Finding Herself and Building a Kindness-Driven Business with Edgar’s Laura Roeder
33 MIN READ
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Updated on March 4, 2024
Bob Dylan wrote I and I in fifteen minutes. Leonard Cohen wrote Hallelujah in five years. Both periods dwarf when compared with the lifetime of devotion that their sort is willing to give to work.
Practice doesn’t always make perfect. The significant role of chance in our very existence let alone successes and screw ups, eludes comprehension. Why do people spend unbowed years towards something? If it isn’t just making a living, what, exactly, is work for?
Joseph Conrad, perhaps, brought us close to an answer in his classic, Heart of Darkness:
I don’t like work – no man does – but I like what is in the work – the chance to find yourself. Your own reality – for yourself not for others – what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.
Work helps us discover our values, things that we care about, and in turn, ourselves. The inherited old linen of life, with its stains, holes, and comforts – no matter how flecked with the sand of talent – must meet the droplets of work’s water, every day, to persist along.
From a graphic design gig that became her first and only real job, to becoming a freelancer and a teacher, and now the co-founder of a fast growing SaaS startup, Laura Roeder has found a little more of herself, with every line of work.
In this episode, we cover:
● Being uncertain about her aspirations as a kid.
● Her first, and only, real job.
● Quitting her job without clients or prospects, and surviving on a discount store.
● Learning everything from scratch with trial and error.
● What her first post on Copyblogger meant to her.
● Her fondest memories from the early days.
● Getting 10 years of experience versus an year of experience for 10 years.
● The biggest motivation behind building Edgar.
● The importance of owning one’s work.
● Two other values that drive the Edgar team.
● The singular purpose of the product.
● Translating vision and feedback into a great product.
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Tune in.
And once you’ve heard the episode, if your eardrums have made answer, and would want more such conversations, you can subscribe to the show on SoundCloud.
Here’s a lightly edited transcript of this conversation.
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Hello Laura, welcome to the show.
Thank you!
Glad that you could make it.
And we’ll straight away jump into the past that is something that we take with all our guests, so the first question for you is, did you want to become an entrepreneur when you were young?
No.
I wasn’t one of those kids that had like one very clear idea of, you know, exactly what I wanted to do. My dad is an architect, that was always something that was interesting to me. But yeah, I wasn’t dead set at becoming an entrepreneur.
Okay. What was your aspiration like when you were young, what is it that you wanted to become?
As I said, I didn’t like have an idea of one thing. I liked to write when I was a kid. I really loved to read my stories. Being an architect might be cool. But yeah, didn’t… I ended up going to school for graphic design. So, when I was a little older I went to college, I wanted to do graphic design.
And that’s what got you into your first real job?
Yeah. My first real job was as a designer for a small agency.
And that was also the only job that you’ve held?
That’s correct. I’m very sure, history is so. My very first job out of college was also the last job that I ever had because I quit it to work for myself after being there for probably about a year and a half.
What made you do it, was it the idea of working for somebody and the internal disputes that might have entailed, what was it?
You know, there were a lot of factors. But I wasn’t happy with the work that I was doing.
When you’re a designer, you only do design. Which, I mean, to a great designer, they’d love it, because they just get to do design all day.
To me, it was a little boring. A little limiting. You know, we were a small agency, so I would kind of get to overhear what was going on with the branding, with the marketing, and I thought, “oh that stuff is really interesting.”
So I thought, maybe I should switch to that side, and be an Account Executive, but then, that seemed like a really important job. So, I was just looking around, like how can I combine the design side with the marketing side.
And I kind of realized that if I worked for myself, I would get to do it all. I would do the design but I would also have to market for clients, then help them with proposals, help them with different parts of their website.
I thought, if I worked for myself it would be a way to do a lot more of these activities that I was interested in for my career.
It was a better way for you to express yourself creatively. There’s this… I’m sure you must have felt this, when you were starting out, this almost transfixing allure behind the idea of entrepreneurship. That quickly translates into fear, when you jump in.
How did you deal with it? As you were fresh out of college, you didn’t really work long in the company, it was a short stint as a Graphic Designer. How did you deal with that switch, and what all did you learn?
Yeah, I was completely clueless. I had not freelanced on the side before I quit my job, which is very unusual, and probably a really bad idea. Most people look out for work on the side for a while, and build a client base, and quit.
I hadn’t done that. I had not clients. I had not prospects, when I quit.
I had to figure out everything. You know, what the good thing is, I was young. I had no kids. I had no responsibilities. I just had to be able to support myself.
And in some parts of America, there’s this discount grocery store called Aldi, and there was one in my neighborhood, where I lived in Chicago at the time. And, in Aldi, it’s like all off-brand stuff.
They don’t have shelves. They just have boxes, piled on top of each other. And the food is really cheap. I was thinking, “you know what, I can just eat all my food from Aldi. It’ll be fine.”
So, I was really lucky that way, as I didn’t have to make a lot of money, as I didn’t have a lot of responsibilities. I thought, okay well, I need to find small businesses. Because that’s where clients are going to be. But I don’t know any small businesses.
I thought, “okay well, I guess they go to Chamber of Commerce events,” and I started to go to Chamber of Commerce events. I started looking for all the programs. Cities have programs for women in business. People starting new businesses. There’s different govt. programs. Different organizations.
So, I just started showing up in anything like that.
Whatever came up as the best possible thing back then ended up being a substitute for what could’ve looked like a proper business plan. So, was there a guiding light, from anyone, from one of your parents, was there a friend who was doing it, or just you and your drive?
Well, I mean, I quickly made a lot of friends in going to these events. So the great thing about going to the Chamber of Commerce events was, I didn’t meet potential clients but I met a lot of friends. And that’s really when I learned everything about business.
Because I would meet people at these events that had grown a business. And I would just ask them, all of my questions. I remember, my client Adrianne, she had run a brick and mortar store for, you know, 10-20 years. She sat down and explained financial statements.
As I needed someone to explain that to me. I didn’t know how that worked. I was like, “Adrianne, what is this? I need help!” Also, my parents had run a business as well. So, my Dad is self-employed. And My mom kept the books for the business.
They didn’t have, you know, a big business. But they worked for themselves.
So, I would definitely, call my dad, not a ton. But I would call him more when I thought something was weird or I wasn’t sure about something.
Like, I had this incident where one of my clients referred me to another client. “Hey, you should work with Laura, she’s great.”
And then after the fact, after I had talked to the person, I had got a contract with them. The first time he came back to me, he said, “well, you owe me money, because I referred you.”
And I thought, “well, we never talked about that, this doesn’t seem right.” And he was just like, “well, you’re young and you don’t know what you’re doing. This is how it is.”
And so, I remember I called my dad, and I was like, “dad, is he right? You know, do I owe him money?” And my dad goes, “no, he’s trying to take advantage of you, he thinks you don’t know what’s going on.” He definitely helped me out in situations like that.
This is exactly what ends up in that transfixing allure as well. You get to learn every day that you don’t know much about things. And there are people, who’re willing to tell you things, just spend their time, and partake in the making of something that they don’t really know, how it’s going to turn out.
Again. Using the time machine. On 28th of September, 2009, you published a post on Copyblogger, which was called 5 Social Media Lessons I Learned From Working With a Hollywood Actress, what did that post mean to you?
Yeah, so that was a big Segway into my social media career. So, I started having a lot of clients, tell me that they’re interesting in learning more about social media.
In 2007, 2008, 2009, at the same time, as all this was happening, my best friend from college who had moved to LA to become an actress, she was cast on a really big TV show, Heroes. As one of the main characters during one season.
I had kind of helped her get a website together, get a blog together, and then when she was cast on Heroes, I saw that there was going to be a big opportunity to really build up a fan following for her.
At the time, celebrities were not online, like I told her to sign up for Twitter. It’s kind of hard to imagine now, not having celebrities on social media. Because now they really dominate social media. But at the time, they were not on Twitter. It wasn’t just a thing that they did.
A lot of them didn’t have any kind of website or web presence at all, and actually I remember, she hired a traditional publicist to get her in magazines and stuff like that. And so, I was like, “I should have a call with your publicist to co-ordinate what you’re doing online, what you’re doing in traditional media.”
And this was one of the most well known publicity firms in LA, you know, for the entertainment industry, it still is.
I had a call with the publicist, and she said, “I don’t know and I don’t care about what she is doing on the internet. I don’t know why we’re talking right now. I have no interest in that. That’s her personal business but has nothing to do with her publicity.”
Was just not interested in any way. You know, it was really fun getting her on Twitter, and getting her blogging. She was kind of my first, big client that gave me this case study of how you could take someone, and build a strong online presence for them.
And, given that, case study in particular and the number of other people that you’ve worked with, I’m sure hundreds of them, thousands of them, through your courses. Because you’ve taught a lot about this stuff as well.
You’ve really seen this transitioning happening in various forms of contention, from different groups of people. There are people like Brian Clark. There’s you. There’s Ashley Ambridge from The Middle Finger Project, who have been around for quite some time, doing this thing.
You believed in this early on for some reason. But there were also people who were naysayers. That was sort of the majority.
In mid-2000s, there was clickbank, and you would be taken into directions, that you didn’t really want to go into. Promises would be made, and you’d end up getting nothing. But then, there was this other side, businesses that last, businesses that had real people behind them.
And you were young, so how were you able to draw a line, in understanding clearly what you wanted to stand for, and align that with where the industry was going?
Yeah, so, I used to teach a course which was very popular called Creating Fame. And the whole idea was that you could use online marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, to be famous to a small group of people.
You know, not celebrity famous, not paparazzi famous. But famous for being the best copywriter for the medical device field, you know, whatever it is for your business.
For me, I was just, I saw very clearly that internet was this amazing platform where any small business could now, really become a much bigger business. And could amplify their reach. Really allowed any small business to become a global business, and be discovered and reach out to people.
And that’s what I had done with my business, which was teaching people social media but from day one it was a nation wide business. It was a global business. I wasn’t doing workshops in local rooms, which is how you would have done a business like that, before that time.
And how many people still do training businesses, right? There’s still certainly a whole world of training that has a potential for the internet. That’s just people in local conference rooms.
I wasn’t really interested in all that kind of internet marketing, get-rich-quick, it was not about that for me. “This is a really cool channel of communication. Let’s leverage it.”
From those days when you were learning and teaching at the same time, how this works, what are some of your fondest memories?
You know, it’s just really fun to see small businesses have this kind of transformation. Because a lot of the people that’ll come to the classes, were just starting out in their business. Trying to figure all the stuff out.
And the people, that I admire the most, were always the people who did not consider themselves tech-savvy. At all.
Because we would get people in the classes that would be like, “okay, I’ve got a computer. I know I’m supposed to use it. Figuring out email. I know that I have to figure this stuff out.”
I remember I had a call with a guy, and he had this like really thick southern accent. He was a little bit older, and he’s like, “we call you the lady that talks to us from the computer!”
And he thought it was really funny to hear my voice on the phone. Because he was used to talking to me from the computer. And that was always really rewarding for me.
To see people that were so dedicated, saying “I don’t consider myself super tech-savvy. These are really new skills. But I know, if I master my skills, I’m really going to be able to succeed with my business.”
And I really admired that kind of determination. Because a lot of people just give up. A lot of people say, “oh, that’s for younger people or you know that’s not for me, I’m not a computer person.” But you have to be a computer person now, for your business to succeed.
You’ve had those memories. I’m sure they’ve contributed to the mission that you’re on right now. But the other thing that is evident from the way you’ve charted the course that you’re on right now, you could say it’s mostly uncharted territory for anyone of your age, when you were starting out, and also decisions you’ve made overall.
So, you start as a graphic designer, you get into designing as a freelancer, then you consult, and then deal with information products. I read somewhere that you made $3000 from your first info product. That was one moment.
And then, of course, that wasn’t enough. The next one happened.
When you stop and say, “how do I go a notch further this time?”
Is that something I really want to do? This time let’s go 5 notches further.
Yeah, I think that resonates with me. One of the really fun parts of being an entrepreneur is that there’s always something new to learn.
And that’s the case. But you can also get stuck in a rut, where you’re kind of running the same business, every year.
Actually, I heard a good quote that said, “Do you have 10 years experience or do you have one year experience for 10 years?”
It can be easy to, if you’re kind of doing the same business model. Maybe you’re staying at the same level of revenue. Maybe you’ve got the same kind of team. And do the same thing for a long time. And btw, I’m not knocking that.
Because that can be very enjoyable. That can be very satisfying. Maybe you’re doing client work, and you’re always getting to explore new angles that way.
But for me, I was interested in seeing what it was like to grow a larger business. Or to grow a different type of business. So yeah, that was a big motivation for me in starting my software company, MeetEdgar.
Because I had never done software before. And I wanted to know what it was like and what that kind of business model was like.
That reminds of, something that a book critic, John Freeman, had said about authors who’ve had success with writing. He said “Quote”
“Whether they have a Nobel or a Pulitzer, or a first novel ten years in the making, all of these novelists are still shocked, each time they finish, that it gets done at all. Perhaps that is why chance remains, aside from sheer effort, the most cited factor in how they discovered their voices.”
As an entrepreneur you have a voice. And that voice is your mission. And that actually affect the product, it affects how you onboard team members, how do you take them from one place to the other, and the funny part is that, there’s no conscious effort being made all the time to hone the voice. It just happens to be.
At least, I feel that it’s that way, given the conversations that I’ve had with people. I’ve never started my own business. But yeah the questions and answers have led me to this direction.
There’s a lot of dependency on chance. How much do you weigh it as a factor?
Chance as a factor. Is that what you’re saying?
Yes.
It’s huge. It’s huge. Because we control as much as we can but, you know, when you track backwards to your own story, you see so many just little coincidences, you’ve connected with.
I mean, people that you spend time with are hugely influential on the decisions you make, on how you end up crafting your business, on the role models that you have. And, so many, especially, so many of my entrepreneur friends and business friends.
I’ve met them at conferences. Standing around by the bar. You know, if they were not standing next to me, I never would have met them. Obviously, when you have a team, your team is shaping the business.
MeetEdgar would not look the way it looks today without every unique person who is on the team. So, if we hadn’t come across those people, business would look very different.
Yeah, I think, you make the best choices you can, but yeah, you have to accept chances as a huge part of the journey.
True. One has to put in ample doggedness as well. Apart from the desire to learn, what is it that really keeps you going, when it comes to any venture really?
Well, now a huge motivation for me is creating amazing jobs. Creating a really amazing place to work. Because I think, that most people, or a lot of people don’t like their jobs. Even in really interesting companies.
You know, people who’re at really interesting startups, getting to do work, solving good problems. In the startup world, there’s so much culture around just, in my mind, an insane amount of overwork.
Working nights. Working weekends. Expected to be available on your phone 24/7. Available on vacation. This is a crazy standard being created and that’s not how we work at MeetEdgar.
What’s hugely motivating for me is the idea of creating a new type of company where people get to do work that’s really exciting for them, and they get to do it in a place where they’re really valued and respected, where it’s understood that they have lives outside of work.
That work is not their entire life. Our team is remote. We’re all in North America. We don’t have an office. People really enjoy that flexibility. Not having to commute, all those types of things.
I want to grow the company, and hire more people, just so that we can give more people great jobs.
So, if you were to give an example, the part that you brought about remote culture, that’s still new for a lot of companies. There is still addressing that as an area to go or not to go. For HelpScout, most of their people are remote. So is the case with Zapier.
Most startups don’t have this culture right now. Even if people do work in one office and location, what are the processes that you think should exist, or what is the kind of thinking that should exist, for an organization to be productive not just in the sense that, “we have to get to this goal, this is what we’re aiming for, with serendipity and a lot of work.”
As you’ve pointed out, it’s important for people to do work they enjoy. How does that happen? As aligning of passion is hard. So, there’s this idea of, I forgot the name of the author. There’s a book called So Good They Can’t Ignore You, and he also published Deep Work. Not able to think of his name.
Cal Newport?
Cal Newport. Yes. His idea around not building for passion. Building for learning and doggedness. To not do what you love. But to love what you do. The opposite of the lore that has existed ever since Steve Jobs gave that keynote.
Because not everyone has that privilege right away, “this is my passion, I’ve identified it”
As someone who runs the company, who gets to decide, what is that they’ll spend a good number of hours every week, doing. Of course, this will involve mental focus. This will change how they think.
How do you think about this? The passion vs. real work dilemma that companies face increasingly. Just to make sure that it’s a workplace that not just produces happy customers, but happy producers, people who’re doing the work.
So, yeah, I think we’re huge believers in ownership.
That’s one of our core values. I think, really running with the concept of ownership does solve a lot of this.
Because it’s very easy for people to both be excited to get their work done, and have a good amount of creativity in how that work gets done, when they do totally own a project.
So, everyone, who is at our company has… We actually have a chart of everyone’s name, and “this is what they own, this is what they’re really good at, so if you need help with this, just contact them.”
For our engineering team, everyone in the team knows what their different specialties are, whether this one is especially good at Javascript, or there might be a part of the app, they’re the ones that know.
Our billing, we have engineer who has been heading up all our billing stuff. So, if you have a question about billing, he’s the one who owns that. You know to talk to him. He has the ownership of making the decisions of how that’s going to get executed.
The person who writes our blog is in charge of our blog. So he decides what the content is, he decides what to write, he’s not being assigned posts, and then writing them. He is owning the whole user experience of what our blog is like.
Ownership is a key value. Plus, you’ve listed choosing kindness and value for value, as the other two values for Edgar. Could you talk about those as well.
Kindness is how we interact with each other. How we interact with the world, and interact with our customers. So, it’s a very simple word. But it’s also a very clear word.
I think, it’s very clear if someone is being kind or not. And at our company there’s no room for people to not be kind, there’s room for people to disagree and have different opinions.
Maybe not even always getting along. Maybe you need a break from somebody. Like you’re done hanging out with them today. Or done talking to them today. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t be kind to them.
I think it’s one of those basic things that if you have that as a common thread, you know that you’re all being respectful to each other. It’s just one of those easy things that we can say, “we don’t tolerate when people are not kind.”
And value for value is kind of an interesting one that, you know, obviously a phrase that we made up. It’s a way of looking at the world, and seeing everything as an even exchange of value. A fair exchange of value.
So, our customers pay us money for the software, and we provide the software in exchange. Which, sends out the social media, which gets them more traffic, which does all things that it promises.
And that needs to be, value for value.
That needs to be an even exchange of value. They have to feel like their money is a good deal, for what they’re good. And we have to feel that they are paying us a fair price for what we’re providing.
The same for every employee. We have to have a value for value relationship with the company and the employee.
So that something that’ll come up, where we’re talking about like, “can we buy that piece of software, or is this freelancer working out for us? Well, value for value, we’re paying them this much money, just don’t really feel like that amount of value is being delivered”
I think, this is important because it’s a way of seeing as an even exchange, where some people, like we’ll interview people who’ll have this kind of point of view, like companies are like these evil overlords, employees are like these field workers that have no choice in the matter.
We don’t want people to view work that way. We want everyone to feel like it’s a decision that they’re choosing to make everyday. You know, I would never want someone to stay… We actually don’t do any equity.
And I would never want someone at my company, who is sticking around for a few extra years because they’re waiting to vest. I want them to be sticking around because they get that value, every single day.
And, when do you think this, I’m sure when you’re speaking value for value, you’re speaking of an exchange that takes place every day or every week, or every year.
When this exchange is taking place, what are the kind of trade offs that you think, both parties have to make. If they ever have to make trade offs, how do you deal with those trade offs?
Yeah, I mean, looking at it from that point of view. Every choice that you make is other choices that you haven’t made, right? Every person who works for a company has chosen not to work for another company.
And every person that we’ve hired, we’ve decided not to hire another person in their role. There are always trade offs. I think, it’s right that it’s a choice. That we can let someone go, and they can also leave.
We’ve not signed lifelong contracts together. So, you know, it’s good to recognize the trade offs. It’s good to recognize that it’s a choice. Because it just reminds you of your own power, and your own freedom in the situation.
That’s how we view things with our customers as well. We don’t want to trick customers into getting locked in for longer than they want to be.
If they’re not using it and they want to leave, we make sure that everyone is getting value for every month or every year they pay for our software.
Speaking of your software. One thing that gets brought out a lot, in conversations about Edgar is that it’s in a competitive space. So, you’ve got well respected companies like Buffer, and Hootsuite, and they are targeting the same market.
I remember, you citing this once, I think it was in an interview with Groove. Sometime last year. “It really isn’t about the winner-takes-all. It really isn’t.” And we ended up writing a post about, wherein we compared companies in the marketing technology space.
Hubspot. Marketo. All these companies. If you were to describe, as you’re the face of Edgar, other than Edgar, our cute octopus. How would you address the singular purpose of this organization, or product?
So, Edgar, significantly increases your traffic on social media. From what we see, it at least doubles your traffic from social media. Usually, pretty much right away. Within the first month. And the way that we do that, is by repurposing your library of content.
Which is what we do, that’s really unique that other tools don’t do. So everyone spends an enormous amount of time, creating all this content, recording videos, recording podcasts, writing blog posts.
You spend a lot of time making the content. What most people do is they spend hours making the content, and sometimes they send out, literally once on social media. People are a little more savvy now. They usually send it out a few times, that first week.
But the problem is, after that, it’s just dying on the wind. You look at the stats in Google Analytics, it’s got that first jump in the beginning, and then it’s just little to no traffic after that. It’s just kind of that after that.
So, what Edgar does is really different, so you load up your ever-great content into a library, and then Edgar just handles sending it out. Over and over again for you, on autopilot, so you don’t have to keep refilling your queue. You don’t have to do scheduling.
Edgar ensures that, “If you give me this great library of content, I’ll make sure your followers on social media are seeing it.” So, it’s a way to really take what you’ve done, and amplify it. And make sure that it’s working for you. Getting you more traffic and more customers.
And, but for somebody who is looking at it, as just another social media tool. What do you think as helped you hone the pitch, and has helped you in talking about this product? Given the background that you’ve had.
The problems that you’ve faced yourself running social media accounts, and strategies for different people. How do you make sure the lessons from that time, and I’m asking this on behalf of anyone who intends to do research, it’s hard to translate research into something that works. Be it a course. Or a software product.
How did I like make my ideas into something real, is that what you’re saying?
Yes. I know it’s a confusing question. I’m confused myself. What I really wanted to ask was that, people hire user researchers now, they spend hours going about the business of understanding how someone does a given job in their day-to-day work.
You try to come up with something. And then, there are people who just know that it’s going to work. I know that you’ve been in the industry. I’m sure there are no researchers at Edgar, right now.
Most products, if you take up Slack, even Buffer, they didn’t deploy all of that. Someone, you feel that it just came out of somewhere. They had some cosmic radio to tune into, and they had this right broadcast that ended up being a business.
If you look at Edgar, I know that you have a very simple landing page, you have a wonderful newsletter that you send out every week, it’s called The Dash. It’s great. I love the book recommendations that you guys do. Rest of the playbook isn’t really evident.
What is it happening inside the company, or inside Laura’s head that is making it happen, for the world it’s just that, “okay, she’s put in the time, and she knows more, and she knows how to translate that into something that works.”
And, so you got to go back, and put in the time, how do you think about this?
Yeah. I mean it’s pretty easy to stay in touch with out customers, and know what they’re doing because it’s the same thing that our team is doing, and the same thing that I’m doing.
I use Edgar to manage my personal Twitter profile, so, it sounds like a small thing. But it’s really important because, I understand the frustrations that our users have. I also see firsthand, all the great things that happen.
You use this tool. And all the response you get, all the traffic you get. But it is really important that it allows me, you know, I was at a conference recently, talking to one of our customers.
She was saying, “Oh, it’s annoying when I have to resize an image. I wish I could just do that right there in Edgar.”
And I was talking to her, and I was like, “yeah, I’ve had that experience too. I’ve had that experience of uploading an image that’s too big, and I had to go back to my image editing tool. I was like, yes, totally know exactly what you’re talking about.”
Maintaining that kind of connection is really important. It means that, you don’t have to do a lot of research if you’re using your own tool on a daily basis to what it’s supposed it. You know what’s good about it. You know what’s bad about it. You know the problems with it.
One of the really cool things about social media too is that allows you to be so in touch with your customers. Our customers are emailing us, we’re talking to them on Facebook, we’re talking to them on Twitter.
And it’s easy for everyone at the company to see all that. One thing that we do is that we do two-weekly emails that the entire company receives, basically one with criticism and one with praise.
So, we do one email every week, which the whole company gets. It has problems with Edgar. Why people are canceling. And other things they don’t like about it.
And we get another email with all the things they’ve written to saying that they love about Edgar. So, it keeps the whole company in touch with what’s going on. As far as the product development, we keep that really simple.
We’re really focused on solving our core problem. We don’t want to be the tool that does everything you can do on social media for everyone. We’re really a content tool. So, we really stick to that. Content for small businesses.
That’s the answer. The answer is in the startup language, to eat your own dog food. You have to be the best user of the product. That’s certainly one way of going about things.
What role you think, imagination has played in things you’ve done, things you’ve made, and brought into the world?
What role does imagination play. I think that’s a really interesting question. Because I think running a business is like this mix of being, very grounded in reality, kind of like, what I was just talking about.
What are the very specific pain points of uploading an image? How does that feel like? It’s just this mix of being grounded in reality, and having this larger vision for where you want the product to go, where you want the company to go, where you see your industry going.
So, I think, imagination is important because you’re going to… Without it, you’re going to get stuck in the past, and you’re going to fall behind or you’re going to get so focused and so reactive on the now that you’re not putting this bigger vision for this better way things could be.
Thanks, Laura. What we were after in this interview, was to understand, how does this Entrepreneur’s mind’s work, and uses, not just your own creative ability but the creative ability of people that you work with to build something meaningful for customers.
Thanks for doing this. We hope you guys keep striving for what your mission is, at Edgar, and keep getting to your milestones with the character and the drive that has helped you so far. Just great to speak with you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Checkout Laura’s new software for coaches, Paperbell
