#263 – Starting a Profitable Business After a Life-Changing Exit with Laura Roeder of Paperbell

October 19, 2022

Key Takeaways

Building a successful business, especially in the SaaS space, requires a deep understanding of the target niche and a focus on scalable, inbound marketing channels like SEO from the outset.
The entrepreneurial journey involves continuous learning and adaptation, with lessons from past ventures, like the challenges of social media marketing and the benefits of a freelance-first team structure, directly informing future strategies.
The coaching industry is a rapidly growing and lucrative niche, offering significant opportunities for entrepreneurs who can effectively serve specific client needs and leverage their expertise through scalable business models.
Consistent, SEO-optimized content creation, even if not perfectly executed, yields results over time, but doing it well significantly amplifies success.
The perceived competitiveness of SEO is often inflated, especially in non-affiliate monetization niches, and achieving page one ranking is a more realistic and attainable goal than being number one.
Hiring specialists for specific SEO tasks (like brief writing and article creation) and acting as the project manager can be more cost-effective and efficient than engaging large agencies.

Segments

Indie Hacking & Entrepreneurial Drive (00:03:54)

Key Takeaway: Serial entrepreneurship is fueled by a passion for building and controlling one’s own universe, offering a stark contrast to the inherent unpredictability of raising children.
Summary: Laura discusses her history as a serial entrepreneur, her success with Meat Edgar and Paper Bell, and her intrinsic motivation for starting businesses, comparing the control in business to the lack of control with children.

Paper Bell: SaaS for Coaches (00:09:24)

Key Takeaway: Paper Bell provides an all-in-one, industry-specific SaaS solution for coaches, streamlining payments, scheduling, and client management to allow them to focus on their core coaching services.
Summary: The discussion shifts to Paper Bell, a company Laura co-founded, which is described as an industry-vertical SaaS designed specifically for coaches, handling essential business operations like payments and scheduling.

The Business of Coaching (00:11:32)

Key Takeaway: The coaching industry is a vast and growing field with significant earning potential, particularly for those who specialize in lucrative niches and build strong referral networks.
Summary: The conversation explores the coaching industry, its potential for high earnings, the different types of coaches, and the value of coaching for personal and professional development, with insights into what makes a coaching business successful.

Lessons from Meat Edgar (00:23:45)

Key Takeaway: Transitioning from a successful bootstrapped business like Meat Edgar often stems from boredom with the product and market, prompting a shift towards new ventures with more aligned incentives and less reliance on volatile third-party platforms.
Summary: Laura explains her decision to sell Meat Edgar despite its success, citing boredom with social media marketing and the challenges of platform dependency, and discusses how this experience influenced her approach to Paper Bell.

Building Paper Bell: Strategy & Validation (00:34:39)

Key Takeaway: Successful bootstrapped businesses are built on a foundation of passion for the niche, the ability to leverage personal brand and audience, and a focus on scalable marketing channels like SEO from the outset.
Summary: Laura details the criteria for choosing her next business idea, emphasizing bootstrapping, working with her husband, and focusing on the entrepreneur/small business world, leading to the development of Paper Bell and its validation through customer needs.

Navigating SEO Growth (00:45:47)

Key Takeaway: Achieving sustainable growth through SEO requires patience, a clear understanding of the niche, and consistent execution of best practices, even when initial results are slow.
Summary: The discussion delves into the strategy of using SEO for growth, highlighting its importance for Paper Bell, the need for patience, and the effectiveness of focusing on niche markets with less competition.

SEO Content Best Practices (00:49:29)

Key Takeaway: Thoroughly implementing SEO best practices in content creation, such as matching H2s with secondary keywords, is crucial for effective SEO, and clear processes make this achievable.
Summary: The discussion highlights the importance of writing truly SEO-optimized content, going beyond basic keyword inclusion to incorporate best practices like secondary keyword matching in headings, emphasizing that these are not secret techniques but require consistent application.

Market Competitiveness and SEO (00:50:04)

Key Takeaway: Many markets, particularly those without strong affiliate monetization potential, are less competitive than perceived, making SEO a viable strategy for startups that might otherwise be deterred.
Summary: The speakers argue that the difficulty of SEO is often overstated, especially in industries like lawn care or SaaS, unless there’s significant affiliate potential, suggesting that startups shouldn’t shy away from SEO due to perceived competition.

The Emotional Aspect of SEO (00:50:47)

Key Takeaway: SEO success, like investing, is often hindered by emotional challenges such as ‘cold feet’ due to a lack of immediate feedback and the need for sustained faith during the initial investment period.
Summary: The conversation draws a parallel between SEO and investing, noting that the primary obstacle is emotional, stemming from the delayed gratification and the feeling of uncertainty while putting in consistent effort without seeing immediate results.

Hiring SEO Specialists (00:52:53)

Key Takeaway: For bootstrapped companies, hiring individual SEO specialists for specific tasks and managing the process yourself is often more cost-effective and manageable than hiring large agencies.
Summary: The discussion shifts to practical advice on hiring SEO help, recommending the use of platforms like ProBlogger Job Board to find specialized freelance writers and emphasizing the benefit of acting as a project manager to assemble a team for different SEO tasks.

Action Aligned with Goals (00:54:47)

Key Takeaway: True progress towards a significant goal requires actions that directly align with achieving that outcome, rather than engaging in activities that are merely related but not instrumental.
Summary: The speakers discuss the concept of ‘You Get What You Go For,’ using the example of self-made billionaires to illustrate that if a goal is ambitious, the actions taken must be commensurate with that ambition, urging listeners to assess if their daily activities are truly moving them towards their desired results.

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Prompts Used

Prompt 1: Context Setup

You are an expert data extractor tasked with analyzing a podcast transcript. 
I will provide you with part 1 of 2 from a podcast transcript. 
I will then ask you to extract different types of information from this content in subsequent messages. Please confirm you have received and understood the transcript content.

Transcript section:
[00:00:05.760 --> 00:00:06.880] Hey dude, what's up?
[00:00:06.880 --> 00:00:08.480] What's going on with your apartment?
[00:00:08.480 --> 00:00:09.760] How's it going?
[00:00:09.760 --> 00:00:10.720] It's a disaster.
[00:00:10.720 --> 00:00:14.000] I mean, did you see a guy tried to burn my entire apartment down?
[00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:16.400] You didn't tell me about this guy for years.
[00:00:16.400 --> 00:00:17.920] This is the same dude, right?
[00:00:18.240 --> 00:00:19.520] Yeah, for a year.
[00:00:20.080 --> 00:00:21.840] He lived above me.
[00:00:21.840 --> 00:00:23.360] I don't really know where he is now.
[00:00:23.760 --> 00:00:27.360] He's in prison somewhere, but basically it's this guy.
[00:00:27.360 --> 00:00:29.920] He's got like some kind of mental illness.
[00:00:29.920 --> 00:00:31.600] So it's really unfortunate.
[00:00:31.600 --> 00:00:36.480] But the result is that he's also, you know, I think they're trying to evict him.
[00:00:36.480 --> 00:00:40.160] So long story short, he's like tried to like flood his apartment.
[00:00:41.520 --> 00:00:44.640] He shoved a hose into a sink and flooded his apartment.
[00:00:44.640 --> 00:00:45.600] So that dripped down.
[00:00:45.600 --> 00:00:47.040] That was one disaster.
[00:00:47.040 --> 00:00:51.120] He set fire where you're next to an alleyway with all these like trash bags.
[00:00:51.120 --> 00:00:55.440] He threw a match or something into there, set fire to the entire alleyway one time.
[00:00:55.440 --> 00:00:57.760] Both of these situations were in New York City.
[00:00:57.760 --> 00:01:01.040] So for whatever reason, they're like, well, you can't evict him.
[00:01:01.040 --> 00:01:02.240] He's got these mental health issues.
[00:01:02.240 --> 00:01:04.160] We don't have like a way, a place to put him.
[00:01:04.160 --> 00:01:07.120] So we're just going to keep him in the apartment.
[00:01:07.120 --> 00:01:20.000] And essentially, a few days ago, the straw that broke the camel's back moment happened where he literally set his personal unit on fire entirely and like just killed us.
[00:01:20.400 --> 00:01:21.200] Yeah, on purpose.
[00:01:21.520 --> 00:01:22.880] And then he bolted.
[00:01:23.360 --> 00:01:25.120] And he was just at large.
[00:01:25.120 --> 00:01:30.400] He's a two-time arsonist, one-time flutter who's doing all this intentionally.
[00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:35.920] And the renter laws are friendly enough that he just could just come back to the building he's trying to burn down.
[00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:36.320] Right.
[00:01:36.640 --> 00:01:39.040] But this time it wasn't okay.
[00:01:39.040 --> 00:01:41.120] So I'm outside freaking out.
[00:01:41.120 --> 00:01:42.800] My girlfriend's out there kind of freaking out.
[00:01:42.800 --> 00:01:50.080] All these people that I've never met in my apartment building are all like meeting each other for the first time, sharing horror stories.
[00:01:50.080 --> 00:01:55.120] Apparently, the girl that lives directly below him, this guy was like walking around with a crowbar.
[00:01:55.120 --> 00:01:56.880] He was definitely at his wit's end.
[00:01:56.880 --> 00:01:58.800] And he just knocked on her door.
[00:01:58.800 --> 00:02:01.880] She told us, that morning, right before he set the building on fire.
[00:02:01.880 --> 00:02:04.280] And he goes, Hey, I'm the guy from upstairs.
[00:02:04.600 --> 00:02:06.040] And she's like, she had no idea.
[00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:06.920] She was like, oh, okay, cool.
[00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:07.800] She just moved in.
[00:02:08.040 --> 00:02:09.320] What guy from upstairs?
[00:02:09.320 --> 00:02:09.800] Yeah.
[00:02:10.120 --> 00:02:11.080] She's like, she described him.
[00:02:12.360 --> 00:02:14.040] The guy, everybody knows.
[00:02:14.040 --> 00:02:18.280] She described him and she's like, this guy had on a coat with no shirt on underneath.
[00:02:18.280 --> 00:02:23.400] He had skinny jeans on, mismatching shoes, and just knocked on my door and was like super polite.
[00:02:23.480 --> 00:02:26.280] He was like, hey, you know, I'm the guy from upstairs.
[00:02:26.280 --> 00:02:27.800] You know, like, they're trying to evict me.
[00:02:27.800 --> 00:02:30.680] They've been trying to evict me for, you know, a few years.
[00:02:31.320 --> 00:02:33.000] And, you know, they gutted my apartment.
[00:02:33.160 --> 00:02:35.480] Do you want to come up and like check it out?
[00:02:36.440 --> 00:02:39.160] And she literally was like, no.
[00:02:39.240 --> 00:02:42.280] Cut to an hour later and he tried to burn the place down.
[00:02:42.280 --> 00:02:44.040] So anyway, so he was gone.
[00:02:44.040 --> 00:02:44.760] He ran away.
[00:02:44.760 --> 00:02:45.320] There were cops.
[00:02:45.320 --> 00:02:46.440] There were firefighters.
[00:02:46.440 --> 00:02:47.320] The whole nine yards, right?
[00:02:47.320 --> 00:02:48.600] It was pandemonium.
[00:02:48.680 --> 00:02:49.080] I don't know.
[00:02:49.080 --> 00:02:50.360] It was this huge mess.
[00:02:50.840 --> 00:02:53.000] Who set an apartment building on fire?
[00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:53.960] Hey, Laura.
[00:02:53.960 --> 00:02:57.640] So this guy lived a few stories up from me, Laura.
[00:02:57.640 --> 00:02:59.400] And long story short, he tried to burn it down.
[00:02:59.560 --> 00:03:02.360] And there was no fire damage or anything in my apartment.
[00:03:02.360 --> 00:03:07.480] But then the firefighters went into his apartment and they just like flooded his apartment with me.
[00:03:07.480 --> 00:03:09.480] Like they just hosed down his entire apartment.
[00:03:09.480 --> 00:03:17.320] So by the time we got back in, it's like seven different like faucets were opened up essentially in my ceiling.
[00:03:17.320 --> 00:03:19.720] Like every ceiling light, we have like these like recessed lights.
[00:03:19.720 --> 00:03:21.000] They were all like faucets.
[00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:22.200] My bathroom.
[00:03:22.200 --> 00:03:24.280] And it was like, it wasn't just flooding water.
[00:03:24.280 --> 00:03:25.800] It wasn't just dripping water.
[00:03:25.800 --> 00:03:28.440] It was brown, basically fire water.
[00:03:28.440 --> 00:03:31.080] So it smelled like a campfire in our apartment.
[00:03:31.320 --> 00:03:32.440] What everybody wants in their apartment.
[00:03:32.440 --> 00:03:33.400] Can I come visit?
[00:03:33.800 --> 00:03:38.920] You know, whenever the fire crew finishes like replastering and like, there's all this work.
[00:03:39.480 --> 00:03:46.960] I've been working in my gym for the last few days and only today, basically, am I back in my office?
[00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:49.200] So it's been very dramatic.
[00:03:49.200 --> 00:03:49.840] Laura, how are you?
[00:03:49.840 --> 00:03:51.280] It's been a while.
[00:03:44.840 --> 00:03:52.320] Good.
[00:03:52.640 --> 00:03:53.280] Yeah.
[00:03:53.280 --> 00:03:54.000] Things are good.
[00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:54.240] Yeah.
[00:03:54.240 --> 00:03:55.760] You're a podcast veteran.
[00:03:55.760 --> 00:04:00.000] You've been on the Indie Hackers podcast, I think it was five and a half years ago.
[00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:01.200] You were episode number 10.
[00:04:01.200 --> 00:04:01.760] That's crazy.
[00:04:01.760 --> 00:04:05.520] That was like April 2017.
[00:04:05.520 --> 00:04:06.480] You came on.
[00:04:06.480 --> 00:04:06.880] Wow.
[00:04:06.880 --> 00:04:08.640] I had no idea I was number 10.
[00:04:08.640 --> 00:04:12.960] Now I seem very like cutting edge from being like read to your podcast.
[00:04:12.960 --> 00:04:13.840] I think you have something.
[00:04:13.920 --> 00:04:15.120] Where are we at now?
[00:04:15.680 --> 00:04:17.200] I don't know, close to 300.
[00:04:17.600 --> 00:04:18.960] It's been almost six years.
[00:04:19.200 --> 00:04:21.680] Laura, you're a serial indie hacker.
[00:04:21.680 --> 00:04:25.760] Your last company I interviewed you for in 2017 was called Meat Edgar.
[00:04:25.760 --> 00:04:28.080] That did millions in revenue, I believe.
[00:04:28.080 --> 00:04:33.120] And then you sold it for like a life-changing sum, which is something that most indie hackers can only dream of doing.
[00:04:33.120 --> 00:04:43.200] And then you kind of leapfrogged eventually to your new company, Paper Bell, which was ramen profitable, I believe, at the time that you sold Meat Edgar, which is again a goal that most indie hackers don't reach.
[00:04:43.200 --> 00:04:51.120] And now Paper Bell, I don't know if you share revenue numbers, but I saw on your website, you processed multiple millions of dollars in payments just last year.
[00:04:51.120 --> 00:04:53.120] So I guess my question to you is: when is enough enough?
[00:04:53.120 --> 00:04:56.080] How many successful companies do you plan to start?
[00:04:57.360 --> 00:04:58.000] Yeah.
[00:04:58.720 --> 00:05:03.040] So yeah, we've processed multiple millions for our customers.
[00:05:03.040 --> 00:05:07.680] We are not at multiple millions revenue yet, just so that's clear to listeners.
[00:05:07.680 --> 00:05:09.760] But I think we'll definitely get there.
[00:05:09.760 --> 00:05:14.080] And yeah, I mean, I love to start SaaS businesses.
[00:05:14.080 --> 00:05:16.720] I love to start indie businesses.
[00:05:17.040 --> 00:05:25.600] You know, when I sold Edgar, I mean, I had already started Paper Bell by the time I sold Edgar, so I kind of knew that's what I wanted to do next.
[00:05:25.600 --> 00:05:31.080] But I did actually force myself to take just a week off when I sold Edgar.
[00:05:31.160 --> 00:05:42.280] I'm like, okay, I'm going to take the next week, you know, not a holiday, but just a week not working, just to have at least some experience of I could live my life and not work.
[00:05:42.280 --> 00:05:46.120] Like, let's take a week and see what that's like, just so I make sure I have the experience.
[00:05:46.120 --> 00:05:47.400] And it's like, yeah, that was fun.
[00:05:47.560 --> 00:05:50.920] One whole week I want to have one whole week.
[00:05:51.320 --> 00:05:54.280] You had like a restless leg syndrome that entire week.
[00:05:54.280 --> 00:05:57.720] I mean, you can't, you can't turn off the brain is the problem.
[00:05:57.720 --> 00:05:59.880] So you love starting indie businesses.
[00:05:59.880 --> 00:06:02.200] Obviously, starting indie businesses is hard, right?
[00:06:02.200 --> 00:06:03.000] It's a lot of work.
[00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:04.200] What is it that you love about it?
[00:06:04.200 --> 00:06:05.800] Why do you love it?
[00:06:06.120 --> 00:06:10.520] You know, I was thinking about this the other day when I was having a hard time with my kids.
[00:06:10.520 --> 00:06:12.920] So I have two kids and they're four and seven.
[00:06:12.920 --> 00:06:24.440] And I was thinking, my business is just like the opposite of the challenges that I have with my kids because kids are challenging because you kind of have no control at the end of the day.
[00:06:24.440 --> 00:06:30.920] Like you're trying to sort of shape things and you're trying to test, you know, your input to see what their output is going to be.
[00:06:30.920 --> 00:06:37.240] But they are independent humans who kind of do, who kind of do what they're going to do.
[00:06:37.240 --> 00:06:46.840] Whereas I feel like in a business, and not like I have total control over everything that happens, but it's kind of like a little game where you get to create your own universe.
[00:06:46.840 --> 00:06:49.400] You know, like I get to hire all the people in this.
[00:06:49.400 --> 00:06:51.560] So I get to choose everyone who's in the universe.
[00:06:51.560 --> 00:06:53.320] I get to choose what kind of customers we're going to have.
[00:06:53.320 --> 00:06:55.320] I get to choose what kind of marketing we're going to have.
[00:06:55.320 --> 00:06:58.360] It's like this fun little thing where it's like a little, it's like a SimCity.
[00:06:58.360 --> 00:07:07.640] It's a SimCity experience or Sim Tower, which I was also a fan of, where you get to build, you get to just craft your own little world and every detail of it.
[00:07:07.640 --> 00:07:11.800] And sometimes it is, especially because I work physically alone.
[00:07:11.800 --> 00:07:13.160] I have a little office that I rent.
[00:07:13.160 --> 00:07:16.320] You know, I have people I work with online, but they're just remote.
[00:07:14.600 --> 00:07:17.520] And so sometimes it really does.
[00:07:17.680 --> 00:07:23.680] I kind of look up and think, this is kind of strange what I'm doing in my own little, crafting my own little world on the computer by myself.
[00:07:23.920 --> 00:07:24.320] What's funny?
[00:07:24.320 --> 00:07:31.120] Courtland and I, I think literally yesterday were having a conversation about almost like two kinds of people when it comes to businesses.
[00:07:31.120 --> 00:07:36.160] There are people that enter their businesses and they're like, okay, this is this system that I can control.
[00:07:36.160 --> 00:07:37.760] And I can look at all like the SimCity.
[00:07:37.760 --> 00:07:40.320] I can think about all the different people and how they interact.
[00:07:40.480 --> 00:07:42.160] Courtland's all about like the four fits.
[00:07:42.160 --> 00:07:45.040] Like, okay, the business has a product and it has a fit with a channel and a product.
[00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:46.880] Like you can kind of see it that way.
[00:07:46.880 --> 00:07:52.400] And then there's also sort of a way where you're just like, okay, well, this is kind of like this sort of lottery ticket that I pull.
[00:07:52.400 --> 00:08:00.320] And if I just have like the right idea and kind of just, you know, launch, like close my eyes and jump, then you know, then I can be financially free.
[00:08:00.320 --> 00:08:03.120] But you take obviously the first, the first path.
[00:08:03.120 --> 00:08:05.280] I like the kids versus business comparison.
[00:08:05.280 --> 00:08:07.360] You know, like just to be like a little game out there.
[00:08:07.440 --> 00:08:09.600] Like, okay, would you rather start a business or have kids?
[00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:14.560] Would you rather make millions of dollars or would you rather spend millions of dollars?
[00:08:15.200 --> 00:08:16.480] Well, I'm doing both.
[00:08:16.480 --> 00:08:19.200] That's why I have to, you know, have the balance.
[00:08:19.200 --> 00:08:29.920] But it is sometimes actually, I do have to kind of remind myself not to be frustrated with my kids because I do spend a lot of my day in this little world that I have a lot of control over.
[00:08:29.920 --> 00:08:31.760] But I can't just say, brush your teeth.
[00:08:31.760 --> 00:08:32.720] And then they do it instantly.
[00:08:32.720 --> 00:08:40.160] I have to be like, okay, which baby shark brush your teeth video are we going to put on to get them to stand there and brush for the whole time.
[00:08:40.160 --> 00:08:45.920] So I have to remind myself that in not all areas of life do I get to be the emperor, like I do.
[00:08:46.320 --> 00:08:52.440] There's a Stephen Covey quote about this that Cortland and I, we do a lot of bickering sometimes, and we have to remind ourselves.
[00:08:52.440 --> 00:08:58.280] And he says that you should try to be efficient with things, but then you have to be effective with people, right?
[00:08:58.280 --> 00:08:59.200] Like, you can't control it.
[00:08:59.680 --> 00:09:06.040] You have to, like, kind of let the thing flow in this way that's not like, you know, input, output.
[00:08:59.920 --> 00:09:07.240] Yeah, that's the way to do it.
[00:09:07.480 --> 00:09:12.120] I think Channing is like the most, you're like the most efficient person that I know.
[00:09:12.120 --> 00:09:14.360] And so when we meet, Channing's like, we're on a timer.
[00:09:14.360 --> 00:09:17.480] We've got exactly, you know, 45 minutes and then hard cut off bubble.
[00:09:17.480 --> 00:09:18.840] I'm like, dude, I'm your brother.
[00:09:18.840 --> 00:09:20.200] Just chill out.
[00:09:20.840 --> 00:09:24.360] But let me describe your new startup so the listeners know what you're working on now, Laura.
[00:09:24.360 --> 00:09:25.560] It's called Paper Bell.
[00:09:25.720 --> 00:09:28.680] I'm going to do my best to sort of pitch it because your homepage is really cool.
[00:09:28.680 --> 00:09:34.520] You've got like this long form sales letter as your homepage, which is not very common for startups.
[00:09:35.240 --> 00:09:44.280] But basically, let's say I'm an executive coach, or let's say I'm a life coach, and I spend a bunch of time learning how to be a good coach, learning how to find clients.
[00:09:44.280 --> 00:09:45.080] And it's really hard.
[00:09:45.080 --> 00:09:49.240] Most life coaches are not that good, but I'm a rare example of a good one.
[00:09:49.240 --> 00:09:56.200] So clients come to me, I work by magic, they have these breakthrough moments, and they live better lives, and then become a better version of themselves.
[00:09:56.200 --> 00:09:58.360] And I'm awesome, they're awesome, everything's awesome.
[00:09:58.360 --> 00:09:59.480] I'm an awesome coach.
[00:09:59.800 --> 00:10:08.200] But even though my coaching skills are great, I'm also having to be sort of this amateur, no-code expert on the side, plugging together all these random tools online.
[00:10:08.360 --> 00:10:09.320] I don't know how payments work.
[00:10:09.320 --> 00:10:10.440] I don't know how to build a website.
[00:10:10.600 --> 00:10:14.360] I don't know how to do scheduling and some finding 50 million different tools.
[00:10:14.360 --> 00:10:16.920] And it's all just hacked together and it's just a crazy mess.
[00:10:16.920 --> 00:10:21.480] And I don't even want to worry about that kind of stuff because I'm just trying to be a good life coach.
[00:10:21.480 --> 00:10:22.920] Enter Paper Bell.
[00:10:22.920 --> 00:10:24.680] So Paper Bell is my savior here.
[00:10:24.680 --> 00:10:29.640] You guys are like an all-in-one tool designed specifically for coaches.
[00:10:29.640 --> 00:10:31.400] You handle payments, you handle scheduling.
[00:10:31.400 --> 00:10:33.480] You give me a nice landing page I can customize.
[00:10:33.480 --> 00:10:38.920] You handle signing of contracts, and a million other little specific things that coaches might want.
[00:10:38.920 --> 00:10:45.840] So I just use Paper Bell, turn it on, pay you guys, and I don't have to worry about anything after that except for my coaching.
[00:10:45.840 --> 00:10:49.680] Other people's pitches are always so much better than your own.
[00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:51.200] I feel like I would make it way too.
[00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:54.560] I'm just going to take that video and put it right on my home.
[00:10:54.800 --> 00:11:01.200] And you said I'm a life coach, so everyone will be like, oh, life coach Cortland, just like describing how he uses this.
[00:11:01.200 --> 00:11:03.760] But yes, that was a very, very good overview.
[00:11:03.760 --> 00:11:10.560] You know, people coming from, you know, the SaaS world, which I know a lot of listeners are, I would describe it as an industry vertical SaaS.
[00:11:10.560 --> 00:11:18.960] You know, there's all these SaaS businesses that focus on a specific industry, a specific vertical, and say, here's the tool to manage that vertical.
[00:11:18.960 --> 00:11:24.880] And that's what Paper Bell is for coaches, executive coaches, life coaches, relationship coaches.
[00:11:24.880 --> 00:11:29.360] That type of coach who primarily works online is really our core market.
[00:11:29.440 --> 00:11:32.320] Have you ever had a life coach yourself?
[00:11:32.320 --> 00:11:38.720] Yeah, I've had more, like right now, I'm working with a business coach and a mindset coach.
[00:11:38.720 --> 00:11:42.080] So the mindset coach is kind of more like a life coach.
[00:11:42.080 --> 00:11:46.640] For me, usually the stuff I want to focus on with a coach is more business stuff.
[00:11:46.960 --> 00:11:50.720] But, you know, the two definitely become intermingled, life and business.
[00:11:50.720 --> 00:11:52.080] I've never had a life coach.
[00:11:52.480 --> 00:11:54.960] I've dated two life coaches.
[00:11:55.280 --> 00:11:56.960] One was a sex and a relationship coach.
[00:11:56.960 --> 00:11:58.480] So she worked with couples.
[00:11:58.480 --> 00:11:59.680] But it feels like it's exploding.
[00:11:59.680 --> 00:12:12.560] It feels like it's this sort of avenue for a lot of people who want to be self-employed, who don't want to work for the man, who want to work with people, who want to help people and feel like they're having a positive impact, and who want the possibility of making a lot of money.
[00:12:12.560 --> 00:12:15.040] Like my ex, she did coaching.
[00:12:15.040 --> 00:12:18.240] She made literally millions of dollars a year.
[00:12:18.720 --> 00:12:22.080] I don't think that's like a standard outcome, but she was super good.
[00:12:22.080 --> 00:12:23.200] She'd been doing it for years.
[00:12:23.200 --> 00:12:27.120] She was charging her clients $400 a session, sometimes more.
[00:12:27.120 --> 00:12:28.720] She was booked completely.
[00:12:28.720 --> 00:12:29.840] She was turning down clients.
[00:12:30.040 --> 00:12:33.720] And then she started teaching other people how to do what she was doing.
[00:12:33.720 --> 00:12:35.400] And that was an education business.
[00:12:35.400 --> 00:12:38.440] So she was charging them $14,000, $15,000 a year.
[00:12:38.440 --> 00:12:42.200] She had hundreds of people signing up for that, and she was just making bank.
[00:12:42.200 --> 00:12:47.080] And I feel like not a lot of people are aware of just how lucrative and how, I guess, promising coaching can be.
[00:12:47.080 --> 00:12:49.320] So it's a really interesting niche to me.
[00:12:49.320 --> 00:12:55.240] Yes, it's a huge industry and it's very much a growing industry.
[00:12:55.240 --> 00:13:01.080] It's something that a lot of people are still skeptical of or they're not sure what it means, especially a life coach, right?
[00:13:01.080 --> 00:13:04.680] People will be like, oh, is that a joke to have a coach for your life?
[00:13:04.680 --> 00:13:05.480] And I'm like, I don't know.
[00:13:05.480 --> 00:13:07.560] It seems like a great thing to have my life.
[00:13:07.560 --> 00:13:09.320] Like, I want my life to be good.
[00:13:09.320 --> 00:13:10.760] And that's also like.
[00:13:11.080 --> 00:13:11.800] Right, right.
[00:13:11.800 --> 00:13:20.440] If you're not familiar with coaching, I mean, I think that's kind of a good way to describe it: it's someone who helps you achieve your goals in a certain area.
[00:13:20.440 --> 00:13:24.920] Because often people will be like, oh, well, like, I could just, my friends help me do that.
[00:13:24.920 --> 00:13:32.200] And it's like, if you have a friend that wants to talk to you for an hour every week about, you know, just your own stuff, cool.
[00:13:32.200 --> 00:13:34.760] That's a very, that's a very good friend.
[00:13:34.760 --> 00:13:37.000] And maybe that will be enough for you.
[00:13:37.240 --> 00:13:42.680] But yeah, I think it's incredibly helpful to have someone who's just, who's just there to help you, right?
[00:13:42.680 --> 00:13:50.840] Whether it's a relationship thing or a business thing, who's there to help you just get better results in whatever area of your life you want better results.
[00:13:51.080 --> 00:13:52.520] I'm so fascinated by this.
[00:13:52.520 --> 00:13:54.120] Courtland will probably attest.
[00:13:54.120 --> 00:14:00.360] Maybe my biggest obsession is performance, is like improving my performance across a lot of different things, right?
[00:14:00.360 --> 00:14:01.640] We got indie hackers.
[00:14:01.640 --> 00:14:02.760] I'm trying to get good at that.
[00:14:02.760 --> 00:14:04.120] I didn't go to business school.
[00:14:04.600 --> 00:14:07.240] I am like an aspiring novelist.
[00:14:07.240 --> 00:14:09.160] I have a literary agent, but I'm still working on it.
[00:14:09.800 --> 00:14:15.440] But one of my weaknesses, Cortland will also tell you this, is that I'm like a man on an island, right?
[00:14:15.440 --> 00:14:22.880] Like everything I learn, I'm like, oh, I can figure out how to, you know, learn how to write novels by just reading a lot of novels and like seeing how.
[00:14:22.880 --> 00:14:28.800] And I feel like the missing puzzle piece is to just find someone who can coach me and be that outside observer.
[00:14:28.800 --> 00:14:31.840] But it's like, I don't know, I guess I'm not like vulnerable enough.
[00:14:31.840 --> 00:14:37.520] With you, is it like, hey, I vaguely know I could be better, so I just want to have this coach?
[00:14:37.520 --> 00:14:46.000] Or is it like, do you start with specific problems and specific like concerns with how you do things and then say, hey, I want to coach for this, or I want to coach this.
[00:14:46.080 --> 00:14:48.080] How do you know that you should hire a coach?
[00:14:48.080 --> 00:14:52.960] Well, there's a coach whose podcast I really like named Itamar Morani.
[00:14:53.120 --> 00:14:54.160] I haven't worked with him.
[00:14:54.160 --> 00:14:56.400] I just like his podcast and his blog and stuff.
[00:14:56.400 --> 00:15:09.760] And something he always says is, I'm not phrasing it exactly like he does, but basically, if someone else with your same abilities could get different results, then you know that there could be a mindset issue there.
[00:15:09.760 --> 00:15:24.480] If they have the same abilities, if they have the same skill set, let's say they have the same sort of conditions in life, you know, similar sort of resources that you have in life, but they're getting a different result than you, then there's something else in the equation.
[00:15:24.480 --> 00:15:30.960] And it could be useful for you to work with a coach to see where you're holding yourself back.
[00:15:30.960 --> 00:15:34.400] And of course, coaching, you know, means so many different things.
[00:15:34.400 --> 00:15:40.160] It's not always holding yourself back, but it's definitely something that we all do as humans.
[00:15:40.160 --> 00:15:47.280] We have our own lens that we look through the world and we automatically discount certain opportunities as not for us.
[00:15:47.280 --> 00:15:56.000] We don't go for certain things because we think they're going to be painful or too hard or think we have to make some sort of sacrifice that we don't want to make in order to have that.
[00:15:56.000 --> 00:16:00.000] And a coach is someone who can point all these things out to you.
[00:16:00.120 --> 00:16:02.280] I mean, it can also just be simple accountability.
[00:16:02.280 --> 00:16:13.160] It can be like with your novel writing example, it can be someone who's like, hey, Channing, you told me that you want to get this novel written, but your behavior is looking very different than someone who wants to get a novel written.
[00:16:13.160 --> 00:16:14.040] What's going on?
[00:16:14.040 --> 00:16:22.600] But that is why I think that mindset piece does often come up because there is some reason why you're choosing different behaviors.
[00:16:22.600 --> 00:16:24.920] You say you want to write a novel, but you're doing something else.
[00:16:24.920 --> 00:16:28.760] Okay, what's going on in your brain that leads to those choices?
[00:16:28.760 --> 00:16:30.840] It reminds me of actually joining Stripe.
[00:16:30.840 --> 00:16:35.480] Like back when I was doing ND Hackers in 2017, my ambition was basically like, I want to pay my rent.
[00:16:35.480 --> 00:16:37.640] Like, wouldn't that be cool if this website paid my rent?
[00:16:37.640 --> 00:16:41.240] Wouldn't that be cool if I could pay my bills and I have to work a job?
[00:16:41.400 --> 00:16:42.200] That's awesome.
[00:16:42.200 --> 00:16:52.120] And then I joined Stripe and I was talking to Patrick Collison and he was like, what if ND hackers changed the face of the startup landscape and inspired millions more people to start businesses?
[00:16:52.120 --> 00:16:53.960] And I was just like, what?
[00:16:54.600 --> 00:16:58.120] This is a totally different mindset, like a totally different outlook on.
[00:16:58.120 --> 00:17:00.040] And you just make different decisions, you know?
[00:17:00.040 --> 00:17:09.400] And it's like interesting because it's like, you don't necessarily know that you have like these limitations or these blockers or these like just like ways that you're not even attempting to think, you're not even considering.
[00:17:09.400 --> 00:17:13.160] Because I see the same thing all the time with a lot of my friends who like work, you know, nine to five desk jobs.
[00:17:13.240 --> 00:17:14.920] I'm like, what if you started a company?
[00:17:14.920 --> 00:17:20.360] And it's like, there's sort of a mindset shift there sometimes where people are like, I never even thought that I could do that.
[00:17:20.360 --> 00:17:23.480] You know, never even seemed like it was possible.
[00:17:23.480 --> 00:17:23.880] Yeah.
[00:17:23.880 --> 00:17:29.720] And often the value of coaching is, yeah, just someone else sort of reminding you that anything is possible.
[00:17:29.720 --> 00:17:33.400] I mean, I think that's also a huge value of a podcast like this one.
[00:17:33.400 --> 00:17:40.920] I think the reason people love this is you listen to stories and you do think, okay, if she did it, if he did it, then maybe I could do it too.
[00:17:40.920 --> 00:17:43.560] If they thought it was possible for them, then it's possible for me.
[00:17:43.560 --> 00:17:46.080] And that's also what a coach can help to kind of remind you of.
[00:17:46.080 --> 00:17:48.400] I'm curious about the business of life coaching a little bit.
[00:17:48.400 --> 00:17:52.240] Do you see like you know which coaches are killing it, which coaches are struggling?
[00:17:52.240 --> 00:17:54.720] Like, for example, like life coaching is a really broad niche.
[00:17:54.720 --> 00:17:57.840] It's almost like starting a business that has like the broadest niche possible.
[00:17:57.840 --> 00:18:00.240] Like, you have any problem, come to me, I like to coach you through life.
[00:18:00.240 --> 00:18:05.280] And there's all these like specific coaches, like relationship coaches or executive coaches or mindset coaches.
[00:18:05.280 --> 00:18:06.320] Who's killing it?
[00:18:06.320 --> 00:18:16.400] Well, you know, we're gonna get more data on that soon because we actually just launched a directory for coaches, coachcompare.com, because it was a big hole in the market.
[00:18:16.400 --> 00:18:19.440] There wasn't a good directory to find a coach, so we launched one.
[00:18:19.440 --> 00:18:22.240] So we have about a thousand coaches on there now.
[00:18:22.240 --> 00:18:28.480] And with Paperbell, we actually don't have because we don't make them like select a category of what type of coach they are.
[00:18:28.480 --> 00:18:30.960] But with Coach Compare, you know, we do have that.
[00:18:30.960 --> 00:18:41.840] So once we have people that are on both systems, we'll be able to put that data together to be able to have really interesting data on how much people in different niches are charging and things like that.
[00:18:41.840 --> 00:18:46.960] For now, I will say I did look through one time and see who was earning the most.
[00:18:46.960 --> 00:18:48.800] We can see who's earning the most in Stripe.
[00:18:48.800 --> 00:18:52.000] People were connected to people's Stripe Connect accounts.
[00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:57.760] And it was interesting how there was like no trend with the top earners.
[00:18:57.760 --> 00:18:59.040] It was all different niches.
[00:18:59.040 --> 00:19:05.360] It was also very interesting that a lot of the top earning businesses were not slick at all.
[00:19:05.520 --> 00:19:08.640] One of the top earners did not have a website.
[00:19:08.640 --> 00:19:14.640] They just used Paperbell landing pages because we can make landing pages, but we're not like a full website builder.
[00:19:14.640 --> 00:19:18.880] So a lot of people have, you know, a separate fancy marketing site that they connect Paperbell to.
[00:19:18.880 --> 00:19:22.000] These people did not have a separate fancy marketing site.
[00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:27.120] They just had obviously a type of coaching that they did really effectively.
[00:19:27.120 --> 00:19:30.760] And then other people referred them because they got great results.
[00:19:30.760 --> 00:19:32.600] And that's how they built their business.
[00:19:29.840 --> 00:19:34.440] They had a group coaching model.
[00:19:34.760 --> 00:19:38.840] But yeah, I was surprised by how simple a lot of the businesses were.
[00:19:38.840 --> 00:19:40.440] It was largely one-on-one.
[00:19:40.760 --> 00:19:47.080] Like you mentioned, Tortland, you can make a lot of money just in one-on-one coaching just by continuously raising your rates.
[00:19:47.080 --> 00:19:49.960] A lot of people doing one-on-one or simple small groups.
[00:19:50.200 --> 00:19:56.920] You know, you see so much out there about putting together online courses and programs, and that can be a whole thing too.
[00:19:56.920 --> 00:20:03.080] But yeah, it's a much simpler business to start to just do one-on-one or small group coaching.
[00:20:03.080 --> 00:20:04.360] And it can be a really great business.
[00:20:04.360 --> 00:20:10.600] I also feel like this is probably one of those spaces where the 80-20 is really, really vast.
[00:20:10.600 --> 00:20:14.840] So, for example, when I think of life coaches, I tend to think of like high-performing people.
[00:20:14.840 --> 00:20:16.520] I mean, just right out of the bat.
[00:20:16.520 --> 00:20:20.760] The kinds of people that want life coaches are going to be people who are like professionals, et cetera.
[00:20:20.760 --> 00:20:33.640] But I listen to like some podcasts, and you know, if you are a top-performing athlete, like Michael Jordan had a life coach, like LeBron James has a life coach, Naval Ravikant has a life coach named Kapil Gupta.
[00:20:33.640 --> 00:20:38.040] And I've just like gone down the route, like I've clicked down a few clicks with like his products.
[00:20:38.040 --> 00:20:44.840] And I think I saw him selling a course or a book to just the general public for like $100,000 or something crazy.
[00:20:44.840 --> 00:20:53.800] It might not have been $100,000, but it's like one of those things where I'm like, wait a second, it's all about his market, right?
[00:20:53.800 --> 00:20:57.320] It's like, it's not like life coaches make bank like writ large, right?
[00:20:57.320 --> 00:21:04.960] It's like, I just feel like there's like this sleeper, you know, group of life coaches who are like going for the top-tier people and they're making more than ever.
[00:21:05.120 --> 00:21:05.960] That's what I would do.
[00:21:05.960 --> 00:21:06.840] That's what I would do.
[00:21:06.840 --> 00:21:14.720] If I had to like design the perfect business as a life coach, and I'm coming at this like with my business hat on, like I don't actually care about coaching, I'd probably be a terrible coach.
[00:21:14.720 --> 00:21:17.280] But I would try to make as much money as I possibly could.
[00:21:14.440 --> 00:21:20.640] Like, number one, I would try to choose a really lucrative niche.
[00:21:20.640 --> 00:21:26.000] It's like who has a lot of money and has something they need coaching with that's like very valuable to them.
[00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:28.880] So, like, my ex, like, she's located in San Francisco.
[00:21:28.880 --> 00:21:36.960] She's targeting like mostly tech executives, and the problem she's helping them solve is like their broken relationships, they're broken marriages, which is a problem of almost infinite value to people.
[00:21:36.960 --> 00:21:43.200] They'll pay almost infinite amount of money if you could help them, you know, repair this like most important relationship in their life.
[00:21:43.200 --> 00:21:44.320] And so, I would do that.
[00:21:44.320 --> 00:21:47.760] Business coaching is another one: coaching executives who are growing their businesses.
[00:21:47.760 --> 00:21:48.720] They have a lot of money.
[00:21:48.720 --> 00:21:52.720] It can be potentially even like a business expense where the money's not coming out of their pocket.
[00:21:52.720 --> 00:21:56.640] And if you help them, they might make millions of dollars or billions of dollars or something like that.
[00:21:56.640 --> 00:21:58.080] So, it's super worth it to them.
[00:21:58.080 --> 00:21:59.280] So, I would do that.
[00:21:59.280 --> 00:22:01.040] And then I would grow through word of mouth as well.
[00:22:01.040 --> 00:22:08.000] I would try to be an extremely good coach, play in a sort of exclusivity, like you don't have access to me because you're essentially trading your dollars for time.
[00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:09.200] So, I don't want mass marketing.
[00:22:09.200 --> 00:22:13.840] I want like sales and the best sales is like a word of mouth recommendation or something.
[00:22:13.840 --> 00:22:14.400] Yeah.
[00:22:14.400 --> 00:22:20.400] And then I would channel that and I would leverage like my big name clients, like you were saying with this, with Naval Ravakan's coach.
[00:22:20.560 --> 00:22:29.040] And then I would leverage that and then start marketing myself and then probably try to transition into education, like scalable, selling courses, selling books, concepts of some kind.
[00:22:29.040 --> 00:22:30.000] Yeah, at some point.
[00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:35.040] And then laugh my way to the bank as a successful, very rich coach and retire.
[00:22:36.480 --> 00:22:39.840] Yeah, I mean, there is that whole game plan.
[00:22:39.840 --> 00:22:48.560] And there's also, you know, it's worth pointing out, of course, in case it's not obvious, most coaches don't make a lot of money, which is also okay.
[00:22:48.560 --> 00:22:58.080] You know, there's also a lot of people that go into coaching because they want to have a small business where their time can be flexible, where they can make money without having a job.
[00:22:58.080 --> 00:23:03.320] So there are also plenty of coaches that are making $3,000 a month and they're like, awesome.
[00:23:03.320 --> 00:23:04.680] I have flexible work hours.
[00:23:04.680 --> 00:23:05.720] I love what I do.
[00:23:05.720 --> 00:23:07.240] I love the people that I work with.
[00:23:07.640 --> 00:23:10.680] It's a pretty quote unquote easy business to run.
[00:23:10.680 --> 00:23:21.960] So I just want to point that out because there is so like, so often you hear about the trajectory you just described, which is a great one, but it's also like, it's cool if you're just, yeah, that's very much the outlier.
[00:23:21.960 --> 00:23:26.680] And it's cool if you just want to make a side income or place your income with coaching.
[00:23:26.680 --> 00:23:27.800] It can be a great way to do it.
[00:23:27.960 --> 00:23:32.040] I think it's kind of ironic because you're an outlier among indie hackers as well.
[00:23:32.120 --> 00:23:39.160] The vast, vast, vast majority of indie hackers, you know, haven't quit their jobs yet, haven't made a single dollar in revenue yet, might not even have an idea.
[00:23:39.160 --> 00:23:44.120] You're a serial entrepreneur on your like third or fourth business and you haven't blinked.
[00:23:44.120 --> 00:23:45.960] So why did you stop working on Meat Edgar?
[00:23:45.960 --> 00:23:48.440] I mean, you're making millions of dollars.
[00:23:48.440 --> 00:23:49.480] You could have just done that.
[00:23:49.480 --> 00:23:52.280] I'm sure it had all sorts of challenges and all sorts of places it could have grown.
[00:23:52.280 --> 00:23:54.520] Somebody bought it, so clearly somebody believed it could grow.
[00:23:54.520 --> 00:23:58.600] Like why did you decide to stop working on that and start a new business?
[00:23:58.920 --> 00:24:02.680] Yeah, I mean, it's a really complex answer.
[00:24:02.680 --> 00:24:08.760] Probably the simplest truth was that I was largely bored with the product.
[00:24:08.760 --> 00:24:11.240] I was bored of social media marketing.
[00:24:11.240 --> 00:24:17.960] It's a tough space to be in because you get less and less permission from your vendors over time.
[00:24:18.600 --> 00:24:27.880] You know, our vendors, our supply chain, you know, whatever you want to call it, was Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and their permissions.
[00:24:28.200 --> 00:24:33.640] And over time, they always and still do just degrade the permissions that tools have.
[00:24:33.640 --> 00:24:43.080] Like, I was just doing a promotion for Paperbill on Instagram, and I was like, oh man, I have to do so much just with a native app because they don't let third-party tools use reels.
[00:24:43.080 --> 00:24:47.120] They don't let third-party tools do stickers on stories so you can put the link.
[00:24:47.440 --> 00:24:50.400] And I know so many people look at the tools and go, why can't they do that?
[00:24:50.400 --> 00:24:54.080] I'm like, I know why they can do that because Instagram doesn't give them permission to do that.
[00:24:54.080 --> 00:25:07.440] That's why, because Instagram wants you when Twitter, like for indie hackers, when Twitter was like, oh, you can't do like scheduling in advance and you had to issue this, you know, sort of newsletter announcement, et cetera.
[00:25:07.440 --> 00:25:07.920] Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:07.920 --> 00:25:15.280] Twitter decided that you couldn't repeat the exact same content, which technically is still the rule on Twitter, which a lot of people don't know because it's a ridiculous rule.
[00:25:15.280 --> 00:25:26.000] Twitter's technical terms of service is you can never repeat the exact same, you can't write hello on the same Twitter account or even two Twitter accounts that you own because that's the exact same tweet.
[00:25:26.400 --> 00:25:27.680] They don't enforce it.
[00:25:27.680 --> 00:25:36.640] But as a tool, we always felt like, and I still feel like it was the right call, we can't risk our users' accounts by going against Twitter's terms of service.
[00:25:36.640 --> 00:25:40.480] So we just decided we're not going to repeat content.
[00:25:40.480 --> 00:25:47.600] So yeah, it was just a really tough market when you're at odds with the people that your business relies on.
[00:25:47.600 --> 00:25:49.680] You know, now, shout out to Stripe.
[00:25:49.680 --> 00:25:59.120] You know, Stripe is a core partner for us because we connect with our customers' Stripe accounts, but our incentives are very aligned working with Stripe.
[00:25:59.360 --> 00:26:03.120] Like we're just trying to make our customers more money to put through Stripe.
[00:26:03.280 --> 00:26:05.680] There's no reason for Stripe to limit our access.
[00:26:05.680 --> 00:26:13.760] They want to give us more access and want to let us do more things through our tools that our customers we can make it easy for our customers to use Stripe.
[00:26:13.760 --> 00:26:18.320] So yeah, Edgar, it was just a tough market in that way.
[00:26:18.480 --> 00:26:33.880] I do think that social media marketing isn't something that will go away, but it's been, you know, Buffer has now also publicly seen a flatlining and decrease of their growth.
[00:26:34.040 --> 00:26:40.840] And I'm not surprised because it's a hard place to grow a business when the tools are fighting against you.
[00:26:41.160 --> 00:26:49.080] I think it's fascinating to be kind of a serial entrepreneur because you have these experiences where you've actually done it and you've actually seen how it went.
[00:26:49.080 --> 00:26:54.040] And then you get this image in your mind of like how it's going to be all so different next time, right?
[00:26:54.040 --> 00:26:56.280] Like every single thing that annoyed you, you're going to do differently.
[00:26:56.280 --> 00:27:04.600] It's kind of like getting into a relationship and then you break up and you have all these things you don't like about the person and you're like, next time, I'm not doing this, that, I'm never dating a redhead again.
[00:27:05.160 --> 00:27:06.120] No more coaching.
[00:27:06.520 --> 00:27:07.400] No more coaches.
[00:27:07.400 --> 00:27:08.920] I'm tired of being coached.
[00:27:10.200 --> 00:27:15.960] What are some general things you learned from running Meet Edgar that affected how you approached your future businesses?
[00:27:15.960 --> 00:27:19.240] Do you have different thoughts about like, I know you bootstrapped Meat Edgar, I think.
[00:27:19.240 --> 00:27:25.720] Do you have different thoughts about fundraising, about how to build a team, about working from home versus an office, about industries you want to be in?
[00:27:26.360 --> 00:27:26.920] Yeah.
[00:27:26.920 --> 00:27:34.360] So the biggest thing I am doing very differently this time is the way the team is structured and async.
[00:27:34.360 --> 00:27:43.640] So at Edgar, we were always a remote company, but we called it real-time remote, meaning we were all in the U.S., we all worked U.S.
[00:27:43.640 --> 00:27:44.680] working hours.
[00:27:44.680 --> 00:27:50.360] We had a lot of live meetings and a lot of live stand-ups and things like that.
[00:27:50.360 --> 00:27:58.520] So while we were remote, it was very different than what you read about Gumroad or Basecamp, where they do a lot of asynchronous work.
[00:27:58.840 --> 00:28:02.840] We worked online, but we were not focused on asynchronous work.
[00:28:02.840 --> 00:28:06.760] Also, everyone was W-2 from the very beginning of the company.
[00:28:06.920 --> 00:28:09.560] We didn't use that many freelance resources.
[00:28:09.560 --> 00:28:14.360] We did a lot more focused on just hiring full-time employees as we needed them.
[00:28:14.360 --> 00:28:18.640] And those are all things that I've done 180 on at Paper Bell.
[00:28:18.640 --> 00:28:30.160] So at Paper Bell, our whole team is freelance and plans to stay that way until we have a really good reason to bring on the full-time employee.
[00:28:30.160 --> 00:28:32.000] I don't know if we will.
[00:28:32.320 --> 00:28:37.120] And not just freelance as in, oh, technically you're a freelancer, but you work the same.
[00:28:37.120 --> 00:28:45.920] Like a truly different way to look at the business where we only want to bring in fractional specialists for only as long as they're needed.
[00:28:45.920 --> 00:28:56.240] And I think what I now view as a mistake at Edgar is sometimes we brought people in as a full-time employee that in retrospect could have just been a three-month project.
[00:28:56.240 --> 00:29:03.600] You know, we could have brought someone in to like clean up that area of the business or solve a problem with the business and then moved along.
[00:29:03.600 --> 00:29:09.760] Instead, we brought them in, they kind of do the three months and then you have to find something else for them to do.
[00:29:09.760 --> 00:29:11.680] And that's not how you see it at the time.
[00:29:11.680 --> 00:29:13.040] You're not like, oh, you're kind of done.
[00:29:13.040 --> 00:29:14.080] What else are you going to do?
[00:29:14.080 --> 00:29:15.680] Like you generate work for them.
[00:29:15.680 --> 00:29:17.600] They generate work for themselves.
[00:29:17.600 --> 00:29:28.560] But you can end up with definitely a bloated team or you end up with a lot of busy work being done at the company that's not really doing anything to move the needle.
[00:29:28.560 --> 00:29:32.880] So at Paper Bell, I'm like, okay, we're going to look for specific problems.
[00:29:32.880 --> 00:29:35.520] We're going to bring in freelancers to solve those problems.
[00:29:35.520 --> 00:29:38.160] I mean, I cannot tell you how much I use Fiverr.
[00:29:38.160 --> 00:29:41.200] I use Fiverr so much.
[00:29:41.200 --> 00:29:45.760] And, you know, we do have regular people that are working on the business in a freelance capacity.
[00:29:45.760 --> 00:29:51.920] But also now, whenever there's just a random little thing that I need done, I just go on Fiverr and find someone to do it.
[00:29:51.920 --> 00:29:55.040] And it's so effective to work that way.
[00:29:55.360 --> 00:29:59.440] What about your personal happiness as a business owner?
[00:29:59.720 --> 00:30:08.280] Is there anything that you've changed from meet editor to now that makes you happier running your business, or is this mostly stuff that just makes you more effective at running your business?
[00:30:08.280 --> 00:30:14.760] Some of the culture stuff is different, and it's just kind of what I prefer now.
[00:30:14.760 --> 00:30:16.920] I really might go back to the Edgar way in the future.
[00:30:16.920 --> 00:30:26.040] So at Edgar, also, we were very focused on having a great culture, a fun culture, making sure people really knew each other, even though we worked remotely.
[00:30:26.040 --> 00:30:31.320] At Paperball, now I tell people, I'm like, we don't do any social stuff at work.
[00:30:31.320 --> 00:30:36.600] So if you're the type of person that wants to use work as a social outlet, you will be miserable here.
[00:30:36.600 --> 00:30:39.000] I'm like, there are no dog photos on Slack.
[00:30:39.320 --> 00:30:40.280] I wonder if this connects.
[00:30:40.360 --> 00:30:44.840] You wrote an article about empowering, how empowering your team is stressing everyone out.
[00:30:44.840 --> 00:30:46.680] Basically, about the new wave, right?
[00:30:46.680 --> 00:30:51.160] Where if you're a knowledge worker, if you're in a startup, employees have like maximum freedom, right?
[00:30:51.160 --> 00:30:56.280] And it's like, just figure out like everyone's like a little like entrepreneur inside of the company and how that's not really good.
[00:30:56.760 --> 00:31:01.080] Analysis, paralysis, people aren't like, they don't have the time for the deep work, et cetera.
[00:31:01.080 --> 00:31:06.760] But I kind of think about that with you as a founder, because that's kind of my biggest issue as a founder, right?
[00:31:06.760 --> 00:31:08.360] Because I wake up when I want to.
[00:31:08.360 --> 00:31:09.480] I work on IndieHackers.
[00:31:09.480 --> 00:31:11.400] I also work on other products, et cetera.
[00:31:11.400 --> 00:31:21.880] And for me, I'm like, well, I want to have good lifestyle design, but I also have to then figure out how I'm going to constrain my own freedoms in a way that actually accommodates my happiness.
[00:31:21.880 --> 00:31:25.320] Was your kind of narrowing things down related to that?
[00:31:25.320 --> 00:31:27.400] Or how do you think about that stuff?
[00:31:27.400 --> 00:31:33.240] Yeah, I think I just, a lot of it was kind of the fun of building a new SimCity.
[00:31:33.200 --> 00:31:33.720] You know, you know?
[00:31:33.680 --> 00:31:37.480] It's like, okay, when we did the social thing, there were some things about it that I really loved.
[00:31:37.480 --> 00:31:38.680] And sometimes it was really fun.
[00:31:38.680 --> 00:31:41.000] And sometimes I felt like, why do we do all this bullshit?
[00:31:41.000 --> 00:31:42.760] Like, let's just do our work, you know?
[00:31:42.760 --> 00:31:48.560] So it's like, okay, with this company, I'll try the, let's just do our work and I'll see.
[00:31:48.800 --> 00:31:52.320] Maybe I'll get bored and want the social outlet.
[00:31:52.320 --> 00:32:01.600] Maybe my team won't be as cohesive and it won't work, but I'm kind of curious to try because there were parts about it that were really appealing.
[00:32:01.600 --> 00:32:09.600] So I think also having that timeline, like I've never been a person who's like, yes, this is going to be my company forever.
[00:32:09.600 --> 00:32:13.680] You know, I just, I don't feel any tie to like, I need to pass this on to my children.
[00:32:13.680 --> 00:32:16.560] It's like, I'll do it for a while and then I'll probably sell it, you know?
[00:32:16.560 --> 00:32:17.040] Yeah.
[00:32:17.040 --> 00:32:17.680] Yeah.
[00:32:17.680 --> 00:32:20.560] I'm like, no, my children need to fend for themselves, first of all.
[00:32:20.560 --> 00:32:24.400] Like, that's not good to pass on too much to your children.
[00:32:24.880 --> 00:32:30.720] But so, yeah, I think it does give me a freedom in a company being a kind of experiment.
[00:32:30.720 --> 00:32:39.840] And that's also that the post-exit freedom is, I try to remind myself all the time, you know, I am doing this for fun.
[00:32:39.840 --> 00:32:42.880] I'm doing this because I enjoy building a company.
[00:32:42.880 --> 00:32:45.200] I need to enjoy the day-to-day work.
[00:32:45.200 --> 00:32:48.880] And that's a philosophy that I've always had before I had an exit.
[00:32:48.880 --> 00:32:51.360] I've always been a big believer that it's your company.
[00:32:51.360 --> 00:32:53.120] You should build something that you really like.
[00:32:53.120 --> 00:32:59.200] So I think it does give a certain permission to experiment and be like, let's not do social stuff.
[00:32:59.200 --> 00:33:02.240] If it's a disaster, we can change it.
[00:33:02.240 --> 00:33:05.360] But like, let's say it slowed down the growth of the company.
[00:33:05.360 --> 00:33:11.280] Let's say that that was true, that if you don't have social stuff, people aren't as cohesive and it slows down your growth.
[00:33:11.280 --> 00:33:20.640] I'm like, okay, I'm willing to take that risk because I want to try building that kind of company, see if I enjoy working in it, other people enjoy working in it, and we'll see what happens.
[00:33:20.640 --> 00:33:23.520] I always hated social stuff during the times where I worked with other companies.
[00:33:23.760 --> 00:33:24.400] A lot of people do.
[00:33:24.520 --> 00:33:31.000] Like, I had a few internships at some startups in SF, and then I always be like, oh, we're going out to the baseball game afterwards, even blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:33:31.080 --> 00:33:34.200] I'm like, I just want to go hang out with my real friends.
[00:33:29.920 --> 00:33:36.600] I don't want to leave work and just be done with the business.
[00:33:36.760 --> 00:33:41.480] My best friends are from the last two companies that I worked for, like in my 20s.
[00:33:41.480 --> 00:33:43.800] Yeah, see, and this is why it's like so good.
[00:33:43.800 --> 00:33:46.120] There's so many different types of people in this world, right?
[00:33:46.120 --> 00:33:49.320] And people, and that's why you need to be transparent about it as a company.
[00:33:49.320 --> 00:33:51.160] And this is something that I really focused on.
[00:33:51.160 --> 00:33:57.800] We just brought on two new people to the customer service team, which obviously is something that you can't be just a specialist coming in once.
[00:33:57.800 --> 00:33:59.320] We need a specialist every day.
[00:33:59.320 --> 00:34:00.760] We need customer service every day.
[00:34:00.760 --> 00:34:05.720] So I was really clear in the job listing, like the type of company that this is.
[00:34:05.720 --> 00:34:15.960] And if you like to chat with people and make friends at work, like you are going to be pretty miserable here, but then you're going to attract the perfect people for you who are like, oh my God, finally, a company with no social stuff.
[00:34:16.120 --> 00:34:18.680] Finally, a company where I don't have to talk to these people.
[00:34:19.960 --> 00:34:23.640] So I'm curious about the origins of Paper Bell.
[00:34:23.640 --> 00:34:27.000] You sold Edgar for millions, I assume, a life-changing sum.
[00:34:27.000 --> 00:34:33.320] You then, you know, you're faced with this idea of like, okay, you love entrepreneurship, but there's an infinite number of companies you can start.
[00:34:33.320 --> 00:34:35.720] There's an infinite number of potential ideas.
[00:34:35.720 --> 00:34:39.320] How do you sit down and figure out what idea do I want to work on?
[00:34:39.320 --> 00:34:40.280] What is my North Star?
[00:34:40.360 --> 00:34:41.560] Like, what is a good idea?
[00:34:41.560 --> 00:34:43.800] And how do you filter out the bad ideas?
[00:34:43.800 --> 00:34:50.120] So I did have some parameters because I had a lot of ideas over the years for sure.
[00:34:50.120 --> 00:34:59.960] So some parameters were it had to be able to be bootstrapped because before Paper Bell, I had another company that failed that we raised a little bit of money for.
[00:34:59.960 --> 00:35:03.160] I absolutely hated having raised money.
[00:35:03.160 --> 00:35:06.360] Not even the fundraising, that part wasn't even that bad.
[00:35:06.360 --> 00:35:07.720] I didn't raise any VC.
[00:35:07.720 --> 00:35:13.200] It was just friends and family, or friends and friends in my case, as I always like to say.
[00:35:13.440 --> 00:35:17.120] Other entrepreneurs that I've met along the way, I raised some money.
[00:35:17.600 --> 00:35:22.320] I hated that feeling of being beholden to my investors.
[00:35:22.320 --> 00:35:29.440] I felt like it was so much pressure, and my investors were just like literally just my friends, all super friendly, no pressure at all.
[00:35:29.440 --> 00:35:34.640] But I just felt like, okay, I can lose my own money, but losing their money, no, thank you.
[00:35:34.640 --> 00:35:40.320] I got to interrupt for a second to say I feel the same way about joining Stripe, where it's like, before joining Stripe, no pressure.
[00:35:40.320 --> 00:35:41.120] It's my own company.
[00:35:41.120 --> 00:35:42.000] If it fails, it fails.
[00:35:42.000 --> 00:35:42.800] It's totally fine.
[00:35:42.800 --> 00:35:47.280] After joining Stripe, it's like this other person bought my company and expects things from me.
[00:35:47.280 --> 00:35:48.640] It's way more pressure in a way that like.
[00:35:48.720 --> 00:35:51.280] It's like a non-consensual life coach, you know?
[00:35:52.240 --> 00:35:52.720] Yeah.
[00:35:53.360 --> 00:35:54.320] I didn't even ask that.
[00:35:54.320 --> 00:35:55.440] That's accountability.
[00:35:55.440 --> 00:35:57.040] Yeah, you're just suddenly accountable.
[00:35:57.040 --> 00:36:03.680] And I think a lot of entrepreneurs probably would feel exactly the same that you do, where it's like, I gotta say, just for maybe some people, like, that's a great motivator.
[00:36:03.680 --> 00:36:06.560] You know, maybe some people are like, yeah, like, that's a great motivator for me.
[00:36:06.560 --> 00:36:10.320] I, you know, I get it done because other people's money is like a market for me.
[00:36:10.320 --> 00:36:13.120] It just made me panicked and I did not enjoy it.
[00:36:13.360 --> 00:36:20.960] And also that company, like, not only did I raise, but the reason it failed, one reason it failed is because I realized I would need to raise more to make it successful.
[00:36:20.960 --> 00:36:23.520] And I was like, I can't keep doing that.
[00:36:23.680 --> 00:36:26.400] So yeah, it needed to be an idea that could be bootstrapped.
[00:36:26.640 --> 00:36:28.000] I work with my husband.
[00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:29.520] He is a developer.
[00:36:29.520 --> 00:36:31.360] I do the marketing business side.
[00:36:31.360 --> 00:36:36.720] So it had to be something that we could just build together, you know, that he could build on his own.
[00:36:37.360 --> 00:36:39.120] I also learned from the failed one.
[00:36:39.120 --> 00:36:41.680] So the failed one was a DevOps tool.
[00:36:41.680 --> 00:36:46.960] And I don't know anything about DevOps, but I thought, okay, I know about marketing.
[00:36:46.960 --> 00:36:56.560] And I definitely discovered during that process how much I had underestimated the value of my own personal brand and audience.
[00:36:56.560 --> 00:37:04.680] And it's not like I'm known in the coaching world at all, but I have an audience of you know, creators, entrepreneurs, indie hackers, whatever.
[00:37:04.760 --> 00:37:08.520] There's crossover with coaches, and I can speak to coaches.
[00:37:08.520 --> 00:37:14.440] Coaches are entrepreneurs, coaches are small business, these are topics that I love and I'm absolutely passionate about.
[00:37:14.440 --> 00:37:17.720] Do not care about DevOps at all.
[00:37:18.040 --> 00:37:25.000] So that taught me: okay, it needs to be something in the small business entrepreneur world.
[00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:31.480] So, something, you know, Chris and I can bootstrap together, something in the small business entrepreneur world.
[00:37:33.000 --> 00:37:41.400] And it took a while before we had a really good idea because I am so not a believer in the find the problem thing.
[00:37:41.400 --> 00:37:44.120] I hate it when people are like, just find the problem and then make a solution.
[00:37:44.120 --> 00:37:46.760] I'm like, making the solution is the hard part.
[00:37:46.760 --> 00:37:49.480] It's really hard to make a good solution.
[00:37:49.480 --> 00:37:53.880] You know, you can't just be like, oh, people want a better way to record podcasts.
[00:37:54.040 --> 00:38:01.160] Like, and then you have to actually give them a better way to record podcasts, you know, not just like, oh, I had the idea.
[00:38:01.160 --> 00:38:11.880] So I do feel like it took us a while to find something where it's like, okay, not only have we identified a problem in the market, but we do actually have a better idea for how to address this problem.
[00:38:11.880 --> 00:38:28.360] And I think we are in a place now in the software world where, like, yes, an MVP is a thing, but it can't be that crappy if you want people to pay money for it because there's too many other choices out there, you know?
[00:38:28.360 --> 00:38:34.040] Like, so it had to be something that we could bootstrap to a point where it's like, okay, you can call it an MVP.
[00:38:34.040 --> 00:38:39.640] It's not totally quote unquote done, but it's good enough for someone to pay for.
[00:38:39.640 --> 00:38:42.520] And we came across Paperbile because I was doing business coaching.
[00:38:42.520 --> 00:38:45.840] So I was advising other entrepreneurs about their business.
[00:38:45.840 --> 00:38:49.760] And it was just a classic, I just went looking for it.
[00:38:44.920 --> 00:38:51.360] I assumed it existed already.
[00:38:51.600 --> 00:38:55.040] I was like, okay, I just need a way for people to like buy a package of sessions.
[00:38:55.040 --> 00:38:57.760] You know, they'll pay and they'll schedule the sessions.
[00:38:57.760 --> 00:39:04.240] And there were workarounds or there were tools that could do it, but the tools were crappy and buggy.
[00:39:04.240 --> 00:39:05.520] So I just found this need.
[00:39:05.600 --> 00:39:09.920] Oh, there's not a good tool that does what coaches need.
[00:39:09.920 --> 00:39:13.120] So to that point, you had your checklist, right?
[00:39:13.120 --> 00:39:16.160] You wanted to be in a space where you could like leverage your brand.
[00:39:16.160 --> 00:39:17.760] It was a space that you knew.
[00:39:17.760 --> 00:39:19.840] And then you came on the idea of Paper Bell.
[00:39:19.840 --> 00:39:23.520] But how do you actually go about validating that solution?
[00:39:23.520 --> 00:39:36.160] Well, I would say the core solution that we came up with then and kind of still is the core of the product is just a way to sell a package of sessions, which doesn't really sound like anything until you try to do it.
[00:39:36.160 --> 00:39:47.200] And then you realize like, you know, with Acuity and Calendly, you can put a payment link on an appointment, but you can't actually sell a package of three appointments and have someone pay.
[00:39:47.200 --> 00:39:50.800] Or you definitely can't do a payment plan, which is very common for coaches.
[00:39:50.800 --> 00:39:52.240] You can't do a subscription.
[00:39:52.240 --> 00:40:03.280] So tying the payment and packages together actually, my audience did not resonate with this at all, but I thought of it as like, oh, it's kind of like a Shopify for coaches.
[00:40:03.280 --> 00:40:10.320] It's like a back-end system to be able to sell your coaching in all the same ways that Shopify is like, oh, yeah, you need to actually ship things.
[00:40:10.320 --> 00:40:12.640] Oh, yeah, maybe people order multiple quantities, right?
[00:40:12.640 --> 00:40:14.960] Like they put all the things together that you need for e-comm.
[00:40:15.280 --> 00:40:16.800] That's what we were doing for coaching.
[00:40:16.800 --> 00:40:19.760] So that was kind of the core idea of the solution.
[00:40:19.760 --> 00:40:34.360] And then, as far as validation, I mean, we did about like 10 customer interviews, but honestly, I've never had the experience of that being incredibly useful.
[00:40:29.440 --> 00:40:35.800] It was the same for Edgar.
[00:40:35.960 --> 00:40:37.960] It's like, okay, we sort of did it.
[00:40:39.640 --> 00:40:44.360] Maybe you can get a reaction at that point if it's like the worst idea ever.
[00:40:44.360 --> 00:40:46.440] You can validate that it's terrible.
[00:40:46.760 --> 00:40:49.640] Yeah, like maybe you can validate that it's terrible.
[00:40:49.640 --> 00:40:55.320] I've definitely never validated, okay, I know that people will pay for this before it's built.
[00:40:55.320 --> 00:41:05.000] I basically just talked to people kind of around, you know, just the classic, like finding out what problems they do have around collecting payments and scheduling and payment plans and things like that.
[00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:12.120] But I wouldn't say I felt like at that point, yes, I'm 100% sure that people will buy Paper Bell.
[00:41:12.440 --> 00:41:19.560] We did kind of the early research and we built it and then we launched it to the Edgar list.
[00:41:19.560 --> 00:41:28.200] And we did, we started at a few thousand MRR right from the beginning from the Edgar list.
[00:41:28.200 --> 00:41:32.520] And actually, something interesting about that though is then it only got worse.
[00:41:34.840 --> 00:41:36.520] Which I didn't really think through.
[00:41:36.520 --> 00:41:44.840] So the problem with launching to like an existing list, because we had a big list for Edgar, it wasn't a targeted list for coaches, but there were enough coaches.
[00:41:44.840 --> 00:41:55.240] But so we launched, it's like we get kind of all the people from the Edgar list, but because we were brand new, it's not like we had other marketing sources after that, you know?
[00:41:55.240 --> 00:42:09.320] So then for the next six months, maybe like nine months, the MRR just dropped as we built up the organic marketing over time because SEO is our biggest marketing channel.
[00:42:09.320 --> 00:42:12.200] So, and that's another interesting thing about being indie.
[00:42:12.200 --> 00:42:15.920] Like, it was good, especially when you're bootstrapped, right?
[00:42:14.920 --> 00:42:18.480] Because we had the maximum cash right at the beginning.
[00:42:18.800 --> 00:42:25.840] But if I was showing that chart to an investor, it would have looked like shit because it was going down every month.
[00:42:25.840 --> 00:42:29.280] It's funny because we were losing people, but we weren't bringing new people in.
[00:42:29.280 --> 00:42:45.440] This is like, did you ever see Paul Graham's like a trough of sorrow graph for like funded startups where it's like it's almost the exact same shape where they have like the what is it, like the tech crunch of initiation, where they'll launch on tech crunch and there'll be this huge spike because they just launched this huge audience, but like the same thing happens.
[00:42:45.440 --> 00:42:49.040] Like they don't really own that audience, so they don't like, they can't repeat launch there.
[00:42:49.040 --> 00:42:53.600] And so like after that, it's like you're super happy on day one and then like day two, it's like less.
[00:42:53.600 --> 00:42:59.920] And then you're just like, oh shit, now you're in the trough of sorrow where you don't actually have a repeatable marketing channel and your numbers are going down.
[00:43:00.160 --> 00:43:04.960] Like I had the exact same thing happen to me with indie hackers where I launched on Hacker News and it was awesome.
[00:43:04.960 --> 00:43:07.600] Like the first day I had like a thousand email subscribers.
[00:43:07.600 --> 00:43:10.080] I had so many people come to the website, thought it was amazing.
[00:43:10.080 --> 00:43:14.400] And then like every day for the next four weeks, there are fewer people coming to the website.
[00:43:14.400 --> 00:43:17.920] And it's like, shit, I haven't actually figured out anything.
[00:43:17.920 --> 00:43:22.480] And I've got to, I've got to, like, you just feel worse than if you're at zero sometimes when it's going down.
[00:43:22.480 --> 00:43:28.880] Yeah, I mean, the good part is you have to remind yourself that you have validated it because you're like, okay, humans paid for this.
[00:43:29.520 --> 00:43:31.440] And sometimes there is some tweaking to do.
[00:43:31.440 --> 00:43:37.440] Like, for example, the humans that paid from the Edgar list already had a huge trust in me as a founder.
[00:43:37.440 --> 00:43:41.840] So part of the reason that they paid is they're like, okay, this is like the new thing from Laura Roeder.
[00:43:41.840 --> 00:43:43.040] She makes good things.
[00:43:43.040 --> 00:43:46.640] Whereas then when we're marketing to new coaches, they've never heard of me.
[00:43:46.640 --> 00:43:51.040] So that's not going to be a selling point that's going to influence their decisions.
[00:43:51.040 --> 00:43:54.480] What would you say is like your sort of reputational superpower?
[00:43:54.480 --> 00:43:57.440] Like, if people know Laura Roeder, what do they think?
[00:43:57.440 --> 00:43:59.040] Do they think she makes really good products?
[00:43:59.040 --> 00:44:00.680] Do they think she's badass?
[00:43:59.840 --> 00:44:01.400] She's inspirational.
[00:44:01.560 --> 00:44:07.400] Like, what is like your specific mark that you leave on the things that you do?
[00:44:07.400 --> 00:44:13.240] I think people probably, I mean, I feel like it's one of those questions that maybe I'm not the best one to answer.
[00:44:13.240 --> 00:44:18.600] I think people associate me with a lot of work-life balance stuff because I talk about that a lot.
[00:44:18.600 --> 00:44:22.120] Because I've always worked part-time in my businesses.
[00:44:22.120 --> 00:44:26.440] I launched Edgar when I was pregnant, and I took maternity leave in the first year.
[00:44:26.440 --> 00:44:33.320] And I've been very vocal about that, largely because these are a lot of issues that affect female entrepreneurs.
[00:44:33.320 --> 00:44:43.720] And I think a lot of female entrepreneurs feel very left out because they feel like, okay, I want to work part-time, but that means I'm not a serious entrepreneur.
[00:44:43.720 --> 00:44:50.840] Or I want to even just take a two-month maternity leave instead of a, you know, entrepreneur three-day maternity leave.
[00:44:50.840 --> 00:44:53.720] But I feel like I'm not allowed to do that.
[00:44:53.720 --> 00:44:57.880] Obviously, these issues affect men as well, but you know, very commonly affect women.
[00:44:57.880 --> 00:44:59.000] So I don't know.
[00:44:59.000 --> 00:45:16.200] I feel like it's part of my job as a visible female founder to talk about these other things that are happening in my life because I'm not embarrassed about them, which I think sometimes people can be made to feel embarrassed if there's any other focus besides their brethren.
[00:45:16.360 --> 00:45:25.720] And then they're going to listen to this episode of the podcast, the part where you said, okay, then I decided I was going to take an entire week off from work between startups.
[00:45:26.200 --> 00:45:27.400] Just to see what it felt like.
[00:45:27.400 --> 00:45:29.480] It was like five days too long.
[00:45:30.120 --> 00:45:32.600] So how do you get out of this Trafa-Saro period?
[00:45:32.600 --> 00:45:38.840] How do you get to the point where it's like, you've got your product, you've got in mind that some people love this, some people paid for it.
[00:45:38.840 --> 00:45:42.680] I validated that there's a need here, but like you don't have a consistent marketing channel.
[00:45:42.680 --> 00:45:47.040] You're not sure if the product is even the right one because your numbers are going down, not up.
[00:45:47.520 --> 00:45:49.120] How do you turn that around?
[00:45:44.840 --> 00:45:49.840] Yeah.
[00:45:50.480 --> 00:45:59.680] So I think something that I do differently than a lot of entrepreneur stories that I read is I do focus on scalable right from the beginning.
[00:45:59.680 --> 00:46:06.400] And I should say, like when I was looking for the criteria for the next business, I know self-serve marketing.
[00:46:06.400 --> 00:46:09.520] I've never had a sales team for any of my businesses.
[00:46:09.520 --> 00:46:11.040] I've never done any outbound.
[00:46:11.040 --> 00:46:12.160] It's all been inbound.
[00:46:12.160 --> 00:46:18.400] So like I know how to create a self-serve, you know, online marketing machine.
[00:46:18.400 --> 00:46:23.680] So what I haven't done, which a lot of people do, is like the kind of do things that don't scale early.
[00:46:23.680 --> 00:46:31.200] Like so many SaaS founders do one-on-one demos with all their customers, even if they're at a lower price point.
[00:46:31.200 --> 00:46:32.800] I was always like, we can't do demos.
[00:46:32.800 --> 00:46:34.400] We cost $50 a month.
[00:46:34.400 --> 00:46:37.360] So I've never done a demo.
[00:46:37.360 --> 00:46:40.880] I'm like, no, we need a strategy that can keep going.
[00:46:40.880 --> 00:46:47.280] Like if the strategy is they like me, so they're going to buy from me, like that's not going to, that's not going to work out down the road.
[00:46:47.280 --> 00:46:52.800] So our core focus has always been SEO from day one.
[00:46:52.800 --> 00:46:58.000] And so while our MRR was going down, our search traffic was going up.
[00:46:58.000 --> 00:47:01.520] You know, it wasn't large in the early days, but it did exist.
[00:47:01.520 --> 00:47:05.520] So I think I always knew that that was my strategy.
[00:47:05.520 --> 00:47:12.080] So I had to just keep my eye on like, okay, are we, it's not huge numbers yet, but are we seeing results from the strategy?
[00:47:12.080 --> 00:47:13.520] Is the strategy effective?
[00:47:13.520 --> 00:47:25.520] And I know eventually those graphs will cross in the right way, and we'll actually start building significant MRR from our SEO in a way that can overcome the MRR we're losing.
[00:47:25.520 --> 00:47:26.800] And we did get there.
[00:47:26.800 --> 00:47:27.600] That's super smart.
[00:47:27.600 --> 00:47:31.880] When you target a niche, like you're like, obviously, Paperbill targets what you call it.
[00:47:29.840 --> 00:47:35.560] It's like sort of an industry-focused SaaS, a virtual-focused SaaS.
[00:47:36.120 --> 00:47:38.040] Essentially, you can just learn everything about that niche.
[00:47:38.040 --> 00:47:41.240] You know who these people are, and that makes research way easier.
[00:47:41.240 --> 00:47:44.440] And I think that also contributes to figuring out how you're going to grow.
[00:47:44.440 --> 00:47:46.040] Because you can see what channels are they on.
[00:47:46.200 --> 00:47:47.640] Are coaches on Hacker News?
[00:47:47.640 --> 00:47:48.680] Like, probably not.
[00:47:49.160 --> 00:47:51.800] Are coaches Googling these different search terms?
[00:47:51.800 --> 00:47:52.920] Like, probably.
[00:47:53.400 --> 00:47:54.360] Are coaches on Twitter?
[00:47:54.360 --> 00:47:55.880] Like, maybe a little bit less so.
[00:47:55.880 --> 00:48:01.560] And so it feels like you picked the right channel, SEO, for your exact audience and what they need.
[00:48:01.560 --> 00:48:04.040] But it's obviously not easy to grow SEO.
[00:48:04.040 --> 00:48:07.240] Like, SEO is one of the ones that requires, I think, the most patience.
[00:48:07.240 --> 00:48:08.760] It's the slowest.
[00:48:09.000 --> 00:48:13.240] You can put in a lot of work on month one and not see it pay off until month six.
[00:48:13.240 --> 00:48:14.120] How do you navigate that?
[00:48:14.280 --> 00:48:16.920] How do you navigate, like, oh, this is going really, really slow, and I want this to work?
[00:48:16.920 --> 00:48:19.720] And then you're right, like, it's a hugely scalable marketing channel.
[00:48:19.720 --> 00:48:24.840] Like, you can get hundreds of millions of page views with SEO, and other channels sort of peter out.
[00:48:24.840 --> 00:48:25.000] Right.
[00:48:25.080 --> 00:48:27.000] Like, how do you succeed at SEO?
[00:48:27.320 --> 00:48:32.280] Well, I think, first of all, SEO is still, people think it's harder than it is.
[00:48:32.280 --> 00:48:39.800] So I would say that SEO requires patience, but is not complicated per se.
[00:48:40.360 --> 00:48:45.320] Anyone who wants to learn SEO, watch the href's blogging for business course.
[00:48:45.640 --> 00:48:46.120] I love that one.
[00:48:47.640 --> 00:48:47.960] Super good.
[00:48:49.000 --> 00:48:49.720] It's so good.
[00:48:49.720 --> 00:48:53.000] It has everything you need to know to be successful.
[00:48:53.000 --> 00:48:56.120] And then obviously, there's a ton of other free content out there.
[00:48:56.120 --> 00:49:01.240] SEO people create a lot of content about SEO, so it's not hard to find.
[00:49:01.240 --> 00:49:18.400] But yeah, if you watch the Blogging for Business course and then you actually do all the things that are in that course, because I find what happens in SEO is a lot of people half-ass it, I guess, because it is that kind of bad, vicious cycle where it's like they're like, well, I don't really want to put too much effort into it until I really see that it's going to work.
[00:49:18.720 --> 00:49:24.000] But then it doesn't work because you didn't put much effort into it and then it compounds and it gets worse and worse.
[00:49:24.000 --> 00:49:29.280] So just all the little things like, you know, having an image for every blog post.
[00:49:29.280 --> 00:49:36.640] I mean, it sounds really obvious, but I find a lot of people don't actually write SEO optimized content like through and through.
[00:49:36.640 --> 00:49:49.840] Like maybe they kind of poke around and find some keywords and then they write an article that's sort of related to the keyword, but they don't do like all the best practices of, you know, make your H2s match up with secondary keywords.
[00:49:49.840 --> 00:49:53.200] Like none of this stuff is top secret information.
[00:49:53.200 --> 00:50:01.120] It's all in the blogging for business course, but having clear processes of things you do every time is really effective.
[00:50:01.120 --> 00:50:04.640] And a lot of markets are not as crowded as people think.
[00:50:04.640 --> 00:50:28.960] Like yes, it's hard to do SEO being a credit card points affiliate or SEO, but if you are a lawn care industry vertical, or even like in the SaaS world, if you're like, I help you with your cap table, like most topics out there are not incredibly competitive because, I mean, it's really just incredibly competitive if there's affiliate monetization.
[00:50:28.960 --> 00:50:32.960] If there's not affiliate monetization, why else would it be super competitive?
[00:50:32.960 --> 00:50:40.080] So I think a lot of startups cut themselves off before they start and think, oh, SEO is going to be too hard.
[00:50:40.080 --> 00:50:42.480] And it's like, you don't even have to be number one.
[00:50:42.480 --> 00:50:45.040] You just want to be on page one.
[00:50:45.040 --> 00:50:47.600] And in a lot of industries, it's not incredibly hard to get.
[00:50:47.760 --> 00:50:53.680] I feel like SEO is really similar to investing in the sense that the problem is emotional.
[00:50:53.680 --> 00:50:57.360] The problem is like you get cold feet because you're like, okay, I'm putting this work in.
[00:50:57.360 --> 00:50:59.760] You get very little intermediate feedback.
[00:50:59.880 --> 00:51:03

Prompt 2: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 3: Segments


Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 4: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Prompt 5: Context Setup

You are an expert data extractor tasked with analyzing a podcast transcript. 
I will provide you with part 2 of 2 from a podcast transcript. 
I will then ask you to extract different types of information from this content in subsequent messages. Please confirm you have received and understood the transcript content.

Transcript section:
every blog post.
[00:49:29.280 --> 00:49:36.640] I mean, it sounds really obvious, but I find a lot of people don't actually write SEO optimized content like through and through.
[00:49:36.640 --> 00:49:49.840] Like maybe they kind of poke around and find some keywords and then they write an article that's sort of related to the keyword, but they don't do like all the best practices of, you know, make your H2s match up with secondary keywords.
[00:49:49.840 --> 00:49:53.200] Like none of this stuff is top secret information.
[00:49:53.200 --> 00:50:01.120] It's all in the blogging for business course, but having clear processes of things you do every time is really effective.
[00:50:01.120 --> 00:50:04.640] And a lot of markets are not as crowded as people think.
[00:50:04.640 --> 00:50:28.960] Like yes, it's hard to do SEO being a credit card points affiliate or SEO, but if you are a lawn care industry vertical, or even like in the SaaS world, if you're like, I help you with your cap table, like most topics out there are not incredibly competitive because, I mean, it's really just incredibly competitive if there's affiliate monetization.
[00:50:28.960 --> 00:50:32.960] If there's not affiliate monetization, why else would it be super competitive?
[00:50:32.960 --> 00:50:40.080] So I think a lot of startups cut themselves off before they start and think, oh, SEO is going to be too hard.
[00:50:40.080 --> 00:50:42.480] And it's like, you don't even have to be number one.
[00:50:42.480 --> 00:50:45.040] You just want to be on page one.
[00:50:45.040 --> 00:50:47.600] And in a lot of industries, it's not incredibly hard to get.
[00:50:47.760 --> 00:50:53.680] I feel like SEO is really similar to investing in the sense that the problem is emotional.
[00:50:53.680 --> 00:50:57.360] The problem is like you get cold feet because you're like, okay, I'm putting this work in.
[00:50:57.360 --> 00:50:59.760] You get very little intermediate feedback.
[00:50:59.880 --> 00:51:03.160] Like, it's not like a graph that goes over and goes up over time.
[00:51:03.160 --> 00:51:07.800] Like, you're putting in all this work and you feel like you're just basically punching a lot of different auto tickets.
[00:51:07.800 --> 00:51:09.960] And it's almost like you kind of have to have faith.
[00:51:09.960 --> 00:51:22.040] And so I'm curious with you, because it seems like, unless I'm mistaken, it seems like SEO was like your big strategy to get this trough of sorrow turning up in the right direction.
[00:51:22.840 --> 00:51:26.680] Like, what was the point where your revenue started increasing?
[00:51:26.680 --> 00:51:30.760] Was it just like you just kind of had faith and you did this the right way and eventually it happened?
[00:51:30.760 --> 00:51:33.400] Or were there any like cold feet moments?
[00:51:33.720 --> 00:51:51.640] The six month mark is when we started to get like, okay, now we're getting consistent growth month over month, and now that growth is starting to really add up, which is not really that long, but I think the hard part is, like I said, you do have to kind of invest in advance, whether that's with your time or your money.
[00:51:51.640 --> 00:51:54.920] You know, for me, I've always hired people to take care of the SEO.
[00:51:54.920 --> 00:51:59.800] So I hired SEO specialists to write the briefs, and then I hire writers to actually write the articles.
[00:51:59.800 --> 00:52:01.160] So I'm spending money on it.
[00:52:01.160 --> 00:52:05.800] Obviously, if you're writing it all yourself and doing all your keyword research, there's going to be a lot of time.
[00:52:05.800 --> 00:52:11.400] So I think if you told people like it'll take six months, a lot of people would be like, well, shit, I'll devote six months to it.
[00:52:11.400 --> 00:52:12.920] So that's not that bad.
[00:52:12.920 --> 00:52:25.080] But because you do have to put all of the time and money during those six months, where maybe you're seeing, you know, almost nothing during the six months, it really puts people off.
[00:52:25.080 --> 00:52:28.520] And it did help, of course, that I had done a company before.
[00:52:28.520 --> 00:52:31.800] And it's not like Edgar, we actually didn't do amazing SEO.
[00:52:31.800 --> 00:52:35.160] We started doing better SEO later, and I saw how effective it was.
[00:52:35.400 --> 00:52:40.680] Most of the company, we did the kind of half-assed version, like I said, like, oh, I think people are sort of interested in this.
[00:52:40.680 --> 00:52:42.120] We'll write an article about it.
[00:52:42.120 --> 00:52:44.120] And that was pretty effective, too.
[00:52:44.480 --> 00:52:47.760] You know, like over time, like even that worked out.
[00:52:47.760 --> 00:52:51.440] So it's like, okay, over time, if you do it badly, something will happen.
[00:52:51.440 --> 00:52:53.600] And then if you do it well, a lot will happen.
[00:52:53.600 --> 00:52:55.680] How do you hire like SEO specialists?
[00:52:55.680 --> 00:52:57.840] This is something we want to work on for indie hackers.
[00:52:58.000 --> 00:52:59.040] We're not that good at SEO.
[00:52:59.040 --> 00:52:59.600] We should be.
[00:52:59.600 --> 00:53:00.720] There's so many topics we could cover.
[00:53:00.960 --> 00:53:04.320] What's your playbook for, I guess, finding people to help with that?
[00:53:04.640 --> 00:53:11.040] So my playbook for hiring SEO specialists, it goes back to what I said about finding a specialist freelancer.
[00:53:11.040 --> 00:53:14.720] So I haven't hired bigger agencies.
[00:53:15.040 --> 00:53:19.360] Also, as a bootstrap company, often, you know, the price points don't work out with agencies.
[00:53:19.360 --> 00:53:24.160] Also, big agencies, you're paying for a lot of overhead to put all the pieces together.
[00:53:24.960 --> 00:53:31.200] So, you know, if you go to that hrest blogging for business course, there's a lot of different moving pieces.
[00:53:31.200 --> 00:53:35.200] It's like do the keyword research, put the keyword research into a brief.
[00:53:35.360 --> 00:53:40.560] You know, the writer who's experienced with SEO writes the brief, somebody else does the graphic for the article.
[00:53:40.560 --> 00:53:47.920] Basically, you can save a lot of money by being the project manager, putting all those pieces together, which is exactly what I've done.
[00:53:47.920 --> 00:53:56.320] And I think it makes it a little easier to find the right person because you're not trying to find this person that can do the whole process.
[00:53:56.320 --> 00:54:02.960] Like for the writer, I always recommend ProBlogger Job Board has a lot of amazing freelance writers.
[00:54:02.960 --> 00:54:05.040] You can find people with a certain specialty.
[00:54:05.040 --> 00:54:07.520] Our writers are from the coaching industry.
[00:54:07.520 --> 00:54:10.240] You know, they know about coaching.
[00:54:10.240 --> 00:54:12.240] They're not the cheapest writers.
[00:54:12.240 --> 00:54:14.080] They're not crazy expensive either.
[00:54:14.080 --> 00:54:16.160] It's like middle of the road expense.
[00:54:16.160 --> 00:54:21.600] But they're handed a complete brief with like all the topics that their article needs to cover.
[00:54:21.600 --> 00:54:25.280] So they can do a really great job on just that part.
[00:54:25.280 --> 00:54:26.880] Well, listen, I know you got to run.
[00:54:26.880 --> 00:54:29.520] What's your advice for fledgling indie hackers?
[00:54:29.520 --> 00:54:36.760] What's something you think they could learn from your experiences, sort of take with them as they try to come up with an idea and try to build a business?
[00:54:37.640 --> 00:54:43.240] I would say there's a blog post that I really like that I wrote, that I like Anthony wrote.
[00:54:43.240 --> 00:54:44.920] That's a brilliant blog post.
[00:54:44.920 --> 00:54:46.920] That's a brilliant blog post.
[00:54:47.800 --> 00:54:50.360] And it's called You Get What You Go For.
[00:54:50.360 --> 00:55:02.200] And in the post, I'm talking about how, you know, often we say these things are our goal, but if you look at your actions, your actions aren't really lining up with what your goal is.
[00:55:02.200 --> 00:55:11.640] So the story in the blog post is about these brothers here in the UK that are self-made brothers that bought Asda, which is like the Walmart of the UK.
[00:55:11.640 --> 00:55:14.120] Like they bought the entire Asda chip.
[00:55:14.120 --> 00:55:19.880] They're like, they're bootstrappers who bought Walmart, you know, is basically their story.
[00:55:20.040 --> 00:55:21.320] They started Bootstrapped.
[00:55:21.320 --> 00:55:24.200] Obviously, they raised a ton of money along the way.
[00:55:24.200 --> 00:55:35.880] And it's an example of like, okay, if your goal is to buy Asda, are you, you know, for example, doing your own SEO or are you putting together 800 million of capital?
[00:55:35.880 --> 00:55:37.720] Like you're doing the latter.
[00:55:37.720 --> 00:55:49.320] So I think you just need to look at: are my actions the type of actions that someone who's trying to get the outcome that I'm trying to get is doing?
[00:55:49.560 --> 00:55:55.160] Because it's very easy to spend a lot of time kind of playing around with this, playing around with that.
[00:55:55.160 --> 00:56:03.320] It's like, okay, well, if I look at my day, do I have any hope of getting to where I want to be, or or not really?
[00:56:03.320 --> 00:56:11.960] And if you don't know what to do, it's like, read Indie hackers, listen to these interviews, you know, watch great free online courses from hrefs.
[00:56:11.960 --> 00:56:15.120] People have put the pieces of the puzzle out there.
[00:56:15.440 --> 00:56:19.360] Are you every day in some little way executing those pieces?
[00:56:14.600 --> 00:56:19.760] I love that.
[00:56:20.000 --> 00:56:23.440] If you're trying to go to the moon, make sure you're building a rocket ship, not building a car.
[00:56:23.680 --> 00:56:24.640] It's not going to work.
[00:56:24.640 --> 00:56:24.960] Yeah.
[00:56:24.960 --> 00:56:26.640] Laura, thanks a ton for coming on.
[00:56:26.880 --> 00:56:32.320] Can you let listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and about Paperbell and anything else you're working on?
[00:56:32.640 --> 00:56:36.400] Yeah, so the best place to find me is Twitter, LKR.
[00:56:37.040 --> 00:56:38.560] Go to coachcompare.com.
[00:56:38.560 --> 00:56:43.520] I feel like probably there's more people listening to this looking for coaches than there are coaches.
[00:56:43.520 --> 00:56:49.360] So if you're looking for a coach, if you were convinced by this episode to find a coach, it's a free site.
[00:56:49.360 --> 00:56:52.720] You can find a coach at coachcompare.com or paperball.com.
[00:56:52.960 --> 00:56:53.440] Amazing.
[00:56:53.440 --> 00:56:54.480] Thanks so much, Laura.
[00:56:54.480 --> 00:56:55.440] Awesome.

Prompt 6: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 7: Segments


Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 8: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Full Transcript

[00:00:05.760 --> 00:00:06.880] Hey dude, what's up?
[00:00:06.880 --> 00:00:08.480] What's going on with your apartment?
[00:00:08.480 --> 00:00:09.760] How's it going?
[00:00:09.760 --> 00:00:10.720] It's a disaster.
[00:00:10.720 --> 00:00:14.000] I mean, did you see a guy tried to burn my entire apartment down?
[00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:16.400] You didn't tell me about this guy for years.
[00:00:16.400 --> 00:00:17.920] This is the same dude, right?
[00:00:18.240 --> 00:00:19.520] Yeah, for a year.
[00:00:20.080 --> 00:00:21.840] He lived above me.
[00:00:21.840 --> 00:00:23.360] I don't really know where he is now.
[00:00:23.760 --> 00:00:27.360] He's in prison somewhere, but basically it's this guy.
[00:00:27.360 --> 00:00:29.920] He's got like some kind of mental illness.
[00:00:29.920 --> 00:00:31.600] So it's really unfortunate.
[00:00:31.600 --> 00:00:36.480] But the result is that he's also, you know, I think they're trying to evict him.
[00:00:36.480 --> 00:00:40.160] So long story short, he's like tried to like flood his apartment.
[00:00:41.520 --> 00:00:44.640] He shoved a hose into a sink and flooded his apartment.
[00:00:44.640 --> 00:00:45.600] So that dripped down.
[00:00:45.600 --> 00:00:47.040] That was one disaster.
[00:00:47.040 --> 00:00:51.120] He set fire where you're next to an alleyway with all these like trash bags.
[00:00:51.120 --> 00:00:55.440] He threw a match or something into there, set fire to the entire alleyway one time.
[00:00:55.440 --> 00:00:57.760] Both of these situations were in New York City.
[00:00:57.760 --> 00:01:01.040] So for whatever reason, they're like, well, you can't evict him.
[00:01:01.040 --> 00:01:02.240] He's got these mental health issues.
[00:01:02.240 --> 00:01:04.160] We don't have like a way, a place to put him.
[00:01:04.160 --> 00:01:07.120] So we're just going to keep him in the apartment.
[00:01:07.120 --> 00:01:20.000] And essentially, a few days ago, the straw that broke the camel's back moment happened where he literally set his personal unit on fire entirely and like just killed us.
[00:01:20.400 --> 00:01:21.200] Yeah, on purpose.
[00:01:21.520 --> 00:01:22.880] And then he bolted.
[00:01:23.360 --> 00:01:25.120] And he was just at large.
[00:01:25.120 --> 00:01:30.400] He's a two-time arsonist, one-time flutter who's doing all this intentionally.
[00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:35.920] And the renter laws are friendly enough that he just could just come back to the building he's trying to burn down.
[00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:36.320] Right.
[00:01:36.640 --> 00:01:39.040] But this time it wasn't okay.
[00:01:39.040 --> 00:01:41.120] So I'm outside freaking out.
[00:01:41.120 --> 00:01:42.800] My girlfriend's out there kind of freaking out.
[00:01:42.800 --> 00:01:50.080] All these people that I've never met in my apartment building are all like meeting each other for the first time, sharing horror stories.
[00:01:50.080 --> 00:01:55.120] Apparently, the girl that lives directly below him, this guy was like walking around with a crowbar.
[00:01:55.120 --> 00:01:56.880] He was definitely at his wit's end.
[00:01:56.880 --> 00:01:58.800] And he just knocked on her door.
[00:01:58.800 --> 00:02:01.880] She told us, that morning, right before he set the building on fire.
[00:02:01.880 --> 00:02:04.280] And he goes, Hey, I'm the guy from upstairs.
[00:02:04.600 --> 00:02:06.040] And she's like, she had no idea.
[00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:06.920] She was like, oh, okay, cool.
[00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:07.800] She just moved in.
[00:02:08.040 --> 00:02:09.320] What guy from upstairs?
[00:02:09.320 --> 00:02:09.800] Yeah.
[00:02:10.120 --> 00:02:11.080] She's like, she described him.
[00:02:12.360 --> 00:02:14.040] The guy, everybody knows.
[00:02:14.040 --> 00:02:18.280] She described him and she's like, this guy had on a coat with no shirt on underneath.
[00:02:18.280 --> 00:02:23.400] He had skinny jeans on, mismatching shoes, and just knocked on my door and was like super polite.
[00:02:23.480 --> 00:02:26.280] He was like, hey, you know, I'm the guy from upstairs.
[00:02:26.280 --> 00:02:27.800] You know, like, they're trying to evict me.
[00:02:27.800 --> 00:02:30.680] They've been trying to evict me for, you know, a few years.
[00:02:31.320 --> 00:02:33.000] And, you know, they gutted my apartment.
[00:02:33.160 --> 00:02:35.480] Do you want to come up and like check it out?
[00:02:36.440 --> 00:02:39.160] And she literally was like, no.
[00:02:39.240 --> 00:02:42.280] Cut to an hour later and he tried to burn the place down.
[00:02:42.280 --> 00:02:44.040] So anyway, so he was gone.
[00:02:44.040 --> 00:02:44.760] He ran away.
[00:02:44.760 --> 00:02:45.320] There were cops.
[00:02:45.320 --> 00:02:46.440] There were firefighters.
[00:02:46.440 --> 00:02:47.320] The whole nine yards, right?
[00:02:47.320 --> 00:02:48.600] It was pandemonium.
[00:02:48.680 --> 00:02:49.080] I don't know.
[00:02:49.080 --> 00:02:50.360] It was this huge mess.
[00:02:50.840 --> 00:02:53.000] Who set an apartment building on fire?
[00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:53.960] Hey, Laura.
[00:02:53.960 --> 00:02:57.640] So this guy lived a few stories up from me, Laura.
[00:02:57.640 --> 00:02:59.400] And long story short, he tried to burn it down.
[00:02:59.560 --> 00:03:02.360] And there was no fire damage or anything in my apartment.
[00:03:02.360 --> 00:03:07.480] But then the firefighters went into his apartment and they just like flooded his apartment with me.
[00:03:07.480 --> 00:03:09.480] Like they just hosed down his entire apartment.
[00:03:09.480 --> 00:03:17.320] So by the time we got back in, it's like seven different like faucets were opened up essentially in my ceiling.
[00:03:17.320 --> 00:03:19.720] Like every ceiling light, we have like these like recessed lights.
[00:03:19.720 --> 00:03:21.000] They were all like faucets.
[00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:22.200] My bathroom.
[00:03:22.200 --> 00:03:24.280] And it was like, it wasn't just flooding water.
[00:03:24.280 --> 00:03:25.800] It wasn't just dripping water.
[00:03:25.800 --> 00:03:28.440] It was brown, basically fire water.
[00:03:28.440 --> 00:03:31.080] So it smelled like a campfire in our apartment.
[00:03:31.320 --> 00:03:32.440] What everybody wants in their apartment.
[00:03:32.440 --> 00:03:33.400] Can I come visit?
[00:03:33.800 --> 00:03:38.920] You know, whenever the fire crew finishes like replastering and like, there's all this work.
[00:03:39.480 --> 00:03:46.960] I've been working in my gym for the last few days and only today, basically, am I back in my office?
[00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:49.200] So it's been very dramatic.
[00:03:49.200 --> 00:03:49.840] Laura, how are you?
[00:03:49.840 --> 00:03:51.280] It's been a while.
[00:03:44.840 --> 00:03:52.320] Good.
[00:03:52.640 --> 00:03:53.280] Yeah.
[00:03:53.280 --> 00:03:54.000] Things are good.
[00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:54.240] Yeah.
[00:03:54.240 --> 00:03:55.760] You're a podcast veteran.
[00:03:55.760 --> 00:04:00.000] You've been on the Indie Hackers podcast, I think it was five and a half years ago.
[00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:01.200] You were episode number 10.
[00:04:01.200 --> 00:04:01.760] That's crazy.
[00:04:01.760 --> 00:04:05.520] That was like April 2017.
[00:04:05.520 --> 00:04:06.480] You came on.
[00:04:06.480 --> 00:04:06.880] Wow.
[00:04:06.880 --> 00:04:08.640] I had no idea I was number 10.
[00:04:08.640 --> 00:04:12.960] Now I seem very like cutting edge from being like read to your podcast.
[00:04:12.960 --> 00:04:13.840] I think you have something.
[00:04:13.920 --> 00:04:15.120] Where are we at now?
[00:04:15.680 --> 00:04:17.200] I don't know, close to 300.
[00:04:17.600 --> 00:04:18.960] It's been almost six years.
[00:04:19.200 --> 00:04:21.680] Laura, you're a serial indie hacker.
[00:04:21.680 --> 00:04:25.760] Your last company I interviewed you for in 2017 was called Meat Edgar.
[00:04:25.760 --> 00:04:28.080] That did millions in revenue, I believe.
[00:04:28.080 --> 00:04:33.120] And then you sold it for like a life-changing sum, which is something that most indie hackers can only dream of doing.
[00:04:33.120 --> 00:04:43.200] And then you kind of leapfrogged eventually to your new company, Paper Bell, which was ramen profitable, I believe, at the time that you sold Meat Edgar, which is again a goal that most indie hackers don't reach.
[00:04:43.200 --> 00:04:51.120] And now Paper Bell, I don't know if you share revenue numbers, but I saw on your website, you processed multiple millions of dollars in payments just last year.
[00:04:51.120 --> 00:04:53.120] So I guess my question to you is: when is enough enough?
[00:04:53.120 --> 00:04:56.080] How many successful companies do you plan to start?
[00:04:57.360 --> 00:04:58.000] Yeah.
[00:04:58.720 --> 00:05:03.040] So yeah, we've processed multiple millions for our customers.
[00:05:03.040 --> 00:05:07.680] We are not at multiple millions revenue yet, just so that's clear to listeners.
[00:05:07.680 --> 00:05:09.760] But I think we'll definitely get there.
[00:05:09.760 --> 00:05:14.080] And yeah, I mean, I love to start SaaS businesses.
[00:05:14.080 --> 00:05:16.720] I love to start indie businesses.
[00:05:17.040 --> 00:05:25.600] You know, when I sold Edgar, I mean, I had already started Paper Bell by the time I sold Edgar, so I kind of knew that's what I wanted to do next.
[00:05:25.600 --> 00:05:31.080] But I did actually force myself to take just a week off when I sold Edgar.
[00:05:31.160 --> 00:05:42.280] I'm like, okay, I'm going to take the next week, you know, not a holiday, but just a week not working, just to have at least some experience of I could live my life and not work.
[00:05:42.280 --> 00:05:46.120] Like, let's take a week and see what that's like, just so I make sure I have the experience.
[00:05:46.120 --> 00:05:47.400] And it's like, yeah, that was fun.
[00:05:47.560 --> 00:05:50.920] One whole week I want to have one whole week.
[00:05:51.320 --> 00:05:54.280] You had like a restless leg syndrome that entire week.
[00:05:54.280 --> 00:05:57.720] I mean, you can't, you can't turn off the brain is the problem.
[00:05:57.720 --> 00:05:59.880] So you love starting indie businesses.
[00:05:59.880 --> 00:06:02.200] Obviously, starting indie businesses is hard, right?
[00:06:02.200 --> 00:06:03.000] It's a lot of work.
[00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:04.200] What is it that you love about it?
[00:06:04.200 --> 00:06:05.800] Why do you love it?
[00:06:06.120 --> 00:06:10.520] You know, I was thinking about this the other day when I was having a hard time with my kids.
[00:06:10.520 --> 00:06:12.920] So I have two kids and they're four and seven.
[00:06:12.920 --> 00:06:24.440] And I was thinking, my business is just like the opposite of the challenges that I have with my kids because kids are challenging because you kind of have no control at the end of the day.
[00:06:24.440 --> 00:06:30.920] Like you're trying to sort of shape things and you're trying to test, you know, your input to see what their output is going to be.
[00:06:30.920 --> 00:06:37.240] But they are independent humans who kind of do, who kind of do what they're going to do.
[00:06:37.240 --> 00:06:46.840] Whereas I feel like in a business, and not like I have total control over everything that happens, but it's kind of like a little game where you get to create your own universe.
[00:06:46.840 --> 00:06:49.400] You know, like I get to hire all the people in this.
[00:06:49.400 --> 00:06:51.560] So I get to choose everyone who's in the universe.
[00:06:51.560 --> 00:06:53.320] I get to choose what kind of customers we're going to have.
[00:06:53.320 --> 00:06:55.320] I get to choose what kind of marketing we're going to have.
[00:06:55.320 --> 00:06:58.360] It's like this fun little thing where it's like a little, it's like a SimCity.
[00:06:58.360 --> 00:07:07.640] It's a SimCity experience or Sim Tower, which I was also a fan of, where you get to build, you get to just craft your own little world and every detail of it.
[00:07:07.640 --> 00:07:11.800] And sometimes it is, especially because I work physically alone.
[00:07:11.800 --> 00:07:13.160] I have a little office that I rent.
[00:07:13.160 --> 00:07:16.320] You know, I have people I work with online, but they're just remote.
[00:07:14.600 --> 00:07:17.520] And so sometimes it really does.
[00:07:17.680 --> 00:07:23.680] I kind of look up and think, this is kind of strange what I'm doing in my own little, crafting my own little world on the computer by myself.
[00:07:23.920 --> 00:07:24.320] What's funny?
[00:07:24.320 --> 00:07:31.120] Courtland and I, I think literally yesterday were having a conversation about almost like two kinds of people when it comes to businesses.
[00:07:31.120 --> 00:07:36.160] There are people that enter their businesses and they're like, okay, this is this system that I can control.
[00:07:36.160 --> 00:07:37.760] And I can look at all like the SimCity.
[00:07:37.760 --> 00:07:40.320] I can think about all the different people and how they interact.
[00:07:40.480 --> 00:07:42.160] Courtland's all about like the four fits.
[00:07:42.160 --> 00:07:45.040] Like, okay, the business has a product and it has a fit with a channel and a product.
[00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:46.880] Like you can kind of see it that way.
[00:07:46.880 --> 00:07:52.400] And then there's also sort of a way where you're just like, okay, well, this is kind of like this sort of lottery ticket that I pull.
[00:07:52.400 --> 00:08:00.320] And if I just have like the right idea and kind of just, you know, launch, like close my eyes and jump, then you know, then I can be financially free.
[00:08:00.320 --> 00:08:03.120] But you take obviously the first, the first path.
[00:08:03.120 --> 00:08:05.280] I like the kids versus business comparison.
[00:08:05.280 --> 00:08:07.360] You know, like just to be like a little game out there.
[00:08:07.440 --> 00:08:09.600] Like, okay, would you rather start a business or have kids?
[00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:14.560] Would you rather make millions of dollars or would you rather spend millions of dollars?
[00:08:15.200 --> 00:08:16.480] Well, I'm doing both.
[00:08:16.480 --> 00:08:19.200] That's why I have to, you know, have the balance.
[00:08:19.200 --> 00:08:29.920] But it is sometimes actually, I do have to kind of remind myself not to be frustrated with my kids because I do spend a lot of my day in this little world that I have a lot of control over.
[00:08:29.920 --> 00:08:31.760] But I can't just say, brush your teeth.
[00:08:31.760 --> 00:08:32.720] And then they do it instantly.
[00:08:32.720 --> 00:08:40.160] I have to be like, okay, which baby shark brush your teeth video are we going to put on to get them to stand there and brush for the whole time.
[00:08:40.160 --> 00:08:45.920] So I have to remind myself that in not all areas of life do I get to be the emperor, like I do.
[00:08:46.320 --> 00:08:52.440] There's a Stephen Covey quote about this that Cortland and I, we do a lot of bickering sometimes, and we have to remind ourselves.
[00:08:52.440 --> 00:08:58.280] And he says that you should try to be efficient with things, but then you have to be effective with people, right?
[00:08:58.280 --> 00:08:59.200] Like, you can't control it.
[00:08:59.680 --> 00:09:06.040] You have to, like, kind of let the thing flow in this way that's not like, you know, input, output.
[00:08:59.920 --> 00:09:07.240] Yeah, that's the way to do it.
[00:09:07.480 --> 00:09:12.120] I think Channing is like the most, you're like the most efficient person that I know.
[00:09:12.120 --> 00:09:14.360] And so when we meet, Channing's like, we're on a timer.
[00:09:14.360 --> 00:09:17.480] We've got exactly, you know, 45 minutes and then hard cut off bubble.
[00:09:17.480 --> 00:09:18.840] I'm like, dude, I'm your brother.
[00:09:18.840 --> 00:09:20.200] Just chill out.
[00:09:20.840 --> 00:09:24.360] But let me describe your new startup so the listeners know what you're working on now, Laura.
[00:09:24.360 --> 00:09:25.560] It's called Paper Bell.
[00:09:25.720 --> 00:09:28.680] I'm going to do my best to sort of pitch it because your homepage is really cool.
[00:09:28.680 --> 00:09:34.520] You've got like this long form sales letter as your homepage, which is not very common for startups.
[00:09:35.240 --> 00:09:44.280] But basically, let's say I'm an executive coach, or let's say I'm a life coach, and I spend a bunch of time learning how to be a good coach, learning how to find clients.
[00:09:44.280 --> 00:09:45.080] And it's really hard.
[00:09:45.080 --> 00:09:49.240] Most life coaches are not that good, but I'm a rare example of a good one.
[00:09:49.240 --> 00:09:56.200] So clients come to me, I work by magic, they have these breakthrough moments, and they live better lives, and then become a better version of themselves.
[00:09:56.200 --> 00:09:58.360] And I'm awesome, they're awesome, everything's awesome.
[00:09:58.360 --> 00:09:59.480] I'm an awesome coach.
[00:09:59.800 --> 00:10:08.200] But even though my coaching skills are great, I'm also having to be sort of this amateur, no-code expert on the side, plugging together all these random tools online.
[00:10:08.360 --> 00:10:09.320] I don't know how payments work.
[00:10:09.320 --> 00:10:10.440] I don't know how to build a website.
[00:10:10.600 --> 00:10:14.360] I don't know how to do scheduling and some finding 50 million different tools.
[00:10:14.360 --> 00:10:16.920] And it's all just hacked together and it's just a crazy mess.
[00:10:16.920 --> 00:10:21.480] And I don't even want to worry about that kind of stuff because I'm just trying to be a good life coach.
[00:10:21.480 --> 00:10:22.920] Enter Paper Bell.
[00:10:22.920 --> 00:10:24.680] So Paper Bell is my savior here.
[00:10:24.680 --> 00:10:29.640] You guys are like an all-in-one tool designed specifically for coaches.
[00:10:29.640 --> 00:10:31.400] You handle payments, you handle scheduling.
[00:10:31.400 --> 00:10:33.480] You give me a nice landing page I can customize.
[00:10:33.480 --> 00:10:38.920] You handle signing of contracts, and a million other little specific things that coaches might want.
[00:10:38.920 --> 00:10:45.840] So I just use Paper Bell, turn it on, pay you guys, and I don't have to worry about anything after that except for my coaching.
[00:10:45.840 --> 00:10:49.680] Other people's pitches are always so much better than your own.
[00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:51.200] I feel like I would make it way too.
[00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:54.560] I'm just going to take that video and put it right on my home.
[00:10:54.800 --> 00:11:01.200] And you said I'm a life coach, so everyone will be like, oh, life coach Cortland, just like describing how he uses this.
[00:11:01.200 --> 00:11:03.760] But yes, that was a very, very good overview.
[00:11:03.760 --> 00:11:10.560] You know, people coming from, you know, the SaaS world, which I know a lot of listeners are, I would describe it as an industry vertical SaaS.
[00:11:10.560 --> 00:11:18.960] You know, there's all these SaaS businesses that focus on a specific industry, a specific vertical, and say, here's the tool to manage that vertical.
[00:11:18.960 --> 00:11:24.880] And that's what Paper Bell is for coaches, executive coaches, life coaches, relationship coaches.
[00:11:24.880 --> 00:11:29.360] That type of coach who primarily works online is really our core market.
[00:11:29.440 --> 00:11:32.320] Have you ever had a life coach yourself?
[00:11:32.320 --> 00:11:38.720] Yeah, I've had more, like right now, I'm working with a business coach and a mindset coach.
[00:11:38.720 --> 00:11:42.080] So the mindset coach is kind of more like a life coach.
[00:11:42.080 --> 00:11:46.640] For me, usually the stuff I want to focus on with a coach is more business stuff.
[00:11:46.960 --> 00:11:50.720] But, you know, the two definitely become intermingled, life and business.
[00:11:50.720 --> 00:11:52.080] I've never had a life coach.
[00:11:52.480 --> 00:11:54.960] I've dated two life coaches.
[00:11:55.280 --> 00:11:56.960] One was a sex and a relationship coach.
[00:11:56.960 --> 00:11:58.480] So she worked with couples.
[00:11:58.480 --> 00:11:59.680] But it feels like it's exploding.
[00:11:59.680 --> 00:12:12.560] It feels like it's this sort of avenue for a lot of people who want to be self-employed, who don't want to work for the man, who want to work with people, who want to help people and feel like they're having a positive impact, and who want the possibility of making a lot of money.
[00:12:12.560 --> 00:12:15.040] Like my ex, she did coaching.
[00:12:15.040 --> 00:12:18.240] She made literally millions of dollars a year.
[00:12:18.720 --> 00:12:22.080] I don't think that's like a standard outcome, but she was super good.
[00:12:22.080 --> 00:12:23.200] She'd been doing it for years.
[00:12:23.200 --> 00:12:27.120] She was charging her clients $400 a session, sometimes more.
[00:12:27.120 --> 00:12:28.720] She was booked completely.
[00:12:28.720 --> 00:12:29.840] She was turning down clients.
[00:12:30.040 --> 00:12:33.720] And then she started teaching other people how to do what she was doing.
[00:12:33.720 --> 00:12:35.400] And that was an education business.
[00:12:35.400 --> 00:12:38.440] So she was charging them $14,000, $15,000 a year.
[00:12:38.440 --> 00:12:42.200] She had hundreds of people signing up for that, and she was just making bank.
[00:12:42.200 --> 00:12:47.080] And I feel like not a lot of people are aware of just how lucrative and how, I guess, promising coaching can be.
[00:12:47.080 --> 00:12:49.320] So it's a really interesting niche to me.
[00:12:49.320 --> 00:12:55.240] Yes, it's a huge industry and it's very much a growing industry.
[00:12:55.240 --> 00:13:01.080] It's something that a lot of people are still skeptical of or they're not sure what it means, especially a life coach, right?
[00:13:01.080 --> 00:13:04.680] People will be like, oh, is that a joke to have a coach for your life?
[00:13:04.680 --> 00:13:05.480] And I'm like, I don't know.
[00:13:05.480 --> 00:13:07.560] It seems like a great thing to have my life.
[00:13:07.560 --> 00:13:09.320] Like, I want my life to be good.
[00:13:09.320 --> 00:13:10.760] And that's also like.
[00:13:11.080 --> 00:13:11.800] Right, right.
[00:13:11.800 --> 00:13:20.440] If you're not familiar with coaching, I mean, I think that's kind of a good way to describe it: it's someone who helps you achieve your goals in a certain area.
[00:13:20.440 --> 00:13:24.920] Because often people will be like, oh, well, like, I could just, my friends help me do that.
[00:13:24.920 --> 00:13:32.200] And it's like, if you have a friend that wants to talk to you for an hour every week about, you know, just your own stuff, cool.
[00:13:32.200 --> 00:13:34.760] That's a very, that's a very good friend.
[00:13:34.760 --> 00:13:37.000] And maybe that will be enough for you.
[00:13:37.240 --> 00:13:42.680] But yeah, I think it's incredibly helpful to have someone who's just, who's just there to help you, right?
[00:13:42.680 --> 00:13:50.840] Whether it's a relationship thing or a business thing, who's there to help you just get better results in whatever area of your life you want better results.
[00:13:51.080 --> 00:13:52.520] I'm so fascinated by this.
[00:13:52.520 --> 00:13:54.120] Courtland will probably attest.
[00:13:54.120 --> 00:14:00.360] Maybe my biggest obsession is performance, is like improving my performance across a lot of different things, right?
[00:14:00.360 --> 00:14:01.640] We got indie hackers.
[00:14:01.640 --> 00:14:02.760] I'm trying to get good at that.
[00:14:02.760 --> 00:14:04.120] I didn't go to business school.
[00:14:04.600 --> 00:14:07.240] I am like an aspiring novelist.
[00:14:07.240 --> 00:14:09.160] I have a literary agent, but I'm still working on it.
[00:14:09.800 --> 00:14:15.440] But one of my weaknesses, Cortland will also tell you this, is that I'm like a man on an island, right?
[00:14:15.440 --> 00:14:22.880] Like everything I learn, I'm like, oh, I can figure out how to, you know, learn how to write novels by just reading a lot of novels and like seeing how.
[00:14:22.880 --> 00:14:28.800] And I feel like the missing puzzle piece is to just find someone who can coach me and be that outside observer.
[00:14:28.800 --> 00:14:31.840] But it's like, I don't know, I guess I'm not like vulnerable enough.
[00:14:31.840 --> 00:14:37.520] With you, is it like, hey, I vaguely know I could be better, so I just want to have this coach?
[00:14:37.520 --> 00:14:46.000] Or is it like, do you start with specific problems and specific like concerns with how you do things and then say, hey, I want to coach for this, or I want to coach this.
[00:14:46.080 --> 00:14:48.080] How do you know that you should hire a coach?
[00:14:48.080 --> 00:14:52.960] Well, there's a coach whose podcast I really like named Itamar Morani.
[00:14:53.120 --> 00:14:54.160] I haven't worked with him.
[00:14:54.160 --> 00:14:56.400] I just like his podcast and his blog and stuff.
[00:14:56.400 --> 00:15:09.760] And something he always says is, I'm not phrasing it exactly like he does, but basically, if someone else with your same abilities could get different results, then you know that there could be a mindset issue there.
[00:15:09.760 --> 00:15:24.480] If they have the same abilities, if they have the same skill set, let's say they have the same sort of conditions in life, you know, similar sort of resources that you have in life, but they're getting a different result than you, then there's something else in the equation.
[00:15:24.480 --> 00:15:30.960] And it could be useful for you to work with a coach to see where you're holding yourself back.
[00:15:30.960 --> 00:15:34.400] And of course, coaching, you know, means so many different things.
[00:15:34.400 --> 00:15:40.160] It's not always holding yourself back, but it's definitely something that we all do as humans.
[00:15:40.160 --> 00:15:47.280] We have our own lens that we look through the world and we automatically discount certain opportunities as not for us.
[00:15:47.280 --> 00:15:56.000] We don't go for certain things because we think they're going to be painful or too hard or think we have to make some sort of sacrifice that we don't want to make in order to have that.
[00:15:56.000 --> 00:16:00.000] And a coach is someone who can point all these things out to you.
[00:16:00.120 --> 00:16:02.280] I mean, it can also just be simple accountability.
[00:16:02.280 --> 00:16:13.160] It can be like with your novel writing example, it can be someone who's like, hey, Channing, you told me that you want to get this novel written, but your behavior is looking very different than someone who wants to get a novel written.
[00:16:13.160 --> 00:16:14.040] What's going on?
[00:16:14.040 --> 00:16:22.600] But that is why I think that mindset piece does often come up because there is some reason why you're choosing different behaviors.
[00:16:22.600 --> 00:16:24.920] You say you want to write a novel, but you're doing something else.
[00:16:24.920 --> 00:16:28.760] Okay, what's going on in your brain that leads to those choices?
[00:16:28.760 --> 00:16:30.840] It reminds me of actually joining Stripe.
[00:16:30.840 --> 00:16:35.480] Like back when I was doing ND Hackers in 2017, my ambition was basically like, I want to pay my rent.
[00:16:35.480 --> 00:16:37.640] Like, wouldn't that be cool if this website paid my rent?
[00:16:37.640 --> 00:16:41.240] Wouldn't that be cool if I could pay my bills and I have to work a job?
[00:16:41.400 --> 00:16:42.200] That's awesome.
[00:16:42.200 --> 00:16:52.120] And then I joined Stripe and I was talking to Patrick Collison and he was like, what if ND hackers changed the face of the startup landscape and inspired millions more people to start businesses?
[00:16:52.120 --> 00:16:53.960] And I was just like, what?
[00:16:54.600 --> 00:16:58.120] This is a totally different mindset, like a totally different outlook on.
[00:16:58.120 --> 00:17:00.040] And you just make different decisions, you know?
[00:17:00.040 --> 00:17:09.400] And it's like interesting because it's like, you don't necessarily know that you have like these limitations or these blockers or these like just like ways that you're not even attempting to think, you're not even considering.
[00:17:09.400 --> 00:17:13.160] Because I see the same thing all the time with a lot of my friends who like work, you know, nine to five desk jobs.
[00:17:13.240 --> 00:17:14.920] I'm like, what if you started a company?
[00:17:14.920 --> 00:17:20.360] And it's like, there's sort of a mindset shift there sometimes where people are like, I never even thought that I could do that.
[00:17:20.360 --> 00:17:23.480] You know, never even seemed like it was possible.
[00:17:23.480 --> 00:17:23.880] Yeah.
[00:17:23.880 --> 00:17:29.720] And often the value of coaching is, yeah, just someone else sort of reminding you that anything is possible.
[00:17:29.720 --> 00:17:33.400] I mean, I think that's also a huge value of a podcast like this one.
[00:17:33.400 --> 00:17:40.920] I think the reason people love this is you listen to stories and you do think, okay, if she did it, if he did it, then maybe I could do it too.
[00:17:40.920 --> 00:17:43.560] If they thought it was possible for them, then it's possible for me.
[00:17:43.560 --> 00:17:46.080] And that's also what a coach can help to kind of remind you of.
[00:17:46.080 --> 00:17:48.400] I'm curious about the business of life coaching a little bit.
[00:17:48.400 --> 00:17:52.240] Do you see like you know which coaches are killing it, which coaches are struggling?
[00:17:52.240 --> 00:17:54.720] Like, for example, like life coaching is a really broad niche.
[00:17:54.720 --> 00:17:57.840] It's almost like starting a business that has like the broadest niche possible.
[00:17:57.840 --> 00:18:00.240] Like, you have any problem, come to me, I like to coach you through life.
[00:18:00.240 --> 00:18:05.280] And there's all these like specific coaches, like relationship coaches or executive coaches or mindset coaches.
[00:18:05.280 --> 00:18:06.320] Who's killing it?
[00:18:06.320 --> 00:18:16.400] Well, you know, we're gonna get more data on that soon because we actually just launched a directory for coaches, coachcompare.com, because it was a big hole in the market.
[00:18:16.400 --> 00:18:19.440] There wasn't a good directory to find a coach, so we launched one.
[00:18:19.440 --> 00:18:22.240] So we have about a thousand coaches on there now.
[00:18:22.240 --> 00:18:28.480] And with Paperbell, we actually don't have because we don't make them like select a category of what type of coach they are.
[00:18:28.480 --> 00:18:30.960] But with Coach Compare, you know, we do have that.
[00:18:30.960 --> 00:18:41.840] So once we have people that are on both systems, we'll be able to put that data together to be able to have really interesting data on how much people in different niches are charging and things like that.
[00:18:41.840 --> 00:18:46.960] For now, I will say I did look through one time and see who was earning the most.
[00:18:46.960 --> 00:18:48.800] We can see who's earning the most in Stripe.
[00:18:48.800 --> 00:18:52.000] People were connected to people's Stripe Connect accounts.
[00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:57.760] And it was interesting how there was like no trend with the top earners.
[00:18:57.760 --> 00:18:59.040] It was all different niches.
[00:18:59.040 --> 00:19:05.360] It was also very interesting that a lot of the top earning businesses were not slick at all.
[00:19:05.520 --> 00:19:08.640] One of the top earners did not have a website.
[00:19:08.640 --> 00:19:14.640] They just used Paperbell landing pages because we can make landing pages, but we're not like a full website builder.
[00:19:14.640 --> 00:19:18.880] So a lot of people have, you know, a separate fancy marketing site that they connect Paperbell to.
[00:19:18.880 --> 00:19:22.000] These people did not have a separate fancy marketing site.
[00:19:22.000 --> 00:19:27.120] They just had obviously a type of coaching that they did really effectively.
[00:19:27.120 --> 00:19:30.760] And then other people referred them because they got great results.
[00:19:30.760 --> 00:19:32.600] And that's how they built their business.
[00:19:29.840 --> 00:19:34.440] They had a group coaching model.
[00:19:34.760 --> 00:19:38.840] But yeah, I was surprised by how simple a lot of the businesses were.
[00:19:38.840 --> 00:19:40.440] It was largely one-on-one.
[00:19:40.760 --> 00:19:47.080] Like you mentioned, Tortland, you can make a lot of money just in one-on-one coaching just by continuously raising your rates.
[00:19:47.080 --> 00:19:49.960] A lot of people doing one-on-one or simple small groups.
[00:19:50.200 --> 00:19:56.920] You know, you see so much out there about putting together online courses and programs, and that can be a whole thing too.
[00:19:56.920 --> 00:20:03.080] But yeah, it's a much simpler business to start to just do one-on-one or small group coaching.
[00:20:03.080 --> 00:20:04.360] And it can be a really great business.
[00:20:04.360 --> 00:20:10.600] I also feel like this is probably one of those spaces where the 80-20 is really, really vast.
[00:20:10.600 --> 00:20:14.840] So, for example, when I think of life coaches, I tend to think of like high-performing people.
[00:20:14.840 --> 00:20:16.520] I mean, just right out of the bat.
[00:20:16.520 --> 00:20:20.760] The kinds of people that want life coaches are going to be people who are like professionals, et cetera.
[00:20:20.760 --> 00:20:33.640] But I listen to like some podcasts, and you know, if you are a top-performing athlete, like Michael Jordan had a life coach, like LeBron James has a life coach, Naval Ravikant has a life coach named Kapil Gupta.
[00:20:33.640 --> 00:20:38.040] And I've just like gone down the route, like I've clicked down a few clicks with like his products.
[00:20:38.040 --> 00:20:44.840] And I think I saw him selling a course or a book to just the general public for like $100,000 or something crazy.
[00:20:44.840 --> 00:20:53.800] It might not have been $100,000, but it's like one of those things where I'm like, wait a second, it's all about his market, right?
[00:20:53.800 --> 00:20:57.320] It's like, it's not like life coaches make bank like writ large, right?
[00:20:57.320 --> 00:21:04.960] It's like, I just feel like there's like this sleeper, you know, group of life coaches who are like going for the top-tier people and they're making more than ever.
[00:21:05.120 --> 00:21:05.960] That's what I would do.
[00:21:05.960 --> 00:21:06.840] That's what I would do.
[00:21:06.840 --> 00:21:14.720] If I had to like design the perfect business as a life coach, and I'm coming at this like with my business hat on, like I don't actually care about coaching, I'd probably be a terrible coach.
[00:21:14.720 --> 00:21:17.280] But I would try to make as much money as I possibly could.
[00:21:14.440 --> 00:21:20.640] Like, number one, I would try to choose a really lucrative niche.
[00:21:20.640 --> 00:21:26.000] It's like who has a lot of money and has something they need coaching with that's like very valuable to them.
[00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:28.880] So, like, my ex, like, she's located in San Francisco.
[00:21:28.880 --> 00:21:36.960] She's targeting like mostly tech executives, and the problem she's helping them solve is like their broken relationships, they're broken marriages, which is a problem of almost infinite value to people.
[00:21:36.960 --> 00:21:43.200] They'll pay almost infinite amount of money if you could help them, you know, repair this like most important relationship in their life.
[00:21:43.200 --> 00:21:44.320] And so, I would do that.
[00:21:44.320 --> 00:21:47.760] Business coaching is another one: coaching executives who are growing their businesses.
[00:21:47.760 --> 00:21:48.720] They have a lot of money.
[00:21:48.720 --> 00:21:52.720] It can be potentially even like a business expense where the money's not coming out of their pocket.
[00:21:52.720 --> 00:21:56.640] And if you help them, they might make millions of dollars or billions of dollars or something like that.
[00:21:56.640 --> 00:21:58.080] So, it's super worth it to them.
[00:21:58.080 --> 00:21:59.280] So, I would do that.
[00:21:59.280 --> 00:22:01.040] And then I would grow through word of mouth as well.
[00:22:01.040 --> 00:22:08.000] I would try to be an extremely good coach, play in a sort of exclusivity, like you don't have access to me because you're essentially trading your dollars for time.
[00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:09.200] So, I don't want mass marketing.
[00:22:09.200 --> 00:22:13.840] I want like sales and the best sales is like a word of mouth recommendation or something.
[00:22:13.840 --> 00:22:14.400] Yeah.
[00:22:14.400 --> 00:22:20.400] And then I would channel that and I would leverage like my big name clients, like you were saying with this, with Naval Ravakan's coach.
[00:22:20.560 --> 00:22:29.040] And then I would leverage that and then start marketing myself and then probably try to transition into education, like scalable, selling courses, selling books, concepts of some kind.
[00:22:29.040 --> 00:22:30.000] Yeah, at some point.
[00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:35.040] And then laugh my way to the bank as a successful, very rich coach and retire.
[00:22:36.480 --> 00:22:39.840] Yeah, I mean, there is that whole game plan.
[00:22:39.840 --> 00:22:48.560] And there's also, you know, it's worth pointing out, of course, in case it's not obvious, most coaches don't make a lot of money, which is also okay.
[00:22:48.560 --> 00:22:58.080] You know, there's also a lot of people that go into coaching because they want to have a small business where their time can be flexible, where they can make money without having a job.
[00:22:58.080 --> 00:23:03.320] So there are also plenty of coaches that are making $3,000 a month and they're like, awesome.
[00:23:03.320 --> 00:23:04.680] I have flexible work hours.
[00:23:04.680 --> 00:23:05.720] I love what I do.
[00:23:05.720 --> 00:23:07.240] I love the people that I work with.
[00:23:07.640 --> 00:23:10.680] It's a pretty quote unquote easy business to run.
[00:23:10.680 --> 00:23:21.960] So I just want to point that out because there is so like, so often you hear about the trajectory you just described, which is a great one, but it's also like, it's cool if you're just, yeah, that's very much the outlier.
[00:23:21.960 --> 00:23:26.680] And it's cool if you just want to make a side income or place your income with coaching.
[00:23:26.680 --> 00:23:27.800] It can be a great way to do it.
[00:23:27.960 --> 00:23:32.040] I think it's kind of ironic because you're an outlier among indie hackers as well.
[00:23:32.120 --> 00:23:39.160] The vast, vast, vast majority of indie hackers, you know, haven't quit their jobs yet, haven't made a single dollar in revenue yet, might not even have an idea.
[00:23:39.160 --> 00:23:44.120] You're a serial entrepreneur on your like third or fourth business and you haven't blinked.
[00:23:44.120 --> 00:23:45.960] So why did you stop working on Meat Edgar?
[00:23:45.960 --> 00:23:48.440] I mean, you're making millions of dollars.
[00:23:48.440 --> 00:23:49.480] You could have just done that.
[00:23:49.480 --> 00:23:52.280] I'm sure it had all sorts of challenges and all sorts of places it could have grown.
[00:23:52.280 --> 00:23:54.520] Somebody bought it, so clearly somebody believed it could grow.
[00:23:54.520 --> 00:23:58.600] Like why did you decide to stop working on that and start a new business?
[00:23:58.920 --> 00:24:02.680] Yeah, I mean, it's a really complex answer.
[00:24:02.680 --> 00:24:08.760] Probably the simplest truth was that I was largely bored with the product.
[00:24:08.760 --> 00:24:11.240] I was bored of social media marketing.
[00:24:11.240 --> 00:24:17.960] It's a tough space to be in because you get less and less permission from your vendors over time.
[00:24:18.600 --> 00:24:27.880] You know, our vendors, our supply chain, you know, whatever you want to call it, was Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and their permissions.
[00:24:28.200 --> 00:24:33.640] And over time, they always and still do just degrade the permissions that tools have.
[00:24:33.640 --> 00:24:43.080] Like, I was just doing a promotion for Paperbill on Instagram, and I was like, oh man, I have to do so much just with a native app because they don't let third-party tools use reels.
[00:24:43.080 --> 00:24:47.120] They don't let third-party tools do stickers on stories so you can put the link.
[00:24:47.440 --> 00:24:50.400] And I know so many people look at the tools and go, why can't they do that?
[00:24:50.400 --> 00:24:54.080] I'm like, I know why they can do that because Instagram doesn't give them permission to do that.
[00:24:54.080 --> 00:25:07.440] That's why, because Instagram wants you when Twitter, like for indie hackers, when Twitter was like, oh, you can't do like scheduling in advance and you had to issue this, you know, sort of newsletter announcement, et cetera.
[00:25:07.440 --> 00:25:07.920] Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:07.920 --> 00:25:15.280] Twitter decided that you couldn't repeat the exact same content, which technically is still the rule on Twitter, which a lot of people don't know because it's a ridiculous rule.
[00:25:15.280 --> 00:25:26.000] Twitter's technical terms of service is you can never repeat the exact same, you can't write hello on the same Twitter account or even two Twitter accounts that you own because that's the exact same tweet.
[00:25:26.400 --> 00:25:27.680] They don't enforce it.
[00:25:27.680 --> 00:25:36.640] But as a tool, we always felt like, and I still feel like it was the right call, we can't risk our users' accounts by going against Twitter's terms of service.
[00:25:36.640 --> 00:25:40.480] So we just decided we're not going to repeat content.
[00:25:40.480 --> 00:25:47.600] So yeah, it was just a really tough market when you're at odds with the people that your business relies on.
[00:25:47.600 --> 00:25:49.680] You know, now, shout out to Stripe.
[00:25:49.680 --> 00:25:59.120] You know, Stripe is a core partner for us because we connect with our customers' Stripe accounts, but our incentives are very aligned working with Stripe.
[00:25:59.360 --> 00:26:03.120] Like we're just trying to make our customers more money to put through Stripe.
[00:26:03.280 --> 00:26:05.680] There's no reason for Stripe to limit our access.
[00:26:05.680 --> 00:26:13.760] They want to give us more access and want to let us do more things through our tools that our customers we can make it easy for our customers to use Stripe.
[00:26:13.760 --> 00:26:18.320] So yeah, Edgar, it was just a tough market in that way.
[00:26:18.480 --> 00:26:33.880] I do think that social media marketing isn't something that will go away, but it's been, you know, Buffer has now also publicly seen a flatlining and decrease of their growth.
[00:26:34.040 --> 00:26:40.840] And I'm not surprised because it's a hard place to grow a business when the tools are fighting against you.
[00:26:41.160 --> 00:26:49.080] I think it's fascinating to be kind of a serial entrepreneur because you have these experiences where you've actually done it and you've actually seen how it went.
[00:26:49.080 --> 00:26:54.040] And then you get this image in your mind of like how it's going to be all so different next time, right?
[00:26:54.040 --> 00:26:56.280] Like every single thing that annoyed you, you're going to do differently.
[00:26:56.280 --> 00:27:04.600] It's kind of like getting into a relationship and then you break up and you have all these things you don't like about the person and you're like, next time, I'm not doing this, that, I'm never dating a redhead again.
[00:27:05.160 --> 00:27:06.120] No more coaching.
[00:27:06.520 --> 00:27:07.400] No more coaches.
[00:27:07.400 --> 00:27:08.920] I'm tired of being coached.
[00:27:10.200 --> 00:27:15.960] What are some general things you learned from running Meet Edgar that affected how you approached your future businesses?
[00:27:15.960 --> 00:27:19.240] Do you have different thoughts about like, I know you bootstrapped Meat Edgar, I think.
[00:27:19.240 --> 00:27:25.720] Do you have different thoughts about fundraising, about how to build a team, about working from home versus an office, about industries you want to be in?
[00:27:26.360 --> 00:27:26.920] Yeah.
[00:27:26.920 --> 00:27:34.360] So the biggest thing I am doing very differently this time is the way the team is structured and async.
[00:27:34.360 --> 00:27:43.640] So at Edgar, we were always a remote company, but we called it real-time remote, meaning we were all in the U.S., we all worked U.S.
[00:27:43.640 --> 00:27:44.680] working hours.
[00:27:44.680 --> 00:27:50.360] We had a lot of live meetings and a lot of live stand-ups and things like that.
[00:27:50.360 --> 00:27:58.520] So while we were remote, it was very different than what you read about Gumroad or Basecamp, where they do a lot of asynchronous work.
[00:27:58.840 --> 00:28:02.840] We worked online, but we were not focused on asynchronous work.
[00:28:02.840 --> 00:28:06.760] Also, everyone was W-2 from the very beginning of the company.
[00:28:06.920 --> 00:28:09.560] We didn't use that many freelance resources.
[00:28:09.560 --> 00:28:14.360] We did a lot more focused on just hiring full-time employees as we needed them.
[00:28:14.360 --> 00:28:18.640] And those are all things that I've done 180 on at Paper Bell.
[00:28:18.640 --> 00:28:30.160] So at Paper Bell, our whole team is freelance and plans to stay that way until we have a really good reason to bring on the full-time employee.
[00:28:30.160 --> 00:28:32.000] I don't know if we will.
[00:28:32.320 --> 00:28:37.120] And not just freelance as in, oh, technically you're a freelancer, but you work the same.
[00:28:37.120 --> 00:28:45.920] Like a truly different way to look at the business where we only want to bring in fractional specialists for only as long as they're needed.
[00:28:45.920 --> 00:28:56.240] And I think what I now view as a mistake at Edgar is sometimes we brought people in as a full-time employee that in retrospect could have just been a three-month project.
[00:28:56.240 --> 00:29:03.600] You know, we could have brought someone in to like clean up that area of the business or solve a problem with the business and then moved along.
[00:29:03.600 --> 00:29:09.760] Instead, we brought them in, they kind of do the three months and then you have to find something else for them to do.
[00:29:09.760 --> 00:29:11.680] And that's not how you see it at the time.
[00:29:11.680 --> 00:29:13.040] You're not like, oh, you're kind of done.
[00:29:13.040 --> 00:29:14.080] What else are you going to do?
[00:29:14.080 --> 00:29:15.680] Like you generate work for them.
[00:29:15.680 --> 00:29:17.600] They generate work for themselves.
[00:29:17.600 --> 00:29:28.560] But you can end up with definitely a bloated team or you end up with a lot of busy work being done at the company that's not really doing anything to move the needle.
[00:29:28.560 --> 00:29:32.880] So at Paper Bell, I'm like, okay, we're going to look for specific problems.
[00:29:32.880 --> 00:29:35.520] We're going to bring in freelancers to solve those problems.
[00:29:35.520 --> 00:29:38.160] I mean, I cannot tell you how much I use Fiverr.
[00:29:38.160 --> 00:29:41.200] I use Fiverr so much.
[00:29:41.200 --> 00:29:45.760] And, you know, we do have regular people that are working on the business in a freelance capacity.
[00:29:45.760 --> 00:29:51.920] But also now, whenever there's just a random little thing that I need done, I just go on Fiverr and find someone to do it.
[00:29:51.920 --> 00:29:55.040] And it's so effective to work that way.
[00:29:55.360 --> 00:29:59.440] What about your personal happiness as a business owner?
[00:29:59.720 --> 00:30:08.280] Is there anything that you've changed from meet editor to now that makes you happier running your business, or is this mostly stuff that just makes you more effective at running your business?
[00:30:08.280 --> 00:30:14.760] Some of the culture stuff is different, and it's just kind of what I prefer now.
[00:30:14.760 --> 00:30:16.920] I really might go back to the Edgar way in the future.
[00:30:16.920 --> 00:30:26.040] So at Edgar, also, we were very focused on having a great culture, a fun culture, making sure people really knew each other, even though we worked remotely.
[00:30:26.040 --> 00:30:31.320] At Paperball, now I tell people, I'm like, we don't do any social stuff at work.
[00:30:31.320 --> 00:30:36.600] So if you're the type of person that wants to use work as a social outlet, you will be miserable here.
[00:30:36.600 --> 00:30:39.000] I'm like, there are no dog photos on Slack.
[00:30:39.320 --> 00:30:40.280] I wonder if this connects.
[00:30:40.360 --> 00:30:44.840] You wrote an article about empowering, how empowering your team is stressing everyone out.
[00:30:44.840 --> 00:30:46.680] Basically, about the new wave, right?
[00:30:46.680 --> 00:30:51.160] Where if you're a knowledge worker, if you're in a startup, employees have like maximum freedom, right?
[00:30:51.160 --> 00:30:56.280] And it's like, just figure out like everyone's like a little like entrepreneur inside of the company and how that's not really good.
[00:30:56.760 --> 00:31:01.080] Analysis, paralysis, people aren't like, they don't have the time for the deep work, et cetera.
[00:31:01.080 --> 00:31:06.760] But I kind of think about that with you as a founder, because that's kind of my biggest issue as a founder, right?
[00:31:06.760 --> 00:31:08.360] Because I wake up when I want to.
[00:31:08.360 --> 00:31:09.480] I work on IndieHackers.
[00:31:09.480 --> 00:31:11.400] I also work on other products, et cetera.
[00:31:11.400 --> 00:31:21.880] And for me, I'm like, well, I want to have good lifestyle design, but I also have to then figure out how I'm going to constrain my own freedoms in a way that actually accommodates my happiness.
[00:31:21.880 --> 00:31:25.320] Was your kind of narrowing things down related to that?
[00:31:25.320 --> 00:31:27.400] Or how do you think about that stuff?
[00:31:27.400 --> 00:31:33.240] Yeah, I think I just, a lot of it was kind of the fun of building a new SimCity.
[00:31:33.200 --> 00:31:33.720] You know, you know?
[00:31:33.680 --> 00:31:37.480] It's like, okay, when we did the social thing, there were some things about it that I really loved.
[00:31:37.480 --> 00:31:38.680] And sometimes it was really fun.
[00:31:38.680 --> 00:31:41.000] And sometimes I felt like, why do we do all this bullshit?
[00:31:41.000 --> 00:31:42.760] Like, let's just do our work, you know?
[00:31:42.760 --> 00:31:48.560] So it's like, okay, with this company, I'll try the, let's just do our work and I'll see.
[00:31:48.800 --> 00:31:52.320] Maybe I'll get bored and want the social outlet.
[00:31:52.320 --> 00:32:01.600] Maybe my team won't be as cohesive and it won't work, but I'm kind of curious to try because there were parts about it that were really appealing.
[00:32:01.600 --> 00:32:09.600] So I think also having that timeline, like I've never been a person who's like, yes, this is going to be my company forever.
[00:32:09.600 --> 00:32:13.680] You know, I just, I don't feel any tie to like, I need to pass this on to my children.
[00:32:13.680 --> 00:32:16.560] It's like, I'll do it for a while and then I'll probably sell it, you know?
[00:32:16.560 --> 00:32:17.040] Yeah.
[00:32:17.040 --> 00:32:17.680] Yeah.
[00:32:17.680 --> 00:32:20.560] I'm like, no, my children need to fend for themselves, first of all.
[00:32:20.560 --> 00:32:24.400] Like, that's not good to pass on too much to your children.
[00:32:24.880 --> 00:32:30.720] But so, yeah, I think it does give me a freedom in a company being a kind of experiment.
[00:32:30.720 --> 00:32:39.840] And that's also that the post-exit freedom is, I try to remind myself all the time, you know, I am doing this for fun.
[00:32:39.840 --> 00:32:42.880] I'm doing this because I enjoy building a company.
[00:32:42.880 --> 00:32:45.200] I need to enjoy the day-to-day work.
[00:32:45.200 --> 00:32:48.880] And that's a philosophy that I've always had before I had an exit.
[00:32:48.880 --> 00:32:51.360] I've always been a big believer that it's your company.
[00:32:51.360 --> 00:32:53.120] You should build something that you really like.
[00:32:53.120 --> 00:32:59.200] So I think it does give a certain permission to experiment and be like, let's not do social stuff.
[00:32:59.200 --> 00:33:02.240] If it's a disaster, we can change it.
[00:33:02.240 --> 00:33:05.360] But like, let's say it slowed down the growth of the company.
[00:33:05.360 --> 00:33:11.280] Let's say that that was true, that if you don't have social stuff, people aren't as cohesive and it slows down your growth.
[00:33:11.280 --> 00:33:20.640] I'm like, okay, I'm willing to take that risk because I want to try building that kind of company, see if I enjoy working in it, other people enjoy working in it, and we'll see what happens.
[00:33:20.640 --> 00:33:23.520] I always hated social stuff during the times where I worked with other companies.
[00:33:23.760 --> 00:33:24.400] A lot of people do.
[00:33:24.520 --> 00:33:31.000] Like, I had a few internships at some startups in SF, and then I always be like, oh, we're going out to the baseball game afterwards, even blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:33:31.080 --> 00:33:34.200] I'm like, I just want to go hang out with my real friends.
[00:33:29.920 --> 00:33:36.600] I don't want to leave work and just be done with the business.
[00:33:36.760 --> 00:33:41.480] My best friends are from the last two companies that I worked for, like in my 20s.
[00:33:41.480 --> 00:33:43.800] Yeah, see, and this is why it's like so good.
[00:33:43.800 --> 00:33:46.120] There's so many different types of people in this world, right?
[00:33:46.120 --> 00:33:49.320] And people, and that's why you need to be transparent about it as a company.
[00:33:49.320 --> 00:33:51.160] And this is something that I really focused on.
[00:33:51.160 --> 00:33:57.800] We just brought on two new people to the customer service team, which obviously is something that you can't be just a specialist coming in once.
[00:33:57.800 --> 00:33:59.320] We need a specialist every day.
[00:33:59.320 --> 00:34:00.760] We need customer service every day.
[00:34:00.760 --> 00:34:05.720] So I was really clear in the job listing, like the type of company that this is.
[00:34:05.720 --> 00:34:15.960] And if you like to chat with people and make friends at work, like you are going to be pretty miserable here, but then you're going to attract the perfect people for you who are like, oh my God, finally, a company with no social stuff.
[00:34:16.120 --> 00:34:18.680] Finally, a company where I don't have to talk to these people.
[00:34:19.960 --> 00:34:23.640] So I'm curious about the origins of Paper Bell.
[00:34:23.640 --> 00:34:27.000] You sold Edgar for millions, I assume, a life-changing sum.
[00:34:27.000 --> 00:34:33.320] You then, you know, you're faced with this idea of like, okay, you love entrepreneurship, but there's an infinite number of companies you can start.
[00:34:33.320 --> 00:34:35.720] There's an infinite number of potential ideas.
[00:34:35.720 --> 00:34:39.320] How do you sit down and figure out what idea do I want to work on?
[00:34:39.320 --> 00:34:40.280] What is my North Star?
[00:34:40.360 --> 00:34:41.560] Like, what is a good idea?
[00:34:41.560 --> 00:34:43.800] And how do you filter out the bad ideas?
[00:34:43.800 --> 00:34:50.120] So I did have some parameters because I had a lot of ideas over the years for sure.
[00:34:50.120 --> 00:34:59.960] So some parameters were it had to be able to be bootstrapped because before Paper Bell, I had another company that failed that we raised a little bit of money for.
[00:34:59.960 --> 00:35:03.160] I absolutely hated having raised money.
[00:35:03.160 --> 00:35:06.360] Not even the fundraising, that part wasn't even that bad.
[00:35:06.360 --> 00:35:07.720] I didn't raise any VC.
[00:35:07.720 --> 00:35:13.200] It was just friends and family, or friends and friends in my case, as I always like to say.
[00:35:13.440 --> 00:35:17.120] Other entrepreneurs that I've met along the way, I raised some money.
[00:35:17.600 --> 00:35:22.320] I hated that feeling of being beholden to my investors.
[00:35:22.320 --> 00:35:29.440] I felt like it was so much pressure, and my investors were just like literally just my friends, all super friendly, no pressure at all.
[00:35:29.440 --> 00:35:34.640] But I just felt like, okay, I can lose my own money, but losing their money, no, thank you.
[00:35:34.640 --> 00:35:40.320] I got to interrupt for a second to say I feel the same way about joining Stripe, where it's like, before joining Stripe, no pressure.
[00:35:40.320 --> 00:35:41.120] It's my own company.
[00:35:41.120 --> 00:35:42.000] If it fails, it fails.
[00:35:42.000 --> 00:35:42.800] It's totally fine.
[00:35:42.800 --> 00:35:47.280] After joining Stripe, it's like this other person bought my company and expects things from me.
[00:35:47.280 --> 00:35:48.640] It's way more pressure in a way that like.
[00:35:48.720 --> 00:35:51.280] It's like a non-consensual life coach, you know?
[00:35:52.240 --> 00:35:52.720] Yeah.
[00:35:53.360 --> 00:35:54.320] I didn't even ask that.
[00:35:54.320 --> 00:35:55.440] That's accountability.
[00:35:55.440 --> 00:35:57.040] Yeah, you're just suddenly accountable.
[00:35:57.040 --> 00:36:03.680] And I think a lot of entrepreneurs probably would feel exactly the same that you do, where it's like, I gotta say, just for maybe some people, like, that's a great motivator.
[00:36:03.680 --> 00:36:06.560] You know, maybe some people are like, yeah, like, that's a great motivator for me.
[00:36:06.560 --> 00:36:10.320] I, you know, I get it done because other people's money is like a market for me.
[00:36:10.320 --> 00:36:13.120] It just made me panicked and I did not enjoy it.
[00:36:13.360 --> 00:36:20.960] And also that company, like, not only did I raise, but the reason it failed, one reason it failed is because I realized I would need to raise more to make it successful.
[00:36:20.960 --> 00:36:23.520] And I was like, I can't keep doing that.
[00:36:23.680 --> 00:36:26.400] So yeah, it needed to be an idea that could be bootstrapped.
[00:36:26.640 --> 00:36:28.000] I work with my husband.
[00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:29.520] He is a developer.
[00:36:29.520 --> 00:36:31.360] I do the marketing business side.
[00:36:31.360 --> 00:36:36.720] So it had to be something that we could just build together, you know, that he could build on his own.
[00:36:37.360 --> 00:36:39.120] I also learned from the failed one.
[00:36:39.120 --> 00:36:41.680] So the failed one was a DevOps tool.
[00:36:41.680 --> 00:36:46.960] And I don't know anything about DevOps, but I thought, okay, I know about marketing.
[00:36:46.960 --> 00:36:56.560] And I definitely discovered during that process how much I had underestimated the value of my own personal brand and audience.
[00:36:56.560 --> 00:37:04.680] And it's not like I'm known in the coaching world at all, but I have an audience of you know, creators, entrepreneurs, indie hackers, whatever.
[00:37:04.760 --> 00:37:08.520] There's crossover with coaches, and I can speak to coaches.
[00:37:08.520 --> 00:37:14.440] Coaches are entrepreneurs, coaches are small business, these are topics that I love and I'm absolutely passionate about.
[00:37:14.440 --> 00:37:17.720] Do not care about DevOps at all.
[00:37:18.040 --> 00:37:25.000] So that taught me: okay, it needs to be something in the small business entrepreneur world.
[00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:31.480] So, something, you know, Chris and I can bootstrap together, something in the small business entrepreneur world.
[00:37:33.000 --> 00:37:41.400] And it took a while before we had a really good idea because I am so not a believer in the find the problem thing.
[00:37:41.400 --> 00:37:44.120] I hate it when people are like, just find the problem and then make a solution.
[00:37:44.120 --> 00:37:46.760] I'm like, making the solution is the hard part.
[00:37:46.760 --> 00:37:49.480] It's really hard to make a good solution.
[00:37:49.480 --> 00:37:53.880] You know, you can't just be like, oh, people want a better way to record podcasts.
[00:37:54.040 --> 00:38:01.160] Like, and then you have to actually give them a better way to record podcasts, you know, not just like, oh, I had the idea.
[00:38:01.160 --> 00:38:11.880] So I do feel like it took us a while to find something where it's like, okay, not only have we identified a problem in the market, but we do actually have a better idea for how to address this problem.
[00:38:11.880 --> 00:38:28.360] And I think we are in a place now in the software world where, like, yes, an MVP is a thing, but it can't be that crappy if you want people to pay money for it because there's too many other choices out there, you know?
[00:38:28.360 --> 00:38:34.040] Like, so it had to be something that we could bootstrap to a point where it's like, okay, you can call it an MVP.
[00:38:34.040 --> 00:38:39.640] It's not totally quote unquote done, but it's good enough for someone to pay for.
[00:38:39.640 --> 00:38:42.520] And we came across Paperbile because I was doing business coaching.
[00:38:42.520 --> 00:38:45.840] So I was advising other entrepreneurs about their business.
[00:38:45.840 --> 00:38:49.760] And it was just a classic, I just went looking for it.
[00:38:44.920 --> 00:38:51.360] I assumed it existed already.
[00:38:51.600 --> 00:38:55.040] I was like, okay, I just need a way for people to like buy a package of sessions.
[00:38:55.040 --> 00:38:57.760] You know, they'll pay and they'll schedule the sessions.
[00:38:57.760 --> 00:39:04.240] And there were workarounds or there were tools that could do it, but the tools were crappy and buggy.
[00:39:04.240 --> 00:39:05.520] So I just found this need.
[00:39:05.600 --> 00:39:09.920] Oh, there's not a good tool that does what coaches need.
[00:39:09.920 --> 00:39:13.120] So to that point, you had your checklist, right?
[00:39:13.120 --> 00:39:16.160] You wanted to be in a space where you could like leverage your brand.
[00:39:16.160 --> 00:39:17.760] It was a space that you knew.
[00:39:17.760 --> 00:39:19.840] And then you came on the idea of Paper Bell.
[00:39:19.840 --> 00:39:23.520] But how do you actually go about validating that solution?
[00:39:23.520 --> 00:39:36.160] Well, I would say the core solution that we came up with then and kind of still is the core of the product is just a way to sell a package of sessions, which doesn't really sound like anything until you try to do it.
[00:39:36.160 --> 00:39:47.200] And then you realize like, you know, with Acuity and Calendly, you can put a payment link on an appointment, but you can't actually sell a package of three appointments and have someone pay.
[00:39:47.200 --> 00:39:50.800] Or you definitely can't do a payment plan, which is very common for coaches.
[00:39:50.800 --> 00:39:52.240] You can't do a subscription.
[00:39:52.240 --> 00:40:03.280] So tying the payment and packages together actually, my audience did not resonate with this at all, but I thought of it as like, oh, it's kind of like a Shopify for coaches.
[00:40:03.280 --> 00:40:10.320] It's like a back-end system to be able to sell your coaching in all the same ways that Shopify is like, oh, yeah, you need to actually ship things.
[00:40:10.320 --> 00:40:12.640] Oh, yeah, maybe people order multiple quantities, right?
[00:40:12.640 --> 00:40:14.960] Like they put all the things together that you need for e-comm.
[00:40:15.280 --> 00:40:16.800] That's what we were doing for coaching.
[00:40:16.800 --> 00:40:19.760] So that was kind of the core idea of the solution.
[00:40:19.760 --> 00:40:34.360] And then, as far as validation, I mean, we did about like 10 customer interviews, but honestly, I've never had the experience of that being incredibly useful.
[00:40:29.440 --> 00:40:35.800] It was the same for Edgar.
[00:40:35.960 --> 00:40:37.960] It's like, okay, we sort of did it.
[00:40:39.640 --> 00:40:44.360] Maybe you can get a reaction at that point if it's like the worst idea ever.
[00:40:44.360 --> 00:40:46.440] You can validate that it's terrible.
[00:40:46.760 --> 00:40:49.640] Yeah, like maybe you can validate that it's terrible.
[00:40:49.640 --> 00:40:55.320] I've definitely never validated, okay, I know that people will pay for this before it's built.
[00:40:55.320 --> 00:41:05.000] I basically just talked to people kind of around, you know, just the classic, like finding out what problems they do have around collecting payments and scheduling and payment plans and things like that.
[00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:12.120] But I wouldn't say I felt like at that point, yes, I'm 100% sure that people will buy Paper Bell.
[00:41:12.440 --> 00:41:19.560] We did kind of the early research and we built it and then we launched it to the Edgar list.
[00:41:19.560 --> 00:41:28.200] And we did, we started at a few thousand MRR right from the beginning from the Edgar list.
[00:41:28.200 --> 00:41:32.520] And actually, something interesting about that though is then it only got worse.
[00:41:34.840 --> 00:41:36.520] Which I didn't really think through.
[00:41:36.520 --> 00:41:44.840] So the problem with launching to like an existing list, because we had a big list for Edgar, it wasn't a targeted list for coaches, but there were enough coaches.
[00:41:44.840 --> 00:41:55.240] But so we launched, it's like we get kind of all the people from the Edgar list, but because we were brand new, it's not like we had other marketing sources after that, you know?
[00:41:55.240 --> 00:42:09.320] So then for the next six months, maybe like nine months, the MRR just dropped as we built up the organic marketing over time because SEO is our biggest marketing channel.
[00:42:09.320 --> 00:42:12.200] So, and that's another interesting thing about being indie.
[00:42:12.200 --> 00:42:15.920] Like, it was good, especially when you're bootstrapped, right?
[00:42:14.920 --> 00:42:18.480] Because we had the maximum cash right at the beginning.
[00:42:18.800 --> 00:42:25.840] But if I was showing that chart to an investor, it would have looked like shit because it was going down every month.
[00:42:25.840 --> 00:42:29.280] It's funny because we were losing people, but we weren't bringing new people in.
[00:42:29.280 --> 00:42:45.440] This is like, did you ever see Paul Graham's like a trough of sorrow graph for like funded startups where it's like it's almost the exact same shape where they have like the what is it, like the tech crunch of initiation, where they'll launch on tech crunch and there'll be this huge spike because they just launched this huge audience, but like the same thing happens.
[00:42:45.440 --> 00:42:49.040] Like they don't really own that audience, so they don't like, they can't repeat launch there.
[00:42:49.040 --> 00:42:53.600] And so like after that, it's like you're super happy on day one and then like day two, it's like less.
[00:42:53.600 --> 00:42:59.920] And then you're just like, oh shit, now you're in the trough of sorrow where you don't actually have a repeatable marketing channel and your numbers are going down.
[00:43:00.160 --> 00:43:04.960] Like I had the exact same thing happen to me with indie hackers where I launched on Hacker News and it was awesome.
[00:43:04.960 --> 00:43:07.600] Like the first day I had like a thousand email subscribers.
[00:43:07.600 --> 00:43:10.080] I had so many people come to the website, thought it was amazing.
[00:43:10.080 --> 00:43:14.400] And then like every day for the next four weeks, there are fewer people coming to the website.
[00:43:14.400 --> 00:43:17.920] And it's like, shit, I haven't actually figured out anything.
[00:43:17.920 --> 00:43:22.480] And I've got to, I've got to, like, you just feel worse than if you're at zero sometimes when it's going down.
[00:43:22.480 --> 00:43:28.880] Yeah, I mean, the good part is you have to remind yourself that you have validated it because you're like, okay, humans paid for this.
[00:43:29.520 --> 00:43:31.440] And sometimes there is some tweaking to do.
[00:43:31.440 --> 00:43:37.440] Like, for example, the humans that paid from the Edgar list already had a huge trust in me as a founder.
[00:43:37.440 --> 00:43:41.840] So part of the reason that they paid is they're like, okay, this is like the new thing from Laura Roeder.
[00:43:41.840 --> 00:43:43.040] She makes good things.
[00:43:43.040 --> 00:43:46.640] Whereas then when we're marketing to new coaches, they've never heard of me.
[00:43:46.640 --> 00:43:51.040] So that's not going to be a selling point that's going to influence their decisions.
[00:43:51.040 --> 00:43:54.480] What would you say is like your sort of reputational superpower?
[00:43:54.480 --> 00:43:57.440] Like, if people know Laura Roeder, what do they think?
[00:43:57.440 --> 00:43:59.040] Do they think she makes really good products?
[00:43:59.040 --> 00:44:00.680] Do they think she's badass?
[00:43:59.840 --> 00:44:01.400] She's inspirational.
[00:44:01.560 --> 00:44:07.400] Like, what is like your specific mark that you leave on the things that you do?
[00:44:07.400 --> 00:44:13.240] I think people probably, I mean, I feel like it's one of those questions that maybe I'm not the best one to answer.
[00:44:13.240 --> 00:44:18.600] I think people associate me with a lot of work-life balance stuff because I talk about that a lot.
[00:44:18.600 --> 00:44:22.120] Because I've always worked part-time in my businesses.
[00:44:22.120 --> 00:44:26.440] I launched Edgar when I was pregnant, and I took maternity leave in the first year.
[00:44:26.440 --> 00:44:33.320] And I've been very vocal about that, largely because these are a lot of issues that affect female entrepreneurs.
[00:44:33.320 --> 00:44:43.720] And I think a lot of female entrepreneurs feel very left out because they feel like, okay, I want to work part-time, but that means I'm not a serious entrepreneur.
[00:44:43.720 --> 00:44:50.840] Or I want to even just take a two-month maternity leave instead of a, you know, entrepreneur three-day maternity leave.
[00:44:50.840 --> 00:44:53.720] But I feel like I'm not allowed to do that.
[00:44:53.720 --> 00:44:57.880] Obviously, these issues affect men as well, but you know, very commonly affect women.
[00:44:57.880 --> 00:44:59.000] So I don't know.
[00:44:59.000 --> 00:45:16.200] I feel like it's part of my job as a visible female founder to talk about these other things that are happening in my life because I'm not embarrassed about them, which I think sometimes people can be made to feel embarrassed if there's any other focus besides their brethren.
[00:45:16.360 --> 00:45:25.720] And then they're going to listen to this episode of the podcast, the part where you said, okay, then I decided I was going to take an entire week off from work between startups.
[00:45:26.200 --> 00:45:27.400] Just to see what it felt like.
[00:45:27.400 --> 00:45:29.480] It was like five days too long.
[00:45:30.120 --> 00:45:32.600] So how do you get out of this Trafa-Saro period?
[00:45:32.600 --> 00:45:38.840] How do you get to the point where it's like, you've got your product, you've got in mind that some people love this, some people paid for it.
[00:45:38.840 --> 00:45:42.680] I validated that there's a need here, but like you don't have a consistent marketing channel.
[00:45:42.680 --> 00:45:47.040] You're not sure if the product is even the right one because your numbers are going down, not up.
[00:45:47.520 --> 00:45:49.120] How do you turn that around?
[00:45:44.840 --> 00:45:49.840] Yeah.
[00:45:50.480 --> 00:45:59.680] So I think something that I do differently than a lot of entrepreneur stories that I read is I do focus on scalable right from the beginning.
[00:45:59.680 --> 00:46:06.400] And I should say, like when I was looking for the criteria for the next business, I know self-serve marketing.
[00:46:06.400 --> 00:46:09.520] I've never had a sales team for any of my businesses.
[00:46:09.520 --> 00:46:11.040] I've never done any outbound.
[00:46:11.040 --> 00:46:12.160] It's all been inbound.
[00:46:12.160 --> 00:46:18.400] So like I know how to create a self-serve, you know, online marketing machine.
[00:46:18.400 --> 00:46:23.680] So what I haven't done, which a lot of people do, is like the kind of do things that don't scale early.
[00:46:23.680 --> 00:46:31.200] Like so many SaaS founders do one-on-one demos with all their customers, even if they're at a lower price point.
[00:46:31.200 --> 00:46:32.800] I was always like, we can't do demos.
[00:46:32.800 --> 00:46:34.400] We cost $50 a month.
[00:46:34.400 --> 00:46:37.360] So I've never done a demo.
[00:46:37.360 --> 00:46:40.880] I'm like, no, we need a strategy that can keep going.
[00:46:40.880 --> 00:46:47.280] Like if the strategy is they like me, so they're going to buy from me, like that's not going to, that's not going to work out down the road.
[00:46:47.280 --> 00:46:52.800] So our core focus has always been SEO from day one.
[00:46:52.800 --> 00:46:58.000] And so while our MRR was going down, our search traffic was going up.
[00:46:58.000 --> 00:47:01.520] You know, it wasn't large in the early days, but it did exist.
[00:47:01.520 --> 00:47:05.520] So I think I always knew that that was my strategy.
[00:47:05.520 --> 00:47:12.080] So I had to just keep my eye on like, okay, are we, it's not huge numbers yet, but are we seeing results from the strategy?
[00:47:12.080 --> 00:47:13.520] Is the strategy effective?
[00:47:13.520 --> 00:47:25.520] And I know eventually those graphs will cross in the right way, and we'll actually start building significant MRR from our SEO in a way that can overcome the MRR we're losing.
[00:47:25.520 --> 00:47:26.800] And we did get there.
[00:47:26.800 --> 00:47:27.600] That's super smart.
[00:47:27.600 --> 00:47:31.880] When you target a niche, like you're like, obviously, Paperbill targets what you call it.
[00:47:29.840 --> 00:47:35.560] It's like sort of an industry-focused SaaS, a virtual-focused SaaS.
[00:47:36.120 --> 00:47:38.040] Essentially, you can just learn everything about that niche.
[00:47:38.040 --> 00:47:41.240] You know who these people are, and that makes research way easier.
[00:47:41.240 --> 00:47:44.440] And I think that also contributes to figuring out how you're going to grow.
[00:47:44.440 --> 00:47:46.040] Because you can see what channels are they on.
[00:47:46.200 --> 00:47:47.640] Are coaches on Hacker News?
[00:47:47.640 --> 00:47:48.680] Like, probably not.
[00:47:49.160 --> 00:47:51.800] Are coaches Googling these different search terms?
[00:47:51.800 --> 00:47:52.920] Like, probably.
[00:47:53.400 --> 00:47:54.360] Are coaches on Twitter?
[00:47:54.360 --> 00:47:55.880] Like, maybe a little bit less so.
[00:47:55.880 --> 00:48:01.560] And so it feels like you picked the right channel, SEO, for your exact audience and what they need.
[00:48:01.560 --> 00:48:04.040] But it's obviously not easy to grow SEO.
[00:48:04.040 --> 00:48:07.240] Like, SEO is one of the ones that requires, I think, the most patience.
[00:48:07.240 --> 00:48:08.760] It's the slowest.
[00:48:09.000 --> 00:48:13.240] You can put in a lot of work on month one and not see it pay off until month six.
[00:48:13.240 --> 00:48:14.120] How do you navigate that?
[00:48:14.280 --> 00:48:16.920] How do you navigate, like, oh, this is going really, really slow, and I want this to work?
[00:48:16.920 --> 00:48:19.720] And then you're right, like, it's a hugely scalable marketing channel.
[00:48:19.720 --> 00:48:24.840] Like, you can get hundreds of millions of page views with SEO, and other channels sort of peter out.
[00:48:24.840 --> 00:48:25.000] Right.
[00:48:25.080 --> 00:48:27.000] Like, how do you succeed at SEO?
[00:48:27.320 --> 00:48:32.280] Well, I think, first of all, SEO is still, people think it's harder than it is.
[00:48:32.280 --> 00:48:39.800] So I would say that SEO requires patience, but is not complicated per se.
[00:48:40.360 --> 00:48:45.320] Anyone who wants to learn SEO, watch the href's blogging for business course.
[00:48:45.640 --> 00:48:46.120] I love that one.
[00:48:47.640 --> 00:48:47.960] Super good.
[00:48:49.000 --> 00:48:49.720] It's so good.
[00:48:49.720 --> 00:48:53.000] It has everything you need to know to be successful.
[00:48:53.000 --> 00:48:56.120] And then obviously, there's a ton of other free content out there.
[00:48:56.120 --> 00:49:01.240] SEO people create a lot of content about SEO, so it's not hard to find.
[00:49:01.240 --> 00:49:18.400] But yeah, if you watch the Blogging for Business course and then you actually do all the things that are in that course, because I find what happens in SEO is a lot of people half-ass it, I guess, because it is that kind of bad, vicious cycle where it's like they're like, well, I don't really want to put too much effort into it until I really see that it's going to work.
[00:49:18.720 --> 00:49:24.000] But then it doesn't work because you didn't put much effort into it and then it compounds and it gets worse and worse.
[00:49:24.000 --> 00:49:29.280] So just all the little things like, you know, having an image for every blog post.
[00:49:29.280 --> 00:49:36.640] I mean, it sounds really obvious, but I find a lot of people don't actually write SEO optimized content like through and through.
[00:49:36.640 --> 00:49:49.840] Like maybe they kind of poke around and find some keywords and then they write an article that's sort of related to the keyword, but they don't do like all the best practices of, you know, make your H2s match up with secondary keywords.
[00:49:49.840 --> 00:49:53.200] Like none of this stuff is top secret information.
[00:49:53.200 --> 00:50:01.120] It's all in the blogging for business course, but having clear processes of things you do every time is really effective.
[00:50:01.120 --> 00:50:04.640] And a lot of markets are not as crowded as people think.
[00:50:04.640 --> 00:50:28.960] Like yes, it's hard to do SEO being a credit card points affiliate or SEO, but if you are a lawn care industry vertical, or even like in the SaaS world, if you're like, I help you with your cap table, like most topics out there are not incredibly competitive because, I mean, it's really just incredibly competitive if there's affiliate monetization.
[00:50:28.960 --> 00:50:32.960] If there's not affiliate monetization, why else would it be super competitive?
[00:50:32.960 --> 00:50:40.080] So I think a lot of startups cut themselves off before they start and think, oh, SEO is going to be too hard.
[00:50:40.080 --> 00:50:42.480] And it's like, you don't even have to be number one.
[00:50:42.480 --> 00:50:45.040] You just want to be on page one.
[00:50:45.040 --> 00:50:47.600] And in a lot of industries, it's not incredibly hard to get.
[00:50:47.760 --> 00:50:53.680] I feel like SEO is really similar to investing in the sense that the problem is emotional.
[00:50:53.680 --> 00:50:57.360] The problem is like you get cold feet because you're like, okay, I'm putting this work in.
[00:50:57.360 --> 00:50:59.760] You get very little intermediate feedback.
[00:50:59.880 --> 00:51:03.160] Like, it's not like a graph that goes over and goes up over time.
[00:51:03.160 --> 00:51:07.800] Like, you're putting in all this work and you feel like you're just basically punching a lot of different auto tickets.
[00:51:07.800 --> 00:51:09.960] And it's almost like you kind of have to have faith.
[00:51:09.960 --> 00:51:22.040] And so I'm curious with you, because it seems like, unless I'm mistaken, it seems like SEO was like your big strategy to get this trough of sorrow turning up in the right direction.
[00:51:22.840 --> 00:51:26.680] Like, what was the point where your revenue started increasing?
[00:51:26.680 --> 00:51:30.760] Was it just like you just kind of had faith and you did this the right way and eventually it happened?
[00:51:30.760 --> 00:51:33.400] Or were there any like cold feet moments?
[00:51:33.720 --> 00:51:51.640] The six month mark is when we started to get like, okay, now we're getting consistent growth month over month, and now that growth is starting to really add up, which is not really that long, but I think the hard part is, like I said, you do have to kind of invest in advance, whether that's with your time or your money.
[00:51:51.640 --> 00:51:54.920] You know, for me, I've always hired people to take care of the SEO.
[00:51:54.920 --> 00:51:59.800] So I hired SEO specialists to write the briefs, and then I hire writers to actually write the articles.
[00:51:59.800 --> 00:52:01.160] So I'm spending money on it.
[00:52:01.160 --> 00:52:05.800] Obviously, if you're writing it all yourself and doing all your keyword research, there's going to be a lot of time.
[00:52:05.800 --> 00:52:11.400] So I think if you told people like it'll take six months, a lot of people would be like, well, shit, I'll devote six months to it.
[00:52:11.400 --> 00:52:12.920] So that's not that bad.
[00:52:12.920 --> 00:52:25.080] But because you do have to put all of the time and money during those six months, where maybe you're seeing, you know, almost nothing during the six months, it really puts people off.
[00:52:25.080 --> 00:52:28.520] And it did help, of course, that I had done a company before.
[00:52:28.520 --> 00:52:31.800] And it's not like Edgar, we actually didn't do amazing SEO.
[00:52:31.800 --> 00:52:35.160] We started doing better SEO later, and I saw how effective it was.
[00:52:35.400 --> 00:52:40.680] Most of the company, we did the kind of half-assed version, like I said, like, oh, I think people are sort of interested in this.
[00:52:40.680 --> 00:52:42.120] We'll write an article about it.
[00:52:42.120 --> 00:52:44.120] And that was pretty effective, too.
[00:52:44.480 --> 00:52:47.760] You know, like over time, like even that worked out.
[00:52:47.760 --> 00:52:51.440] So it's like, okay, over time, if you do it badly, something will happen.
[00:52:51.440 --> 00:52:53.600] And then if you do it well, a lot will happen.
[00:52:53.600 --> 00:52:55.680] How do you hire like SEO specialists?
[00:52:55.680 --> 00:52:57.840] This is something we want to work on for indie hackers.
[00:52:58.000 --> 00:52:59.040] We're not that good at SEO.
[00:52:59.040 --> 00:52:59.600] We should be.
[00:52:59.600 --> 00:53:00.720] There's so many topics we could cover.
[00:53:00.960 --> 00:53:04.320] What's your playbook for, I guess, finding people to help with that?
[00:53:04.640 --> 00:53:11.040] So my playbook for hiring SEO specialists, it goes back to what I said about finding a specialist freelancer.
[00:53:11.040 --> 00:53:14.720] So I haven't hired bigger agencies.
[00:53:15.040 --> 00:53:19.360] Also, as a bootstrap company, often, you know, the price points don't work out with agencies.
[00:53:19.360 --> 00:53:24.160] Also, big agencies, you're paying for a lot of overhead to put all the pieces together.
[00:53:24.960 --> 00:53:31.200] So, you know, if you go to that hrest blogging for business course, there's a lot of different moving pieces.
[00:53:31.200 --> 00:53:35.200] It's like do the keyword research, put the keyword research into a brief.
[00:53:35.360 --> 00:53:40.560] You know, the writer who's experienced with SEO writes the brief, somebody else does the graphic for the article.
[00:53:40.560 --> 00:53:47.920] Basically, you can save a lot of money by being the project manager, putting all those pieces together, which is exactly what I've done.
[00:53:47.920 --> 00:53:56.320] And I think it makes it a little easier to find the right person because you're not trying to find this person that can do the whole process.
[00:53:56.320 --> 00:54:02.960] Like for the writer, I always recommend ProBlogger Job Board has a lot of amazing freelance writers.
[00:54:02.960 --> 00:54:05.040] You can find people with a certain specialty.
[00:54:05.040 --> 00:54:07.520] Our writers are from the coaching industry.
[00:54:07.520 --> 00:54:10.240] You know, they know about coaching.
[00:54:10.240 --> 00:54:12.240] They're not the cheapest writers.
[00:54:12.240 --> 00:54:14.080] They're not crazy expensive either.
[00:54:14.080 --> 00:54:16.160] It's like middle of the road expense.
[00:54:16.160 --> 00:54:21.600] But they're handed a complete brief with like all the topics that their article needs to cover.
[00:54:21.600 --> 00:54:25.280] So they can do a really great job on just that part.
[00:54:25.280 --> 00:54:26.880] Well, listen, I know you got to run.
[00:54:26.880 --> 00:54:29.520] What's your advice for fledgling indie hackers?
[00:54:29.520 --> 00:54:36.760] What's something you think they could learn from your experiences, sort of take with them as they try to come up with an idea and try to build a business?
[00:54:37.640 --> 00:54:43.240] I would say there's a blog post that I really like that I wrote, that I like Anthony wrote.
[00:54:43.240 --> 00:54:44.920] That's a brilliant blog post.
[00:54:44.920 --> 00:54:46.920] That's a brilliant blog post.
[00:54:47.800 --> 00:54:50.360] And it's called You Get What You Go For.
[00:54:50.360 --> 00:55:02.200] And in the post, I'm talking about how, you know, often we say these things are our goal, but if you look at your actions, your actions aren't really lining up with what your goal is.
[00:55:02.200 --> 00:55:11.640] So the story in the blog post is about these brothers here in the UK that are self-made brothers that bought Asda, which is like the Walmart of the UK.
[00:55:11.640 --> 00:55:14.120] Like they bought the entire Asda chip.
[00:55:14.120 --> 00:55:19.880] They're like, they're bootstrappers who bought Walmart, you know, is basically their story.
[00:55:20.040 --> 00:55:21.320] They started Bootstrapped.
[00:55:21.320 --> 00:55:24.200] Obviously, they raised a ton of money along the way.
[00:55:24.200 --> 00:55:35.880] And it's an example of like, okay, if your goal is to buy Asda, are you, you know, for example, doing your own SEO or are you putting together 800 million of capital?
[00:55:35.880 --> 00:55:37.720] Like you're doing the latter.
[00:55:37.720 --> 00:55:49.320] So I think you just need to look at: are my actions the type of actions that someone who's trying to get the outcome that I'm trying to get is doing?
[00:55:49.560 --> 00:55:55.160] Because it's very easy to spend a lot of time kind of playing around with this, playing around with that.
[00:55:55.160 --> 00:56:03.320] It's like, okay, well, if I look at my day, do I have any hope of getting to where I want to be, or or not really?
[00:56:03.320 --> 00:56:11.960] And if you don't know what to do, it's like, read Indie hackers, listen to these interviews, you know, watch great free online courses from hrefs.
[00:56:11.960 --> 00:56:15.120] People have put the pieces of the puzzle out there.
[00:56:15.440 --> 00:56:19.360] Are you every day in some little way executing those pieces?
[00:56:14.600 --> 00:56:19.760] I love that.
[00:56:20.000 --> 00:56:23.440] If you're trying to go to the moon, make sure you're building a rocket ship, not building a car.
[00:56:23.680 --> 00:56:24.640] It's not going to work.
[00:56:24.640 --> 00:56:24.960] Yeah.
[00:56:24.960 --> 00:56:26.640] Laura, thanks a ton for coming on.
[00:56:26.880 --> 00:56:32.320] Can you let listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and about Paperbell and anything else you're working on?
[00:56:32.640 --> 00:56:36.400] Yeah, so the best place to find me is Twitter, LKR.
[00:56:37.040 --> 00:56:38.560] Go to coachcompare.com.
[00:56:38.560 --> 00:56:43.520] I feel like probably there's more people listening to this looking for coaches than there are coaches.
[00:56:43.520 --> 00:56:49.360] So if you're looking for a coach, if you were convinced by this episode to find a coach, it's a free site.
[00:56:49.360 --> 00:56:52.720] You can find a coach at coachcompare.com or paperball.com.
[00:56:52.960 --> 00:56:53.440] Amazing.
[00:56:53.440 --> 00:56:54.480] Thanks so much, Laura.
[00:56:54.480 --> 00:56:55.440] Awesome.