Optimizing Your Marketing Strategy to Create Happy Customers with Andre Chaperon and Shawn Twing

André Chaperon is an entrepreneur, marketer, writer, and Co-Founder of Tiny Little Businesses, a company that helps people create small—but important—businesses. André left his job in the corporate world at the age of 30 to start Tiny Little Businesses, and he has helped many fellow entrepreneurs develop long-term relationships with their patrons.

Shawn Twing is a 20-year veteran of digital marketing and President of Barn Door Media. He helps clients identify business models, implement marketing strategies, and bring their business to its full potential. Shawn has been named one of the top experts in the world on paid traffic.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

André Chaperon discusses his journey in thought leadership.
Shawn Twing shares his marketing experience and how he started a partnership with André.
How do you create a system and optimize your business to create a happy customer?
Facilitating long-term connections with customers.
André and Shawn’s careers as both teachers and learners.
Co-authorship and the future of writing.
What is the hardest part of collaboration?
Strategies for building the right feedback loop.
The importance of finding your dominant skill—and learning to excel at it.
The “TOL” approach: Thinking Out Loud
André and Shawn’s methods for mind mapping and forming ideas.

In this episode…

Customer connections are vital to the success of a business, but your marketing approach might be driving them away. So how do you secure positive interactions with customers, and what are the best strategies for optimizing your business?

André Chaperon and Shawn Twing are writers and thought leaders that have two decades worth of marketing knowledge. With experience in scaling their own business, André and Shawn can help anyone find the most successful system for building their business—and have created courses to help creators like you do just that.

In this episode of The Michael Simmons Show, host Michael Simmons is joined by André Chaperon, Co-Founder of Tiny Little Businesses, and Shawn Twing, President of Barn Door Media. They discuss the best marketing models, the benefits of setting aside time for learning, and how to create long-lasting relationships with happy customers. Stay tuned.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by my company, Seminal.

We help you create blockbuster content that rises above the noise, changes the world, and builds your business.

To learn about creating blockbuster content, read my article: Blockbuster: The #1 Mental Model For Writers Who Want To Create High-Quality, Viral Content

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:02

Welcome to The Michael Simmons Show where we help you create blockbuster content that changes the world and builds your business. We dive deep into the habits and hacks of today’s top thought leaders. Now, here’s the show.

Michael Simmons 0:14

Today is a special episode, we have two amazing guests who are business partners, André Chaperon, and Shawn Twing. So, André, I first heard about the reputation before I actually met him. So he started as a thought leader, that’s actually more as an affiliate, though, promoting other people’s products, and using his marketing knowledge. And over time after building up a base of people who really trusted his voice, and becoming actually pretty famous in that world, because he had very small list compared to other people. But he was often the top affiliate for others. In other words, he had a really, he was able to cultivate deep authentic relationships, where people trust him. And actually several people that have been in our programmes, swear by André, and I’ve talked about how much they just want to emulate his authenticity with marketing. But he then went into courses, and his courses on digital marketing, online marketing, and how to build relationships through email, have sold 10s of 1000s of courses, though, he’s been very successful. And also another interesting thing is that he lives in Gibraltar. And he really just loves writing, though he doesn’t do any video at all. And it’s all writing. So we talked about that. And more recently, André partnered with Shawn Twing, and Shawn has spent two decades in the world of online advertising. And he’s managed over 100 and million dollars in AD budget, and work with nearly 200 clients on over 650 projects. He also is a great learner, and thinker and writer. And in this episode is actually really cool to hear about how André and Shawn met, and how they really collaborate at a deep level to and really thoughtful level to create amazing ideas, and build relationships and build a successful business. So without further ado, I give you Shawn and André. All right,

Michael Simmons 2:27

Shawn, and André, welcome to the podcast.

André Chaperon 2:28

Thanks for having us.

Michael Simmons 2:33

really, really excited to dive in here got a lot of questions for you both. And you guys have built a very successful thought leadership business, there’s 10s of 1000s of enrollments that you’ve had over the years, which is just crazy to think about that.

Michael Simmons 2:53

And the world of thought leadership has really changed both of you have been in the space for a long time, it kind of started off more or less at info marketing online. And we’re just at the point where, you know, people are at a large level are buying online courses, people are getting used to paying for content. And so I guess my first question is, how would you think about the context historically, in the past and the future, for this moment, and where the thought leadership business is, and what it is, and I think,

André Chaperon 3:23

for me, it’s been very organic. It’s so my journey from when I started doing this till, till now, it’s just been, it’s just been a journey that I’ve embraced, being on the journey, you know, I’ve been trying to race to a certain endpoint or goal or something like that, that’s, that’s pulling me forward to try and get this plus as possible. So I learned early on that, for me, it was about the journey. And so I’ve just, I’ve just allowed it to unravel as it’s happened. And along the way, I’m learning I’m making, you know, as you do loads of mistakes, and I have certain values that I use as a as a guiding star. But what happens after that is I don’t have an answer, other than just enjoying the work that I do. So it’s maybe not answering your question, because I don’t necessarily look too far ahead. I never plan one year, you know, in the future. So for me, it’s about, I mean, now, short, both both work in the business, and we have some ideas of what we want 2021 to look like. But, you know, I don’t know what’s going to happen in five years time. So I don’t think about it.

Michael Simmons 4:44

And you’re you’ve been in the industry for 17 years now. And it’s really evolved a lot of different ways. So for my understanding, you started off more on an affiliate side of things purely on email. And now it’s really evolved into something else can you talk more about the transitions that the major transitions you’ve made and why you’ve made them and even are you making any big changes this year when you’re thinking about the next year

André Chaperon 5:13

Yeah I think for me when I started in 2003 Iknew nothing zero you know I lost my job so and Imade a decision at that point that I was never going to go back so I had burned that bridge you know in my head that I’m going to make this online thing work but I didn’t know anything and you know back in 2003 they weren’t it was very different to to what it looks like now so you kind of have to figure stuff out yourselves yourself so I spent the first five years as an affiliate marketer because that was I didn’t have to have anything of my own I didn’t have any expertise because I didn’t know anything that I put that I could bring to bear so for me it was about learning and the best way to learn at the time for me anyway was through affiliate marketing because then I could promote other people’s products to me it taught me how to listen to people to the market to the pains of the market and trying to figure stuff out and then you know try and add value in some way you know insert myself as an affiliate marketer and let’s still be somebody that can add value I think there was that pulled me along

Michael Simmons 6:32

right so the first five years your affiliate marketers and then in around 2008 I guess if I can not do the math correctly you got more into the the course business and sell your first course Autoresponder

André Chaperon 6:45

yeah there was a transition so in 2009 was was when I first sold my first marketing product so and that’s when I essentially started to you know started to sell information that I had created it was a I reached a level of expertise that I felt comfortable with codifying and putting it into a product and selling that to an audience that I had curated for the last few years just sharing openly about the stuff that I was doing so that sharing piece and the affiliate marketing piece became that bridge to when I finally became a somebody that was selling their own stuff so that was my transition you know Shawn’s had have had a very different journey tonight so

Michael Simmons 7:33

yeah can you talk more about your journey Shawn?

Shawn Twing 7:36

so yeah and I’ll see if I can hit the question you asked to just from my perspective so I ran an agency for 21 years digital agency digital only agency André and I had met and just very very similar values so the partnership actually started earlier this year we did it decided to do a course that we talked about for a couple of years that and then following that realize that what we really enjoy is just writing together so and thinking together now so that partnership started end of April early May what I’ve seen over the years and has worked with you know somewhere north of 200 clients 650 projects what I what I’ve seen my perspective is that when we first started I started working online in 1996 I started my agency in 1998 when we first started knowing that no one really knew anything we didn’t know what was going to work I mean I remember conversations when people would say you know I’m not sure about this because I’m not really sure this internet’s gonna be a thing like really legitimately said that we didn’t know but at some point there was this shift to direct response marketing is almost like the entire industry said well there is this model out there you know brand doesn’t seem to me if you want to make money online you know the brand marketing doesn’t seem to be the way to do it the way that seems to match up with you know that when adwords first came out and we first started to be able to do affect traffic the direct response model just kind of naturally worked we had decimal place accurate accuracy reporting we could buy large volumes of traffic we could very easily make money and then that model has stuck around but what I think the shift that we’ve seen it’s happening faster now because the rate of change in tech is so much faster now is the direct response model in its purest form isn’t actually the best model for modern internet it just doesn’t it doesn’t work nearly as well as it used to doesn’t mean it doesn’t still work of course it still works but now we’re starting to see a lot more of a much more sophisticated approach instead of just being either you do brand marketing which you know the joke you know the inside joke about brand marketing as a brand effective the two most expensive words in the english language alright so either you go down this road where you don’t really know what’s happening you’re spending a bunch of money and you hope that you’re getting some positive effect or You go to the second decimal place, accuracy, direct response, everything is about an offer and monetizing attention. And what we’re learning is that there is an enormous world in between those two options where, yes, if you’re paying for attention, then you want to monetize that attention. But you don’t need to do it, necessarily with a front end, low cost offer and a bump offer an upsell one and upsell to and then a core offer. And you don’t have to do it that way. But now we’re in this this world, it’s very rich. I’m a lifelong martial artist. And one of the things in the martial arts is there are many paths up the mountain. And I finally reached the phase in marketing, where we can all collectively sit back and say, You know what, there are lots of paths up this mark up this mountain, we have the tools to do it our own way. We can let personalities come through. And in embracing, embracing how you want to show up in the world, like André and I are creators, and we’re writers, we want to write long content, we want to give away a lot of our best thinking. And that’s that works for us may not work for other people. But if it does work, then embrace it into your point about thought leadership, what a perfect thought, What a perfect time to think about expertise and thought leadership when we have access to effectively infinite markets. And the cost of publication has dropped to essentially zero. Without you know, zero marginal cost, it’s, there couldn’t be a more amazing time to be producing high quality content. The downside is it’s also easier to produce crap. Right, right. You’re competing against junk. That’s that’s the challenge now is how do you and I think you’ve you’ve probably captured this better than anybody in your training is how do you? How do you recognize that most of what’s out there they’re going to be competing against is probably junk, and that you need to rise above that?

Michael Simmons 11:52

Yeah,

Shawn Twing 11:53

that’s a very different animal.

Michael Simmons 11:55

Yeah, there’s so many interesting things in what you said there. You know, one of the things I talked about, which is probably not a predominant idea is that the downsides of direct response marketing approach, not saying it’s bad, but just that it has downsides. What was your journey there? realizing that, okay, we, you know, it can’t be all that we should also do branding, and think about other ways to go up the mountain, because you spent over $100 million in paid advertising and working well, yeah,

Shawn Twing 12:24

I mean, I’ve managed a lot of paid advertising. And I’ve been in other masterminds. And André and I have consulted for some of the bigger direct response companies I’ve consulted with other direct response companies. It’s, it’s this is a, this is a funny thing about the big direct response companies. Outside of those companies. People looked at them as being like the source of how to do things inside the walls of those companies. Many of them are thinking, wow, this really isn’t, this isn’t continuing to work the way it used to work, we need to do something else. So it’s this weird dynamic, you know, of course, it still works, right? They’re still there several billion dollar plus big direct response companies out there, direct response still works. In principle. If you embrace the principles of direct response, to me, that makes perfect sense. But when you become dogmatic and a purist about it, that’s that’s where anything starts to fall apart. If you’re if you have to make the sale in the first interaction. For example, if that’s part of the dogma, that creates so many problematic downstream effects, then if you’re unless you can make a very simple change and say, I’m willing to engage with your attention and not require you to purchase or not requiring you to opt in. This is a classic example, think about the most classic direct response in form quote, unquote, funnel. I hate that word. But think about the most the classic model, you pay for somebody’s attention. And then you immediately bring them to a decision point where they can’t proceed past that unless they give you an email address they opt in. And then you give them something with bells and whistles, a free report a video series, In what world do we where else do we do that? How many stores have you ever walked into when somebody where you walk in and you want you want to browse around and the store owner says, before you can do that I need to get your email address before I can show you what I have nowhere, it doesn’t exist anywhere. So to make a simple change like that, just recognize, maybe instead of forcing the opt in at the beginning, let people come in and browse around a little bit. Let them look around. That’s heresy and then direct response community. Yet, when you start pulling back the curtain on some very successful online businesses, you realize many of them are not are not forcing the opt in, they’re actually giving away content in the beginning to filter out the wrong prospects to get the right prospects. It’s a very tiny change. But that is a monumental, it’s a seismic downstream effect from that one change in thinking.

Michael Simmons 14:51

Yeah, the positive of the DEC direct response world is the measurement. You could do something and look back and see okay, here’s a back to impact I had and once you start to move away from that it becomes maybe more intuitive or values based and harder to measure okay what was exactly the content that made the difference or are we you know or is this decision really going to work how do you think about making those decisions in your business that go towards that once you start to walk away from the comfort that measurement gives

Shawn Twing 15:28

oh André and I are both systems theorist so I’ll open the door for André to riff on systems theory and then I’ll try to formulate my thoughts while he’s doing that

André Chaperon 15:39

yeah so we our lens on everything we do is is is tethered to systems thinking and the more that we you know it to be clear we are we are students of systems thinking we certainly not experts in in in in systems thinking so we are learning by doing and about understanding concepts and then putting putting them out there into the world and then seeing seeing what happens and seeing where the emergence happens and then learning from that and then it reinforces our own understanding that then we then put back into the business and we do other things so that’s our lens on on systems theory and one of the main ideas around it is is you as you optimise the optimise your system which is the business centre business is a system it’s a single big system within that there are multiple subsystems and that and that single big system can only have one functional or or or goal and for us we’ve decided that that the most meaningful thing for us is to put those to create was to optimize for happy customers and happy customers is something we’ve defined that that means something to us is the certain criteria that you know that’s not a happy customer because the easiest thing in the world is to produce customers anybody can use customers but there’s a world of difference between a customer just any customer you know just because you want to sell them something and a person that has decided that they want to be be somebody under your wing for you know way into the future and they want to buy everything that you put out and there’s that enthusiasm and an excitement around the fact that they’ve that they’ve found you and they’re happy that they have so we optimize for that and as soon as as soon as we think about it that way everything else changes because all the decisions that we make within the system are guided by that by that single principle so we can’t do a certain thing by choice because it will move us away from creating a happy customer and that starts all the way from from the very beginning from the from an ad on facebook for example you know that’s still part of the system and that’s the way to think about it

Michael Simmons 18:19

Can you give an example of a surprising choice that you’ve made where

Shawn Twing 18:24

You’re teeing me up for my favorite story, Michael

André Chaperon 18:28

oh here we go

Shawn Twing 18:29

yeah I love this so if you ask 999 out of 1000 marketers if what I’m about to say makes any sense and if you have to if you have to 1000 marketers if this makes sense I’m guessing 999 will say this makes no sense yet we do it and it makes tremendous sense for us so the the central idea of systems theory is that the effects produced by the system are emergent from the collection of relationships and assist they’re not you can’t point to any part of the system say that did it it’s the system is in a relationship the best example of a system is a car it’s very easy to understand the great irony of a car is that the thing that provides the power the engine on its own can’t even move a car across the floor if you put if you put all the parts of a car in a garage floor the wheels get the drive train you’ve got the engine you’ve got the fuel system the cooling system but all on the on the pieces none of them actually produce motion put them all together and they produce forward motion so that’s that’s a system so our business system we optimize for happy customers meaning it’s not it we don’t just look at how many customers do we create in there we can look at some metrics you know yes its customers minus refunds but it’s not it’s not just that it is how many what do we get for feedback it’s all these different factors so here’s an example of how we make decisions that seem crazy in a local linear version yet from a systems version make perfect sense so in April of this year we our first product together was just a collection of my experience managing paid traffic called the traffic engine

the that was a 10 days or so we did a pre promotion then we did the actual promotion itself and the energy of the promotion because it was André and I writing together and we love this stuff there there was there was a lot of enthusiasm there was a lot of excitement around that promotion we could see it in the replies that we were getting in the the enrollment close on a monday and closed on my my birthday on that following monday that sunday really started saturday but that sunday I started getting really concerned that we were going to have a lot of people buy on monday because they had had 10 days of this experience that was exciting they felt like they were part of something and they were enthusiastic and we were in André and I can both right so it would be very easy to push some people over the edge to buy who probably shouldn’t buy so so if you can look at it from the perspective of a couple of perspectives who cares you know they can always refund you know that’s that’s not how we approached it we what we realize is if we want if we want a happy customer we want somebody six months from now to say I am so glad I purchased the traffic engine I did these things my business is so much better that’s really what we wanted and we we needed to actively discourage people from buying who shouldn’t so in this this is a testament to how similar similarly crazy André and I are we had a conversation on a sunday and I was at the time I was nervous even mentioned this which subsequently we’ve done it for time so I shouldn’t have been nervous but what I the idea that I had and brought up was I said why don’t we create a free course that lasts as long as the traffic engine which at the time was imagined as eight weeks ago through it what if we create a free eight week course it sounds so crazy and we give it away on the last day so instead of stacking a million bonuses you know by before midnight and you get you know a free toaster a typical or you know bonus reveal whatever instead of doing that to encourage sales why don’t we go the opposite way so that’s what we did we created this we call it sort of a minI marketing MBA online MBA we’ve just put together and we spent hours and hours and hours curating what we felt like were the seminal pieces of content that we had consumed over the years like Kevin Kelly’s 1000 true fans and you know Jack Borns profitability triangle and just resource after resource and we put them in the right order and we organise them in to forever into their last email on that monday said and we call it out we said we here’s what we could do we could stack all these bonuses but we don’t want you to be a customer if now’s not the right time for you don’t worry we’ll open this up again in the future you’re not missing out and if you shouldn’t buy today for any reason or if there’s any you know we like to Derek Siver’s idea to hell yes or no if it’s not hell yes for you right now that is totally cool but we’re not going to leave you hanging because that creates false pressure that if we say don’t worry don’t buy it’s not a big deal but you’re you’ve been engaged with us this whole time and there’s nothing to do next we’re going to accidentally can create pressure on you to buy so what we did instead is we said here’s something you can have instead and it was it’s deep ever since we’ve done the same thing we’ve created we’ve created three free courses total or two free courses total we we always give something away in the last day of our promotions to discourage last day purchases from people who shouldn’t buy most people will look at that and say in isolation that’s insane you’re literally taking money off the table you’re literally not you’re discouraging people from buying on the day that they’re most likely to buy in an enrollment but we’re not optimizing for last day we’re not optimizing for for money we’re not optimizing for how do we maximize last day sales all of those a reductionist linear cause and effect thinking we’re optimising for the production of happy customers and you will be a happier customer more likely if you shouldn’t buy today if you wait six months and we have maintained the strength of the relationship in between by continuing to assist you so that’s a that’s a very that’s a clear example of what seems like it’s crazy but the positive feedback we get for people who reference especially later like oh I didn’t buy the first time I bought it now and I’m so glad for whatever reason they’re glad they wait but they’re happy they’re really happy because we treated them the way we would like to be treated ourselves

Michael Simmons 24:49

so counterintuitive and obvious it’s obvious in the sense of like you ended it with three people the way you want to be treated yourself but you In the industry, how yond individual testimonials, how could you tell that that strategy was working on a systems level? And how long did it take you to get that confidence?

Shawn Twing 25:12

I don’t mean, there’s one easy answer we’d like from a metrics perspective, our refund rates are consistently far lower than 1%. So that’s like it from a metrics indicator, that’s a really good indication that we are not shepherding people in. And it’s not uncommon to see 15 to 30% refund rates. So when we say less than 1%, I mean, that’s that’s the stratosphere. That’s rare air. So that’s one indicator to use, because then you get a much better at, you know, you can have, if you just measure customers, then you’re getting a false positive. But if you measure retained customers, so customers, after the refund, period, whatever, then you get a little bit more accurate. That’s tangible. But then feedback, André, how we get, we get so many emails, comments, as we have comments enabled on virtually everything that we do. So we see people referencing in the comments.

André Chaperon 26:06

Yeah, I think one of the hardest things to wrap your head around is, you can’t look at a spreadsheet and see this, you know, these numbers don’t play out in a spreadsheet, other than the obvious things like the refund, the refund rates are pretty much non existent. But one of one of the things that we do is, is we’ve got this concept where we, we create a customer before any transaction takes place. So that’s a mindset that we have or a principle. And it was it was funny, because we had opened, I think it was our Summer Enrollment. And we and we were, we had open enrollment for orders one madness given to us. And at the time, and there was there was one person who wasn’t a customer, and just just how he was interacting with us via email. So he would email us directly and the comments on the site, I just got a sense that he was getting so much value from from this interaction. So I checked in our system, and he wasn’t a customer. And in that moment, because if you want an hour, we’re writing content every single day, one of our content pieces, call them out, and we’re going a little screenshot. And he said, You know, I’m not gonna name his name, because I haven’t asked him I asked was permission was on our website, I guess. So, so we wrote about and put the screenshot of what he had said, and I knew that he was going to become a customer, he had all the trades, that we had put that out there before we even knew. And then one person said in the comments, yeah, but you know, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s really easy just to, you know, give content and then for people to, you know, take that stuff and not use it or or, you know, this isn’t about just giving content, there’s there must be something else to it. And he is anyway, so when we, when we opened enrollment, he was one of the first people to bar. But then what happened later on is now for our last enrollment, which was I don’t know, it was a few weeks ago, I took a look at his record in our system, and every single one of our enrollments he had purchased all of our products. So he now is a customer of every single product that we own. And that was somebody that just because we treated him as a customer before he became a customer, we just knew what was going to play out. And that trade happens with so many of our customers, when you go there, and you have a look. But we haven’t got some fencing system that then passes an art and we get to see them on a spreadsheet. It’s just something that we just pay attention to. And we can see that some of the things that we doing are working, so we’re just going to continue to do them. But it’s not a cause and effect thing. You know, we can’t turn it back to one single event. Yeah,

Michael Simmons 29:04

it’s really interesting. As you guys know, I’ve been that way the mental model club and study great entrepreneurs and innovators. And one of the things I really walked away with from at a fundamental level is that there’s one of the advantages is there’s very long term thinking number one, and then abstract thinking that there’s kind of similar to what you’re saying there’s concrete would be everything is measurable immediately, and it doesn’t get the result. And then abstract is more of this long term as this seeing the connections and doing things that would seem counterintuitive to other people, even just putting aside time for learning an hour, two hours a day is crazy from just a short term perspective. And even if you’re not even sure how it’s going to connect in the future, so it’s it’s just really interesting to see it in this place, how you’re applying it.

Shawn Twing 29:54

And one thing that we have is an advantage which is deliberate is there there aren’t layers of people between In us in our customers, when somebody emails us, we see it. And if somebody says I don’t under, you know, I tried this thing, or I don’t understand it, I didn’t get this result, like, it’s, those don’t get filtered through some collection of Support Agency, then eventually it rises to our attention, we see it. And then, and oftentimes what we’re creating in our free content is informed by something that somebody has raised. And it does, and we don’t want to be clear, when someone asks us a question, we don’t then go check and say, Okay, I was just a customer Is that it? Doesn’t matter, you know, and we get, we get some crazy, crazy questions. You know, we get questions that are like you. Okay, well, here’s my background 20 paragraphs, and here’s what I tried to do. Five it’s in, but there’s never a moment where we go like, Okay, this isn’t a customer. So they’re, we’re gonna give them the abbreviated answer. It’s like, Okay, well, here’s a, here’s a question that we can chew on. And often, that question would benefit a lot of people so that we could come becomes part of our content that we answer it, we think about it, we sort of pull it apart. Another thing that, as André was talking about, it’s something that happened in last enrollment. There is a good indicator, it’s one of those things that, again, it doesn’t show up on a spreadsheet, but it’s a really good indicator that you’re moving in the right direction, which is we had, I think there was an affiliate, I’m guessing this was an affiliate who promoted our one of our enrollments, which is somewhat rare for us, but they someone promoted, so they weren’t seeing all of the content that we were creating. And they I think they kind of came in with this idea of, okay, just just another, you know, more internet marketers, you know, selling something. So they they posted, they asked the question in the comment that we had answered already in our email series, but, but there was a bit of an edge there, there’s, there’s some suspicion, write a comment, and I happen to see it right before I went to sleep at night. So I kind of had it in my head, like, you know, rather than tackle it now, I’ll jump. First thing tomorrow morning, I’ll get up and give this person a more thorough, useful reply than a quick answer. When I got up the next morning, we had had three customers of ours actually write really long replies to the person’s question, in depth about their own experience with our courses, and answer way better than I ever could have. But that was a really interesting indicator that it was like, Okay, here’s somebody who, it wasn’t that they seemed critical. There was just some kind of that suspicion in their voice, like, what’s really going on here, right? All of a sudden, we had members of the community up for customers jumping in really saying, No, no, no, you’re, you know, don’t be concerned about this, you know, here’s what you really need to know. And these guys are legit, and they really care. And I think that person actually ended up becoming a customer. Yeah, I can’t remember

Michael Simmons 32:59

Interesting

Shawn Twing 33:01

what it was. Yeah. But it was just really, it was a fascinating experience to see sort of the tribe rally around and say no, you know, like, they answered it, which was really, that was, that was really cool.

Michael Simmons 33:13

He Yeah, I was going through your website today in preparation for this interview. And you’re just you talk, obviously, a lot about Tiny Little Businesses. And the value of that, and you mentioned how you get, you’re seeing all these messages come in. And it’s interesting, I think a lot about this thought leadership industry has, in some ways similar to beginning of the software industry. Now, you know, let’s say the stuff beginning of the software industry was the 1980s. Now, we’re 40 years later. And you know, there’s clear practices on what does a software company look like you can go to, you can get a four year degree in computer science. There’s a whole funding ecosystem, and the thought leadership industry is going to figuring what the best practices are and how you create a thought leadership company, and what’s the lifestyle like, and so I was curious, from you guys. How do you look at it from obviously, you’re not building a business to sell, but what is that? What is building the business mean to you about what the size is, what you outsource versus what you don’t and what your lifestyle is?

André Chaperon 34:18

You’re probably not going to like our answer.

Shawn Twing 34:23

Now I really want to hear what you have to say.

André Chaperon 34:26

And, and I think, you know, Shawn, and I are kind of lucky that that we met, you know, in this in this weird way, because, and I thought I was gonna do this by myself for the rest of my life. But now, there’s two of us that are going to do that. Yeah, it’s because we love doing this work so much. And we are both lifelong professional learners. We just want to understand stuff for our own benefit our own thinking we you know, We, we want to have a richer experience of the world. And for us, as writers, we like to think on the page and thinking public. So we always that, again, it’s, it’s because we want to understand things more. And then it just so happens that we have an audience that we share this with, and we can be of service to them are satisfying our need to enjoy this work that we’re doing. So I feel hugely privileged to be able to wake up every morning, and this is what I get to do. And I get paid for it. You know, it’s, it’s the perfect thing. So we don’t think I mean, I certainly don’t think of some number, you know, I don’t want to get to 10 million a year or whatever the thing is, if it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. But that’s not the point. For us. The point is salons, we get to do this work every single day, and get better at every single date. So poster that’s I hadn’t put up yet, which is better than yesterday. That’s what it says. And that basically frames everything. You know, we rock up every single day, and we want to have a better understanding of what we did yesterday, me and the work that we do want it to be more meaningful to the people that we’re serving, just better every single day. And if we just focus on that, which is our presence, everything else just slots into place, we get to earn money, good money. And I guess that’s, that’s the weird answer. It’s not about some number.

Shawn Twing 36:34

Aren’t you gonna say something crazier than that.

Shawn Twing 36:37

Yeah, there’s a very, there’s a great interview, by the way. There’s a really great interview, or Tim Ferriss interviewed Michael Lewis, the author.

Michael Simmons 36:47

I heard that one

Shawn Twing 36:48

he had read it, I think it’s near the beginning. Where there Michael Lewis, he says, like, he doesn’t need the money. I mean, he’s probably I mean, you could probably burn hundreds every day and his fireplace and never run out. Like he doesn’t need the money. So why does he keep doing what he’s doing? And when I heard that, I thought, finally, somebody has described my experience, he put the words to what I’m doing, which I didn’t have the words were beforehand, which is, you know, every state is I mentioned earlier, every system needs to be optimized for a single goal. And my life system is, you know, I’m optimizing for the experience for the creative experience for that feeling of being immersed in something that feels important to me. And, yes, money is an emergent effect from that money comes out the other end. But it’s an effect, it’s not the cause. It’s not ever I know, we never sit down, I can try to imagine what our business planning process would look like, it would never be a typical business. Like, I could imagine somebody saying, Okay, well, let’s let’s do your 2021. Planning. So let’s start with how much you know, income to each of you want to earn next year, and we would both look at like, what, like, What are you talking about that’s, that’s so far down the line, like we know that will be a byproduct of doing the thing that we care most about. And we also need to be clear, that’s a luxury, we’ve both been in this game for a long time to get decades each. So we’re in a different phase, if this were day one, we were trying to figure out how to put food in our mouths, it would be a very different conversation to have, then you have to have some sort of monetary goal, and you have to work back from that. But it’s not. Those are differences in degree, they’re not differences in kind it’s not, it’s just kind of go out and just figuring out how to make money. That, that really, it’s just, that’s not, in my experience, that’s not actually going to get you to the place that you want to go including the money place, which is sort of strange. It’s figuring out the thing that you can be so immersed in that time, disappears or standstill, or whatever it is, and, and it’s enjoyable. And for some people that’s making systems that produce boatloads of money of people. That’s their thing. Cool. I mean, great. You do you. But for us, it’s really the experience of thinking. And in testing our thinking and teaching and in many ways, you know, I feel very selfish because a lot of when I’m writing, I’m writing for me because I want to understand something. Yeah. Yeah, when we, you know, André and I write together, which is really weird. But it’s like that. It’s it’s the thing that neither of us ever learned how to do. And we did it effortlessly, which is really strange to me. And the experience of it of is, is incredible. And so what I’m, when I’m in that place, when I’m writing at around thinking, and I know that I’m going to at the end of that, be able to hand it off to somebody who’s going to return it back better. And then I’m going to make some contribution that’s going to make it better. It, there’s something about that that’s just so wildly intoxicating that everything else just falls by the wayside. It’s weird. It’s saying you just say it seems weird. That’s, that’s it. That’s what, that’s what I’m optimising for.

Michael Simmons 40:17

That’s amazing. I’m the same exact way, I feel like a kid in the candy store, every day, I get to write and like waking up early, so I can get a little bit of extra time to read. And it’s interesting, it’s just the cultural values, I think, are very different than the software, I feel like, they’re, it’s more of like, you’re raised, that you’re going to work, you know, 80 hour, 7080 hours per week, you’re raising capital, you’re being in the business as a liability, because then the business is less valuable. So you have to basically outsource everything. For me, I’m big fan of Jim Collins, he, he has the 1000 hours per year is a creative.

Shawn Twing 40:57

20 Mile March.

Michael Simmons 40:58

Yeah. And so it’s about three hours per day, and he tracks every single day, whether he gets to that or not, and adds it up over time. So I love that for myself of like, I definitely want to do this, I’m not trying to get out of writing, like I want to just do a better and better. One question for you guys is I’ve never seen I love the idea. I love the bouncing ideas off people and developing it. But I’ve never actually seen anyone else in our industry actually have a partnership where they actually write together, you talk more about how does that work? Like every day your your writing together? And how does that how do you bounce ideas back from each other? What difference does it make and is that the future, you feel like more people are going to do this just like in software, there’s multiple people creating software.

André Chaperon 41:46

And I don’t know, if more people are going to do this certainly not. as, as, as writers in this world, people love doing videos, videos are easy to do Easy, easy to produce. So I’m not quite sure how that works. With the collaboration, obviously, you can have a team and you can have a script, and then you can read read something. But for us, we love writing so much. And all of our courses that as, as you know, they’re 95% written content. So our collaboration is all, you know, through that lens of writing. So whenever we writing emails for enrollment, is, there’s a window that we need to produce stuff, we don’t plan the whole thing out. For us, it’s very organic, it’s, we’re going to open enrollment for x product. And this is the theme that we that we want to teach, you know, in that space, and then each morning, we will rock up, we will start writing a single email. And then from that email, some sort of emergence happens and ideas just really, you know, just present themselves to us. And then when we expose our audience to that email, then then then something else happens, right, then they respond to a day, there’s, there’s a feedback loop that that suddenly happens, and that informs the next email. And we just love that process of not knowing what’s gonna happen next. And you’re not really caring, because we just want to show up to this collaboration. And we know that that that that work that we producing is so good, because of the way that we do it. And then obviously, our audience is a recipient of that. So they get to see the the end result of, of this fun net we having on the other side. And then for our courses, it’s currently now we were busy creating content. It’s a lesson for a brand new course that we’ve just opened up. And typical. So we decided to do this in December. That’s you know, so same exact same thing happens now we are creating course content and material is advancing these, these these lesson pieces backwards and forwards. And they get to see that result as we release it. So they get to see like a finished version, which is not really a finished version. It’s just a version that’s finished. And it’s just the neck loop just continues on with so we keep having, keep having fun. They keep getting really amazing stuff that then moves them forward and their business support. So it’s just win win on both sides of the coin for us.

Shawn Twing 44:31

I think I’ll give you some of the tactical stuff because we this is something that we wanted, we had to we had to invent it and I wish someone would. Alright, so last, so last, last November, André and I were consulting for this client together. And we just we had to produce content for that client. Front End for them. So André flew to the US we locked ourselves in a two bedroom suite outside of New York City for five days and created it in day one. We had no idea how we hadn’t even talked about how this is really how we do everything. He hadn’t even really talked about how we were going to do it. We’re like, well, we’ll just we’ll do it. So day one. We bought, we sort of, we talked through that idea. We both went to our separate rooms and wrote, and then we had no idea like, what are we going to combine to so we had no clue. And then we came back. And then somehow, I don’t know when we stumbled in that, that five days, we stumbled on Brian Koppelman and David Levine. So they were the two guys who wrote Rounders, they’re famous for Rounders, they wrote the TV show billions. They’ve done a lot and but they write together. And I remember Roger said, like, Oh, these two guys write together. So for all of a sudden, it became possible. Like now, people writing together was in the possibility space. So something happened, where we diagrammed out, we’re both structural writers, we have to be thinking structures, we diagrammed out the structure, and I was like, Okay, I see it, I’ll go write a draft, like get started. So I just went and I wrote into, I couldn’t write him, I wrote, like 1000 words, couldn’t write anymore, and then hand it off to André. And then it was like, 1600 words, and we just tag team row for an entire day. And then we did it for the rest of the week, we produce this content. And what has since evolved from that. And there’s some there’s some really kind of funny, this weird little factors like André, six hours ahead for me. So often I will write something is that they will have had a conversation, we will know like the theme will have some will have some some structure to it. But but that’s it. And then I’ll sit down, and I’ll write, but it’s a really weird feeling. Because I’m writing for an audience of one, I’m writing for my collaboration partner, my creative partner, who is the person who I am most concerned about, for my right, so it sounds like it sets the bar impossibly high, but it’s the opposite. It’s just, I’m really writing something for him. And I’m not reading it, because I want him to say to me, Hey, good job I’m writing because I want it to rise to the level that he’s going to look at it and think, Okay, he’s given me something to work with here. And then often, you know, he’s up six hours before I am, and I get up early, but I often he is then had his writing time with that same piece. So for me, it’s like Christmas morning, I see the I see the new version the next day. And it’s bad, it’s always better. And it’s Oh, shit, and then something might come in, or I might have an idea. And you know, it’s to be clear, it’s not all sunshine and unicorns, if we had were working on this thing together, where I wrote the first part, and it was very clear, I said, something was off. But it was very clear that I just I missed it. Like they just it wasn’t getting there. So it’s not a can we Pat each other on the back the hardest all day, but it is this profound respect for the other person. But I don’t know if I’ve ever even thought about it, really in that level of detail. But when I write that I’m really thinking about two things. Is this valuable to the audience? Why do they care? How can we make their lives better? But I’m writing for really, the most important person who I write for is André to say this, this is my best thinking on this subject right now. And I know it’s not our best thinking. So here’s, here’s what I’ve got, go make it better. And I’ll do what I can with this new thing that you’ve done. It’s like that improv, it’s always and always, and it’s been something and he’s added to it. And he’s done something. And I’ve added to it. And in the end, I never I never know who wrote what I look at a piece after I’m like, Damn, this is good writing, but I don’t. I never feel like I wrote it. I always feel like we created this thing that neat. Again, it’s systems theory. It emerges from the collision of the two of us, and neither one of us can do it on our own. It’s really weird.

Michael Simmons 49:04

It’s amazing. It makes me think of Michael Lewis’s going back to Michael Lewis’s book on Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Have you guys read that?

Shawn Twing 49:12

You know, we love The Undoing Project. It’s such a good book, sad book, too. But yeah,

Michael Simmons 49:16

yeah. very honest, to have just forget, you know, power law has worked out so well. And then the challenges that can come up along the way, What’s the hardest part of doing that? Like I when I think about I think, Okay, well, sometimes one person really believes in a strong idea, like we should do this topic or do it this way, or the voice that how do you shift it makes a little bit more complicated having a voice.

André Chaperon 49:42

And, you know, one of the things is that sometimes it’s very difficult to write a certain thing that just doesn’t come out. Shorter I joke, if we haven’t heard from the other person, you know, by a certain time, so I’ll text him or he’ll text me are you? Are you having enough art? And, you know, it’s, it’s really perfect. So you’ve just got to bed, because there’s two of us doing it. When it was just me, you know, if it just wasn’t happening, I’ll just drop it and then come back to it tomorrow. You know, I don’t get to do that anymore. Which is, which is a good thing. So forces me just to create the best version I possibly can, no matter how difficult it is, knowing that, that backwards and forwards, we’re going to get to the place, we need to get to that in service of our audience. It’s just so much better than then when I was doing this by myself. Because then it was just me. And if somebody wasn’t great at this was great. Instead, it stayed not great until one day in the future, would loop around and have a better idea. So now I can fix this. No, that’s not it’s just so much better for our audience.

Michael Simmons 50:59

I can see that I just wrote I published an article the other day, but I started it in April. And then I just was working on it got lots of revisions, and like, I just doesn’t feel right, but I don’t know what to do. So I could see, I’ve done that several times. So I could see in that kind of situation. Just by the collaboration, you could find what’s blocking it and get over that more often. Yeah, I

André Chaperon 51:21

mean, one of the negatives is now when I look back at all of our published courses, which was, you know, which I created years ago, they, they look terrible, even though they great products, you know, conceptually, what they teach is, is very good. It’s it’s the writing and, and the way that I was thinking about certain ideas, and articulating those ideas. Now, I can’t wait until we go back and rewrite them all, which is what we’ve been doing this year, and what we’re gonna be doing this first half of next year. So we’ll, we’ll get to a point where all of our courses are the new version, where it’s through a collaboration process. What

Michael Simmons 52:03

this is jumping through, or going adjacent is, I’m fascinated by these idea of feedback loops. And so I think about a lot of my life, in the business in terms of what are the feedback loops? How quickly do they happen? What’s the quality? So let’s, for example, if you publish something, you do get the likes and comments. But is that the best? I’ll just think about this morning, have? I noticed that my longer articles? I can look at the stats I see. Okay, look at it doesn’t have the highest click, like rate percentage of people who like it, or even the highest share rate. I’ve had several people message me and say it was the best article of mine they’ve ever read. But it doesn’t show up anywhere, that would be obvious. Beyond that, that’s hard to capture. So like how do you build the right feedback loop? So you’re getting accurate data? And put, you know, so I hear you get a feedback loop with each other. You’re talking about how you have access to seeing your customer emails, and you’re responsive to those. And yeah, you’re going back and doing your courses again, and just almost adding another level of iteration. On top of that, how do you look at feedback loops in your business.

André Chaperon 53:11

So the way I look at it is this is this is this layers, right at the very top layer, it’s, it’s the craft of me, which is which is my understanding and my ability to translate that understanding into words that our audience can then use learn from, you know, with some utility for them. So that’s the highest level. And then at that level, I know that there’s a lot of improvements that I need to make. So the one is having a coach who’s brutally honest about her feedback that she gives me. So on that very high level is she’s helping me improve my ability to translate ideas to to the page. And so now I know that by the time it gets to the audience, I’ve done as much as I possibly can do in this moment right now to, to meet with it for me to produce my best work in that moment, which may not be the best work in, in when you assign, but at this point it is and then it goes through the middle collaboration grinder, and then it gets better and better and better. And then we that we share that. So now. Now as we share it, as you know, there’s there’s the next feedback loop, which is, you know, customers responding to that. And they can respond to that before they’ve made a purchase, or they can respond to that just was it impactful. And one of the things that that are showing them out of ordinary daily is we don’t just share useful information. That’s, you know, anybody can share useful information. For us. It’s very important that we share insights. And for us, an insight is something that shifts someone’s perception. Like they it’s like an aha moment where they can slip their heads not ship. I didn’t I had never thought about it that way. So it thing that we do is we try and engineer as many of these insights as we possibly can. So people can can have these, these these, these, like weird, you know, moments of, of clarity. And so everything is in service of that. And then looking at the feedback, also by email, because people are more open by email, because they know, it’s only between them, and us. And then, you know, very regulation short, and I have a conversation with, with a customer or prospect. And you know, we’ll ask them a question. So they’ll ask us something. And instead of sponsoring it, we asked him a question back. And then there’s suddenly this dialogue that’s happening that really didn’t need to happen, that it’s happening. It’s happening because we wanted it to happen. And we can, you know, we care to understand what so and then all of that is, is just various layers of a feedback loop. That’s, that’s useful for us. This monster, yeah,

Shawn Twing 56:00

I think about it, I think, similarly. But I, I’ve condensed it down to just the title of a book, which is Will it Make the Boat Go Faster. So the book is about the British men’s eight rowing team, they hadn’t won gold in the Olympics run in 100 years, some ridiculous amount of time. This is

Michael Simmons 56:18

just to be clear. So this is a book that you’re writing or you recommend, this

Shawn Twing 56:21

is a, this is a book I recommend it’s called Will it Make the Boat Go Faster. You can also just get the book entirely and get everything you need from the title. It’s, it’s, it’s a really interesting idea. So it’s written by I think he was the captain of the British men’s a team. They, when they went to Sydney, they hadn’t won British men’s eight rowing team, when they went to Sydney, they hadn’t won a gold and I don’t like it was like 100 years. And of course, they won gold. And the reason that they talk about and has since become a consultant and comes down to this one question, everything they did for four years, every decision they made, was that the smallest feedback loop imaginable. There was one question, will this make the boat go faster? And if the answer was no, you’re like, you know, someone comes, they’ve got brand new shoes, like, Oh, we know this, so and so wants to sponsor us, and they say these shoes are amazing, whatever. Will those shoes make the boat go faster? No, then why are we talking about it? On to the next decision, right? Like, what everything every trainings, everything they did was optimised around that simple question. So when I think about Graham Duncan has a great line. He’s interviewed by Tim Ferriss. Yeah, guy, and he has this great line that, you know, our genius is right next to our dysfunction. So my genius, which is eerily eerily close to my dysfunction, this show can be dysfunctional. But my my genius is I can see with precision, like what’s necessary for something to be true. A lot of it’s because I’ve spent years and years and years immersed in Theory of Constraints, and really in systems theory, and really thinking about what’s necessary, but not sufficient, and like, what are the ingredients, that’s how I think it’s also the dysfunction can show up where if something doesn’t make sense to me, I just can’t do it. Like, if it doesn’t, there’s a connection between A and B, I’m like I’m out. But that those two things really play hand in hand. Because what I’ve realized it creates many feedback loops. And what I’ve realized is a lot of the nonsense we spend our time doing, has no relationship to what we actually care about. So here’s here’s an example this summer, I had, André, the only difference in our personalities is André tends to be more measured and thoughtful about things. And I tend to jump out of airplanes and try to figure out how I can make a parachute before I hit the ground. And I had this burning desire for a course I wanted to write this summer that in retrospect, there is no way in hell, I could have possibly done it. But I just it was it was a nagging me and I wanted to do it. So I mentioned André several times very clear to me that he is he was far more reserved that I was excited. So we use we just sort of had this is something I borrowed from somebody else, but very simple. One to 10. Write one to 10 how enthusiastic was I about it? And one to 10? How not enthusiastic was he about? You could just do one to 10 how and things. But the deal is the higher number wins, period. No discussion, right? So I probably was a seven. And André’s resistance was probably an eight, if I’m remembering correctly. So that could have occupied you from a feedback loop perspective. That’s really fast feedback, to have that mechanism in place to say, here’s this thing that’s occupying a lot of my thinking cycles. It’s something I’m interested in. Now, if the two of us, we know what we’re optimising for we both have the same sort of shared perspective where Is he on that scale? He’s an eight not wanting to do it. Where am I on the scale? I’m more of a seven wanting to do it. over it was over it that there’s no ego. There was no there were no tears. There was no, I’m so mad he didn’t agree with it was it was over in a conversation, it was a very quick feedback loop to say, you know what, yeah, that that makes sense. It was the right decision or looking back on it was the right decision. So that like you can, we can build in feedback loops. But I

Michael Simmons 1:00:24

really like that the simplifying it,

Shawn Twing 1:00:26

it simplifies, but it connects back to that original point, which is, if you don’t know what you’re optimizing for any decision will do. Right? So if you’re like, Well, you know, I don’t, I don’t actually know what I’m trying to accomplish. So now I have to think about everything. Does this sound fun? Does that sound fun? Does this if you know, will this make boat go faster? Yes or no? And if the answer’s no, you’re done thinking about? It’s the fastest feedback loop in the world. Now sometimes the answer? Isn’t that clear? It’s like, well, it might. Let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about it within the context of what am I actually optimizing for? Not? Is this something we could do? We could do a lot of things, something we should do, based on making this boat that we’ve created faster? So yes, we could do more promotions to make more money. But our boat isn’t about faster for us isn’t defined? How high? Are we piling the stacks of money. So that becomes irrelevant. Like it just, it’s the greatest feedback loop in the worlds the shortest one, because it tells you exactly where to focus your attention. And more importantly, all of the bullshit you don’t have to focus on, right there just there’s so many decisions, where Andre will ask me something, and I’ll look at it and think he’s already he’s already made this decision. Sounds great to me, I don’t even need to be involved. Because he’s thought about this. And I don’t I’m not going to add something just quick, long answer to a short question

Michael Simmons 1:01:47

you want the topic I want to talk about is so you know, I personally believe that in the future, there’s going to be you more people, you know, you know, who are in the profession of learning, coming up with ideas, sharing it with an audience helping get a transformation. And it’s also can be overwhelming for somebody just getting started. You have to choose what medium, you know, are you writing, audio? Do you do a podcast video speaking? What platforms? Do you do your own? Do you do email? Do you do SEO, LinkedIn, medium, and so on.

Michael Simmons 1:02:23

And then not only that, once you’ve gone through that, you have to think about what your voice is, really get clear on your topic. These are some things I’ve seen people struggle with. And you know, people could be thinking about it for months. How do you, let’s just start off with the medium of writing. Both of you have gravitated towards that it sounds like and I agree that the one unique advantage that writing has is it really forces you to become a better thinker, and you could see your ideas in different way and iterate on them in a way you couldn’t with video. Why else? What do you think stands out about writing? And do you feel like more? This is a skill that everyone should have, that it’s a foundational skill that’s gonna help you do better video better and audio better? Or is it just your guys preference?

André Chaperon 1:03:12

I’ve read or heard or, you know, either read or heard someone say that you need to be, you need to over time become world class and either writing or, you know, audio or video, visual, or audio, because that’s the only way you can communicate, right? So you got to pick which one you want to do. And for us for some of the reasons that you’ve just said is we’ve chosen lighting, you know, for me are the voice for writing, I think slowly. So writing makes sense for me, because I can kind of, you know, stuff comes out. And it looks very messy. If you look at one of my first drafts, I mean, that’s not something I will put in front of anybody. But that’s how I’m thinking. So if I have to do you know, audio video, like we do now, that real time feedback loop that’s happening right now you ask a question. And in this moment I respond. I find that very difficult, not just stressful, but just my mind isn’t rings to think in that clarity of words, in that one stream sentence, it’s not going to do that. So I find it really difficult. So I’ve never one thing really fast there.

Michael Simmons 1:04:26

I’m the same way. But I always remember, you know, so hard growing up like you’re a middle school, high school, like, you know, guys are always you know, making fun of each other thoughts. Always people would say something like, hey, my feelings are and then I would, I would dream I wouldn’t have a good response. Well, I dreamt about it. And then I was like, hey, that’s what I should have said, but it was always way too long. So I can relate to that feeling.

André Chaperon 1:04:49

Exactly. The same way. Everything happens later. And then and then it’s better. So you know for me and it just it just happens and I’m lucky you know Shawn’s Shawn. As a writer as well, that’s a that’s a primary method of thinking and articulating your thoughts. Although he’s, he’s, he’s exceptional at doing, you know, video he can, he can talk to, to a crowd to an audience in real time and it’s no problem for him because I don’t have that ability. So, but luckily both of us are writers separate us. That’s the medium for us that that was set in stone already. For somebody else. It might be video, you know, Frank Kern, he can do both. But you know, he’s so good on video. That’s his, that’s his medium. And, you know, Evan is he’s like a video guy, and I’m sure he’s, he’s a great writer, but he jumps on the camera, and you know, behind the camera, and he can just rip and it just sounds amazing. And he’s like, all his thoughts are just coming out just the way, you know, as they should. Right? They

Michael Simmons 1:05:49

sound like he’s written them down. And organized

André Chaperon 1:05:53

yeah. So yeah, I think that’s, that’s the first thing somebody needs to decide on. Which, which one, they’re going to become world class that

Shawn Twing 1:06:02

for the right reasons to experiment to, though, right? You know, you got to figure it out. Like, I don’t think André and I woke up one day and said, oh, we’re actually writers, and we had to get there. And to figure that out. It’s funny, I’ve never thought about this. But the reason that I prefer writing is for the opposite reason that both of you prefer writing, which is I think, too fast. So for me, it’s very easy to blurt out like 10 things that are churning in my mind. And what writing allows me to do is to get those 10 things and realize that eight of them don’t make any sense. And that two are actually the same thing. And then I work through my thinking. Right, so I become a much more precise writer, than I am a thinker. But the thinker is what gives me the canvas from which to draw the ideas to write. I never thought about that before such an interesting distinction.

Michael Simmons 1:06:56

So for example, will you speak your ideas? first conversation that once is there the narrowed down into writing?

André Chaperon 1:07:03

Sometimes you go,

Shawn Twing 1:07:06

but I’m just thinking of, like, for me, the thing that scares lots of people is speaking in front of crowds, or something for me is always exciting, not because I want to speak in front of a crowd. But because I want, I want to I curious when I’m thinking about something, and when I’m in a position where there’s some pressure and there’s an audience, I do better thinking. So I remember, years ago, I was at a conference, that person was running the conference as a good friend, Molly Pittman, from Digital Marketer was supposed to speak about paid traffic, she landed found out or I think her mom was sick or something and got back on a plane and had to return. So like 15 minutes before that time slot, probably 500 people in the audience for 15 minutes before the person run the conference. Like hey, do you want to do a presentation like be on a panel talking about paid traffic? Like absolutely like to me that no concern whatsoever? Because I’m really curious. When someone asks a good question. My second favorite quote, is E.E. Cummings. Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question. But someone asks me a good question. I’m, I’m, it’s like Christmas morning. I’m like, ah, like, I hadn’t thought about that. And I’m perfectly content. I don’t have any ego at all. And just saying, André, use this. And I use this abbreviation TOL all the time, which is thinking out loud, which is we’re just gonna think out loud for a moment. Sometimes we do that in writing, sometimes, after we do it, literally thinking out loud with conversation, but the ability to just think out loud and see what emerges, to me is like, that’s what that’s the greatest gift is I don’t, I don’t always know, I write morning pages every day. But generally, the morning pages like what comes out for me is a surprise. Like I don’t it’s it’s emergent. Like, that’s like this morning was an incredible, incredible writing session, because there was a lot of stuff in my head that I sensed but didn’t have words for and then they emerged and now now they have some form. So that for me often happens, these conversations where we start somewhere and form begins to emerge. And once there’s form, and there’s some precision, then we can start asking questions. Is this the best solution? Are there better ways to do this? Do we agree would we do this differently? Do we have different perspectives on like, but until there’s forum, we can’t really do that? Yeah, I’m learning way more today.

André Chaperon 1:09:30

For me, I’ve to start with with the thing that’s the slowest. And that’s just a pen and a paper. So I can talk faster than I can draw with a pen and pencil so I start with pen and pencil because it slows everything right down. And it forces me because my because my monkey brain is slacker, just a jumble of stuff. And, you know, any, you can only write one word at a time. So that that’s that’s supporting the mechanism for me. And then I’ll always, almost always it You’ve probably considered but then while the main thing is this, there’s always some, some some sort of visual. So there’ll be some some picture, if you look through any of my diaries, it almost always starts with some picture of what I’m thinking of, or I’ll start to write something and then I’ll draw something to make sense of it, like the bigger picture, and then I’ll start to, to write again. So that’s, that’s, that’s the first piece and then then it goes digital. And so that’s, that’s

Michael Simmons 1:10:33

really interesting. You know, and you’re just talking about note taking, is really feels like 2020. With, have you guys followed the release of Roam at all? Yeah,

Shawn Twing 1:10:43

we are both believers.

Michael Simmons 1:10:45

Oh, yeah. Okay.

Shawn Twing 1:10:48

André believes more than I do.

Michael Simmons 1:10:51

After something,

Shawn Twing 1:10:52

right. André is a more of a believer than I am, I see the value of Roam. But I also have some issues. But that’s, that’s neither here nor there

Michael Simmons 1:11:01

is that your main way of the big thing is, I think a lot about is there’s no taking, but then there’s also no taking for thought leaders. And that’s something different too, because you’re not only need to take notes. So you could have it for later to apply to your life. But you could write from it. Is there I guess this is not just about Roam. But just more broadly. How do you think of Do you have any? What are your most unique thoughts on how to capture ideas that you’ve never seen? talked about anywhere else?

Shawn Twing 1:11:35

It’s an easy question. You better start André?

André Chaperon 1:11:42

Yeah, I don’t have a good answer to, to be honest, you know, both Shawn enough, kind of buy into the whole his little custom idea. So and Roam is like purpose built to be able to do that. So that’s very interesting, that the hardest thing to me, and I think it’s the hardest thing for Sean as well is, is to create examples. So though, that idea, we should take some idea, you’ll compress it into, let’s say, three, three seconds, and the most three seconds to sum up that entire idea. I find that difficult, because it’s so easy just to capture information. So I’ll start with my pen and paper, I’ll get clarity around something, and then I’ll start to capture it inside of Roam. Or I’ll get an email from somebody and I want to capture elements of that in the links and that all go to that all goes into Roam to Roam, it’s very easy for it to turn into this place where you just store stuff. But it’s, it’s, it’s more difficult to then, you know, be purposeful about creating these examples, this compression of thoughts around every single note, which I’m very bad at. So you know, I don’t have a good answer for that. And it’s something that I’m working at getting better at. Like, every single time I do do that. It’s always it’s just, it’s just, there’s so much better than and then it’s not like around because then you get to see these, these ideas that pop up later on, that you heard and then you can you can obviously work on them to make them better.

Michael Simmons 1:13:22

You feel like it’s changed? Do you feel it changing your brain and you helping you hasn’t made a really big difference in the quality of your writing or

André Chaperon 1:13:32

my biggest improvement, my biggest upgrade far is is been doing their journaling. So wanting pages, free writing. In fact, one of the best books I’ve ever read is Accidental Genius. Because the whole book is just about different forms of writing to express ideas, you know, pull ideas out and to get clarity. So for me is, you know, I do my morning pages are not as good as you know, Shawn does it every single morning. I don’t. And that’s that’s a goal I have. But I’m bad at what I do do is I will I’m always noodling down ideas. I’m always writing always drawing pictures. And I’m and I’m free writing. So if I’m writing fiction or nonfiction, the first place to start is to get all those those ideas in some sort of way is it’s expressed through through generally, through some version of journaling, and then it’s, you know, Roam and digital is, is a downstream effect on that. And then what I want to do is, if I’m listening to podcasts I have, I have these little small notebooks that you can put in your back pocket. And then I have the my pencil but I have them short ones. So so the pencil has, has a little hard talk so it doesn’t break the nib. So the pencil goes in my pocket and in the little notebook. There’s my pocket and then I’ll go somewhere and I’ll listen To a podcast. And while I’m listening to it, I’ll just let you know. In analogue, I’ll write down ideas as they’re forming. And I’ll timestamp it. So I’ll press pause, I’ll write down the timestamp. And the idea I’ve had in that moment about this thing. And it almost always turns into some sort of picture. Because I’m very visual. So, so the podcast, I’m listening to gets, you know what the notes kind of take shape, and some picture emerges. And then I’ll put that into Roam afterwards. But, again, I’m bad at this. So what I’ll do is I’ll take a photograph with my phone, and I’ll put that photograph inside of Roam. So all the notes today, I just haven’t touched them on X.

Michael Simmons 1:15:44

visual system, you use the printer. In other words, you use triangles for pyramids, and Venn diagrams and quadrants, or is actually more doodles like characters interact with each other and

André Chaperon 1:15:56

our systems diagram, the thing that influenced me the most back in the day was mind mapping. So almost everything is is a very ugly mind map. So it’s just an idea with a circle around it, and then a line will go to the next thing. And this, this mind map will just start to emerge as I listen to something along the way, if a picture like I re-read a part

André Chaperon 1:16:22

of The Art of Possibility, and one of the ideas was this, this idea that is you can have a stone block, but that stone block is actually a statute if you really think about it, and what we need to do is take away all the, for the best. So I just drew a square, the sweetie square with a little face in the middle. And that was my idea. So when I see that, I can understand that very quickly, what it’s about that idea and says no words there, other than the little mind map pieces that you know, that they’re blocked into says block of stone, and the face just says within the statue that needs to be revealed. And so that, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s one of the blocks that’s meaningful to me.

Michael Simmons 1:17:11

Really, really fascinating.

Shawn Twing 1:17:13

I’ll throw a thought out there to this counterintuitive, I think so. And this is this will tie in my complaint about Roam, too, which is Roam’s. Excellent. So when I say my complaint about it, it’s in that context. And I can’t remember the book, I’ll find the book because you’ll appreciate it, Michael. But the phrase that is that jumps out at me as the phrase is display, the word is disfluency. So for some reason this really resonate with you, I think it was because for years, years and decades, I would look at that would work with clients, and they wanted to see a dashboard of their results, like what was going on. And I never, I mean, never literally never saw anybody making a decision from a dashboard. Because they never there was no context there wasn’t, there wasn’t a story. So what often I would do is I would go look at a lot of data, and I would write the story of the data that we did x, then this thing happened. And we did why. And it was it was very time consuming. But it was always infinitely more valuable than the dashboard. And then I’ve read a book where in that book, there’s a story about a school district, I believe it was in Detroit, they had a very similar experience where I think p&g was nearby or something. But they got tremendous with just the schools where students uniformly were not doing well. So they built the most sophisticated dashboards for each student in their performance. And nothing improved. Like year after year, nothing got better. And then some intrepid teachers sort of took over like a janitors broom closet, and they got some butcher paper, big sheets of brown paper and crayons and post it. And they would sit down and they would have conversate they would look at the data. And then they would say like, Oh wow, this is such an such teacher and her students are doing way better in math than other students. What is she doing differently? And then they would they would find out that she had this sort of novel curriculum and say, Okay, well let’s borrow that curriculum or it looks like Johnny’s not doing so well on all these classes. And a teacher was saying oh, well, you know, his sister died or something and it was the disfluency was the friction that was created from the interaction that made made the system actually work. And if you look at the father of the intellectual father of Roam, the intellectual father of of Zettelkasten method is Niklas Luhmann. And if you look and see what lumen did, he wrote everything down on note cards, he sort of a five shaped cards, and then he would have an h1 had a unique number and then he would, he would put them in order, but then as they branched he would start adding suffix suffixes and getting further and further and further branch. And then physically interact, make, make the connections in space and write references on it. But if you think about how this fluid that is, it’s a, it’s a cosmic pain in the ass to do that much work with it. And, but But think about what happens when you interact with an idea that you’ve written down 50 to 1000 times to understand how other things relate to it, the friction created by the system is where your knowledge and your insights and your understanding emerges. And when we use a system, like Roam, or whatever it is, fill in the blank, when you use a system that is designed specifically to eliminate friction, I think we actually take away the thing that we need most in learning, which is being forced to slam up against these ideas and think, you know, this idea doesn’t hold water, or this idea is the same as somebody else’s idea. And when you get to get in and start monkeying with it, though, that is that reveals itself. But if you can just do it, the nomenclature, the nomenclature for Roam, which is really easy, you have double brackets, and you just link to an idea. And then later you realize you’ve linked to that idea. 50,000 times Oh, that’s amazing. Except it’s not because it’s easy. It was there was there nothing forced you to say that this, that when I read about an idea here, and I read about the same idea here, that they’re not actually the same, and that spending the time in the space where it’s, there’s friction. To me, that’s where all of my learning has happened. So, you know, I do use digital tools, I use Evernote, primarily I do you use Roam a very extensive room database, it’s, it’s amazing for what it does. But I think the part where I feel I feel a little bit like it’s we’re going in the wrong direction almost is that we’re trying to make things easier, that should be harder that man making, making the learning harder. It’s not going to be popular to your audience, I suppose.

Michael Simmons 1:21:53

I really resonate with that, because I’ve noticed that people on our course and our writing course, they’re really gravitating towards wrong. But what I’m seeing it, I’ve had a bad feeling about it, just because it’s you know, there’s an all the scheme of things that are stopping people. You know, sometimes if you’re just getting started, making sure you have the perfect database, and everything is honestly the most direct path to getting out the work and the ideas. But I think part of my resistance is exactly what you’re saying that, you know, part of what we want, we want to build a database in our brain first, as a part of building that database is really struggling to get the idea clear. And for me, I think it’s a great forcing function to even write it out for someone else to get it. So it’s good enough that someone else would find value. Horses are brains. Number one, okay? What’s really important here, we’re going to the audience who’s really busy. So forces you think about what’s important, what’s not important? And oftentimes, those sorts of decisions are the sorts of decisions that make it go deeper in the mind. Versus as you’re saying, the opposite would be just okay. I got this information. Let me tag it, link it up, and then move on. So yeah,

Shawn Twing 1:23:07

I think we’re in Roam can be really useful. Sorry, André, we can interrupt you. I think if you if you collect a lot of information, and then in you use the bracketing well, so if you if you you’re writing something, and that refers to like I was just doing this the other day. So if you’re writing something, and then it refers to an idea that you have codified and something that you’re interested in, so that you’re putting brackets around it to say this is a standalone thing. So earlier you mentioned Jim Collins, André, our big fan of Jim Collins, we thought, you know, well, it’s the cannonballs and flywheel are two principles that we really, we’ve talked about a lot. So let’s just for the sake of argument, say that the flywheel which is true in my room instance, that the two words, the flywheel is a standalone entry. The mistake I made with Roam in the beginning is that as soon as I created that, I then felt like it was my job to go populate that page. So I would go and I would try to write up, like, what’s my understanding of the flywheel and it’s from Jim Collins. And of course, I had to then link to Jim Collins, and it became like this, for the lack of a better phrase becomes like this intellectual masturbation where you’re just you’re doing the thing. And then at the end, you’re like, wait a minute, what was I actually trying to do here? I was trying to get the insight from this concept, like, that’s what I really want to have happen. So the change that I made with rain, the Roam was sort of a discipline that I started developing is don’t force myself to go codify the thing. Let the thing become a collection of links about that thing. So anytime I’m listening to somebody if I have podcast notes or something, and I think to myself, that’s sort of an interesting take on a flywheel or here’s this person talking about their phone. I just make the reference because then the page that is in this is where I think the magic of rome is then the page that’s the flywheel just becomes a collection of every time in every context I’ve ever referred to it and then I can go look and I can look at that entire collection of links to it and think to myself okay what emerges from every from the 100 times I’ve I’ve made a note to myself that this is kind of like a fire wheel what can I learn from this and that’s the second discipline that I think is missing that you are hinting at where it’s not just a data collection device there has to be something built into your process where you come back and you say let me go look at these things that are aggregating a lot of references and start writing more about them what does this collection of references mean what what can I draw from it and from there that I think is is incredibly valuable you can start saying you know the flywheel start you know you start seeing where it shows up and the different iterations and and you can then that’s that’s valuable and that’s this book it’s it’s it’s work I that’s weird yeah

Michael Simmons 1:26:07

That’s a great great insight there and I’m looking at the time here guys you guys have been very generous and I really just really on a personal level resonate with your values and I think it’s really good for customers you guys obviously love doing it you built a very successful business that’s just gifts to the world where can people go to learn more about you guys and the business sign up for one of your courses

André Chaperon 1:26:35

well the bad news is you can’t sign up for any course because because they’re all closed everything’s yeah we’re the worst marketers ever but everything was great yeah so tinylittlebusinesse.com everything’s everything’s on there so what a world building is there on the front end for free just browse around but nothing’s linear so you’ve kind of got a stumble upon stuff which is the whole reason why we do it this way we’re where we we purposefully create easter eggs when people have to find an easter eggs all over the website there’s there’s no funnel that that you’ll see you just got to browse around and find things yeah and then next year we will we are going to reopen all of our courses as evergreen products

Shawn Twing 1:27:25

and we just did a end of year 2020 year end review and did a quick count and in 2020 we created 105,000 words of free content so wow that was just that’s just this year so you get to the site and you can find it’s all there it’s there I don’t think I don’t think there’s an opt in required for any of it actually it’s hard to opt in so don’t don’t go looking for an opt in to find like the good stuff there’s 105,000 words on the site that does not require an opt in we’ve arranged thematically you can go and explore it and then somewhere along the way you’ll stumble on an opt in if that piques your curiosity we do we do it usually bi weekly newsletters and other stuff but don’t rush to opt in and go explore there’s lots of fun to be had for free

Michael Simmons 1:28:15

awesome and it’s best for creators who want to build their business online so they’re getting awareness engagement conversion those are the themes that you help people with

Shawn Twing 1:28:30

yeah that’s our that’s we’ve tried to make the system of making money online just clear and distilled and what’s required to do that successfully from our perspectives and just in the three parts that you mentioned we have courses on those but there’s there’s a tremendous amount of free content for each of those as well

Michael Simmons 1:28:51

Awesome. you guys are awesome appreciate it and we’ll have to do a part two sometime in 2021 or 2022

André Chaperon 1:28:59

Thank you, Michael. alright guys

Outro 1:29:02

Thanks for listening to The Michael Simmons Show we’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes if you found value in today’s episode we would greatly appreciate a five star rating on your favorite podcast player

Tags: André Chaperon, Barn Door Media, Michael Simmons, Shawn Twing, The Michael Simmons Show, Tiny Little Businesses

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