MBA2153 Extended Interview: Laura Roeder – Lessons Learned From Growing & Selling Her Business and Starting Again

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I'm doing great. It's been. We talked a long time ago, so it's really good to be back on because a lot, A lot has changed.

Yes, yes, totally. And I really have so many questions. I have so many questions for so many reasons. And we've been wanting to have this chat for some time. So I'm so glad, Glad that you're here. First of all, how is summer in the uk? You're just getting out of summer, right?

Yeah, it was actually a pretty nice summer. You know, travel was really crazy here with flights getting canceled, baggage loss. So we had a very. We had a very British summer. We went to the Isle of Wight, we went to Wales, we went to Cornwall. We did all the, all the British. All the British hits.

Okay. The greatest hits. I love it. We have that in common. We're both Americans. We're expats in, in different Commonwealth countries. You're on the Commonwealth, you're in the motherland. So. So that's. That's awesome. But I love the fact that you know more. I hear a lot of my friends who are from America are now moving and exploring new places. I've been an expat all my adult life, actually. I was living in Dubai, then I moved back to the States for a few years and came to Sydney and things like that. How has expat life kind of changed your perspective on things?

Oh, man, it's Such, it's such a big question. I mean, I really love living in the uk. You know, I think other countries make fun of Americans for not having a passport, but maybe they don't realize that America just is such a huge country. You know, it's not that weird to just stay in America, you know, visit places in America. But when you go outside of America, you do realize there's a lot more world out there, a lot more ways to live. So many other things that we take for granted in America, like shops being open all the time are just very unusual, you know, every everywhere else in the world. Although I do miss just being able to go to, you know, CVS at 3:00am by whatever I want. You can't, you can't do that other place.

That is very true. And I, I try to explain this to some of my friends that like the thing about the US is that it really spoils people because they have the mountains, they have the snow, they have the beach, they have desert, they have forests, they have, you know, like. So you could pretty much get an extra, you know, a non cultural experience, you know, nature experience everywhere.

Yeah.

So it kind of doesn't really encourage people to leave their borders. But having said that, what you mentioned about like things being closed or the inconveniences of, of Europe or other places in the world, it really does give me gratitude and patience and makes me realize, well, maybe these things are not so important. Maybe I don't need to buy something at, you know, one o' clock in the morning. It's just like the idea of it is comforting. I don't know why. Just knowing that you can go get something at one o'. Clock. Yeah, yeah, it's weird. As I, as I mentioned before we jumped into the chat in our intro that you know, you're the founder of me, Edgar. You sold me. Edgar. You're the founder of Paper Bell. You are an absolute baller when it comes to, you know, building and growing a business and, and building it on your terms, which is something that I'm really interested in learning more. But before we get into that world, I want to learn a little bit more about, you know, you said you grew up in Austin, you're from Austin, Texas. You know, what was that like growing in Austin? Do you have any family members that are entrepreneurship? Do you have any entrepreneur influences growing up? What was like your first exposure to business?

Yeah, so my dad is a self employed architect. So he, you know, did the plans, my mom would help do the bookkeeping and he's sort of interesting because he technically is an entrepreneur, but he's the type of entrepreneur that just loves to be an architect. So he didn't have interest in growing a larger firm. In fact, he, he had employees. And then there was a real estate crash in the 80s and he had to fire them all. And he was like, well, this is great. This is, this is much better just, just being on my own. So it's a little bit different than, you know, for me, I am interested in growing a larger business. But I think what was such a huge blessing about that that gave me head start is, you know, I did grow up in a family where my family's business earned our income. So I think for so many people, just that idea is such a huge mental hurdle for them. You know, they've been told that owning your own business is really risky or unstable and you need to get a job. So it's not like it was a huge business. It's not like it had, you know, some huge amount of wealth or anything. But just having that baseline of like, okay, the way my family makes money is from my parents business, I could do that also. And actually my very first foray into working for myself was as a freelance graphic designer, which is, you know, kind of a very similar type of business to being a freelance architect. So I did have someone to talk to just for those very basics of like, okay, this guy didn't pay me. What do I do? Although my dad is a terrible person to ask because he's just like the nicest guy in the world. I'm sure he was just like, well, sometimes people just don't pay you. He's not, he's not very aggressive about stuff like that. Yeah. Although my mom would be the one calling and being like, nope, we gotta get paid. So yeah, I do, I do think that was just a huge, you know, privilege that I had that so many people, their families are unsupportive or just think it's a crazy idea. And you know, I was lucky not to have to deal with those kind of obstacles.

That's very interesting. Knowing that that's an option. Knowing that, like, hey, entrepreneurship is an option. Starting a business an option. You know, my dad was actually an engineer and in the 80s lost his job in that crash and he became a salesperson and a car salesman. Out of all the kinds of sales people can think of, the one that we think about in our head and growing up in that environment, you know, you just learn that sometimes you have money and sometimes you don't. Sometimes there's ups and downs. And you. I think my tolerance for risk came from that. From just observing that. Well, that's awesome. When did you first start or tell yourself, maybe I can do this business thing? Like, what was that? Was it a book? Was it an experience?

So I was very young. I think I started working for myself full time when I was, I guess, 23. And I never had a job since. So I only had one job after college. I quit that to start working for myself, and I never looked back. So, you know, I feel like when you ask people this on podcasts, there's two, but not you just generally podcasts. Because I listen to a ton of business podcasts. There's two books that get mentioned over and over and over and over again, and they are Rich Dad, Poor dad and Four Hour Work Week. And mine was Four Hour Work Week because that book came out right at the same time that I was quitting that first job, which. Which, I don't know, 2007. Somewhere around there, you know, is around when the book came out. And, you know, that book was so powerful for me of just seeing this example of like, okay, this. This guy, this guy did it. You know, he's. He did it. He's explaining how to do it. I had always been a kind of early Internet person. You know, I think you and I are a similar age. I'm 38, so I was that kind of first generation to have AOL in fifth and sixth grade and. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, coding websites, like when I was in middle school. So for me, reading the stuff in the four Hour workweek was like, okay, I know about this Internet stuff. And I had. I had already started becoming aware of those worlds of doing, you know, affiliate marketing on, you know, Google Ads, all the kind of early Internet stuff. I was kind of learning about it. So, yeah, that book was a huge part of my journey. And I just figured, you know, if I don't like freelancing, I'll just get another job. It just seemed to me like the worst case scenario. It's like, okay, well, the worst case scenario is just the scenario that I already have. It's like, I have a job now. I don't like it. Well, then I'll just get, okay. It might be a slightly worse job. But, you know, I was young, I didn't have kids to feed, right? It's like, okay, I know I can get a job at Target or something and be able to survive, you know, move back in with my parents if I have to. So it wasn't that hard for me, I think, to take, to take that initial leap.

It's great that you recognize that. I call it the Mario Jump. You know, like, there's these levels in Mario where you have to like make this big jump. In the worst case scenario, you're gonna fall through and you're gonna start in that where you just started, like, you know. Yeah. But my first book actually is none of those. And it's like such an obscure book and it's actually a book written by a brother and sister that started Coffee Republic, which is. Was a big coffee chain in the uk. It's called Can Do It. It's not the best book in the world, but it was just the right book at the right time. I read it cover to cover on a flight and it was one of those books that documents the journey of building a business. For them was a cafe and, you know, doodles on the napkin. And after I read that book, I was just like, they're not special. I could do that too. Like, why not? You know, and it was really inspiring. And then I read Rich Jet. Yeah, this is. Which is usually, you know, par for the course, you know, awesome.

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I'm really loving what you're dropping because I feel like we kind of grew up in the same generation. We learned our way around the Internet and kind of learned by doing and got our confidence through that. One of the things I, you know, I did a research on lore before I got on this call and one of the things I learned, and I knew this for some time, but I wanted to talk to you about it, was that you're one of the co founders of B School with Marie Folio. Now, for those, for the younger folks who are listening, B School is this big thing that came out in the late.

For the men who are listening, women know what this says, men have no idea.

I knew about it. I was like, you know, huge. Right?

You're tuned in. Yeah, yeah.

So it was like, you know, 2010, even like 2012, 13, 14, 15, 16. You know, Marie Folio had this business program called B School, which was like a business school alternative type of thing. And she was like, in. In this is my perspective, she was like the face of the brand and face of the. The program. I didn't know at that time that you were the co founder of it. I only learned that later when. When I, you know, was doing a bit of research. How did that happen? How did that synergy happen, that partnership happen? And. And why did you take on that opportunity?

So I first hired Marie as my coach. You know, I saw her at one of the first kind of online marketing, online business events that I went to, and I think she was on stage there. And I'm like, you know, I think Marie is impactful for so many people because she does. She does seem very relatable. And for me, you know, at the time, I was in my early 20s, I guess she was in her late 20s or whatever. And to see a young woman with a successful online business, I'm like, oh, yeah, I want. That's. That's who I want to work with. You know, I can really relate to her. She's done it. So I first hired her as my coach, but then very quickly, we just became really good friends. And really the origin story for B School is that we were going to all of these, you know, back then it was called Internet marketing, like these Internet marketing events. And at the time, a lot of them had a kind of very, like, sleazy, aggressive, get rich quick. A lot of, you know, they would tell you stuff like put logos on your website of like, brands you haven't worked with to make your website look better.

I got a zinger for you. I went to one of those events and they would say, advertise on websites like Forbes and Inc. And then you could say, featured in. Oh, yeah, you can't do that.

Yeah, all kinds of shady stuff. And, you know, unfortunately, we also had a lot of experiences of being sexually harassed, of not being taken seriously, of just, you know, being one of so few women in those rooms. And we really started B School being like, okay, let's just have a place where we can teach people about online marketing where they don't have to steal themselves before walking in the room. You know, it's like we're learning along with all the shady stuff we're we're learning some, some just really great principles of marketing and sales and online business. Like, let's share this in a way where people don't have to put their, their shield on before they go through the learning. Or of course, a lot of women just weren't walking in those rooms at all because they felt so unwelcome there. And that's really why we started B school together. And actually when we started it, we taught it together. So I was also like in the videos and stuff and the kind of short version is it just, it just took off instantly. I think our second launch was over a million. And you have to remember this was like quite a long.

This is nuts.

I mean, it's still very impressive to have a million dollar launch today, but back then it was, it was like really not happening. So, yeah, you know, within less than a year after we launched our second launch was a million dollar launch. And it became such a bigger thing because we had both been running our own businesses already and basically it was like, okay, this isn't some sort of side project. This is bigger than both of our existing businesses. And basically I saw that it wasn't where I wanted to focus my attention long term. So the reason that people haven't seen me in it is because I did leave it after only, I think, two years. And then, you know, we did create all the materials together, but basically she bought me out of my share and then continued doing it on her own. But, I mean, I'm incredibly proud of it. I've met so many people that are like, I took B school back in the day and that's, that's what got me started. And so many people still have really good friends that they met in B school. You know, there were local meetups all around the world. It's just like, it was such a phenomenon.

That's amazing. I mean, I love hearing the story because sometimes success finds you and you, you have to kind of let go of everything and be like, I gotta pursue this. There's something here. And that's what happened with us with this podcast. You know, we had a podcast before this that totally tanked and not that great, but when we pull this off and it really resonated with the audiences and we started to get traction and, you know, itunes was recognizing us and we're just like, oh my God. I know I got this other stuff I'm working on, but, like, I'd really be missing out on opportunity if I don't jump on this. You mentioned something that is really important. Being a woman, being in entrepreneurship. There's a lot of things that people don't talk about. There's a lot of challenges that you go through just by. Because you're not a man. You know, it's just such a interesting kind of challenge that you're going through. But you also have the challenge of being a female entrepreneur. That's an. That is a leader in. In to women. You know, like, a lot of women look up to you because you've done things that are. Are successful, but also just recognized by both men and women, not just for being a woman, but just for being a. A very good entrepreneur. Do you feel any pressure or do you feel a sense of responsibility being, you know, a female entrepreneur? And, and I'm saying this because I feel this way too. As a minority. I feel like as Egyptian American, as an immigrant son of an immigrant parents and things like that. I feel like I have a sense of responsibility to kind of represent my people, you know, and show them that, you know, this is possible. And yeah, there's challenges, but, you know, this is how to deal with them. Do you feel that way as a, As a female entrepreneur?

I think I feel it in a positive way. I don't feel a negative pressure of like, oh, I can't mess up because people are watching. But I do feel like it's. I mean, it's kind of cheesy, but I feel like it's an honor to be able to publicly show people a different way to do things. You know, there was something that I retweeted the other day where someone had said, if you're not working on the weekend, like, you don't want it. You know, you just. If you're not working on the weekend, you just don't care. And, you know, I retweeted it and I'm like, I'd. I'd rather have a great relationship with my husband and my kids than whatever x percent faster growing business, you know, And I think obviously that's true. Not just for women, for a lot of people. And a lot of people feel like that's bad. There's something wrong with them, I mean, which is so crazy to even say out loud, right? Like, of course, I think, of course at the end of your life, you're going to be a much happier person with a great relationship with your friends and family than however, you know, much you impressed everyone with how many employees you had or whatever. But a lot of people feel like they're. They're not allowed to go down that route, or there's people blatantly saying, oh, you don't want it bad enough. You're not, I'm not going to take you seriously. You're not a real business owner. You're not a real entrepreneur. So I think sometimes the good part of being underestimated is you can just be like, yeah, like, I know that you underestimate me. I know that you don't take me seriously. So whatever. That just. You took all the. There's nothing I can do to change that. So all the things that you think are dumb, like me working part time, I'm just gonna be like, yep, I work part time. Like, don't care if it bothers you. I know there's a lot of other people out there that are looking for permission to say, yeah, you can be successful and work part time. You can be successful and not have your business as the only thing you care about in life.

Yeah. I mean, it's hard to believe that on your deathbed you're going to say, I wish I spent more time in the office. It's usually exactly what you said. Like, I want to spend more time with family and friends and, and, and I always kind of echo what you say, you know, why are you working hard in the first place? Like, what's, what's the ends? You know, like, aren't you trying to build a better life for your family and be able to afford the things and enjoy the experiences with them? If you're just working for work's sake, that's a problem. That's a neurosis, you know, but, yeah, I'm glad that you, you, you retweet and you comment on these things because we need champions of that idea. I want to get into the Internet marketing stuff because, you know, when you started mentioning some of this stuff, you brought me back. For those who are listening and they're maybe interested in learning more about marketing, getting better at marketing, and they're entering this world. There's a lot of, there's a lot out there. There's YouTube, there's videos, there's courses, there's books, there's old school books. There's stuff like, even the old school stuff, there's a lot of good gold in there. But then you have to sift through some of the stuff that it kind of is shady, you know, and marketing is very gray. And in a lot of ways, what is your advice or what do you do to kind of sift through and see what's best for you? Because I love Your branding. I love what you do with your website and your work and things like that. And it's very straightforward and matter of fact and very transparent. But that obviously comes along with marketing principles. So what are your techniques?

Okay, so the easiest way to sort of make a rule for yourself is just to have the rule don't lie. This sounds funny, but I swear this just makes it so easy. So I've, I've had this rule for a long time, which is just don't lie. Anything that you're putting out needs to be true. So having that filter just allows you to. Sometimes you look at these marketing principles like scarcity. Right. So scarcity just means if there's less of something, people have a more urgent desire for it. And that is absolutely true and it's very effective in marketing. So if you look at whatever you're doing for scarcity, if you, you know, if you have an ebook and you say that there's only seven minutes left to buy this ebook, but actually, of course, the counter just restarts as soon as it hits seven minutes.

Seen it.

That's a lie. Yeah. They don't have only seven minutes left. Right. Whereas in Paper Bell, something that we do is we have a special offer that goes for the first seven days of when you sign up for a free account. Right. That is true. That offer is only, we personalize it. You know, we use a tool so that their coupon code, like it only works for them for the first seven days. Right. So it's, it's true that for the first seven days, that's their window whenever they are for seven days to get the special offer. So it's like it's taking the same concept and just taking away the stuff. That's not true. And there's still plenty of ways to do it.

Yeah. And I love this simple rule that they can follow. And also the idea that like, don't throw the baby out of the bathwater. Like, okay, have scarcity, but just be, be honest about it. Like if you're closing your doors, close your doors. If you have only 100 spots available, really only have 100 spots available. And at some point you can't, you can't just have it open forever. You have to have a closed period or that means you just never sold 100 spots. But the point here is that like, yeah, I love that because this frees you then to use what's out there because then you're being honest. I love it. So something that you and I have in common is that we both Work with our better halves. Your co founder, Chris, of me, Edgar, and I get to ask this question all the time. Like, how is it working with your spouse? You know, is it impossible? I could never do that. What are some techniques you use? I can't speak for you, but, like, what is the answer that you give to this? Like, because for me, I feel like I don't know how you can't have your better half. You're involved in some way in your life, you know?

Yeah. I mean, I love working with my husband. And it's interesting because I do. Obviously, it's not for everyone, and if you're like, that sounds like a nightmare, then don't do it, you know, but just little. So I have had a business partner before, right? We talked about Marie Forleo. She was my business partner. And there were so many little things that we didn't align on. Like, one was that, like, anyone who's followed Marie or, like, read Marie's book, Like, Marie is so ambitious. Like, such a hustler. She loves to, like, stay up all night getting it done. Like, I'm lazy. I just not. That's just, like, not how I work. So, like, she would always want to be, you know, working more. Let's stay up, let's finish it. Let's, you know, film it all in these two days. Like, let's get it all done. And I, like, just don't have the same energy levels that she does. We also had different kind of life, you know, at the time. I didn't have kids yet, but I knew I wanted to have kids. You know, she had, like, an older stepson and knew that that was. That was good for her. So the great thing about working with your spouse is that, you know, we're so aligned on all of our bigger life goals. Like my husband and I, it's important to us that we're not working too much. And so it just. There's never any pressure for, you know, one of us to say, why haven't you got this done? Why haven't you finished it? Because we know at the end of the day that we don't want to have really busy work days. He's, like, on a huge fitness kick right now. He's spending a lot of his time exercising. And I'm like, yeah, that's like, yeah, I want. I want you to be. Yeah, as. As, you know, hot and healthy as possible. I want you to live a long, healthy life. So, yeah, I would much rather you exercise than, like, ship that feature today. So I Just found for us, it gets us really, really aligned on kind of those bigger, deeper, more important goals for the business. And I think our kind of secret to success for working together is that we do have totally different skill sets. So he's a developer. That's what he loves to do. I don't know how to do that. You know, I'm the marketer. He doesn't know how to do that. And also the way that we do it is, is the reason that people don't see him like credited anywhere. Well, one reason is that he does not want to be publicly online in any kind of way or even privately online in any kind of way. Once someone asks us to do a podcast together, you know, just audio, and he's like, absolutely not. That's just like any sort of public visibility he's not interested in. And also the way that we do it is like he makes the product and I run the business. So we talk about business stuff, but it's not like we need to talk about and agree on like every business. Like, we don't, he doesn't, he's not involved with any kind of like budgeting or anything like that for the business. Like he, we talked together about what the product's going to do and feature stuff. But I think having those separate domains works really well for us because then we're not having to discuss like every little decision in the business.

That's very healthy. Knowing your roles. Nicole and I were fortunate enough to be colleagues before we were, you know, you know, intimate partners. I was working at the same university as she did. We were both former teachers. She was actually in my department. I was her supervisor. And she still actually has her classroom observation that I gave her a good thing. It was a good one. But, but you know, I knew her as a professional. I knew her as, and I respected her before I loved her, which was really, I think that's something that I'm, I feel lucky about because it's so much easier for me to see her as a professional and have that conversation with her in, in a business setting then you know, feeling like, oh, I work with my wife, you know. So, yeah, that, that definitely is something I, I'm grateful for. So you started to meet Edgar. You started me, Edgar, at some point in your life and you know, social media, yeah, 2014, social media was hot. And you know, it's still very hot. And from afar I saw you kind of grow me, Edgar, and make it your own. And it's a self funded company. Correct. So my question to you is what were some of the growing pains you had over the course, let's say from, from, from launch until sale. What are some of the things that stick out those moments, those memories? You're like, I do not want to rel that that was tough.

I mean the hardest stuff over the years was always the team stuff. And that's also what I'm kind of reexamining now with, with my new business. Because one, when I started Meet Edgar, you know, I looked around at my friends who had, you know, online course businesses is what a lot of my friends were doing or coaching businesses or things like that.

Creators now they call them creators.

Creator, the creator economy, we call it info products then, you know, but no one had like full time employees. Everyone just had kind of like VAs and freelancers that they worked with. And so I was like, okay, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to have a quote unquote real business. And I was looking around, yeah, and I was, I had a lot of friends in Silicon Valley, you know, running funded companies and I'm like, okay, I'm going to do things like they do. So not just the business model of SaaS but also having W2 employees on the team. I'm like, I'm not just going to have a bunch of VAs. I'm going to have everyone on my team be W2 employees. And there were a lot of things that were great about that and we had a lot of success very early on and we grew our team too large because I was kind of following the formula of the bigger the team you have, the more successful you are. It's one of the easiest ways to kind of look successful to other people is to say like, oh, how, how big is your team? And if someone says a number that feels like a higher number, like wow, you guys, you guys must be, must be doing really well. And in retrospect, you know, we had people in full time roles that were like one off projects, you know, we had a full time marketing data analyst when we just absolutely did not need that to be a full time role. You know, we thought we did at the time or an in house like ad buyer when we could have easily used any kind of freelancer or agency. And over the years like finding that balance of how best to work with people like who needed to be in house, who needed to be full time, I found that very challenging because I think my skill set is definitely not like I'm not a big like a nurturer, you Know, like, I just want to kind of, like, set the goals, get the work done. I'm, I'm not so great at navigating the people side. And I did have an amazing person that I worked with who was great at the people side. But honestly, like, a problem that we always had over the years was the team absolutely loved working there. Like, we created a really great environment for the team. People never left. But sometimes that's not so good if no one ever leaves, you know what I mean? Because then it's just like, everyone wants to stay because the environment's so great. But what we did not master at that company, looking back, was like, having the great environment and, like, always hitting our targets every time, always staying focused on what we wanted to do. And I, like, I wish I had a lesson of, like, here's how you do it, but that's just something that I'm trying to do better at my new company.

Yeah, holding your team members accountable is tough, especially when they feel like family, you know, like, when they feel like they're so close to you. Work with them. They're great people and they're, they're, they're doing their job, really. But, you know, they're not really pushing the envelope. That is, that is required with a lot of businesses in a competitive space, like the marketing space. You know, I love that learning. And one of the things I want to kind of just follow up on is, you know, sometimes we make decisions in our business and we're not really sure why. Like, why did you decide to go with the W2s and, and hire these positions and things like that? Do you ever analyze, like, is that a decision that came from. From. From just past experiences or just something you want to do, something different? Or, like, did you ever analyze why?

Well, yeah, it was, it was because of what I saw, what I thought were real companies doing.

Okay. All right.

Yeah. And now that I've gotten further along, I actually, I mean, it's something that I want to write and share more about. I think there are so many things that need to be done really, really differently in a small company. And let's say small is like under 10 people, under 20 people. I think a lot of things need to be done inherently differently than so much of the business. Content that you read is about big companies, because obviously those are kind of the impressive big name companies. And I mean, like, one example is at the time we had, you know, leaders for our departments, and at the time I thought, okay, those leaders really shouldn't be doing Very much execution work because they should be like on strategic work for their department, you know, they should be mentoring their teams. But no, we needed them to do execution work because we only had, you know, or whatever. Like yeah, we, we didn't have room for people to just sort of be like thinking all like, it didn't really make any sense. But I hardly have time to think. But like I would read these things about like, oh, you don't, you know, you don't want your leaders like so down in the weeds. So they never have, they never have the capacity to work on a bigger strategy that's really going to move your company forward. And I think like there, there needs to be more education for that middle ground. It's like I feel like there's a solo freelancer and then I mean people love stuff like, you know, traction.

Oh my God, I was about to say that.

Organize a large routine.

So Nicole's reading this book right now and I read it like a few years ago and you the my takeaway when I read eos and it's a good book and Gino Wickman did a great job with it. But it's, this is not in my opinion if you have a team that is, I would say less than 50 people, which is most small businesses. Right, right. Most small businesses. This is way, way like not applicable. Like you just can't pull off what he's trying to do and you just feel deficient. You feel like I'm doing something wrong and I'm not successful enough to implement this system. Do I even have a business? Yes, you do. You know, so I think what you're saying is so true and I will champion anything that you produce. Tell me, I'll retweet it because that is so, so important. Because there's so many people I know personally, my own businesses, where there's not enough examples, there's not enough, there's not enough information or content about how to navigate that I would say before 10 million in revenue, like even just before that. And, and all we see is like the fast growing companies, even the self funded ones, you know, like the base camps of the world. And you know, ConvertKit, you know, they're amazing companies and I'm super proud of those people. But that's the anomaly. That's not the normal.

Right.

Journey.

Right?

Yeah.

Right. Yeah. I mean I can think of an example so we would always try to follow. There's a book called Scaling up. Used to be called the Rockefeller Habits. It's like the same as Eos I actually don't know who copied who or if they came with the exact same idea. But it's kind of funny how they're exactly the same. So we would follow scaling up and it's like, like you're saying you're like trying to do, you're like, okay, they said, I have to have this meeting rhythm, right? So you're having all these meetings and you're like, jesus, we only like, we don't have that many people and they're just in all these meetings all the time or something. That's big. And scaling up is like, you have to have, you know, your one big goal per quarter and everyone at the company, like every week has to show their progress towards that one. Everyone has to be marching in the same direction. We would always be like, yeah, but like our customer service team, I mean, they don't really work on that goal. Like they just, just answer all the queries really well. But instead of just seeing that, we would, like, try to, you know, create some other tasks for them to do so they could be involved in the big goal. And the whole thing, like, didn't make sense and was just a waste of time. Or we would have a developer that would need to be working on this one feature, but it's like, oh, but that feature is not our goal. So they have to do some other random work so that we can somehow shoehorn them in to be related to the goal. And it, it was just a waste of time. But you read these books and the books are like, if you do everything we say in this book, you will 10x your business. So it's like, I'm trying.

I know.

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I was at a, at a, a founders meetup the other day and one of the things that we had to share, you know, what are some takeaways you've learned over the years. And, like, over the last eight years of building Webinar Ninja, my number one takeaway is, no one knows your business better than you do. Like, along the way, sometimes you forget, sometimes you think, this coach is going to unlock it for me. This system's going to make it happen. This next product, this next idea. Oh, no. This marketing strategy. No, I'm going to hire this firm and they're going to kill it with the marketing. Like, no, they don't know anything compared to what you know. Right. Like, the answers are within you. And I know that's frustrating to hear, but that's what I've learned, really. It's just like, unfortunately, you got to figure it out, and there's no way around that. So you sold me, Edgar, and I want to hear a little bit about what made that decision for you or just like, you know what, it's time to say goodbye.

Well, I mean, it was a lot of things. So I actually did take myself out of the day to day of the business a while before I sold. You know, I mentioned someone who was really good with the people, so I put her in the president role, and she was running the business, and I would usually talk to her once a week. And that was my only involvement in the business. So it was much easier for me to sell than a lot of people because I had. I had already been kind of out of it. And then another huge factor was that I did reach some early traction with my next business. So in that process of taking myself out of Meet Edgar, I was pursuing other businesses. And this one that I'm doing now, Paper Bell, you know, I launched Paper Bell while Meet Edgar was still running. And basically we had success with Paper Bell right from the launch. Not big numbers or anything, but, you know, you. Yeah, I don't know, 200 people bought it or something at the launch. Like, okay, that's. Yeah, that's, like, enough to know that people. That people want this thing and more people will buy it. So after that happened, then I knew that I was kind of ready to go to the next stage with Edgar, and that did end up being selling the business.

So did you get tired of me, Edgar? Did you feel like.

Yeah, I mean, I got tired of. I definitely got tired of the social media world. I mean, actually, in the past, in the last few years, I Meet Edgar because I've always done a lot of podcasts. I was like, I'll do podcasts, but I won't talk about social media. I'm like, I love talking about business. And entrepreneurship. Like, do not ask me about social media marketing. I was just so sick of talking about social media marketing strategies. It wasn't a passion of mine. I think something that a lot of the social media tools have struggled with is you are extremely limited by the platforms and the platforms have given the third party tools less and less access and permission over the years. Because, you know, it's interesting watching Buffer from the outside, I don't have any insider information, but they, they have shared some that they're having like, similar problems that we had at Edgar. And from the outside, I think their tool has kind of stagnated in a similar way that ours did at edgar. But at the same time, it's not like I see some other tool that's doing way better. I think from the outside, maybe you wouldn't understand. Why is there not more innovation at Buffer Edgar? But a big reason why not is because, like, we just, there's only so much we can do. You know, Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, like, they let us do what they let us do and they don't let us do other things. So I'm sure, you know, both Buffer and Edgar could have been more innovative. It's not like we'd reach, you know, the absolute cap. But I think that's a big reason why that happened at both companies and why I don't know how they feel. For me, it was a little less fun because it's like, okay, you might have ideas of ways you can make things better and then you can't execute those ideas.

Yeah, yeah, big time. And I mean, I love the fact that you were self aware and, and your ego is not totally out of control to the point where you didn't recognize that, hey, the writing's on the wall. Like, I, I need to, you know, make a decision about this and also be aware of the fact that like, I'm not enjoying this anymore. Like, and, and that's important to me. And I often wondered about this, like, how, how can a product like Meet Edgar or, or Buffer or whatever really thrive if it's not in the interest of Facebook or Twitter?

Right.

If people are not in the platform, like, they're gonna, they're gonna, I don't, they don't publicly say this, but they probably don't want people tweeting outside of Twitter because they want them to be on the platform. So the automation tools, I don't know if they, they, they don't give it as much juice in the algorithm, but I can imagine so.

Yeah, well, and we Also, we also saw that the company is just small businesses. They do not care about at all. Like some. There are enterprise social media tools like SprinkLRS1. I mean, you would never know them unless you work a huge company. And those. Those do have much better relationships with the tools because Facebook does care about, you know, enterprise advertising dollars, which is. Which is all part of the ecosystem. Facebook does not care about small business advertising dollars, and Facebook doesn't care about small businesses because a lot of them aren't giving any advertising dollars. So we never had a contact at Facebook. Every time we needed to talk to someone at Facebook, I would email all my friends, like, who do you know at Facebook? Who can you get me in touch with? Over the years in the business, we never got a steady contract there. They were constantly, like changing their partner programs and which one you needed access to, and it was just always this desperate struggle to get into them, you know, and we were. We were and are definitely one of the, you know, top five social media marketing tools.

And.

And they had no. They had no interest. So it was. It was just kind of a hard.

Super frustrating.

Yeah.

So you learned a ton through me, Edgar, about, like, what makes a product sticky, what makes it fun to use, you know, what kind of business you want to build around that product. What were some of the things that you learned and adapted in your new business? Paper Bell, which, by the way, is a fantastic product. I was checking it out. It was like, amazing. Like, what it does, does so much for coaches. So congrats. Congrats for that. So what are some of the things that you kind of said? Note to self, do this in Paper Bell.

Yeah, so. So Paper Bell is a tool for life coaches to run their business. So that means managing payments, contract signing, scheduling, you know, client management stuff. So one thing that I did the same was stay in the small business freelancer, creator kind of space, which. Which is a hard space to be in because, you know, we only get 50 bucks at a time every. Every customer. If you look at SaaS that does larger deals, it can be a grind growing a business in a small business space. But it's also the space that I just have genuine passion for. Like, I love entrepreneurship. I love encouraging people to become entrepreneurs and have that freedom in their lives. So even though there were downsides of that, I did want to stay in that space. You know, with Paper Bell, we have like more or less no platform risk. You know, we integrate with Stripe and PayPal for payments, but there's a lot of other choices there. If something went wrong, we integrate with Google Calendar but we only benefit them. It's kind of the opposite. Like you were saying, it's like Facebook. Do they really want other tools to post on Facebook? No. Does Google Calendar want other tools using Google Calendar? Yes. That's just more using Google Calendar, you know, more.

Depends.

And again it's, we just, if in some weird world we can use it, we could, you know, build our own calendar and switch to another calendar, whatever. We can't just say, oh, just use this new Facebook. That's not how it works, you know. Yeah, so, yeah, so we, I did want to build something that didn't have those platform dependencies. And also, you know, coaching is such a growing industry. We're still in the very, very early days of coaching. You know, it's starting to explode. I think we're going to see it explode even more. And social media, it's not like social media was in any way a dying industry. Social media is still growing, but it's growing in very different ways. And yeah, it continues to grow in ways that are unfriendly to third party tools. I mean TikTok is obviously kind of the next big social media platform. I've never, no one uses TikTok tools as far as like, you know, posting to tick tock. Managing tick tock. Like, I don't even know. Some of them have very basic posting functionality. But if, if you're creating a tick tock like you're in TikTok. So the, the kind of like, I don't know, old style of tool is still useful. Like, I mean we still use and love Edgar at Paper Bell because it just, it keeps our, all of our social channels full every day. Yeah, I mean we have a lot of followers on Instagram just from like posting about our blog posts on Instagram for Paper Ball. So it's still useful, but the industry is definitely not growing in a way that's friendly to tools, whereas the coaching industry is.

Coaching is absolutely huge. And there's a couple reasons why I love the coaching industry and it's why Nicole and I pivoted and niched down to coaching and built Webinar Ninja for, for coaches and creators and, and now we're even moving courses and things like that. And the reason why we're so bullish on it is one, both Nicole and I are former educators. This is like our world. We grew up in, in, in, in our professional worlds as teachers and you know, education is kind of our jam and, and we know this stuff and we would love it. But the, but more importantly, the barrier of entry to be a coach as a business is so low. Right? In terms of costs, in terms of infrastructure, in terms of the ability to just get started and share what you know and share your expertise, the margins are much higher than having a.

Right.

If you're, if your ideal client is a, you know, let's say a mom and pop, a bakery or even like a tech startup, you know, so their margins are quite high. So therefore they can afford tools that will make them money, you know, so this is why like when I saw your, your product, Paper Bells is like, this is perfect because it's, it's, it's a great price point. It's also just a good tool that's not over complicated and a million things. It's like the, you know, infusionsoft or the HubSpot of coaching. And I think what a lot of people don't realize is that this is just the beginning and there's going to be so many services and tools and businesses that are going to be serving this market. And if you can build a brand around coaching or even be a coach yourself, it's going to be, it's just going to get easier for you. Would you agree?

Absolutely. I mean that's, that's a big motivation for me is to be kind of seen as, as the category creator and the primary one in the category because there's going to be a lot more Paper Bells. You know, there's going to be, I can promise you there will be some exact copies which we had at meet Edgar. We were like, wow. They just took our exact interface and copy and pasted it into theirs. Who's Edward?

Who's.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, you know, being in a space early, I think it is really important to get that brand awareness right so that people are saying like, even if they don't choose Paper Bell, like telling people like, you need a tool like Paper Bell, you need Paper Bell or something like Paper Bell. And that's kind of how you define the space. So, you know, we're, we're not there yet. A lot of coaches still haven't heard of us, but I think we are gaining that, that market share very quickly. And I think it is a bit, a bit of a race because I see new tools popping up all the time and, and I think there will be a lot more.

Totally. There's so much more. I want to talk about Laura, but I know that we're kind of running out of time, but I do Want to mention a few things for people to check out. We're going to put in the show notes. There's a couple articles that I think that you really just nailed. One of them was about not doing your own customer support, which I'm a big believer of as well, because for actually different reasons than what you mentioned in the article. But I let people read it. But my reasons are, are really. It's hard for you to be the big thinker and to come up with new ideas and solutions when you're in the weeds so much. And yeah, sometimes support is a muddy place, you know, like, you're just. People don't know what they want, they're being rude, they're being short, you know, like, whatever. And I'm not saying that that's all customers is a very fraction, but just one customer can really, you know, ruin your day. Exactly. And you need trained professionals for that. And the other article is one about public speaking. And I want to talk a little bit about that because you do a bit of public speaking. One of my favorite speeches that I heard from Craft and Commerce is yours. I really, you know, I think I.

Tweeted, I haven't spoken at Craft and Commerce.

Which one was it?

Was it the lead pages one?

Yes, the lead pages one. Sorry, it was a drip.

One or two, something.

That's why there's a C's. The C's got me converted. Got me confused. Sorry, that's my bad. So, yeah, that's one of my favorite ones. I really, I remember when I watched it, I was like, I gotta reach out to her. Until it was really, really helpful. Have you always loved public speaking? Is this something you worked on? Is it something that you still get nervous about? Is this something you seek out? Or you just say, hey, if somebody asks me, I'll say yes.

Yeah, I. I do love to speak. It was pretty natural for me. I remember back when I lived in Chicago in my early 20s. I was like, oh, I like speaking. I should go. I should go to Toastmasters. And I don't know if they've improved, but at the time, like, I showed up to my first meeting and it was like so formal. It was like, you memorize and you, you know, memorize word for word and you present exactly this way. And I was like, ooh, this is. This is not what I meant. This is not the kind of speaking that resonates with me. I will not be returning to this organization. But I do have something to recommend for anyone who wants to be a better speaker. There's a woman named Gail Larson. I think her book is called Transformational Speaking. Look up Gail Larson. She has an amazing book. I went to a live workshop that she did in Santa Fe years ago and she teaches you just kind of how to like, convey information and tell a story authentically. I need to revisit her book because I'm sure I've forgotten it and could make my talks way better. But, yeah, it is something that I love to do. I actually have a rule now that I live in the UK that I can't go to any conferences in North America. You can probably identify with us living in Australia. So much business stuff is in America. It's just way, way more than anywhere else. And for me, I have little kids, like the time and the jet lag and the whole thing. I just, for me, I make a black and white rule so that I can't even be tempted to go to anything in America. So I'll go to stuff in the uk, I'll go to stuff in Europe, but there, there is just a much lower volume here. So I do really enjoy speaking, but it's not something that I'm, I'm pursuing right now.

I totally resonate with what you're saying. One of the things that Nicole and I really have a pain point with is like going flying 14 hours to go to a conference, and then you need like a week off to recover. It's really tiring, it's really draining and you don't really come back refreshed or feel like, you know, that you're ready to take on new things in your business. One of the big reasons why we started our own, like, small business retreat for founders here in Australia, because it's like, why are we flying so far anywhere, when there's some amazing people that. These are people that I never got a chance to get to know, but also people that I would only see at conferences in the States. Like, this is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, it was a big reason why we started oscon. I definitely resonate with the fact that, you know, I, I love the fact that you're balanced, that you, you prioritize your mental health, your physical health, your family. Like, hey, the idea of this sounds good, but in reality, is this really good for me, you know, like, the fact that you have that awareness is huge. And super proud to like, to know you and to learn from you and to. And just to know that there's other people that are considering this because I just feel like there's the other narrative that we Talked about where people just like never say no to an opportunity and go after everything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can work on a plane for 14 hours on the way there and then you can work on the plane on the way back.

No, I could barely read on a plane. Are you kidding me? Laura, it was awesome, awesome, awesome chatting with you. Thank you so much for taking the time. We're going to pop all the notes and the links that you mentioned and that we mentioned in our conversation in the show notes. But thank you so much, Laura for being on the show.

Yeah, thank you, Omar.

Such a good conversation with Laura Roeder. If you want to learn more about what she's doing over at Paper Bell, go to Paperbill IO they're working on some interesting solutions for coaches. It's simple, it's easy and in fact we're collaborating with them because their tool is great for one on one coaching. Our up and coming tool coursesinja is that's great for group coaching and I'm proud to support her work because she's done a great job serving customers throughout her whole career as an entrepreneur, giving them what they need over delivering as she did. In today's conversation. I think it's important for us to reflect on some of the things that Laura said today. One of the things I think that really stood out was how she made decisions in the past that she regretted just because she thought she had to do this to be a professional entrepreneur to build a real business. Sometimes we put our own barriers up. We put our own sort of obstacles and rules that don't really resonate with the truth of our life and business. We don't really need to do that. And we all go through this in some form and it comes from a sense of maybe insecurity or a lack of confidence or a feeling like this is how I make it. The beauty of business is that you make the rules. You get to choose what your business is and how it runs. It's your own utopia. As Zarek Sivers says in his book Anything youg Want. I also love the fact that she was really self aware of the way me Edgar was transitioning as a product that was reliant on other technology, other social media platforms. There are a few things out of her control, out of her ability to be as successful as she'd like. So when she started Paperbill, she made sure she didn't make the same mistake again, that she has total autonomy over how to serve her customers and she's not relying on other software or other technologies or entities like other social media platforms to be successful or to serve their customers the way she feels is right and will serve them best and allow her business to expand and grow. Those critical decisions will have an effect throughout the lifespan of your business. I want to thank Laura Rotor for her time. That was a fantastic conversation. If you love these extended interviews, if you're getting something out of it, this is something that we've been experimenting with recently. Let me know in a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Tell me what you think of these extended interviews. If you enjoy them, if you get something out of them, what do you get out of it so that we can know to keep on doing them. Thank you so much for listening to the Hundred Dollar NBA show. The best thing you could do to support the show is to hit, subscribe or follow right now and of course to share the show with your friends and family over on social media. Go ahead and let them know to go to subscribe over@100mba.net. There's some handy buttons down there for them to click so they can be part of the community and be a daily listener. Before I go, I want to leave you with this hindsight's 2020 it's very interesting to hear Laura talk about her journey and all the things she's learned along the way, but I say yes. Hindsight's 20 20, but our vision should be getting better over time. Unlike our biological selves, as business owners, we need to learn from our experiences, our mistakes, and have them top of mind the next time we make a decision or move in our business. Just like what Laura's done with Paper Bell. I always say it's okay to make mistakes, but it's not okay to make the same mistakes more than once. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode where we discuss the topic. How long should you give your business idea before you quit? Listen in tomorrow to hear about that one. I'll see you then. Take care.

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