He’s Taken No Funding, Doing $2,600,000 Per Year With SaaS Business Webinar Ninja, EP 252: Omar Zenhom
Omar Zenhom, co-founder of Webinar Ninja. Omar and his partner Nicole used their years of education experience to develop software and training resources for webinars. Omar also hosts the $100 MBA show, a top-ranked podcast with over 50,000 downloads per day. Listen as Nathan and Omar talk through the process of building up Webinar Ninja - as always, with an eye on the numbers. Famous 5 Favorite Book? – Anyone Can Do It What CEO do you follow? — Myself What is your favorite online tool? — Slack Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? — You’ll do better if you rely on your own strengths and skills - don’t look for a path through other people. Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:10 – Nathan’s introduction 02:20 – Welcoming Omar to the show 02:30 – “Education is a performance” 03:00 – Of Omar’s projects, Webinar Ninja is currently generating the most revenue 03:30 – Over 500 episodes of the $100 MBA show since 2014 04:10 – What you really need to know about getting sponsorship for your podcast 05:05 – Currently use an agent, Midroll, to negotiate sponsorship deals 06:15 – Making around $15-16k in sponsorship per month 07:20 – Discussion of sponsorship models 08:10 – Webinar Ninja: “I was scratching my own itch” 08:50 – Omar and Nicole launched Webinar Ninja in April 2014 09:15 – From $65, $115, or $165 per month 09:40 – “We’re still testing prices and collecting data” 10:20 – Moved away from Google Hangouts to Web RTC 11:00 – Currently working with 2500 customers, 1900 of whom are monthly customers 11:30 – Average customer pays $115 per month 12:20 – MRR $200,000 from Webinar Ninja 12:30 – “We’re really into making everything we release completely stable” 13:15 – Churn rate of around 7% - that means 93% of customers stay on month-to-month 14:20 – Advertise through Facebook ads, public speaking, event sponsorship 15:00 – Paid $15,000 to sponsor Heroic Public Speaking 16:00 – Advertising spend of around $3.20 per customer 17:20 – 8 full-time team members on Webinar Ninja, all remote 18:00 – Total salary cost per month around $9500; all costs around $20,000 a month 19:15 – “I’m happy growing slow - I don’t really want to blow up” 19:30 – Omar says he wouldn’t sell Webinar Ninja right now 20:30 – Right now Omar’s investing profits back into his business 21:15 – How the affiliate program works 22:30 – Other major costs include security and server infrastructure 3 Key Points: Forge your own path. Success comes from relying on your own strengths and skills, not by following other people. It’s okay to grow slowly. You get to decide what you want from your business: stable, slow growth is no better or worse than being explosive. Some of the best business ideas come from solving your own problems. Resources Mentioned: Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts. Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible. Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+ Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books. Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives The Top is FOR YOU if you are: A STUDENT who wants to become the CEO of a $10m company in under 24 months (episode #4) STUCK in the CORPORATE grind and looking to create a $10k/mo side business so you can quit (episode #7) An influencer or BLOGGER who wants to make $27k/mo in monthly RECURRING revenue to have the life you want and full CONTROL (episode #1) The Software as a Service (SaaS) entrepreneur who wants to grow to a $100m+ valuation (episode #14). Your host, Nathan Latka is a 25 year old software entrepreneur who has driven over $4.5 million in revenue and built a 25 person team as he dropped out of school, raised $2.5million from a Forbes Billionaire, and attracted over 10,000 paying customers from 160+ different countries. Oprah gets 60 minutes or more to make her guests comfortable to then ask tough questions. Nathan does it all in less than 15 minutes in this daily podcast that's like an audio version of Pat Flynn's monthly income report. Join the Top Tribe at http://NathanLatka.com/TheTop