The Path to $100,000 ARR - What Flopped with Paid Ads

Source

Source	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yooDHvwG2s
Readwise URL	https://read.readwise.io/read/01kv42zs4qdegwwdzqv47hed8m
Readwise ID	01kv42zs4qdegwwdzqv47hed8m
Date	2025-08-22
Author	App Masters
Category	video
Cover image	https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0yooDHvwG2s/sddefault.jpg?v=68a4b520

[Music] [Music] What is up app nation? It is Steve P. Young, founder of appmasters.com, and we’ve got an amazing, amazing interview for you guys where these guys went from creating videos for Empanada Company to now applying those concepts, those

marketing strategies into building a Clear 30, and I’m going to tell you more about Clear 30 in just a bit. But let’s welcome in Thatcher and Hatcher. Where Asher and Thatcher, where is the video? Here we go. [Music] You guys are so funny. I can see you

guys in the back in the back seat when the video is playing. Welcome to the show, guys. >> Thank you very much. Yeah. Oh, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the uh you know, flattering introduction, Steve. >> No, you guys have done amazing work. And the way this all happened was I was speaking with Asher a while I don’t know a couple of months ago and I was he’s like hey after you hit a certain revenue point why don’t you come on and share that journey and so you guys able to do that and then now we were able to schedule all that stuff. So congratulations guys to >> yeah thanks that was our goal that kept us going and even just that first

meeting with you when you were telling us we were we we originally met about like Indie App Santa which was just super helpful in terms of getting that original growth. Um, but just, you know, hearing what you were saying about like it was just very inspirational and definitely kept us grounded for our point up to here. >> Yeah, that’s awesome, man. Congrats. So, I want to tell the audience a little bit about Clear 30. It’s a science-based act app that helps you people take a 30-day break from weed with daily support, symptom relief tools, and accountability. And the thing that I

really liked about you guys was you combined your social first marketing with so and then you built the product. So, talk to me about that a little bit. Yeah. So the actually the building of the product was really interesting. So we’re two, you know, 22 year olds like working on this, but we kind of had a secret sauce which was our co-founder was a 50 something yearear-old clinician clinical psychologist and top um basically addiction specialist in the nation. And he came to us with this idea of like, hey, we want to build out a text program texting somebody every day

while they’re taking a break from weed. because he saw this huge problem with all of his data. Like there’s, you know, as weed gets legalized, everyone’s getting cannabis use disorder. It’s affecting a lot of people and nobody’s going to treatment for it. So, he saw this big white space in the market and he wanted to really start to help people with it. So, we built out this text program together. Um, we were like, it was really fun and then we were like, let’s just do an app together. Let’s take, you know, some consumer magic and really go deep into that app world, but then apply like a rigorous scientific evidence-based

uh magic to it as well and combine those two worlds for Clear 30. >> Yeah, definitely. I think there were probably a lot of mistakes early on, but it was very fun to learn and it’s brought us to where we are now and so we’re excited to be here. >> All right. Well, you paired this awesome Figma file. You want to get through this? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. We can run through a little bit about who we are and you know, I guess, you know, what we’re >> do, where we’re from and everything. So, you want to start off? >> Yeah. Yeah. This is us. Look, if you guys hit us up here, we’ll have some sauce for you guys. Everything we talk about, you know, we want to help you guys as much as possible. So, we’ll have

some documents showing some of our AB tests and some things that have worked. >> And also for a for reference, right? I’m Thatcher. And >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. >> Let’s Let’s not skip. >> Okay, let’s go. Okay. You’re Thatcher. >> I’m Thatcher. >> A Even my mom will get it mixed up sometimes, so no worries. >> It sounds so close, too, which makes it harder. >> It’s a huge problem. It’s probably top three problems in the company right now. Fred, he was able to help us secure really lead getting an NIH grant which

is super exciting uh thing for the app which gave us a lot of runway through the SBIR through um and then you know he even brought it to the White House and did some presenting for them which was cool. >> Yeah. So that’s like a good you know overview of like who you know what our company looks like in terms of like why we’re why we’re here in the first place. Um I would like to think that we’re a little bit funny and kind of smart and kind of stupid and maybe smoked a little bit too much weed at some point. Um but you know towards the beginning we really liked different kind of apps and so from there we decided that you know as Asher

said from the text message program and a lot of guidance from uh Dr. our our other co-founder um we started to build clear 30 which you know as Steve as you said is like a sciencebacked program to help people stop smoking weed very community based. We have like an on-site clinician. Um, and from there we >> we failed. >> We failed a lot. >> We thought, “Oh my gosh, this should be so easy. You make an app and you run TikTok ads and you print money, guys. Everyone should do this.” I think we might saw one LinkedIn post that says, “Guys, you should make apps.” And we thought this was going to be so easy. But then, you know,

we put a dollar in to the ad machine after we made our app and we only got about 60 cents back and we’re like, what is going on with us? >> Sad face. That made us feel not good. We didn’t like feeling that way. Um but so you know through this through meeting lots of great people you know great mentors um >> great podcast diving into like the whole app ecosystem and really just learning like what it takes to make a good app what it takes to monetize we started failing less um so you know we went from this quarter um we actually from May to

August now we’ve 15x our like impressions 4x our leads 6x our revenue and we went from losing 23% after the Apple tax on money we’re spending in May to, you know, making 24.5% on the money we’re spending in August, which has allowed us to continue to scale and just put money into the ads machine and get that little carrot stick uh growth in terms of the ARR. So, >> and so from there, we’ve been able to hit 100K. And I will say also like while a lot of maybe what we’re going to talk about with the onboarding and ads is a

little bit revenue driven, um it’s not totally like our mission in general and overall is really to help people and help people who are struggling with weed. Um, and we really see people converting as like a proxy for us getting people to buy into the program. We know that the program works. It does cost money to run. We have an on-site clinician. So, there’s a lot of different parts. And so, when we talk about revenue and like AR and stuff like that, it’s not purely from a we want to make money perspective for ourselves, but more so we want to make the product better and be able to get it out to more people and be able to help more people. So, just like a little bit of a preface

to, you know, >> we’re not evil money grubbers as much as we like getting our ARR up. >> That that is it, man. And that that’s one of the reasons why I say you’re running a business, right? Like to help more people, you need to make money and make sure that you go. So you should never feel bad for doing that. You got we got some good people coming in. Ebrook says, “Best episode incoming right now.” Pablo, good. Good to see you, Kevin. Good to see you. >> Michael, yes, we were running late. Okay, it’s H’s fault. Okay, right here. It’s this guy’s fault.

That’s okay. >> H and I are good. Let’s go. So these you guys you’re hype, man. >> So cool. >> The rap tech says, “Love the Apple simplistic native feel.” So congrats to you guys on building a really cool UIUX app, too. >> It is, but um yeah, >> but yeah, um we Oh, what’s up, Turbo? Um >> you got some friends here. It would be very very helpful to just in general

like I I don’t want other people building apps to fall into the same thing that we found like fell into which was the big our big pitfall and why our paid ads flopped was that we didn’t build a monetizable app and we worked so hard on the app building all these features and we weren’t really talking to our users. We were just building what we thought they would want and then when it came to time to download we couldn’t run ads we couldn’t grow. All the people we got in through marketing weren’t converting. So this was kind of our journey and this onboarding and these ads was kind of our journey to understand what went wrong there and

then fix that. >> Yeah. And it is somewhat of a little bit of a double-edged sword in that like I think to a certain extent it has been a little bit helpful that we spent so much time on the product kind of not even worrying about the monetization because we didn’t know what we were doing and then we ended up with a a good product that could kind of stand on its own and you know didn’t have to rely on that. but uh definitely was hindering our growth and led to a lot of uphill battles early on that, you know, we’ve come to learn is probably not how we would approach it a second time around. >> I love it, man. Great insight there, Braden. Yeah, most people are on YouTube. Oh, very love this episode.

Matt says, “Just me and Matt on LinkedIn.” Yeah, sorry, Braden. Most people on YouTube. >> Let’s get into the onboarding stuff because you said that was the broken piece. >> Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Um, I would say we spent like the last I would say like two, three, four months really just only focused on the onboarding. Um, like we said before that we did a lot of work on the product which made it so that we could kind of have it stand on its own. But the onboarding was really the broken part. It was essentially just like a whole quiz of questions and no reason for people to come in and even pay. Um,

and at one point we didn’t even have a paywell. So it’s like of course we’re not going to make any money off of that. But um, yeah. So this is our current whole onboarding and it’s in its glory. If you know, if people want this Figma as well, if you hit us up on LinkedIn or Twitter, we’ll send it to you so you can get the whole onboarding. Um, but I kind of wanted to break down uh like the top I would say like three AB tests that we ran um when we were doing our onboarding. Um, which I think uh the the biggest one or not the biggest one, but the top three I think were really important to us was um the first one was really diving into the users pain points and their dream outcome. So that’s something that like we’ve come to uh

really uh value a lot in kind of displaying our product and what we can do. I think before we really dove into this, it was really just, you know, the user would answer some questions, we would get an idea of their weed usage, and all this is also integral to like the usage of the app, but we would do all that. Um, and then sort of just like restate the facts, like, oh, hey, you like using it through Bud versus Cart, uh, and you think that it’s impacting your life negatively right now. Um, so it was very much just restating the facts. It was very feature- driven as well as like, oh, we’re going to help you through daily messages, video

journaling, you know, stuff like that of like showing what exactly the app has. And also it’s it was very overwhelming in the beginning. Um and so this was like uh this left side is a little bit more of like our previous onboarding. And so from that we really tried to improve every aspect of that. And so >> yeah, sure. Would you mind zooming in a little bit more? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So >> yeah, definitely. So the the purple slide is a little bit of like you know showing what um people are kind of what they answered when they first went through the question. So sort of like a spitback page like oh you smoke this putt per week. Trying to highlight that painoint. Not doing a very good job at

that. Um, and then from there kind of highlighting, oh, we have them select their goals. This is where, you know, we can take you and we’re going to do it through these features. We have sciencebacks content. We have support tools and an accountability buddy. And generally it definitely wasn’t horrible. Um, but from, you know, there there were some issues with it. And so from that, uh, we kind of shifted focus and tried to attack each of those individually. Um, and so with that, uh, one of them was just really providing more info to the user rather than just spitting back what they already gave us. showing them a comparison in terms of how they relate to um the people who smoke that are

their age. So, showing them how much more or less they smoke than people their age. Um showing them how much money they would spend over the period of a month uh if they continued their usage like this. Um and we also shifted a lot more to it being like future driven rather than feature driven. Um so, you know, showing them, hey, this is what you can reach and you know, how are we going to do that? Well, we’re going to make it easy to get there. It’s been proven by a ton of people. Um we’re going to help you in the early days. And so really showing them what that uh life could be like after quitting weed rather than saying, “Hey, we’re going to give you daily messages.” Um and the last part I think is making it more

narrative. So, you know, there are different slides where it’s literally just words saying, “This is where we’re going to take you. Um this is where, you know, you were before.” Uh instead of just throwing it all at them at once, like, you know, having a little bit more time with it. And you know, the goal isn’t to get people through the onboarding as quick as possible. It’s to keep them engaged and make it more of a conversation and narratively flowing. One one thing just to back up on that a little of the importance of onboarding is I know you might have seen like just the general industry data but then even us looking at our data like people make the decision of whether they want to pay for your app or go all in within the first five minutes. It’s not like

they’ll use it for a few days and then decide and a lot of founders they you know are messing with their app they’re building features and they neglect the first five minutes. You should like as a rule I think one to one you should put as much time into the first five minutes alone as the entire rest of the app. So what we did as well was back up and look at things from a sales perspective. Like we took sales courses. We thought about these things and really just digging in psychologically. What are your pain points? What are you uncomfortable with your life? Like making you admit this stuff to yourself and then painting a picture of where you want to get to and

then telling you you know clear 30 fills that gap from where you are those pain points to your dream outcomes I think can be very very helpful. Yeah. >> So were there questions right before this Asher? >> Yeah there were. So there were definitely questions like uh before it though it kind of starts off asking them about their goals, what their name is. Yeah. Um at the very bottom underneath all this we have the entire onboarding flow but yeah we ask them about their goals, what they want to do like after clear 30, what they want to achieve with Clear 30. Um and then throughout that period kind of reaffirm some of those things. But I would say that the part that was just shown is is um the I would

say the meat of uh our onboarding narratively and persuasion wise is really showing them okay we got this information on you uh from you and kind of want to present it in a way that is very clear and shows you how our product can help you better your life generally. I think that you know in a lot of sales it’s like some people approach it as like hey you want this thing you want this thing like let me convince you why you want this thing. Whereas like for us a lot of it was like okay let’s actually figure out what their problems are like really being a problem finder and figuring out okay where do you have issues in your life what do you want to

improve and how can we actually help you do that and what can we do to help you do that >> I think this is the best application I know Russell I think Brunson is his name he talked about like the dream outcome in one of his books the traffic secrets and I don’t know if you guys adopted that from him but I really liked the philosophy and it’s it’s an a great example of painoint and leading to the dream outcome. >> Yeah, we really one thing we did as well was we like broke down how we think users might perceive value. We use this thing called like the value equation. We

can also send that later, but um just thinking about showing off dream outcome and then making it clear that they’re likely to achieve their dream outcome and then also showing them that it’s going to not require as much effort and sacrifice as they think to get there and there will be less time delay. And you can see this even with guys like Cali. They’ll consistently remind people, hey, you’re going to reach your dream outcome faster than you think you might. people lose weight in the first few days, in the first few weeks. Um, and I think there is something to be said for looking at um, you know, the whole industry, looking at the people who do do it best, the people who are

converting, Cali, Iris were converting ahead, Twitter, um, and kind of modeling, not like making your own, but seeing what works and watching podcasts like yours and even talking to people like Jacob Rushman who are like onboarding specialists. Like we booked a whole call and he just roasted our onboarding. >> It was super helpful. But yeah, super helpful to just keep learning and pulling all these things and you’ll be able to make something that converts. >> Yeah. >> Well, Turbos loves your app. He says, "Clear 30 was so helpful in helping me and my circle reduce our unnecessary weed consumption. The gamification was

intuitive and enticing." >> Thank you, Turbo. >> We sent We sent this to some users that we’ve been uh testing back and forth with. >> That’s amazing, man. And then Michael Oman says, “I love this run through and journey as well.” Yeah, we’re trying to we’re just trying to share. Yeah, we love Michael Lockerman. We’re just trying to share >> We’re just trying to share as much as we can because we messed up a lot. Want other people to not mess up as much or even if they do, you know, they learn from it, but be able to, you know, kind of get that head start that maybe we didn’t have. >> Yeah. >> Um, >> Ashro, back to your Figma.

Awesome. Yeah. So, this is another AB test we did. This is another reason why I really like this like tearing down other people’s onboardings and seeing what works for them. We have implemented a fair trial policy. So we were getting reviews that are people like the app but you know we people are uncomfortable we do an entire you know onboarding and then spring it on them do you guys want to pay for this they might feel like their time is wasted so we were going through onboardings we saw a heads onboarding and we saw something that was like you know hey just so you know guys while you’re doing the onboarding this

is going to be a paid app and we were like >> at least I was like dude this is never going to work like why would you ruin it and tell people that it’s going to be paid like this is like a crazy idea but then thatcher was like >> yeah I think I think it was Well, we might as well test it. I think that the way that we approached our onboarding was never out of intuition, but more so out of how can we collect data on this? How can we AB test this and give 50% of our users this page and 50% not. And so after testing that, this was the page that we put in in terms of, you know, relating mental clarity is based on whatever goals they selected. So taking their dream outcome and I think the the

part that works really well about this page is anchoring it to a certain price of something that they’re used to. Um, >> anchoring it to a pain point and anchoring it to something that they don’t really want to do anymore. So saying, “Hey, this app is going to cost you the same amount that two pre-rolls does and it’s free for you to try early on.” Um, so really not saying, "Hey, be ready to spend money, but more so like, yeah, making it clear, yes, this is a paid thing there, you can try it for free, but in comparison to other things in your life, like that you want to get rid of like smoking weed and smoking pre-rolls and stuff like that, it’s going to cost um less than that or

around the same amount." Um, and actually like not only did it decrease the amount of reviews and negative reviews they were getting, but it actually increased conversion by 3% because it really builds trust with the users. I think that that’s really important. >> I think people think about value, value, value, but sometimes just being clear and building up that trust like we’ve seen in so many different parts of the app like just works better. >> Yeah. And I would say >> I think it’s a brilliant screen that like honestly this is great. I love it. >> Thank you. Yeah, very much appreciate that. Yeah. um definitely wasn’t you know definitely heavy inspiration from

ahead and it definitely could use work as well like everything in our onboarding is not final like we’re still working on it to this day like as of today we’re doing more work on like oh how do we take how much money they spend into it but this is just our experience so far yeah >> um >> then we got our third one here of our our big three probably biggest this is actually our biggest highest leverage test and I would urge people you know think about the points of highest leverage in the business I think that payw wall is where you know a few changes can completely transform your business and we saw that for ourselves And for context as well, this payw wall,

we have them go through the onboarding, kind of ask them questions, re articulate their pain point, show them where they can do, where they can be, give them some actual value as well through like personalized feedback. Um, and then they’re shown this payw wall that kind of explains uh the free trial policy for Clear 30. The general payw wall originally, uh, >> this is very standard. Yeah. >> Yep. Heavy. It’s a it’s called the Blinkist trial setup. I mean, I’m sure that other people have come on here and, you know, talked about it as well. But the idea is that really showing users, hey, today you’re not you’re just going to sign up for a free trial. In two days, you’re going to be reminded and in

three days your billing starts. Uh, and it’s called the Blinkist trial. It’s from an app called Blinkist that did this and they saw major success in it and they did so well that Apple actually took it and put it as like breast standards on their website. >> This like it didn’t work very well for us. Like we thought, you know, like this one page, right? We want you to try clear 30 for free. I mean, this stuff works. They were even, you know, like I think Dualingo did a million AB tests and saw that 0.00 was like just people loved clicking on that and it really felt free to them. But this, you know, we were showing features again in this, you know, we’re showing off our app. We

had a whole carousel and we were like, “Oh, they’re going to download our app. They’re going to want to see >> they love features.” And what we realized after, you know, we were only at 20% conversion on that payw wall. We realized and this is still, you know, an earlier variation. We have a lot of work to do. But when we switched it and I don’t think we have the full screenshot here. Oh, there. Oh, here. Right. >> So, it’s a scroll. You can scroll through. It’s like this is all one page that you can scroll through. >> And this shows the exact basically what’s going to happen day by day in our program. And one of the kickers is that

we have dream outcomes here, like even scientific ones that are interspersed. So, you know, you’re seeing the work you’re going to be able to do and then you’re going to be able to see, you know, by day two your brain starts to reset, your memory starts coming back. Um, so you basically, and we borrowed this from Bible chat, we saw that they basically showed out what’s going to happen throughout the course of your trial. >> And I think that there are a couple reasons that it works. I think one of them is like we said like shifting from that feature mindset that I think a lot of founders probably are in is like they build all these cool features and they want to show them off, but like really

people have a different perspective coming in from an Instagram ad. They don’t really care. So, I think shifting to that future perspective, but also um showing that like >> being realistic about change, like we can’t say that tomorrow you’re going to be done with weed forever, cuz that’s not accurate. And people know that that’s not accurate. Even if we said that, people wouldn’t believe it. I think really showing like, hey, it might it’s going to take seven days, probably more than that. The app is called Clear 30. But like just showing the first seven days and being very transparent and kind of building that trust similar to the fair trial policy slide, I think is is really powerful. And this this

like this one change that we did had a 50% increase from this. So we were making 20 we had a 20% conversion rate. We changed it to this and we had a 30% conversion rate. And like that’s one of the things that that can genuinely really change a business. So like I would continue to you know optimize your onboarding if you’re someone who hasn’t or your payw wall specifically if you’re someone who hasn’t. >> And shout out super wall as well. Really great. They have that’s how we run all this. It’s basically price testing. We can change it out. AB test all super easy to use. Um, so yeah, this is not a

paid pot. >> Guys, you guys went from that three screen prompt. Is that what you guys did? And replaced it with it’s not about willpower. And then what happens after you hit try for 00 the >> Apple We just changed the first slide. So it’s still a three slide thing. The opacity is down on the other ones because those stayed the same. The only thing we changed is that first slide that people are >> Why don’t you try 30 days for free? Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. I got it. >> That’s brilliant, man. I love it. >> Yeah. One small thing as well is that we have like a onetime offer as well. So if

you uh go right here, um we have like you know a lot of apps different have this. Cali has it. I believe that Twitter has it as well. But you know if they go to try and purchase uh and then decide not to do it, we give them a sort of onetime offer and discount to be like hey we still want you to use this and showing them that. So that’s been something cool that we’ve implemented as well. >> Got it. Love it. >> This is brilliant. >> Um yeah. So that’s like the the the overall of like the onboarding flow. Yeah. Below is our our whole onboarding. Um and then also like just our general approaches like after going through this for a couple months I would say um how

our approach has been going through onboarding is definitely like Asher said talking to experts like Jacob Rushman um Sebastian Steph he does more ad marketing type side of things um so doing that uh and then also being able to look at other onboardings as well and really seeing like what works with other onboardings like ahead and Twitter and just breaking down those Figmas um and then also talking to your users and collecting data on them. So, like at first we weren’t even collecting data, but this is something that we implemented like uh a week ago and we have a ton of responses. And the idea is that when a user goes to delete the app,

there’s a popup asking them not to delete the app. Um, and so there are a lot of different apps that do this with like, oh, maybe you get a discount, maybe you just submit feedback, but we kind of like decided to combine those two and say, you can have a whole free subscription to this app if you fill out this survey. Um, and we now have a ton of responses coming in to this survey from people specifically who didn’t go through like who went through the onboarding and didn’t like that it was paid or didn’t complete on the payw wall. So, it’s the exact cohort of people that we want to get information

from to continue to improve your onboarding. Um, and the survey itself definitely needs work as well. Well, I mean like that’s something that you know we have to constantly be improving the questions, but definitely a really good um source that we sort of like stumbled upon um to get data and user feedback on your onboarding. >> I love it. All right, we I’m going to go through this. The I’m not even I don’t even know how to say that. Okay, I feel like your onboarding will help me improve mine. And then Michael, he loves you guys. Those those fonts are are they

customs? Lovely rounded. Um the fonts maybe the 30 the 30 is like a a logo. Yeah, the 30 is like a custom font. Everything else is Lex end though. Um for the for our inapp stuff. Um >> I think he was digging the the it’s not about willpower and all the other stuff that you guys have going on too. >> I heard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s all uh that’s all Lex end. Um that’s our Lex company. >> Alexend. Is that what it’s called? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Nice. I love it. Okay.

Mike L says, “Was it always paid on boarding right off the bat or did it develop into a paid program?” >> See, this is something we wanted to bring up. Um, we were, you know, we were premium for a while. Um, actually, yeah, like we were premium up until like the last maybe four or five months and, you know, just wasn’t working. And then, like lots of other apps we’ve seen, when we made that switch and we flipped it, we actually were talking with another app founder and he’s like, "You guys are idiots. Like, how dare you make a premium app? it’s never like oh okay okay we’ll try it and then we tried it

and you know everything like so many other stories just completely shot up um and then we’re like okay now let’s just iterate our onboarding so much this is how to make money we kind of figured it out in the end we would love to go back to premium in some way shape or form like I feel like you know we’re we’re giving up a lot of growth in certain ways by having this paid model and part of our goal is you know figuring out ways to balance the experience to give out more and more value without just hard payw walling everything >> definitely and we also want to do that as well with people who maybe don’t even want to purchase our app, but being able

to provide value even to the people who end up not using our app. So like being able to give people like a meditation pack for if they don’t have the money to afford our app, being able to give them meditations for free where they can use it whenever they want or like you know a supplement finder where they can select things and find supplements that might help them. So um yeah, our our goal is not it’s not like oh hard payable is really good because we get a ton of money. Ideally, everyone would use this forever. For right now, in terms of how much uh how much we’re growing and what we need to sustain ourselves, it is important. But yeah, like you said, in the future, hopefully we don’t even have to do a pay wall. We can make money some

other way. >> No, I love the hard pay wall and especially with apps like this and the way you guys have sort of done it with this. I would add this. I love this especially as a balance with the hard payw wall too. >> You’re like, “Hey, don’t delete. Just give me some feedback and we’ll we’ll make we’ll give it a tip for you for free.” So, I really love that. >> Yeah. All right, Ollie. We’re not even done yet. What do you guys think? We’re not even done yet, right? We haven’t gotten to the ad side of things, Ollie. >> Best onboarding, best app. There you go. >> Thank you, >> thanks, Ethan.

Best onboarding. All right. >> All right, let’s get into the adset things. >> Oh, shoot. >> Nice. Nice. >> All right, we’re still live. We’re getting some uh >> Yeah, we were getting a little >> We’re getting some choppy choppy, but we’re good. Looks like we’re back. >> Okay, awesome. So, these are some stuff that’s worked for us in ads. Really interesting. Like Tik Tok ads and meta ads are just so different in like the um you know the people that like them, which ones perform well. It’s just been shocking to me. Um this is one that worked very well. We’ve learned skits

can work very well with the caveat that you need to show the app. Sometimes, you know, I’m a I’m a natural comedian in a way. Slightly less funny than a natural comedian, but I still like to make lots of jokes and I can get lost in the actual skit of things and forget that I’m actually making an advertisement. So, um I think you know like just blatantly showing the ad no matter what and doing it. This is one of my dad where he’s talking uh in a Gen Z lingo and he’s asking me like, “Yo, bro, get off the pen, dude.” Um that one did very well. Um having a girl um always works

better than having me for some reason. I’m not sure. I’ve been trying to pin this one. I think I might have to move to Turkey and get some, you know, facial reconstruction, but I I’m not sure if it get ugly. Um but showing an app, having a girl works very well. Um, I’ve been looking for already viral videos in our niche and we’ve we’ve been doing that a lot. So, even just looking up, you know, we went through the niche, what’s been viral, and a lot of these stitch videos were doing very well. And then we found already viral stitch videos and we just, you know, take this, it’s a guy talking about living life that’s not dependent

on weed, and then I just, you know, talk about that and just go into a response to that. So, it’s already, you’re already shielded by that virality, and you can just build up, you know, the hook. >> Yeah. I would say one thing as well that we’ve noticed is that the aut the authenticity goes a really long way. Like there are ones where maybe, you know, we’re acting a little bit more and it’s kind of maybe a little bit clear that we’re putting on a character and those seem to not perform as well as like ones like this where we’re stitching videos and Asher is just talking blatantly to the camera about his experience and it it comes off as

very authentic because it is authentic. Like we’re not making things up. It’s all very real. And I think that people really connect to that rather than saying like, you know, the skits do work well, especially if it’s done well. But um you know definitely just like not necessarily putting on a character all the time that that authenticity can really shine through and people really notice that. >> Yeah. Um >> hey Asher is are these skits are they running as ads or are you just putting posting them as organic? What are you guys doing? >> Posting them on organic seeing how they do and then running like the favorite ones as ads and then we’ll see we’ll track basically if they’re working well.

But we have a mix of we’re running a mix of organic and um paid ads. Some of the more like less converting ones and more just value giving ones will be just be straight organic. >> Okay, got it. >> Um, and then types here. So, people really like like we’ve learned people really like like self-quantification. And this is something a lot of apps have in their onboarding. And even like you could see Sebastian Steph, one of these marketers was telling me about you know the astrology app. I don’t know if you’ve seen it that’s been like blowing up in the woods like hey you’re this type or this type and people love this

sort of thing in the onboarding. Um, so just talking about, hey, like building kind of the lore of like these are the cannabis use patterns. Are you a first thing smoker, a creative spark seeker? And then diving in and just keep hammering seeing what people are talking about in the comments and seeing which ones people say they are. And then making videos specifically for these niches can help grab different people. So that that has all been really interesting on the Tik Tok side. >> Oh, I love that. I will say also like we do it to that to a certain extent in our onboarding where we’re like comparing their like usage amount to the average

person their age. Um we don’t do it as in depth of like saying hey this is the kind of weed smoker that you are. Um but is definitely something that we’re you know thinking about AB testing in the future. And while there are a little bit less intent like if we told people to come use our app because it’s a quiz they come in with a little bit less intent than if we say hey come use our app if you need to stop smoking weed. Um and so like the percentage of people who convert is a little bit lower but you know as we improve our onboarding and you know just make it bettering them. We can bring in more of those less intent people as it kind of gets better.

Can we get back to the the types the eight cannabis use? Is that a is that an ad? Where was this? >> So this is on our Tik Tok. We’ve just ran it as an ad and it’s a carousel so people can they there’s like different pictures and then the end is a call to action and then we’ve been making not only like we’ve been making organic content and paid ads targeting these types and talking about them. Um and we’ve this is something we picked up from one of our competitors. We won’t say but like looking at people say like meta ads library you’re seeing people

are running type ads and they feel like the call to action to a quiz works better like sometimes than you know a call to action >> like just the like a foot in the door just starting little and then convincing them from there versus asking this big ask of quit weed or take a break all at once. >> I love it. >> Did you guys know that there was this eight patterns or was that through was that doc? >> No, I just made it up. >> Okay. All right. for being honest. >> We we made it up, but at the same time,

we’ve, you know, dedicated the last year and a half to our life of talking to people who are smoking weed all day, every single day, browsing. >> We put in, you know, 10,000 hours of reps of just diving into this world. So, it wasn’t too hard. >> I love this comment. I’m an adult and I don’t drink. Leave me alone. >> This is the only This is my way. >> I’m adult that doesn’t drink. Are you that type of smoker? No, this is something we do deal with on Tik Tok. Like there’s so much um

backlash to people being told, you know, like stops because of, you know, there’s so much history of the government just being like complete jerks and like putting people in jail for smoking weed that like there’s a lot of emotion around this. In the end, we’re just trying to help people, but it’s very hard to convey that in every single piece of content that we’re not anti-weed. We don’t think it’s bad. We just want to help the people who are struggling. Exactly. >> Um but, you know, it’s it is what it is. um on Instagram. >> Thanks for being honest, Asher. Because I loved it, too. I love

it. Was it Dr. Fred? No, but it was just >> a lot of our stuff inapp is actually by Dr. Fred that we did make up a lot. I have to go through him, but >> it’s veryinical. The ads is a little bit different. >> Yeah, the ads are a little bit less clinical. >> The app is very evidence-based. >> I love it. >> Uh yeah, on Instagram, we found more serious stuff. Interviews, having people’s faces just work a lot more. having less like you can just pull off a lot of lazy stuff kind of like this of like you know on Tik Tok people I think expect a slightly higher uh bar of quality on Instagram. They like videos,

they like engagement >> and that human connection as well of being like oh this is another human telling me about their life and it applies to my life rather than like oh haha funny video. I like this. >> Yeah. So we have like skits too and then one thing was interesting testimonials. We have user interviews and every once in a while we’ll have a user who’s in New York and we’ll just be like, “Hey, can we pay you a little bit of money to go and film you talking about the app and you know, testimonials just like in all advertising just works very well.” So that’s worked on Instagram. >> Yeah. >> Um >> none of these are AI. I mean, I guess you’re going to get to AI, but the ones

that you’ve showed off so far, are they all just like real humans? >> So, yes, we tested some AI. Um, in terms of if we have a bunch of different niches and we have like one video and we want different hooks and we’re like, you know, someone for a drug test, an old person, a young person, and we test like the AI video of somebody. I’m very um and I I do think there’s a lot of opportunity for AI ads. I think it does people can tell the BS as of right now, 2025. And I think for me, I haven’t seen the AI ads perform as well in the way that we’ve been doing it with AI humans

because I think it erodess a lot of trust. And for something like this where it’s like you’re trusting someone to change your life and you’re putting your health in their hands, I think, you know, you need that trust to be there versus another app, >> right? It’s not just like a fun music app where it’s like, “Oh, here’s a fun game made with.” It’s like, “Okay, cool. I’m entertained by this.” It’s like people, this is a real problem that people are having in their life and they want to feel seen and understood and not like, you know, we’re just making videos of AI people. >> But trust me, we’ve tried. We’ve tried. >> How are you guys finding these, you know, having a girl versus you, Hasher? Like, how are you finding these people?

So, uh, oh, I just like, you know, go to my friends and I’ll be like, “Hey, can I pay you $30 for me to just put I just put this girl, she’s a friend. I just, you know, brought her to my, uh, front yard. I had her just stand there and then took a bunch of her videos of her pointing in the sky and just like say like doing this stuff and then I’ll later fill in like, oh, what words do I want? What hooks do I want?” And I just have a ton of B-roll of her. >> Yep, definitely. >> Oh, that’s it. >> Us filming ourselves as well. Like, this is like Asher’s dad. Asher’s in the video. I’m in the video. very much like

grassroots which I think also um can lead to more trust as well >> and that’s another thing which helps I think it helps when the same people who are marketing are the people working on product and the people working on the app because this is some when we talked about our user demographic data like we use that data not just to sell people but like on the app and why they should convert but and not just to make their experience better but to understand our customer and who we’re marketing to. So we break down you know the stuff they’re telling us and we correlate that to conversions. So what users are converting into the app? Which what uh

triggers do they have? What are their goals? So we know our users very well in terms of like most volume and most conversion that we know that people are seeking mental clarity. They’re looking for control over weed and we know that those are the people we should be talking to. So we double down on you know our actual conversion metrics and our metrics from that onboarding. >> Yeah. I would say like at the very least like through your onboarding if you’re running ads and not necessarily getting a onetoone maybe you’re getting like 0.5 to one or something like that like there’s still value to be gotten from it other than like cash flow whether that’s

like information from your users seeing how your onboard is going collecting data from them seeing where to put things. So like no matter you know AB testing different things and seeing how they convert. So just because you might not be getting onetoone immediately, it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily um you know doing horribly because you are kind of failing but you get to learn a lot from those failures and learn a lot from that data and be able to apply it for the future. So I think that it is defining definitely that takes a lot of work and a lot of iterations to go through and it’s not just going to be like oh unless you’ve done it before it’s not going to be like oh snap boom cool onboarding now I get one you know two to one ad spend but um yeah

definitely definitely something to learn from everything in it. >> This is some of our process here too. Um, part of what we do is we look at the user demographics. Then we go to the meta ads library and we can, you know, just look at competitors, look at inspiration. We knew we uh we wish we knew about this earlier. And another great thing, this is a tip. If you want, you can get an offshore like graphic designer or just a graphic designer in general for pretty cheap and just have them all day look through your competitor’s meta ads and then make static images for that, you know, and um, which can be really cool. Um, then

we then we cook up, we make some ads, and then we see which ones win, and then we double down on which ones work. Um, as you can tell, Thatcher is more of the designer. Um, but that’s generally our process. And then our process for making some of these videos, one of the things that was a big barrier for me is I felt weird making good videos, talking to the screen, seeming like like in terms of content. something that um somebody um told me who’s really really interesting media guy um he’s like Michael Sicken but he told me that you know what he

does was take notes um if he has an idea throughout the day he’ll go into the notes app or anything and just record an audio note um just like hey I have this idea for the ad this this this then he’ll put that audio note into a GPT that’s trained to speak like him think like him and create engaging ads or content and then you know this is what I added on to this is take that script and then put it in the Cap Cut teleprompter record and then you can edit it later and it makes the idea to recording process very smooth and very simple. >> You can put out

Yeah. >> One thing that I think I also want to mention that I’ve just like came to my head while we were doing this is like something that we’ve seen very successful as well is being very specific with the hook that we’re giving. So, um, like when we’re talking about static ads, like you could have a picture of a piece of weed, or something that’s performed really well for us is like a picture of like a crack wire, which is like something that unless you are really a stoner addicted to weed, >> you’re not going to cut up your Android charger to connect side A to side, charge your cart, >> but that’s something that like they that people who use carts and are addicted to weed like we’ll notice and be like, "Oh,

wait. This is something that I don’t see in every single video." Um, in addition like the video call outs as well of being like, “Oh, are you someone who smokes weed?” versus like, are you someone who wakes up at 3:00 a.m. in your mom’s basement and then you turn on the TV and drink a Red Bull and then decide, “Oh, it’s time to hit my cart and then I hit it five times.” Like, stretching that out over a long period of time really gets people towards the beginning as well. Um, which is really cool and something that I just remembered. >> How did you come up with that that hook like >> I’m just me talking to honest. I mean some of it’s probably being around a he talks a lot as well but uh yeah just

like just think the top of your head because I think a lot of it is like while you should rely on data a ton like early on I think really having faith in yourself and your intuition is really important like you know if you have an idea for something and you know the user base like we are people that used to smoke weed as well so we know the experiences that are in that realm as well but um yeah I think a lot of it is just having trust in yourself and then once you get that user data building off that >> we had to stop for the app. Yeah, exactly. Early on because we knew what we wanted to make the app do because >> we were I was like smoking weed like

every day and then trying to take a break and then I’d be like, “All right, this I I failed. Like, this is what we have to fix.” And I haven’t smoked in nine months because of the app. So, it’s it’s worked on me. >> Yeah. >> Oh, man. That’s funny. Jamie says, “Steve’s face so confused.” What am I confused about? I love this. It hasn’t been a quiet moment. >> All right. Joseph says, "Hi all. We’re all on boarding. If you don’t figure it out all by yourself, where would you find an expert company to do it for you? >> That’s a good question. I think that a lot of what we did is look on um

YouTube. The Sebastian Stef breaks down a lot of different um competitors and not necessarily competitors, but just in different consumer mobile apps, not only the onboarding, but like different onboarding tricks as well as the marketing side of things. So, it’s a little bit more well-rounded. Um I will say uh Jacob Brushman um definitely really helpful. I think I don’t remember I remember you found was that from a YouTube video or like >> I’d say like YouTube um just continuing to find people that are building stuff and honestly if you don’t want to build your onboarding I do think that copying

or almost almost like very quickly copying like some other competitor can kind of 8020 you the way there where it’s not going to be perfect it’s not going to be great but it’s the fastest way to get the most amount of like bang for your buck >> and I will say one thing that also is helpful is like actually going and downloading the app and going through the onboarding and noting like what your experience is like because like yes you can look at like the mirror or Figma boards but you’re not really going to get the same like experience or animations or like haptic feedback or like really be able to like uh I think understand it to the same extent as you

were to actually download the app. So that’s something that we did early on is like actually go through them and like you know pretend I am a user who wants to use weight. What is the loom the the noom app onboarding like? So um >> I love it. I love it. Oh it’s a quiet moment guys. How do we do this? uncomfortable. >> All right, Mike says, “Have you tested a web to app funnel?” >> That’s an amazing question. Um, not yet. It’s been something that’s been on our minds for a really long time. Um, we’re partially broke, so we can’t really afford many of the web to appeave.

If you want to give us a discount, we’ll plug >> everything. We would love it. We would love to see it work and then be able to shout you guys out. Um, but uh definitely something a t-shirt that says web to >> the web to wave tattoo maybe. I don’t know. Um yeah, we’ll definitely uh it’s something that’s been in our mind and that we we want to play into um specifically with like lead magnets as well. like, oh, having a drug test calculator. If you need to, you know, figure out, oh, when am I going to pass my drug test? Hey, you need to pass, you probably you will, but here’s an app to

make it easier. Stuff like that. >> And he’s been building web apps as well. Um, and like we have features that we want to validate, such as we want to sell supplements. A lot of our users are begging for supplements, and we want to be able to get them supplements, but we don’t want to, you know, pass Apple and go through and do all the iterations and testing. And he realized like, yeah, I could just whip up a really quick web app and try things out. So I would think about you know utilizing the web in that in that sense as well. >> And then you can also use it in Instagram comments like you could be like hey comment you know supplement for like a free supplement finder for how to use it and that’s just providing value and forwarding the brand identity and

the brand association that people have with you. >> I love it. Well George was asking about this and I’ll kind of pull it back up to the stage but how are you giving the the subscription away when they’re giving you feedback right now? >> Yeah. I don’t know. I hope Apple isn’t listening to this. Uh basically we like I guess a little bit more technically we have our app accepts um what’s it called like uh its own URL schema. So like there’s like https we have clear30 colon slash if you click on a link like that it’ll open to our app. Um and basically

what we do is in our back end we have a database of free codes that we have active. Um and then there’s a URL that we give to the users that’s like clear30code equals whatever. Um, and then when it opens the app, it checks that and then we kind of manually handle the free to paid in our app. So, I know that like with Superwall and a lot of different apps like that, they are like they really push like, hey, just use Superwall to like, oh, if they click on a feature, use the Superwall SDK and then you can figure out if you give it to them for free or paid. We have like a manual flag in our app that signals if they’re free or paid and then handle,

oh, are they unsubscribed? Okay, turn it off. Are they subscribed? Turn it on. Um, and so that way we can like conditionally show them the payw wall and unlock the features um just through the inapp logic. And so we basically open the app and then check the database to see if it’s active code or not. >> And this is all we allegedly do this. >> Yeah. Allegedly. You I heard it from somewhere else. That’s what I was saying. >> Yeah. >> If we were to do free codes is how we do it. >> Yeah. Well, I mean you could do I mean honestly, George, there’s an easy way if you have a lifetime subscription. You can create promo codes off of that and you can do it through Apple. So it’s not actually that hard.

Oh, that’s good. Yeah, that’s actually also what we’re doing. That was our previous way. We’re now using the lifetime code thing is what we said just now. Um. Yeah. >> All right. You want to get into more questions? people are coming up with. >> Yeah, definitely. >> All right with our presentation. >> Well, let me ask you about the ad side of things. What What is your MMP? Are you guys just using the Tik Tok SDK and the the Facebook SDK >> and we uh adjust. It was It was kind of difficult at first to get set up. We actually like hired some guy or at least I did like on Fiverr because I’m less technical than him and he just walked us

through getting adjust all set up. But we really don’t like look at analytics very much through adjust. We’re very into we have a whole uh we use Amplitude for our revenue tracking and we have um you know an attribution slide like a lot of other apps that say you know where did you come from? Did you come from Tik Tok, Instagram, etc. Um and then we you know we basically correlate like how much is a Tik Tok trial costing us? What’s the lifetime value of a Tik Tok user? What about a Instagram user? And then we adjust our ad money based on what you know signals we’re getting from that attribution slide.

Yeah. So the MP is definitely very much for like the setting up conversion campaigns but not so much used on the data side of things. Um just because it’s kind of wonky and the self attribution question where it’s like hey where did you come from? Definitely somewhat skewed depending on like the organiz but it works. >> Yeah it works for at least in the in the short term. >> No I’ve heard that from others too. I’m trying to find it on your on boarding but I’ve heard the same thing on from others like it’s good enough and it’ll give you some type of indication. >> Yeah. >> Oh yeah. Here it is. >> Yeah. Right here. >> Yeah. Oh, this is also the one to the

left is also a cool one. Um the how do you plan to use clear 30? That’s something that we added in um to so we kind of wanted to be able to show some of the features but not do it in a way where it’s like hey look at these features. Um so we kind of framed our features in a question perspective of saying hey what are you planning to use it for? So they can see all the different features and then we can also get an idea of the users coming in one what kind of features they might be interested in using and what can we you know possibly use more in advertisements or what do we need to improve based on what people want to use coming in. Um

and then additionally we can use it for testing possible features in the future. So um for example right now we’re running uh you know we are doing some religiousbased ads and we’re testing those to um see like you know a lot of people who uh follow a certain religion doesn’t really that religion might not necessarily approve of smoking weed and so a lot of people want to quit smoking weed because of religion or and so we’re able to >> but it’s also like it like empowers them. They find it empowering. >> Yeah. Exactly. So we can kind of test that in that question and be like hey are you using it for religious based

guidance? Um and then we can see if people are interested in that. And so it’s like a sort of way uh to kind of validate possible features in the future. >> I love it. Look at that. Beautiful. Beautiful. Okay, let’s get into some more questions. I like >> Julia from Sage App says, “What partially broke at 100,000? It’s ARR, but ad cost too high.” >> Yeah. So, um right now like we’re still like in terms of like why we’re not like shooting way past it right now. Um,

yeah. So, right now we are figuring out, we’re one, this is our first time dealing with Apple’s like cash flow. So, we’re trying to figure that out in terms of the payback period. It’s just like we’re kind of taking a second to recoup and be like, what the heck is going on? How are we going to financially like what’s the unit economics of it? >> Um, I do think, you know, in terms of continuing to grow with scale, um, there are, you know, always road map roadblocks in terms of like, um, you know, the meta costs sometimes sporadically going up and down. So what we’re doing right now is we’re looking at basically how we collect money from

our users what we can do and then we’re looking you know in terms of upsells and what we can do there. So you know we’re look experimenting with supplements we’re experimenting with higher touch therapy support. >> Um so >> you know we’re kind of taking this break right now to figure out what that next bigger thing is. >> All right Michael has a great question. How do you efficiently make your Tik Tok videos? Video makes takes so much time. Any tips on creating efficient pipeline? Yeah. So, I would say balancing um volume and then also quality is really

important. I got sucked into personally like trying to make think about oh my god I’m trying to make as many videos as possible. This is going to be great. And I realized like I was just printing out crap and you know the algorithm was treating it as such. I think that you know you don’t I wouldn’t even think in terms of speed. I would just think in terms of reps. I think like volume will solve everything. So if you just you know are building like making videos for eight hours a day, six hours a day, you will eventually get very very quick with it. I am a personal huge fan of trying like three or four formats, seeing which

one works and then doubling down on that. But that thing that I shared earlier in terms of just talking talking to GPT and then recording your voice with the um uh teleprompter, I’ve been able to, you know, bang out like three or four videos in an hour with it, which has been much faster than used to take me a day or two to do that. What about the interview ones, man? Because I’ve know those ones work pretty well. Like, is that hard to Yeah. How do you go about doing those? >> It’s scary at first. You’re walking around my lead.

Um, >> having cool people is helpful for that. Like even if you had a friend and you’re interested in doing that, like having more people, but it definitely does take a lot more production time and effort to do. >> But I would say that you don’t need as much um equipment as you think. I used to think, oh my god, I need this and that and this and that. You can do it with a phone. You can use this as a microphone and someone else is filming it and it’s like >> and it’s good and you can you can be fine. So you could honestly go through and just get as many >> phone mic too. >> Yeah. Right. Exactly. The phone mic and it you know it works. I think that’s part of the authenticity as well. Like

we’re not trying to be super high budget like you know uh I think that for >> for different apps it might be different circumstances but like you know if we had huge lights and like microphones it kind of like is sort could create I believe a sort of disconnect to people watching the video is that like oh they’re not like me like they you know they have all this money and this big fancy thing I think that like >> there’s a correlation I found out which is the more fake equipment you bring to something and the more friends you have with different headphones connecting to different microphones you will create a swarm If you go to a major metropolitan

area, >> that would be ridiculous. >> Yeah, we set up like I remember we did um interview we set up like two cardboard boxes. We were going to get a table, but we didn’t really have one. So, we set up two cardboard boxes um and then put weed talk on them and we had like a whole bunch of people swarming around wanting to get interviewed off of like us sitting there with cardboard boxes and a really shitty sign. We’re like, “Oh, okay. I guess people are interested in this.” Um, so definitely very funny, but yeah. >> Yeah, it’s definitely it’s not as intimidating. I It’s intimidating, but it’s not as scary when you’re in the

moment as you might think it is. >> That’s awesome. That’s awesome, guys. Well, Sage, Julia from Sage App, Julia, let’s do another interview. Let’s do an interview. But she said, “It’s a long journey to recoup. Good luck, guys. Definitely recommend digital goods, etc. Sold outside of the app for better LTV and more immediate cash on hand.” And I think if it’s okay for me to say this, but if you look at Sage app, they do just that as well. >> Okay. >> Okay. Thank you, Sage. We’re gonna steal your onboarding, Sage. We’re not gonna borrow from >> check out check out her products that

she sells in the >> guys. This is awesome, man. Like really cool stuff. All right, Matthew says, “How long do they keep their subscription?” >> Uh the free subscription. Um right now it’s forever. Uh and it’s kind of been that way for a little bit. Uh in terms of >> You might have to patch it. >> Yeah, we might have to patch it soon. Um but yeah, if you get a free code, it’s valid forever. um unless they like restart the app and then we make the code not valid anymore. Um but there’s no necessary like expiry date that is

set up for it. Um because we really want people to have access for a while. It’s not the biggest thing that we don’t make $5 from someone. Like that’s not a huge deal to us. It’s more so that they have access to it is important. >> Another thing that’s really cool in terms of getting feedback, but I think very industry specific to us is we have Julian who’s like a pure support specialist and he actually texts people throughout their journey. like it’s day three, he’ll check up on them and he he’s texting people all day asking about, you know, what are they struggling with this sort of thing and he gets all types of information from

them. So, that’s been really cool. Um, but you know, if you have like a app that’s motivating people or healthing, you can always think about that. But, you know, that’s not available to every app. >> Yeah. >> What software are you guys using? Were you literally texting from his phone? Because I know you guys asked for it during the Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, we have I mean, yeah, we had people sign up with their phone number. We made our own like panel with we kind of just vibecoded it to be able to connect to our backend and send out messages through Twilio. So, it’s all kind of like proprietary, definitely not the the the most

structurally sound. It’s not like we’re using a SAS, but uh I don’t know, spend a couple days putting it together so that we can we can text people. Um and it definitely drives up Twilio costs and that’s something that we are figuring out right now as we you know, that’s part of the reason that it’s like, oh, why broke at 100K MR? Well, we spend a lot of money on Twilio per month because we’re texting all of our users. But um yeah, so we’re we’re using our kind of like own internal software for that, but there definitely is probably a SAS that makes it easier. Yeah. >> W Julian feature. Yeah. No, people love Julian. That’s like half of I think like our users sometimes fall in love with

Julian and then that’s a problem. But other than that, people really like Julian. >> Makes Asher jealous. >> I do have to go to Turkey and get my plastic surgery. >> Julia says, “Do it. Copy her.” All right. >> Let’s go. But we actually will check it out. That’s awesome. >> All right, before we get into the jokes in the last app audit, how are you guys on time? You got some go a little bit over. >> Sure. Yeah, we’re done. >> Michael says, “Any advice on bringing big influencer partners?” I heard you had co-founder, subject matter, expert. Most influencers that I’ve touched base

with usually just want upfront cash and one-time work. >> Yeah. So, we were running this for a while. Um, we had, you know, like the similar thing that like Cali II did, which is just virtual, uh, assistants just going through our niche. They would just scroll and tell their niches, you know, it’s there are for you pages, all of our niche, people trying to quit weed, and then just go through and hit up everybody and be like, “Hey, you want videos? You want videos?” And if you’re doing that sort of volume and you can, you know, reach a thousand people a week, you’ll get some great influencers, some not so good ones, and then it’s

really going to be like one or two, in our experience, like one or two% of the influencers who make you 99% of your money. There’s like a weird power law there. So, we had um you know, a great Oh, sorry. I think you’re a little frozen, but maybe we could keep talking. >> No. Yeah, he’s >> Okay, cool. Go, go. Oh, yeah. So, we had a lot of success with, you know, we had some influencers going, “Hey, this is day one, day two, day three without weed.” I’ve talked to a lot of people in the industry who have said, you know, they’re much bigger fans of paid ads than running influencers at scale and

sometimes it’s a lot more paid ads. Um, but I think depending on your industry, if you’re in fitness, I might skip out on that because it’s super saturated. But if you’re doing board games or something like that where there’s a lot more influencers than businesses trying to make money, I would go for it. So, I would definitely >> stronger communities as well. Like board games is probably something that’s like I’m intuitively I’m like oh people who are into board games probably are more tight-knit in the community than like fitness. Like you know there are a ton of gyms but like you know there might only be like one board game community in an area and so if you can get everyone in that community to want to use your app like they are more likely to share

with their friends possibly. So um yeah but I might skip out on a big big influencer if you’re just starting and start with smaller micro ones and build up from there. >> Okay. Fred. Fred says, “Fred, I use I just use Clear 30 to watch in social to watch videos that handsome, smart, engaging Dr. Fred.” >> Yeah, Fred is Yeah, Fred is the reason we’re here. Well, he is. He’s it it has been such a trip building an app as like two like you know cracked out 22 year

olds like thinking on YouTube all day and then there’s just a clinical psychologist right there being like hey like I like the payw wall trick but is this like scientifically efficacious and then thinking about just the balance between those two um will really build like a great like product in general. So like he’s definitely like >> you know brought brought us very very far with like all his leadership and everything. >> Yeah, definitely would not be where we are without him. Fred’s blaze right now. >> Yeah, Fred’s kind of lay off.

Chris says he’s a little late to the party and yes, they are running meta ads, but what are your what are you seeing for cost per trial starts? >> Yeah, so it can fluctuate. It actually fluctuates like plus or minus like you know 40% per day. I would say they can kind of they can range from like you know 10 $ eight $10 and then you know sometimes they’ll go up to like 20 and or no wait I I was thinking about trial conversions >> per trial per trial for us right now is around like 10ish 10ish it definitely

varies per day and it’s all based on like the self attribution question I guess of seeing Instagram like meta versus Tik Tok um >> but then if we’re converting some like we’ll be converting at like 40 or plus percent sometimes so then you know we’ll making, you know, our our it’s 30 bucks, so we’ll be making like 14 15 bucks off of a trial and then it’ll cost us like $10. But then sometimes those numbers get very good down to like $6 per trial. >> Yeah, the meta machine is definitely very all over the place. Like we’ve had weeks that are really good and then weeks that are not so good. >> We’ve had therapy sessions with our friends who are just like it’s okay.

God, dude, >> just nightmares about the meta CPA. >> Yes. Yeah. Exactly. It’s definitely helpful to have other people who like work around us that have been where we are in our couple months. Present guys helped us. They have a screen time app called Be Present and they dealt with the same thing and they showed us, you know, it’s okay. >> Are they all Are you all in the same location or what? >> Yeah. So, we’re in New York City and we work in this place called Versie which is really cool. It’s this co-working space and it’s very very concentrated with like consumer app founders. So, there’s like lots of apps much bigger

than us all working in New York City there and lots of events. So, we meet a ton of consumer lots of >> Superwwell is around there too and they hopes ton of happy hours. >> Yeah. >> Nice. Are you guys doing anything for at promotion summit in the New York? >> Did you have to? We weren’t We didn’t plan on it, but we’ll be there. >> Plan on it. But yeah. >> All right. I’m going to be there. So, I’ll hit you guys up and then we can go check it out. But I’ll be there. I get in on se September 17th and I’ve got that whole day free. You guys come to promotion summit. >> Yeah. Chat chat. I love chat.

What about the revenue event? You guys doing stuff there? >> Oh, honestly, we’ve been a little evented out. We weren’t even thinking about it. But honestly, you know, if it’s going to be a party and it’s going to be fun and there’s going to be no weed cuz we can’t smoke that, then >> it’s company policy. I love >> No, I’d love to check out that co-working space. That’d be awesome, man. >> All right, guys. Well, let’s get into some dad jokes, shall we? [Music] Guys are too young to be dads.

22, son’s 17. It’s very close in age. But anyways, you guys want to start first or you want me to go? Is it combined that you’re in and Asher? You or you guys got like one each? >> Yeah. Yeah, we got one each. But each Yeah, he can run it first. >> Okay, let’s go. All right, I’ll go. So, we got a three-way. All right, >> you guys drink or No, >> I drink. >> Okay, cool. So, we play for a beer. All right. When I’m in New York, >> we don’t smoke weed. We don’t smoke weed. >> No weed. Okay. When I’m in New York, we

will lose loser buys. Okay, let me see. Let me try to fix let me try to find one. >> All right, here we go, guys. What do you call an alligator that’s been promoted? [Music] >> All right. Ready? >> Yeah. I don’t know. >> A delegator. There you go. A delegator. >> Okay. >> All right. All right. Who’s go Who wants to go next? Azure. Is that true? >> I can run it. I can run it. Um, okay.

All right. So, mine was No, we’re not. >> You want me to do screen share? >> No, no, no. Don’t screen share. I’m not >> I just need to reference the joke when I’m looking at it. Um, okay. So, um, why did the app get rejected from the app store? >> Why? >> Well, it had commitment issues. It kept crashing on the first date. Yeah. >> First off, >> all right, Asher. >> Mine is inspired a little bit, well, not

really, but a little bit by my shirt. This is Cookie Monster, if you could see, uh, from Sesame Street. Um, all right. What’s a ghost’s favorite smoothie >> flavor? Booberry. >> Give him another one. Give him another one. [Laughter] >> I got one. I got one. Um, I can’t >> I can’t stop telling jokes about

airports. >> Why? >> Say it’s terminal. >> That’s good. That’s good. That was good. >> All right. >> All right. Mike says, “I wrote to the univer to the next universe.” >> All right. >> Look, I had the first joke that was so whoever’s joke you thought better. S for mine. Asher, you want to say? Yep. That’s Asher. Thatcher >> was Yeah, there you go. So, A, S, or T, put it in there. >> And don’t let Asher stop. All right, we

won’t. >> All you got to do is vote and then we’ll do a free Indie App Santa promo courtesy courtesy of our friends from Web to Wave, the easiest way to build web to app funnels. >> Asher’s gonna wear a shirt or tattoo soon. >> And then arcads.ai. And if you are trying to test different hooks like Asher says and you need an AI tool, Arcad’s AI, it’s a really great tool. You can use some of that thing that even Asher said where you take that script idea, take it through Catgpt and

then if you’re too afraid to put it and put yourself in front of the camera, well, you can have an AI do that as well. All right, as iOS developer joke. Okay, that’s that’s for you, that All right, cool. Let’s get into the app audit and give some feedback. So, we’ve got this audit from, let me pull up the name. Avon says, "I need help on monetization opportunities. I’m not sure how to start monetizing when you pick this app. I

really, I probably already implemented tip jar." So, he’s got a fat calculator. You guys got anything from the screenshots that you guys want to highlight? I’ll zoom in a little bit for you guys, too. Yeah, I see that it’s something, you know, it looks like it’s for doctors to keep track of their patients. Yeah, I’m not sure how exactly he’s advertising it, but if I were him, I would love to or if I were, you know, a doctor watching this, I would love to know that this is for me clearly what it does in the ASO. Like to me it seems like it’s like a calculator or something

but I would want to see myself a dream outcome as a doctor very big like doc like making calculate you know patients fat easier track patients fat easier like as a doctor I want to know who it’s for and I want to know how it can help me instead of you know showing the features very quickly. Yeah, I would say as well I think that like for this specifically if it’s applying to their profession like I think that there’s a like higher possibility that like they might be more willing to spend money on it because it you know could help their career rather than it being like oh this is a personal funny photo dog app like

no this is going to help you do better at your job and your career on an every single day basis. And I think that really stressing that cuz like I downloaded it and I was like is this made for me to use? Like it doesn’t really seem like something for me to use. So, I think that really calling out who it’s made for, um, you can get super specific for it. I don’t think it needs to be made for like, oh, everyone can calculate that. You could literally be like, “This is for doctors.” Like, I probably wouldn’t use that copy, but you know, making really calling out who it’s specifically for. Um, and the fact that it’s tied to the profession, I think, could be helpful. >> Like, okay, get into the app. I didn’t

even know it was for Dr. Spur. So, thank you for doing that for me. >> All right. >> Maybe it’s not. I think it is though. >> And then steal the clear 30 onboarding. No, maybe not. >> All right, let’s get into the app and help them with some moni monetization. >> All right, calculator. >> I forgot that it was a fat calculator. I think it’s worth just mentioning again, but okay. Easily calculate the body fat with your calculator. Okay, accurate

formulas. Wait, what does it say? I don’t even know what a caliper is. Okay. >> No, I think it’s like a doctor tool. >> I don’t love the ad in the product screenshot. >> Yeah, true. >> Oh, right here. Yeah, I like it. Good find, dude. >> Yeah, I didn’t even notice that. >> I didn’t notice it either. It’s got another one, too. >> Yeah. >> Okay. I guess it is for a doctor. >> Yeah, I think this was something when it first opened up. I kind of didn’t even get to use the app and then it’s, you know, kind of showing me a payw wall. Um, originally I was like, I don’t know like why I would ever I don’t know who

would ever like click on this to do it. Like maybe people who are using it for the profession are like, fine, I’ll buy it right now and don’t even notice the X. But that was something that stood out to me. And I think that also in the reviews section of the payw wall when I scrolled down before uh it put some like four star reviews first. It looks like now they’re five star reviews. I don’t know, but there were some four star reviews in there that were kind of like highlighting more negative things in the app. And so um and maybe it’s like randomly selected because mine were different. But um I don’t know. I think that really showcasing the best possible thing. >> I think showing it how it can help you achieve your dream outcome would be

great. And I think you could spend more time on the onboarding. We we tried to show off the features of our app and we realized people don’t care. They don’t care what the app is. they they care about themselves and what your app can do for them. So, I would love to paint this as, hey, this can make your life easier. Think about status. Other doctors will think, wow, this guy has it all under control. Like, really think about these psychological movers um rather than the features. >> Yeah. And it doesn’t even have to be long. Like, it doesn’t have to be like, oh, 10-minute onboarding. Like, this is not a super complicated app. There’s not really a whole bunch of reasons to ask a whole bunch of questions. It’s not really going to change how the app

works. Like, you don’t need to make it a super long onboarding. But I do think that switching out those features for future driven things and you know like you said like possibly status based things and doctor specific niche references I think we >> I do think great great market and it’s I’m I’m jealous of you that you get to sell to people who have so much money and intent. I think it’s it’s great and so I do think you’ve picked a good market. >> Yeah. And I would even test it with a hard pay wall just like you guys have done too. And I’m I’m okay with removing the X up top because you have this continue with free version. But yeah,

totally okay with that too. I love it. Dream outcome is my new favorite expression. Good job, Asher. >> Thank you, Blue. >> All right, [Music] let’s see. Calculate. Let’s try to calculate. See what happens. >> Oh, do I have to input stuff? Oh, I didn’t know how to input stuff. Okay. See, I think I don’t know what you guys feel like. I feel like maybe asking for this in the onboarding like how old are you? You know, do you know what these

inches are? are like, “Are you ready to >> I think that’s really smart.” And then, you know, you can have that aha moment on the other side of the pay wall. Hey, we have everything calculated. Here’s how it’s going to help you so much to have everything calculated. It was so easy to get everything in and now just pay us and we’ll show you. >> Yeah. And like even if you hard pay wall, you could easily hard because it’s like such a uh I I guess I’ll say simple. I don’t mean that in a negative way at all, but like it’s a very like easy to use app it seems like in terms of what it’s doing. So like you could easily hard payw wall it and but allow

them to do the core feature on the payw wall or like you know do part of it maybe do it once and then be like okay you want to keep using it to actually unlock the app and possibly more stuff that’ll also help you in your dream outcomes you know here you can pay for it. So >> yeah providing them value some sort of little mini value before the payw wall would be great with this. >> Yeah I agree. >> I would say rewatch this episode and then every time we say dream outcome take a shot. There you go. >> We have a really fun time. Yeah, we have a really fun time. >> All right, now the most important part.

You guys wanna by a score of nine, eight, and three. All right, in third place with three, it is yours truly, me. Boom. >> I thought it was Asher. Ashes were not. >> All right, so it’s between you two. By one vote, by one vote, the winner is Thatcher. Where’s my applause? Yes, >> that’s lit. >> No, no, no. The blueberry. >> Yeah, the blueberry.

To be fair, Ashley helped me find and come up with that joke to a certain extent, so he deserves some credit at least. But >> win in life. I’ve learned that. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Let’s pick a winner for the free Indie App Santa promo. We got this. Look at a lot of votes. This is probably the most full board. H is working. You guys put H to work here. All right. And the winner is

Braden said I shouldn’t stop. >> I’m happy he won. >> It’s definitely poor calculating a person’s body fat. Yeah, I figure too. >> All right, fellas. >> Congratulations, Braden. >> Congratulations, Braden. >> Hey guys, Braden, just email me steveappmasters.com and then we’ll hook you up with a free Indie App Santa promo on us. Thatcher Asher, this was freaking amazing, guys. Congrats. I’m very much impressed by your knowledge at such a young age, you know, and all the tips that you shared with the onboarding and

the ad side of things. It was phenomenal success. So, I’m super excited after this and I learned so much from you guys, but anything else you guys want to share before we say goodbye. >> Just say, yeah, our greatest appreciation. Keep doing what you’re doing. Uh, I don’t think we’d really be near as close as we are without people like you. We got great people on our like board, Alex Mitchell, like other people that we’re working with like Julia Eth. Shout out all you guys. Um, but just really like the whole ecosystem of, you know, helping people on apps on like YouTube and like you leading that

uh I think has been really helpful because, you know, this is the best time to build anything like thanks to channels like this of like actually democratizing and making this knowledge available to everyone. >> 100%. And if anyone has anything that they want to you know learn, thank you so much, Michael. >> We love you, Michael. We actually love you. If anyone has like specific information they want to ask from us, like please hit us up on LinkedIn, hit us up on Twitter. We’re very open to sharing whatever we have learned because we’re not really trying to gate any kind of information or anything like that. Like if you guys need help with something that you think we could help with, hit us up and we’re happy to respond.

I love it. Hey, I did find an error on your Figma. >> You just forgot, Steve. And let’s let’s move Jacob back and then let’s >> You know what, guys? do in the app. It’s gonna help you so much. >> Thank you. >> You know, you actually got our ASO, right? We actually hit you up for the ASO and it’s been like we changed it. We and like we shot up. I actually want to like after you did our ASO, I remember looking up, you know, quit weed or

something or stop weed and I had to scroll for years. Wait, wait, hold up. Watch this. This comes with Indie app Santa. Um, stop weed, tea break, anything like that. You used to have to scroll for years. Now, you know, we’re we’re three. We’re just, you know, we’re right there. Tea break weed. We’re right there. We’re two or three for almost everything. And there’s apps that have had, you know, hundreds of thousands of downloads, been out for years past us, and we’ve just shot past them. So, you know, >> clapping. Look at them. Look at them. No, thank you guys. No, I was just guys. Hey, I brought it up because somebody

did ask for the Figma if they’re at Asher willing to share all that. So, if you just hit them up on Twitter or >> Yeah, please feel free. >> All right, fellas. Well, this was it. H I forget who’s on for next week. Help me with this. >> So next week we have Mark who who has social media app and he will be talking about a lot of stuff about ads and how he grow his social media apps. And >> that’s right. Yeah, he’s got a cool social media app and he’s going to talk all about that including his new book as

well. >> That Asher, thank you so much for coming on and doing this, man. This was phenomenal. Thank you for putting this amazing Figma board on there as well. Definitely. >> My name even though I’m just kidding. >> Yeah. No, you did help for real. >> No, congrats on your success, man. I look forward to hanging out and having a beer with you. I owe the beer. So, >> all alcohol and not weed at all. No. >> Barely. You can barely drink, but I’ll buy it for you guys. >> Love it. All right, guys. Join us every

Friday, 9:00 a.m. Pacific. I’ll see you on the