Shutting Down and Opening Up: A Conversation with Marie Poulin, Creator of Notion Mastery

Jul 6, 2021

"Marie Poulin, Creator of Notion Mastery," and the hosts discuss shutting down their previous business, hyperfocus's impact on work-life balance, and the surprising effects of empathy. They also touch on rejection sensitive dysphoria and fear of criticism. A wide range of topics from personal experiences to launching projects are covered.

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Introduction

00:00 • 2min

Deciding to Shut Down Doki

01:42 • 13min

Combining Self-Awareness and Responsibility for Users

14:35 • 3min

Hyperfocus and its Impact on Work-Life Balance

17:22 • 17min

Reconsidering Empathy and Its Impact

33:54 • 12min

Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria and Fear of Criticism

46:05 • 13min

Ending the Conversation and Where to Find More Information

59:02 • 3min

Pre-order Michele's book on talking to customers! https://deployempathy.com/order

Marie's course, Notion Mastery: https://notionmastery.com/
Marie's Twitter: https://twitter.com/mariepoulin
Marie's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKvnOhqTeEgdNt1aJB5mVng
Marie's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mariepoulin/

Michele Hansen 00:00

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Michele Hansen
Hey, welcome back to Software Social. We have another guest with us this week. I am so excited to have my friend, Marie Poulin, here today. She is the creator of Notion Mastery, which is this amazing Notion course that has over 1200 students, averaging $45,000 MRR. Pretty amazing business that she has built up. Welcome to Software Social, Marie.

Marie Poulin 01:18

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat.

Michele Hansen 01:21

So um, people listening may know you from all of your YouTube videos and courses with Notion, which have been crazy successful, and only, only, since October 2019, since you launched it, but I actually want to talk about something else. So you had another business, a course business called Doki, and actually, the last time I spoke, like, like, like, actually spoke with you like, internet friend is so funny. Like, I feel like I talk to you all the time, but actually, like talk to you, talk to you, was you and your husband, Ben, were thinking about what to do with Doki and whether you should sell it or shut it down.

Marie Poulin 02:15

Yes, and you very kindly reached out with some suggestions on how we might handle that. And it, it sort of wasn't, I don't want to say it wasn't our passion anymore, but yeah, you know, Ben got offered a full time gig. So for anybody listening, my husband and I teamed up back in 2014 to, to run our company together. We built a software and we ran it for I mean, five-ish years or so, and I think neither one of us was, it was definitely our first software project. And it was that build a giant software project that does all of the things and, you know, kind of wishing that we had done something smaller when we learned about the whole software building all of the different pieces. And so when we first went to MicroCon, that was, it was just so eye opening how many things we had done wrong, and it was it was a really wonderful learning experience. But I think it kind of showed us that there were parts of that, that just, I don't know that either of us was super excited to go 100% all in on it. I liked the working with people side of online courses and actually shipping and working on their websites, and just all of, all the other pieces of it other than the software. And so the burden was really on Ben to build all the features and do customer support, and, you know, he was pretty much like the solo founder handling all of those parts of the software, and I was handling more of the consulting side of it. And it was a huge burden on him. It was huge. And so when he got offered a full time job, it was a chance for him to step into more of a leadership role, be challenged, be working with other people, and it just, he really flourished. And I think it was something he was missing. Like, when you're a solo founder, you're just, you know, you're wearing every single hat. You're making all the decisions. And if you're bumping up against stuff you've never seen, it's pretty tough. It's a tough life to be, to be solo founder. So I was really encouraging him to, to kind of explore this new venture, but it sort of meant that Doki got left in the dust a little bit. And so we kind of took our foot off the gas, and just in this year in January 2021 we decided what if we just kind of shut down signups and, and just kind of let it do its thing and just kind of keep supporting the clients that were still using it, more like our consulting clients and not really market at widely. And so we did and I was like, how do you feel about this? And he's like, oh, I feel I feel so relieved. And I think that was really important that it didn't feel sad. It didn't feel like oh no, we're shutting this thing down. Like he felt like no, this is a chapter of my life that was great. And now it's over. So it's been a journey.

Michele Hansen 04:54

So, I mean on, you know, on this podcast, you know, we talk a lot about like, getting a SaaS off of the ground, or I guess, in my case now, like, getting an info product off the ground, and then also running those companies. But there's this other phase of it, which is exiting, and sometimes exiting means selling a company, or, you know, being acquihired by someone, or it means shutting it down. And I'm wondering if you can kind of talk through that a little bit about how you guys decided to sunset it, rather than sell it.

Marie Poulin 05:37

Yeah, because we had gone through this conversation back and forth. And we even had, you know, several people who had made offers to buy, and it felt actually pretty close, like, that was something we were really seriously considering. And again, you're, it was just really, really valuable to get your, your insights on that, and to have somebody that, you know, not attached to it just kind of as an outsider giving us perspective on that. And so we, we had some meetings, and we definitely considered it, and I think the burden of what would have needed to happen to be able to make that handoff happen in a way, such that it could actually be successful for those who are taking it over, felt too big for Ben. I think it was, again, given that his attention was elsewhere, it there was just such a cognitive load associated with all of that cleanup work, and just, just kind of the whole process of that transition. And it's possible that it may not have actually been that much work. It's kind of hard to know, in hindsight, but I think the anticipation of that, and just, you know, when Ben does something, he wants to do it properly, and he wouldn't have felt good, I think to just kind of pass it off as is knowing how much legacy work needed to be rebuilt. And he, he just didn't feel comfortable with it. And I was like, you know, I don't know this stuff as well as you do. And if you feel really confident and happy to just kind of say, you know, what, we're totally cool to just, like, the, the amount just kind of doesn't match up with, with what it would be wort...