Women of Color Rise supports more diverse leaders at the table, especially women and people of color. We’ll be talking with CEOs and C-suite women leaders of color and learning about their leadership journeys.
How can you travel the world while running a successful start-up?
For this Women of Color Rise episode, Analiza talks with Melissa Kwan, Co-Founder and CEO, eWebinar. Melissa has spent twelve years in startups and built three successful companies without venture capital backing. Her previous startup, a real estate tech company, was acquired in 2019.
Four years ago, Melissa decided to leave NYC to travel the world while working on her third start-up eWebinar. She shares advice about what makes a successful entrepreneur:
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Be relentless. Especially at the worst of times, don’t give up.
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Focus. Figure out what you want to serve to your core customer and stick to it. Melissa shared that with her first company, she kept saying yes to customers and spread her services too wide, which limited her company’s growth.
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Emotionally detach from your company so that you don’t take things personally. Separate your company from yourself. When a customer says no, they are not saying to you, they are saying that your product doesn’t deliver what they need.
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Have fun! Life isn’t about work. Rather than say, “When I retire, then I will travel,” imagine traveling now and do it. If you have the chance to work remote, do it now, even if it’s just temporary.
Melissa believes that happiness should be the foundation of one’s career, not the other way around, and that the way to achieve this is by intentionally designing one’s life. She’s all about living life now and encouraging others to live their lives now too.
Get full show notes and more information here: https://analizawolf.com/episode-50-be-a-digital-nomad-with-melissa-kwan