Watch this interview with Jenna Raby, founder and CEO of Laborfair.com. Jenna talks about Laborfair with Steven Tse of eBay during the 2008 San Francisco Home Show. Learn about what Laborfair.com is, its free service to consumers, the range of service providers Laborfair.com offers and how it differentiates from other online marketplaces like Craigslist.
Do you want to give up your nice day job, your guaranteed salary, any free time with your partner or close friends, and devote any and all waking hours to your novel business idea for an indefinite amount of time? If the answer is an unequivocal “yes” –become an internet entrepreneur. You’ll do fine! While my partner, also an internet entrepreneur, adores the frequent vicissitudes and gyrations of startup life – an experience I equate with a log flume ride at an aquatic park with your mouth open--I hang on with clenched teeth and nails dug hard to the side of the boat. Just last week, I cracked a tooth from clenching my teeth repeatedly in my sleep for the past year. I’m serious. I haven’t had a dream that didn’t involve Laborfair.com in over two years. Intellectually, I was ready to be an entrepreneur. Emotionally, phewee! You take a serious beating. As he likes to say and says often, “Fear is a great motivator.” Without Sunday morning meditation at the Zen Center, weekly yoga classes, and my infrequent walks on Muir Beach with the dogs, I’d be a goner.
Starting a business that delivers on social mission and profitability is not for the faint of heart. You have to make tough choices. You need a combination of blinding innocence and a stalwart, unfailing belief in yourself and your business to pull through. Honestly, the hardest part has been growing the business, not starting it. By nature, I'm a human rights advocate and overall multi-faceted kind of gal- so business analysis--it's a steep learning curve for me. Have you ever had to do everything and learn everything simultaneously? I’ve learned not to “make perfect the enemy of the good” as Jim likes to say. Working alone, finding solutions for problems together with the team, raising awareness, being passionate about using business to create social change—I am all about that. But holy heck, put me in front of pie chart analysis, cost margins, average revenue per user, spreadsheets, cost per click, html code, non-disclosure agreements, seo, sem, linux vs. linus--Is that the Peanuts character? Well, you get the picture. I wish I had a twin sister with the MBA. I’d never talk to her but I'd sure like to know her. Like a lot of people, I learn best under pressure, so it's been going well. I'll check in later when I get a spare second to think about this again.
A friend of mine passed away today unexpectedly of a heart attack. I knew Karen Schlessinger when she was Karen Miele, the hard-nosed, good natured, former seminary student turned single mom next door. When I was a young kid, I would go to her house through the path in the woods to play with her two boys, Cabot and Brad. These boys were my fishing buddies, my co-horts in mischief and the cowboys to my indian. We'd ride the shetland ponies they had in the pasture at breakneck speed, bareback down the driveway, then go into the old house and watch her make apple pie or chocolate chip cookie dough in these beautiful mustard colored pottery bowls, killing time while we waited anxiously for hay season. Mrs. Miele terrified me with her stern demeanor, sharp Irish nose and shrill belly laugh but my fear was respectful. I admired her ability to raise two boys alone, comment knowledgeably about American Folk Art, cook great food, and most importantly share with me stories about my "handsome, briliant father"-- a man long since gone and a real mystery to me. She was my mom's age when she died-- a youthful 61. Later in my life and before I started Laborfair, I worked with Karen as an adult for six years in New Jersey. As a grown woman, I saw her differently-- a dutiful and loyal companion to her best friend, Gretchen, and a woman, after years of working hard, ready to explore her retirement with her husband, Les. She never got that chance. She always encouraged me to go out and pursue my dreams--always told me what great ideas I had. Six months ago, Karen wrote to congratulate me for starting Laborfair. She wrote, "woman need your help. we're tired. this is a great idea and I see how it helps so many women." Thank you Karen. I'll miss you.
My partner, Ben Picard, and I moved out West together after years of dreaming about it separately. After college, Ben toured Highway 1 on a 1978 Yamaha 750 motorcycle all the way from the cornfields of Iowa. In 2002, I flew in from New York City to visit my brother and his fiancée, ski Tahoe, wine taste Napa, and hike in the Headlands. I was enthralled. Who wouldn’t want to live in this glorious place? In September of 2005, after nine years living in the hustle and bustle of America’s most frenetic metropolis, we sold everything we could easily part with, donated our televisions, furniture and heavy winter coats to Katrina victims, and set out across the glorious US for Northern California. We had an 18 foot trailer and Diego, our fearless long-haired dachshund in tow. Like many others before us, we came to the Bay Area to start our own online business. We’re more idealistic than most, we wanted ours to deliver social good and pay our rent.
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