a newfound passion: laura roman’s e-⁠Residency story

E-⁠Residency Community Leader Laura Roman on how entrepreneurship helps find connections across geographies and feeds the soul

Laura Roman is in Estonia because she likes it here. She likes the cozy, village-like feel of Tallinn, the capital, and she likes the clear, straightforward, no nonsense, 'let's roll up our sleeves and get things done' business mentality of the Estonians, one that she says has started to rub off on her.

Laura relocated to Estonia in 2018, which also happened to be the year she became an Estonian e-⁠resident. She had done a variety of things before that, including running a business in Barcelona selling Lithuanian bed linens. (Her former partner and the father of her daughter is Lithuanian).

While in Barcelona, she had also pivoted to working as a marketing assistant with some overseas clients, developing a career as an online services provider as well. But she still had itchy feet.

While preparing for a summer trip to Tallinn, she also discovered Estonian e-Residency. For Laura, who majored in geography at university, she found the idea of obtaining a digital residency in another country to be an innovation she had to support:

So she applied for Estonian e-Residency and set up her firm, which she called Redearth. Her hometown in Catalonia is Terrassa, which can be translated as "red earth" in English. She said she found the ability to run a business from wherever she happened to be located to be attractive.

"Before e-Residency, you had to stay within the system of your country," says Laura. "And if that system sucked, you were still stuck with it." But Estonia offered her another option, one that she sees as simpler and friendlier than some of the systems she's familiar with.

She also relocated to Tallinn not long after her summer trip. "Everything was really easy," she says of that experience. "Very smooth and straightforward."

Having an Estonian company has also allowed Laura to run various businesses all under the Redearth name since. She has since 2018 worked as a marketing or virtual assistant to various businesses.

"I have had some crazy ideas in between too," she notes, "and always had this entity that would back me up and invoice clients as a company."

Working with businesses in the coaching industry, led to her to become one herself, picking up certifications for business, mindset, hypnotherapy, and holistic health coaching.

"I now help entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs to work in their limiting beliefs so they can achieve success faster and have a more balanced life as a Mindset coach, while I still provide marketing and virtual services in my small agency."

More recently, she has started organizing events. At first, Laura organized cafe meetups, drawing in both Estonians and other internationals who are interested in personal growth. They would meet at popular cafes such as Literaat and Fotografiska,

But things are evolving and on March 2, she organized an event at Tallinn Creative Hub, a popular venue for international conferences housed inside an old power plant built in 1912-1913. She sold tickets to the event, which she dubbed the Expänded Tallinn Networking Event, and convinced people to be speakers. People came to hear inspiring stories from entrepreneurs, talk about their passions, and meet like-minded Tallinners. One assignment was to organize a meetup with someone they met at the event, which many followed through on. Two people even went on a date afterwards.

"It was an absolute success," Laura says of the event. "I feel this is my newfound passion."

One additional benefit for Laura, has been the opportunity to develop the kind of social life she would have in Barcelona, but also to network with other entrepreneurs.

"We get to discuss many interesting topics and speak authentically about important matters such as trust, freedom, love, life-balance, et cetera," she says. "I think it's important to have these spaces anywhere where you can just be yourself," she adds. "It feeds your soul."

The event also fed Laura's geography bug too, bringing together people from different places, and allowing her to place them on her own mental world map. "When you spend so much time immersed in some studies, such as a university degree, even if you don't work as a geographer anymore, it shapes who you are and the way you think," Laura says.

Both because of the quarantines during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the ubiquity of smartphones and social media, people appreciate these events because they have the opportunity to reconnect in person, be listened to and accepted for who they are.

"We are all so disconnected from each other," remarks Laura. "These events make people feel good about themselves."

To further that desire to build communities, Laura was also recently appointed to be an official Community Leader for the Estonian e-⁠Residency program, a new role where she can connect people who have similar passions, including entrepreneurship, creating businesses, border-free culture and traveling. About her new role, Laura says: