Basecamp → The Principles → HEARTBEAT (INTRO) → Part 1.1
To illustrate how I created the ‘Heartbeat’ for TDW, I’ll share a brief personal story. This narrative will serve as a framework, showing how the process might unfold differently for you.
For a long time, andrechaperon.com/ was a single-page affair.
I have been operating on tinylittlebusinesses.com since 2011. During this time (roughly 2011 to 2023), andrechaperon.com/ had no "ethos" in the sense that the site didn't give off a subtle "message" or vibe to visitors.
Here’s a ‘web archive’ version from January 9, 2019.
For newcomers, the page revealed little about me, offering only a link to TLB for those curious to learn more.
However, once on TLB, it was a completely different affair. On the other side of the click, there was a whole TDW to explore.
When I left TLB in mid-January 2023, my one-page website revealed very little about me personally. It said nothing about the values I care about or the vision I wanted to build for TDW.
This was my (new) starting point, reflecting your starting point as you journey through this training if, indeed, you’re starting from a blank canvas.
In late 2022, I worked with a writing coach, Rachel Jepsen, on a personal essay exploring ‘Why I Write.’ This experience was wonderfully enriching. It helped me peel back long-forgotten layers of my past and make sense of a puzzling question: Why, as a dyslexic, do I write for a living?
At the end of 2022, I published it on my one-page site, overwriting the previous uninspiring affair.
Why I Write (Dec 25, 2022), Wayback Machine
While working with Shawn at TLB/MMS, 2022 was drawing to a close, and we were excited about our 2023 plans. I intended to publish personal essays and short fiction on my site as a separate creative outlet.
But in mid-January 2023, everything changed. Unexpectedly — perhaps a sign of a mid-life crisis — I decided to leave TLB/MMS, making Shawn the brand’s sole owner and custodian.
Shawn and I had agreed not to tell our TLB/MMS audience until it made sense, and I wanted to respect Shawn’s wishes and concerns.
This left me in a somewhat weird situation: I couldn’t start building my new digital world on my personal domain for, as it turned out, about eight months.
I had already worked on another shorter marketing essay, The Invisible Conversation, so I published it near the end of January 2023, turning the home page into a traditional-style blog.
I knew I would rearrange everything later. But, for now, I needed something personal that communicated something about me, replacing the previous page that said very little.
Blog layout (Jan 31, 2023), Wayback Machine
Although I couldn’t visibly develop my personal site yet, I began creating the building blocks for its future structure and navigation (a principle of “wayfinding” we’ll explore later).
By the end of July 2023, anticipating Shawn’s announcement about my reduced involvement, I published my new home page.
On August 09 (2023), Shawn sent this email to warm our customers up to the announcement in the following newsletter. Then, on August 18, Shawn officially announced the news to everyone.
At the same time as the announcement, I published all the remaining pages I had been working on. The Wayback Machine has an archive from September 27, 2023 (although I published those pages two months earlier).
This chronology brings us to a point where I can describe how I started establishing a “Heartbeat” throughout the still-small website.