Episode 246 -- Elizabeth Anderson -- Regular People Understand the Value of Hard Work

Start with a simple promise: make the software not suck. That’s Elizabeth Anderson’s north star as CEO and co-founder of Lunar Lab, where she pairs human-centered design with ethical strategy to build products that people actually use. We dig into how she and her co-founder left toxic tech during the pandemic, learned sales with a stack of library books, and created a B Corp that treats impact as a requirement, not a tagline.

Elizabeth walks us through her product playbook: invite every wild feature idea, then slice to a focused MVP using value–effort prioritization. She explains why intuitive UX, honest feedback, and transparent leadership beat shiny UI and bravado, and how turning away misfit projects builds trust and long-term results. Her case studies—from aviation apps to startup forums—show the power of launching lean, testing in the real world, and earning the right to add more later.

The conversation widens toward public service and parenting. Elizabeth ran for Congress in a deep-red Alabama district to force a neglected conversation on maternal health and rural hospital closures. She shares the data, the human costs, and what changed when she met voters across the spectrum with empathy. At home, she and her husband—both in tech—block YouTube at the network level, yet let their kids read widely and ask hard questions. Safety, context, and open dialogue beat algorithmic chaos.

We also talk about libraries as civic infrastructure: job training, lending tools, community programs, and yes, the books that powered Elizabeth from poverty to entrepreneurship. If you care about product design, inclusive leadership, or healthier communities, this story is a practical guide to building with purpose.

If this conversation sparks ideas, follow and share it with a friend. Subscribe for more candid, human-centered talks, and leave a review to help others find the show. What’s one feature you’d cut from your next big idea?

Music "STOMP" used by permission of artist Donica Knight Holdman and Jim Huff

Transcript

Welcome And Elizabeth’s Role

SPEAKER_03 0:20

Welcome to Stacked Keys Podcast. I'm your host, Amy Stackhouse. This is a podcast to feature women who are impressive in the art world, or in raising a family, or who have hobbies that make us all feel encouraged. Want to hear what makes these women passionate to get up in the morning, or what maybe they wish they'd known a little bit earlier in their lives? Grab your feet and stomp to your own drum. I am super excited this afternoon. We have a special guest, and I cannot wait to kind of dig in and find out exactly who she is and what she does and what makes her tick. So today I welcome Elizabeth Anderson. Welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:34

I'm so glad to be here. Oh, I'm thrilled. Now, Elizabeth, right out of the gate, let's find out who are you personally and professionally?

Making Software Useful And Ethical

SPEAKER_00 1:43

I always find that that question is very hard for me because I do too many things all of the time. So uh just to kind of give you a little bit of my background right now. I'm the CEO and co-founder of a company called Lunar Lab. We do design and strategy for software of any type. So basically, if people are making software, we make the software not suck. That's the simplest way to say it. Um, we make it profitable, we make it make sure that it's ethical, that it's inclusive, that it's beautiful, although making it pretty is the easiest part of it. Um, intuitive things like that. Um before, well, I guess in addition to that, I also ran for U.S. Congress recently, which was really exciting. Um, I've got two little girls. They are so, so wonderful. I just love them. And I do lots of volunteer work and activism work, and I'm on the board of several organizations and organize conferences and do all I do way too much.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

You do have a full plate. But what's interesting about that is Lunar Lab. That that's a business that takes you out and about, and you have to think creatively and strategically about something that a lot of people think is pretty complex. So, how do you get to that? It's not that hard and that bad.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Well, uh, it's funny with the software stuff. It is um it is complicated, but what's so fun about it is that we get to go in and learn about totally different industries all the time. And just just coming in with an open mind about that and know that you're going to learn from people who are industry experts. So, for example, we're working on an aviation app right now. It's for pilots. I can't fly a plane, right? I don't, I have never flown a plane in my life. You know, I personally am not a pilot, but I'm learning a lot about how pilots work and operate. And then what we do is we sort of apply best practices in software, although I kind of hate that terminology because it's different every single time that we do it. Um, we sort of apply what we know and we apply our expertise into these spaces to create software solutions that are helpful for people. And what that can look like is thinking through, okay, how is this going to sit in the marketplace in the current landscape? Is this something that you can monetize? Uh, and then how can we make this intuitive for people to use? So there's a lot of psychology wrapped up in uh drawing people's eye toward the right direction. And if you ever think about, if you've ever used an app where it was so easy to just kind of get to what you wanted, it probably you didn't even think about it. Versus if you've ever used an app that is like have you ever downloaded an app and then deleted it right away? Because you're like, this is a useful. Okay. So that that kind of stuff, that's what that's where we're trying to fix. And we make it so intuitive and seamless that you can just sort of fly through it and get your problem solved right away. And that's our expertise. And then we get to learn about all of these different fields, and I mean like every kind of field under the sun. We have done every type of software, it's so fun.

Origin Story Of Lunar Lab

SPEAKER_03 4:57

Wow. How'd you get started in that?

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Oh my gosh. Well, that's kind of a loaded question.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Actually, like loaded.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Um, yeah, we so my co-founder and I had been in software for a very, very long time. And she and I met in fintech, so financial software. Uh, we worked at a very large financial software company together. We had worked in tech for a long time at that point, and then we kind of got to know each other. She was actually in a different department from me at the time, and we like met in the break room, right? And then after a few years, we started working together. We ended up going to a couple of other companies together. We ended up in custom software. It's like when you find a person that you just gel with, you just stick with that person. And so we met and we went through several companies together. We ended up in uh the executive leadership team at a custom software company. And that was kind of where we got into that custom software space where it was like we're learning totally different fields every single day. And then we launched our company because we were at a point in our careers. I think a lot of women in tech get to this point where the field can be so toxic and it can be very unsatisfying to work in software, especially when you are working in places where, you know, people will just build literally any software, whether it's good for the founder or if it's good for the overall ecosystem, whether it's good for the community or not, people will just build any old thing. And we wanted to be people who could not only build good software that was going to go out and do good things in the community and help people, but we also wanted to build software that was going to help the founders of that software to build generational wealth for themselves and for their family. And so really help them in that way, help them to create jobs and stimulate the economy. So we were really thinking in this very broad way. But like I said, also the tech industry is just pretty toxic and we wanted to work in a place that was better, you know, that was more um more interested in workers as human beings than as like cogs in the wheel. So we ended up deciding to start our own business doing this several years ago. It was kind of a crazy time because we are not two people who had been like dreaming of becoming entrepreneurs or anything like that. We're actually very risk averse. And this was this was sort of like the height of the pandemic when we decided to quit our jobs and start our own company when we like literally could not even leave the house. Um, and we both had kids. We were homeschooling our kids at the time. And so for us to be such risk-averse people and to take that action, that tells you that it just felt like it felt like it was the only option at the time, and it felt like the safest option at the time, even though it was it was a pretty, pretty out there option for us.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

Yeah. Well, and you have to take something that maybe you weren't in the sales aspect before, and you have to sell it at the same time. That's a whole nother ball game.

Learning Sales With A Library Card

Human-Centered Sales Philosophy

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Oh my gosh. So I did operations, finances, project management. That was my world forever. And my co-founder, of course, she did design and design leadership forever, and we didn't know anything about sales or marketing, social media marketing was this whole new thing. And of course, we could not leave the house because it was the middle of the pandemic. Like we were all still kind of on lockdown when we decided to launch this business, which was such a crazy idea at the time. And uh, so what I did was I went to the library and I checked out every book that I could find about marketing and sales. I'm a really, really big reader. And I literally just sat down and over the course of the month read like so many books. I was probably like 15 books about sales and marketing. And every single day I would be messaging Kelly, my co-founder, and I'd say, Hey, did you know that you know emojis are are correlated to this percent increase in engagement on social media? And she'd be like, I don't care. But you know, we we um we started with that and just kind of figuring it out along the way. And then we also sort of brought with the sales piece, we wanted to bring our philosophy of uh building the software into the sales that we were doing. And what I mean by that is that when we're building software, we always consider that the software is for humans and it's made by humans, and it has to work for everybody and be made by, you know, an inclusive group of people. And so that human element is very, very important. We do a lot of human-centered design. And we also wanted to bring that into sales. There's a lot of sales as this like competitive sort of like domination culture. It can be very brash and harsh. But the way that we approach sales was okay, if we're selling this service to people, it's because it's a thing that would genuinely help them. So we sat down and said from day one that if we're gonna sell something, we will never, ever, ever, ever sell any service to somebody that doesn't need that service. And so we have turned people away before and said, hey, we don't think it's a good idea for you to build this thing, or you should start with uh doing some user research or market validation first before you work with, we don't just like take people's money. So I don't know, I think we we tend to look at things from a sort of different lens sometimes, and we're not always thinking about like hardcore sales, but um we've done pretty good. We close a lot of deals, lots of people want to work with us, which is really nice, but it's first and foremost human-centered.

SPEAKER_03 10:52

Yeah. So where'd the lunar lab name come from?

Why The Name Lunar Lab

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Oh my gosh. Well, it's um we sat down and we were this was so funny because it was a it was the pandemic and we set aside some strategy days and we were going to like figure out our new business together. And the day that we were gonna do it, we were gonna sit on the back porch. The day that we were gonna do it ended up being like pouring down rain. So we ended up in the garage, which is so funny because it's like such a classic place to start at um because it was the pandemic, and you know, we had to like sit, we had a social distance, you know. And so um, so we sat down in the garage and we were kind of going through some names, and we did a whole entire session where we just sort of threw spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick. And let me tell you something, we still have that document, and it is so embarrassing. We have done naming at this point for other companies. So we occasionally we'll kind of do some branding, and um you really go through some crazy stuff, but I think that's the good way to do it is just see what sticks, and you're just throwing out everything, even the really bad ideas, and there were some awful ones. And so we were kind of throwing all of these names out, and then we said, well, what can we do? You know, we wanted just something to be like related. We like the moon, you know, we're women, and um, you know, what can we sort of do with that? Alabama has this wonderful history of being, you know, in the space race. We we have NASA up in Huntsville, and I think that being from Alabama, I know and I acknowledge that people do not always think of Alabama as an innovative technological place, but we really are. The truth of the matter is that Alabama is wonderful. We have a great tech ecosystem. And so we kind of wanted to highlight some of that and how, you know, there is a lot of science to what we do when we think about designing software. There's two types of design UX design, which is more the science side of psychology. That's how users interact with the system and helping them find their goals and click through the system and making it intuitive, versus UI, which is where you make it pretty. And they're very different. So we wanted to highlight that we were more in that sort of scientific space. So that's a long way of saying um many reasons how we landed on that name. But it was funny because when you know, you know, right? Like we hit that name and we were like, that's the one. Like there was nothing else, but it was conversation over right away. We knew that was the one. And so we've been we've been very happy with it.

SPEAKER_03 13:32

Yeah, you get to play with it a lot, so that's kind of fun too. You stay with your core growth of who you are, but then you get to kind of grow within it. So that's kind of fun. It looks like you have fun with it. Now, you are very much in a lot of leadership positions and roles. And I mean, here you were saying you ran for Congress. I mean, that's that's really jumping into a leadership um aspect of life. So talk to me about who you think a good leader is and how you um strive to be that yourself and within your company.

Empathetic, Transparent Leadership

SPEAKER_00 14:08

I think so much of it goes back to that sort of human-centered element of things. Before I was a leader, I was in many, many individual contributor roles. And I had some fantastic leaders, and I had some not so fantastic leaders, which I think we all have, right? Oh, yeah. You learn from Yeah, we've all had a bad boss. And I think that there was a lot of thinking about what kind of leaders I like to work for, and which bosses were great and which bosses were terrible. And I think that has kind of informed my leadership style at this point. When I think about good leadership, and I've given lots of talks about empathetic leadership because I think it's really like the core of everything that makes a good leader is you want to be somebody who is strategic and thinking on a long-term scale, thinking very holistically, understanding what our goals are and where we're kind of going, but also being able to zoom in. So you want somebody to be very strategic and you want somebody to be um very empathetic, somebody who understands the people on their team and is and and understands that they are human beings, right? Every single person, we all come in every single day and we're all just humans out here. So I think that we should treat people like humans and be good to people and be understanding. That doesn't mean being a big old softy and not having any accountability or anything like that, but it does mean that we respect people and we strive to make sure that everybody on their team on our team comes to work and is able to, you know, have dignity and pride in their work and that we're setting people up for success. That is really, really important. I do think a lot of leaders set people up for failure. And I don't think that's you know the right way to be. The other thing is I think transparency and honesty are really, really important. Sometimes, especially when we start talking about feedback, I think that people are very hesitant to give feedback to people on their team, and you know, then that can turn into a really ugly situation, and then you've got to let that person go and this, that, and the other thing. And so I always want to be very honest. If you give people feedback, that is a gift. You know, you don't have to be ugly about it, certainly. You can be kind and gentle and share with people because you want them to succeed, not share with people things that are are harmful, right? So I think strategy, you know, empathy, transparency, honesty. I think those are kind of the key things in a good leader. And those are the things that I strive to have.

SPEAKER_03 16:48

Well, oh wow, that is a good leader, and you you're right. You've come through it by what you've received and then what you're able to give. And I think a lot of times those lessons, if we can turn around and apply them, I mean, it makes us miss it makes us all both better leaders and followers. Um, but then to decide to run for public office, I mean, you're a mom, you're a business owner, you've got a full plate, you could turn your back and say, I am not doing that. And it and it can cost a lot, both financially and emotionally. Um, what put you in that path?

Why Run For Congress

Maternal Health And Rural Care Gaps

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Uh honestly, it's because I am a mom and a business leader, right? Um, I think that so, so for me, I didn't talk about this earlier, but I grew up below the poverty line. I had a really, really hard life when I was growing up. And because of that, I was uh received a lot of public benefits, right? Like I received, I was on welfare as a child. We received food stamps, you know, um, we lived in the projects from time to time. So I was on free lunches, you know, my whole entire life. And so I had this background where I kind of understand that those services are so important. Part of the reason that I was able to go to college was because I had a Pell Grant. And that's that is a that's a public service, right? That is, you know, people will call that welfare. But because I had a Pell Grant, because I had all those free lunches, I was able to go on and become a first-generation college student. And I was able to start my business ultimately because I had those things. And if I had not had those things, I I firmly believe I would have still been trapped in poverty. I mean, it is very, very hard to get out. And I say that as someone who has done it and has seen everything, I can see it from the other side. It is almost impossible to get out of without a lot of luck and um and a lot of opportunity. So because of that background and knowing that policy decisions impact people's lives every single day, and knowing that our politicians sometimes don't understand what regular people are going through. I can't tell you the number of times when, you know, that I have seen some politician get up and say, you know, these kids that are on free lunches, they just need to understand the value of hard work as if they don't, you know, like I understood the value of hard work. I'm a very hard worker. And I was absolutely on free lunches. And so hearing that kind of stuff makes me realize that these politicians can be really out of touch. They don't understand sometimes what's going on in some people's lives, and they don't understand that the policy decisions that they're making are really impacting us. So that said, I live in Alabama. We are sometimes very negatively impacted by policy decisions. And it was October of, I guess it was 2023. We, Shelby County is the county that I live in in Alabama. It's the wealthiest county in the state of Alabama. And we at in October of 2023, we lost all of our maternity awards. So the wealthiest county in Alabama does not have a maternity award. Meanwhile, yeah, you have to drive a long way. Like the average time to get to a hospital when you're in labor, if you're in a rural area in Alabama, is like 75 minutes. When I was born over 40 years ago, my mom drove for an hour and 15 minutes to get to the hospital while she was in active labor because she didn't have care closer to her. And that has not changed for over 40 years now. And so we lost all of our hospitals in October. In November, that we did not have anybody running as a Democrat uh for U.S. Congress in this district. Um, and there was like no one had signed up to do it, no one had run in this district as a Democrat for since 2018. So it's for a long time. And it was just kind of going and going and going. And we had this person in office that I did not feel was looking out for maternal health care, which was really important to me as a mom. Um was not somebody that was looking out for rural health care, especially in our district. And so that's such an important issue to me. And I've got two girls who I know are going to be impacted by this one day. Uh, hopefully they'll stay in Alabama. But um, I I've got these two girls, and I looked at them and I said, well, we need to, we need to do something. Now, said all that to say there's a reason why we had not had any Democrats run uh in this district since 2018, and that was it's a very red district, like it's extraordinarily red, but I don't feel that we should only have one person on the ballot because it is a democracy. We should have choices. And so I decided to run knowing that I was going to lose that race. Like I was I was very clear-eyed about that from the beginning. People were like, you're crazy. Why would you do this thing? Um, you know, and it I did feel that it was so important to highlight that policy side of maternal health care, because maternal health care um, you know, is a major issue in Alabama. It has been for a long time. We have a very high rate of maternal death and uh infant mortality in this state. We have a very high rate of preterm labor and low birth weight babies in this state, particularly with rural mothers, uh low-income mothers, black mothers, and Hispanic mothers. And so, and just nobody was really talking about it. And I said, we have got to talk about that. We cannot let this go. You know, we have lost all of our maternity wards. And we and and no one said a peep about it from a policy perspective. It just didn't even come up. So I really wanted to push that issue and get people talking about it and understanding and push our current leadership to make some moves in that issue. Um, and also, like I said, I just wanted to have somebody on the ballot because it it was a democracy. We should always have choices, and it's it's it sucks when we don't. So um, so yeah, that's how I ended up doing that. And it was busy and it was a crazy time, and I would totally do it again because it was wonderful and I enjoyed every second of it, even when I was very tired.

SPEAKER_03 23:07

Yeah. Well, it's just that conversation. It just everything that you're saying seems to go through the same thread of conversation, people, empowerment, those kinds of ideas seem to just be threaded throughout what you think and believe.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:25

So do you usually listen with your head, your heart? And then I talked to somebody about this not long ago, and they said, well, you know, there's also the gut. And so there's all these systems. So how do you how do you listen to yourself?

Head, Heart, And Gut In Decisions

SPEAKER_00 23:42

All of the above. Um so uh definitely I'm a big believer in intuition, but not because I think it's like some spooky woo-woo thing, because I I do genuinely believe, and I have read you know some research on this as well, that when we have intuition, it's because we have, you know, our conscious brain does not remember every single thing that we have ever seen or encountered, right? And so when we're having an intuit, intuitive moment about something, if we're if we're thinking, ah, I don't know, it's because something in there has seen something. Like we've encountered something similar enough before that we're like, uh, it doesn't feel right. You know, you've got it, you're at the stop sign and you're like, I've got to go right, I've got to go left, and you're like, something just tells me that right is the way to go. And I and I do think that there's something kind of deep down in our unconscious that that knows because we've had an experience similar enough to that before. And again, that's not in like a woo-woo way. That's in a I I do think that we process information even if it is not consciously available to us necessarily. It's it's still in there. And if you're somebody like me, I have been through so many life experiences. I've I feel like I've lived 10 lifetimes. Um, I I listen to my intuition because it always guides me straight. Now, that said, we also need some data about stuff. So I'm very data-driven. Um, so that's that's the head part, right? Where I like to think things through. And if it's a snap decision and I've got to make a call, usually I listen to my intuition and it it guides me very, very well. But I also want some data to back that up whenever I can get it. So if I have a little bit longer time to decide, I am going to start looking at data and analyzing things and thinking more strategically because I think that's so important. Now, back to the intuition thing, we have definitely had a number of situations at Lunar Lab where we had talked to people. And I remember there was a client that we do, we do a lot of like mentoring work, and we had somebody that we were mentoring, and she came on to a call with us and she said, Oh, I brought my developer with me. And like the second that me and my co-founder started talking to this guy, we were like, Nope, nope, that something is wrong. Like, I don't know what it is with this guy, but like we were like, uh-uh. And so the founder messaged us afterwards and she said, When you started talking to him, your whole vibe changed. She was like, I have never seen you be like that. Like, what was going on there? And I said, I don't know. There's something weird about this guy. Like, he just gives me the creeps, like, there's something wrong, right? And I said, I I wouldn't work with it. I don't think you should work with, but I I can't tell you, but there's just something wrong there. It feels wrong, it feels bad. And she was like, I was kind of feeling that too when I talked to him, but I can't put my finger on it. Well, it turns out that he was like a big giant scam artist, and he had scammed a whole bunch of other founders, um, and you know, had gotten them to pay him and had done no work for them or worse. So it did so I think there is something to that intuition because like I didn't know that guy, I had never met that guy before in my life, but there was something that I was like, no, this guy, get him out of here.

SPEAKER_03 27:08

Oh goodness. Well, that that's a good one that you listen to then. And and and that's part of what you're talking about too, is the mentoring and being, you know, involved with people that that you've got a lot of experience and and people you can lean on that. Um but you know, a lot of people have a place or a method that they go to to solve a problem. Do you do you have kind of a this is where I go when I hit the the decision road? This is where I go when I'm struggling. Do you do you have a place for solutions or a process?

Libraries As A Problem-Solving Habit

SPEAKER_00 27:52

I don't know if I would say that I have a process, but I will say that I always tell my kids that if you ever have a problem in life, you should go to the library because they will solve any problem you've got, which is so true. Um to find out about marketing, right? That's right. That's right. So if I'm like really stuck on something, um what I tend to do is just I I have a hard time sometimes making decisions. Even it's funny because I'm like very decisive, but then also when it's like a low stakes thing, I get like kind of stuck on it. But if it's like a big thing, I usually get really decisive. And once I've made the decision, I'm like good to go. Um, but how do I make the decision? Um, I really like to have as much information as I possibly can gather. So that's why I like to go to the library because I will I will read a book um about any topic. And so if I need to know, and if it's a big decision, you know, I'll I'll read about it, I'll gather data. In fact, this is kind of a funny story about a very big decision I made, which was to get married. And um, you know, when my husband and I got married, we were in college and uh we sat down and we did a spreadsheet. And it was like, how do you feel about like how many kids do you want to have? And how do you feel about debt? And you know, where do you want to live and what does your career path look like? And we did that and we made sure that we were aligned on everything. And then we got to the end of our spreadsheet and we were like, yes, this is fiscally responsible. It's so ecological, like we love each other, and also this makes sense. And so that was a huge decision to make, and we did the spreadsheet. So I think gathering data is a really great way because you can make your decision. Another thing that I'll do sometimes is I'll kind of imagine both paths, like if I choose this way versus if I choose this way, what will it look like? And then will I feel bad if I don't choose the other path? Like, am I gonna regret not choosing the other path? Because I think if you put yourself, if you got to choose between A and B, and you say, okay, we'll pretend that I've chosen A, like B is gone to me, right? B is dead. There is no more B. How do I feel about that? And if I'm like, oh, oh no, then maybe I'm not ready to make a decision yet.

SPEAKER_03 30:13

That's that's great. Well, Elizabeth, I have a question. With the background that you've had and in growing up and the struggles that you had, and here you are a parent. Do you find sometimes that it's a little scary that you overcompensate, or do you overcompensate of like this is how I had it, but here I have the ability to make things different for my own?

SPEAKER_00 30:35

Is that yes, yes, I overcompensate all the time. And you know what my husband would say where I overcompensate is I give those kids the best Christmas. Like, you want to talk about some Christmas magic? Like, we're doing it, and we do big birthday parties for them. I just want them to always be like very loved. And so we do, you know, we I like to make a lot of magic for them that I did not have necessarily in my own childhood. And so we'll do things like uh one of my kids has a January birthday and she wanted to have a snow themed birthday. And I was like, cool, let's do it. And I got a ton of fake snow, and we had an indoor snowball fight in like literally the living room. It was so messy, and then we just vacuumed it all up, you know. But um, I have no regrets about having an indoor snow fight in the living room, even though I still find um fake snow all over my life, the events and whatever. So I I think I definitely do that. And I definitely um, you know, I spend so much time with them and I want to always be there for them and be involved. And lately I've been trying to volunteer with the marching band because my oldest is in marching band, and I want her to have all these opportunities that I did not have. And um, yeah, probably overcompensating a lot, but I I don't know that I know a better way to do it.

SPEAKER_03 31:58

Yeah. But it's also a tough landscape to be a parent of kiddo the these days because they've got so many things available to them. How do you monitor? How do you and you're in the tech world, so you kind of see what apps can do. And and so how do you how do you balance or figure out the protection there versus the freedom and and good parenting versus eh parenting?

Parenting, Tech Boundaries, And Safety

SPEAKER_00 32:28

Well, if you ask my kids, they will tell you that I'm the meanest mom in the world because I don't let them use YouTube. So um I we we did make a decision. My husband works in tech as well, and we made a decision that they're not allowed to use YouTube. So I mean, that is blocked at a um at the like server level. Like I can't, you cannot access YouTube in this house. Um it's it's interesting because when it comes to books, they can read anything, like literally anything. Like my oldest right now is reading Stephen King stuff. Is that appropriate for a 14-year-old? Maybe some of it isn't. But we let them ask us questions when they get stuck on stuff. And so they'll ask us like, what is this? And sometimes it is some wild stuff, and then we have to have a very awkward conversation with them. But I think it's it's good for them to learn about that stuff in a very safe environment versus something like uh Roblox or something like that, where you can you where you're kind of in a more unsafe environment and you don't know what kind of people are on there, and there's some weirdos. Um, we do talk to them a lot about like creepers, you know, and we've been very open with them that there are bad people in the world that will hurt you and they want to hurt you, and they will trick you, and you'll think that they're your friend. And so I do think sometimes it's hard to have those conversations. So sometimes people don't want to have those conversations with their kids because our kids are so sweet and innocent and and wonderful, and we want to protect them as much as we can. And I certainly want to protect my kids from everything under the sun. I have been through so much that I don't want them to have to experience that. But at the same time, I feel like a way of keeping them safe is by telling them kind of what kind of stuff can happen. So, you know, I've had I had a really rough time in my childhood, and I've been very open with them about that and said, you know, this is what kind of stuff happens to to kids sometimes, and I want to keep you safe. And here's why we're making some of the decisions that we do, like why you can't use YouTube. Um, and here's how you can watch out for some of this stuff too, because it's so important for them to know like what to do if that situation ever comes to them. Um, I I and I do want them to be able to sort of see the world world very broadly and see it in a clear-eyed way for what it is, even the scary parts, because I feel like that will keep them safer by knowing that stuff. We can't guarantee it, you know, which is terrible because bad things happen to kids in the world every single day. Believe me, no one knows that more than I do because I've lived it. But I think it is a way of keeping them safe by letting them know what happens out there. And I think too, if there are kids that are young enough to experience some of this stuff, then my kids that are sheltered over here in this suburban environment, you know, they're perfectly safe in my house. If this stuff can happen to kids, if kids are old enough to experience it, my kids are old enough to hear about it.

SPEAKER_03 35:43

Yeah. Oh wow. And that I think sometimes we're so afraid that that we don't um empower by giving giving kind of a platform of information that can be handled at a time. And um so what have you had it ever presented to you in looking at wants and needs and and maybe the difference in wants and needs, what our kids need, what we need, what versus what we want. And have you played in that balance of thinking those terms through?

SPEAKER_00 36:22

Not so much. I think I I I tend to think about those things more on the fly as things come to me, if that makes sense. I mean, there's definitely our needs, which are psychological safety is so, so important. Um, you know, obviously eating enough and sleeping enough and things like that. And then most of the things outside of that are like honestly their wants. Um, and I don't, I don't think a lot of stuff is like, you know, being able to to watch YouTube is is probably not a need. But um, but knowing that, and you know, having a snowball fight in the dining room is not a need, but like knowing your mom loves you is so I don't know. I don't necessarily think too deeply about wants versus needs on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_04 37:13

Well I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_03 37:19

Sorry about that. I don't know why it rang through, but it did. Um so you know, it's really interesting because you being in the industry that you're in, you're looking at wants and needs all the time. Or what they think they want to let their consumer do may not be. So how do you draw them back and go, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's go straight for what we're actually trying to accomplish.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

I just had that conversation like one hour ago, actually.

SPEAKER_03 37:52

Good. You got an answer.

Wants Vs Needs In Product Design

Prioritizing Features And MVPs

SPEAKER_00 37:53

So, you know, like it's funny because a lot of times, so we work with people who are startups all the way up to like big, gigantic companies. And sort of across the board, people who are working with us, they have all these big ideas, right? Because people are, you know, one of the early catchphrases that we have was that we're like empowering dreamers and people are dreamers, right? People have big ideas for the software, and they're great ideas. And so we we usually start with a session where we just like literally have them bring every idea. And let me tell you, there will be some crazy ideas, and that's okay. And we always say, just bring your craziest stuff, like say whatever, throw it out there. We put sticky notes on the wall, write down whatever it is, and then we will sort through them and figure out which ones that you need the most. The way that we try to do it is we think about okay, what are the features that we can put in the software that are actually going to help people and we think that are going to work in the marketplace. So there's this great matrix that we do where it's like, you know, analyzing whether it is high value to the end users or high effort, and then we sort through all of these issues and we figure out which ones are. If it is high value and low effort, like you should do it right now. If it is low value and high effort, you should maybe like consider never doing it. So there's a bit of that. There's a bit of um, you know, I think about one all the time where a guy was building an app and he really wanted to have like a discussion feature in it. And he really wanted to have the ability to put gifts in the comments of these discussions. And we were like, well, but this that is that's gonna take a lot of development time. It's gonna cost you thousands of dollars, and you don't even know if people are gonna use a discussion feature yet. So, like, let's find out if they're gonna use the discussion feature and then come back and add the gifts in. Because the beautiful thing about software is that you can put like literally, I mean, you can do anything with software and you can change it all the time. It's not like you build it one time and then you're done forever. And so, you know, the guy that I was talking to today said, I've got all of these feature ideas and we're changing our minds all the time. Like, how do we, how do we decide which features are going to go in here without making this project go like way over budget? And so I told the guy, you know, what we need to do is we need to think about the most streamlined version of the app because he is their startup founder. This is the brand new app that we're building. What's the most streamlined version that we can take into the marketplace and test out? Because you don't want to get you don't want to overload it with so many features that you don't necessarily need. You want to get people to what they need to do as fast as possible. So um, so yeah, I think I think starting with like realistically what must get done, like what is absolutely essential, and then being very ruthless about defining what the fluff is. And then knowing that you can you can do the do the fluff stuff later. It doesn't mean it can never get done. It's just that you need to get the more immediate stuff done, the stuff that you know people are going to be using, like that they have to have in order to meet the needs in this app. Um do that first and then come back.

SPEAKER_03 41:23

Yeah. I think there's a lot of times people have that one and done thought. And you just don't seem to have that limit.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

Not at all.

SPEAKER_03 41:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

Why? Or you know, like you can you can reinvent all the time. Like I said, I've lived 10 lifetimes. And uh I think if I if I just sat down and at any point in my life was like, that's it, that's all I can do. I'm done now. I you know, I would not have gotten as far as I have gotten. So I guess I just tend to think in terms of I'm I'm really I think a lot about opportunities and uh love seeing new opportunities and like reaching for them. You know.

SPEAKER_03 42:08

What do you think you'll always need help with? I that I always need help with. Well, you always need help with, whether it's being, you know, in your personal life or or professional.

SPEAKER_00 42:19

If I had like a clone that would help me if I had more hours, I just wish I had more hours in the day. That is my biggest challenge that I have on a on a regular basis, is just I need I need more time. And I'm maybe because I'm I like looking for opportunities. The downside of that is that maybe I'm not so good at saying no to things sometimes. I just want to say yes to everything. I love saying yes. You know, I like I very much live my life in like you know how in in improv they're always like always say yes, yes and right. I'm very I'm a yes and person, and that is hard because sometimes I should probably say no. But I like doing new things.

SPEAKER_03 43:09

That causes some midnight oil, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 43:11

Boy, does it? Boy does it. Yeah, why did I run for Congress? Um because I'm a yes and person, right? I can simply run for Congress on top of, you know, I'm on all these boards and I run my business and I've got these two kids, and I make all my kids clothes and you know, I read all these books and things like that. But yeah, I can totally run for I should, you know, somebody should probably, you know, my husband, he's so sensible. He's always like, Are you sure you're not doing too much? And I was like, I think I can do it, you know, and I did, I did it, but it was I was tired at the end.

SPEAKER_03 43:46

So do you think you'll find yourself running in for a public office again? Or I think so.

Saying Yes, Capacity, And Burnout

SPEAKER_00 43:54

Yeah, I think so. It was a really positive experience, and I have never felt more in tune with the community around me. And somebody posted on Instagram one day. I wish I had saved this because it was so funny. They were like, My dream job is to be a person who goes around and just tells people that I love them and that I want the best for them. And I'm like, oh my gosh, that is what it felt like to run for office, is you just you know, everybody jokes about like the kissing babies part and shaking hands, but it's a lot of shaking hands and kissing babies, and it feels good to fight for people, right? And it feels good to be connected with my community and be involved and make a difference in a way. And it was such a positive. I got to meet so many people during that that I would not have otherwise met. Just, you know, all different types of people who live here and hear about their experiences and what they were going through and what their biggest issue with their issues are. And I ran as a Democrat, but my campaign colors were purple. So I talked to people on every side of the political spectrum, from like I talked to very, very left-winging like communists all the way to like centrist people, all the way to like very, very MAGA Trump supporter people and had positive conversations with all of them because at the end of the day, I really do believe that we all really just want the same things, right? We all want to live in a safe community, we all want to have good relationships with our neighbors, we want the moms and babies to live. Um, we want good health care and those are universal, like we want to be able to go to the store and buy groceries. Um, everybody wants the same things. And so I had really good conversations. So just because that part was so fun, I think I would do it again.

SPEAKER_03 45:45

Well, and y'all do quite a bit or you're involved in quite a bit across the board through Lunar Lab of making sure that you're supporting different causes or different aspects of the community and industry and just across the board. Do you have a um platform process for that? Or is it just kind of what comes across that you go, that really takes my heart, I'll go for it?

Considering Another Run For Office

SPEAKER_00 46:16

Yeah, we're a certified B Corp. So because of that, that's um it's like a legal structure. We're we have a certification, we have a third party that certifies us and kind of authenticates everything that we're doing. But our legal structure as a public benefit corporation means that we are legally required to consider our social and environmental impact in every decision that we make. And so, because of that, when we are doing our mentoring or when we are doing our volunteer work or our charitable giving, we do have a process internally. So we can't just like we can't just mentor or volunteer with like any rando. So it does have to be sort of through nonprofit organizations or organizations that we know are aligned to our benefit goals, which are to improve economic um success for people in our community, particularly in historically excluded demographic groups. And I and I say historically excluded, we use that terminology very intentionally because um I don't like to say stuff like underrepresented, because the truth is a lot of these demographic groups are underrepresented because they have been intentionally excluded from these industries uh in a historic way. So we do work with historically excluded founders and individuals to make sure that we are lifting people up in our community and we try to keep it really local to Birmingham. Although, you know, there have been times when, oh, you know, you remember there was that horrible shooting in the grocery store and you know, years ago, and that was not local to that was in Buffalo, and um that was not local to us, and and that was not necessarily directly tied to what we do, but that one really, you know, tugged at our heartstrings. So we definitely made a made made a chance to do to uh to volunteer or excuse me to uh donate to that. So, you know, things like that, they do come across, stuff comes up. I remember there were a lot of small businesses that were impacted uh in North Carolina by the hurricane a few years ago. So we made sure that we donated to that effort. Anything that we can do to help lift people up because we want everybody to have the same sort of economic opportunities that we've had.

SPEAKER_03 48:38

If this were your platform and you could just say something, shout out something really loud, what would you go for?

SPEAKER_00 48:47

Anything?

SPEAKER_03 48:48

Anything.

SPEAKER_00 48:50

Um the first thing that popped into my head was y'all just love each other because I think um we forget sometimes that we are all part of a community, and I think it's easy for us to see the divisions between ourselves and other people. But at the end of the day, if we just approach approach every single person we talk to with love, it can just be so more positive, so much more positive. It's like I said earlier, when I was having all those political conversations with people all up and down the political spectrum, um, whether I agreed with them or disagreed with them, I tried to approach every single person with love and understanding and empathy and actually listening to people, even if you disagree with people, it's really important to listen to what they have to say because they might just have a different perspective than you do on something and they may see it in a way that you don't see it. So um, yeah, love each other, listen to each other.

SPEAKER_03 49:48

Well, and as a mom too, um, if you've had to talk to a younger Elizabeth and say, Hey, hang on, Elizabeth, this is coming, what would you tell her?

B Corp Model And Community Impact

SPEAKER_00 50:00

Oh gosh. Oh, that's so hard. Young Elizabeth was really going through it. She she was um I don't know. That's a that's a tough question for me because my early life was so challenging. I mean, I went, I had, you know, was dealing with poverty, but I was also dealing with um, you know, I think that there is a lot of class discrimination that goes on. Like people know that you're in poverty and they hate you about it. So I think there was a lot of that going on. Um, also had a domestic violence situation, you know, my entire childhood was very difficult. My dad was in federal prison for a very long time. And so just really a lot of challenges when I was younger that were very hard. And I think that young Elizabeth did an okay job of doing her best to sort of to get through everything. And I I guess I was always at the time when I was young, I was so disciplined. And I guess I wish that I had taken a little bit more time to have fun, although I don't know that I didn't really have time for that. I was, you know, when I was in high school, I was raising my younger siblings, and um so I didn't really have a lot of time, but I I wish that I had been able to take some more time to think about maybe what I wanted instead of what I was just getting pushed towards. And it wasn't like I was getting pushed towards stuff because other people had expectations for me. It's just that my options were so limited. When you're in that situation, it's not like you have choices. You know, I ended up with a music degree, and people are always like, oh, you know, you must have had like really understanding parents to get a music degree because that's like some humanities thing. And the truth of the matter is I got a music scholarship, and that that was that was the choice that was made for me. If I wanted to go to college, I was gonna be a music major and that was it. I did not have I there was no choice for me there in that it wasn't like I chose to be a music major. It was chosen for me by circumstances, and so maybe I would have said, think think a little bit more about what you want, um, even if it was unavailable to me at the time. And maybe that's why I found myself in so many different situations across my life and doing so many things because uh because I just I just go in the direction. So I don't know. Maybe that's what I would say.

SPEAKER_03 52:39

Huh? That's interesting. So we've talked about a lot of different aspects of life, business, just kind of across the board. Is there something that we didn't talk about that you want to make sure we do?

SPEAKER_00 52:51

Oh gosh. Um, I'm not sure. You know, uh I am a certified yapper and talk about any topic for any length of time. So that's probably the hardest question that you've asked me. I had to turn it around on you. Is there anything that we should have covered that we didn't?

SPEAKER_03 53:09

Oh, I don't know. I think we could go on and on. I really think we could dive deep into some of these um issues. And I I I always like talking to somebody that can open my eyes. And and you have done that on a number of topics. So I think I hope that our listeners as well. Um and you I I love the library too. And I I um love to come across someone who still sees it as relevant and something that we must continue to have and to utilize.

Lead With Love, Listen Deeply

SPEAKER_00 53:39

And so um maybe I'll say a final word on the library. I like literally am obsessed with the library. We probably go two or three times a week. We have library cards at multiple libraries. And we went a few weeks ago and we checked out 25 books, me and my kids, and my we came home and my husband was like, What are you doing? Are you gonna read all of these? And we were like, Yeah, totally. Um, but I will say this about the library. First of all, when I say go to the library if you have a problem, I mean that in the truest sense of the word, not only for the books that are there, but the librarians can help you with things. They have services. My local library is putting together a trip to Ireland. I mean, they have uh like a therapy dog, you can rent a bread machine. You might not realize how much stuff that your library has that can benefit you. Like personally, I I mean, it truly is a large amount of sort resources that it's not just books at the library. So much is going on there that can help you. And the other thing is that as you use those services, their funding is dependent on you using those services. So, like, check out 25 books, you know, check out their DVDs and Blu-rays, check out the bread machine, even doing things like uh asking for a book with a librarian, or even just pulling a book off the shelf. Please don't put it back on the shelf, put it on the little, the little cart because they track the interest in those different books, and then they get funding based on that, and they use that funding to provide more services to the community. So, like the library is life, the library is everything, the library is why I was able to escape poverty. The library has solved every problem. We went one time because there was a tornado. We were in Little Rock, Arkansas, and there was a tornado coming, and we were like, oh my gosh, where are we? Where are we gonna go? What are we gonna do? We can't get back to the hotel. And I was like, we gotta go to the library. They have everything. Everyone go to the library all the time, they'll solve all your life problems.

SPEAKER_03 55:47

That is awesome. And I can remember, I forgot why I was there, but I was in Arizona and I didn't have anywhere to go. And um, and I looked toward the library and I got so frustrated because it was during COVID and they were closed. And I'm like, what?

SPEAKER_01 56:05

Why am I?

SPEAKER_03 56:07

So yeah, I I would do the same thing. It's kind of like, you know, in the South, a lot of times we grow up of look for the church, go to the church. Well, the library kind of equates on that same level.

SPEAKER_00 56:19

It really does. I mean, they have everything and they're there for you. The services are there, and my kids have a great time. During COVID, our library would you would say, I need books about butterflies. And then they would package up a bunch of books about butterflies, and you just pick them up at the drive-thru. It was so great. Awesome. Love, love libraries so much. Please protect your local library.

SPEAKER_03 56:41

That's great. Elizabeth, how do people follow you, get in touch with you if they wanted to work with you, or just follow along?

Advice To Younger Self

SPEAKER_00 56:49

Yeah, our website is www.lunarlab.io. So www.l-n-ar-l-a-b dot i-o. And then of course you can find me on LinkedIn, it's Elizabeth Anderson. You might have to search for Elizabeth Anderson Birmingham. I know that I have a very generic name, it's hard to find me. Uh so definitely there. Uh if you search, if you Google Elizabeth Anderson, Alabama, you will find my political website if you want to uh get involved in that way. Sometime I'm a politician, so of course I've got to ask for donations. Um anybody wants to donate. Um, and yeah, those are kind of the main ways we would love to work with anybody. We love chatting with people. If people just have an idea about some software that they want to build, we will literally talk to you for free and kind of give you some guidance if it's something that we think you know could be good in the marketplace or what you should do next, or if you just want to hear how the software development process works because it's kind of opaque to people sometimes. Like please call us. We love to just chat.

SPEAKER_03 57:58

That's absolutely awesome. Um, Elizabeth, I have one more question, and that is if you had a superpower for 24 hours, you can use it personally or professionally. What would that superpower be? How would you use it? And I'm really more interested in the why you would choose it.

SPEAKER_00 58:16

Um, that is very difficult. When I was a kid, the thing that I always, I just wanted to like know all of life's mysteries. Maybe this is why I'm so drawn to the library, because I just wanted to like know things, like all kinds of things, like, you know, um, you know, historical mysteries or where did I put that thing that is lost, or whatever, just sort of being able to know more information. And I know that's not like invisibility or you know, ability to fly or something like that, but I think if I could just know more information, I would be able to maybe make more strategic. And I think that is why I wanted to know more information as a kid, was because I wanted to make the right choices. And so maybe that's the one that I would want. Um, you know, just being able to kind of know the outcomes of things, man, that would be seeing the future. Uh, could do a lot with that. I would, I would feel more confident in my decision making if we can we can only see the future. Hard hard to let go of that though, hard to keep it for just one day. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:30

I talked to somebody earlier and said, well, first of all, I'd like to make the 2448 and then go. So yeah.

Libraries: Underrated Civic Powerhouse

SPEAKER_00 59:37

I'll tell you, my husband read a book about, I can't remember the name of the book. I'm so sorry, but it was about uh a plane and it went through some kind of wormhole. And while they were in the air and they landed, and it turned out that they were like the plane had landed six months before, and now there were like two of these people and it. And the book was so interesting. It was telling me all about it because all these people were fighting with their it was kind of like a clone situation. And they were like, No, I'm the real one. No, I'm the real one. And I just looked at him and I said, Oh my gosh. If another Elizabeth came into my life right now, I feel like we would be besties. We're gonna do like you do the cool the school pickup today. I'll do the homework. Like we could like really split some things up. So maybe I need a clone that would be my superpower. Um I was I was delighted about it. He he said that every single person in the book has all of these struggles and problems from him, and I'm like, no way, no way. Clone Elizabeth shows up on my doorstep, we're best friends.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:43

Yeah, you would go ahead and assign the duties and go, okay, here's your track, here's my track. That's funny. Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining us. It's been fabulous.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:54

Yeah, this has been so fun. Thank you, Amy. I really appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:59

Oh, it's been great.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:19

To my own song.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:21

Find Stat Keys Podcast on Spotify, SoundCloud, and iTunes, or anywhere you get your favorite podcast, listen. You'll laugh out loud, you'll cry a little, you'll find yourself encouraged. Join us for casual conversation that leads itself based on where we take it, from family to philosophy, to work to meal prep, to beautiful surviving life. And hey, if I can ask a big favor of you, go to iTunes and give us a five rate. The more people do rate us, the more we get this podcast out. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:00

Whatever you do, it ain't nothing on me. Cause I'm doing my thing, and I'll hold the key to all my walls and all my dreams.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:22

Don't do my own drive. Don't do my own dumb. Don't do my own drunk. Don't do my own dumb.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:43

Step real proud. Nobody's gonna step up on my cloud. Do the break on my big drum.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:59

And all I'm drunk Start to my own drum. Stomp to my own dunk. Stop it. Gonna put some hood. Start to my drunk.