If you told me 10 years ago that this is what we'd be doing now, the "huh?!!" I'd have uttered would've been quite quizzical. I would've cocked my head and offered you an interesting facial expression, one eyebrow up. 🤨
E-learning technology wasn't anything from our past. And developing an online course creator platform, in a sea of SO MANY other e-learning platforms... well, that's just plain silly. Right?!!
"E-learning platforms are a dime a dozen," is what I'd have told you. That's for other businesses to create. I thought maybe we'd use one for a business of ours at some point. But create one? Ha!
I can tell you though that we both have an insatiable desire to learn, everything and anything we're even mildly interested in. That's just part of who we both are.
Mention something to Chad, and if he finds it even remotely fascinating, he's an encyclopedia about it in-a-weekend. And I'm often reading 3 or 4 books at a time, and I've usually got a tutorial or course open in a Chrome tab at any given moment.
So creating a platform to assist with getting expert knowledge out to the world... that same knowledge that we individually soak up like a sponge? Well yeah, that makes sense.
It's just not what we set out to do.
So how did we end up here?
Nothing gets technologists more interested in developing something than the products on the market NOT filling their needs.
That's what happened to us.
I was launching a health & wellness program after spending time as a chef, and we cared a whole ton about keeping our customers' information and data safe, especially since they were often sharing private medical information with me. We went hunting for e-learning platforms that could handle our security needs and that could house HIPAA information. And with ALL of the products on the market, we couldn't find one - nope, not one - that met our needs.
Next thing I know, Chad's off to the races, pivoting us from a totally different startup that we were embarking on together.
Chad's extremely good at getting from here to there in any way possible.
He repurposed our secure technology framework, which was built for financial compliance of all things, to be the underlying structure that our e-learning platform would sit on.
I then got uber-educated in course creation by being in the trenches...
- Terrified and frozen in front of the camera, I had to work through it. I practiced and practiced, and Chad chuckled at my over-preparedness. Eventually... I was doing facebook lives with no prep work.
- My head was "stuck" and I was all knotted into a big ol' case of imposter syndrome despite a whole bunch of credentials (like being a le Cordon Bleu trained chef).
- I was convinced I needed the same kind of expertise for my health & wellness course - even when I was just starting out - as I had for my 25 year career.
All of this uncertainty tore at me while Chad very systematically 🤓 built our e-learning course hosting platform.
Over time I slayed my demons and overcame my fears about creating courses in things I didn't have 20+ years of experience in, and I started to love product & course creation. No matter what area I was focusing on.
A couple of years and several products later , I kept thinking about our day-to-day expertise and how we weren't creating courses and content around it. We both were corporate technology consultants & had lots of entrepreneurial experience. That's where I felt I was most expert. And of course, so was Chad.
And then, it just happened.
Why not share our e-learning course hosting platform, our course creation experience, and our business & entrepreneurship knowledge with those who could benefit from it most? So they could build their products & courses hand-in-hand with their businesses?
We'd watched too many fellow entrepreneurs back-peddle to get their businesses defined without strategic thought, as they just threw things together to get up and running that would often need to be redone later.
And we'd advised many people on how to unwind entrepreneurial businesses that hadn't exactly gotten off on the right foot.
Why not help online course creators from the very beginning?
Our mission would be to help course creators get setup and from day-1 be able to build, grow, and scale their course creator business. And if we did it right, we'd remove the fear of words like "technology", "operations", and "accounting" (to just name a few) that reside in all of those nerdy back-of-the-house departments that the introverts hide in.
From creatives to technologists to serial-ish entrepreneurs
What does being a chef have to do with technology?
Nothing really, except it's the reason we're here today. Ha!
And what's that entrepreneurship stuff anyway? Well...
We own a successful consulting business that we built from nothing. And one of our favorite things is to mentor start-ups since we've both been part of many.
But first, we were creatives. We both had a flare for art: collectively, we drew, photographed, designed buildings, and threw pots. I even found myself with a creative writing degree.
But it was the dot-com boom. We both ended up in software. Creatives turned to technology. Side note: technology can be extremely creative, it's just that your palette is more structured. 🎨
Chad became a full stack developer and architect, and is a sought after consultant in many industries, from off-track betting to biotech, for his ability to put systems together. This led to management and a VP of Technology position with 50 people in his organization. Fast-forward: it wasn't his favorite thing.
I started as a user interface developer and quickly went into leadership roles. Most of my early career was in financial technology. After getting an MBA, I became an intrapraneur (meaning I was an entrepreneur inside a funded organization) and built a web technology team from the ground up. It was great until the politics set in. And with 13 direct reports, I lived in reviews. Fast-forward: climbing the corporate ladder wasn't so glamorous.
Meanwhile, we both were part of several start-ups - other people's and our own. Some were quite successful. Many failed. Our careers have been long.
We both learned A LOT about operations, team building, business growth, and of course technology. And we applied it left and right to the businesses we built. We left behind any titles and started our own consulting business. Chad architects just-about-anything in corporate technology, and I've thrown in my coding hat and now run really big projects and programs for our corporate clients.
Why it's about you...
Helping large companies make even more money doesn't have a lot of meaning.
But you know what does have a lot of meaning?
Helping a teacher get her first course up and going so she can make money on the side and bring her two sons to Italy for their first-ever international vacation.
So is helping you get your course and business going together so that you're marching toward your long-term goals, and so it's not so terrifying when you get to your first tax day.
We found out the hard way that it's important to focus on what's really important, and only what's really important, and put blinders on to the things that don't matter so much (even if they're squeaky). Taking this approach means that we're focused on the minimum viable...
It's not about creating a flurry of work and having to juggle even more.
We're exhausted by the give-everything-you've-got approach. Been there, done it, seen it. Got the scars.
We don't believe in working for the sake of working. Not at all. We believe in working smart and we've figured out that no matter how much you do, there's still an endless supply.
So, we believe in the freedom to get out for a walk on the beach, a run in the hills, and a trip to the slopes midweek on a blue bird day.
We've said Yes! to living & working abroad in Buenos Aires & London & other places, even with kids in tow. We made amazing friends and took the time to laugh over dinner and explore wildly different places.
At Sidkik, we're focused on helping you build, grow, and scale your course creator business. The way you want for yourself, so you have the freedom you're looking for.
We do that by being the e-learning course & challenge hosting platform that has your business in mind from day-one.
So you can make more $ while you sleep. From anywhere in the world.