Building Trust with Your Followers

“Your job in business as an author, as a speaker, as somebody who has something that you want to offer an audience, is to build that trust, is to build that relationship.” —Omar Zenhom

Omar Zenhom realized he was only getting his MBA because he was seeking permission to become an entrepreneur. Upon that realization, he left his university job and dropped out of his MBA studies to focus on his $100 MBA Show podcast, where he helped other people like him learn the basics of marketing, sales, finance, and idea validation so they could start their own businesses and be in charge of their own destinies.

In this episode of “Authors Who Lead,” I talk with Omar about his journey creating Webinar Ninja, how webinars can help authors find new readers, and how to build trust as an entrepreneur.

Just Start

Sometimes products “start with a failure,” as Omar tells us. As authors and entrepreneurs, we need to just start, not wait until we think the time or product is perfect. Webinar Ninja didn’t arrive fully formed. Omar went through a few early versions first. But he kept moving forward and improved his product. Using his $100 MBA Show podcast to grow his audience, he soon learned exactly what they wanted. He realized that most people don’t want to do all the work he did with his first versions of Webinar Ninja; they just wanted the tool, the software that does the work for them.

Building Relationships

Omar says in the podcast, “It’s all about the fact that no one really cares until you show them you have their best interest in mind.” Both Omar and I have an educational background, and we learned this concept early on. If students don’t trust that you care about them, they won’t care about what you have to say. Building a community is the same idea. Omar runs Webinar Ninja first to serve his audience and then to give them tools to grow their business.

If you can’t be in front of your audience directly, webinars can be the next best thing. There are tools inside webinars that offer opportunities for relationship building such as asking questions, gathering emails, and interacting with the other participants. As an author, webinars can be a great way for your readers to get to know you and what else you have to offer, such as courses, giveaways, or signed books.

In this podcast, Omar also shares with us:

How everyone’s entrepreneurial journey is different

That sometimes you’ve got to create a bad product to create a good one

How a webinar works

The different tools to use inside a webinar

How an author can use webinars to reach more readers

What the Tokyo Method is and how it works

What was your biggest takeaway from this episode? Are you thinking about hosting a webinar? Are you an author looking for ideas to reach more readers? Share in the comments below!

That’s all for this week. If you have a message inside of you that needs to be written, today is the day to start. Don’t delay—take action.

Episode Resource:

Listen on: