MBA864 The Tough Thing About Tough Decisions

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Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that gives you real deep dive lessons from the real world for your real business. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA and webinar Ninja. And today's episode is one of those Just in Time episodes, an episode about a challenge I've had gone through recently in our business. I share with you what I've learned through the challenge and how you can use it in your own business as well. And it's all about really tough decisions.

In business, you're going to make tough.

Decisions all the time, but from time to time you're going to make some really tough decisions.

The type of decisions where no matter.

Which way you go, it's not going to feel great and it's going to take some time to feel okay about the decision. Recently I had to make a really tough decision with our webinar software company, Webinar Ninja.

And again, with these tough decisions, whatever option you choose, it's not a cakewalk.

You're going to need to deal with some stuff you just don't want to deal with.

Now our decision has been made, but.

I'm still not 100% over the fact that I had to make this tough choice. And and I'll explain why, but more.

Importantly, I'll explain to you how we came about making the decision and how.

Did we know we made the right choice at the end of the day. And by we, I mean me and my co founder Nicole. I'll walk you through the challenge we.

Faced, what were our options and the.

Process we went through to make the right choice and all the things we had to go through and consider along the way.

Now, this is one of the biggest.

Decisions I had to make with Webinar.

Ninja, and there was a lot to process. And to be honest, I was hesitant.

About sharing this with you on this.

Podcast, but I knew if I learned.

Something from it, you would too. So we have a lot to cover. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So let's begin with the recent challenge we faced that prompted this tough decision.

In the past nine months, we've been.

Working on the next version of our webinar software, Webinar Ninja. And this version is called webinar ninja 5.0. Now, the current version of webinar ninja, webinar ninja 4.0, has been a great success this past year, being the easiest and most complete webinar solution on the market. We surpassed over 10,000 paid users and became one of the fastest growing webinar platforms.

But for those who know me very well, know I'm a very competitive person.

Not only with others, but with myself, I knew we can do better. I saw Webinar Ninja as something bigger. I had a vision in my head of what it can be, how, how game changing it could be.

So I began the journey of making.

That vision a reality nine months ago, working on webinar ninja 5.0.

Now, you might be asking yourself why.

You have a good thing going.

Why mess with it? The answer is simple. To be the best, you have to.

Be the best by a lot. Like a whole lot.

You have to be ahead of the competition by at least five years.

You need to blow people away with your ingenuity.

And we see this not only in business.

I mean, we see this in sports. I mean, I remember growing up, Michael Jordan was just so dominant, and he was just so much better than everybody else. And he was the best because of that. But here's an example in business that I really think resonates with me. And it's when Steve Jobs first revealed the first iPhone, when he gave us that first demo of the iPhone back In January of 2007, our jaws dropped. And so did Steve's mic, right? Every other mobile company was scrambling, and they spent the next five years trying to be iPhone.

By that time, Apple took over the.

Smartphone market in a big way.

You see, he was way ahead of.

The pack when they released the iPhone.

And that's why they were the best.

Everything about the iPhone was just revolutionary, and he just owned the smartphone market because of it. And that's why we began working on webinar Ninja 5.0 in June of 2016. And we started with thinking big, bigger than we ever thought before. Webinar Ninja 5.0 is designed and coded from scratch and we rethought everything we thought of the biggest pain points for those who do webinars and how to cure those pain points in an extraordinary way. We started to say, why not more than why.

We wanted the user experience to be.

Seamless and like nothing they've ever experienced.

My goal is to have users use.

Webinar Ninja and say, thank you, thank.

You for making this make so much sense.

I wish all my pieces of software were like this. So we drew up our first documentation of webinar ninja 5.0. Shortly after this began a snowball effect of really working hard on the next iteration of Webinar Ninja. We began hiring the best talent we can find to join our team. I mean, in order to make our vision a reality, we had to hire the best of the best. From backend to front end developers, to designers, to media server experts, to iOS app developers. Yes, webinar ninja will have an iOS app very soon. And when we invested a ton of money and time, we invested over a million dollars and 30,000 collective hours of work to build the best webinar software anyone has seen or will see in the foreseeable future. And we set a launch date for late March. We started moving towards that goal and we're doing great.

But of course, there were a few.

Bumps we hit a few delays, a few surprises along the way that made that deadline a whole lot harder. That launch deadline became more and more ambitious as we got closer. So we hired more help, more teammates to work on the project to speed things up.

But sometimes that doesn't really speed things up that much. With software development, sometimes some things need to be finished before we can work.

On the next thing. So sometimes there's a little bit of a waiting game, there's a sequence involved.

And even with hiring new help, I.

Started to feel, wow, I don't know if we're going to hit this launch date the way we want to launch. Like, the product is not going to look the same. If we're going to launch on this date, might have to cut some things. And I wasn't feeling good about that. The other huge challenge we faced was midway through the last nine months, we had a moment where we decided to do something revolutionary with the technology that powers our webinar broadcasts. I mean, we can't wait to share this with you when we launch.

But that meant hiring a new team.

Of members and orienting them to the project and understanding what webinars are and Webinar Ninja and all that stuff. Mind you, the beauty of Webinar Ninja.

Is that it's so simple to use.

For our customers, but there's a lot.

That goes behind the scenes to make that happen.

We often joke within our team and say, webinar Ninja is 10 softwares in one. The sky is in a friendly interface. So whenever you see a great ui, great user experience, know there's a lot of work and thought involved in order to make that happen behind the scenes. So as we developed, we learned new ways to make the software even better than we imagined. Some ideas we just had to push to after the launch, but some in.

My book were must haves because I.

Knew they would make our users love us. So about two weeks ago, after meeting with our whole team working on webinar Ninja 5.0, Nicole and I realized that we're going to have to rediscuss the launch date. Uh, just saying that out loud makes me upset.

Just the thought of moving the launch.

Date from what I announced to our current users made my heart sink. I hate disappointing our users in any way, even if it's just temporary. My development team was asking for more time for development and for thorough testing. I was already pushing them to the limit. And if any of them are listening to this right now, thank you so much for being so dedicated to Webinar Ninja. You are amazing and I know you have our best interest in mind when you tell us we need more time. So Nicole and I had to make a tough choice. A really tough choice. Either stick to the launch date that we announced to users late March and.

Cut out everything that doesn't make that.

Deadline from the new Webinar Ninja, or push the launch date and give it the time it needs to launch the software the way we wanted it to launch, the way I had it envisioned in my mind back nine months ago. Now I hate these decisions because you.

Never feel great whatever you choose. Again, it's just one of those decisions.

Like, ugh, I have to make a tough decision. So Nicole and I sat down and discussed this. I mean, I started thinking of different scenarios. Well, what if we launch on time with all the important features, but then we won't have enough time for good quality assurance testing, for beta testing on a live server in with real users. But if we delay the launch, we disappoint our existing users.

We're really anticipating this release again. Either way, I'm not 100% happy. But here's the thing. I realized the decision is not about happiness.

It's about regret.

Which decision would I regret more if.

Things didn't go as well as I hoped for? Ugh, that's tough. I mean, if I go with option.

A, would I regret it more if it didn't go perfectly? Or what about option B?

Because regret is a tough one.

And when it comes to decisions, you don't want to regret them. So in these moments, Nicole and I.

Crack open a notebook and a pen and you guessed it, we make a Pros and Cons list.

There's something about seeing the reality of.

Your situation in black and white right.

In front of you that makes you think more clearly. This was about a two hour discussion.

That was very painful for me. In my head I was screaming, I.

Don'T want to delay the launch.

But the screaming slowly died down as we went through each pro and con.

You see, a pros and cons list.

Is just pure honesty and it reveals what you're more afraid of. In my case, disappointing users in the short time with a delayed release, or.

Disappointing them and myself with a software.

That isn't exceptional at its release.

The reality was I could push the team to the brink and launch on time in late March, where the product.

Would not be the vision that I had at the start. It would resemble it, but not really the complete package.

I also again, would not be happy.

With the time allotted for beta testing and quality assurance. Or I can man up and do what I'm dreading, announce the delay and release about eight to 10 weeks later and give our users a better software that's well tested.

Now, any person at this point would.

Say, okay, we gotta delay the launch.

But I still was not convinced because part of the vision was to release in late March. But then I was also reminded through.

The Pros and Cons list that you.

Only get to launch once. You wanna maximize the impression you make on not only the users that you have and new customers, but your launch partners and promoters. Webinar Ninja 5.0 is the biggest project I've ever worked on in my life, and it will be the largest launch I've ever done.

I'm going to be calling in all my favors with all my friends in business for this launch. The product has to be remarkable. I also knew that testing a new Webinar Ninja in a live server environment for a good amount of time was important. It had to be flawless.

The standard of reliability with all the.

Moving parts we have with webinar Ninja. We needed to test it with real beta users for more than just a couple weeks. And a couple weeks would be all.

We had time for if we tried.

To push it for a late March release.

At the end of the two hour.

Meeting with all the pros and cons on the table, I knew the delay was the right decision mentally.

But emotionally, I still wasn't convinced I.

Needed to sleep on it.

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Well, the day after when I woke up, I didn't feel a whole lot better about making the decision to delay the launch.

But my head had my heart beat.

With an internal debate. I knew I had to put my big boy pants on and email our users with this decision. I did. In fact, I emailed the users today, and as I wrote it, I felt more confident that this was the right decision. I was reminded of the business leaders I look up to that had to do this themselves. Elon Musk needed to delay the release of the Model S, and it was a tough decision to make that announcement, but he had to, to make sure that it was released properly.

Our very own shining example.

Apple recently had to delay the release of their wireless earphones, AirPods. They had to delay it a couple of times, actually, and when asked about it, they said, we just can't ship something unless we know for sure it's ready to go. And that's the bottom line. You gotta make sure it's great. And in order for me to make sure it's great, I had to delay it. I found comfort in the fact that these were challenges all great businesses at times had to overcome.

And that's really the lesson for you today.

Whatever tough decision you need to make, it's a rite of passage.

It's a part of what comes with.

Creating a great business.

Do your homework. Make your pros and cons list.

Discuss with who you need to discuss with. Give yourself the time to make the right decision. Don't rush it.

It's way too important to rush. Think of which decision would you regret.

More if it goes a little bit off, if it doesn't actually happen perfectly. It's been 10 days since my big decision, and I'm feeling better about it.

I'm not happy we had to do it, but I'm happy we decided to.

Do things right and not sacrifice quality over my ego. Really, I see that now. I see that I had a lot of pride, and I really didn't want to, you know, change the date because I had pride in that date.

But sometimes you have to swallow your.

Pride for the greater good, for the benefit of your customers, for your users, for the product, for the business. And that's not easy to see in a moment's notice. You have to give it time. You have to discuss. You have to put things down. You gotta allow yourself to process that decision. Thanks for listening to the 100 Ombie show, and I hope today's episode was helpful. I hope by sharing my tough decision and the challenge I had, it helps you with your next tough decision.

If you found this episode helpful, let.

Us know in an iTunes rating and review. Just head on over to iTunes, search the $100 NBA show and give us a review. And, of course, make sure you hit the subscribe button below with whatever app you use to listen to podcasts so you get all our episodes automatically. All right, that's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. I want to share with you one of the reasons why we decided to delay the launch so we can launch properly. That was not on the pros and cons list. And it's something that just came about by me thinking about it, sleeping on it, all that stuff.

And it's.

I invested so much into Webinar Ninja. Webinar Ninja has been an incredible experience. I've put in so much money, and we're bootstrapped. We're not funded. This is all our own money, money that we made through the process of building the software. We didn't get a handout. We didn't start with some sort of huge lump sum.

And we put in a lot of time and effort, and there's so many.

People involved now with our team, the stakes are super high. So I was really hesitant to rush things. As much as I wanted to launch on time. I was like, no, this could be a horrible decision. There's too much at stake. Let's do this right.

So sometimes if you want to make.

A tough decision, think about what's at stake and how those things will be sacrificed or how those things will be lost if you make a rushed decision. For me, that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. I was like, ugh, I do not want to risk this. We've put too much time and effort and money into this to rush it. Let's do it right. I hope that helps, and I hope to see you in the next episode. I'll check you then. Take care.

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