He Earned $100,000 While Learning To Code

Jonathon Ringeisen is the founder of Essential Studio Manager (ESM), a customer relationship manager (CRM) for photographers 📸

Per a recent profile, Jonathon built it while learning to code and eventually sold the business for $70,000.

The backstory…

Like millions of others, Jonathon wanted to learn how to code. But unlike most people who choose to learn in a low-pressure experimental environment, Jonathon wanted to create something of value while gaining experience, so he started a business and learned on the fly.

💡 How he came up with the idea for ESM in 2017…

Jonathon’s wife, Elena, had recently started an online business selling Lightroom presets to photographers (Lightroom is a popular photo editing program, and presets apply specific looks or effects to photos). 

He decided to create a customer relationship manager (CRM) for photographers to capitalize on the audience Elena was already building.

📈 Initial traction…

Once the minimum viable product (MVP) was ready, Jonathon started to promote ESM. Since Elena had a growing customer list of photographers, Jonathon started by emailing them.

He also ran Facebook ads and included a referral program that incentivized ESM users to share it with friends and colleagues.

He started getting users and feedback while he continued adding features…

ESM users also provided feedback on the product’s pricing. Many of them told Jonathon the price was too low, so he increased it to $15 per month and then eventually $29 per month (which was still cheaper than his competitors)…

During this time, Jonathon was also learning how to run a business.

🗓️ Come 2022, five years after Jonathon got started, he decides to sell the business…

ESM had plateaued at about $1,600 MRR, and the competition was intense. It was an excellent learning experience, but Jonathon knew ESM was no longer the best use of his time.

He then listed it for sale and…

When all was said and done, we received a total of $70,000.

So he probably earned around $100,000 from ESM over the years 💰

Obviously the project didn’t make Jonathon rich, but given that he learned a ton about programming and building a business along the way, I’d consider it a big win overall.

Think about the skills you want to learn.

Instead of learning in some low-stakes practice environment, how about creating something for real-world use or consumption? 

It’s scary, sure, but you’ll likely learn much faster that way 🚀

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