Maria Ebenezer runs two successful businesses — online and offline. One is an event staffing agency that puts talent on the floor at international conferences, and the other is an online education program where Maria teaches people how to build a business like hers.
Even though they sound different on paper, Maria built them both using the same guiding principles: build trust first, nurture relationships for the long haul, and create a brand that feels authentically you.
Maria has spent years learning how to make strangers feel like they already know her, whether that happens over a handshake at an event, a freebie helping them reach a goal, or a website that conveys her personality.
Here's how she built recognition in the event staffing world, then used those same skills to build a teaching brand online.
(If you’re interested in building an online business like Maria, take a look at Podia. Podia has your website, community, courses, digital downloads, and email all in one place, so you can focus on creating a great experience for your customers. Start a 30-day free trial today.)
From event staffing to online teaching
Before she offered courses and training for entrepreneurs, Maria ran an event staffing agency, providing hostesses and support for international conferences and exhibitions in the corporate sector. It's formal, relationship-driven work. You don't win a corporate client with a flashy ad. You win them by being genuine and reliable, year after year.
That kind of trust takes time to build, and it took many years of consistency for Maria to become a well-known name in the space. But once she was, something interesting happened. People started asking her for more than staffing.
"I had a lot of people messaging me that they want to start their own event staffing agency, and asking if I could mentor them,” Maria remembers. “They asked me if I could teach them how to do what I’d done.”
When COVID slowed events to a stop, she had her answer. She'd teach.
Maria switched to Podia for better website features and the ability to grow an audience
Maria's first stop was Udemy, but she quickly felt limited because the platform isn’t built to help you build a relationship with your customers.
"You don't get to have a fancy website, you don't get to brand yourself," she explains. "It was more like a marketplace."
Udemy handled the marketing, but that meant Maria had no name recognition and no way to turn a course buyer into someone who knew and trusted her specifically. She couldn’t build an email list, either, which meant no way to follow up with the people who enjoyed her courses.
She moved to Teachable next, looking for more design options and control over her own products. It was a step in the right direction, but Maria observed that a lot of creators still used a separate website builder for their main site since Teachable only provided a simple storefront page.
When Maria discovered Podia in 2022, it felt like the perfect fit, and the thing that sold her was the feeling of finally having a real home for her business.
"You can build really beautiful websites," she says.
Podia let Maria bring her whole business, including her website, email, courses, learning materials, and audience, under one roof. "You don't have to separate your personal brand from the core selling platform," she explains.
For a creative person who cares about how things look, this was a big win. But it also served a strategic purpose because Maria could use her branding and site organization to tell her story and bring new clients into her business.
Her site became a place people could land and immediately get a sense of who she is. And if they wanted to stick around, they could easily get on her email list, read blog posts, or sign up for products.
Your branding and website design can help you build trust
Ask Maria what makes a site stand out, and she doesn't talk about clever copy or growth hacks. She talks about clarity.
"You're gonna need a lot of visuals, more images and less text," she says. “People form an impression of your brand before they read a word, so let the visuals do some of that work.”
She also recommends paying attention to your color palette. Skip anything too harsh or too busy. The goal is a site that feels put together, not one shouting for attention.
Her biggest piece of advice is about restraint on the homepage itself. Instead of cramming every detail onto one page, keep only the essentials there and link out to the rest.
“If a client lands on your home page and there are too many buttons and CTAs competing for their attention, people don’t know what to click on,” Maria says. “Visitors freeze instead of acting.”
Instead, she recommends limiting your homepage to one or two CTAs, and no more than two free offers. This gives people one clear next step instead of a wall of options.
The same logic applies to layout and design. Contrasting colors, properly sized images, and a clean, uncluttered structure all make a page easier to read at a glance. If a site is hard to digest, you’ll lose people before they've had a chance to trust you.
It all comes back to the same idea that shaped her events business. Recognition and trust get built through consistency, whether that's showing up reliably for a client year after year, or presenting a website that has a clear, actionable message and authentic story.
Building trust before asking for the sale
Across both of her businesses, Maria follows one rule closely: give something away before you ask for anything back.
In her education business, Maria made a free video teaching people how to create a portfolio, tied directly to her paid portfolio course. Anyone who watched the video got added to an email sequence that guided them toward the paid offer. Her audience, mostly women building their own businesses, responded well to it.
"If it's directly tied to the product, it's really effective," Maria says.
"You can't expect people to make financial decisions if they're not even familiar with you," she says. That's why she recommends starting with one free video or one PDF lead magnet. It gives visitors a way to get a feel for you before they're asked to spend money.
To get more eyes on your free resource, Maria uses SEO as a starting point. Check Google Trends for the keywords people in your industry actually search for, then write blog posts around them, even if you're only writing once a month.
This helps people who are looking for your services and knowledge find you and learn from you organically. If you add a valuable free resource to your content, they can sign up, learn more about you, and hear about your other offers through an email nurture sequence.
Another tip Maria has learned building two businesses is to ask your customers how they found you. That’s how Maria learned that her corporate clients were coming from Google searches, not social media, which let her stop spending time and money on Facebook and Instagram ads that weren't converting for that audience.
Maria also emphasizes that building trust and brand recognition takes time, and you might have to test a lot of different approaches before you find the thing that clicks. "In the first five years, acquiring customers was quite difficult," Maria admits. But it gets much easier as you continue to learn about your people and hone your offers.
Trial and error, in her experience, isn't a sign something's wrong. It's just part of the process.
The secret sauce ? Build trust, lead with value, and let your website tell your story
Whether it's an event client renewing for the fifth year in a row, or a stranger deciding to buy a course after enjoying some of your free content, Maria's approach stays the same.
Create a great home base for your business so customers understand what you do. Give value first so clients trust your expertise. Make yourself easy to find and easy to reach. Stay consistent long enough that these connections continue to build.
If you're ready to build a website people trust the moment they land on it (that’s also connected to your community, digital downloads, online store, and email marketing), start your free trial of Podia today. We can’t wait to see what you make.
Maria Ebenezer runs an event staffing agency and works as a Podia Pro, helping creators build and brand their own digital businesses. You can learn more about her on her website.
