Speaker Spotlight Laura Rabell

Laura’s family roots run deep in North Carolina, where her mother grew up in a textile mill town and her father played basketball for Davidson College. After growing up in Pensacola, Florida, she lived in Charlotte, NC with her husband E.J. for 10 years before they moved to Nashville, TN, to pursue music. With a marketing and client services background in fields such as healthcare consulting and financial services, Laura found a niche in helping small business owners with business development through digital marketing.

She began freelancing for clients as far back as 2009, helping with everything from brochure design to book editing. Eventually, her interest in technology led to the discovery of WordPress led to an affinity for web design. The field of web design brings together Laura’s skills in communications, editing, graphic arts, and marketing all in one package.

Rabell Creative, founded by E.J. and Laura in 2012, offers WordPress website design and digital marketing services to help organizations make the most of their online presence. Rabell Creative is a Google Partner agency, and Laura is a Certified Adwords Specialist. Visit www.rabellcreative.com to see our portfolio of recent client projects.

Rabell Creative was founded with the concept of giving back in mind, striving to build intention around working with non-profit organizations that are doing meaningful work and making the world a better place. Laura is also a performing musician and songwriter (www.laurarabell.com) and enjoys staying active in the local community through various community organizations and activities, including:

• Apparo “Website for Good” Agency Partner 2017 & 2018
• Co-Chair, Great Gatsby Gala benefitting the MS Society
• Board Member, MS Movers & Shakers
• Volunteer, The Relatives of Alexander Youth Network
• Past Community Development Chair, Charlotte Junior Chamber Board of Directors
• Past Chicago Marathon Charity Runner, Hope Worldwide
• Past Classroom Mentor, Thompson Child & Family Focus
• Past Event Chairperson, Relay for Life of Mecklenburg County

Laura graduated with honors from the University of West Florida in Pensacola, earning a degree in Interdisciplinary Humanities, focused on Communication Arts, Arts and English.

Laura will be presenting “How Running a WordPress Design Agency Allowed Me to Follow My Dreams of Becoming a Musician”

In the summer of 2010, I made the mistake of reading Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek, while sipping tropical drinks on a beach vacation, and it ruined my life. Or rather, it encouraged me to rearrange my life to make more time for my passion for music and achieve location-independence. My husband and I founded Rabell Creative, a WordPress web design and digital marketing agency in 2012. After six years of experience building WordPress websites for clients full time, I will share with you our top tips and tricks for building beautiful websites efficiently, making your clients happy, and having time leftover to pursue your passions. I will outline the exact procedures and plugins that help simplify this process and discuss some of our most frequent pitfalls in dealing with clients, and how we avoid them.

Since we can work from anywhere with just our laptops and the Internet, we moved to Nashville in 2016, so I could pursue my dream of becoming a musician and songwriter. Running a fully remote WordPress web design agency is allowing me to travel, play music, and live out my dreams, and I am so grateful for the awesome and supportive WordPress community that helps make it all possible.

WordCamp Raleigh 2018 is over. Check out the next edition!