366: Omar Zenhom — Crafting Success Without a Tech Background
Download MP3Hey. It's Arvid, and you're listening to the Bootstrap founder. Today, I'm talking to Omar Senham, the founder of Webinar Ninja, A company that he recently sold after 10 years of growing it. And it's a formidable competitor in an arena where players like Microsoft Teams and even Zoom are fighting for customers. So it's quite the accomplishment.
Arvid:Omar shares his challenging and often perilous journey bootstrapping a very technical business as a non technical founder. And we get into the exit and what it meant for him. Both the good and the bad. Oh, and we end up praising Arnold Schwarzenegger too. For some reason.
Arvid:It's a really nice conversation. And since we are talking about heavy lifting in a way, that is exactly what today's sponsor could do for you and your business. Paddle.com is a payment provider that takes care of all my business payment needs. Taxes, refunds, collecting outstanding payments, having an easy API integration, they have it all. And I'm glad they do so
Arvid:I can focus on building
Arvid:my own business instead of registering for things like sales tax in Argentina or something. I trust Paddle to do that all for me and I think they can do it for you too. So check out paddle.com to learn more. Now, here is Omar.
Arvid:Omar, in your long career as a founder, you've probably run into dozens of these obvious best practices that didn't really work out in reality when you tried them. Can you tell me, about a popular startup advice that you deliberately chose to ignore and that actually ended up working in your favor?
Omar:I love this question because I can think of many, but I'm gonna choose one that maybe the jury's still out. You know, who knows? But, because you can't can't go back and change that decision. So when I started Webinar Ninja, I started, I I pre launched it in April 2014, and then I launched, this podcast, my podcast, The 100 Dollar MBA Show, in August of that same year, so just a few months. And a lot of people ask me, like, why did you do that?
Omar:Like, I was still just trying things out. I was just seeing what's gonna work, what's not, and they kind of both started to gain traction at the same time. One of the pieces of advice I got from somebody who is in software, that's all they do. They don't do, you know, media. They don't do podcasting.
Omar:They don't do video. They do anything. They told me it's probably a better idea for you to create a software company without you being the brand or the face or doing any of the marketing. So that way, the the product stands on its own, and then when you go to get acquired or sell the company, you don't have to worry about, you know, you being attached to the brand. And that sounds like sound advice.
Omar:Like, that's not bad a bad idea. You know? But for me, all I had was that. Like, I'm a nontechnical founder. I know a bit of PHP.
Omar:I know how I know enough so I can know that my, engineers are not scamming me. But but other than that, I'm nontechnical, you know, and my background, I was I was an educator as a teacher for 10 years at the high school university level. So, like, all I got is my teaching. All I got is for me to do the webinars. All I got is for me to do the, you know, the video marketing and the and the sales.
Omar:That was my contribution to the company. So it was kinda hard for me to to accept that advice. So I said, you know what? I'm just gonna use what I got because I don't know if this thing has legs in the 1st place, if it's gonna sell, if it's gonna make it happen, if it's gonna resonate with an audience. And I did it, and it helped big time.
Omar:You know? Now when we did get acquired, it was something that we had to talk about, you know, intellectual property, how long they can use my likeness, all that kind of stuff. So there was a bit of a hurdle, but it wasn't impossible. You know, we were able to move around it. I firmly believe, and maybe this is just confirmation bias, but firmly believe it would be really hard for a webinar engine to take off if I didn't, do all the content, run the webinars, run the sales webinars because I learned so much about my customer that way.
Omar:I learned so much about what their pain points are and what the the language they use to describe their pain points, and I was able to then bring it back to my team, my technical team, and say, hey. You know, I think this feature would really solve these problems for our customers. How long would it take for us to build this? 2 weeks later, we you'll ship it out. Okay.
Omar:Great. I communicate that to my audience and show the value. So that's, one piece of advice I would say that, I guess I'm glad I ignored, but in some ways, I felt like I didn't really have much of a choice.
Arvid:Right. Yeah. It was kinda constrained by your reality as a founder at this point. Although, I think it probably made sense for businesses founded prior to 2014, like, in the the nascent stages of social media and in, like, founder presence on social media too. Right?
Arvid:Because if you look at it now and and you look at a SaaS business that you you wanna use for your own business, you look for the founder. You look for the people behind it. I'm on every single businesses about page every single time before I subscribe to it just to see, are these real people? Like, this is the first thing. Right?
Arvid:And then if they are, are they people that I actually would wanna talk to? Because I eventually will have to. So, you know, like, from a personal perspective, it makes perfect sense. I chose the same way, and I feel now trust is so much less mediated by gatekeepers as it used to be back in the day, right, before social media that you kinda have to establish some of that as a founder with every single customer that you have out there.
Omar:That's so true. I I do I do agree with that in in in a lot of regard, and I felt like I was able to build trust by audience quickly because I wasn't afraid to put my face and put my my name behind the product, which was a differentiator, and we attracted a lot of, independent creators and a lot of coaches and people that resonated with my style and who I am as a teacher and all that kind of stuff versus, you know, some of the bigger enterprise tools.
Arvid:Yeah. Was it a a choice that you made consciously at that point, like, to go for that kind of audience?
Omar:I knew I had to niche down In 2014, January 2014, just maybe a few months before we launched Webinar Ninja, I went to a conference called New Media Expo in Vegas. The conference doesn't exist anymore, but it was a conference. It was kinda like the first time I met people doing what I always wanted to do. I felt like, wow. This is possible.
Omar:I met people like Nathan Barry there for the first time. He was just starting ConvertKit at the time. I remember we were having, like, breakfast at 2 AM. He's having waffles next to me, and we're just chatting. And and he he was telling me that this niching thing is working for him.
Omar:You know? Like, he was niching down to, like, mommy bloggers and, fashion bloggers and things like that, and I was like, okay. Maybe I need to do that so that I don't need to appeal to everybody. And, also, I was more interested in having, you know, several customers, you know, whether it's a 1000, 2000, 3000 customers rather than 3 or 4 big clients where I have to kinda bend the software for their needs.
Arvid:Yeah. That that's always the thing. Right? You you don't really want whales as a person just getting started. You want, like, a a nice diverse variety of customers because you also get way more feedback that you may actually quantify instead of just having to, you know, look for the big ones and what they want.
Arvid:Because that's a that's a thing that I personally experienced a lot in in my founder journey. Like, sometimes you have to say no to feature requests, to things that people want from you. Was that also a thing on your journey with Urban nine Ninja? Did you say no to a customer feature request that they had for you?
Omar:All the time. All the time. And a lot of the things we had to say no to were just, like, nice to haves. We resisted to have virtual backgrounds for a very long time just because for us, we the the most important thing for us is reliability because we're alive. We need to make sure that the the software, had a lot of redundancy that, you know, people wouldn't get embarrassed for their audience if things crashed the replay, you know, recorded properly so that if somebody, had a paid webinar, the replay was just as valuable as alive.
Omar:So for us, the quality of the software, the experience itself was super high priority, and it became more of a priority as our user base grew because more chances for things to happen, more loads on servers, we had to really work on our infrastructure. So it was, that was kind of our priority, but then there were features that really did move the needle that differentiated us. I would say there was one feature that surprised the hell out of me that I didn't know that would be such a game changer, and it was email notifications. So, like, we built in email notifications. So once someone registers for a webinar, they would get automatic emails sent to, the registrants to remind them of the webinar and, you know, to tell them about the replay and any kind of offers, and they can add notifications before or after.
Omar:But I think the way we implemented it was great for our audience because what we did is we actually just wrote all the emails with just default copy with variables that changed for the webinar, you know, time and date and title and all that kind of stuff. And a lot of people never changed the default. They're just like, this is fine. And it was so funny because people are like, that was the number one feature. They voted for features.
Omar:That was the number one feature people love. They actually like that better than the actual webinar.
Arvid:Yeah. But that you see where the value is. Right? Like, because in a a webinar is a thing in time that happens in a moment. This is kind of this emergent thing, hopefully, if it's really good.
Arvid:Right? People feel like like that this was something that I was part of, but the the relationship between the people hosting and the people coming to the webinar, that is an ongoing thing, hopefully. Right? That is that is something you can strengthen and bolster. And for that, notifications are extremely valuable.
Arvid:I can see this, being being something like, almost a core feature of a platform like yours. That makes perfect sense to me. So how did you prioritize these things? Because I bet even though this may have been the biggest thing that people wanted, was, like, 20 different thing they wanted as well.
Omar:Yeah. This is a tough question. I'm gonna be honest with you, Arvid. Like, there were there was a good chunk of 5 years in my 10 year journey where, you know, it was really hard to project manage. It was really hard to be, like, have a calm kind of sense of, like, okay.
Omar:This is the priority. This is the road map. We were just trying to keep up with the market, keep up with the demand. You know, recruiting was, like, a full time job for me, trying to find the right people. Great engineers are seeked out and and poached all the time.
Omar:Poaching is happening all the time in our industry. It's ridiculous. I mean, I had great players on my team get poached from friends I know, people that are in my mastermind group.
Arvid:Yikes. Oh, that's that's rough. That is rough. Yeah.
Omar:So that was kind of my main concern of, like, how can I keep a strong team, 1, to maintain the software and keep up the standard, but 2, keep evolving and keep growing? But mainly, I think what really helped me the most was that I ran every webinar to sell the software. So when I was selling the software, I asked a lot of questions about why they're not running webinars now, why they've stopped doing webinars, why what they don't like about their current software, and I learned this technique actually from my father. My father was a car salesman. He's an engineer by trade, but in a depression during the the eighties, my dad switched careers and became a a salesperson and just fell in love with him, became a car sales man, and my first job at 13 was washing cars at the wash bay.
Omar:So they would trade cars, and I would have to wash and I loved it because I was 13, so I can drive cars on a private lot, and it was a lot of fun. But my job ended at 3, and my dad continued to sell cars from 3 to 9, and I was waiting for him because he's my ride home. So I would watch him sell cars, and one of the things that he would do that the other salesman didn't do, as soon as somebody walked into the dealership, he would ask them, what's wrong with your car? It looks fine. Like, why are you looking for a new car?
Omar:And they would say, you know, I really don't love the radio, and, you know, there's no trunk space, and I really don't love the seats. Not very comfortable. So he was asking these questions so that he can address those concerns in the right car for them. There's no reason for him to tell him about the horsepower or the suspension. They don't really care about that.
Omar:They care about these things, the reason why they're changing their car. So, I use that technique in in in webinars where I would ask questions at the top of the webinar and say, like, you know, why are you struggling? Why haven't you done webinars? What have some of the disasters you've had? What are the things you don't like about your software?
Omar:And through those questions and getting those answers, I was able to show how our product solved those problems. And sometimes, I wasn't able to solve those problems with my product, and those things were, like, red alert in my head, took note of it. My next meeting, my next stand up with my team, I said, okay, guys. This is something that is really coming up with all my webinars. I think we can come up with a nice solution.
Omar:We have some of the infrastructure ready for it. We can borrow from this feature to do this, and that really helped me understand how to solve problems without surveys. You know, surveys are great. We ran surveys, but, like, sometimes the customer, it's not their job to figure it out. Like, it's not their job to, like, rack their brain and figure out, okay, this is what I want.
Omar:Build this software. Here are the specs. Go ahead. You know, like, we need to find out through inferences, through questions, through figuring out what they're struggling with to come up with the right solution. Also, you gotta come with a solution that you can actually pull off, like, something that you can actually do with the resources you have.
Omar:So I think that's kind of really how we built our road map.
Arvid:Man, this this is founder led sales, which is great. Maybe founder instigated sales. There probably was more than just your your sales rep right now there. But I I love that you are still very much in there, and you you're kind of the conduit between customers and and their needs and what the feature priority list is. I I really like this.
Arvid:And what I like most, particularly with the story that you talked you told about your dad asking people what's wrong with their car, it's perfectly fine. This is a very respectful way of engaging a customer. I I think better there are so many desperate ways to go for a customer, but saying, hey. What you have is okay, but tell me what what do you think is wrong? Maybe I can help.
Arvid:That that alone already sets you apart from all these people trying to, you know, snake oil, sell you on things that they make you fear or whatever.
Omar:And we were in that market, Arvind. Like, we were like, one of the things that we had to do is differentiate ourselves. We're not high pressure sales. We're not trying to, you know, say, like, you're one click away from being a $1,000,000. We we really had to, show them, hey.
Omar:Like, our whole theme and all her whole mantra was, like, webinars are a great trust building tool. And if I wasn't trying to build trust in my audience, then it would be very hypocritical. You know? And the best lesson I learned from my dad was sales is not about saying the right words or convincing somebody to buy something. It's being an advisor, being helping them make a decision, and that was, like, the best thing I ever heard in my life because it alleviated the the pressure for me to be, like, trying to, like, oh, they're gonna slip through my fingers.
Omar:More like, hey. Maybe the best decision for you is to wait 6 months and then come back to me, or or maybe this product is too much for you. You don't need this. You actually, you know, need maybe a video marketing software instead of webinars.
Arvid:Yeah. Yeah. That's that's something I hear a lot from founders who have this kind of more personable, more honest approach. Let's just call it what it is. Right?
Arvid:When when it comes to communicating with their prospects, if they find a prospect that doesn't work, they don't have a problem recommending an alternative solution. Maybe even a direct competitor, if they know that that act of connecting with the client is leaving a better impression than trying to push something on them. I really like that. That must have been hard. Like, I I think webinars or or anything like video communication, that must be a hypercompetitive space.
Arvid:Why why did you go for a space like that?
Omar:The short answer is ignorance is bliss. I was really ignorant about how hard it is. Like, I just loved webinars because I used to run a lot because I was a teacher, and it was a great way for me to leverage the skills I already have, en masse to teach a lot of people at once and be able to sell my products and services. I was selling the 100 MBA program at the time. That's how I fell in love with webinars, but I hated how long it took to put it all together, the, you know, the landing page and the thank you pages and the automations and the replay and all that kind of stuff.
Omar:That's kinda how Webinar and Asia was born, and I didn't really understand how hard it was. Again, nontechnical founder. I just kind of learned along the way. I was like, how hard it could be? You know?
Omar:It's not that hard. You know? Just kinda you know, I know my way around, like, landing pages, WordPress, blah blah. You know? I need just the video element.
Omar:I know a buddy of mine, Matthew Kimberly, he asked me the same question. Like, why would you this is probably, like, the most difficult software you could build. Like, it's, like, actually, like, 5 softwares in 1, which is true. I had, like, email marketing, I had video marketing, video recording, landing page software, you know, chat software because it has the chat and all the notifications aside during the webinar. And I I I kinda just fell into it.
Omar:And I didn't realize how difficult it was as I was still building it, and once I kinda built it it's funny, like, once you get the ball rolling, it's like becoming a bodybuilder. You know? Like, you you don't just become a bodybuilder overnight. You just go to the gym once. You start lifting some weights.
Omar:All of a sudden, you think, okay. Why don't I start doing some squats? And it just starts to build upon each other. I'm actually glad I didn't know, and that's the problem I have now, Arvin. I know how hard building a software is.
Omar:I'm very tentative to start another SaaS because I'm I'm I'm not sure I can pull it off. Like, I'll be honest with you. Like, I don't know if I can do it again. I I, you know, probably if I made if I chose the right product, right audience, things like that, and there's a good chance I can use my experience, but, you know, I was a lot more confident with as little as I knew back then than than I am now. Does that make sense?
Arvid:Oh, I can relate to that so much because I I felt the same way, like, a year ago before I started my new SaaS after having sold it a couple years. Yeah. Well, it is great, but it's not yet profitable, so I'm still on the path. And that is, like, now almost, like, what, 7, 8 months in. So for somebody who had a successful exit, who had then then the opportunity to, like you, teach and and build build a a media business to then get back to the drawing board, start building a business, and seeing just how hard it is to get it off the ground.
Arvid:Man, it's it it I don't think it ever is any different for anybody. No matter how much you've done in the past, every single new project is a new project. It may fail. It may win big. Somewhere in between, who knows?
Arvid:But personally, what I told myself is, hey. If I get a mildly interesting story out of this, it's gonna be worth it anyway. Right? And if it if it keeps me interested, if it keeps me busy looking at new technologies and and figuring out how to integrate this so I can maybe just tell other people to also try it, and then one of them is successful, that is enough. So if if that in any way helps you try your next thing, just look at what what Tim Ferris does with his fear setting.
Arvid:What's the worst outcome? The worst outcome is you're still okay, you learn something new, and you have a new story to share. I think that's alright. Right?
Omar:Yeah. I mean, let me ask you this, Arvid. Like, when you exit 2019, you started writing books. You're you're into the media business. Before you started PodScan, did you have, like, this feeling where you're like, you couldn't help but roll your eyes and be like, I don't know if I could be bothered.
Omar:Like, I know how hard it is.
Arvid:Oh, for sure. 100%. Because, like, now that I'm building a SaaS again, particularly as a technical founder, which is, like, taking care of everything. Right? I need to make sure operations are running, servers are not, like, going up in flames and all that.
Arvid:And I need to add people's, like, European VAT numbers to their invoices as well, that kind of stuff. In in addition to that, I need to do, like, all the marketing, all the sales, all the, the marketing, all the sales, all the, the the presence, right, the the social media stuff and all that. It is so much compared to maybe a year and a half ago when all I did was my podcast. Like, I was talking to, one person a week. They're having a chat, and then I did, like, a solo episode talking about one thing that I was on my mind.
Arvid:So I wrote a script, and I recorded it, and I had a couple of questions, and I had a nice conversation. And I sometimes edited, sometimes had somebody help me do it. It was so little work compared to running his ass.
Omar:And totally in your control too. Like, if yeah.
Arvid:100%. And I could I could spend hours thinking about the perfect question to ask or the perfect editing move to make to make it interesting or, you know, these little tiny things because the outcomes were so clearly defined. But with a SaaS, like, every day is potentially the best and the worst day you could possibly have in the journey. So I I I don't wanna warn people not to do it because I think it's it's extremely rewarding, but it is also extremely challenging. Right?
Arvid:It goes both ways.
Omar:Yeah. I've I grew, like, tremendously in those 10 years. Like, I don't even recognize who I was back then. But, yeah, that was an interesting journey, and I I think I don't regret because of who I become. But now that I am in a more comfortable position, I'm thinking, okay, what do I do at this point that still fulfills me?
Omar:Because to be honest with you, like, I wanted I just wanted to win, you know, like, it with Will Burn and Andrew. I just wanted to be able to have a successful, profitable business that would put me in a good position financially, all that kind of stuff. But now that that kinda has been done, I wanna be like, okay. Where is this going? Like like, a part of me is just like, should I just do something completely different?
Omar:Or should I just, like, start learning the piano or something? Like
Arvid:Why not? You know what I mean? I mean, you can. Right? Like, nobody's gonna stop you.
Arvid:Yeah. Yeah. I I get the feeling too. It's it's weird because, like, we I think as as humans, we have this this this narrative in our mind that our life needs to kinda have this this story. Right?
Arvid:This background theme, this arc, this this big thing where you start somewhere and then you grow, grow, grow, grow, and then the biggest thing happens at the end. I don't know if that's the case, and I I don't know if that's necessary to feel fulfilled in what you do. Like, I I started this business, like, the the PodScan thing, because I I had built a a very unsuccessful SaaS business just in between just to try new things. Like, again, like, I was just giddy to do tech stuff, and I needed a way to market it, and I didn't find it. So I I built my own marketing tool.
Arvid:That that's kinda where this came from. So and and then it blew up all of a sudden. So I never expected this little marketing tool to actually turn into the business that I'm really focusing my attention on. So you never know. And anything that keeps you interested, I think, is a benefit because with everything you do, you personally bring your whole experience, like, all 10 years plus of your experience.
Arvid:And in your case, the 10 years of your own experience plus the 10 years of your podcast guests and listeners and audience experience altogether in one. Like, the only thing that you, that that would be, I I think, a net loss for humanity if you is if you were to stop teaching in some capacity.
Omar:Yeah. That's kind of been the through line for me that that that's where I feel like I can add the most value, and that's kind of you know, when we when we sold open our ninja, you know, Nicole and I were Nicole's my wife and my business partner, and what we were discussing is like, okay. Everybody was asking, what's next? What's next? And it's just like, can I just chill for a moment?
Omar:But but it was a valid question. And for me, I just wanted to focus on the 100 on BA Show and build build the 100 on BA community. I wanted to be able to and, honestly, you know, the podcast, I maintained it during, you know, the the Webinar Ninja days and growing the software, but the community really took a backseat, and I really wanted to reinvest myself because I feel like, again, I'm I'm a different person than I was when I started it, so there's so much more I can offer, and I can really actually distill a lot of the stuff that matters. And my goal really with with the $100 a B is just to provide timeless information. There's so much there's so much strategy and tactics that you can get from, you know, Twitter or get from x or anywhere else.
Omar:And, I I'm really interested in the stuff that doesn't change, so regardless of what you're building, it will work.
Arvid:I think that's that's the ultimate long term play. Right? I I I don't think I would ever give up this podcast. I I might stop the SaaS business, any of the some of some of the ones that I run. But the podcast, the media business, that's also my personal brand.
Arvid:We kinda talked about this earlier. Right? That's the thing that throughout every other thing that I do, this is the constant thing. Like, I have access to an email list of people. They gave me their email.
Arvid:They trust me to send them stuff that they might find valuable and hopefully will find valuable. They allow me in their ears while they walk their dogs, which is, I think, one of the greatest compliments you can give a person is to allow them in in such a such a delicate, moment that is such a big part of your life. Like, that to me is the long term cumulative self reinforcing value generator of my life. So I I do completely understand that you wanna keep that going in particular. I mean, you're 2 and a half 1000 episodes, and I think you should just keep it going to see if you can get to 5 figures.
Arvid:Like Yeah. It's up for you to it might take a couple decades, but hey. I mean, we got the time. Right? Longevity is a thing, so you can do this until you're, like, 95.
Arvid:That's great. I I think that is the the true value of what entrepreneurs today can start from the very first day they start being a founder. Like, you you did it, and and that I I love about your show in particular is that it started in tandem with the SaaS. Right? Even though it was a bit later, but, like, 2014 is 2014.
Arvid:It doesn't matter exactly when. Right? It happened at the same time. I do wonder, like, do you think your your life would look very different had you not started the podcast?
Omar:A 1000%. A 1000 per the podcast has changed my life in so many ways, opened so many doors. You know, I I I speak on stages because of Webinar Ninja at SaaS conferences, but I speak three times as much when it comes to the podcast because the the show really allowed me to give honest advice to people. One of the things the reason why I started the podcast, which is mostly me teaching 3 days a week, and then we have a an interview once a month with with somebody. I can't really have their perspective.
Omar:You know, we had Laura Rotter. I don't have a female perspective being a founder of a SaaS company. You know, that I I need somebody else for. But, the reason why I started is because I felt like there was a lack of just straight up real advice, real lessons that people can just implement right away. So often when I'm you listen to an episode, it's something I struggled with maybe for years, maybe 6 months ago, and I just recovered from the pain.
Omar:Now I'm ready to teach it, and that is something that I really love about the podcast. This is why I do it, and I think that's why it was successful. Honestly, it's because I'm able to, provide a a new kind of dynamic to podcasting, and, that show has just yeah. It changed my life big time, and, a lot of people ask me, like, wow. How do you have a successful podcast?
Omar:Like, if I wasn't successful after 10 years, it would be a problem. Like, there's gotta be something wrong with me at this point. You know? Like and, really, honestly, it's the consistency. I just allowed enough reps for me to get better.
Omar:I invested in it. A lot of people, especially in the business world, see podcasting as a marketing tool, as a way to get leads, and I think that's a mistake. I think you're gonna spend the time building a podcast and recording a podcast, editing it. You might as well go all in and realize that you are part of the media now. You're competing with people that are trained actors and show hosts like Stephen Colbert and, you know, like, so why don't you level up your game?
Omar:Get voice lessons. I got voice lessons. I took public speaking lessons. I upped my, you know, technology and all that kind of stuff when I could afford it. But the the point is is that if you don't take it seriously, unfortunately, it's too competitive to stand out, and that's something that I was just trying to do is, like, every time I got by the mic, how can I get better this time?
Omar:How can I improve my intonation? How can I improve my pauses? How can I, do better when it comes to the edit with my team? And that's kind of, how the the show got better over time.
Arvid:I love the attention to detail. I can tell you're a craftsperson in that regard and and other regards, obviously, as well. But that like, to to want to become better at speaking, not every person knows that that's even an option. Right? Like, it's like that you can have a voice teacher, that you can have a vocal coach.
Arvid:It's not just for singing. That's also for just communicating. And maybe I should get a vocal coach.
Omar:I'm gonna give people a gift here. Here's a gift. Super amazing gift you're gonna love. It's gonna be 2 pronged gift. The first prong is there's a great public speaking course for, like, less than a $100 that you could buy at CreativeLive.
Omar:It's called Heroic Public Speaking. It's by Michael Port and Amy Port. The these guys were my coaches as public speakers. Amy Port is my voice coach, and they ran a CreativeLive when they were launching their public speaking program. This this is, like, maybe 2014.
Omar:That's how and they still have it on CreativeLive, but it's a great course. It's worth its weight in gold. Incredible. Right? I'm there live, and I'm on the stage being coached.
Omar:You could see how horrible I am. You can laugh at my misery and how bad I like, he's stopping me every 3 seconds, correcting my speech and my opening and my gestures and my eye contact and my voice, and and I'm like, this is a disaster. I'm horrible. But the fact that I'm if I don't have cringeworthy work, I would say there's no if you don't have cringeworthy work, you've started too late. You need to really just start putting in the reps and realizing it's okay to be bad at the first in the beginning, which is a blessing because you don't have much of an audience at the beginning.
Omar:But as you get better and you start growing you know, I I I laugh because I was in my car one day, and I don't know what happened, but it looped into the first episode of the podcast. Yes. I listed my own podcast to see if I'm getting better or not, but I couldn't even bear it. I was like, how do we mute this? How do I show off the volume?
Omar:This thing is atrocious, but, you know, that's that's where you start. You gotta start somewhere.
Arvid:It's so funny because you're mirroring exactly my experience with my own show. I used to edit it myself. I used to record it through what could only have been a potato or something. Like, it was really, really, really bad. And, just listening to I mean, obviously, I have help now.
Arvid:Right? I found people who are really good at the particular jobs that are needed for these particular things, audio engineering, and, even like, it's a it is a team effort at some point. And just like a SaaS business too. Right? Like, you you always have to find the right people to do these jobs well.
Arvid:Like you said yourself, you're not a technical person. You needed to find and hire technical people to to get this going. How big was Webinar Ninja when when you sold it?
Omar:We had a team of 30. We were not a huge team. We were very heavy on customer support. We were just like, because it's webinars, and if anything, they needed help. They're not sure how to work something in the studio.
Omar:Our response sign was, I believe, like, average was 90 seconds. So we were we were their chat. Right? They were the only ones that are actually doing that. A lot of people were just doing email or ticket software, and and we just wanted to kind of be known for great support.
Omar:And, so we we had a good team of about 7 people in support, in customer success, who help people as they get started, things like that, and ran our member webinars as well. We had, like, a mem like, a members area, and, we did, like, coffee hours to get people to learn from each other and things like that. And, lots of engineers. A lot of people don't know this. I share this often in speeches now that post exit, but, like, Nicole and I didn't pay ourselves very much at all, like, a minimum for the longevity of the business because we want to reinvest back into the business as much as possible and grow it.
Omar:I felt like a raise or a higher, let's go with a higher. And I'm not saying that's the right way to do it. That's what I did. I I you know, one of my favorite hobbies is poker, and, I just had pocket aces. I had a good hand.
Omar:I felt like I wanna go all in, and that's the choice I made. Not saying that's the choice for everybody, but I had engineers getting paid 5 times as much as me. Like, I had, like, I had to run that payroll every month and be like, this is what's best for the company. This is what I gotta do. And maybe I enjoy being a martyr or something like that, but that's that's if I had to do it all over again, I'd probably, try to figure a way to take some cash off the table to feel a little bit more comfortable.
Arvid:Yeah. The sacrifice only goes so far. Right? Like, you I think that's that's also kind of a mental health aspect to this because if you're constantly underpaying yourself because you think the business needs it, this creates this I I think I I feel this myself in obviously having a not yet profitable business. I can't really pay myself anything.
Arvid:So the the feeling always is there's something wrong. Right? Like, there's always this little bit of anxiety just even from understanding it to be lacking something. And I think a lot of founders probably feel this. Right?
Arvid:I can't pay myself. This has to be be bigger, be better, and, like, that creates a lot of, like, internal, I don't know, resentment maybe or at least pressure
Omar:Oh, yeah.
Arvid:That you need to be able to deal with. How did you deal with that kind of stuff?
Omar:It's it's a tough question because it's hard for me to separate that experience of building that company and that software and myself. My my my value, my identity was definitely wrapped up into it, because I I really wanted it to be the most successful thing I built. I wanted to make sure that it was valuable. There was a lot we had 30,000 users, you know, so it was a lot of people relying on us, and I wanted to make sure that we built a great product and and all that. But at the same time, I was not happy with my life in terms of, like, my my quality of life.
Omar:You know, when you're not paying yourself well as the founder, you can't afford getting a cleaner in your house. You gotta clean on the weekend. You gotta you can't afford getting ready made meals or you can't afford to hire a, you know, a trainer to help you get healthy and feel better about yourself. So you you got pressure at home. You got pressure at work.
Omar:You know, like, it's it's not sustainable, like you said, and I feel like, I just bought into a narrative that maybe wasn't the best for me. You know, I I came up where our heroes were, like, the base camp guys, you know, 47 signals, Jason Fried, you know, Mailchimp. And what I realized after all my experience is that these guys are rare occasion, that this is not the norm. Normal businesses don't run this way, and for me to base my whole business based on the exception to the rule is not really a smart thing to do. All power to them.
Omar:These guys are still my heroes. Love them. But, the the the honest thing was I should have sacrificed growth to make sure that Nicole and I were healthy and doing well and made the business work with those constraints. Instead of me saying, you know, hey. Instead of me making another $20,000 a CRO, let me dump that on marketing, which helped.
Omar:It helped growth, and it did well. But it's a real gamble. You know? We had competitors popping every single month with, you know, stealing our sales copy, taking our features, all that kind of stuff, and, you know, at any moment, you can find yourself not not where you are today. So my advice to anybody who's building a SaaS that is maybe, reinvesting in the business, it's a good practice in the beginning to get some traction, I would say, the 1st 18 months.
Omar:But from there, you need to say, okay. In order for this to be a real business, I need to start, making sure at least my needs are met and, figure out why this is not working. Like, why am I maybe I need to raise my prices. Maybe I need to change my market. Maybe I have to go up market, whatever it is to make this work for me rather than the other way around.
Arvid:Yeah. It's it's like this the saying of, like, product market fit is obvious when you hit it because then all of those things are not problems anymore. Right? But leading up be leading up to it, there's still something you need to turn, some kind of knob, some some configuration that needs to change for you to be able to pay your safe pay yourself first, right, which is also an important concept. Right?
Arvid:Pay yourself first, make sure your needs are met, and then you can take care of others. It's kind of the oxygen mask in the airplane logic there.
Omar:Yeah. Arvind, you know, that's a tough one for people to understand if you'd never experienced it. Like, the best way I could put it is that if you have product market fit, it's almost hard not to make money. Like, it's so easy for your business to make money that it's like you're swimming in think Google. Think Facebook ads.
Omar:Think, you know, think about these products that we use every day. Like, it's so easy. It's such a great product. People will absolutely love it and want it, and the boulder's rolling down the hill instead of up the hill. And that is really where you wanna go, and that's what the business you wanna run.
Omar:I mean, in a lot of ways, I think you can resonate with a media company. It's much easier to make money. There's so many avenues for you to make money whether it's sponsorship or products or services or, you know, I bought your your your Twitter course back when it was Twitter. Yeah. Right.
Omar:In the
Arvid:other day.
Omar:Yeah. And it was really helpful, but the point is that you have different options to make revenue, and it's just easier. And that's how it should be. That's what a good business is.
Arvid:Yeah. I I appreciate, first off, I appreciate you buying my tour of course. That that is highly appreciated. But I I also like the visual of, like, you know, pushing the boulder up the hill. That to me fits well with what you said just prior to this about this, like, loading up a burden onto yourself by not paying yourself, by by putting all these anxieties.
Arvid:Like, that makes it even harder to go uphill to begin with. You don't even have to think about pushing a boulder. It's just harder to go uphill with all these burdens on you. Right? So, like, that's that's also what breaks founders is all the internal pressure plus the external pressure of not yet being at the top of the mountain where it starts, going down like an avalanche.
Arvid:Yeah. That's the that's the tough part, man. How long did it take for you to feel comfortable enough in in the business in Webinar Ninja to say, well, the hard days are over. Now how many years did that take?
Omar:I hit a plateau. We hit a plateau with the revenue for a while, and the catalyst that changed it was hiring a coach. I wasn't I wasn't really a person that invested in coaching. Like, I took courses. You know, I didn't really have I'm talking about, like, high level $3,000 a month coaching.
Omar:You know? And, we hired Dan Martell. He was our coach in SAS Academy, and we caught him in a sweet spot. Like, Dan now is kind of a big shot now, and he's he I say that with, you know, with love. Like, he's he's he's busy, and he's got he's famous, and he's got a lot of, things on his calendar.
Omar:We we he just, you know, recently started SAS Academy. He was still able to be approached, get on calls, things like that. So we caught him when he was really, like, still, needing all the case studies and all that kind of stuff. So, but he held us accountable, and he gave us some good systems from his exits that worked, you know, in terms of SOPs, building our assistant recruitment, understanding how to evaluate talent, understanding how to build the systems that will allow the business to be easier for us so that we could focus on the things that matter. You know, that's really what helped us a lot, and that was kind of the moment where we started to see a change.
Omar:I would say it's that was around 2018, so it was 4 years, and then we plateaued. And then we and in that moment, we we we went past 7 figures in revenue and started to really grow. And, you know, I I I didn't see that coming, but it was helpful.
Arvid:I don't hear that very often. Like, coaching, I think, is still highly undervalued in entrepreneurship. There's mentorship and that kind of stuff, but I think that that has more of a power dynamic that that doesn't necessarily exist with a coach. So that is really cool. Where would you go look for a coach if you were to find one today?
Omar:Great question. One of my favorite hacks in life is I like to become friends with people who are where I wanna be in a few years. So I I became friends with a guy named Rob Rawson. He lives here in Sydney. He's the founder of Time Doctor, which is a time tracking app, which obviously blew up after COVID.
Omar:And, it it it's it's a huge sass, and, I met him at a birthday party, mutual friend birthday party. But when I got to know who he was, we started to see each other, and then he called me one day because he's old school. He's a little older than me. Called me. He said, you should you should, check out Dan Martell.
Omar:I'm in SAS Academy. Like, I don't I go to all the events and things like that, but, you know, you might benefit from this where you are right now in your in your company. And I looked into it. We got on a call with Dan. It was a good fit, and and, basically, you know, Rob was a few steps ahead of me.
Omar:He's already been where I was, so he kinda was able to kinda say kinda like a Sherpa moving up a mountain, like, don't go here. Go here. This is where to go. And, he's still one of my closest friends to love Rob to death, and that's a great hack in life. It's just try to make friends with people that are just a few you don't have to be friends with Tony Robbins or, you know, Richard Branson.
Omar:You could just be friends with people that are just maybe a few years ahead of you. I actually love to go on holiday with people that are a little bit higher in their financial status than me, because it allows you to understand what your life might be soon. You know? What worries them? What are they talking about?
Omar:Everybody has problems. They just have different problems. Like, now they're like, I don't know where to invest my money. I don't wanna, you know, screw this up. I don't wanna you know, like, they have different I know that sounds very, like, privileged, and it's true, but, you know, it's funny.
Omar:As people make more money, they have more problems, but they also have other things in their life that they maybe start to creep up, health, families getting older and need care, You know, they're having some relationship issues, and they're just it's good to be around people that are, you know, maybe where you wanna go to understand, like, is this the reality that you imagine? No. It's actually a different reality. Be prepared.
Arvid:Yeah. That that's the stuff that hit me after we sold our company. Like this you know, we we elevate your life, and certain things are no problem at all anymore. Like, you don't even think about it, but all of a sudden, what's just said. Like, you need to protect where you're at.
Arvid:You need to start investing money. And if you come from a a background of of people who had no money whatsoever, you don't even know, like, how to spell investing at this point. Right? Like, there's there's such a such a lag. I'm with
Omar:you, Arvid. I'm with you. You're right. Yeah. My parents are immigrants.
Omar:We didn't we didn't have a lot of financial education. You know? My my mantra was, like, say yes to every opportunity, work hard, and that's bad advice for me right now. You know? Yeah.
Arvid:So how how did you flip that switch? Are you still working on that? Like, how is how is that going for you?
Omar:100%. 100%. Like, I have a really I'm gonna be honest with you. Like, it's very hard. I'm very uncomfortable being comfortable.
Omar:I'm very uncomfortable not struggling and working all my life and and hustling, and and that kinda gives me meaning in some way. And sometimes I have to hold myself back and say, am I working just for the sake of work? Am I just doing this so I can validate my existence or whatever? The other thing is is that growing up, you know, my parents came from Egypt. They they migrated to the US.
Omar:Me and my sisters were born and raised in the US, and they tried their best. They worked really hard. They had to learn a new language. They had to get their degrees all over because it wasn't recognized in the US, and it was it was really tough for them, you know, and they tried their best, but the bottom line is is that they never kinda got ahead financially. They never you know, I see my friends now, and their parents were homeowners, and they had investments, and they know it had stocks, and they know, you know, what the S and P 500 is.
Omar:Like, that was never even uttered in our house because we're just trying to make ends meet, you know, and trying to stay out of trouble and make sure that we keep our heads down. As as immigrants, you're just kinda paranoid that, like, you're doing something wrong when because you're not used to the culture. So so for me, I had to educate myself, and there's a lot there's a lot of information out there, a lot of books, a lot of, you know, courses you could take for in terms of financial information, but there's a lot of stuff that can misguide you, you know, especially today with the Internet and and and people with advice. And and one of the things I've just made a rule for myself is, like, I don't really invest or spend money on things I don't understand. Like, if I don't understand like, if I don't understand, you know, NFTs, I'm not going to throw some money on it because I just don't understand how it works.
Omar:So then that's not a good idea. If I'm that interested in it, I should educate myself and figure it out, you know, whether it's crypto or anything else. So one of the best things I've done is that because I don't invest in things I don't understand, I just invest in myself. I have a unlimited budget. This is a rule that I got from Ramit Sadio, good friend of mine, good guy, really smart guy to follow when it comes to financial advice, or financial, you know, education, I should say, is have an unlimited budget when it comes to investing in yourself.
Omar:So if you ever wanna go to a conference or a course or buy a book, this should not be even a concern. Obviously, you gotta make sure that it's legit and it's a it's a good thing, but especially books. Books should be buy now right away. Like you know? And I I've learned so much from books.
Omar:Books have been the best mentors of my life. They're most bang for your buck. And one of the reasons I was gonna ask you because I know you you wrote a book as soon as you sold your company. One of the reasons I haven't written a book yet is because I'm really intimidated by it. I'm really intimidated because I've read so many great books, and every time I read a book, I'm like, if I write a book one day, it's gotta be just as good as this.
Omar:And that's holding me back, but, that's that's really where I I try to invest and try to get me better so I could add more value to others.
Arvid:Well, that that sounds like you need just you just need an editor. So somebody who can look at it and say, hey. This sucks. Like, just get get an editor that that is, comfortable with making you uncomfortable. And if if that's something you can already handle pretty well, writing a book is gonna be fun.
Arvid:Like, I honestly, to me, like, my my journey with writing the book was I I started with a with a newsletter because I just wanted to to build an audience, like, keep reaching people, make build this this asset of having the list that was that was from the start. I wanted to be able to reach people where they at, which is in their email inbox. And then people told me, hey. I I, am dyslexic. I can't read.
Arvid:Can you just, you know, make an an AI based audio? And I said, nah. I'm just gonna record it. So I started the podcast from that. That was just people didn't wanna read my thing, so I also started narrating it.
Arvid:And that that started my my solo podcast, and then people were saying, all of this feels like it kinda belongs together. Shouldn't this be a book? I was like, oh, yeah. Sure. So, like, the first book I wrote wasn't even intentionally a book.
Arvid:It was just kind of a selection of articles that I've written for my blog slash recorded as podcast episodes that started to kind of fit into a bigger, fully, you know, cohesive thing. So when I look at your work and your work is, you know, 4 figures worth of podcast episodes, I know that the book already exists. The book is in all of this. What you now need to do, and and that is just my personal very humble opinion, is to pull it together and you have something already. You might even ask an AI agent to just pull it all together because you created the content, might do the editing, and let the AI do the editing at this point, but I think you've already written a book.
Arvid:It's just not in the form of a book.
Omar:You know? Yeah. That's that's good advice. I think, I think I need to get out of my own, like, you know, limitations of thinking that it has to be a certain way. Yeah.
Omar:And, I think maybe the process would be enjoyable to to do it.
Arvid:Yeah. I I think you don't need to reinvent anything. Like, you already have all your experience codified, and that's the thing. In the journey itself, like, throughout the last 10 years now, you have all the itself, like, throughout the last 10 years now, you have all the stages of your own experiential approach to, entrepreneurship. They're all there.
Arvid:So you have an infinite almost infinite amount of referenceable quotes from yourself in the past. Right? That's awesome. So all you need to be able to do now is to actually access that, in in a form that that is conducive to writing. But, hey, I I think you you will be great at writing a book.
Arvid:You're already a good a wonderful teacher. You're you're very capable of explaining things. You already have the tenacity to do a thing for 10 years. You can write a book, man. It's really, really clear.
Omar:Okay. Okay. I gotta get on it. I gotta put it on my priority list. A quick story about your newsletter story.
Omar:It's funny. One of my favorite examples of what you just shared is, Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't know if you know Arnold Schwarzenegger's, podcast. Yes.
Arvid:I
Omar:think it's called pump club, the the the podcast, and it's basically AI reading his newsletter, and he's upfront about it, and and it sounds exactly like him. He's got an AI to you know, he sounds like a robot anyway, but, you know, the point is is that he he got a AI that sounds like him, his particular robot, and, he it's it's a brilliant idea. And I I just love the fact that, he's, leveraged his kind of, quote, unquote, weaknesses accent to, make it work for for AI.
Arvid:That's a brand too. Right? Like, your brand is you're you're comfortable with how weird you speak, might as well use AI because you then you can be weird on purpose. Right? It's because just kind of judo ing the whole thing from weakness to strength.
Arvid:I love it. Which is I I love that, in particular, Arnie being such an inspiration for for people who wanna, like, do something about their physical health. Right? And, many, many things beyond that. Be the
Omar:positive corner of the Internet is what he calls. I love that.
Arvid:And he he truly is. Like, I've been consuming a lot of his just life advice because he like, the journey that he went through in terms of the the bodybuilding experience plus the whole government thing as well. Right? Like, there's just so much of tenacity and, like, straightforwardness in in that person. Yeah.
Arvid:I highly recommend the newsletter. I haven't listened to the podcast, but I probably should because I probably really enjoy it. And that's that is so cool. But, yeah, that's the story. Right?
Arvid:That is the story of just doing the best you can with what you have.
Omar:Yeah. He doesn't overthink it either. That's what I love about him. He just, like, just have a vision and just do it.
Arvid:And maybe that's exactly what you should do at this point. Don't overthink the book because the book also and I that's my experience particularly with the second one I wrote. I wrote that in public in in a sense that I wrote a draft, and then I invited, like, 50 people to read that, Then I re refreshed the draft and invited another 50. I did that, like, 10 times until the book became the book it was at the end, almost indistinguishable from what it was in the first draft. So the first book you write is never gonna see the light of day anyway, so you might as well write it now.
Arvid:Right? You might as well do whatever or write it just in, in your bullet points or write it just in little quotes or whatever. Get out of your system. Get it out. Like, put it in a in a in a system that you can then expand on.
Arvid:A book is never a static thing, and it doesn't have to be in this modern day and age where everything is digital anyway. Right? So you you can conceptualize it as more like a web of interconnected data than paper with text on it. That will make it easier to research and and start, like, forming it into the the ultimate shape. And then you can talk to your friends, hopefully, who have also published a couple books in the in the past, who can then help you, you know, find the right way to publish it and find the right way to find the right editor and and the right proofreaders and that kind of stuff.
Arvid:I'd love this, by the way, in what you said, like, surrounding yourself with people who are ahead of you. I think that to me is probably the most valuable lesson in all of this. It's like, if you don't know how to do it, find people who know how to do it and become their friend. Like, obviously, this is a simplification, but surround yourself with people who are where you want to go. I think that is advice that is just spot on.
Omar:Totally. And it's a small world. Like, one of the things I realized is that, basically, if you stay in touch with, like, 30 to 50 people, they know somebody that you need to know. Like, the everybody knows everybody now.
Arvid:Yes. It's all about the network that you're building by just reinforcing existing relationships over time. And, I mean, this brings me to my question that I have for you. If people wanna start staying in touch with you, if they wanna follow you, if they wanna figure out, like, what you're doing, what you're working on next, or how long the break is gonna take, and what if if you're gonna learn to play the piano at in the meantime or whatever, like, where where do you want people to go to follow you on your continued journey?
Omar:Yeah. There's 2 places. First one is my podcast, the $100 MBA Show. If you're looking to, build, grow, or scale your business, this is where we teach people through my own experiences how to do that, how to do it efficiently, how to do it without killing yourself. And just, one of our goals is that every episode allows you to just take an action item and just implement and come back the next day.
Omar:So you could check us out anywhere you get podcasts, a $100 MBA or YouTube or on YouTube now since August. If you wanna go a little deeper with me, I'm gonna share a little story. A good friend of mine, I mentioned earlier, Matthew Kimberly. He is a great copywriter, and one of the things he taught me is you need to really invest in your newsletter, make your newsletter, like, as valuable as any product you have. And the way he described it is, you know, when you get a text message from somebody that you absolutely love, a friend, maybe your loved one, your mom, your significant other, you just see the notification.
Omar:You're just like, oh, I gotta open that. See you see and your heart kind of skips a beat. That's what you wanna have your readers experience when they see the subject line and it's from you. It's like they just wanna see you as somebody of value because every time they open your your newsletter, they get something out of it, and it's incredible. So I took on that advice about 6 months ago, and we revamped our our newsletter, and it became like a really big focus inside the $100 MBA.
Omar:So, if you wanna join our newsletter, you could just go to 100mba.net. We have some freebies. We have templates. We have, great guides you can check out. And once you're on our list, you'll get our newsletter.
Omar:But our newsletter focuses on 3 things every single week. And, the 3 things is something to think about, something to do, and something to learn. And I really wanted to create a valuable newsletter, and I felt like these are the 3 things that really helped me along the way is to work on those three things every day. So, surprisingly, the the think about is actually quite important. It's like I give a thought experiment.
Omar:I give something for them to ponder, something to be grateful for, something to think about. Like, you know, one of my favorite quotes is, we would be jealous of who we are today 10 years ago. You know? Things like that, or just some some some ideas of think about what would your business look like if you had to do x y z, you know, and it just is a chance for you to just reflect. I think thinking is very underrated.
Omar:I think we're in a culture of production and doing and shipping things quickly, and I'm all for that. But sometimes thinking has a lot of value, especially when it comes to, like, knowing what to build, knowing what to do next, and allowing your mind to really cultivate. The second thing is something to do, which is I give them an exercise to do, that has helped me in the past, and this is usually like a 5 minute exercise to do in their notebook, and then lastly, something to to learn, and these are some lessons that we share throughout the week. So that's the newsletter. If you you guys are interested, just go to 100mba.net to sign up.
Arvid:Well, you certainly taught me something, made me think about something today, and I will probably do a lot of these things as well. So if if this is an extended version of the newsletter, then it's been been very effective for me. Thank you so much for sharing all these wonderful things with me today and talking about your journey. I know it's it's weird to talk about this this whole from start to exit and beyond journey because you live so many different lives along the way. So thank you for sharing a glimpse into each of these lives.
Arvid:I really appreciate it.
Omar:Arvin, I had a great time, and I'm so glad we got to meet. I know this is virtual on on Riverside, but I really admire you from afar. I love the way you put out your work and your how earnest you are. I have a huge amount of respect for people that are kind, that people that are doing good work, are kind to people, that reply to people. You remind me of Chris Brogan.
Omar:When I was coming up, Chris Brogan was a hero of mine because I saw how kind he was with people when he came off stages, and then they would ask questions, and, I think that's super underrated. There's so many successful people that I know that I came up with that don't reply to messages, that don't, show people the time of day. I know people are busy, but, you know, common courtesy is, something that I really value, and I I just wanna say that I recognize that, and I I love that about you.
Arvid:Aw, man. Thank you so much. My heart is full with joy at this. I was really, really glad to hear it. Thank you so much.
Arvid:That was wonderful.
Arvid:And that's it for today. Thank you for listening to the Bootstrap founder. You can find me on Twitter at abidkahl, a r b I d k a h l. You You find my books on my Twitter course tattoo.
Arvid:And if you wanna support me
Arvid:on the show, please tell everyone you know about podscan.fm and leave a rating and a review
Arvid:for this podcast by going to rate this podcast.com/founder. Makes a massive difference if you show up there because then the podcast will show
Arvid:up in other people's feeds, and that will truly help the show. Thank you so much for listening.
Arvid:Have a wonderful day, and bye bye.
Creators and Guests
