I'm not surprised by the slow traffic this story got, easily the least amount of the three stories I've published. That's alright, though. I doubt business is something a lot of people take great interest in, or at least, the interest I have, so the premise alone isn't something that most people would be interested in. That said, I still see this story as having huge amounts of potential. I know economics and business aren't topics that everyone has a fascination with, but I do, so no matter what the traffic is, I'm still going to put a lot of effort into making this story a great one. Already, this is the story I've done the most research for.

Now then, this chapter is the real start of the story. What catalyzed the start of the Louds going into business? What started their path to becoming rich? Let's find out.

I do want to mention that, though, that, despite the years this story takes place in (this chapter takes place in the year 2030), this is not a sci-fi story. I'll make nods that with mentions of things that could potentially exist in the future, but I'm not going to draw attention to that. The focus of this story is the business and how it affects the family's relationship with each other.

Disclaimer: The Loud House and characters belong to Nickelodeon.

Lincoln was wired in, completely content to just let his half-eaten chicken sandwich and fries sit at the table, only taking occasional bites. His focus wasn't on eating, it was perfecting how the sky looked. He probably spent more time contemplating how many stars he wanted to include than he did on any other part of the picture. He settled on five stars. After that, his focus turned to the person staring up at them, the bottom half of his face completely covered by the face shield he had on. Lincoln knew the man had to wear a jacket, but should it be leather, a trench coat, or something else? Ah, screw it. He was going to let the virtual pen decide and just started drawing, though that didn't stop his rational side from kicking in and reminding him that, since this was supposed to be a picture of a ninja, it might be a good idea for the jacket to have a hood.

"Yo. Linc!"

"Huh?"

"Are you at all paying attention to anything going on around you?"

"Nope. Only what I'm drawing."

"What is it?"

"A bit of a modern, American take on a ninja."

"And what does said picture look like?"

"This." He turned the tablet around to let his friends/colleagues see the picture. The picture had the aforementioned night sky and ninja, crouched down on top of a random skyscraper in New York like he was ready to jump off at any second. It was a two-toned picture, white on black, and it was encased in a circular design, like the picture was a symbol for something. This being a Lincoln Loud original, the detail was fantastic, something his colleagues noticed and responded with varying ways of saying 'Heck Yes!'

"Is this for a commission?"

"No. This is for the workshop on Friday."

This caused a few people (but not all of them) to either laugh or shake their heads. "You're really going to that?"

"Yeah."

"Why? All they're doing is putting ink on a shirt."

"You say it's putting ink on a shirt. I say it's putting ink on a shirt and it's going to look amazing. Seriously, just picture this image on a shirt. Now, that is a shirt that's worth putting on, if you ask me."

"You sound like a middle schooler."

"Listen, how about I just finish this drawing and you guys can laugh when I actually get the shirt and it comes out as a botch job?"

"Whatever." Lincoln got back to his drawing while the rest of his table continued their talking. He was content to just sit there and perfect this drawing. When he was speaking with his friends, he was only half-right. He was trying to come up with a really good drawing that was worth wearing ever since his company announced the workshop. He had a week to think of something and he could never feel like he was fully satisfied with whatever he drew. Then this picture came along, and it just stuck. It just flowed out of him so well that he was surprised it hadn't come to him sooner. This just felt so natural and it was damn good on top of it. He was also happy he could use this time to draw it, since he had a fairly weak inspirational memory and had to put down ideas the moment he got them. In this case, it was during his lunchbreak in an outdoor eating area to the office he worked at.

Plus, it was a really nice day to spend some time outside. The Chicago River and Lake Michigan were beautiful, and there was a nice breeze in the air. It was days like these that made him happy he made the choice to move to Chicago after he graduated from college. Of course, it was also nice that the company he worked for would gladly pay him for his services, seeing as there was a bit of a competition going on between a few businesses who caught wind of Lincoln's talents as an artist and would happily pay him well to work for them, or at least, as well as a graphic designer can get paid, which wasn't the most in the world. He didn't mind, though. He was content to just be doing something he enjoyed. Plus, growing up in such a big family on a small budget, he learned how to be good with money.

After the break ended, he didn't have time to work on it until his workday was over, at which point, he hopped into his car and headed back to his apartment he shared with a couple friends from college who also moved to Chicago. He made himself some leftovers for dinner, and while he would've liked to work on finishing up his sketch, he first had to call up his girlfriend. He went to his room, put some headphones on, and opened up Skype to start a call, waiting for her to respond.

"Hey Linc."

"Hey Jordan. I take it you're done with practice today?"

"Thankfully. Coach P. practically had us grind out the same routine at nauseum until the day ended." *sigh* "You have no idea how happy I am to be home right now."

"Well, welcome to the world of stage performance, I guess."

"I'd like to see you try."

"I would, but I already know I'd suck, so there's really no point in me trying."

"Exactly, so I don't want to hear any lip coming from you." It may sound like they weren't having the healthiest conversation, but they were actually having fun with it.

"I think you already told me but remind me again what the performance is."

"Don Quixote."

"Yeah, that's definitely a ballet I'd assume your coach doesn't want you guys to botch."

"Look, I know it's a very celebrated story, but my god, could we please have a little room to breathe?"

"You're a graduate of Butler and a student at Joffrey. You don't get to complain."

"And yet, I imagine the art graduate from Cincinnati has days where he wished something would fall on his head and end him."

"Hey, I never said I wasn't a hypocrite."

"I know. We both are. It's why we work so well together."

"I'm not entirely sure about that, but I guess it's possible."

After a short silence, she asked "So, what are your plans for the rest of the night?"

"Finishing up a drawing of a T-shirt design. My company has a thing going on on Friday where we can submit a design and they'll order it in for us from one of those local print shops. It's part of a workshop they got set up for us."

"That sounds awesome. Can I see what you have so far?" He pulled out his tablet and showed her the unfinished drawing, a white-colored drawing on a black backdrop that, for Lincoln, seemed fairly simple to make. Still, he was putting a lot of care into making it look good, so that explains why he wasn't done yet."

"Looks great, Linc, though it seems fairly simple for you."

"Well, it's getting printed. I don't want the people doing it to think I have it out for them, but I do want the design to look epic."

"Just don't push yourself too far with this. Remember, it's just a shirt." She remembered one time where he was so focused on perfecting a commission piece, he practically cut off communication between the two. Lincoln, meanwhile, could only think back to what a few of his coworkers said to him.

"Please don't feed me that crap. I've already got to deal with enough of it from a few jackasses over at the office."

"Are they that bad?"

"No, they're good people. They just don't appreciate graphic t-shirts like I do."

"Didn't you say they've commended your commission work, too?"

"Yeah. Don't ask me why they think the two things are mutually exclusive. So, how about you? What are your plans for the night?"

"A come-down night. I plan on watching Netflix for a bit before crashing."

"Quite the exciting night ahead of you."

"Hey, I don't have a hobby that also counts as a time-waster like you do."

He acted like he was injured. "Ouch."

"Sorry. That was mean."

"I feel like I need an ice pack after hearing that."

"Listen, I said I was sorry, but really, if you can't handle some shade, then we shouldn't be dating to begin with."

"Please. You have nothing on some of the sheer crap I had to endure during high school. Trust me when I say 'What happens at the lunch table stays at the lunch table.'"

"You honestly think I can't hurl better insults at you than your friends could in high school?"

"You were never a hormonal teenage boy, so I'm going to go with a solid 'no' on that."

"Well screw you, too, honey." They both had to chuckle at how that conversation panned out.

"Alright, mind if I let you go? I want to get this thing finished while the juices are still going strong."

"Yeah. No problem. I still need to eat anyway. It's leftover pasta night!"

"Hey, just like what I had for dinner tonight."

"You had pasta, too?"

"Yep."

"How did we go so long without dating?"

"I'd have to say it was a combination of other interests at the time and a really awkward middle school and high school phase where no one knew how to properly handle puberty."

"Yeah, I'd say that sounds about right."

"Alright, babe. We'll talk tomorrow. We still good for Saturday?"

"Like always."

"Cool, then I'll talk to you later."

"Okay. Love you."

"Love you, too." They leaned in and kissed the part of the screen where each other's lips were positioned.

"Bye."

"Bye."

And with that, Lincoln spent the rest of the night perfecting his drawing. Most of the night wasn't even spent on drawing, it was checking and rechecking it over and over again. He flipped the screen more times for this one drawing, a simple white on black drawing, mind you, so not even close to some of his more demanding works, than he did with any other picture before. Every time he did, it almost always ended with a single line being shortened or outright deleted and redone. Even he couldn't believe how much effort was being put into this design, but when it's a design going on a shirt, it should be a design he wants to wear. And it was with that mindset that he finally completed it around 10:14, right around his typical bedtime, and the results spoke for themselves.

"Holy crap, dude! That looks great!"

"That's what I like to hear. Any of you who said this was a waste of time can now, officially, shut up!" If he wasn't on the clock right now, he would've added a few swear words in there. He came in wearing the shirt with his graphic on it. It came out absolutely perfect and he fell in love with the thing the moment he took it out of the packaging. Seems like everyone else agreed, too.

Of course, this being your typical office environment, he had to wear business-centric clothes, so he basically pulled a Clark Kent and opened his shirt up to reveal the design to everyone. That's why, when lunch came around, he took his top shirt off completely to show everyone what his shirt fully looked like. Everyone had one question on their mind when they saw it that someone was inevitably going to ask. "Where can I get one?"

"Sorry, but this is a one-off."

"Aww, come on, Lincoln. Can't you convince whoever printed that to sell it?"

"Yeah. I'd totally buy one if it was."

"Sorry, guys, but I don't think they're going to pick it up that easily."

"Then why not try selling it yourself?"

"How? I'm not exactly Nike. I don't have the resources to sell these things en masse."

"No, but a site like t-springs would. You could just upload the design there and you could earn yourself a few extra bucks." Now there was an idea. Lincoln actually could sell it, but he would need to decide which website he wanted to sell it on. T-springs was one of those sites.

"I've heard of that place but never used it. Do you know how much I could get?"

"I think they start at five, but depending on the size ordered, you could receive anywhere from five to seven."

That could really help Lincoln with some personal expenses. Combine that money with the money he got doing commissions and he could cut down on a few loans and expenses that were hanging around. He had a market in that his coworkers wanted to buy, and the commission rate for each shirt sounded reasonable, so Lincoln decided he would go ahead and do it.

"Alright then. I'll send an email out to you guys when I've uploaded it." This got him a few subdued cheers from his colleagues.

When work ended, he made his way back home, created an account on the website, and uploaded his picture to be printed on the shirts the site sold. The next thing he did was send an email around to his coworkers saying he uploaded it and that they can now buy the shirt, too. Considering the good word his friend Nick put in for the site, he trusted that the finished product would turn out exactly like the shirt he was wearing right now.

Originally, he didn't think much of this. It was just a way to earn some cash on the side from some people who thought the shirt looked cool. Then he saw his email get spammed with order confirmations. After a couple hours of this happening, he opened his account page to see how many orders he got. On the first day alone, he netted around a hundred orders totaling $438, much more than he expected. But okay, this was just a temporary thing. All his coworkers saw the email, and everyone who wanted one got one. He didn't expect that many, but he did expect the traffic. He expected this to die down.

The day after, it turns out that the design was so popular with the office that they spread news of the shirt around to different people in their lives. This was evident by the fact that more emails were popping up telling him that he was getting more orders for his shirt. More and more days passed with traffic only remaining stagnant at worst, and the orders just kept coming. He was very curious about the hits the page, itself, was getting, so to check it, he called up someone he knew could help him track it.

"Lisa Loud speaking."

"Hey Lise."

"Ah, greetings, Lincoln. What do I owe the pleasure?"

"You still have some hacking skills, right?"

"…Are you asking if I'm able to break into the Pentagon?"

"Am I correct to assume that you've already tried?" Silence.

"…I…plead the fifth."

After a chuckle, he said "No, that's not why I'm asking. There's a webpage that I want to see the traffic for, and I need your help with that."

"Well, I have been a little preoccupied as of late with my medical studies, but I think I still got some coding magic lying around. Just give me a few moments to whip something up." Some dead air followed as he heard some keys typing in the background. After a couple seconds, she asked "So what's the big deal about the webpage you want to track?"

"I uploaded a design on it and got my indox spammed with confirmation emails about people ordering the shirt. I want to know just how many hits my design is actually getting."

"Understood. …And, she's up and running. I'll send it to you immediately. Just copy the site's URL into the box at the top."

"Thanks, Lise." He pulled up a different email (one that wasn't completely congested), clicked the one sent by Lisa, and opened the sucker up.

The good news about the application was that it could be easily downloaded by simply clicking on two boxes. She was even nice enough to code in the ability for him to track new websites if he so desired with it. Right now, that wasn't the main focus. What was the focus was the current traffic numbers, and boy, did he like what he was seeing. He was able to see that the page itself had already generated over a thousand views in the span of a day. While he still wasn't sold that this was a success that was meant to last, he was still going to track the amounts of hits he was getting. This would be something he would do for the next couple weeks.

The traffic only went up, as did the order numbers. He was getting several thousand hits per day, with sales being in the several hundreds to, sometimes, thousands. He trusted that they were coming out properly the moment he saw one of his coworkers wearing it one day, so he was happy they were delivering on quality. Honestly, though, it was just a dumb design idea he thought up. He wouldn't have expected for this shirt to sell so well that he managed to net several thousand orders from the shirt in only a couple weeks. Again, the traffic was never worse than stagnant at a few hundred hits, but not a day passed where he wasn't getting a lot of orders in. He was absolutely loving it, being able to see that people were buying his art and that more people were, at least, viewing it, giving it more exposure. At some point, someone he was close to from home (sans Lisa) would come across this. He just knew.

"Mom! Mom!"

"Richie?"

"Mom, I found an awesome shirt I want on this website. Can you buy it for me?"

"Hang on, Kiddo. You know how this works. Show me the shirt first." Lori was a protective mother that didn't want her kids buying anything without her first seeing it to make sure it was okay for them to wear.

The young six-year-old practically dragged his mother to the computer to show her the shirt. It was a harmless design, a ninja-looking person on top of a building. The swords were stashed away on his back (though one hand was grabbing the handle of one of them, but Lori could forgive the artist for that) so nothing bad was shown. She could fully understand why Richie would want this, so she decided to go ahead and buy it. However, before she added the item to the cart, she began to inspect it more thoroughly. Why did this art style seem so familiar to her?

Her focus now was to look at who made the design. It was an alias, but the name itself said everything. LoudLabelz. All she had to do was put two and two together to figure out who the creator was.

"I'll be damned…"

"Mom?"

Oh right. Her kid was right next to her. She immediately slammed her hand to her mouth before turning to him. "You didn't hear me say that, alright? Promise not to use that word or phrase and I'll literally buy you two shirts."

"Okay!" Like all kids, bribery did a lot to keep his mouth shut from saying anything like that to his father. Bobby didn't like swearing.

She turned back to the screen and actually did try to place the order, but as she clicked Add to Cart, nothing happened. She tried again but nothing happened. She immediately refreshed the page. Shock came over her as she read the message on screen.

Due to a high number of traffic, this page is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.

The traffic stopped. Spamming F5 did nothing but show a screen that was pretty much black. Lisa, who was also watching from her own monitor at her residence in Baltimore (watching the traffic for the page had become a bit of sibling bonding time for the two since she created the software for him, so she started to regularly Skype him), couldn't get it to respond either. The two of them had a pretty good idea of why this happened. Call it a hunch.

"Lisa, do you think-"

"No other reason. How many emails do you have?"

Lincoln pulled out his phone to check and simply responded with "Too many for me to want to go through all of them." The way he said it confirmed everything.

"Remind me to ask for your assistance when I need a logo for any future organization I may create."

Lincoln simply put his hands on the back of his neck and sighed.

It started out as a design for a shirt Lincoln only thought he would wear. What it turned into was a shirt that was popular enough for a site's network to crash.

It wasn't the biggest site in the world, and it was fairly new, only a year old, so both siblings assumed that they didn't have the best infrastructure put in place. And given the quality of many of the designs, they didn't exactly have the most exciting offering out there. They'd be lucky if they netted ten thousand visits in a day and it could be assumed that the average amount of sales each day was around three thousand. At best, they were probably using only a couple switches. Well, if the site was looking to expand, they now had a pretty good reason to.

Lincoln then got a phone call and saw that it was from Lori. "Hello?"

"Lincoln, that shirt was yours, right?"

He bolted up. "Wait, how do you know?"

"Richie wanted me to buy it for him."

Something immediately crossed his mind. "…You're still living in Minneapolis, right?"

On her end, she made a facial expression that said 'Where else would I be?' "Uh…Yeah."

Another thought ran through his head. Holy crap. Did word spread.

"Anyway, were you aware that your shirt just caused the site to crash?"

"Yeah, I'm looking at the page right now. So's Lisa." He put his phone on speaker.

"Greetings, eldest sibling, and yes, the site's down. I even checked the homepage and it's out, too."

"Wait, the homepage is down, too?" Lincoln asked.

"Indeed. I feel I should congratulate you, Lincoln. Not only did you manage to crash a website due to the popularity of your product, but also getting the most hits for a product on this site's history."

"Shit. I didn't even check." He immediately looked to the small box that gave the hit total. On this night alone, he attracted 18,585 hits, of which 10,322 were firm orders, earning himself $54,584, about the same as his annual salary. The site spiked at around eight thousand concurrent users, which caused the crash. He simply leaned back down into his chair, closed his eyes, and laughed. Completely by accident, he created a fad shirt that made him more in one night than he made annually at his job.

But where Lincoln saw accident, Lori was beginning to see opportunity. If the public likes a product, then it isn't an accident. It can be surprising, but it's not an accident, and Lincoln brought an entire website to its knees because the public loved what he made. Sure, it was a fairly small company that had a poor network in place to handle the traffic, but he still brought it down. That meant the public wanted it, and if she (and by extension, the company itself) went about managing this the right way, this could have some serious growth potential. She decided to stew on this idea for a couple days to try and think about how she could turn this into a legitimate, sustainable business.

"Well, like Lisa said, congratulations Linc, and I'll be talking to you soon."

Still running on a high, he responded "Alright. See ya, Lori."

"Bye Linc. Bye Lise."

"So long."

Lori had always wanted to run her own company, and her current position as a junior executive was doing wonders at teaching her what it means to be in charge of a company, despite not actually managing the one she was at. She knew she needed three things: a product the public wanted to buy, enough capital to get the business up and running, and the right people behind her. All of her siblings came to mind and could fit different roles either immediately or when called upon. This would be a family effort, she knew, but she needed to run the idea by three people first. She needed her idea to be heard by Lincoln (the man who created the precursor product, was the catalyst for the idea, and would lead the design efforts), Lisa (who would be instrumental in helping organize the capital and assets to create and sustain the company), and one other person.

Lola was currently in the dance studio, practicing a routine she was going to be tested on by the coach of her dance team next week. A famously hard worker, Lola had spent every moment since she got out of her classes for the day trying to perfect it, or at least, not make the mistakes obvious. She was working up an insane sweat that would've challenged Lynn during her exercises. She was that focused on nailing this performance. She had to if she wanted to travel with them for an upcoming competition. She did not want to be backup.

She eventually had to take breaks, though, since the human body could only take so much. Like most girls her age, the focus when she sat down on the bench was first, her water, and second, her phone. She had a video of the dance open that she was using to help guide her, and while that was the first thing she had her focus on, the text notification was what immediately got her attention, especially when she saw that it was from Lori.

Hey Lols. Listen, I know this is sudden, but I want you to make a trip home this weekend. I have an idea I want to run by you.

She had to respond with the obvious. Why can't you just tell me over the phone or a Skype call?

Because I'm going to run it by you and a few others first, and after that, the rest of the family. Please Lola. I think we have the potential for something big here.

Lola was very intrigued by that last sentence. By that token alone, she responded with Okay. Fine.

If it sounds unrealistic for someone to find success because a t-shirt design, I can only respond with this. Remember when fidget-spinners were a thing?

So yes, the actual story has now begun. Lincoln found success with a t-shirt design, Lori thinks she has a product that's worth selling, and now, she just needs to pitch the idea to her siblings now. If your wondering why I chose Lola as the third sibling, it'll be fully explained next chapter, but if you've seen Room with a Feud, that epsiode should give you some insight.

Finally, I want to make something clear about this story in that I am not going to cover the entirety of the family's business ventures. Successful companies are very complex and enduring things that would take years upon years to craft a compelling story about. Often, successful businesses outlive their founders. Ford, for example, has a fourth-generation family member as Executive Chairman, the founder's great-grandson. So yeah, there is no way I could cover something like that in a relatively short amount of time. This story will only focus on the early days of their business attempts, which is usually when the pressure to succeed and drama are at their highest, since everyone is determined to not let the company collapse and they start to taste what it's like to be successful.