While studying in Maastricht to become a lawyer, a different career opportunity opened when she founded a real estate agency with a fellow law student. The beauty of such an experience is that it gives you a view of all the different sides of a business: after all, being a founder means doing whatever needs to get done.
“That was my first experience in entrepreneurship, sales, management, marketing… It was an adventure where I had to get my hands into everything. We ended up turning it into a profitable business, growing for over five years.”
Much of that first experience was centered on sales, with many doors being opened thanks to Laura’s position as admin of a large Facebook group helping people to find a place to rent.
“We had all the renters, but didn’t have any owners. So we created partnerships with other agencies that had properties, but not enough clients. It was a win for everybody, and over time we started to get more and more owners listing directly with us.”
Eventually, various things came together to push her in a different direction. New laws regarding rental fees came into place, which fundamentally changed the business model of real estate agencies in the Netherlands, and Laura finished her law degree. She decided to use her degree and took a job as a legal consultant for an NGO in Uganda.
“I love Uganda, the country and people are amazing. But I realized working in that job that I preferred the private sector to NGOs, and so I moved to a remote position as a sales manager with a Canadian company specializing in providing solutions for Amazon sellers, right at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.”
That position gave her a lot of insight on the needs of SMB owners who can either save tons of time or increase their margins thanks to adapted tech tools.
Together with gaining experience as a sales manager, Laura also used the past few years to go back to entrepreneurship again, launching her own lead-gen agency. At this point, she’s well experienced in the do-it-yourself aspect of growing a young company, skills that we’re sure she’ll be able to apply well at OrderCast.
“I love the challenge of pushing myself to grow at the same time as the company grows. I’m going to be at a lot of trade shows, doing product demos to show how the tool works for our clients, and I really like that aspect of sales. So much of sales today is email or messaging, but here we get to have those face-to-face conversations. I’m excited to get started!”
Welcome, Laura! And the excitement is reciprocal — we can’t wait to see you out on the trade show circuit doing live demos. If you’re reading this and want to be part of the OrderCast adventure, reach out — we’re currently hiring for multiple positions 🤗
