#263 - 在人生重大转折后开创盈利事业

嘿，老兄。最近怎么样？你的公寓情况如何？进展如何了？

Hey, dude. What's up? What's going on with your your apartment? How's it going?

简直是一场灾难。我是说，你看到有个家伙试图把我的整个公寓都烧掉吗？

It's a disaster. I mean, did you see a guy tried to burn my entire apartment down?

你跟我提这家伙好几年了。是同一个人对吧？

You've been telling me about this guy for years. This is the same dude. Right?

是啊，一年多了。他之前住在我楼上。现在不知道他在哪，应该被关在某个监狱里。总之这家伙有某种精神疾病。

Yeah. For a year. He's he, like, lived above me. I don't really know where he is now. He's in he's in prison somewhere, but basically, it's this guy, he's got, like, some kind of mental illness.

真的很不幸，结果就是他们现在想把他赶出去。长话短说，他曾经试图用软管塞进水槽，把自己公寓淹了，水漏到楼下。这是一次灾难。他还放过火。

So it's really unfortunate, but the result is that he's he's also you know, I think they're trying to evict him. So long story short, he's, like, tried to, like, flood his apartment. He shoved a he shoved a hose into a sink and flooded his apartment, so that dripped down. That was one disaster. He set fire.

我们旁边有条堆满垃圾袋的小巷。有次他扔了根火柴什么的，把整条巷子都点着了。这两件事都发生在纽约。但不知为何，他们觉得不能驱逐他，因为他有心理健康问题。

We're next to an alleyway with all these, like, trash bags. He threw a match or something into there, set fire to the entire alleyway one time. Both of these situations were in New York City. So, for whatever reason, they're like, well, you can't evict him. He's got these mental health issues.

我们没地方安置他，就只能让他继续住在公寓里。结果几天前，压垮骆驼的最后一根稻草来了——他故意把自己那间屋子彻底点燃，引发了大混乱。然后他就逃跑了。

We don't have, like, a way a place to put him, so we're just gonna keep him in the apartment. And, essentially, a few days ago, the straw that broke the camel's back moment happened where he literally set his his personal unit on fire entirely and, like, just chaos ensued. Yeah. On purpose. And then he and then he he bolted.

比如，当时他就在外面逍遥法外。

Like, then he was just at large.

他就像个两次纵火犯，一次骚扰者。他故意做这些事，而租房法律对他太友好了，以至于他可以回到他试图烧毁的大楼。

He's like two times two time arsonist, one time flutter. He was doing all this intentionally, and the renter laws are friendly enough that he just he could just come back to the building he's trying to burn down.

对。但这次这次，情况不妙了。所以我在外面抓狂，我女朋友也在外面惊慌失措。我公寓楼里这些素未谋面的邻居们，都是第一次见面，互相分享恐怖经历。

Right. But this time this time, it wasn't it wasn't okay. So, like, I'm outside freaking out. My girlfriend's out there kind of freaking out. All these people that I've never met in my apartment my apartment building are all, like, meeting each other for the first time sharing horror stories.

显然，住在他正下方的女孩说，这家伙当时拿着撬棍四处走动。他绝对是走投无路了，就在放火烧楼前那个早上敲了她的门。他说：'嘿，我是楼上的邻居。'而她完全不知道他是谁。

Apparently, the girl that lives directly below him, this guy was, like, walking around with a crowbar. He was definitely, like, at his wit's end, and he just knocked on her door, she told us, that morning, right before he set the building on fire. And he goes, hey. I'm the I'm the guy from upstairs. And she's like she had no idea.

她就回了句'哦，好的。'她才刚搬来。

She was like, oh, okay. Cool. She just moved in.

'什么楼上的邻居？'

What guy from upstairs?

是啊。然后她就，她就...

Yeah. It and she's like, she

描述起来就像，那个家伙。就是大家都认识的那个人。

described Like, him guy. The guy everybody knows.

她描述他时，说这家伙穿着外套里面没穿衬衫。穿着紧身牛仔裤，鞋子还不配对，就来敲我的门，表现得特别有礼貌。他说，嘿，我是楼上的住户，你知道吗？

She described him, and she's like, this guy had on a coat with no shirt on underneath. He had skinny jeans on, mismatching shoes, and just knocked on my door and was like, super polite. He was like, hey. You know, I'm I'm the guy from upstairs. You know?

他说，他们想把我赶出去。这几年他们一直想赶我走，还把我公寓拆得乱七八糟。嘿，你要不要上来看看？而她直接拒绝了。

Like, they're trying to evict me. They've been trying to evict me for, you know, a few years, and, you know, they gutted my apartment. Hey. Do you wanna come up and, like, check it out? And she literally was like, no.

一小时后，他试图放火烧房子。总之他跑了。警察来了，消防员也来了，整个场面乱成一团。

Cuts an hour later and and he tried to burn the place down. So anyway, so he he was gone. He ran away. There were cops. There were fire firefighters, the whole nine yards.

对吧？简直一片混乱。不知道怎么说，就是一团糟。

Right? It was pandemonium. I don't know. It was this huge mess.

那是谁？那栋着火的公寓楼里是谁？

Who's that who's that an apartment building on fire?

嘿，劳拉。

Hey, Laura.

劳拉，这家伙住在我楼上几层。长话短说，他试图纵火。我的公寓倒是没受什么火灾损害。但消防员进了他的公寓后，简直就像把他的公寓和我的一起淹了——他们用消防水龙把他整个公寓冲了个透。

So this guy lived a few, stories up for me, Laura. And long story short, he tried to burn it down. And there was no fire damage or anything in my apartment. But then the firefighters went into his apartment, and they just, like, flooded his apartment with me. Like, they just hosed down his entire apartment.

等我们回来时，天花板上像开了七处水龙头。所有嵌入式顶灯都成了出水口。卫生间里也不仅是渗水，简直是喷涌而出。

So by the time we got back in, it's, like, seven different, like, faucets were opened up essentially in my ceiling. Like, every ceiling light we have, like, these, like, recessed lights. They were all, like, faucets. My bathroom and it was, like it wasn't just flooding water. It wasn't just dripping water.

流下来的都是褐色的消防水，整间公寓闻起来像篝火现场。

It was brown, basically, fire water. So it smelled like a campfire in our apartment.

这正是人人梦寐以求的公寓体验呢。

That's what everybody wants in their apartment.

我能来参观吗？等消防队完成石膏修补之类的工程吧。这几天我只能在健身房工作，今天才刚回到办公室。总之非常戏剧性。

Can I come visit? Yeah. You know, when whenever the fire crew finishes, like, replastering and, like, there's all this work. I had to I've I've been working in my in my gym for the last few days and only today, basically, in my back in my in my in my office. So, yeah, it's been it's been very dramatic.

劳拉，最近好吗？好久不见了。

Laura, how are you? It's been a while.

挺好的，一切都不错。

Good. Yeah. Things are good.

是啊，你可是播客老手了。你上过《独立女演员》播客，我记得大概是五年前吧，你是第10期嘉宾。

Yeah. You're a podcast veteran. You've been on the Indie Actress podcast. I think it was five and a half years ago. You're episode number 10.

真不可思议，你上节目那会儿是2017年4月。

That's crazy. That was like April 2017 you came on.

哇，我都不知道自己是第10期。现在想想我那时候还挺前卫的。

Wow. I had no idea I was number 10. Now I seem very like cutting edge for me.

你是第一个

You're first

两位数嘉宾。我同意上你的播客是因为觉得你有潜力。我们现在

double digit. Will agree to your podcast. I think you have something. What are we

录到第几期了？

at now?

不清楚，快300期了吧。劳拉，你都快做了六年独立创业者了。2017年采访你时，你上一个公司叫Meat Edgar，我记得营收有数百万。

I don't know. Close to 300. Been almost six Laura, you're a serial indie hacker. Your last company I interviewed you for in 2017 was called Meat Edgar. That did millions in revenue, I believe.

然后你以改变人生的价格卖掉了它，这是大多数独立开发者梦寐以求的事。接着你直接跳到了新公司Paper Bell，我记得你在出售Meat Edgar时它已经能靠拉面盈利了，这又是大多数独立开发者难以企及的目标。现在Paper Bell——不知道你是否公开营收数据——我在官网上看到你们去年处理的支付金额就达数百万美元。所以我的问题是：什么时候才算够？你计划创办多少家成功企业？

And then you sold it for like a life changing sum, which is something that most indie actors can only dream of doing. And then you got a leapfrogged eventually to your new company Paper Bell, which was ramen profitable, I believe, at the time that you sold Meat Edgar, which was again a goal that most indie actors don't reach. And now Paper Bell, I don't know if you share revenue numbers, I saw on your website, you processed multiple millions of dollars in payments just last year. So I guess my question to you is when is enough enough? How many successful companies do you plan to start?

是的，我们为客户处理了数百万美元的支付。不过澄清一下，我们自己的营收还没达到数百万，但我相信很快就能实现。我确实热爱创办SaaS业务，热爱创建独立企业。

Yeah. So yeah, we've processed multiple millions for our customers. We are not at multiple millions revenue yet, just so that's clear to listeners, but I think we'll definitely get there. And yeah, I mean, I love to start SaaS businesses. I love to start indie businesses.

你知道，当我卖掉Edgar时，其实已经创办了Paperbelle，那时我就清楚接下来要做什么。不过我确实强迫自己在出售Edgar后休息了一周——不是度假，就是单纯不工作，想体验下不工作的生活是什么感觉。结果整周都在想'这很有趣，但我更想回去工作'。

You know, when I sold, Edgar, I mean, I had already started Paperbelle by the time I sold Edgar, I kind of knew that's what I wanted to do next. But I did actually force myself to take just a week off when I sold Edgar. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna take the next week, 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, like, let's take a week and see what that's like just so I make sure I have the experience, and it's like, yeah, that was fun for I wanna One get back whole week.

你是不是

Do you

那整个星期都像得了不宁腿综合症一样坐立不安？

have, like, restless leg syndrome that entire week?

我是说，你根本停不下来思考对吧？所以问题是——

Mean, can't you can't turn off the brain is So the is the

你热爱创办独立企业。显然这很艰难，需要付出大量努力。那么你究竟热爱它的哪一点呢？

You love starting indie businesses. Obviously, starting indie businesses is is hard. Right? It's a lot of work. What is it that you love about it?

你为什么喜欢它？

Why do you love it?

你知道吗，前几天我和孩子们相处困难时就在想这个问题。我有两个孩子，一个四岁一个七岁。我当时觉得我的事业正好和带孩子面临的挑战相反，因为养育孩子的难处在于你最终无法完全掌控。你试图塑造他们，测试你的输入会得到什么输出，但他们是独立的个体，会做自己想做的事。而在事业中，虽然不能说完全掌控一切，但就像在玩一个创造自己宇宙的小游戏，比如我可以决定雇佣哪些人。

You know, was thinking about this the other day when I was having a hard time with my kids. So I two kids and they're four and seven. 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. 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, but they are independent humans who kind of do what they're gonna do. 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, you know, like I get to hire all the people in this.

所以我能选择这个宇宙里的所有成员，选择我们要服务的客户类型，决定采用什么样的营销方式。这就像个有趣的模拟游戏，像是《模拟城市》或《模拟大楼》的体验（我也曾是这些游戏的粉丝），你可以建造并精心设计属于自己的小世界。特别是因为我独自办公，租了间小办公室，线上合作的同事也都是远程的。有时我抬头想想，自己一个人对着电脑打造小世界确实挺奇妙的。

So I get to choose everyone who's in the universe, I get to choose what kind of customers we're going to have, I get to choose what kind of marketing we're going to have. It's like this fun little thing where it's like a little, it's like a SimCity. It's a SimCity experience, or SimTower, 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. And sometimes it is, especially because I work physically alone, I have a little office that I rent, I have people I work with online, but they're just remote. And so sometimes it really does 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.

真有意思。其实就在昨天，我和Cortland还在讨论关于创业者的两种类型。有些人创业时想着：好的，这是我能够掌控的系统，我可以像玩《模拟城市》那样观察所有人。

That's funny. Cortland and I, I think literally yesterday, we're having a conversation about almost, like, two kinds of people when it comes to businesses. There are people that enter their businesses, and they're like, okay. This is the system that I can control. And I can look at all like, the SimCity.

我会思考不同人群如何互动。而Cortland更关注既定规则，比如企业有产品，需要匹配渠道，你可以这样看待。但还有另一种方式就像：

I can think about all the different people and how they interact. Cortland's all about, like, the forfeits. Like, okay. The business has a product, and it has a fit with a channel and a like, you can kinda see it that way. And then there's also a sort of a way where you're just like, okay.

好吧，这就像我抽中的彩票。只要我有正确的想法，闭着眼睛纵身一跃，说不定就能实现财务自由。但你显然会选择第一条路。我喜欢

Well, this is kinda like this sort of lottery ticket that I pull. And if I just have, like, the right idea and kinda just, you know, launch, like, close my eyes and jump, then, you know, then I can be financially free. But you would take, obviously, the first the first path. I like

孩子与事业的对比。对吧？就像在外面玩个小游戏，好吧。

the kids versus business Yeah. Comparison. You know? Like, it just it's be like a little game out there. Like, okay.

你更愿意围绕孩子创业吗？你是想赚几百万美元，还是更愿意花几百万美元？

Would you rather start a business around kids? Would you rather make millions of dollars or would you rather spend millions of dollars?

嗯，我两样都在做。这就是为什么我必须保持平衡。但有时候确实需要提醒自己不要对孩子感到沮丧，因为我整天都处在这个我能掌控的小世界里，但不能简单说句'刷牙'他们就立刻照做。我得先想好要放哪个鲨鱼宝宝刷牙视频，才能让他们乖乖站着刷完牙。所以我得提醒自己，并非生活的每个领域都能像工作中那样当皇帝。

Well, I'm I'm doing both. That's why I have to, you know, have the have the balance. But it is sometimes actually, I do have to kinda 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, but I can't just say brush your teeth and then they do it instant. I have to be like, okay, which baby shark brush your teeth video are we gonna put on to get them to stand there and brush for the whole time. So I have to remind myself that in not all areas of life do I get to be, you know, the emperor like I do in

史蒂芬·柯维有句名言，科特兰和我经常为此争论。他说对事要讲效率，对人要讲效果。明白吗？就像你不能控制人，必须让事情自然流动，不能像输入输出那样机械。

There's my a Stephen Covey quote about this, that Cortland and I, we do a lot of bickering sometimes, and we have to remind ourselves. And he says that you should try to be efficient with things, but then you have to be effective with people. Right? Like, can't control You this have to, like, kinda let the thing flow in this in this way that's not, like, you know, input, output.

没错就该这样。钱宁是我认识的最讲究效率的人。每次见他都像在倒计时：'我们只有45分钟，时间一到就结束'之类的。

Yeah. That's the way to do it. I think Channing was, like, the most you know, like, the most efficient person that I know. And so when we meet Channing, he's like, we're on a timer. We've got exactly, you know, forty five minutes and hard cut off blah blah blah.

我就说：'老兄，我是你兄弟，放松点。'不过让我向听众介绍你的新项目吧劳拉，它叫Paper。我会尽力推销它，因为你们主页做得太棒了——居然用长文案当主页，这在初创公司里很少见。

I'm like, dude, I'm your brother. Just chill out. But let me describe your new startup so the listeners know what you're working on now, Laura. It's called Paper I'm gonna do my best to to sort of pitch it because your homepage is really cool. You've got like this like long form sales letter as your homepage, which is not very common for startups.

简单来说，假设我是个高管教练或人生导师，花大量时间学习如何做好教练、如何找客户。这很难，多数人生导师水平一般，而我是少数优秀的。客户来找我，我施展魔法，他们获得突破，成为更好的自己。

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. And it's really hard. Most life coaches are not that good, but I'm a rare example of a good one. So clients come to me, I work my magic. They have these breakthrough moments and they live better lives and they become a better version of themselves.

我很棒，他们很棒，一切都很棒。虽然我的教练技能出色，但还得兼职当个业余无代码专家，东拼西凑各种在线工具。不懂支付系统，也不会建网站。

And I'm awesome, they're awesome, everything's awesome. I'm an awesome coach. But even though my coaching skills are great, I'm also like having to be sort of this like amateur, no code expert on the side, plugging together all these random tools online. Like, don't know how payments work. I don't know how to build a website.

就是，我不知道怎么搞预约排期，还要找五千万种不同的工具，所有东西都像临时拼凑的，简直一团糟。我根本不想操心这些事，因为我只想专心做个好的人生导师。直到遇见PaperBell——它简直就是我的救星。你们这个专为教练打造的一站式工具太棒了。

Like, I don't know how to like do scheduling and some finding 50,000,000 different tools and it's all just like hacked together and it's just a crazy mess. And I don't even wanna worry about that kind of stuff because I just I'm just trying to be a good life coach. Enter PaperBell. So PaperBell is my savior here. You guys are like an all in one tool designed specifically for coaches.

你们处理支付、安排预约、提供可自定义的精美落地页，处理合同签署，还有无数教练可能需要的小功能。现在我只要用PaperBell，开通服务，付钱给你们，之后除了专注辅导客户就什么都不用操心了。

You handle payments, you handle scheduling, you give me a nice landing page I can customize, you handle signing of contracts, and a million other little specific things that coaches might want. So I just use PaperBell, turn it on, pay you guys, and I don't have to worry about anything after that except for my coaching.

别人的产品推介总是比自己的听起来好得多。

Other people's pitches are always so much better than your own.

感觉像是

Feel like

我要把这段视频直接放在主页上。既然你说我是人生导师，大家就会知道这是人生导师Cortland在分享使用心得。不过确实，这个概述非常非常好。对于来自SaaS领域的听众（我知道很多听众都是），我会把它描述为行业垂直型SaaS。

I would make it way too too I'm just gonna take that video and put it right on my home. And you said, I'm a life coach. So everyone will be like, oh, life coach Cortland, just like describing how he he uses this. But yes, was a very, very good overview. People coming from the SaaS world, which I know a lot of listeners are, I would describe it as an industry vertical SaaS.

现在有很多SaaS企业专注于特定行业垂直领域，提供该领域的专业管理工具。PaperBell就是为教练——无论是高管教练、人生导师还是关系教练——打造的解决方案。我们的核心市场就是主要在线上开展业务的这类教练。

There's all these SaaS businesses that focus on specific industry, a specific vertical, and say, here's the tool to manage that vertical. And that's what PaperBell is for coaches, executive coaches, life coaches, relationship coaches. That type of coach who primarily works online is really our core market.

你自己请过人生导师吗？

Have you ever had a life coach yourself?

是的，我现在更像是和一位商业教练以及一位心态教练合作。心态教练更像是生活教练。对我来说，通常我想和教练重点讨论的是商业方面的事情。但你知道，生活和商业这两者确实会交织在一起。

Yeah, I've had more like right now I'm working with a business coach and a mindset coach. So the mindset coach is kind of more like a life coach. For me, usually, the stuff I wanna focus on with a coach is more business stuff. But, you know, the two definitely become intermingled, life and business.

我从未有过生活教练。我曾和两位生活教练约会过。其中一位是性与关系教练，她主要为伴侣提供服务。但这个行业感觉正在爆发式增长。

I've never had a life coach. I've I've dated two life coaches. One was a sex and relationship coach. So she worked with couples. But it feels like it's exploding.

感觉这成了很多人想要自主创业的途径——那些不想为别人打工、想与人合作、想帮助他人并产生积极影响、同时希望有机会赚大钱的人。比如我前女友从事教练工作，她年收入高达数百万美元。虽然这不是普遍现象，但她确实非常出色，已经深耕多年。

It feels like it's this 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. Like my ex, she did coaching. She made literally millions of dollars a year. I don't think that's like a standard outcome, but she was super good. She'd been doing it for years.

她向客户收取每节课400美元的费用，有时更高。预约全满，甚至不得不拒绝客户。后来她开始培训其他人从事这个行业，这变成了教育业务，每年向学员收取1.4万到1.5万美元。

She was charging her clients $400 a session, sometimes more. She was booked completely. She was turning down clients and then she started teaching other people how to do what she was doing. And like that was an education business. So she was charging them like $14,000 $15,000 a year.

有数百人报名参加她的课程，她简直赚翻了。我觉得很多人并不清楚这个行业有多赚钱、多有前景。这真是个非常有趣的细分领域。

She had hundreds of people signing up for that and she was just making bank. And I feel like not a lot of people are aware of just like how lucrative and like how, I guess, promising coaching can be. So it's a really interesting niche to me.

没错，这是个庞大的产业，而且正在快速增长。很多人对此仍持怀疑态度，尤其是对生活教练这个概念不太理解。人们常会说：'什么？人生还需要教练？这不是开玩笑吗？'

Yes. It's a huge industry, and it's very much growing industry. It's something that a lot of people are still skeptical of or they're not sure what it means, especially a life coach. People will be like, Oh, is that a joke to have a coach for your life?

而我说，我

And I'm like, I

不知道，生活中能有个教练似乎是件很棒的事。我希望我的生活能...这也是对的。如果你不熟悉教练这个概念，我想可以这样描述：教练是帮助你在特定领域达成目标的人。因为常有人说'朋友也能帮我'，但如果你有个朋友愿意每周花一小时专门聊你的事，那很好，这是非常棒的朋友，可能对你来说就够了。

don't know, it seems like a great thing to have a coach in my life. I want my life to be And that's also like right. If you're not familiar with coaching, mean, I think that's kind of a good way to describe it is it's someone who helps you achieve your goals in a certain area because often people will be like, Oh, well, I could just, my friends helped me do that. And it's like, if you have a friend that wants to talk to you for an hour every week about just your own stuff, cool. That's very good friend and maybe that will be enough for you.

不过确实，我觉得有个专门帮助你的人非常有用。无论是感情问题还是事业问题，他们能帮助你在想提升的任何生活领域取得更好成果。

But yeah, I think it's incredibly helpful to have someone who's just there to help you. 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 in.

我对这个太着迷了。Cortland可以作证，我最大的执念可能就是提升表现力。就是想要在很多不同方面提升自己的表现，对吧？

I'm so fascinated by this. Cortland will probably attest. Maybe my biggest obsession is performance. It's, like, improving my performance across a lot of different things. Right?

我们有独立开发者社区，我正努力在这方面变强。我没上过商学院，是个有抱负的小说家，已经有文学经纪人，但还在努力创作中。

We got indie hackers. I'm trying to get good at that. I didn't go to business school. I am, like, an aspiring novelist. I have a literary agent, but I'm still working on it.

但我的一个弱点——Cortland也会告诉你——就是我像个孤岛上的独行侠。我学任何东西都想着'靠多读小说就能学会写小说'之类的。感觉缺失的拼图就是找个能指导我、作为外部观察者的教练。但我不确定，可能我还不够愿意示弱。

But one of my weaknesses, Cortland will also tell you this, is that I'm like a man on an island. Right? 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 and I feel like the the missing puzzle piece is to just find someone who can coach me and be that outside observer. But it's like, I don't know. I guess I I'm not, like, vulnerable enough.

对你来说，是模糊觉得'我可以更好所以需要教练'，还是先有具体问题和做事方式的顾虑，然后说'这方面我需要指导'？

With you, is it like, hey. I vaguely know I could be better, so I just want to have this coach? Or is it like, do you start with specific problems and specific concerns with how you do things and then say, Hey, I want to coach for this or I want

怎么判断自己该请教练？

to coach How do you know that you should hire a coach?

嗯，有位我很喜欢的播客教练叫伊塔玛·米兰尼。我还没和他合作过，只是喜欢他的播客和博客之类的。他常说的一句话（虽然不是原话）大意是：如果另一个和你能力相当的人能取得不同结果，那就说明可能存在心态问题。假设他们拥有相同的技能、相似的生活条件和资源，却得到与你不同的结果，那么方程式中还有其他变量，这时候找教练帮你找出自我设限的地方会很有帮助。

Well, there's a coach whose podcast I really like named Itamar Mirani. I haven't worked with him. I just like his podcast and his blog and stuff. 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. 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 and it could be useful for you to work with a coach to see where you're holding yourself back.

当然，教练指导涵盖很多方面，不全是关于自我设限。但作为人类，我们都会透过自己的视角看世界，自动排除某些认为不适合的机会。我们不去争取某些东西，因为觉得会痛苦、太难，或认为必须做出不愿做的牺牲。而教练就是能帮你指出这些盲点的人。

And of course coaching, you know, means so many different things. It's not always holding yourself back, but it's definitely something that we all do as humans. We have our own lens that we look through the world and we automatically discount certain opportunities as not for us. 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, you know, sacrifice that we don't want to make in order to have that. And a coach is someone who can point all these things out to you.

有时候也可能只是简单的责任监督。比如你写小说的例子，教练可能会说：'嘿，钱宁，你说想写完这部小说，但你的行为完全不像要写小说的人。怎么回事？'这就是为什么我认为心态问题经常出现——你声称想写小说，却做着完全不同的事，背后肯定有原因。

I mean, it can also just be simple accountability. It can be like with your novel writing example, it can be someone who's like, hey, Channing, you told me that you wanna get this novel written, but your behavior is looking very different than someone who wants to get a novel written. What's going on? But that is why I think that mindset piece does often come up because there is some reason why you're choosing different behaviors. You say you want to write a novel, but you're doing something else.

好吧，你脑子里到底在想什么导致这些——

Okay, what's going on in your brain that leads to those It

这让我想起加入Stripe的经历。2017年做Indie Hackers时，我的目标只是付得起房租——'要是这个网站能帮我付房租该多酷？不用打工就能付账单简直太棒了'。

reminds me of actually joining Stripe. Back when I was doing Indie Hackers in 2017, my ambition was basically like, I wanna pay my rent. Like, wouldn't that be cool if this website paid my rent? Wouldn't that be cool if I could, like, you know, pay my bills and I have to work a job? That's awesome.

后来加入Stripe后，帕特里克·科里森问我：'如果Indie Hackers能改变创业生态，激励数百万人创业呢？'我当时的反应是：啥？这完全是不同的思维方式和格局，做出的决定也截然不同。有趣的是，你往往意识不到自己的这些局限或思维盲区——就像我那些朝九晚五上班的朋友们。

And then I joined Stripe, and I was talking to Patrick Collison, and he was like, what if indie hackers changed the face of the startup landscape and inspired millions more people to start businesses? And I was just like, what? This is a totally different mindset, like a totally different outlook on and you just make different decisions. And it's interesting because it's like you don't necessarily know that you have these limitations or these blockers or these just ways that you're not even attempting to think, you're not even considering. Because I see the same thing all the time with a lot of my friends who work nine to five desk jobs.

我问他们'为什么不创业呢？'很多时候他们会经历思维转变：'我从没想过自己能做这个，感觉根本不可能。'

I'm like, what if you started a company? 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. Never even seemed like it was possible.

是的。教练的价值往往就在于，有人能提醒你一切皆有可能。我觉得这也是像这样的播客节目的巨大价值所在。人们喜欢这个节目的原因就是，你听到别人的故事时会想，如果她能做到，如果他能做到，那也许我也能。如果他们觉得对自己来说是可能的，那对我来说也是可能的。

Yeah. And often the value of coaching is, yeah, just someone else sort of reminding you that anything is possible. I mean, think that's also a huge value of a podcast like this one. I think the reason people love this is you listen to stories and you do think, if she did it, if he did it, then maybe I could do it too. If they thought it was possible for them, then it's it's possible for me.

这也正是教练能帮你提醒的事情。

And that's also what a coach can help to kind of remind you of.

我对商业生活教练这个领域有点好奇。你有没有观察到哪些教练做得很成功，哪些教练在挣扎？比如说，教练是一个非常宽泛的领域，几乎就像创业时选择了最宽泛的定位——任何问题都可以来找我，我可以指导你的人生。

So I'm curious about the the business life coaching a little bit. Do you see, like, you know, which coaches are counting it, which coaches are struggling? Like, for example, like, coaching is a really broad niche. It's almost like starting a business that is like the broadest niche possible. You have any problem come to me, can coach you with your life.

然后还有各种细分领域，比如关系教练、高管教练或心态教练。哪些类型做得特别好？

And there's all these like specific coachees like relationship coaches or executive coaches or mindset coaches. Who's killing it?

我们很快就会有更多相关数据，因为我们刚推出了一个教练目录网站coachcompare.com，这是市场上的一个空白。之前没有一个好的教练查找目录，所以我们创建了一个。目前上面有大约一千名教练。通过PaperBell我们看不到这些数据，因为我们不要求他们选择教练类别，但在CoachCompare上我们有这个分类。等我们有了同时使用两个系统的用户后，就能整合数据，获得不同细分领域教练收费情况等有趣的数据。

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. There wasn't a good directory to find a coach, so we launched one. So we have about a thousand coaches on there now. And with PaperBell, we actually don't have, because we don't make them select a category of what type of coach they are, but with CoachCompare, we do have that. 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.

目前我只能说，我曾经查看过谁赚得最多。通过Stripe我们可以看到收入最高的教练——我们的系统连接了用户的Stripe账户。有趣的是，收入最高的人群没有任何规律可循，各个细分领域都有。

For now, I will say I did look through one time and see who was earning the most. We can see who's earning the most in Stripe. We're connected to people's Stripe Connect accounts. And it was interesting how there was, like, no trend with the top earners. It was all different niches.

还有一个非常有趣的现象是，很多高收入的教练业务看起来一点都不光鲜。其中一位收入最高的教练甚至没有网站，他们只用Paperbell的落地页——虽然我们能创建落地页，但我们不是完整的建站工具。很多人会另外搭建一个精美的营销网站来连接Paperbell，但这些高收入者却没有这样做。

It was also very interesting that a lot of the top earning businesses were not slick at all. One of the top earners did not have a website. They just used Paperbell landing pages because we can make landing pages, but we're not like a full website builder. So a lot of people have, you know, a separate fancy marketing site that they connect Paperbell to. These people did not have a separate fancy marketing site.

他们显然掌握了一种非常有效的辅导方式，正因效果显著而获得客户推荐，这就是他们业务的基石。他们采用团体辅导模式。不过说实话，很多商业模式简单得出乎我意料，主要是一对一服务。就像你提到的科特兰，仅通过一对一辅导并持续提高收费标准，就能赚得盆满钵满。

They just had obviously a type of coaching that they did really effectively, and then other people referred them because they got great results and that's how they built their business. They had a group coaching model. But yeah, I was surprised by how simple a lot of the businesses were. It was largely one on one. Like you mentioned, Cortland, you can make a lot of money just in one on one coaching just by continuously raising your rates.

很多人都在做一对一或小型团体辅导。虽然市面上到处都在宣传线上课程和项目，那确实也是个方向。但说实话，开展一对一或小团体辅导业务要简单得多，而且完全可能成为非常成功的商业模式。

A lot of people doing one on one or simple small groups. You know, you see so much out there about putting together online courses and programs, and that can be a whole thing too. But, yeah, it's a much simpler business to start to just do one on one or small group coaching, and it it can be a really great business.

我也觉得这个领域可能是二八法则特别显著的典型。比如提到人生教练，我立刻联想到高成就人群——毕竟会寻求人生教练的本身就是专业人士这类群体。我听播客时注意到，顶尖运动员如迈克尔·乔丹、勒布朗·詹姆斯都有专属人生教练，Naval Ravikant的教练是Kapil Gupta，我就这样顺着线索深挖了下去。

I also feel like this is probably one of those spaces where the eighty twenty is really, really vast. For example, when I think of life coaches, I tend to think of, like, high performing people. I mean, right out of the bat, the kinds of people that want life coaches are gonna be people who are, like, professionals, etcetera. But I've listened 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, and I've just, like, gone down the rabbit.

我点开过他的几个产品链接，记得看到过他向公众出售价值10万美元的课程或书籍——虽然具体金额记不清了，但当时真的让我震惊到反复确认。

Like, I have clicked down a few clicks with, like, his products. And I think I saw him selling a course or a book to just the general public for, like, a $100,000 or something crazy. It might not have been a $100,000, but it's, like, one of those things where I'm like, wait a second. Like like, what? You know?

定价这么高？没错，这完全取决于他的目标市场。要知道并非所有人生教练都能赚大钱。

Charge it? Like, yeah. It's it's all about his market. Right? It's like it's not like life coaches make bank, like, writ large.

对吧？就像

Right? It's like

确实。

Right.

我就是觉得存在这么一群潜伏的生活教练，专门针对顶级精英人士，他们赚得比以往任何时候都多。

I just feel like there's, this sleeper, you know, group of of life coaches who are, like, going for the top tier people, and they're making more than ever.

换作我也会这么做。如果让我设计一个完美的生活教练业务，带着商业思维来看这事——其实我根本不在乎教练本身，我可能是个糟糕的教练——但我会尽可能多赚钱。

That's what I would do. That's what I would do. 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. But I would I would try to make as much money as, like, possibly could.

首先，我会选择利润丰厚的细分市场。比如那些既有钱又有高价值需求的人群。像我前女友在旧金山，主要服务科技公司高管，帮他们解决婚姻破裂这种对当事人价值无限的问题——只要能修复人生中最重要的关系，他们愿意支付天价。

Like, number one, I would try to choose a really lucrative niche. It's like who has a lot of money and has something they need coaching with that's like very valuable to them. So like my ex, like she's located in San Francisco. She's targeting like mostly tech executives and the problem she's helping them solve is like their broken relationships, their broken marriages, which is a problem of almost infinite value to people. They'll pay almost infinite amount of money if you could help them, you know, repair this, like, most important relationship in their life.

所以我就会这么做。商业教练是另一个方向，辅导企业成长中的高管。他们资金雄厚，甚至可以把这笔支出算作商业成本，不用自掏腰包。

And so I would do that. Business coaching is another one. Coaching executives who are growing their businesses. They have a lot of money. It can be potentially even like a business expense where the money's not coming out of their pocket.

如果你帮到他们，可能带来数百万乃至数十亿的收益，对他们来说超值。我会这么做，同时依靠口碑传播。我会成为顶尖教练，营造排他性——用金钱换取我的时间，所以不需要大众营销，只要精品销售和口碑推荐。

And if you help them, they might make millions of dollars or billions of dollars or something like that, so it's super worth it to them. So I would do that, and then I would grow through word-of-mouth as well. 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. So I don't want mass marketing. I want, like, sales and the best sales, like a word-of-mouth recommendation a

朋友时间。

friend time.

类似这样。然后我会利用大牌客户背书，就像你说的Naval Ravikan的教练那样。嗯。接着借势自我营销，最终转型做教育产品——卖课程、出书

Or something. Yeah. And then I would channel that and I would leverage, like, my big name clients, like you were saying with this with Naval Ravikan's coach. Mhmm. And then I would leverage that and then start marketing myself, and then probably try to transition into education, like, selling courses, selling books

概念。善良。

Concepts. Kind.

是啊，总有一天会的。然后我就能笑着走向银行，成为一名成功又富有的教练。

Yeah. At some point. And then laugh my way to the bank as a successful, very rich coach

然后退休。是的。我是说，确实有那样的整体规划，但也要指出——当然，可能显而易见——大多数教练赚得并不多，这也没关系。很多人进入教练行业是因为想要经营一个小型企业，工作时间灵活，不用上班就能赚钱。所以也有很多教练每月赚3000美元就觉得非常棒了。

and retire. Yeah. I mean, there there is that whole game plan and there's also, you know, it's worth pointing out a lot of of course, in case it's not obvious, most coaches don't make a lot of money, is also okay. 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. So there are also plenty of coaches that are making $3,000 a month, and they're like, awesome.

我有灵活的工作时间。热爱我的工作。喜欢和我共事的人。经营起来相当轻松。我想指出这一点，因为你经常听到你刚才描述的那种发展轨迹，那确实很棒，但同样...

I have flexible work hours. I love what I do. I love the people that I work with. It's pretty easy business to run. 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 Yeah.

是的，那确实是极少数情况。如果你只是想赚点外快或者用教练工作替代现有收入，这也是个很好的方式。

Yeah. That's very much the outlier. And it's cool if you just want to make a side income or replace your income with coaching, it can be a great way to do it.

嗯，我觉得有点讽刺，因为你在独立开发者中也是个异类。绝大多数独立开发者还没辞职，还没赚到一分钱收入，甚至可能连想法都没有。而你已经是连续创业者，做到第三四个项目了，眼睛都不眨一下。那你为什么停止做Meat呢？我是说你明明赚了几百万美元。

Well, I think it's kind of ironic because like you're an outlier among indie hackers as well. The vast, vast, vast majority of indie hackers haven't put their jobs yet, haven't made a single dollar in revenue yet, might not even have an idea. You're a serial entrepreneur on your like third or fourth business and you haven't blinked. So why did you stop working on meat either? I mean you're making millions of dollars.

你本可以继续做那个。我相信它肯定面临各种挑战，也有发展空间。既然有人收购了，显然有人相信它能成长。你为什么决定停止那个项目，转而开始新业务呢？

You could have just done that. I'm sure it had all sorts of challenges and all places that could have grown. Somebody bought it, so clearly somebody believed it could grow. Why did you decide to stop working on that and start a new business?

是的，这是个非常复杂的答案。最简单的真相可能是我对产品感到极度厌倦。我对社交媒体营销感到厌倦。这个领域很艰难，因为随着时间的推移，你能从供应商那里获得的权限越来越少。我们的供应商，或者说供应链，随便你怎么称呼，就是Facebook、Twitter、Instagram这些平台及其权限。

Yeah, it's a really complex answer. Probably the simplest truth was that I was largely bored with the product. I was bored of social media marketing. It's a tough space to be in because you get less and less permission from your vendors over time. Our vendors, our supply chain, whatever you want to call it was Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and their permissions.

随着时间的推移，这些平台总是——现在依然如此——不断削减第三方工具的权限。比如我最近在Instagram上为Paperbell做推广时，就发现必须用原生应用完成大量操作，因为他们不允许第三方工具使用Reels功能，也不允许在故事中添加带链接的贴纸。我知道很多人看着这些工具会问：为什么它们做不到这些？其实我明白原因——因为Instagram没给它们权限。就是这样。

And over time, they always and still do just degrade the permissions that tools have. Like I was just doing a promotion for Paperbell on Instagram and I was like, oh man, I have to do so much just with the native app because they don't let third party tools use Reels, they don't let third party tools do stickers on stories so you can put the link. And I know I know so many people look at the tools and go, why can't they do that? I'm like, I know why they can do that because Instagram doesn't give them permission to do that. That's why.

因为Instagram希望你

Because Instagram wants you

我们当时正在使用

We were using and

这就像是

it's just like

就像Twitter对独立开发者那样。没错。当Twitter突然说不能提前安排发帖时，独立开发者们不得不发布那种...你知道的，类似公告通知之类的东西。

when Twitter, like For indie hackers. Messed yeah. For indie hackers when Twitter was like, oh, you can't do, like, scheduling in advance. And you had to, like, issue this, like, you know, sort of newsletter announcement, etcetera.

没错。Twitter曾规定不能重复发布完全相同的内容——技术上这条规则至今仍在，只是很多人不知道，因为这规定太荒谬了。Twitter服务条款的技术细节是：你永远不能重复相同内容，甚至不能在同一个账号或你拥有的不同账号上发完全相同的'你好'——因为那会被视为同一条推文。不过他们并不执行这条规则。

Yeah. Yeah. 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. 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. They don't enforce it.

但作为一个工具，我们始终觉得不能冒险违反Twitter的服务条款而危及用户账户。所以我们决定不再重复发布内容。是的，这确实是个艰难的市场环境，尤其当你与业务赖以生存的平台方对立时。现在要特别感谢Stripe——作为我们的核心合作伙伴，我们与客户的Stripe账户直连，双方利益高度一致。我们致力于通过Stripe帮客户赚更多钱。

But as a tool, we always felt like we can't risk our users' accounts by going against Twitter's terms of service. So we just decided we're not going to repeat content. So yeah, it was just a really tough market when you're at odds with the people that your business relies on. Now, shout out to Stripe, Stripe is a core partner for us because we connect with our customers' Stripe accounts, but our incentives are very aligned working with Stripe. We're just trying to make our customers more money to put through Stripe.

Stripe没有理由限制我们的接入权限。他们希望给予我们更多接口，让我们能通过工具帮助客户更便捷地使用Stripe。是的Edgar，这个市场环境就是如此艰难。我认为社交媒体营销不会消失，但正如Buffer公开数据显示的增长停滞与下滑——当平台工具与你为敌时，业务发展确实举步维艰。

There's no reason for Stripe to limit our access. 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. So yeah, Edgar, it was just a tough market in that way. 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 of their growth. And I'm not surprised because it's it's a hard place to grow a business when the tools are fighting against you.

我觉得连续创业者很有趣，因为你积累了实战经验，亲眼见证过成败。然后你脑海里就会勾勒出下次要如何截然不同的场景——就像每件让你不爽的事，你下次都要换个做法。这有点像恋爱分手后，你列出一堆无法忍受的缺点，发誓下次绝不重蹈覆辙。

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. And then you get this image in your mind of how it's going to be all so different next time. Like every single thing that annoys you, you're gonna do differently. It's kinda 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, that.

我再也不和红发人约会了。没错。

I'm never dating a redhead again. Yeah.

再也不找教练了。

No more coaches.

不要教练了。我受够了被指导。从运营中你学到了哪些影响未来创业方式的通用经验？比如关于融资——我记得MeetEdgar是自筹资金的？关于团队建设、居家办公与办公室的选择、行业方向等问题，你的想法是否有变化？

No more coaches. I'm tired of being coached. What are some general things you learned from running that affected how you approach your future businesses? Did you have different thoughts about like, I know you bootstrapped MeetEdgar, I think. Did 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?

是的。这次我最大的改变是团队架构和异步工作模式。Edgar时期我们虽是远程办公，但采用'实时远程'模式——所有成员都在美国境内，工作时间也...

Yeah. So the biggest thing I am doing very differently this time is the way the team is structured and async. 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. 工作时间。我们有很多实时会议和站立会议之类的活动。虽然我们是远程工作，但和Gumroad或Basecamp那种大量异步工作的模式非常不同。我们在线工作，但并不专注于异步工作。

S. Working hours. We had a lot of live meetings and a lot of live stand ups and things like that. 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. We worked online but we were not focused on asynchronous work.

另外，从公司创立之初，所有人都是W-2雇员。我们没有使用太多自由职业资源，而是更专注于根据需要雇佣全职员工。这些做法在PaperBell我都彻底改变了。在PaperBell，我们整个团队都是自由职业者，并且计划保持这种模式，除非有充分理由需要雇佣全职员工。

Also everyone was W-two from the very beginning of the company. We didn't use that many freelance resources. We did a lot more focused on just hiring full time employees as we needed them. And those are all things that I've done, 180 on at PaperBell. So at PaperBell, our whole team is freelance and plans to stay that way until we have a really good reason to bring on a full time employee.

我不确定我们是否会改变。而且不仅是形式上的自由职业者——不是那种'技术上你是自由职业者，但工作方式相同'的情况。我们采用完全不同的商业模式，只根据需要引入临时专家。现在回想起来，我认为在EDGAR时犯的一个错误是，有时我们会雇佣全职员工，但实际上可能只需要他们完成一个三个月的项目。本可以请人来清理业务中的某个领域或解决问题后就结束合作。

I don't know if we will. And not just freelance as in, oh, technically you're a freelancer, but you work the same. 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. 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. We could have brought someone in to clean up that area of the business or solve a problem with the business and then moved along.

但我们却雇佣了他们，他们做完最初三个月的工作后，你不得不为他们找其他事情做。当时你意识不到这点，不会想着'你的工作差不多完成了，接下来要做什么？'。你为他们创造工作，他们自己也创造工作，最终可能导致团队臃肿，或者公司里充斥着大量无实质意义的忙碌工作。

Instead we brought them in, they kind of do the three months, and then you to find something else for them to do. And that's not how you see it at the time. You're not like, Oh, you're kind of done. What else are you going to do? You generate work for them, they generate work for themselves, 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.

所以在PaperBell，我决定我们要寻找具体问题，然后引入自由职业者来解决这些问题。我使用Fiverr的频率高得难以形容。虽然我们确实有一些长期合作的自由职业者，但现在只要有些零碎工作需要处理，我就会直接上Fiverr找人解决。

So at PaperBell, I'm like, okay, we're going to look for specific problems. We're going bring in freelancers to solve those problems. I mean, I cannot tell you how much I use Fiverr. I use Fiverr so much. And you know, we do have regular people that are working on the business in a freelance capacity, 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.

这种方式工作效率非常高。

And it's so effective to work that way.

作为企业主，你个人的幸福感如何？从Meet Edgar到现在，有什么改变让你更享受经营企业吗？还是这些改变主要是让你更高效地运营企业？

What about your personal happiness as a business owner? Is there anything that you've changed from like Meet Edgar to now that like makes you happy running your business or is this mostly stuff that just makes you more effective at running your business?

有些文化方面的东西确实不同，而这正是我现在更偏好的方式。未来我可能真的会回归Edgar那种模式。在Edgar时，我们也非常注重打造优秀的文化氛围、有趣的文化，确保即使远程工作大家也能真正了解彼此。而在PaperBell，现在我告诉人们：我们工作中不做任何社交活动。所以如果你是那种想通过工作获得社交满足的人，在这里可能会很痛苦。

Some of the culture stuff is different and it's just kind of what I prefer now. I really might go back to the Edgar way in the future. 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. At PaperBell, now I tell people, I'm like, we don't do any social stuff at work. So like, if you're the type of person that wants to use work as a social outlet, like, you will be miserable here.

比如Slack上就不会有狗狗照片。

Like, there are no dog photos on Slack.

我在想这是否与你写过的那篇关于赋权如何让团队压力山大的文章有关。基本上讲的是新浪潮对吧？如果你是知识工作者，在初创公司，员工拥有最大限度的自由。每个人就像是公司内部的小创业者，但现在看来这并不太好。分析瘫痪，人们没时间进行深度工作等等。但作为创始人，我常思考这个问题，因为这正是我作为创始人面临的最大难题。

I wonder if this connects you wrote an article about empowering how empowering your team is stressing everyone out, Basically about, like, the new wave, right, where if you're a knowledge worker, if you're in a startup, employees have, like, maximum freedom. Right? And it's like, just figure like, everyone's, like, a little, like, entrepreneur inside of the company, and now that's not really good. Analysis paralysis, people aren't like, they don't have the time for the deep work, etcetera. But I kind of think about that with you as a founder because that's kind of my biggest issue as a founder.

对吧？因为我想什么时候起床就什么时候起床。我既做Indie Hackers，也做其他产品等等。对我来说，我想要良好的生活方式设计，但同时也需要想办法约束自己的自由，以真正适应我的幸福感。

Right? Because I wake up when I want to. I work on Indie Hackers. I also work on other products, etcetera. And for me, I'm like, well, I want to 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.

你缩小业务范围与此有关吗？或者你对此怎么看？

Was your narrowing things down related to that, or how do you think about that

是的。我觉得很大程度上是出于建造新模拟城市的乐趣。你知道吗？当我们搞社交活动时，有些部分我确实很喜欢，有时候也确实很有趣。

Yeah. I think I just a lot of it was kind of the fun of building a new SimCity. You know? It's like, okay. When we did the social thing, there were some things about it that I really loved, and sometimes it was really fun.

但有时候我会觉得：我们为什么要做这些破事？不如专心工作。所以这次创业我就尝试'专心工作'的模式看看。也许我会觉得无聊想要社交出口，也许团队凝聚力会下降行不通，但我很好奇想试试，因为这个模式确实有很吸引人的地方。

And sometimes I felt like, why do we do all this bullshit? Like, let's just do our work, you know? So it's like, okay, with this company, I'll try the let's just do our work and I'll see. Maybe I'll get bored and want the social outlet. 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.

所以我觉得有个时间规划很重要，我从来不是那种认定'这家公司我要做一辈子'的人。你知道，我没有任何必须把公司传给子女的执念。我就是打算做一段时间，然后可能会卖掉它。真的，首先我的孩子们得学会自力更生。

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. You know, I just I don't feel any tie to like, I need to pass this on to my children. It's like, I'll do it for a while and I'll probably sell it, you know? Yeah. I'm like, no, my children need to fend for themselves, first of all.

把太多东西传给子女并不好。但确实，这种想法让我在经营公司时有种做实验般的自由。退出后的自由也是——我经常提醒自己：我做这些是为了乐趣，因为我享受创业过程，我必须享受日常工作。

Like, that's not good to pass on too much to your children. But so yeah, I think it does give me a freedom in a company being a kind of experiment. 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. I'm doing this because I enjoy building a company. I need to enjoy the day to day work.

这是我在成功退出前就一直秉持的理念。我一直坚信：既然是你的公司，就应该打造你真正喜欢的东西。这确实赋予了我们尝试的权限，比如'我们不做团建活动。如果效果不好可以调整，但假设这确实会拖慢公司发展速度...'

And that's a philosophy that I've always had before I had an exit. I've always been a big believer that it's your company, you should build something that you really like. So I think it does give a certain permission to experiment and be like, Let's not do social stuff. If it's a disaster, we can change it. But let's say it slowed down the growth of the company.

假设这是事实——如果没有团建活动，团队凝聚力下降，公司发展会放缓。我的态度是：我愿意承担这个风险，因为我想尝试打造这样的公司，看看我是否享受在这种环境工作，其他人是否也喜欢，然后静观其变。

Let's say that that was true, that if you don't have social stuff, people aren't as cohesive, it slows down your growth. I'm like, okay. I'm I'm willing to take that risk because I wanna try building that kind of company, see if I enjoy working in it, other people enjoy working in it, and and we'll see what happens.

在我与其他公司共事期间，我一直很讨厌团建活动

I always hated social stuff during the times where I worked with

很多人都这样

other companies. A lot of people do.

比如我在旧金山几家初创公司实习时，总会遇到'等下我们要去看棒球赛啦'之类的安排。而我心里只想：我只想下班后和我真正的朋友聚会。难道我就不能离开工作场所，完全做我自己吗

Like, I had a few internships at some startups in SF, and then always be like, oh, we're going out to the baseball game afterwards even blah blah blah blah I'm like, I just wanna go, like, hang out with my my real friends. Don't I wanna leave work and just be be be of my own big

来自我过去任职的两家公司，大概是我二十多岁时的经历。

are from the last two companies that I worked for, like, my twenties.

是啊。看到了吗？这就是为什么它如此之好。世界上有这么多不同类型的人，对吧？

Yeah. See? And this is why it's, like, so good. There's so many different types of people in this world. Right?

作为公司，你需要对此保持透明，这正是我真正关注的地方。我们刚为客服团队招了两位新人，显然这不是那种只需专家偶尔介入的工作。我们需要专家每天在岗，客服服务必须每日提供。

And people and that's why you need to be transparent about it as a company. And this is something that I really focused on. 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. We need a specialist every day. We need customer service every day.

所以我在招聘启事中明确说明了公司的性质。如果你喜欢在工作中与人闲聊交朋友，在这里会相当痛苦。但这样反而能吸引到最适合的人——他们会感叹：天啊，终于找到一家不需要社交的公司了。

So I was really clear in the job listing the type of company that this is. And if you like to chat with people and make friends at work, 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.

终于有个公司不用和这些人打交道了。对了，我很好奇Paper Belt的起源。你以数百万美元出售了Edgar，我猜那是改变人生的金额。之后你面临着这样的选择...

Finally, a company where I don't have to talk to these people. Yeah. So I'm curious about, like, the origins of of Paper Belt. You sold Edgar for millions, I assume, a life changing sum. You then you know, you're faced with this idea of, okay.

你热爱创业，但有无数的公司可以创办，无数的潜在创意。你如何坐下来确定自己想做什么项目？你的北极星是什么？怎样才算好创意？

You love entrepreneurship, but there's an infinite number of companies you can start. There's an infinite number of potential ideas. How do you sit down and figure out like, what idea do I wanna work on? What is my North Star? Like, what is a good idea?

你如何筛选掉那些糟糕的创意？

And how do you filter out the bad ideas?

所以我确实设定了一些参数，因为这些年我确实有很多想法。其中一个参数是必须能够自筹资金，因为在Paperbell之前，我创办的另一家公司失败了，我们曾筹集过一些资金。我特别讨厌融资这件事——倒不是融资过程本身有多糟（我甚至没拿过风投的钱），

So I did have some parameters because I had a lot of ideas over the years for sure. So some parameters were it had to be able to be bootstrapped because before Paperbell, I had another company that failed we raised a little bit of money for. I absolutely hated having raised money. Not even the fund raising, that part wasn't even that bad. I didn't raise any VC.

就是向朋友和家人，或者说一路上结识的其他创业者们筹了点钱。我特别厌恶那种受制于投资人的感觉。明明我的投资人都是朋友，非常友善毫无压力，但我就是觉得...

It was just friends and friends and family or friends and friends in my case, as I always like to say, other entrepreneurs that I've met along the way. I raised some money. I hated that feeling of being beholden to my investors. I felt like it was so much pressure and my investors were literally just my friends, all super friendly, no pressure at all. But I just felt like, k.

我可以亏自己的钱，但亏他们的钱？谢了不用。

I can lose my own money, but losing their money, no thank you.

我得插一句，我加入Stripe时也有同感。加入前毫无压力，公司是自己的，失败就失败呗无所谓。但加入Stripe后就像...

I gotta interrupt for a second to say I feel the same way about joining Stripe, where it's like, before joining Stripe, no pressure. It's my own company. If it fails, it fails. It's totally fine. After joining Stripe, like Yeah.

现在公司被别人收购了，对方对我有期待，压力反而更大了

This other person bought my company and expects things for me. It's way more pressure in a way

就像被迫接受的人生导师，懂吗？

that, like It's like a non consensual life coach. You know?

确实。

It's yeah.

我甚至都没要求过什么责任归属。

I didn't even ask for some accountability.

是啊。你突然就要承担责任了。我觉得很多创业者可能都会有和你完全一样的感受，就是觉得这挺糟糕的。

Yeah. You're just suddenly accountable. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs probably will feel exactly the same that you do where it's like, I kinda sucks.

对某些人来说，这可能是个很好的动力来源。你知道吗？有些人会觉得，没错，这对我就是很好的激励。我会因为别人的钱在路上而把事情搞定。

And for maybe some people, like, that's a great motivator. You know? Maybe some people are like, yeah. Like, that's a great motivator for me. I, you know, I get it done because other people's money is on the way.

但对我来说，这只会让我恐慌，我一点都不享受。而且那家公司...我不只是融资了，它失败的原因之一就是因为我意识到要让它成功需要融更多资，我当时就想：不，我做不到。不能再这样下去了。所以它必须是个能自主启动的项目。我现在和丈夫一起工作。

For me, it just made me panic and I did not enjoy it. And also that company, like not only did I raise, the reason it failed, one reason it failed is because I realized I would need to raise more to make it successful and I was like, No, I can't. Can't keep doing that. So, yeah, it needed to be an idea that could be bootstrapped. I work with my husband.

他是开发人员，我负责市场营销和商业方面。所以这个项目必须是我们能一起构建的，或者他自己就能完成的。我也从失败的项目中学到了教训。那个失败的项目是个DevOps工具。

He is a developer. I do the marketing business side. So it had to be something that we could just build together, you know, that he could build on his own. I also learned from the failed one. So the failed one was a DevOps tool.

我对DevOps一窍不通，但我想着：好吧，我懂营销。在那个过程中，我确实意识到自己严重低估了个人品牌和受众的价值。虽然我在教练圈完全不知名，但我有一群创作者、创业者和独立开发者的受众，和教练群体也有交集。我能和教练们对话。

And I don't know anything about DevOps, but I thought, Okay, I know about marketing. And I definitely discovered during that process how much I had underestimated the value of my own personal brand and audience. And it's not like I'm known in the coaching world at all, but I have an audience of creators, entrepreneurs, indie hackers, whatever. There's crossover with coaches. And I can speak to coaches.

教练就是创业者，教练就是小企业主。这些都是我热爱且充满热情的话题。我对DevOps完全没兴趣。这让我明白：好吧，项目必须和小企业创业者领域相关。

Coaches are entrepreneurs. Coaches are small business. These are topics that I love and I'm absolutely passionate about. Do not care about DevOps at all. So that taught me, okay, it needs to be something in the small business entrepreneur world.

所以，你知道，克里斯和我可以一起创业，在小企业家的世界里做点什么。我们花了很长时间才想到一个好主意，因为我根本不相信‘发现问题’那一套。我讨厌人们说‘只要找到问题然后解决它’。我觉得，想出解决方案才是最难的部分。要做出一个好的解决方案真的很难。

So something, you know, Chris and I can bootstrap together, something in the small business entrepreneur world. 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. I hate it when people are like, Just find the problem and then make a solution. I'm like, Making a solution is the hard part. It's really hard to make a good solution.

你不能只是说‘哦，人们想要更好的播客录制方式’。然后你还得真正给他们提供更好的播客录制方式，明白吗？不只是‘哦，我有这个想法’。所以我觉得我们确实花了很长时间才找到这样的项目：不仅发现了市场中的问题，而且我们确实有更好的解决方案。现在软件行业的情况是，最小可行产品（MVP）确实存在，但如果你想让人们付钱，它就不能太糟糕，因为市场上选择太多了。

You You can't just be like, oh, people want a better way to record podcasts. It's 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. 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. 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?

所以它必须是我们能够发展到可以称之为MVP的东西。虽然不是完全‘完成’，但已经足够好到有人愿意付钱。我们遇到Paperpile是因为我当时在做商业教练，给其他企业家提供建议。这很典型，就是去找的时候以为它已经存在了。

So it had to be something that we could bootstrap to a point where it's like, okay, you can call the MVP. It's not totally quote unquote done, but it's good enough for someone to pay for. And we came across Paperpile because I was doing business coaching, so I was advising other entrepreneurs about their business. And it was just a classic, just went looking for it. I assumed it existed already.

我当时想，好吧，我只需要一个让人们购买课程套餐的方式。他们付款后可以预约课程。虽然有变通方法或工具能做到，但那些工具都很糟糕且漏洞百出。于是我发现这个需求：没有一个好工具能满足教练的需求。

I was like, Okay, I just need a way for people to buy a package of sessions. They'll pay and they'll schedule the sessions. And there were workarounds or there were tools that could do it, but the tools were crappy and buggy. So I just found this need, oh, there's not a good tool that does what coaches need.

说到这点，你当时有你的清单对吧？你想进入一个能利用你品牌的领域，一个你熟悉的领域。然后你想到了Paper Belt，但你是如何验证这个解决方案的？

So to that point, you had your checklist, right? You wanted to be in a space where you could leverage your brand. It was a space that you knew. And then you came on the idea of Paper Belt, but how do you actually go about validating that solution?

嗯，可以说我们当时想出的核心解决方案现在仍然是产品的核心：就是销售课程套餐的方式。这听起来没什么特别，直到你真正尝试去做。你会发现像Acuity和Calendly这样的工具，你可以在预约上放付款链接，但不能真正销售包含三次预约的套餐并让客户付款。当然也做不了分期付款（这对教练很常见），做不了订阅。把付款和套餐绑定在一起——实际上我的受众完全没共鸣，但我觉得这就像是‘教练界的Shopify’。

Well, would say the core solution that we came up with then and 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. 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. Or you definitely can't do a payment plan, which is very common for coaches. You can't do a subscription. 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.

这就像是一个后端系统，让你能用Shopify销售商品的所有方式来销售教练服务。Shopify会说‘哦，你确实需要发货’‘哦，客户可能订购多个’。他们把电商需要的所有功能都整合了。我们就是在为教练行业做这样的事。这就是解决方案的核心理念。

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. Oh, yeah, maybe people order multiple quantities. They put all the things together that you need for e comm. That's what we're doing for coaching. So that was the core idea of the solution.

关于验证环节，我们做了大约10次客户访谈。但说实话，我从未觉得这特别有用。埃德加也有同感。就像，好吧，我们勉强完成了。或许在最糟糕的情况下，你能得到些反馈。

And then as far as validation, we did about 10 customer interviews. But honestly, I've never had the experience of that being incredibly useful. It was the same for Edgar. It's like, okay, we we sort of did it. Maybe you can get a reaction at that point if it's, like, the worst idea ever.

你可以验证它确实很糟糕。

You can validate that it's terrible.

是啊。也许你能验证它确实很糟糕。我从未真正验证过——比如在产品收费前就确信人们会为此买单。我基本上只是随机找人聊天，了解他们在收款、排期、付款计划等方面遇到的问题。但当时我并没有百分百确信人们会购买Paperbell。

Yeah. May like, maybe you can validate that it's terrible. I've definitely never validated, okay, I know that people will pay for this before it's billed. I basically just talk 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. But I wouldn't say I felt like at that point, yes, I'm 100% sure that people will buy Paperbell.

我们做了前期调研，开发产品后先向埃德加的订阅名单发布，起步就获得了几千美元的月经常性收入。但有趣的是随后收入反而下滑，这点我深思过。问题在于：虽然埃德加的订阅名单很大，但并非针对教练群体（尽管其中也有不少教练）。我们就这样发布了。

We did kind of the early research and we built it and then we launched it to the Edgar list and we started at a few thousand MRR right from the beginning from the Edgar list. And actually, something interesting about that though is then it only got worse, which I really think through. So the problem 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. But so we launch.

我们确实获得了埃德加名单上的全部用户，但由于是全新品牌，之后并没有其他营销渠道。随后6到9个月里，随着我们逐步建立自然营销（SEO是我们的主要渠道），月收入持续下降。这也是独立开发的有趣之处——尤其当你自筹资金时，初期现金流反而是最充裕的。

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. 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. And that's another interesting thing about being indie. It was good, especially when your bootstrapped, right? Because we had the maximum cash right at the beginning.

但如果我把这份数据图表拿给投资人看，他们会觉得糟透了，因为月收入逐月下降。

But if I was showing that chart to an investor, it would have looked like shit because it was going down every month.

有意思的是这个

It's funny because this

是因为我们当时在流失用户，却没有引入新用户。

is because we were losing people, but we weren't bringing new people in.

这就像你是否见过保罗·格雷厄姆提出的'悲伤低谷曲线'——那些获得融资的初创公司几乎都呈现相同走势。就像所谓的'科技媒体首发效应'，在TechCrunch发布后会因巨大流量产生峰值，但同样的情况是：他们并未真正拥有这些用户，也无法重复首发。于是第一天狂喜之后，第二天数据就开始下滑。

This is like did you ever see Paul Graham's, like, trough of a trough of sorrow graph for, funded startups where it's like it's almost the exact same shape where they've 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. Like they don't really own that audience or they don't like they can't repeat launch there. And so like after that it's like you're super happy on day one and then like day two it's like less.

然后你就会想：完蛋。现在你陷入了悲伤低谷，既没有可复制的营销渠道，数据还在持续下跌。

And then you're just like, shit. Now you're in the trough of sorrow where you don't actually have a repeatable market marketing channel and your numbers are going down.

对。

Right.

我的Indie Hackers项目也完全如此。在Hacker News首发时效果爆棚——第一天就新增上千邮件订阅，网站访问量惊人。但随后四周，每日访问量持续递减。

Like I had the exact same thing happen to me with Indie Hackers where I launched on Hacker News and it was awesome. Like the first day I had like a thousand email subscribers. I had so many people come to the website, thought it was amazing. And then like every day for the next four weeks there are fewer people coming to the website. Yeah.

我当时就想：糟了，其实我根本没找到解决方案。有时候数据下滑时，感觉比从零开始还糟糕。

And I like, shit, haven't actually figured out anything And I've got to I've got to you just feel worse than if you're at zero sometimes when it's going down.

确实。但好处是你要提醒自己：产品已经得到验证，毕竟有真实用户付费。有时候只需要微调——比如Edgar邮件列表的用户本就对我这个创始人有高度信任，他们付费部分原因是出于这种认可。

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. And sometimes there is some tweaking to do. Like, for example, the humans that paid from the Edgar list already had a huge trust in me as a founder. So part of the reason that they paid is they're like, okay.

这是劳拉·里特尔的新作品。她做的东西很棒。但当我们向新教练推销时，他们从没听说过我。所以这不会成为影响他们决策的卖点。

This is, like, the new thing from Laura Ritter. She makes good things. Whereas then when we're marketing to new coaches, they've never heard of me. So that's not gonna be a selling point that's going to influence their decisions.

你会如何形容自己的声誉超能力？如果人们知道劳拉·罗德，他们会怎么想？他们会觉得她产品做得很好吗？还是觉得她很厉害？很励志？

What would you say is like your your sort of reputational superpower? Like, if people know Laura Roeder, what do they what do they think? Do they think she makes really good products? Do they think, you know, 's badass? She's inspirational?

你在所做的事情上留下的独特印记是什么？

Like what is like your specific mark that you leave on the things that you do?

我觉得这个问题可能不该由我来回答。人们常把我和工作生活平衡联系在一起，因为我经常谈论这个话题——我一直以兼职状态经营企业。我怀孕时推出了Edgar，第一年就休了产假，并且经常公开讨论这些，因为这些是影响女性创业者的普遍问题。很多女性创业者感到被边缘化，她们觉得'我想兼职工作就意味着我不够认真'，或者'我想休两个月产假而不是企业家式的三天产假，但似乎不被允许'。当然这些问题也影响男性，但更常见于女性。

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. I think people associate me with a lot of work life balance stuff because I talk about that a lot because I've always worked part time in my businesses. I launched Edgar when I was pregnant and I took maternity leave in the first year and I've been very vocal about that largely because these are a lot of issues that affect female entrepreneurs. 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 or I want to even just take a two month maternity leave instead of an entrepreneur three day maternity leave, but I feel like I'm not allowed to do that. Obviously these issues affect men as well, but very commonly affect women.

所以我觉得，作为一位备受关注的女性创始人，谈论生活中这些其他方面是我的责任——我不为此感到羞耻，而有些人可能会因为关注点不在'超级明星'上就觉得难堪。

So I don't know, 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 if there's any other focus besides superstar.

然后他们会听到播客这期内容，你说'好吧，我决定在两次创业之间休整整一周假'，就为了

And then they're gonna listen to this episode of the podcast, the part where you said, okay, then I decided I was gonna take an entire week off from work between startups and, like Just to

体验下那种感觉。

see what it felt like.

感觉像是多熬了五天。

It was, like, five days too long.

那么你如何走出这个低谷期？怎样才能到达这样一个阶段：你有了产品，心里清楚有些人喜欢它、愿意付费，我也验证了市场需求存在，但就是没有稳定的营销渠道。你不确定产品方向是否正确，因为数据在下降而非上升。该怎么扭转这种局面？

So how do you how do you get out of this trough of sorrow period? How do you get to the point where it's like, you got your product, you got you've got in mind that, like, some people love this, some people paid for it. I validated that there's a need here, but, like, you don't have a consistent marketing channel. You're not sure if the product is even the right one because your numbers are going down, not up. Like, how do you how do you turn that around?

是的。我认为我和很多创业故事的不同之处在于，我从一开始就专注于可扩展性。需要说明的是，当我为下一个创业项目制定标准时，我了解自助式营销。我所有的企业都从未组建过销售团队，也从未做过外拓，全部依赖自然流量。

Yeah. 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. And I should say, when I was looking for the criteria for the next business, I know self serve marketing. I've never had a sales team for any of my businesses. I've never done any outbound, it's all been inbound.

我擅长打造自助式在线营销系统。而很多人会做的早期不可扩展的事情，我都没做过。很多SaaS创始人即使产品定价低也会给所有客户做一对一演示，但我总说'我们不能做演示，我们月费才50美元'。

So like I know how to create a self serve online marketing machine. So what I haven't done, which a lot of people do, is kind of do things that don't scale early. So many SaaS founders do one on one demos with all their customers, even if they're at a lower price point. I was always like, We can't do demos. We cost $50 a month.

所以我从没做过产品演示。我认为必须采用可持续的策略——如果策略是'客户喜欢我所以会买单'，这条路迟早走不通。因此我们从第一天起就专注SEO。虽然月度经常性收入在下降，但搜索流量在上升。

So I've never done a demo. I'm like, No, we need a strategy that can keep going. Like if the strategy is they like me, so they're gonna buy from me, that's not gonna work out down the road. So our core focus has always been SEO from day one. And so while our MRR was going down, our search traffic was going up.

早期流量虽不大但确实存在。我一直清楚这就是我的战略，所以持续关注着：虽然数字还不大，但战略是否见效？最终这些曲线会以正确方式交叉，SEO带来的MRR将超过流失的部分。后来我们确实做到了。

It wasn't large in the early days, but it did exist. So I think I always knew that that was my strategy. So I had to just keep my eye on like, okay, it's not huge numbers yet, but are we seeing results from the strategy? Is the strategy effective? 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, and we did get there.

这非常聪明。当你瞄准细分市场时——比如你们的纸卷靶标（怎么称呼来着？）——这种垂直行业SaaS能让你吃透整个领域。你了解目标用户群体，这让市场调研变得容易得多。

That's super smart. When you target a niche, like you're like obviously paper roll targets, what'd you what'd you call it? It's like sort of an industry focused SaaS, like vertical focused SaaS. Like essentially, you can just learn everything about that niche. You know who these people are and that makes research way easier.

我认为这也有助于思考如何实现增长。因为你可以观察，比如，他们活跃在哪些渠道？教练们会在Hacker News上吗？很可能不会。你懂吧？

And I think that also contributes to figuring out like how you're gonna grow. Because you can see, like, what channels are they on? Like, are coaches on hacker news? Like, probably not. You know?

教练们会搜索这些不同的关键词吗？很可能。教练们用推特吗？可能相对少些。所以你感觉像是为精准受众和他们的需求选择了SEO这个正确渠道。

Are coaches, like, googling these different search terms? Like, probably. Are coaches on Twitter? Like, maybe a little bit less so. And so it feels like you picked the right channel SEO for your exact audience and what they need.

但显然SEO增长并不容易，它是最需要耐心的方式之一，见效最慢。你可能投入大量工作，第一个月看不到成效，直到第六个月才有回报。你是怎么应对这种情况的？

But it's obviously, like, not easy to to grow SEO. Like, is one of the ones that requires, like, I think the most patience. It's the slowest. You can put in a lot of work, you know, on month one and not see it pay off until month six. Do you navigate that?

你如何应对这种进展极其缓慢的状况？我迫切希望它能见效。而你说得对，这是个极具扩展性的营销渠道——SEO能带来数亿页面浏览量，其他渠道则后劲不足。SEO的成功秘诀是什么？

How do you navigate like, oh, this is going really, really slow and I want this to work. And then you're right, it's a hugely scalable marketing channel. You can get hundreds of millions of page views with SEO and other channels sort of peter out. How do you succeed at SEO?

首先我认为，SEO仍被很多人高估了难度。SEO确实需要耐心，但本质上并不复杂。想学SEO的人可以看Ahrefs的《商业博客》课程，

Well, I think first of all, SEO is still people think it's harder than it is. So I would say that SEO requires patience, but is not complicated per se. Anyone who wants to learn SEO, watch the Ahrefs Blogging for Business course.

我超爱这个

I love that

Temsolla出品的那个。质量超高，包含了所有必备知识。当然网上还有大量其他免费资源。

one by Temsolla. Super good. It's so good. Has everything you need to know to be successful. And then obviously, there's a ton of other free content out there.

SEO人员创作了大量关于SEO的内容，所以不难找到相关资料。但确实，如果你学习了商业博客课程并真正落实课程中的所有要点——因为我发现SEO领域很多人都是半吊子功夫，我想这是因为那种恶性循环：人们觉得'在明确看到效果前不愿投入太多精力'，结果正因为投入不足而失败，这种消极影响会不断累积。其实做好每个细节很重要，比如每篇博文配图，听起来很简单，但很多人确实没有写出全面优化的SEO内容。

SEO people create a lot of content about SEO, so it's not hard to find. 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 wanna put too much effort into it until I really see that it's gonna work. 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. So just all the little things like, you know, having an image for every blog post. I mean, it sounds really obvious, but I find a lot of people don't actually write SEO optimized content, like, through and for through.

比如有些人可能随便找几个关键词，写篇勉强相关的文章，却没有遵循最佳实践——让主副关键词相互配合。这些都不是什么机密，商业博客课程里都有讲。关键在于建立清晰可重复的工作流程。实际上很多市场没人们想的那么拥挤。没错，做信用卡积分联盟或SEO确实竞争激烈，

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 age choose, match up with secondary keywords. Like, none of this stuff is top secret information. It's all in the blogging for business course, but having clear processes of things you do every time is really effective. And a lot of markets are not as crowded as people think. Like, yes, it's hard to do SEO being a credit card points affiliate or SEO.

但如果你是草坪护理行业垂直领域，甚至SaaS领域（比如帮人处理股权结构表），大多数主题竞争并不激烈。只有涉及联盟营销的领域才会白热化。没有佣金收益的领域为何要拼得你死我活？很多初创公司还没开始就自我设限，觉得SEO太难。其实你不需要做到第一，只要进首页就够了。

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 it's really just incredibly competitive if there's affiliate monetization. If there's not affiliate monetization, why else would it be super competitive? So I think a lot of startups cut themselves off before they start and think, Oh, SEO is going to be too hard. And it's like, you don't even have to be number one, you just want to be on page one.

在很多行业里，要做到这一点并不算特别困难。

And in a lot of industries, it's not incredibly hard to

我觉得SEO和投资很像，问题都出在情绪上。你会因为'投入这么多工作却得不到即时反馈'而退缩——不像看着曲线逐步上升的投资图表。你感觉自己就像在买一堆不同的彩票，

get I feel SEO is really similar to investing in the sense that the problem is emotional. The problem is you get cold feet because you're like, Okay, I'm putting this work in. You get very little intermediate feedback. It's not like a graph that goes up over time. You're putting in all this work, you feel like you're just basically punching a lot of different lotto tickets.

几乎需要某种信念支撑。我很好奇你的经历，因为除非我理解错了，SEO似乎是你突破'悲伤低谷'的核心策略。你的收入是从哪个节点开始增长的？是靠着坚持正确方法最终水到渠成，还是也曾有过动摇时刻？

And it's almost like you kind of have to have faith. And so I'm curious with you because it seems like, unless I'm mistaken, it seems like SEO is your big strategy to get this trough of sorrow, like, you know, turning up in the right direction. Like, what was the point where your revenue started increasing? Was it just like you just kinda had faith and you did this the right way and eventually it happened, or were there any, like, cold feet moments?

六个月是个转折点，那时我们开始获得稳定的月增长，这些增长逐渐累积起来——其实不算太久。难点在于需要提前投入，无论是时间还是金钱。我个人一直聘请SEO专家撰写内容大纲，再雇写手完成文章，所以是在持续资金投入的。

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. You know, for me, I've always hired people to take care of the SEO. So I hired SEO specialists to write the briefs, and then I hire writers to actually write the articles. So I'm spending money on it.

显然，如果你全部自己写并且自己做关键词研究，那会花费大量时间。所以我觉得如果你告诉人们需要六个月，很多人会说，好吧，见鬼。我有六个月时间，那还不算太糟。但因为你确实要在那六个月里投入所有时间和金钱，而这期间可能几乎看不到任何成效，这真的会让人望而却步。当然，我之前创办过公司确实有帮助。

Obviously, if you're writing it all yourself and doing all your keyword research, there's gonna be a lot of time. So I think if you told people, like, it'll take six months, a lot of people would be like, well, shit. I'll have six months to it, so that's not that bad. 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 it really puts people off. And it did help, of course, that I had done a company before.

而且不像Edgar，我们其实没有做得很好的SEO。后来我们才开始改进SEO，我看到了它的效果。公司大部分时间里，我们做的是那种半吊子版本，就像我说的，比如，哦，我觉得人们可能对这个有点兴趣，我们就写篇文章。这样效果也还不错。

And it's not like Edgar, we actually didn't do amazing SEO. We started doing better SEO later, and I saw how effective it was. 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. We'll write an article about it. And that was pretty effective too.

你知道吗？随着时间的推移，即便是那样也奏效了。所以就像，好吧，如果你做得不好，时间久了总会有点效果。而如果你做得好，效果会非常显著。

You know? Like, over over time, like, even even that worked out. So it's like, okay. Over time, if you do it badly, something will happen. And then if you do it well, a lot will happen.

你们是怎么招聘SEO专家的？这是我们想在独立开发者社区改进的地方。我们SEO做得不太好，本应该做得更好。有很多话题我们都可以覆盖。

How do you hire, like, SEO specialists? This is something we want to work on for indie hackers. We're not that good at SEO. We should be. There's so many topics we could cover.

你找人来帮忙这方面有什么方法吗？

What's your playbook for finding people to help with that?

我招聘SEO专家的方法，其实回到我之前说的找专业自由职业者那套。我没有雇佣过大型代理机构。作为一家自举公司，通常代理机构的价格点也不合适。而且大机构你要为很多整合工作支付额外费用。如果你去看Ahrefs那个商业博客课程，里面有很多不同的环节。

So my playbook for hiring SEO specialists, it goes back to what I said about finding a specialist freelancer. So I haven't hired bigger agencies. Also as a bootstrap company, often the price points don't work out with agencies. Also big agencies, you're paying for a lot of overhead to put all the pieces together. So if you go to that Ahrefs Blogging for Business course, there's a lot of different moving pieces.

比如做关键词研究，把关键词研究写成摘要，由有SEO经验的作者根据摘要写文章，另外有人负责文章配图。基本上，你可以通过担任项目经理来省很多钱，把所有这些环节整合起来。我就是这么做的。我觉得这样找合适的人会容易些，因为你不需要找一个能搞定整个流程的人。比如找作者，我一直推荐Pro Blogger Job Board，那里有很多优秀的自由撰稿人，你可以找到有特定专长的人。

It's like do the keyword research, put the keyword research into a brief, the writer who's experienced with SEO writes the brief, somebody else does the graphic for the article. Basically, you can save a lot of money by being the project manager, putting all those pieces together Got it. Which is exactly what I've done. 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. Like for the writer, I always recommend Pro Blogger Job Board has a lot of amazing freelance writers, you can find people with a certain specialty.

我们的作者来自教练行业，他们了解教练知识。他们不是最便宜的写手，但也不算贵得离谱，属于中等价位。他们会收到完整的内容大纲，涵盖文章需要涉及的所有主题，因此能出色地完成这部分工作。

Our writers are from the coaching industry, they know about coaching, They're not the cheapest writers. They're not crazy expensive either. It's like middle of the road expense. But they're handed a complete brief with all the topics that their article needs to cover. So they can do a really great job on just that part.

听着，我知道你时间紧迫。对于刚起步的独立开发者，你有什么建议？你觉得他们能从你的经历中学到什么？当他们尝试构思创意并建立业务时，应该牢记什么？

Well, listen. I know you gotta run. What's your advice for fledgling indie hackers? 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?

我想推荐一篇我写的博客文章——安德鲁也写过类似的，那篇非常精彩。标题叫《求仁得仁》。文中我谈到，我们常把某些事称为目标，但若审视自己的行为，就会发现行动与目标并不一致。

I would say there's a blog post that I really like that I wrote, that I like Andrew wrote. It's a brilliant blog post. That's a brilliant blog post. And it's called You Get What You Go For. And in the post, I'm talking about how 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.

博客里讲的是英国一对白手起家的兄弟收购ASDA（相当于英国的沃尔玛）的故事。他们完全靠自主创业起家，当然中途也融资了不少钱。

So the story in the blog post is about these brothers here in The UK that are self made brothers that bought ASDHA, which is like the Walmart of The UK. Like they bought the entire ASDHA chick. Bootstrappers who bought Walmart, you know, it's basically their story. They started Bootstrapped. Obviously, they raised a ton of money along the way.

这个例子说明：如果你的目标是收购ASDA，你是在自己搞SEO优化？还是在筹集8亿英镑资金？显然是后者。所以关键要看：我的行为是否与想达成目标之人的行为一致？因为很容易把时间浪费在各种琐事上。

And it's an example of like, okay, if your goal is to buy ASDA, are you, for example, doing your own SEO? Or are you putting together 800,000,000 of capital? You're doing the latter. 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. Because it's very easy to spend a lot of time kind of playing around with this, playing around with that.

就像每天自问：按照现在的轨迹，我真有可能达成目标吗？如果不知道怎么做，就去读独立开发者社区、听访谈、看HRAS的免费优质网课。前人已经拼好了拼图，你每天是否都在执行这些碎片？

It's like, okay, well, if I if I look at my day, do I have any hope of getting to where I wanna be or or not really. 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 HRAS. People have put the pieces of the puzzle out there. Are you every day in some little way executing those pieces?

说得太好了。如果你想登月，就该造火箭而不是汽车。造车肯定行不通。

I love that. If you're trying to go to the the moon, make sure you're building a rocket ship, not building a car. Yeah. It's not gonna work. Yeah.

Laura，非常感谢你能来。你能告诉听众们在哪里可以了解更多关于你、PaperBell以及我们正在进行的其他项目吗？

Laura, thanks a ton for coming on. Can you let listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and about PaperBell and anything else we're working on?

是的，找我的最佳方式是Twitter，lkr。访问coachcompare.com。我觉得可能听这个节目的人中寻找教练的比...所以如果你在找教练，如果这期节目让你想找教练，这是个免费网站。你可以在coachcompare.com或paperball.com找到教练。

Yeah. So the best place to find me is Twitter, l k r. Go to coachcompare.com. I feel like probably there's more people listening to this looking for coaches than there are So if you're looking for a coach, if you were convinced by this episode to find a coach, it's a free site. You can find a coach at coachcompare.com or paperball.com.

太棒了。非常感谢，Laura。

Amazing. Thanks so much, Laura.

太好了。

Awesome.