auto-renew message going, damn it, I don’t want that domain for another year. Ah, crap. Must log in.

David Abrams
75-word domain.

Lee Matthew Jackson
I would love to launch a website with a ridiculously long— hey, maybe there’s a challenge for you then. Show how webinars work despite the handicap of having a 75-word-long domain name. That would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it?

David Abrams
Yeah. I’m scared by that.

Lee Matthew Jackson
I would love to do that just as a joke. A really long domain name. Just on the podcast. We’ve rebranded the business and we are— and then just like read out this really long URL. Check out the podcast on— Yeah, I don’t think it would go down well. Well, mate, you’re a legend. You’ve inspired me. You’ve certainly taught me a few things or helped me connect a few dots that I hadn’t actually thought about with regards to webinars. Obviously, I’ve got a few preconceived ideas from the past, but you’ve enabled me really to connect what I did on Blab with webinars and obviously your own platform. So I’m going to be going ahead and checking that out. Guys, it’s demio.com. That’s D-E-M-I-O.com. You’re a nice guy to talk to. How can people connect with you, mate?

David Abrams
Yeah, you guys can find me on social media, I guess is the best way to do it. So it’s, I don’t even know what my domains are, but David Abrams on Facebook, and it’s Abrams, itsabrams on Twitter, or you can reach out to me at any time at Demio. We have a live chat on there, so you can talk to me there, or even on Twitter/meetdemio. And facebook.com/meetdemio.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Sweet. And before you go, buddy, do you still use WordPress at any time?

David Abrams
I do. I actually use WordPress for a lot of the Demio sites and for my systemizing business and stuff like that. We use WordPress all the time. So yeah, still a big fan of it.

Lee Matthew Jackson
So you’re still one of us and we love you.

David Abrams
Aww, thank you guys.

Lee Matthew Jackson
Favourite WordPress plugin, let’s test you now.

David Abrams
Favourite WordPress plugin, hmm. This is a tough one. I still— this is such a small one, but I really love Pretty Links because it’s such an easy way to set up tracking and redirection and stuff like that. I can set up all kinds of nice, easy, clean redirects across the board.

Lee Matthew Jackson
I never thought— it’s funny. This is episode 63. I always thought that people would always say Yoast and all that sort of stuff, but Pretty Links has become one of the most popular plugins it seems in WP Innovator history.

David Abrams
Really?

Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, it really surprised me as well because I was like, with a name like Pretty Links, it sounds like rubbish, doesn’t it? But it’s a really powerful product. We use it as well on LeeJacksonDev.com, you know, so all of these redirects that I’ve got going on, it’s just perfect to be able to, you know, as well for affiliate links as well because, you know, we’ve got a few affiliate links to start to monetize the podcast, etc. So yeah, Pretty Links has been phenomenally cool for us. Well, mate, you’ve passed your WordPress knowledge there. I thought I’d just test you, put you on the spot without any warning. You did well.

David Abrams
Well, thank you. I’m glad I passed the test. That’s all that matters. I’m messing with you.

Lee Matthew Jackson
I’m looking forward to beer in Tampa. That would be amazing. Remember, guys, demio.com. David— not Dave, sorry. David, you’re a legend. Thanks so much for being on the show, and have an awesome day.

David Abrams
You too, Lee. Thank you so much. Talk to you guys soon.

Lee Matthew Jackson
All right, buddy.

David Abrams
¡Hola!

Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, that about wraps up episode number 63. Now next week we’re going to be meeting James Rose from Content Snare, and he is all about getting that content from the client. That’s a problem that I think many of us have experienced over time. You build an amazing website, but then you’re waiting weeks, months, if not years for the content so that you can get that website live. So that will be James, not James from the Giant Peach as Larissa said a minute ago and had me in fits of laughter, but James Rose from Content Snare. Don’t forget, head on over to the Facebook group on LeeJacksonDev.com/group. How about you share your storeys of getting content from the client? Alright guys, have a great week.