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    In Memory Of The Best English Editor At ReVerb

    David Roberts, CEO and Founder of ReVerb tells the story about his mother, Margo Roberts…

    It was 2016, just another day in my life as a native English editor. I was taking on more work than usual. More clients were approaching me for their editing and proofreading requirements. I enjoyed editing content and localizing texts, particularly for those who did not speak English as a first language. A friend of mine needed an email checked, and I offered to help. I would get requests for an English editing service like these every now and then. However, the demand started to grow, and what started as a one-off thing became a nice supplemental income to my marketing consulting business.

    I admired Ukrainian tech startups and was always keen on working with them. Ukraine had a great tech market, and content editing services were high in demand. So, I started offering my services. Although Ukrainian was not my first language, I knew Russian and quickly detected mistakes made by Ukrainian writers. I also helped out a Polish IT managing company TimeMachine4.net with their marketing, which later became known RevDeBug.

    Then the best part of the year. I was at the 2016 Wolves Summit in Warsaw giving a speech, when much to my surprise Denys Zhadanov, president of Readdle, contacted me about editing texts. I had contacted him a few times before on Facebook, and I was delighted that he was ready to consider considering my services. 

    I was always in awe of Readdle, the tech giants in creating top-notch productivity apps. Being an integral part of Readdle’s marketing meant a significant opportunity to expand my content editing business. And it happened! I was on the marketing team and it wasn’t long before I was busy providing my editing and proofreading services. It was a win-win situation that promised a bright future. 

    However, there was a turning point when I faced a problem. Work had to be turned around within 24 hours. I was unable to do the edits as I was busy with other clients at a conference in Poland. This is when the idea of calling my mom struck me. My mother, Margo Roberts, in Minnesota, was a highly educated woman with a Master’s Degree in Cellular Biology. In the 1970s and 80s, she worked at the Mayo Clinic’s Microbiology lab.

    She was also of great assistance to my father and had run several successful businesses with him. Being diabetic, she had lost a lot of mobility. The demise of my father in 2007 also took a toll on her life. She started to keep herself busy with visits to church and participating in community activities in her small town of Dodge Center, Minnesota, while also traveling to her various(and what would later prove, hard to get rid of) timeshares. And, here’s the best part- she was also a great writer!

    After convincing her to help me out, she agreed to do the editing tasks for Readdle. I had to teach her how to use Google docs and Gmail over Skype, so she could edit the content on my behalf, without anyone knowing. I kept her involvement lowkey because another Ukrainian startup had approached me for my editing services. However, they backed off when I told them that my mother, a baby boomer, would be editing the texts. I could not take the risk. So, in the meantime, I spoke at the Wolves Summit for Time4machine, and it was great. We won a runner-up award and had a splendid time. When I caught a moment in all the excitement in Warsaw, I was amazed to read the positive feedback about my mother, who was now a professional editor’s editing. 

    Readdle loved my mom’s texts, and even her use of the snarky Star Trek slang was appreciated (she was a die-hard Trekkie). The icing on the cake was that she actually enjoyed being a professional editor and would look forward to the monthly payments that I would send her. She would be delighted and often spend that money on my kids, who loved their now “even cooler” grandmother. Mom stayed on as Readdle’s secret editor. 

    My business was growing quickly. I was hiring copywriters, marketing specialists and expanding my team of content editors. My editing business revolutionized into a content marketing agency that you know as “ReVerb.” ReVerb was providing its services to countless tech companies based in Central and Eastern Europe, Israel, and Singapore. 

    As of writing this, ReVerb has worked with close to a whopping 800 different tech companies and startups since 2016. If you use a service or technology from any of those regions, there’s a better than average chance you’re reading texts handled by ReVerb. 

    Alongside Readdle, mom stayed as the Lead Editor for ReVerb, mentoring other writers and editors as they were hired, keeping Readdle as her main client. Working as an editor had become such a sweet part of her life. She would tell everyone that she was editing Readdle’s texts, and if she spotted someone using a Readdle app, she would let them know of her involvement (which not everyone believed). A few times, we were certain Tanya Mitkova, localization lead at Readdle, had figured out that I wasn’t editing the texts. Sometimes, when she had specific questions about one of mom’s unique slang insertions, and mom wasn’t available to explain to me what she meant by that.

    When my mother’s kidneys failed in 2017, she had tiring daily dialysis treatments. She would wake at 4 AM and go into the Mayo clinic for several hours. She was concerned that she wouldn’t be able to edit Readdle’s texts, as the dialysis machine was limiting her mobility. Propping up a laptop seemed impossible. This was when I knew it was time to get her a new iPad so she could happily edit texts while undergoing her treatment. It also kept her mind off her deteriorating health. 

    She enjoyed working from the hospital, and sometimes I would join her and sit with her all day working from my laptop. It was wonderful having to spend that time with her while not having to worry about work commitments. She was dying, but you could never guess. Reading updates from Denys’ FB page was a particular interest for her, and I’m sure he must have found it odd at the time that my mom was following and liking all his posts. Her spirits soared when she received a task assigned from Pavel, Tanya, Denys, or Maria. It would put her mind at ease and give her an opportunity to utilize her keen intellect and be a part of a great company, in secret.

    In November of 2018, she fell in the bathroom and had a nasty bruise. She refused to let me take her into the hospital and would tell me not to worry. She insisted that I focus on work. I had to leave as I was attending Slush in Helsinki and was scheduled to give a talk in Reykjavik on the way back. However, her bruise turned septic, and she ended up going to the hospital a few days later after I was out of the country for the next ten days. My sister Zoe Roberts was also in New Zealand, and Liliya was taking care of our four kids.

    My mother spent six weeks in and out of the hospital for surgeries. Her organs were also failing.  She had eight surgeries during that time. Throughout everything, she never missed a single editing assignment for Readdle. One of her doctors had the Spark app open on his tablet. She recognized the Readdle logo and told him that she edits their texts. He told the nurse that her pain medication might be too high, which set mom off into delight-filled laughter. In between visitors, and medical procedures, she would check her messages from me, then open the task on her tablet and edit everything with a smile and a chuckle at her own wit. At that time, I was glad that I had introduced her to the world of editing. Being a secret editor for Readdle had brightened up some of the most stressful days of her life. 

    Mom did Readdle’s edits right up until the day before she died in January of 2019, during surgery on her heart to put in a stint. The night before her final surgery, I sat with her while she edited one of Tanya Mitkova’s texts from her hospital bed. She asked me to keep editing Readdle’s texts after she was gone and someday let them know of her involvement when the time seemed right.

    Now seems like a good time.

    Margo Roberts

    Rest in Peace Margo, we miss you!

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