Design the life you want to lead (not around the next demo)

For the past 3 years, my partner and I traveled and worked on the road as digital nomads. I often get the question, “How do you do it?”

There’s no secret.

I simply decided to make it a goal to design the life I want to lead.

Having goals allow you to do 2 very important things:

1. Say yes to the things that take you closer to it
2. Say no to the things that don’t

It’s incredible how much of your life you actually can have control over if you decide to take control of it. It might not happen overnight, but there is so much of your life you can craft by being mindful of what you say yes and no to.

For me, the first step was finding a way to automate all the live demos (for sales and onboarding) I was doing for my previous SaaS company in order to maintain and grow our revenue. With a super small team, I was the only person responsible for sales, marketing, and customer success. (More on that here.)

Some days, I would have 5 back-to-back kick off webinars for new customers. I remember sitting at the hotel lobby at 4am in Kyoto doing a demo for a customer and thinking to myself, this can’t be my life.

I remember the days when my first priority after landing in a new city would be to find reliable internet to make sure I could deliver the next demo seamlessly. I remember the countless would-have-been-fun nights I had to cut short so I could make it back to my computer in time.

Ironically, on one hand, I was living so freely and finally traveling full time. Something I had always wanted to do. And on the other hand, I was completely restricted by my customers’ schedule. I hated how I was supposed to be succeeding at enjoying life but yet but so much of it was dictated around the next demo. I loved having control over my business, but I had no control over my time.

These are the reasons why eWebinar* exists today. To liberate people like me from being controlled by revenue generating webinars that can be automated.

When my previous company was acquired last year, I set out on a new adventure to build an automated webinar solution that would have all the bells and whistles people need to grow their business at their own time. A solution with integrity that companies would be proud of using and aligning their brand with. Our mission at eWebinar to give people back their time is so important to me because freedom is my #1 priority.

Freedom for me means the ability to choose what to do at your own time. It means being able to say yes to going anywhere in the world, anytime you want without needing to explain to your manager. It means being able to choose where you wake up in the morning because wherever that is will ultimately make you happiest and most productive.

When I automated all of our repetitive demos, training, and onboarding webinars for customers, I also freed myself from their schedule and repurposed my time towards revenue generating activities that could not be automated. I spent more time on meaningful conversations, hosted more Q&As and office hours.

Automating webinars does not mean ignoring your customers, sacrificing your brand, or your revenue. In fact, you can automate your webinars and make yourself available at the same time; these two things are not mutually exclusive.

Having said all this, there’s a time and place for webinar automation and it’s not always the right thing to do. When we first rolled out eWebinar, I was doing 1on1 demos for 10 weeks straight because that’s what was required to get feedback from early customers and to get the company off the ground.

This was my schedule of demos on a typical week:

I didn’t automate our demo until I was starting to hear relatively the same feedback from live calls and felt fully comfortable about how the product was being communicated. Since having our eWebinar demo on autopilot through eWebinar (delivered in a very meta experience), I no longer do live demos. But that’s not only because I have chosen to design my life that way, it’s also because customers would rather go through our demo on their own.

Whenever I’m referred to someone for a demo, I would propose to walk them through myself or for them to join the self serve webinar and connect with me on questions after. 100% of the time, they would choose to go through the self serve demo either because they prefer not to speak to a salesperson, or because they don’t want to coordinate schedules with the number of people who have to see it.

You can automate your demos and make yourself available at the same time.

There are still some demos I prefer to do myself, such as the higher value deals or the ones with friends. But this is a choice that I get to make.

My (tech) friends would say things to me like, “If I sell my company, I’ll move to Hawaii” or “I would stay in Mexico longer if I could, but I can’t.” YES, you CAN. Don’t let what you believe is impossible (today) stop you from moving to Hawaii or extending your stay in Mexico.

These are some of the things I did in the past 2 years while running my business with customers in North America without sacrificing revenue:

• Checked off a bucket list item and vacationed in the Maldives
• Took my partner’s 2 kids to Japan and Vietnam
• Went to Burning Man for the first time without reception for 10 days
• “Moved” to Amsterdam
• Lived in Hawaii for 3.5 months with our best friends
• Spent time in a number of cities in Europe, Asia, and North America

While I started designing my life with the goal of traveling more, I now realize that having control over my time meant making room for new experiences, friendships, and connections I wouldn’t otherwise have had.

If I can design the life I want to lead, you can too.

There are only 3 steps you need to take to make this a reality:

1. Decide to make life design your goal
2. Say yes to the things that take you closer
3. Say no to the things that don’t

To quote my favorite book, “What is the world’s greatest lie?” the little boy asks. The old man replies, “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.” — The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo

• eWebinar is an automated webinar solution that combines pre-recorded video with real-time interactions and live chat to deliver an engaging experience for attendees every single time, without you needing to be there. We save people from doing the same presentation over and over again.

Did you enjoy this article? Find me on LinkedIn, Instagram , Twitter where I post daily about my journey bootstrapping 3 startups.