How the best sales webinars actually work, with Nicole Baldinu

Speaker 1 (00:03) Welcome to amplify the personal brand entrepreneur show. Today on the show, Bob is speaking with Nicole Baldini. But some of the best webinars I've been on, I've seen the same content, just delivered better. They've paid attention to the questions, they've paid attention to the chat, and so they're able to answer and address those pain points and their audience's needs because they're tweaking, they're refining their content based on delivering the same content. Some of the things are like, it could be a plus, it could be a minus. But yeah, I'm just trying to think now. Oh, there's so many great tips on it. Those are helpful so far. Speaker 2 (00:43) Hi there, and welcome back to amplify the personal brand entrepreneurship. My name is Bob Gentle and every week I speak with incredible people who share their circus to building, marketing, and monetizing their expertise, intentionally growing a unique personal brand and the mindset you need for your business to grow and thrive. If you're new to the show, then while you still have your device in your hand, then hit the subscribe button. That way you won't miss a single episode. And if you are a regular listener, then consider sharing this show with just one person. It's the very best way you can help the show grow. So this week, my guest is the producer of one of the most prolific podcasts I know, cofounder of two SAS products I'm very excited about and still finds time to launch a new podcast. Prolific doesn't even begin to describe Nicole Baldinu. Nicole, welcome to the show. Speaker 1 (01:32) Hey, Bob, thank you so much. Really happy to be here. Speaker 2 (01:36) For the listener doesn't know anything about you. You have a lot going on. Could you maybe just start by telling us a little bit about who you are, where you are, and the kind of work that you do? Speaker 1 (01:45) Sure. So I am based in Sydney, Australia, which is my hometown. I was a high school teacher for over twelve years, which took me, interestingly, away from Sydney to places like Japan and Dubai, where I taught for a number of years before I decided to leave teaching and begin my next chapter. And that took me to New York to study film. Yes. Speaker 2 (02:15) No, carry on. There's clearly more. I was about to jump in there, but I know there's more. We need to get the exciting bits. Speaker 1 (02:23) Well, good. Yeah. So like I said, I left after twelve years of teaching, went and did a very short film course in New York, did a bit of freelancing. I didn't do that for too long. I was also settling into a new romantic relationship with my nowhusband and cofounder, Omar Zhom. Soon after, he asked me to team up with him on a project that he was working on and was thinking about. It was the $100 MBA. The $100 MBA at the time that the idea was to create a series of video training to help people get started with an online business without forking out the huge amounts of money that people fork out for a traditional MBA. So we created that together. I had just learned how to edit film, so I had all these fresh skills that I could learn to to the project that was very exciting for me. So we launched that, and then it was about eight months later that the $100 NBA evolved and we launched the $100 NBA Show podcast, which you referred to earlier on. So that's been going eight years strong, 2000 episodes. Plus that's a daily podcast from Monday to Friday. Speaker 1 (03:38) And all credit to Omar. He's on the mic every single day recording a lesson for our listeners. Speaker 2 (03:43) I have a lot of questions about that, but before I get to that, there's something really interesting happened there. You were working as a teacher, fairly successful. What was it that triggered you to just say, you know what, something new? Speaker 1 (03:57) I used to think that my story was different in that I went into teaching as a fallback. But I've since learned that a lot of teachers go into teaching thinking that they won't be in teaching for the rest of their life. It's a very safe career and a lot of people go into it for different reasons. And so for me, you know, there's a whole backstory as to why I went into teaching. We don't have to go into that. But I did. I had a number of very, very good years. I was good at my job. It's something I wasn't good at what I as a teacher, but I was looking for something else because I think I always had this idea that I would be doing something else with my life. And for me, as creative as teaching can be, it wasn't giving me the creativity that I wanted, that I was looking for. And so that was really the reason why I decided to leave and look for something else. I just felt there were so many constraints and there are so many constraints around teaching. Your timetable, the things you have to teach, the calendar year, all of that. Speaker 1 (05:02) I felt it was quite limiting and I really just wanted to explore something new. I didn't know what that was going to be. I pretty much put myself on a deadline by resigning and having six months before I had to actually leave and find the next thing. And so, fortunately, I did within those six months. But that's really what I was looking for. And so that's why I chose film, because I thought, well, it's not like I was always a budding filmmaker. I didn't even know how to use a camera when I went to film school to make videos. I mean, yeah, that was the reason that I left. And I saw filmmaking as the complete opposite of what I was doing of my day to day as a teacher, so to speak. Speaker 2 (05:46) Yeah, I think it's very brave. I say this as somebody who was also in a very safe environment for a little bit of time. It would be very easy to stay there, but it takes quite a force of will to move out of that kind of safe role. And I think a lot of people, they never quite overcome the gravity of a safe job. So I'm always curious to know what it was that helped them overcome the inertia and move into something of an adventure again. So that was interesting. So the $100 MBA podcast, for me, I look at it and I think it is quite a feat, a daily podcast, to sustain that. I remember that a little while ago, probably a year ago, I thought, this podcast is getting kind of easy. I could go to a daily show and I had lots of people telling me, yeah, you should do that. But then I didn't do it because I just was overwhelmed by the potential for the production overhead and all the other things that I wouldn't be able to say yes to. But I'm curious, what does it take to pull off a daily show? Speaker 2 (06:53) How much time does it really take? Speaker 1 (06:55) It's a good question because when Omar and I started, it was just the two of us when we started our business. And now we have a team, you know, very fortunate to have a great team behind the $100 MBA that keeps the show running daily and not skipping a beat. So it took a lot in terms of Omar to plan, create the curriculum, the lessons that he was going to teach, and then, of course, the time that went into recording, and then the time that went into editing, and then all the post production stuff. You know, I edited the first 376 episodes before our amazing sound creative Carl stepped in and took over and now does a far better job than what I did. And we do, we have people that help us with write the show notes that put up the episode, promoted on social, all of those things. But at the beginning, Omar and I were just getting started. The $100 MBA itself was very new as a product. The community, the membership was growing, but it wasn't huge numbers. We didn't have Webinar ninja as a product, as an offering yet. So it was just really us just working every single day for hours, whether it was recording and then editing, doing all of that. Speaker 1 (08:16) So it does take a lot. The format of the show is a short format, it's lesson based, so it's not usually more than 1520 minutes of content, but still, there's a lot that goes into the editing of that. So I've never tallied up the actual hours now of every single team member that works on the show, but I'm sure it's a significant amount. I don't know if that's helpful to you or answers your question? Speaker 2 (08:44) It does. And I think what's interesting is that $100 MBA product came before the podcast. It's not like a lot of podcasts, but the podcast is the main event. The podcast is there to support the commercial product. So it does make sense that you put the effort into the promotion of it. And the podcast is a great way to do that, because you build a relatively large community through a podcast that can then find their way to the commercial product when they need it. Yes, and that makes sense. It's marketing through service, which is my favourite way of doing it, rather than marketing by throwing money at ads or tricking people or crazy funnels. Obviously you have funnels, but there's human service there as well, which is, frankly, one of the reasons we're talking. Speaker 1 (09:28) The first podcast that we had was what we refer to as our failed podcast. I don't like to use the word failure, because it was a massive learning and it's what led to the $100 MBA and much more successful results and what we actually wanted to achieve. But the first podcast that we had, which was an interview show, didn't do so well at all. We ran it, we did 45 interviews, and then we decided, this isn't working, this isn't the product, this isn't the podcast that we aspire to have. And so the $100 VA show came off very an interesting lesson with a podcast that didn't do so well at all. Speaker 2 (10:19) And was the $100 NBA show always daily? Speaker 1 (10:23) Yes, it it was was Monday. It was seven days. I'm trying to remember seven days for a number of years. And then we switched to Monday to Friday. Speaker 2 (10:36) And is there any batching involved or is it just every day on my recording? Speaker 1 (10:41) Yeah, he batches. He definitely batches. So he'll have dedicated days in the week where he records a number of episodes. And of course, we have to do that when we travel, but there's always we take a microphone everywhere every time we travel, because there might be last minute updates to Sponsor Reads and all of that, but he definitely does batch. Speaker 2 (11:03) So, moving on from the podcasting, you began with essentially a course and a community, then we have a podcast to support that. And then we have webinar ninja. Now, most people listening. No, I never have software companies on the show. I just don't do it. They always want to come on the show, but they never do. Most of my guests are people I go out and look for. You were referred by a friend who I trust, and obviously I was quite excited because I'm already a customer of Webinar Ninja, rather, and I was actually going to be asking you anyway, because as an organisation, you're doing things very differently. You're very visible as co founders, you invest in your own personal brands the way it's very unusual for SAS owners to do so. I simply preface the questions that I'm about to ask you with that for the listener so they can understand you're not paying me. I essentially asked you now, you're not a traditional tech startup, not by any means. And I'm curious to know how the hell you manage to pull something like Webinar Ninja off. Because I know what it takes to build those things and to go from Course creator to podcaster to building a SaaS product. Speaker 2 (12:17) It's not the normal path that these things happen. So how did it happen? Speaker 1 (12:22) So when we launched the $100 MBA and we were trying to get members into the community at the start, we did the whole launch sequence and created a buzz and all of that, which was very new to me at the time because I just was fresh from teaching and new to the world of business. But, you know, we got all these members in and then the numbers started to kind of plateau as they do. And so Omar started running webinars to get more members into the $100 MBA community. Teaching was something that came naturally. He's also a teacher as well. And so teaching on a webinar was a very natural kind of transition to sharing more knowledge, more information, offering something of value, and then encouraging people to sign up to the $100 MBA. So he was running webinars by putting a whole bunch of tools together. I don't even remember all the tools he was putting together, but they were literally different pieces of software and plugins and chats and all of that. And you know, he was spending a significant amount of time putting all those tools together. We're talking 2014 and I think at some point he got a freelance developer to help him kind of put he had a little bit of coding skills, just very few coding skills. Speaker 1 (13:46) And he put something together, got a freelance developer to help him out as well. And he put together a very simple plugin that was used to run those webinars. And it was on one of those webinars where somebody asked, what are you using to run webinars? Because again, 2014, there's not that many solutions out there. Go to was kind of the big kahuna in the industry at the time. And so somebody asked, what are you using to run this webinar? And he said, Something I've just put together. And somebody asked, can we buy it? Can I buy it? And so that's where the idea came from. And soon after, like he did with $100 VA, he approached me and said, I've got this idea for a webinar solution because this is taking way too long every single week. I believe in webinars just like we believed in podcasting. The way to build an audience is a way to teach and to deliver value. He saw the potential of webinars and that's where the idea for women on Injure came from. Let's build a tool that we can use. And that seems to be something that other people are interested in as well. Speaker 1 (14:56) Now it's still just the two of us. There's a freelance developer just contracted for just a temporary gig, so we didn't have anything really to start this company with. And so we presold webinanja. He designed some mockups in Photoshop. This is what it's going to look like, this is what's going to be, this is what's going to do. This is how much it costs. You can get access lifetime, and then if you buy now and then we'll deliver the product in about six months, I think we said. And so we presold webinar with those funds. That's what funded the first developer and the first version of webinar back in 2014. Speaker 2 (15:38) That makes sense. I'm thinking back to then, there really wasn't very much it was GoToWebinar. Nobody's heard of Zoom. Zoom wouldn't have had a webinar capability then anyway. And what I love about it now, because I did a lot of due diligence when I picked my webinar platform, on the one hand, it's very simple, and on the other hand, it has everything you need and nothing that you don't. And the price point, again, this does sound like Blatant promotion, but I'm a Cameron Scott and the price point is awesome for somebody who just wants to get a foot onto the ladder with webinars because I don't know why people make it so expensive. Is there something inherently expensive in being a webinar provider? Speaker 1 (16:23) Well, there are costs. There are definitely costs too. With live streaming. There are servers, there's the hosting, we handle the hosting, so there are significant costs. And as I learned, building a software company, engineers are also very costly, higher as well, so there are significant costs. But I really appreciate that you're very transparent and that I do feel like we've always been very fairly priced and maybe that's just something I don't want. Speaker 2 (17:00) To over egg it. Obviously. Now, when it comes to webinars, this is a question I wanted to ask you probably more than I wanted to ask anyone. A question for a long time is when you're in a position where you can watch lots of people running webinars, you'll see a lot of people I'm going to say fail, but like you described earlier, you have to fail in order to learn what works. But you'll see a small number of people just killing it. They're flying. And from the perspective you've had of being able to look over all of these different people running webinars, you must have an insight into what makes them really, really work and what people consistently do that leads to tripping over their own feet. So what are the key ingredients to making a webinar really work? Speaker 1 (17:45) Yeah, it's such a great question. There's a few things there's a few things that go into a really great webinar, I think. First of all, the host has to care. And I know this is going to sound very like, of course, but that willingness and care factor has to be obvious and there's many ways you can do that by engaging with your audience, with your attendees, by taking the time to answer questions. The fact that you're reading the chat, I think a lot of the times there's a lot of pressure on the webinar host. They feel like they have to do things perfectly. This is kind of a performance and in a way it is, yes, you're on camera, you're performing, you're mindful of how you look, your voice, all of those things. But on the other side are people who have given up their time to be there. And the fact that you're engaging with them and that you show that you care, I think is huge. And sometimes it's interesting. Like sometimes one of the things that do trip people up is they do care so much that they want to stuff their webinar with huge amounts of information and really jampack it with value, which comes from a good place. Speaker 1 (19:10) But the flip side of that is that it's overwhelming and it can leave the attendee quite overwhelmed. I've just got more things to do now after I've watched this, which can go both two ways. So definitely some of the things that we teach that you want to keep it tight and you want to keep it like less is more, really, in the case of a webinar, so that people really do walk away. The focus as your intention as the host is that they walk away being able to do something right away, apply what they've learnt without that sense of overwhelming. It's surprising how many webinars I've attended where the content is the same, but it's just been really refined. The host has taken the time, you don't have to create a brand new webinar every single time. I think there's that pressure to like, it's got to be new, it's got to be fresh. But some of the best webinars I've been on, I've seen the same content just delivered better. They've paid attention to the questions, they've paid attention to the chat, and so they're able to answer and address those pain points and their audience's needs because they're tweaking, they're refining their content based on delivering the same content. Speaker 1 (20:35) Kind of some of the things are like, it could be a plus, it could be a minus. But yeah, I'm just trying to think now, oh, there's so many great tips, I don't know if those are helpful so far. Speaker 2 (20:46) No, those are really helpful. I think one question I wanted to ask you was about repetition. I see some people who I know are actually selling through their webinars, essentially running the same webinar again and again and again and again. And do you find that actually, this is something that I've often felt and people have told me, but it's still anecdotal that when you run a webinar for the first time, it's very likely to fail. And it's only part of the power is getting people to the webinar and actually running the webinar. But there's also a part of the power of the webinar is being seen to be running the webinar on a regular basis, positions you as an expert, which gradually over time leads to more people coming to the webinar. Is that something that is a real thing or is that just in my head? Speaker 1 (21:34) Well, no, I mean the fact that the more the webinars do provide you with that opportunity to be seen as the expert, because by nature it's something that you can scale it compared to doing a real live in person's event. The fact that you can reach so many people in different time zones means that you can be more visible, you can be more present, you can be seen more frequently. So there's definitely value to showing up. And the more you do, the better you get as a host and the better your content will be. And yeah, I mean, people should show up if you've done the right promotion and all of that. Speaker 2 (22:26) So one of the things you mentioned a moment ago was coming to your podcast with an attitude of service rather than from an attitude of selling. And let's assume somebody's managed to get over themselves and forget about, oh, I'm worried about how I'm looking, I'm worrying about how I'm sounding, I'm worried about how I'm selling. And they manage to actually show up and just run a great webinar and allow their natural charisma to shine through rather than letting all these hang ups get in the way of it. The other thing that is often hang up for people is what happens if nobody shows up? What happens if there's only five people there? What's your perspective on webinars with low numbers of people? Speaker 1 (23:04) I get that. I get that that's a real fear. I know that our first webinars had less than five people, maybe five people one time, then six, then seven. I get it, it's a real fear. But to me it's, again, what you said, just being there in service. I don't think at any point that someone's on a webinar that they're actually thinking about how many other people are there. They're there because they came for a reason. They came to learn something. There was a promise that you made through your title of the webinar, the description of your webinar, whatever they saw about you on your website or on your social, there was something there that got those, however many people to show up, to show up. And so focusing on that, I mean, those people are there to hear from you. And so, you know, I'd say they're not really worried about, they're not really thinking about how many other people because they've got questions and then, you know, for them, if they post a question and you answer it, then they're really happy because there weren't hundreds of other people, then their question got missed, for example. Speaker 2 (24:25) I know from my experience, I actually really enjoy going on a webinar where there's not very many people for exactly that reason. You can get attention. It's almost like a private consultation. Those are my favourite webinars, I think, as well, with a good webinar platform, webinar ninja included. They don't know it's only you that knows exactly. Was a mind blowing moment when I finally realised that I managed to let myself relax into it. Actually, it's okay if there's only a few people there. Yeah. Speaker 1 (24:53) And your focus really is like getting better at what you do, whether it's what you teach, how you serve those metrics of how many I get, it conversion, all of that if you're there to sell a product. But I think that needs to come second. Speaker 2 (25:12) So on the topic of coming second, if you've managed to relax into your webinar, you've shown up the majority of people running webinars because they want a result of some kind. Yeah. You might be running them for support purposes, but let's assume you're an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs typically want to sell something and a lot of people make a lot of money making selling through webinars rather difficult. So from your perspective, what is the simplest approach to okay, you get to the last 15 minutes of the podcast. No, they're not podcast, the webinar. It's time to make an offer of some kind. How can we make that simple and easy? Speaker 1 (25:51) Well, one of the things that I see Omar do that he does and that he and he promotes, is that if there is going to be an offer, mention it right at the start. Get it right out of the way from the very beginning. It's always great to have an agenda slide to let people know what's going to happen on the webinar. Most people want to know, okay, how long are we here for? How long is this going to go for? What are we going to COVID Yes, they might have read the registration page, but it's good to just this comes from teaching days, right? This is all we're going to do today. And you go through all the items that you're going to be covering, and if an offer is going to be one of them, then I think the best thing to do is to just get in front of it right at the start and it just puts people at ease. Like there is going to be an offer. You're still going to learn something and they'll still be even if you're not going to take the offer, there is still value in you being here, but you can get in front of it at the beginning to make that transition just a lot more comfortable for yourself and for everyone else. Speaker 2 (26:57) That makes it so simple. Eyes are watering with the excitement of that because I'm one of those people who makes it very difficult for himself. I think a lot of people do. But it's the transition into the offer that's often that moment of anxiety, but actually putting it right at the very first slide, at the end, there will be an offer. All the tension's gone. I love that. So we mentioned at the beginning personal branding. And personal branding is in many ways something that neither you or Omar necessarily had to do, but you continue to do. You continue to show up. You've just launched your own podcast, which we'll talk about. Omar is still incredibly visible. He's one of the most chatty people on Twitter I've come across. Speaker 1 (27:43) He loves Twitter. Speaker 2 (27:45) Yeah. But none of that is necessary. And most SaaS CEOs or co founders, they don't do these things. I'm curious to know from you, what has that emphasis on personal brand and being visible and being part of the community led to for you that it just wouldn't have otherwise? Speaker 1 (28:01) It made a lot of sense that as being teachers, both with the podcast and with Webinar ninja, teaching and learning is still really the foundation of the business. It's the heart of the business. And so, naturally, just sharing our story and sharing the story of going from teaching and into entrepreneurship just was quite an organic and easy way to introduce people to the brands. And just, you know, just felt like you know, something to kind of yeah. Put at the forefront rather than hide or, you know, like that's what I did when I left teaching. I was like, I'm not a teacher anymore. Now I'm a filmmaker. I don't want to talk about teaching anymore. Oh, I'm an entrepreneur now. I don't want to talk about teaching anymore. But actually, teaching is what we do as part of our part of our business. That naturally being part of the story and the evolution of our journey as entrepreneurs is one thing. The other thing is that we always, you know, one of our primary company value is being customer centric. And you can say, okay, what does that mean? Great. You have a custom centric value. Speaker 1 (29:18) That's awesome. But what does that actually mean? And that means and for us, what it means is that we invest a lot of time talking to our customers, engaging with our members, whether it's the webinars, whether it's personally getting in there and answering some support emails. We have a team, but Omar and I are happy to jump in there and talk directly to customers. And we've done that pretty much from day one. Again, it wasn't just a conscience or we're going to do this so that this is a personal brand. It's just the way we organically felt was the right way to build the business, to be close to our customers so that we could learn, so that we could improve the product and. So by naturally being close to the customers, being willing to talk to your customers, you'll be surprised how many people don't actually want to talk to their customers or afraid of talking to their customers. By doing that, then you become more known to your customers. They know who you are. You know, it's funny because Omar is the one who does all the sales webinars and I'm there in the chat and it's been like that for years, and yet when some of our members come in and greet us, it's, hey, Omar and Nicole, they just know that we're both there. Speaker 1 (30:36) And I just feel that has come from investing in our customers, in talking to our customers and really listening to them and being there. So I think that's where yes, I. Speaker 2 (30:48) Think listening to you there. I was reminded I went to Social Media Marketing World in San Diego last March and the listeners probably bored of hearing about this. Sorry, I live in San Diego and. Speaker 1 (30:59) I've never been to Social Media Marketing. Well, you can tell me all about it. Speaker 2 (31:02) That's ridiculous. Mark Schaeffer gave a talk about something, I can't remember what it was. Sorry, Mark, but he did talk about sort of Web Three and the new economy and things like that. What he was talking about was, as we go into a world that's more and more virtualized and more and more automated and more and more remote, actually, as customers, there's far less binding us to the organisations we use. And as employees and as team members, there's far less, again, binding us to those organisations because the relationships have become more and more tenuous and that belonging is the currency of the future because you can't buy it, it's entirely decentralised. And that personal branding and the leadership in personal branding and organisations showing up in other people's lives is becoming a real competitive advantage for me in my choice of webinar platform, that was so obvious and it was a really powerful effect that these were people that I could connect with. I was having a conversation with Omar on Twitter before I was a customer. It was about something completely different, but I felt very differently about Webinar Ninja than I did about any other webinar company because there was a binding effect psychologically of that relationship and it's incredibly powerful and I can clearly see it working in your favour, which is just a really interesting thing for me to observe. Speaker 1 (32:33) I appreciate that. I mean, look, and that means you have to hear it all. You hear the good and the bad, but you have to if you want to build a great product, you have to really I mean, that's what we're striving for, is to continuously improve. And so you have to be willing to hear it all. It's the good and the bad, which will always be the criticism as well, of course. Speaker 2 (32:58) So I'm looking at the time and I don't want to take too much of yours, but there are still two things I need to talk about. Now, I got a cryptic email saying you were launching something new. Tell me. I know what it is. But for the listener, what's going on. Speaker 1 (33:11) At Ninja World Ninja, we are launching a new product. We've been working on this for about 18 months now. We're going into beta soon. It's called Course Ninja and we see this as a great complement to webinar ninja. And essentially, Course Ninja will be an easier way for people to run live cohorted courses. A lot of our users are coaches, trainers, creators. They've got courses that they want to run or they've already run on different platforms. And we're trying to make it easier for people who like us. You know, small teams, wear all the hats, juggle all the moving parts of the business. And our aim is to make it easier for them to bring it all under one roof and be able to run your course, promote it using webinar ninja delivery, using Course Ninja. And that's got us really excited. And I guess for us, again, going back to that story of being teachers first, it's almost like a combination of where we've always wanted to go and so very excited about that. Speaker 2 (34:20) I can't wait to see it. I missed the webinar the other night talking about it, but I will eventually get a look. I'm very excited. I like the idea of cohortbased learning far better than simply courses, because for me, courses on their own, knowing the statistics around people who buy courses and don't complete them, I couldn't with integrity deliver one. But cohort based courses where you're going through the content with people together, that makes much more sense to me. So you've also just launched your own podcast. I don't know how new that is, but do tell me about Nicole and Kate Can Relate, what's that all about? Speaker 1 (34:55) Oh, thank you. Well, Kate is Kate Erickson. Who's the other half of Entrepreneurs on Fire, another well known podcast. Kate is a friend. We were neighbours in San Diego. We still live together and lived nearby in San Diego, so we've been longtime friends. And when, you know, we moved back to Australia overnight in 2016, still kept in contact and during the pandemic. Having my own podcast was something that I kind of had thought about for a number of years. I'd always been on the other side and producing the $100 NBA show. But where Nicole and Kate Can Relate came from was the fact that Kate and I are in a Mastermind with another girlfriend. And just the conversations we had every month about business, about personal challenges, all of those things are just really soul. Nourishing. After those conversations, we always feel energised. We always feel like we've got a new perspective. We're always just able to approach that thing that was in our head. And this constant worry that was in our head. We just were able to get it out, see it from another person's perspective and just, you know, get on with the day with just more energy and confidence. Speaker 1 (36:11) And so those conversations, I thought, gosh, it would be really great if we could have those conversations more public facing. And so that's where Nicole and Kate can relate came from. And so Kate and I, we get together once a week and we record a conversation. Speaker 2 (36:27) I think you just described the rationale of a brilliant podcast. I tried to explain to a lot of people why they just start a podcast and it's for all the reasons you just described. That was almost a masterclass in the good reasons to start a podcasting. And I didn't realise it was Kate Ericsson. Obviously, I know of her I've never met, but that's an amazing co host. It must be quite a bit very lucky. She is also very lucky, let's be honest. So how long has that podcast been out? Speaker 1 (36:57) We launched in August of last year, so it's been over a year now. Speaker 2 (37:02) I'm not new anymore. I apologise for that. I had a scour of your LinkedIn profile earlier and it said, just launched. Speaker 1 (37:10) So obviously yes, that's my bad. I need to update that. Speaker 2 (37:13) Yeah, you do. Speaker 1 (37:15) It does still feel quite fresh, maybe compared to, like, podcast of eight years ago. Speaker 2 (37:21) Yeah, but I remember how I felt when I was a year into my podcast. It wasn't you anymore. I was a veteran, so we've covered a lot of ground and I'm hoping the listener has found something to be inspired by. I certainly have so many ideas, so many notes, but there's a couple of questions I still want to ask. The first one is, whenever I meet somebody that's extremely competent and accomplished, it's never good enough. I'm always curious to know where is it that you still struggle? Which part of your business do you look at? Go, I feel like a failure here. Speaker 1 (37:56) That's a really great question. There's a lot of things I feel that I could still do better and improve, whether it's management, leadership, all of those things. I still feel like I need to get better and there's still so much to learn. I think, personally, I suppose from the sales side of things, I've never been very I've had other areas in the business that I've been very focused on in the early stages, helping with content, customer support. Later on I got more involved in product, but never really on the sales side of the equation. I've always kind of deferred to Omar for that and I feel like I could really learn a lot more and improve those skills. Speaker 2 (38:45) I guess that's teamwork, when you are in a power team like that, it doesn't make sense to divide and conquer, focus on your own areas of excellence. But no, I appreciate that. It's never an easy question to answer. So, like I said, I have had a great time. It's been awesome meeting you. There's so many places that I would still like to go, but I don't want to take any more of your time. If anybody's listening, thinking they would like to connect with you, I imagine you're an easy person to connect with. What is your favourite place to connect? What's your favourite social media platform? Speaker 1 (39:19) I like Instagram out of all the social media platforms, so I'm Nicole Baldinu. Speaker 2 (39:25) On Instagram and people can find a podcast that Nicole and Kate can relate. Just search for it. It's easy to find. And my last question is, what's one thing you do now that you wish it started five years ago? Speaker 1 (39:38) It's hard. I have two podcasting, so my own podcast is one of them. It's just been so much fun, so it's so rewarding and I'm sure you can relate, so that's definitely one. And I guess related to this, because I do see podcasting as a way to refine and hone your communication skills. I only recently, last couple of years, started journaling and writing more and I think that's a really great skill that anyone and all of us should really work on. Speaker 2 (40:17) I have a lot of questions just around that, but I'm not going there just now. Nicole, it's been great fun. Thank you so much for your time. If it's all right, I'd quite like to have you back sometime and we can talk about your own podcast and some other stuff some other time. But for now, thank you so much for joining me. Speaker 1 (40:35) Thank you so much, bob, I had a really great time talking to you. You're very easy to talk to and yeah, this time really flew by.