In the last ~6 months, @figmaacademy has turned into a full-blown FAMILY business :)
It feels like one, big, awesome game...
And I get to play it every day with the people who mean the most to me.
I'm feeling grateful tonight.
So I wanted to share the story 👇
I hit launch on the beta program this time last year and passed out shortly after 💤
I remember being BLOWN away that 10 people signed up while I was sleeping.
Then I remembered I had to sprint to my computer to invite them so they didn't think they were scammed lol.
Why sprint? Well...
I couldn't figure out how to connect @lmsqueezy and @ConvertKit at first...
That meant I sent all 500 of the invites to the Figma team manually (or... @richariddering mostly did anyway 😅).
Pretty much every system we launched with broke right away lol.
Speaking of my wife:
I couldn't do any of this without @RichaRiddering
She helped me go all in from the beginning and has supported me every step of the way.
And by the time January enrollment was in full swing, we realized we needed to start treating this like a business...
So we formed our LLC "Riddering ink" and made things official.
@richariddering took over all of the finances, legal docs, reporting, etc.
And I was able to focus on trying to keep the day-to-day operations afloat.
Which turned out to be a lot to handle 😬
At this point our support queue was massive.
I had companies asking for team licenses when I had 0 plan 🤷♂️
I actually apologized to Maven for being so distracted during that week.
Something had to change.
And it turned out my dad was the one who had the game-changing idea...
"What if you hired your sister-in-law?" he asked in Feb.
I would never have considered asking her to quit her job.
But as soon as he said it I KNEW that it was the right move.
She's a graphic designer + operations specialist. And she lives right down the street! Perfect 👌
But our little family business was growing, and not just financially...
My sister-in-law had her 2nd kid in June.
This meant yet again... I was looking for help. But this time was different. This time I wanted to go bigger.
So I reached out to my good friend @Sam_Lane96
His wife now handles all of our sales operations and CRUSHES it 🙏
This frees up my sister-in-law to do things like help me launch the Designer Talent Network, edit videos, create marketing graphics, etc.
But we didn't stop there...
ridd.pallet.com/talent/welcome?referral=true
In May my sister got married. Which meant I got to meet my new brother-in-law's best man.
Turns out, the dude is a killer editor/animator and now we have him working on all kinds of creative projects.
What has me the most excited is what he's going to work on next though...
I'm currently working with @FonsMans on the branding for a BIG project.
Like... way bigger than @figmaacademy
I seriously can't wait to show you where our little family business goes next 🤩
twitter.com/FonsMans/status/1548640895364366338?s=20&t=IG-UxD0P0NJ3qpvy9A-Eww
It all started with being obsessed about the idea of "learning Figma in Figma"
But it's grown into so much more.
I've realized that I LOVE the process of trying to build a family business online.
There's nothing I'd rather do with my free time. And you know what??
It's working!
We've made more $$ than I ever imagined. I won't pretend that part isn't great.
But do you know how cool it is to spend an evening building @airtable automations with your wife while talking shop and celebrating her first successful "zap"?
Ya, we're that nerdy 🤷♂️
Thanks for reading this far by the way :)
I didn't sit at my computer to write a thread on the family business.
I just started typing and here we are. I hope you found it at least somewhat entertaining.
Everyone should try to make $1 on the internet. It changes everything.
That's it. No retweet CTAs. No follow requests.
Just me being me.
I won't even ask you to sign up for @figmaacademy 😉
(ok, ok...I couldn't resist...)