Lynda Weinman is the co-founder and Executive Chair of Lynda.com, the leading online learning company that teaches people about business, software, technology and creative skills in order to help them achieve their personal and professional goals.
As a web graphics and design expert, she has authored several best-selling books, been a renowned educator, and worked as a consultant for companies such as Adobe, Macromedia, and Microsoft. She has been a lecturer at multiple design, animation, web design and computer-graphics conferences, and has spearheaded workshops at prestigious companies such as Disney.
We sat down with Lynda recently to learn more about her journey, which is inspirational considering she is self-taught. Her passion has led to the creation of an international business which has made an impact on our world, helping people reach their goals.
Tiffany Pham: What was the process of educating yourself in the area of computer science, and what drew you to study this area?
Lynda Weinman: In 1982, my boyfriend at the time challenged me to help him with his new computer. I started to read the manual and was mortified by how it was written by engineers for other engineers, with no sensitivity to the uninitiated. I threw the manual away and started trying things. I realized through trial and error that I could teach myself, and remembered my steps as I learned new software and techniques. Eventually my boyfriend complained that he became a computer widow, and I fell in love with all the new things I could do in ways that had never before been possible. As the computer era gained popularity, I started sharing what I taught myself with others, and after years of this “hobby” realized that I had a gift for simplifying technical instructions and had a true passion for teaching.
Pham: What inspired you to launch Lynda.com?
Weinman: I was teaching computer graphics in 1993 at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena when I first discovered the world wide web through the earliest public browser, Mosaic. I realized instantly that my art students would need to know how to publish to this new medium and looked for a book to assign to them. As I browsed through the bookstore and considered the earliest books on HTML, it reminded me of reading that first computer manual. All the books on web programming were written for programmers. I realized with my knack for teaching, love of sharing, and ability to learn new things that I should write a book for my students and other people who wanted to learn how to leverage this new communication medium. Unable to get a publisher to accept my book proposal, I wrote the book as magazine article installments while I researched and shared web design techniques. A woman wrote to me who was Debbie@debbie.com, and that made me wonder if Lynda dot com was available. It was, I bought the domain name for 35.00, and lynda.com became my personal sand box to teach myself as I wrote the book. The book became a national and international best seller and the website lynda.com became known to the world. With the book’s success, my husband and I decided to quit our day jobs, move to a small idyllic town away from the big city, launch a small web design school, and later put our lessons online as videos.
Pham: What were the challenges and opportunities that you were presented with when launching the company, and that you face daily in terms of operations?
Weinman: We started our school in 1997 and social media wasn’t yet invented. Book sales were what gave us visibility, and word of mouth. Even though this was the beginning of the dot com era, we weren’t in Silicon Valley and it never occurred to us to ask for funding. We believed that we had to make money to stay in business, which is rather old fashioned, but it was our only truth at the time. The empathetic and approachable style of teaching that was the hallmark of my book(s) ended up creating a lot of good will with the in-person school and external videos that we created. People could really learn from our materials, and we were teaching critical skills. We took that idea and scaled it. Along the way, I’d say our biggest challenges were articulating our core values, hiring the right people, and focusing on the things that most mattered.
Pham: What was the process like of turning the initially free web resource site into a profitable business?
Weinman: Actually, we never were a free resource. We always charged for our work without over charging, and people who respected it and learned from us shared their appreciation by telling others. I am not sure that our strategy would be the same today if we were just starting. We had the benefit of time on our side in the early days, as there were few competitors and no other way to grow than positive word of mouth and customer recommendations. We didn’t even have a marketing department in the early years.
Pham: What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs who would like to follow in your footsteps in terms of creating an online business?
Weinman: Make sure there is a true need for what you offer, and test it in small ways before you get into a lot of debt or take other people’s money. We proved our business model before we scaled, and we were able to take financial risks after we built a cushion. We were quite careful with our profits, always reinvested in ourselves, and cared about our customers, contributors, employees and community. Today, building a brand reputation is totally different and can be done with even fewer financial resources than we needed. What’s so cool is that we teach all about social marketing, business and software skills on lynda.com. In some ways we’ve created a template for others to create their own successful businesses, and that’s a wonderful thing!
