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The Durable Business Course

The Durable Business (TDB) is based on timeless principles. It's our attempt to identify the underlying framework for building a long-term business asset that applies to service businesses, digital/virtual information/knowledge products, consulting, etc.

TDB is what we would do to grow a business from $0 to $100,000 in revenue. We're so confident it will work that we're going to create that business and show our work as part of TDB.

Yup, as part of the training, we'll be following our own frameworks to build a brand new online side-business from $0 to $100K. We'll do it in a market we've never operated in, with no email list, no reputation, and no advantage our students don't have.

Some of our marketing friends have suggested we're mad to do this, that we've lost our minds, and we would agree. The hardest part of any business is starting from zero. In contrast, going from $100K to $250K, or $250K to a million, is a relative walk-in-the-part.

But we like hard.

Note: For a better user experience, the email archive links below will open in a new window. The audio icon indicates audio narration available.

The high-level framework that drives The Durable Business is made up of four main parts that form a momentum-generating ‘flywheel' that's inspired by the work of Jim Collins (described in his monograph, Turning the Flywheel).

The flywheel concept has been responsible for Amazon's dominance. Jeff Bezos called the concept “the secret sauce.”

Mind Map of The Durable Business

Download the High-Res Printable PDF

Questions & Answers

Q1: I already own Lean Business for Creators (LBC). Do I need to buy TDB?

Because LBC has become The Durable Business (TDB), all 762 students of LBC will receive access to TDB for free. If you own LBC, do not purchase TDB. There is nothing for you to do. As of Friday 27, Nov, you'll see access to TDB in the Academy.

Future updates to TDB are included for free as well.

Q2: I see at the top of the page, TDB is Rated G (accessible for all ages). Does that mean I can put my ten-year-old through the training?

Absolutely. We have had a handful of parents request access for their kids or teenagers (9, 13, and two 15-year-olds) to go through our previous course, Lean Business for Creators.

Knowing that, there is no swearing or other inappropriate language in LBC or TDB.

Giving your kid this early exposure to timeless, foundational principles of business, marketing, and entrepreneurship, is a skill they'll use and develop for the rest of their professional lives.

Q3: Is TDB a fit if I don't want to create my own products? I'm only interested in being an affiliate marketer.

The short answer is no. We will not be teaching students how to build a purely affiliate-based business.

(We do think there are opportunities for using affiliate offers to discover and validate ideas, generating revenue along the way. But the end goal would be to create a long-term, durable asset which requires more than affiliate revenue. See the comments for other nuanced answers about affiliate marketing.)

Q4: Where can I find the Jonathan Boyd interview?

The audio and full transcript is here. Enjoy!

Many people have reported to us they've listened to the audio three times (some even more). It has resonated with a lot of our students.

Q5: How long will the course take?

There are two parts to “how long” — (1) how long will it take us to create the training until completion, and (2) how long will it take you to consume the training and act on it?

  1. The honest answer is we don't (yet) know. Our guess would be some time in the first half of 2021, with discover content beginning to appear in December 2020 to get you prepared for taking action in the new year. However, the end-point is irrelevant when you enroll and start this journey. We'll be releasing sections to students as we complete them, bit by bit, over the coming weeks and months. This is an EXECUTION course, it's not a book you read from beginning to end, then decide if you like it or not. We will all — ourselves included — be executing and building our new businesses in realtime. For this reason, the end-point is not important. If you do the work, you'll be earning revenue in short order.
  2. There is nothing easy about going from zero dollars and no customers to a business that generates $100,000 in revenue and produces customers every day. It's a journey, and the length of the journey will be different for everyone, ourselves included. Market conditions, who you chose to serve, your budget and cash flow constraints, the level of expertise you bring to bear, and your technical knowledge will contribute to how fast or slowly it takes you to reach $100K in revenue. Remember: business is not a race. It's an infinite game where the aim is to keep playing forever.

Q6: Is the training primarily text-based or videos?

We are both writers. We have voices for text. We write to understand the world, to think. For this reason, we suspect that the majority of the training will be written (text-based).

That said, as we've been doing with our emails, we'll include Amazon Polly based audio narration whenever possible.

Some things will be better with video, and in those cases, we'll shoot video. Q&A calls will use Zoom and will be transcribed.

If you are definitely not a reader, we would sadly suggest you give TDB a pass. We feel you'll be doing yourself a massive disservice in missing out on this, but we want to be honest and exceed your expectations.

— Shawn & André
André ChaperonShawn Twing