#155: What Questions You NEED To Ask Yourself With Marc Champagne, Co-Founder of Kyō

If it wasn't for these practices and tools that I know I have access to, that's what gave me the one second I needed to make a different decision. I saw the power of questions in my own life and others, but they literally can save a life. So that's what fuels me every day, is that no matter where you're at in your journey, we can all leverage a well timed question. It's going to be different for all of us, but something will land and resonate and provide hopefully some clarity on where we want to be or what we desire. For me, it's just to put out this content so that people can land there when they need it.

Come on this journey with me each week when you join me, you're going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close up. Hi and welcome back. I'm so excited you're back here with me today and I'm so excited for you to meet my new friend, Mark Champagne. He unpacks the mental fitness practices and reflective questions shaping the lives of some of the most successful and brilliant thinkers in the world. He is the host of the Top 50 ranked podcast behind the Human and co founded the journaling app Kyo, which ended up reaching over 86 million people without any paid advertising. I can't wait to get into that, Mark. All within the first two years of launch. He has studied mental fitness practices for over a decade and has consulted for top, top rated digital journals and wellness companies. Mark's first book, personal Socrates Publishing October 2021, explores the pointed questions that stimulate our mental fitness and teach us how to direct our internal narrative to work for us instead of against us.

I love this.

Marc, I'm so excited you're here.

So am I. Thanks for having me, Heather.

Oh my gosh, my pleasure. All right, so let's get into. These are some massive numbers. 86 million. Can you take us back and give us the backstory of where was Mark coming from, how did you get there and how did we end up here?

Absolutely. I mean, somewhat similar to your story. I spent a good chunk of time in corporate America and I was in brand management at the very end, you know, running brand strategies for pharmaceuticals and hundred million dollar kind of brand budgets and the marketing and the teams all linked to that. But I, throughout that time in that industry, I always had a reflective practice or more specifically a journaling practice in the early mornings. And it started when I was in sales like straight outta university. There was a whole group of us that were hired. Everyone went in the same sales training. I thought to myself, I'm like, I've got to do something different, because we're all going through essentially four weeks of the same training, so what can I do? And at the time, the solution, or the answer was I got up a bit earlier and just started reading. And at that time, it was reading blog posts, and I think they're out of Darren Hardy and Success magazine and just that, things like that, right? And then you start seeing trends or practices that keep coming up over and over again. And I started kind of pulling on the thread. And what landed for me was this whole idea of taking a few minutes in the morning to do a little bit of reflection. And at the time, because I was traveling quite a bit, I was doing this digitally in a word processor because there were really no apps at that stage. And I just kept doing.

Mark, what year is this?

Well, this is 12 years ago.

Okay.

Yeah, 12 years ago. That. When it. When it. When it all started, really. And it's, you know, since. Since evolve. I started using Apple Notes and I got out of word processors, and then there were journaling apps that fired up. It was a consistent practice through, you know, trying to change companies and interviewing with different companies and processing, you know, when that works or when it didn't work or dealing, you know, pumping myself up before presenting a giant brand plan in front of the, you know, the CEO to get that approved, like, use. I was leveraging all this stuff in my. In my day to day, but there was always this itch or this frustration with the tools that I was using to do it, because I would take that knowledge in the morning, and it started to evolve. Then it was podcasts, started to read books. But I was. I was coming out of these short kind of blog posts, and I would copy the questions that I was hearing from the authors or the. Or the host being interviewed, especially on podcasts, because I found this was so frustrating. The host would be interviewing the guests, they'd be talking about their story, and some sort of traumatic event would happen, right? The explosion would happen. And then they said, then I. Then I asked myself, what did I. You know, what did I want to do? What did I want for my life? Or something like that, and everything changed. And it went into the trajectory. And I remember thinking, hold on, there's got to be more to that question. Like, I mean, that just changed your whole life. So I would write that question down every time I would hear them on different shows. And through different mediums. And then I would reflect on it the next morning in relation to where my life was at. But it was so disconnected because I'm copying and pasting into all these different apps and eventually got to the point where I think I would regret not trying to create a solution. And I'm not a developer, I'm a marketing guy. I have a business degree. I don't know any developers. I had my brother in law who was running, he had his own IT company. I mean, that is not a developer. And we both joke about that today, but it was the closest to some sort of technology experience. I was happy in my job. There was no, you know, there wasn't, it wasn't an event where I couldn't stand going in, but there was this feeling of potential regret of not trying the idea. So we started working on it. And that's what Kio was, the journaling app. And I was working for a Japanese company at that time. So keo is the Japanese word for today. I had just come back from Tokyo for a conference and I remember the experience of walking from my hotel, which was busy and crazy on the streets of Tokyo, but then walking through a temple on the way to the conference hall and everything just like slowing down. So when we started thinking about this journaling app, we thought, you know, what about that experience that you can find that, that calm or that pause no matter where you're at in the world. And that's what Keel represented was this at the time was one of the first guided journaling apps. Because the headspace and calm, like the meditation apps were starting to take off. So people were starting to, you know, be open to that method. But there was nothing on the reflection front that took people through a guided path of some sort and in this case through questions, which was how I was doing it. And that didn't feel like, oh, you're Talking about the 12 year old girl writing her diary about the boy at school, which is nothing wrong with that. But no, I'm talking about questions that are changing people's lives and helping you through the hardest and the most exciting periods of your life. So that was, that was Keo.

Wow. You know the one thing that jumped out at me when you were just explaining that and thank you for sharing that story number one, how similar your and my story is. Different, but so similar, it's crazy. I just can't believe it. And then also I also wonder, I wonder how many other people are. There have got to be millions of people like us that or in these corporate jobs, traveling like maniacs on that rat race and having these breakthrough moments. It's unbelievable. So the one thing I noticed is that you saw a problem in the marketplace and knew, okay, this is an issue. I see it. We've all been there, right, so many times in our lives that oh, I see this as broken or this should be fixed. But you also saw that you weren't qualified, you didn't have the tools. However, you still moved forward and did it. How did you get yourself to push through? Because I believe that's so many people see the problem, they know they can solve it, but then they say, oh, I'm not qualified and I don't have the money.

Well, and it's, it's funny you say that because I, I'll never forget whenever I made the announcement that I was leaving the company, you know, people were coming into my office and chatting and you could feel it and see it on their face that they almost wanted to say, like, I have an idea too, you know, and I just, I just, I knew these people really well. I work with them across multiple companies and I just remember that feeling. And so I started reflecting on it and I think what it was again, there was this, this feeling of, of potential regret, not trying it. And I was at the point too where things were going really well. I was on the typical corporate track. I think the next move for me really was I'm in Canada and I was in Montreal where most of those companies are located was, you know, go to Europe and do another global type position or Switzerland or something which would have been super cool, obviously. But I chatted with my brother in law who again had some sort of it related experience. I said, here's the frustration. He was the entrepreneur because he's always been in that space. I said, would you be interested in exploring this space and seeing if we can do something in and similar to your story? I mean just, you know, when you wrote your first book, like just super naive to what it takes to create, you know, write a book, to create an app. It had zero, zero knowledge. So we tested it. I mean I went, I remember I went, I was at a big creativity conference in Montreal and my brother in law came to you. I said I was there for the pharma company and. But I was also meeting with all these people. We're just pitching this concept in a modernized fashion, right? As you can see, like I'm not sitting here on top of a mountain in a row meditating, normal, you know, normal guy, not that there's anything wrong with that. But that was the stereotype with anything wellness in that space, right? You're a monk or something meditating. And here I was pitching this to creative directors and all these different people in different industries at this conference and people were really lighting up with the idea. And my brother in law, he had that existing company, had a designer on the team, so he was mocking things up and changing things as we were talking to people and we were reacting real time and eventually we sat down. Never forget, because Martha Stewart was one of the guests with Snoop Dogg at this conference. They had just partnered with, right? They had just partnered with their weed ventures and they walked by and we always say it was Martha and Snoop Dogg that inspired this. But my brother in law said, why don't you, why don't you come on full time? You can partner with me on my existing business. I can help a little bit on the marketing side of that company, but 80% of my time would be spent essentially creating this new business, this new wellness company under the same umbrella and launch it. There was an element of, okay, it's not, I'm not just jumping ship from the company. And I knew enough just running these big brand plans that, you know, you really had to put together a solid plan to make right. And that was where I felt comfortable. We'd outsource the development and figure all that stuff out, which that's not cheap. Which is, yeah, it's not cheap. But thankfully, you know, I mean, we put in some, some personal savings into this. But we also had that other company that the idea at least was to, was to help fund the new one essentially. And then, you know, in a perfect world, we'd build that one up and then either, you know, sell the other company or hire someone else to run it because we were really passionate about this, this mental fitness space. I mean, it didn't turn out that way within the first two years of reaching all of those people with the app. I'd say largely due because of the marketing strategy and all the collaborations and the brands and whatnot that we had.

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Pause for a minute on that because you're kind of like blazing over 86 million downloads. Can you dive a little bit more into what made that work?

So it's a bit of a mysterious recipe because at the time as well Apple. Well still to this day I think, I mean it's really hard to get on Apple's radar and what was happening at that time. We had a very Apple ish looking app. I mean design wise we spent a lot of effort and money in making sure it looked really good and it worked as well. And eventually I'll never forget we had a Small team of five. I was in Toronto then there were a few people in US and Dubai and UK and scattered around, but we were all in Toronto for our first team meeting, essentially, and we had the Apple Dashboard up, and I think this was maybe a couple weeks after launch, and prior to launch, probably about six to eight months before we even launched, I was meeting with a ton of different people and interviewing them. And at the time, it was a written platform or blog, and then it eventually turned into a podcast. But I was interviewing all these people kind of similar to what I know your mentality of, like, reaching for the top, essentially. I was interviewing, like, Kevin Rose, the biggest technologist at the time, and Adam Grant was part of the app, providing his questions on workplace feedback. And we had Claude Silver from VaynerMedia in there, and it was also my book, by the way. So I'm excited that's continued, but just reaching out to those people, and again, they're the experts in their space and bringing those prompts in the app and making it work. So I think Apple was seeing that and they started featuring the app all around the world.

Oh, so you really don't know, like, the one thing that made that happen. But that was your tipping point. That's every entrepreneur's dream. Congratulations.

Yeah, it was. Thank you. It was unreal because we were sitting in that room in Toronto, the first team meeting, and at the time, you know, we're looking at the Apple Dashboard, and there was this giant spike, and it said that we had 1.2 million app store impressions coming out of Saudi Arabia, out of, you know, no one lived in Saudi Arabia. There was no connections there. But for whatever reason, whoever the editors are in that store or in charge of that region of the world picked it up as a new app we love. And then it just started to snowball. Australia, US. I mean, I think it was a hundred, probably 130 or 120 countries at the end. And it was. We're hitting all these different lists, and it just kept racking up and racking up. And then I had the podcast running, so people were sharing it as well. And, yeah, I mean, it was almost surreal or unbelievable because most apps don't get any visibility. There's hundreds of thousands, if not more in the store. And even though those are media impressions, so essentially people walking by the magazine stand, they looked at it, didn't necessarily pick the magazine up at the end. We still had about a community of over 200,000 people using the app as well that we hadn't paid for we hadn't paid like other than me interviewing people and traveling around a bit, there was no media buys or press releases or anything like that. That was sparking that level of traction.

That's amazing. Oh my gosh, that makes me so hopeful. So how do you go from 86 million downloads to no more apps?

Yeah, that's the toughest part and that's the arc of the journey essentially. And again in that same location in Toronto, this time by myself, I was sitting, it was a co working space. Looking at that number now on the Apple Dashboard, 86.9 million people. And the next step, I'm about to hit delete from App Store. And those were by far the darkest moments of my life because at that time I had left that job. Right. That was a well paying, great track. All those people, I thought about those faces again where people are like, me too. I have an idea like that. Good on you for doing it. And now I'm failing essentially. What would they think? What would our investors or advisors think? My family. And the worst part was just the extreme stress. Financial stress of keeping this going and mental stress at home. My now 5 year old, I guess he would have been to 1 or 2. I just always wondered is he picking up on any of this stress?

He is, they always, I felt the, it's terrified. It's the worst feeling because you know you're not able to fix it in that moment and you know it's impacting them.

Yes. It's obviously the last thing that you want. So you know, there was a combination of things that that happened. I mean ultimately what happened was, you know, the app was working and people were coming in, but I mean we were not app developers so we were figuring this stuff out as best as possible. We built something to solve my problem, which seemed to be attractive to others, but not necessarily from a business model perspective. So the business model, which was a subscription model to more premium content, wasn't working as planned. Probably we would have got it to a place of working, but at that point, being a year and a half or two years in and having already invested a good chunk of change, we weren't naive to the fact that we weren't going to solve that next iteration in one shot and it wasn't going to cost what we're being quoted. It's probably going to be 10 times that. And the worst thing, we don't know how long it's actually going to take to get it to a point. It's not like I've submitted the first draft of the manuscript, we're working on the book, it's coming out this day. This was, I don't know when the app is going to come out to the point where we've reached that mark, where people come in and they actually stay in and subscribe, for example. And my brother in law was the same thing. He had two kids at home within the ages of, I think three and six at that time. So we weren't, we had families that we had to consider as well. We weren't just, you know, college kids essentially in a dorm room. Right. So the decision was made to, you know what, we can't fund this anymore. We're going to have to delete this. I obviously worked as hard as possible, so my brother in law continued on in his other business because that was the other thing we were, we were now taking a business that was profitable and doing well before we started this. And we're really putting that business in jeopardy because it was funding a lot of this. So he continued on there and I was left probably in the worst state of mind at that point because I no longer had my backup plan, which was to go back to that industry that I had left because it didn't feel right anymore. What felt right was to continue down this, this idea of preventative health and mental fitness that was just lighting me up. But it happened to be that one product we created, you know, didn't work out, but how do I continue? And that's when it got really, really dark because there was no plan for the first time in my life. And I was so jaded and fogged with that fear and anxiety that it was almost nearly impossible to think clearly until finally, I don't know what it was. It's probably combination of just, just really doing everything possible to be in the present moment and not get wrapped into that internal narrative. But I remembered I've interviewed at least 200 people on the podcast and for the app and they're asking a very different set of questions. They're not asking the questions that are, that I'm asking, that are driving me into the ground. They're asking, what do you want for your life? What's next? You know, how can I learn from this? And asking questions that will bring back the hope and the drive and whatnot. And that's when things flipped. And that's when I realized, you know what? I, I need to somehow continue this path of questions and show that this stuff is all accessible to any of us. And that's what led into the Next Path, which has been writing this book for the last couple of years.

Oh, my gosh. I so relate to your story, Mark.

I know you do.

Crazy. And my heart bleeds for you because I know how hard those dark days were. And for everyone listening, that's going through those tough times and trying to figure out that's the work, that's the grind. That's when you have to. To stay like, don't give up. And what you said, Mark, it was lighting you up. You knew that there was something here. And I. So I get what you're saying because we were so conditioned from corporate America and this is the path you're supposed to be on, and this is what success looks like. But when you actually taste and feel and connect with something that's bigger and more meaningful, but you don't know how to build it yet.

Yes.

Trusting and keep going. And you did. And now, because you kept going, you have a new book coming out.

Yes, I do. Thank you. It's, you know, it just feels. Here it is. I just got a physical copy of it yesterday, which feels very surreal. It's.

Did you cry? I cried when I first held my book.

It felt like it was. It felt like it was coming, but my 5 year old was there as well, and he just started asking the most ridiculous questions. Right. You know, where are all the pictures and all these things? It was so. It was super cute, but it just feels so aligned because it's just the work that I've been really. I mean, I'm obsessed with questions because again, you just heard. I mean, essentially questions saved me. And I've interviewed people where literally, I remember, I'll never forget this. It was a young guy, I think he was maybe 20, 21, right before the interview, sat down and his eyes were bloodshot and he just didn't look well. And I asked Ryan, are you sure you want to do this interview? Like, you seem like you're off or there's something up, and it's like, no, I absolutely need to do this. Because last night I checked myself into the suicide ward of the hospital. And if it wasn't for these tools and like journaling and meditate and these practices and tools that I know I have access to, that's what gave me the one second I needed to make a different decision, you know, and that's what happened to me too. And, you know, my mouth dropped and he said, no, so we have to do this interview. And I was changed at that point. Seeing, you know, I. I saw the power of Questions in my own life and others, but they literally can save a life. So that, you know, that's what fuels me every day, is that no matter where you're at in your journey, we can all leverage a well timed question. It's going to be different for all of us, but something will land and resonate and provide hopefully some clarity on where, where we want to be or what we desire. We can help kind of clear out whatever's looping in our head. So for me it's just to put out this content so that people can land there when they need it.

So what is personal Socrates? What does that even mean?

Yeah, well, that's. So this was where the good friend of mine that it turns out to be the founder and owner of Baron Fake, who's publishing this book, when I started talking about the idea, he brought up personal Socrates. Because Socrates or the Socratic method, most people know very high level, including myself, is oh, Socrates, guy that asks questions. There's a flow of questions. It's like question after question after question. And that's essentially the extent of what I knew about what, who Socrates was. And I realized though that through the study of questions and how I was using the practice and as well as others, everyone's going through this flow of you ask one big question like what do I want for my life? That then leads to the next question and the next question after that and it's just being curious and continuing down that line of question until you're past the surface level and you're at the core of what you're trying to discover. So the Socratic method, I mean, has been around for thousands of years, but it's been around for thousands of years, so it's hard to relate in modern times. So that's what this book is. It's a book of profiles of people that anyone would know, like Kobe Bryant, Maya Angelou and Jane Austen, people that I've done the research on and then their stories inspired the prompts in the profiles. And then there are people that I've interviewed like Naveen Jane or James Clear, Ryan Holiday and so forth, following the same format. And the idea is that when someone opens up the book, they're two to four page profiles. They're intended to either be your mental fitness in the morning, to take 10 minutes to just slow down and reflect or upgrade the questions and the practices that you're currently doing.

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Open the book and you look and follow your intuition. There might be something there like a loaded question like who am I for example? Or something from like Picasso, what is my art reflecting back? Which is a, you know, a bit of a parallel on the work that you're doing. What is that reflecting back in your life right now, in your journey and just slowing down to think about that so you can live a little bit more intentionally and, and essentially design the, the life that you want. So it's all through the narrative of, of other people so that you can relate to different jobs and different stories and different industries. But it all comes back to the questions and that's why it's called personal Socrates questions that will upgrade your life from legends and world class performers.

Is this a practice that you're still disciplined about today in your life?

100% yeah. Every, every morning there's, there's a consistent. In my life, what happens within that time, which is usually between 40 minutes and an hour varies, but there's always an element of reflection, whether it's journaling, just like I've been doing for the last 12 years, or taking a walk and thinking about a question or some sort of breath work, like something to prime and calm my mind as well, those two things. And then there's exercise to top it off. And I just try to mix it in with the routine, like as my coffee's brewing. I mean, it's ironic that Ryan Holiday's in the book and that he had such a huge impact in how it's structured because his book, the Daily Stoic, leans against my coffee machine and I read one passage every morning to just kind of reset my own mind to wait a second. Like the stuff that I might be thinking about or looping on, like this stuff has happened over and over again and people have dealt with it and handled it. And I think it just gives you the pause, right? Or like to steal some of your terminology, it allows you to pump the brakes, right? Pump the brakes and change the perspective. And then now you're starting the day, owning the day, because you've done this, right? It's not your phone, your email or some sort of message that's starting your day like you're starting the day in a, in a positive, typically positive and primed way.

It's so powerful. And I love this idea of asking ourselves the question, right? Because for me, for 14 years, I wasn't asking the question. I was just doing the thing, right? Like I was on the wheel, just, I was just going forward, but I wasn't. And that really, even in my life, I have to, when I think back to it, I'll never forget I had a mentor say to me, you need to pick your head up from this day to day grind that you're on for a minute and think what it is that you really want in life. Heather. And that conversation, which is really around what you're saying here, which is what questions might ask myself, I wasn't asking myself questions, I'm sure I was asking everybody else on my team questions and whatever, but I never stopped to thoughtfully apply that back to my life. So that, that's really, really powerful. Mark.

Oh, thank you. I mean, it's. I'm just following what I'm hearing from, from 10 years ago, essentially, and just, just staying down that path and hearing the questions that others are asking and trying to apply them within my own life. And it happened for the book too. It just to write. I had to follow those practices to write the book. I'll never forget. I mean, I remember one day I was, it was a full writing day and I just felt stuck. I mean, I Wasn't sure where I was going. All the regular normal, right, all the regular self doubt stuff that was coming up. And I remembered an interview that I had conducted with Cal Fussman, who I love Cal. Cal. He's so great, right? So Cal, I mean, legendary interviewer and writer for Esquire and whatnot. And just someone that puts you on the edge of your. Your seat when you're listening to him speak. And he left me with this thought of. He said, you know, out of all the things I've written, I've never started the article or the story or the book with a blank screen. If I didn't know what to say, I would go to sleep and I would write down a question on a notebook saying, what do I want to say? And then he'd go to sleep and he would wake up and the first thing he would do is pick up that notebook and answer the question. And so I did that as well, you know, and I went to sleep and what do I want to say? And I mean, I don't remember what the answer was, but it started the writing process, right? And just again, it gives instead of pushing flow through the process, Pause. Especially when you go to sleep, but your mind is working on this as you're sleeping. And then you wake up, refresh and you can start. It's just one question, right? We can use this for anything, whether it's presenting a project or a keynote or whatever. It works for any situation. And that's what, like that's where I'm questions? Yeah, exactly.

That is so powerful. And it's not something that I believe a lot of people are talking about because this is the first time I'm having this conversation on this podcast in two years. This hasn't come up. So I definitely think it's unique and different. Mark, where can people get the book? How can people get ahold of you?

Yeah, I'm pretty accessible. I mean, the personal website is behindthehuman.com and then you'll find the social handles and everything there at behind the Human. The book is available on Amazon and it's also available directly from Baron figg. So it's Baronfig.com and you'll see a books page there. I'm excited. I mean, shoot me messages if you're picking up the book or if you have questions that have changed your life. I mean, I'd love to hear what's working for all of you listening, because as you can probably tell, I'm slightly obsessed with really good quality questions.

Oh my gosh. And I'm so glad that you are, because this is something that now I am going to be implementing in my life, is asking myself questions and making that part of my journey. So thank you for. Thank you for teaching all of us. And thank you for writing Personal Socrates.

Thank you.

Until next week. Thank you, Mark. Keep creating confidence and I'll catch you next week. I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably, some something will happen. No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while.

You could miss it. I'm on this journey with me.