A 7-figure business with no-employees (Laura Roeder)

This episode explores how Laura Roeder built a 7-figure business with minimal staff, leveraging automation and freelancers effectively.

1. Success can be achieved with minimal traditional staffing by leveraging technology and freelancers.
2. Contentment in entrepreneurship involves balancing ambition with personal happiness and satisfaction.
3. Automation and efficient systems can replace many traditional business operations.
4. Psychological aspects, like dealing with envy and defining personal success, are crucial in entrepreneurship.
5. It's possible to create a significant business impact working part-time, focusing on essential tasks.

1: Introduction and Background

Noah introduces Laura and sets the stage for discussing her unique business model. Noah Kagan: "Laura Roeder, founder of Paperbell.com, has built a seven-figure business with no employees, just her husband and freelancers."

2: Building a 7-Figure Business

Laura discusses the specifics of building a high-revenue business without a traditional employee structure. Laura Roeder: "I rely on freelancers and automation to manage tasks traditionally handled by full-time employees."

3: Psychological Aspects of Entrepreneurship

They explore the psychological hurdles and victories in entrepreneurship. Laura Roeder: "Envy can be a pointer towards what you want but check if it aligns with your true desires."

4: Work-Life Balance

Discussion on how Laura balances her professional and personal life effectively. Laura Roeder: "I've worked part-time since having kids, balancing business success with personal life."

5: Future of Work

The episode concludes with predictions and advice for future entrepreneurs. Laura Roeder: "The future is lean businesses with high automation and fewer employees."

1. Consider using freelancers for flexibility and scaling needs.
2. Implement automation in business processes to save time and reduce errors.
3. Focus on essential business activities that drive growth, avoiding unnecessary tasks.
4. Regularly assess personal and business goals to ensure they align.
5. Use psychological insights to navigate personal challenges in business.

Get the NYT bestseller - milliondollarweekend.com - Available Everywhere!

This week, I caught up with Laura Roeder, a dear friend who also happens to be an exceptionally skilled businesswoman. She is the Founder of a coaching software business called Paperbell.

We chat about handling envy, finding contentment, and happiness in our lives, both at work and personally. Laura's approach involves skipping traditional meetings, relying on freelancers, and keeping everyone on the same page with informal company updates.

Laura's a master at dodging work in the best possible way—she's smart and super efficient with her time. Following her lead, you might just discover that a day's workload can be knocked out in just 2 hours.

In this conversation, you’ll enjoy 3 BIG things:

When’s the right time to sell a business and do you actually need to if running the business is so damn easy.

The differences between selling SaaS products and courses.

Learn how to manage company updates and maintain alignment without traditional meetings.


Enjoy these 3 things plus more ear nuggets along the way.

Check out Laura’s website and her coaching software company Paperbell.

If you're hungry for more efficiency tips to level up your business game, check out last week's episode, the second in our ‘Brutally Honest’ series. Join me as I jump into the time machine to drop some serious wisdom on my younger self about the do's and don'ts of business. You can hear that in episode 348 of this feed!

Use Docusign, Hellosign, or Pandadoc and want subscription free. Check out our latest tool - Breezedoc.com Same tool as others, but pay once and use it forever.

Sign up for my email newsletter at noahkagan.com. People have been loving my latest series where I share brutally honest advice to my younger self on a variety of topics. Join 350k+ subscribers at noahkagan.com.

People

Laura Roeder, Noah Kagan

Companies

Paperbell.com

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Laura Roeder

Content Warnings:

None

Laura Roeder
As humans we have this desire to create and contribute and grow and finding that line between just being truly happy with what you have and balancing that desire to keep going. I mean figuring that out, which isn't quite the right word because it's not really something you go and think about. I think it's something you experience every day. I think that's a great way to spend my time, is to find that right balance for me.

Noah Kagan
What is up you sexy bastards? It is your boy beachbody aka Rabbi cant lose aka noah Kagan. Let me tell you, I do not have a beach body right now. But what I do have for you this week is a very special guest, Laura Roeder. She is a 15 year plus friend of mine who also happens to be an exceptionally skilled entrepreneur.

She is the founder of a coaching software business. So yes, if youre a coach and you want software to run your whole business, its called Paperbell.com dot and casually, it's now a seven figure business she runs part time with her husband. She's also sold another software business called Meet Edgar for multiple seven figures and has had successful course businesses too. In this episode, we're going to chat. How did she do that?

Handling envy, finding contentment, happiness in your lives, at work and personal. Also while doing all this with a family, or even if you don't have a family now, Laura's approach is different. It involves skipping a lot of meetings, relying on freelancers and how to keep everyone on the same page with informal company updates. Laura is a master, you might say, at dodging work. And I say this really positively.

She's smart, super efficient with her time and seems to have a good time doing it. You can follow her lead and you might just discover that you can have a lot of success in under 1 hour a day. In this conversation, you're going to enjoy three gigantic things. Number one, how did Laura get these businesses going and her first customers? Number two, the difference between selling SaaS products and courses?

And number three, how do you maintain a company with without having any meetings or really any employees enjoy those three things? Plus, more ear nuggets along the way. Now you can find out more about Laura at laurarroeder. That's r o Dash e Dash e Dash r.com and her coaching software company, paperbell.com dot. And if you're hungry for even more tips and brutally honest business advice, check out last week's episode 348 in this feed, where I give really mean but honest and helpful advice to my younger self and all of you other gorgeous people.

Also, if you're using docusign, Hellosign, or Pandadoc or any other one of these digital signature tools, and you're paying a subscription, I got a hookup for you today. Check out our latest tool, breezedoc.com. That's breeze dash.com dot. It's free to use, and if you want to upgrade, you pay once and you get it forever. No more subscriptions.

If you're looking for a digital signature tool, that's a hard word to say, but our product's not a hard one to use. Stop using these other products. Stop paying subscriptions. Go usebreezedoc.com. Also, a special preshow shout out to listener 18 jB.

A free million dollar business coach, Noah shares valuable tips, tools, and tactics for improving your effectiveness in business. He avoids complicated business jargon and inspires listeners to take action for free. Man 18 JB, I love you. And I love every other one of you gorgeous listeners. If you want a shout out in a future episode, take 30 seconds right now and go leave a review on iTunes or Spotify.

We check every single one of them. I'd love to shout you out in the future.

So, first off, this show is gonna be sponsored by LMnt, all right? They didn't even give me money. You trying to get money? Maybe, but I just. I drink a lot of LMNT.

You know, when you're dealing with a high professional person like Laura Roder, and you need to do, in a high. Professional interview, you need your electrolytes. I invested in them. I don't know why they let me invest, but they let me invest. I bought some of it.

It's expensive, but, I mean, our life is worth it. Yeah. I mean, I've been thinking we don't need enough salt, so. Have you been thinking that or salt in your water? I put this on my margaritas.

My electrolytes, extra salty. Oh, that'd be cool for the rim. Do like, an electrolyte rim on the margarita. That's exactly right. Yeah.

Okay. All right. So, lmnt, they've sponsored million dollar weekend. They've sent me some boxes, which I've given out to friends. I really do use it almost every single bike ride.

You know, it's funny when people have, like, really fun, laughy start of shows, and then they get serious and it's like, oh, let me just share it. So I saw something that triggered me, and it was like, oh, I saw this guy who I don't really care for and triggered me about jealousy. And it's like, oh, he gotta interview someone that I've wanted to interview. I don't know if jealousy ever fully goes away. Maybe it does.

Laura Roeder
Well, you know, I like the idea that jealousy can be a pointer towards what you want and can give you clarity for what you want if you're feeling jealous. Although I also think that I find myself sometimes feeling jealous of something that I don't actually want, but looks really cool. Like, I don't actually want to have, like, for me, a business with a ton of employees, but it sounds very impressive to have a ton of employees. So I do think you have to check yourself. You might feel a bit jealous, and you have to be like, okay, but is that really what I want?

And I guess in that case, I guess what you're really feeling jealous of is, like, maybe the recognition, you know, that they're getting. Not actually. Actually what they're doing to get that recognition. Yeah, you fixed it. All right.

Noah Kagan
Show's over. Deep. We got deep on jealousy very early on. I mean, I think all of us feel that, right? Jealousy is the lack of something or the belief that there's something we wanted that we don't have and another has it.

But, yeah, I was just thinking about that. We're all, you know, people watching are like, maybe I want Laura's life. Maybe I want Noah's life. Probably not. Just kidding.

Actually, lately I've been. I was last week at a campfire. I was just like, wow, life is great. Yeah. And I think yesterday I was asking, what's new with you?

When you came over and you're like, life's fucking great. Yeah. Tell me more about that. Yeah, I mean, I think I definitely have got to a place where I'm just very content with my life. And we were talking about this contrast between what looks good on the outside is I often find, not actually, what makes a kind of nice day to day life, that those are very different things.

Laura Roeder
You know, what looks good on the outside and what we often aspire to are these kind of big name recognition or things that are very easy to kind of put a milestone stamp on. Like, you have so many employees or you're making so much money, or you've had an exit for a certain amount of money. But if you look at kind of how you spend your day to day life, it's often totally unrelated to those things. Like, it actually kind of has no impact on your day to day life, any of those things. So, yeah, I'm in a place now where I'm enjoying my life with my kids and my husband and my family.

I love where I live. I'm really enjoying my business. But sometimes it feels like there's not things that I can kind of tell other people about that are this very impressive looking accomplishment. Cause I'm like, yeah, I like my work, but it's like, okay, and. But it's like, no, actually, that's kind of to like your work every day.

That. What else are we trying to do here? Right? Like, that's it, 100%. I was working on tweets this morning.

Noah Kagan
That's what we do out here in Austin. And one of the tweets I was kind of thinking about was just how I called my friend last week, Adam Gilbert, and he answered the call just midday, like, 02:00. Like, who fucking is available at 02:00? Me, by the way, if anyone wants to. No, no, but this is the point.

This is my point, is that. And when we talked lately, I think a lot of, okay, what's new? Or what's this thing? And a lot of it's externalized. Yes.

And I think really, jealousy and all these things we kind of even started with is it's external. Yeah, right. And internal is like Adam said to me. He's like, yeah, I want to be available for what matters. And I like that my schedule is free.

And so I've been even looking at my own schedule this week, and it's like, if you needed me at 02:00, I couldn't answer the phone. Yeah. Like, even this, I'm like, I have an 1130 interview, which I'm actually pretty excited about, but it's being okay. Are you really doing the things you want to do? And the challenge, though, is, if you're just getting started, you may not have that opportunity yet.

Laura Roeder
So I have kind of a Twitter debate with Jason Cohen from WP engine, where he says, okay, when you're starting something, you have to be in mega hustle mode for that first year. And then I'll be like, no, actually, I am the exception to this rule. And he's like, okay, unless you're Laura Roder. Cause she did it differently. Because I've worked part time since I've had kids, which has now been nine years.

So that's been, like, two successful startups and one failed startup during those nine years. And I've worked part time the whole time. And love that. I'm always like, someone has to do the things, but it doesn't have to be you. And you can pull the things out over time.

So it's like, stuff needs to be done to make a business successful. You can do that stuff in 24 hours or a week or a month. And so it's like if you're cutting down your hours, maybe your pace will be a bit slower, but you can still get the stuff done. And we do so much useless stuff. Right.

I think that often there are a set of essential activities that are actually moving things forward and making progress. And those things do not take 10 hours a day. They take 2 hours a day. And then we mess around trying to find stuff to do for 8 hours. Yeah.

Noah Kagan
Yeah. What's the rush? I saw Tim Ferriss put a tweet out this morning I thought was cool about how because we're bored, we want to micromanage and we want to do emails. Yeah. But let's take a quick pause and we're going to keep on the story of doing less and making millions, which is kind of what, what you've been able to do.

Can you just. I'm going to put a timer on. All right. I'm putting a timer on for 25 seconds. I just want you to brag about yourself.

Laura Roeder
Oh, okay. 25 2nd brag. My brags are one. I've been working for myself since I was 21 full time. Always made it work, made my own money.

I've had two successful exits, actually. I've had one public one for me at Edgar, but I also sold another business to my business partner and that bought me a house in Venice, California. So that one was pretty good, too. I have an amazing home life. Great brag.

Oh, thanks. 25. 2Nd brag. I might use that more often. That was cool.

Noah Kagan
Yeah. I think sometimes we don't recognize what we've done. Like even your first one. I think most people wouldn't say that's the thing, but that's what, a fucking cool thing where you didn't have to go and do the standard job life that some people enjoy. And that's great.

Some people are like, for me and you, it's not for us. Yeah, yeah, good for you. Good for me. Good for you too, listener. So sometimes I listen to the show and I'm like, dude, I hate this guy.

But then I'm like, no, he's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. And so tell me more about your slow pace. Tell me about what's this week of not doing a lot. It's not that you're not doing a lot, but you're doing it at a like sustained pace.

Laura Roeder
There's kind of a entrepreneur story that you have this intense amount of work, often have this burnout, and then there's some reward at the end. Right. I mean, that's kind of like a classic story is like, you kill yourself for ten years, but then either you have the exit or you get to the end of the rainbow or whatever. And I just always think about, but why? It's like, for real.

None of us know how long we have. This could be my last day. I don't know. I don't know what's gonna happen. Hope not.

It'd be really creepy once you publish this. Not in my house, dude. Do it out in the front yard. But we really don't know. Right?

And so to have any amount of time that we're spending in our lives doing stuff we hate, it's like, yeah, we have to do stuff we don't like. The garbage needs to be taken out. Whatever. Life is not just beautiful and enjoyable all the time, but to be like, yes, I'm spending the next year where I'm not going to like my day to day life. That's stupid, in my opinion.

That's very stupid to choose for any kind of long period of time to be like, okay, I hate this, and I'm not seeing my friends and family, but don't worry, I'll get some sort of reward at the end. It's like, will you get the reward at the end? And why not try to do it in a way where you're going to like it? So a few comments on that one. I loved it.

Noah Kagan
That was all I have to say. You know, I was talking to Mafe, my wife, and I was just like, there's impressive entrepreneurs like you who aren't out there as much as other people that I'm like, these are the women and men and just entrepreneurs. Let's not even have gender. That's just great. And let's share these stories.

So thank you for coming on and sharing it. The second point was, like, I was making a video yesterday about how we got up similar to where it is today. And I didn't try very hard in the beginning, and then I tried hard, and it was definitely more fun not trying hard. And I'm coming back to that. Right.

There's a lot of stories in it, but I distinctly remember the first year, like, I have to have deals and I have to get to a million dollars. It was just, what's a deal? I want. Yeah, okay. I can do it the next month or two.

Yeah, it was a nice moment to reflect on. Just, okay, I enjoyed what I was working on, necessarily more than. I don't even know when we hit a million dollars. That was part of the video. I was like, I don't.

I don't know. Yeah. And then third, I've been writing it down. Almost every day is like, when you keep complaining about something, you have to eventually complain about yourself. And so when you're complaining about your job or you're complaining you're working really hard, you're not getting anything.

Eventually, it's like, well, okay, maybe you can change it. Yeah. And we can change most things. So, you know, shit happens, right? To all of us.

Laura Roeder
And there are some circumstances in our life that we don't choose, but we always choose how to respond to those circumstances. Right? We. We always have that choice. And, yeah, when you're doing something and you see this so much with entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs being like, oh, I have, like, this kind of client that I hate.

I really hate. I'm so sick of this client. I'm sick of providing the service. But you know what? It pays the bills, but they don't really have any kind of plan for getting out of it.

It's like they have this kind of, oh, well, someday I'll move to a different business, or I'll stop doing this kind of work. I'll stop working this kind of client. But they're not taking any action on doing anything different, you know, because we always have that money excuse, and money's real. We all need money to survive. Right?

It's not an excuse in that way, but when we put money as the most important thing, it messes up our other priorities, because we just think, oh, well, they pay us the most, and then that kind of ends the conversation. Yeah. For money and things like that. You sold Edgar. Do you share the number?

Just in the seven figures. Okay. So somewhere, like, between one and ten. Yeah. That is a very big spectrum, because then there's also.

Noah Kagan
Do you have qsbs? Do you need text? No, I was in s corp, so I did not get qsbs. Yeah. So, for people out there, if you're a C Corp and you hold the shares for five years, you get up to $10 million tax free.

And there's ways you can even multiply that with giving it out to your friends and family. So we sold sumo.com recently, and I got qsbs for my distribution of it, but. So you made one to $10 million. Let's put it maybe three. Okay.

Something like that. Okay. She's not. No tell. No tell.

She's not telling us nothing. What did you spend the money on and how did it change your perspective on anything? Yeah, I put it in index funds, which is what you should do too, listener, when you get a lot of money. I already had a good amount of wealth because I had paid myself very well all along the journey. How much is very well?

Like, where's your salary? I would usually pay myself around, like, 200,000 a year, something like that. Yeah. Which I find for me plenty of money to do everything I want. I think a lot of people have a kind of similar range for 200 being plenty for them.

Laura Roeder
You know, it depends on how many kids in private. Totally, totally. You know, your mortgage and whatever. Like I referenced on my bragging time, I had another business with a partner, and she bought me out, and that was very successful financially also. So when I had the exit, I already was living well.

You know, I wasn't waiting for the exit to have the money. So what the exit gave me was the freedom not to work. It did give me enough money where I could support myself from the investments, but that's not what I've done. You know, I've kept. Built another company and kept working, but it has been something that I remind myself of all the time going back to enjoying my life.

If I'm not enjoying this company, I really just. I really need to change something or not do it, because I am incredibly lucky that I don't need to do it for the money. That's the biggest change for me from the exit. And did you spend it on anything when you. Nah, I mean, I joke that my house has all japanese toilets.

It does have all japanese. You know, those are expensive. How did they corner the market on toilets? Like, when you say japanese toilets, people. Are like, oh, people know.

Noah Kagan
People know, like, what a cool brand, yo. It's like, you got that Noah Kagan toilet. Like, oh, shit, dude. He's got the lambo toilet. That's interesting.

So you sold and you didn't really change much, and then you also just. You did go back to making things. Cause I think there's generally a fantasy of, like, if I can create the company to make the money, then I'm gonna stop working ever again. And it does seem like almost everyone I know who has made some money or a significant amount of money keeps going. I heard it explained away one time that made a lot of sense to me.

Laura Roeder
Like, if you're an entrepreneur who has an exit, that's extremely rare, right? Like, a lot of people want to create a company and they don't. You actually created a company. You actually made it valuable enough that it was valuable enough for someone else to buy. You are a very driven, ambitious person to get to that level.

So the odds that you're just going to have this 180 on your whole personality and go from like, I'm an incredibly ambitious, self motivated person to like, I never want to do anything again just makes no sense.

Noah Kagan
I want to give a shout out to a sponsor who didn't give us money. I just love their products so much, so I wanted to shout them out. It's lmnt, which is element. You might have seen them on shows like Tim or Lance Armstrong and other people. It is a product that I take almost every single day and especially every single time I bike ride.

It's electrolytes, it's salt. I don't know. Did caveman need this stuff? Who knows? But I love these guys.

And it's definitely something I recommend and use on the regular. They have a free pack that you can get for yourself@drinklmnt.com. Noa Kagan that's drink. Lmnt.com. Noa kagan gogip a free sample pack from these guys.

It's funny. I'm working harder now than I ever have, and it's weird to meet Mafe at this time where she's like, yeah, all you do is work. And I'm like, you should see me. There's times where it's slower, but it's definitely, I don't know, I'm enjoying it. And then when I'm not, I think what you said I love is how do we take our power back and really change your schedule and change things?

So you were mentioning to me before that now you've stopped meetings. Yeah. So what is different around how you're running and starting Edgar versus running paperbell? Yeah. So at Edgar, our team was all w two employees, and we followed, scaling up slash traction, you know, having all the meetings.

Laura Roeder
There's so many meetings, and people love traction, but no one talks about the meetings, like. So we had all the department meetings, doing the quarterly planning leadership team one on ones with all the employees. And it was a. It was a lot of meetings. And I think a lot of people have this experience as they grow their company and kind of move up the ranks in their company that their time is now filled with meetings.

And I did not enjoy that. It made me feel very powerless in the company because I felt like I couldn't just, like, do something. I had to talk to someone else. About them doing something. And I really got to the point where I really resented that.

So at paperbell, you know, we have a totally different kind of team where we have no actual employees. We have freelancers. We have some regular freelancers who work regular hours for us. But I'm just like, what if I just don't do this stuff? Let me see if the company falls apart, like maybe, maybe it won't work, you know, maybe it'll be a huge failure and then I'll just bring back the meetings.

But so we, we don't do any kind of one on ones. We don't do any department meetings. I write a slack update every week of what happened the week before. And that's kind of the way, you know, to keep everyone in the loop. But also we're working online, so everyone's work.

When companies can't see what the other people are doing and they're working online, it's always very confusing to me because I'm like, isn't the work, can't you just see it on the Internet? I don't know. I guess because they don't keep things organized. Like our tasks are in ClickUp or in GitHub. Like it's just, you just look at it if you want to see what's going on.

So, yeah, we just don't have any meetings and it's worked great. I feel so relaxed here in you. I'm like, it's like a massage for my brain. What's in your weekly slack update to your team? So it's just what happened the past week.

So it's not a narrative, it's just a bullet point list. And sometimes it's quite short because like the customer service team, they often don't have extra things to do. So what they do every week is like answer all the emails. And so it might just say like they answered all the emails or if we've created some new video documentation that would be in there for product. It's just literally what went live or sometimes what the majority of the work was on for whats going to go live soon?

Marketing. Okay, this landing page went live. The split test went live. Literally just kind of a bulleted list of what shipped basically across the company. So you were a content creator.

Noah Kagan
That was kind of your first career. You sold courses. That was your first. Well, I first freelanced and then I sold courses. You freelanced, you sold courses, you and Marie.

So freelance sold courses, Marie sold your own courses, then created Edgar, which was social media scheduling and now creating software for coaches or course creators for the million dollar weekend spirit. That's a plug, by the way. Share how you got the idea problem and your first one, two customers in each of these. Well, the courses were about social media marketing and online marketing, and that came from my clients asking me about social media marketing. So when I was freelancing, I was doing design and web design.

Laura Roeder
I'd make websites for local businesses, and when social media became a thing, they're like, oh, do it, huh? Do I do the social media on the website? What do I do? So I would tell them what to do. And then I discovered that online courses were a thing.

So I'm like, oh, this is smart. Instead of telling one person, I can tell 100 people at the same time. So that's how I found that idea and those clients. For Edgar, it was actually a very direct progression from that. So I had a social media marketing course where I taught people to create a library of their content and repurpose it.

I taught them just to keep it in a spreadsheet because there wasn't a better way to do it. So Edgar is software that does what I was teaching people to do manually. So that was the kind of problem. Validation was like, okay, well, if I sell a course and they buy the course, and maybe they'll buy software, that makes it easier for them. Although I recently wrote an article about how I find it's actually much easier to sell a course than it is to sell software because software is an ongoing charge and you can't have that kind of fun promise with software like a course, you can sell if they want the outcome of the course, but they never open the course, you know, so you can sell people.

Like, you'll be organized if you buy this course, or you'll have a bunch of followers on social media and then they buy the course. Well, no one really buys a SaaS tool because it's like, oh, if you buy the SaaS tool, you'll be organized even if you convince them they're not going to pay after the first month once they don't use it. Which is actually the beauty of lifetime deals, by the way, because people will impulse buy lifetime deals the way they will, of course, because it makes sense for them financially because they don't have, you know, the ongoing commitment. So paperball is my business now, which is a tool for coaches and consultants. Like, we have a lot of life.

Coaches run their whole business. So your payments, your scheduling, contract, signing client comms, kind of everything you need to run the business in one place. And when I had taken myself out of Edgar, I was doing some business coaching and I actually looked for paperball, assuming that it already existed, because I'm like, okay, I need a tool where people can buy a few sessions and they pay for the sessions and they schedule. And so I'm like, looking for it and I'm like, what? Huh?

I literally just assumed there would be a tool that all the coaches used to do this. And I found that there were tools, but they weren't very good. They didn't quite work. There wasn't a good one. So that's just fulfilling my own need for.

What I was looking for is how I kind of discovered the problem space for paperbell. That was awesome, because I was curious about your selling a SaaS for selling a course question. And also, it's interesting how the problems are all connected to your own problems. Yeah. And to audiences and people that you're already kind of.

Noah Kagan
It's easier for you to interact with. Yes. And so I referenced a failed startup. And so in between Edgar and Paperbell, I had a DevOps SaaS. Oh, yeah, the pig thing.

Laura Roeder
Yeah. Ropig. A community that I was not connected to did not personally understand the problem space. Like, could barely understand what our own software did because I'm not a DevOps engineer myself, and there was lots of reasons why that fail. We ended up launching it and then immediately shutting it down.

But I realized I was not excited about running that business. And if the founder's not excited, like, nobody else is going to have the energy to push it forward. And being in a that I didn't understand and didn't care about was a huge mismatch for me in that business. I remember talking about it. Yeah, I think that's a.

You never liked it. Don't do that one. It's not that. Look, people can succeed in these other things, and I think there's a fantasy of that, but the reality is there's easier ways. Yes.

Noah Kagan
And succeeding with paperbell, succeeding with Edgar, succeeding with things that you have an understanding of and you are excited or enjoyed to go and work on for some period of time. Exactly. Like, I actually genuinely think life coaching is amazing. Like, I think more people should have coaches. I think coaching makes the world better.

Laura Roeder
Like, it's just something that I do have a passion for and it does make me feel good that we're enabling coaches to do what they do. I just don't care about DevOps. So did your first clients come through you telling the people that are booking you to use paperbell. So paperbell customers came from our meet Edgar list. So for me to Edgar, we targeted kind of like freelancer, solopreneur, creator type of audience.

So there were always coaches. We didn't target coaches, but there were coaches in that audience. And I started paperbell before I sold Edgar. So I still had access to the Edgar email list, audience, all that stuff. So we launched paperbell to the Edgar list, and we basically said, hey, if you're a coach, I think we gave away, like, some lifetime subscriptions to paper bell as a way to pull the coaches out of that audience.

Like, we wanted something that only coaches would be interested in because we only wanted the coaches. So that's how we got our first customers. It feels. This is just my feeling. It feels like you've been quieter about paper bill.

Noah Kagan
I remember when Edgar came out, you were promoting more, you were talking more, and it feels like I've seen you now coming back on that. Well, I think it's because my following is not coaches. So with Edgar, there was a direct link between my online following and Edgar customers. Like, I hang out with a lot of bootstrapper, indie hacker kind of people on Twitter. Those people could use Edgar.

Laura Roeder
They cannot. They're not coaches. So they don't have a use case for paperball. So, you know, this is something that sometimes you see. People are like, oh, it's stupid to build in public unless your audience is entrepreneurs.

I just like sharing about business and public, but when I do it now, I don't think it helps me grow my business. It's just something that I enjoy doing. So I think you're probably right that for a while, I just wasn't really doing it because I was kind of more focused on just growing paperbell. And now it's kind of like I have the space, or I'm just choosing to or whatever, kind of bring back more of the sharing about entrepreneurship side you. Recently, we were voice memoing about maybe selling Paperbell, and I thought, it's fascinating because everyone goes through these troughs.

Noah Kagan
Like yesterday, Monday, and Tuesday, I was really annoyed, and I recognized it. So I was like, okay, don't make any decisions or anything like that in this state. And today, I'm more like, I'm more calm. I was able to get a good night's sleep. And you said when you hit a certain number, you started feeling you're like, okay, maybe I actually like this.

Laura Roeder
Yeah. Because I think this is common, whether you're getting your first dollar or whether you're getting your million or 10 million to go through these, maybe walk people through what you're experiencing. Yeah, I mean, I think it's so common too, when the business is either, you know, declining or even just not growing as much as you like. Like paperball. We've increased our mRR every single month since we've existed, which 35 2nd brag is an amazing accomplishment, right?

Noah Kagan
Oh, yeah. But to me, I'm like, oh, it's not growing fast enough. It's not growing fast enough. You know, it was hardly anything last month. So I find if I'm not happy with it, with whatever random thing I've decided in my head is the, you know, bar for me to be happy with, and then I'm, oh, I'm sick of this business.

Laura Roeder
I want to sell this business. I'm done with it. As soon as we're doing better, like in March, we had a killer month. Tons of growth. No idea why.

By the way, I've been, like, digging into all our numbers. Absolutely no idea why we have not asked the people. Like, just like, why did you buy this all the time? What was I doing with the book? With millionaire, a lot of times lately, I'm just like, hey, who'd you hear about it from?

Noah Kagan
And that's been like, helping me triangulate where to point. Yeah, no, that's a good idea. Yeah. I'm like, is it just. Did we reach some kind of inflection point?

Laura Roeder
I don't know. But anyway, since we had a great march, and to me, great means, like that, we added like a good percentage of MRR. What percentage? In March, we grew like 7% month over month. And that made you feel better about it?

And that made me feel better. And it's funny answering the question out loud. Oh, 7%, that's the good number. 3%, that's the bad number. It shows you how arbitrary it is.

But that's how I was feeling. Well. Cause you were saying, hey, I wanna sell. And you also said once you hit the million ARR, that marker made you feel differently about your business. Yeah, because to me, and again, so arbitrary, so different for each person.

I kind of have this idea in my head that, okay, a million ARR, that's a real business. Which, by the way, if I look at anyone else's business, I think they're doing amazing. And I'm thrilled for it. Right when my friend is at like ten k a month, I'm like, you're doing amazing. And I genuinely feel that way.

But for myself, I'm like, okay, it hasn't really validated until it's at a million error. And it took us a lot longer to get there in paper bell than it did with Edgar. So I'm, like, spending all this time being like, oh, this business is going so slow. It's going so bad. But then once we cross that threshold, I'm like, oh, okay.

No, no, I like it again. No, it's fine. You know, I think that's true for all of us, that maybe we're doing better than we think. What's the voice in your head saying? When it's not fast enough, it's not good enough?

Noah Kagan
What's that voice? If I just had less successful friends, I'd feel a lot better. You know what I mean? Like, I'm friends with all these people like you that have built these larger businesses, and that's the crowd that I compare myself to. And that has its benefits, right?

Laura Roeder
Because I'm setting, like, a high bar, I'm seeing what's possible. I know that it's possible to build these larger businesses because I know the humans who have done it. But if all my friends were, like, freelancers who were like, yes, I finally made fifty k a year. Like, that's what I would feel hype about, you know? So I think that's kind of like the double edged sword of this whole, you know, you're the average of the people that you surround yourself with.

I know for me, because I do have a lot of friends that have really big numbers in their businesses. I'm always kind of comparing my numbers with theirs, to be honest. So it sounds like two things. One, you need a few bad, like, I would say poor performer friends. Like, just get that.

Noah Kagan
Get one degenerate. You need, first off, to get better, poor performing. I need some duds. I need some duds. Get a few duds in there.

But I think that's part of it. One of the themes I think about for my life, and what I hear from you, too, is being happy with enough being happy that, like, if today's our last day or this our last week, am I working on what I want to work on? Is my schedule. Like, how I want? Am I with my family?

Are these the friends and activities? Like, talking with you gives me energy. That's why I know you're only here for a few days. It's like, okay, let's. Let's try to talk.

And, I don't know, this is exciting. This is fun to share your story and just being mindful of, okay, it's enough. Like, these are the moments. And I think that's one of the big paradoxes of life. And maybe it's just something that you never figure out is that balance between contentment and striving for more.

Laura Roeder
Right? Yes. It does seem like as humans, we have this desire to create and contribute and grow and finding that line between just being truly happy with what you have and balancing that desire to keep going. I mean, figuring that out, which isn't quite the right word because it's not really something you go and think about. I think it's something you experience every day.

I think that's a great way to spend my time, is to find that right balance for me. Yeah. I definitely think the all or nothing mindset where the past few weeks, especially after I got back from the honeymoon, I was like, I don't want anything in my calendar anymore. That's almost too much. But I don't want to just be busy.

Noah Kagan
To be busy sake. So finding the right balance of I do like making content. Some meetings are pretty fun. I think it's thinking about what meetings or how can you change those meetings and not having it be such a big swing either way. Yes.

Look how far we've come in today's episode, but also in just the, you know, we met, give or take, 15 plus years ago. Yeah, it feels like a good conclusion, right? I think that was all my questions. Great show.

That is a wrap. I hope you loved the episode as much as we did making it for you. Sign up for my exclusive email newsletter, noacagan.com. We have an email each and every week that's meaty, juicy business advice for gorgeous people like yourself. Join 350,000 subscribers@noacagan.com.

Next, text a friend you love them. Yo, dog, let's go do the coffee challenge together. And before you go, slide in my DM's, Oakagan, I love hearing from you what you thought about these episodes. Finally, a couple shout outs to the amazing team who make this happen. Thank you to jasonodcasttech.com for turning this party into a fiesta.

Thank you to Jeremy, Cam, Sylvia, J. Diego, and memo from the door team. For all the magic, you do have a breed of day. What's your favorite tea?