She Did It Her Way

Today's podcast episode is sponsored by LOLA. LOLA is a female-founded company offering a line of organic cotton tampons, pads, and liners. (Pssstt....the founders of LOLA came on the show back in April,  "How to Create a Lifestyle Change with Your Product.")

They started their company with a simple and seemingly obvious idea: women shouldn’t have to compromise when it comes to feminine care products.

• 100% Organic cotton
• Easy to use interface and customizable to your needs
• Subscription is super flexible too!

You MUST give it a go! LOLA is giving She Did It Her Way listeners 60% OFF your first order by using HERWAY at check out :)

Are you tired of being the face of your business? Do you want a little less of the pressure off of you? Do you want to remain CEO of your company, maintain freedom and flexibility of your time?

In today’s episode, we get to see how this can be done with Laura Roeder, founder of Meet Edgar, an online program that shares and re-shares social media postings for online businesses. With only 10% of social media advertisements reaching followers on Facebook lately, Meet Edgar allows businesses to get the most bang for their buck, by continuing to repost those ads and alerting followers on updates to create continued engagement, and acquisition of new traffic as well.

Meet Edgar was hatched from Laura’s first business, LKR Social Media, which was a social media training business. Edgar was essentially an automation of what she was teaching entrepreneurs; which was how to effectively market on social media. She also taught entrepreneurs how to categorize their marketing by promotions, blog posts, personal content, and so on. She found it weird and frustrating that she had to keep her social media content in a separate place or spreadsheet, and somehow copy and paste what she could onto a social media platform. She wanted to streamline the process, and modernize it to make it easier on herself, and everyone else. Luckily, her husband was a software developer, and he was able to build her the first version of Meet Edgar.

Initially, she planned on running LKR and Edgar simultaneously, and have Edgar be an optional software package of LKR. But when Edgar launched in July of 2014, it was a hit immediately with 17 customers in its first month, 50 the next, and eventually 100 within its first few months! Less than a year after its launch, Edgar became a million dollar company, and matched LKR as a seven-figure business!

She then decided that she wanted to stick to software, and shut down LKR. She was ready to move on from the training business and no longer liked running a company that was dependent on her constantly creating a product, and promoting. With the software business, she had no choice but to outsource a lot of the work, because software developing was not her area of expertise, and she preferred heading a team instead of everything falling on her shoulders.

So she went into Edgar with the intention of building a scalable business and began delegating certain departments and aspects of the company to strong members of her team. It was especially important for Edgar to grow without her in the beginning because she needed to go on maternity leave, and being able to hand off her company to capable leaders gave her peace of mind, and allowed for distribution of ownership within her staff, and help grow them as leaders

Hear more as Laura shares some of her tips and tricks for online marketing talks more about becoming a more passive CEO, and building a business that she truly enjoys that doesn’t compromise her freedom!

In this episode, you will…

• Learn how to evolve and modernize your product and services
• Figure out how to transition your business and your team
• See how to balance being a new mom and an entrepreneur
• Know how to distribute ownership to strong leaders within your team
• Be able to run a remote business
• Learn how to market your business and make connections via email
   

INSIGHTS

“Right from launch, this business needs to not only function without me, but be able to grow without me, and really thrive without me. So I think I made very different decisions right from the beginning with giving people ownership over other areas of the business…it didn’t become a bottleneck of, ‘What would Christina do?’”- Laura Roeder

“There’s this idea that whenever you’re upset about something, you have another imagined reality in your head, and you’re upset that whatever you’re experiencing does not match that idea…when I think of it that way I think that’s absurd…I just find that helpful to remember [when] we’re not growing fast enough [or] we’re not making enough money…It’s so easy to benchmark yourself against these crazy standards…I think you just have to stay grounded, and really remind yourself why you are doing this, and what you’re really after.” –Laura Roeder

“It’s fun to strive for bigger goals in the business, but as soon as it becomes not fun, I think you really need to step back and be like, ‘Why am I creating something for myself that I don’t enjoy?’” –Laura Roeder

RESOURCES

Meet Edgar Website

Laura Roeder Website

Meet Edgar LinkedIn

Meet Edgar Facebook

Meet Edgar Instagram

Meet Edgar Twitter

Scaling Up by Verne Harnish

Where does the love for your business stem from? How has it brought joy to the lives of others? How can your services heal people and bring them together?

For Kendra Peterson, food has always been an element of comfort and love in her life, and with her company Drizzle Kitchen, she aims to provide the same for everyone else. Drizzle Kitchen is a boutique, private chef business that provides healthy and clean, customized meals for families who have food allergies, or special dietary needs. Her clients range from busy families, patients out of surgery, or people with life-threatening allergies. Regardless of the need, she brings to the table yummy, nutritious meals that everyone can enjoy together and make memories from!

The inspiration for her business spans all the way to her childhood when she would watch and help her mom cook Julia Child-inspired recipes, and set up full tablescapes for the holidays. When her mom passed away when she was eight years old, she took the reins in the kitchen, and began reviving her mom’s old recipes and drumming up fun recipes of her own for her and her dad. She got more creative with her cooking when she became a vegetarian in her teens. Her dad wanted to make sure she would continue to get all the nutrients she needed with her dietary change, so he took her to the doctor to discuss healthy and fulfilling eating habits, and bought her some vegetarian cookbooks. It was then that her love for cooking became an obsession, and she started making things like tofu cheese and strawberry soup. She also began cooking healthy meals like hand-rolled pasta in fresh Pomodoro sauce for her friends in high school.

She took her excitement for cooking into college and majored in food science and nutrition. When she graduated she began working for Williams-Sonoma, and opened some stores and hosted cooking classes for them. From the cooking classes, she started getting offers to be a private chef, but that wasn’t a road she wanted to go down initially. However, that didn’t stop the requests from coming in. It took a plea from a family friend who was the mother of seven, with a husband who traveled for work constantly, for Kendra to finally explore the profession. The friend needed help with maintaining well-rounded, nutritious meals for her kids, and Kendra found that she really enjoyed acting as a private chef and building her own meals for families.

She started putting the word out about her services and switched to part-time at Williams-Sonoma to attend the Chopping Block, a cooking school in Chicago. She soaked up all the information from Alinea and Charlie Trotter alums, and with her knowledge, she became even more confident and vocal about her new business.

A pivotal moment in her business was when she catered a birthday party for a board member from the Step Up Women’s Organization. She was so impressed with Kendra’s food that she sent her contact information to everyone in her network. Her recommendation skyrocketed her business and her status and helped her obtain a high-level clientele that really put her on the map. Some of that clientele included Cubs players, and their wives and trainers, as well as Jim Karas Personal Training Studio.  

A few years later, she started working with a family who had a son with behavioral issues. The parents had tried therapy and dietary changes but did not have any luck themselves. When Kendra arrived she saw there was a deeper problem amongst them, and knew she needed to help the dynamic of the whole family. She started doing cooking classes with the dad to get him more involved with his wife and kid, and she began making meals that the whole family could enjoy. Through her work with them, she saw how she was able to strengthen and ease their family turmoil, and how food could bring people together. From there she knew she wanted to continue to work with families, and how her work could change lives, not just eating habits.

Tune in and learn more about how Kendra started Drizzle Kitchen, and how she continues to improve people’s lives with some good cooking!

In this episode, you will…

• See the multiple ways your services can help your clientele
• Learn to recognize signs leading you down a career path
• Know how to build an educated and passionate team for your business
• Be able to figure out rates for your service and time
• See how to separate your work and personal time
• Figure out how to deal with the taxes and bills that come along with starting a business

INSIGHTS

“In high school…my friends would come over after school and I’d make hand-rolled pasta in fresh Pomodoro sauce, and it just became this thing that I loved. And it was fun because my friends were happy and fun, and excited about the food, and I was having fun…and it seemed like a very fun way to enjoy meals and enjoy time with your friends.” –Kendra Peterson

“I was connected with a family whose son had behavioral issues…they wanted me to focus on the boy and what his food needs were…after a few months of myself, and plenty of other therapists, I started doing cooking classes with the dad…I started making meals that the whole family could eat together, and very slowly…the parent’s relationship started getting back together. That was really the first client where [I saw] food can literally change your life…food was literally why they weren’t a family anymore and so being able to bring that back in and see how happy and grateful they were…that will never leave me.” –Kendra Peterson

“I didn’t think that anyone knew how to relate to my business…I didn’t understand how different businesses could overlap, and how really, I needed financial advice…getting advice from people outside of my industry has been very beneficial” – Kendra Peterson

RESOURCES

Drizzle Kitchen Website

Drizzle Kitchen Instagram

Drizzle Kitchen Facebook

Drizzle Kitchen Twitter

Kendra Peterson LinkedIn

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Ottolenghi Website