| Source | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGgFkAAnZFs |
|---|---|
| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kv42zgsxay2zhtp27ynxpk8p |
| Readwise ID | 01kv42zgsxay2zhtp27ynxpk8p |
| Date | 2025-10-03 |
| Author | App Masters |
| Category | video |
| Cover image | https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aGgFkAAnZFs/sddefault.jpg?v=68e3c654 |
[Music] [Music] What is up app nation? It is Steve P. Young, founder of appmasters.com, the place you go when you want actionpacked content related to helping you grow your app downloads and more importantly those revenues. And you might be asking, how is this guy saying it so fast? Just used to saying it very,
very fast. Welcome to our weekly live streams and I got phenomenal, phenomenal guest. He’s a great follow on Twitter and I’ll link up his Twitter profile is linked up into the show notes and your favorite YouTube video. But he’s been able to really bootstrap his app to over $500,000 in MRR right now. He’s going to break down his exact strategy from organic to meta ads and all of it above. I’m super excited to bring him on because he’s been sharing a lot of great content on Twitter. So, we’re going to
break it all down for you, and you’re going to want to bookmark this particular video and podcast episode, and you’re going to want to rewatch it. So, without further ado, let’s bring in my friend Desmond Hoe. >> Desmond, we’re friends, right? >> Yo, Steve. Yep. Thank you so much for having me. >> We’re friends, right? Let’s just clear that up. Yeah, I didn’t get that. >> Very much friends. Yeah. By the way, by the way, um just just to clarify, um
we’re at around 200k MR, not 500K. Yeah. >> But you’ve been able to achieve it a couple of times. >> Um well, like uh I I usually try to separate like the MR and monthly revenue like monthly runway. Yeah, it’s not monthly recurring revenue. That doesn’t really matter. like even like you can impress people with that numbers but um I mean yeah just to clarify that because that’s it’s quite different in in the in the ways that I try to grow my app
sustainably so I’m still aiming for the 500k MR status but yeah it’s not we’re not there yet but >> okay well congratulations it’s still six figures above >> so much yeah thank you yeah >> that’s more than what I made in a year when I wait worked back in you know corporate life >> so >> appreciate you appreciate you yeah >> all right congratulations Since Jimlock here, he’s from Hong Kong as well. >> Hey, what’s up? >> I know it’s late in Hong Kong. Giza is here. We got Adrian from Ireland. All right. Yo, Southeast Asia representing Jamie from Thailand
is here as well. Hey, guys. >> And everybody else. And then Desmond is a legend. Alex, >> thank you guys. >> All right, Desmond. Well, talk talk to me about this because you got this app called Life Reset. And I’ll I’ll pull it up into this. Talk to me about the beginning of the journey. like what were you doing to try to forget about the app itself where you came up with the idea unless you guys want you want to talk about this but talk to me about what you were trying to initially do to like kickstart the growth. >> Yep. Um so in the very beginning like
the reason that I started this project is because of two things. Firstly it’s just three things. Firstly, I was um we have been building like a software apps for me and my co-founder for two years already before uh life reset but we didn’t really have a success. We struggle with product market fit so they were pivoted uh from our previous projects. Um and then we were looking for new ideas and then that is the first idea. That’s the first reason. And then the second reason is that I I was really
like a you could say like a self-improvement ad addict like I’m really like a self-improvement books in general and like um um watching like self-improvement related content on YouTube and Instagram. Yeah. >> So I realized that there’s a huge trend on Instagram last year that there’s uh I would say I will observe there’s a self-improvement niche in Instagram. So you there’s a lot of like Instagram film page posting edits that is related to self-improvement. Maybe there will be
like a motivational coach just saving saying something that is very inspiring and then it would get like so much likes. So I was thinking like um there’s a huge audience in this niche and what if I build an app surrounding this plus I’m also myself is a user. I would love to use something like this. I have like in fact in in fact I I did like a try to build habits uh on my own. So >> um I come up with like an idea on building a program self-improvement program app and then I also um read from
a lot of books that 66 days in general is a a is a scientifically proven framework for habit building. So then that’s how we got the idea and then basically we just kick go um just go straight forward to build the MVP. We spent around just really around six weeks to go from scratch just the idea to launching it. Um and then of course launching on Apple is a headache but luckily we got through it. And so then
the first um the first like uh momentum or the growth uh strategy that we had is just really to stick with the organic approach because like I said what I realized is is that there’s a lot of organic in self-improvement content on Instagram and then my plan was to if I can make some content like that those videos I could also promote my app and that’s how we try to grow the app in the beginning I cover like the there’s a lot of like evolving stage page of our
growth strategy, but that’s the phase one. So, we make a lot of content on Instagram and then brought us actually the first 100k downloads. >> Wow. Are you the one creating the content yourself? >> I am the one creating content. So, I was making mainly like faceless videos. Like I don’t show my face. I’m quite shy and then I just make um I just have one Instagram page and then I just keep posting every day. Uh there’s some it’s either Mims or it’s either um some POV
videos showcasing the app. >> Yeah. >> So uh in total in 2024 it got um around 100 million views in uh in total. So that bring us a lot of insource. >> That’s amazing. I’m going on your Instagram page. Is it the by life reset that handle? >> Yep. Yep. Yep. So we yeah we we were we were used to we were our name was by well it was rice app.life but due to some reason we have to change the name so that we change to by life reset right now. So in some UI you might see that we
call ourselves rise that was our previous name. >> Yeah I like it the share what you want to share Desmond we had a fun conversation before we went live but what were the from the content because a lot of people have tried it. I I personally tried it myself bro and like nothing really hit for me. What what what worked for you? What type of content worked for you? >> So, what worked for me or something that worked for others previously? Um, I know
that sounds fake, but >> my strategy is literally to copy what kind of memes worked for other people. Uh I have a YouTube channel and I have I have literally a video talking about how I make like those um organic reals for my app and then it break downs a lot of strategies. So but um I so I could explain it in a very simple terms. So uh in the self-improvement niche on Instagram. So it is a very established
niche which means there’s like hundreds of thousands of of new videos post every day by so many like billions of teenagers all around the world let’s say and then a lot of videos goes viral every day in this niche and a lot of them are also mess. It’s literally just mess that takes um >> uh like uh maybe should I share my screen? >> Yeah, I have your video up too. H, I put the video in our notes tab so you can see Desmond’s video that we can link up to as well. Thanks.
Yep. Yep. All righty. Uh, could you see that? I’m showing my Instagram page, right? >> Yep. >> So, for example, um like uh let’s say this one. Did you see this one? The >> I was gonna pull up that one, Desmond. Yes, sir. >> Yeah. So, this is so this one is really the the the legend the leg most legendary one. So um I got this inspiration from my friend um who is building an app called Kaio. It’s an MMA training app and then they literally had
this video with the same template. There’s a there’s this footage below and then there’s a WhatsApp conversation uh above >> and then um what they what they did it was for them it was something like bro let’s let’s start training MMA today is um day one something like that. Okay. And then of course um the template of this meme is that a couple seconds later um you will show that there’s a transformation. Your bro suddenly betray you or they didn’t really betray you but they just really locked in.
So that this is what how it gets funny. So then um I thought okay um why don’t I just try something like this? So because the humor of human beings is pretty universal. If some people find the meme that Kaio made is funny, maybe they will also find something that I made funny. So that I try to replicate it and of course it actually went viral. I think there’s actually a lot of luck as well. I don’t think that um 100 times if you try this strategy 100 time it it work. I
think it doesn’t work like that. Maybe there’s like a maybe just 20% hit rate in terms of this kind of strategy. But if you should just keep doing it enough then some of them will pop off. So that I post something like this and then later on um this is a couple months later I was keep posting memes uh like this and then I realized that okay I have enough like um experience of stealing other people’s memes. How about I make something that um I come up with with myself. So I actually didn’t steal this format from anyone. I just like
randomly think about like okay I could actually do this like comparing my app with other apps and then putting some uh caption over it. Well, but the caption inspiration is also from another friend um who’s building an app called Stronger. Um and they use a lot of these kind of mem like a breakup book to um to to make some funny res. And then I also tried to like uh do something like this and then he also luckily went viral. So yeah, that’s that’s really just those
kind of videos that I was making last year. mainly just mess or very low effort uh edits that you could just really make in maybe say 5 to 10 minutes. >> That’s amazing. I love it. And it How do you come up with these ideas, Desmond? Do you have a like a format or a strategy a notion board? Yeah, I I don’t have a notion board for this, but uh what I did was I uh I scroll I just really just scroll on social media because the the logic
behind is that you need to you’re making really organic UGC that your target audience would react to. So um just pretend like you are your target audience. For me, I am my own target audience. I like self-improvement stuff. So I just really scroll my on my own my personal IG feed and I’m seeing those memes. So every memes I I I watch or I saw I will think about all right how do I adapt this for rice or for rice life reset. So if I have an idea I save it or
I just immediately pull over my laptop and just make the edits. >> Desmond you know I’ve heard from other people who have said hey I’ve gotten a lot of views I didn’t get any more downloads. Have you ever experienced that? And if you have like how do what are some of the best practices to making sure that the views turn into installs? That’s a very tricky questions. Um to me I think there’s definitely ways but it is it is it is um just not I’m I
don’t think it’s a there’s a very perfect way to make sure your organic converts because it’s first of all I think organic videos in general as a social med media strategy or marketing strategy for apps it’s not the best strategy like it is good for initial starter or you want to validate your product market fit or if you don’t have any budget that was what I was experienced last year. So, uh it’s only good for those scenarios. But if you want to scale, um you would want to go
paid or you want to go other strategies. The reason is that um the yeah what you asked Steve is basically how do I how do I scale, right? Because if you want to make sure you the conversion is good, that means you want to scale. And but organic in general, it is very uh there’s a lot of nuance. Um the reason that your content go viral is because you’re hitting a certain culture culture and then that culture resonate of people but culture can never be engineered. um
pay ads or marketing strategy on like influencer marketing you can make you can make it scale because um there’s a lot of ways that you can calculate u the CPM the RPM or the clickthrough rate for organic in general you are just really looking for a a subculture that resonate with a lot of people and this subculture which change every single not every single seconds but every month say every week there’s something changing and that you can never measure it so I started doing organics because I realized that you just kind of make sure that your
organic converts because for my case I did 100 million views last year. Um the conversion wise it is really not it it is really horrible I would say but I’m not concerned about that because the budget there’s there’s no budget it’s free free traffic but from a conversion standpoint maybe it’s a 01% something like that >> the reason is that um for my strategy specifically I wasn’t uh it was faceless for first so that there you you don’t
show a face so your audience doesn’t establish like a attachment or connection to your content. a lot. You are basically just writing on some format that went viral. And then I also don’t try to plug in my product POV or my product VSSL or what whatever you call it a lot because that would also harm the reach for an organic because you don’t want to look too much like an ad. But there’s so many restrictions on doing organic and then yeah so to me doing organic is really vibe marketing
and I don’t think it’s a really scalable method to go beyond say after 100k installs I stopped doing that and then that’s also that’s also I would say I don’t think um I could answer that questions because I would I wouldn’t try to answer that question it’s just impossible to me. Let’s see. I like it, man. I really like this video. I’ll kind of And you kind of have it pinned. So, I’ll remove it and I’ll kind of share this one. I’ve seen other people do this where they’ll take a like, you know, popular ha app and you have habits in here. This is pinned and kind of
put it into and then you show off your app. So, you’re starting to start to show off your app a bit here in this video. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Okay. So, where do you go from there? Now, you got 100,000 downloads, making some money now. What what what what happens next? >> So next um we we need to scale. So organic didn’t help us to scale or we couldn’t scale with organic. Yes. Because from zero to 100k we were just
relying on one Instagram page, the one that you were showing. Yeah. >> And then >> it doesn’t it doesn’t really it doesn’t really go viral anymore. We were used we used to get like 100k or 500k or 1 million every week. And then during like November, December last year um it was only getting say like 5K, 10K or even lower during that time. And then I realized that something needs to change. So back then I had basically I had basically like three options. I can
either try to scale my organic strategy because there there are some successful apps that could scale the organic strategy. There’s indeed some maybe I’m just not good enough. So I could try to So that’s option one. That’s option two which is I just try other strategies. So there’s so many strategies, right? That’s we could do like um maybe ASO, we could do um maybe say like pay ads, influencer, try more strategy. And the third one is that I could just maybe give up like I say this is the ceiling. So um I my my thought behind is that I
saw so many apps that is doing um influencer marketing back then like Twitter and also like a KAI they’re doing so good and also I watched a video with um resume and I realized that hey maybe I could also do pay ads. So then that’s why I decided to think that okay um I could try pay ads and then see how it goes. So um especially but back then
um we we really we are really broke like me and my co-founder we don’t have we are not vyback we are just bootstrapping although like we have 100k downloads but the uh we weren’t making like huge amount of money so um we were pretty cautious of like a paid marketing and we don’t want to just lose all our hard earned money um like in some asset doesn’t convert so what I did is that um I give myself like a certain budget. Okay, let’s spend those budget and see
what’s next. I didn’t really set like a very like a ambitious target. I just want to say okay, let’s spend 10k in January. We need to spend this 10k in on influencer on paid ads and maybe some could be used to maybe scale organic as well. Hire some people to help me do some more organic. That’s what I did. And then I started to do these three things together actually in January this year. Um, wow time flies. It’s actually just nine months ago. I I was doing
these three channels all together. Yeah. Organic marketing. I try to scale it with uh by running the page again and then and hire I remember hiring an editor having to help helping me to run another new page. Secondly, I also tried to start to run run ads. Um after studying the resume strategy I think I I made some ads and set up the meta ad structure and I started running ads. And the third one is that I also do influencer marketing and then I had a notion database notion board um just
sculpting influencer and then reaching out to them like just the typical ways. So I let these three channels run together and then see which one perform the best after a month and the result is that ads seems to be the most promising. It wasn’t very good actually. It is just um um in in terms of rorowes it was just breaking even in January maybe slightly losing some money but I um but but by assessing the performance after a month
I realized that pays seems to have the best potential so that I just double down on ads spending more money on ads and then making more creatives February March April and then that’s how we decided to go full on paid. >> Yeah I love it. What of the $10,000 what did you allocate to just the paid ads? I was allocating I think um after January I think in total maybe just uh five four
to 5K four to five okay so the breakdown is that I think one I want to run 1k went to organic to get some editor to help me and then around um 4k went to pay ads and then around 4k went to um influencers um probably pay ads took up 5k >> okay I like Okay, the talk to me about the ad strategy because I have a note from here from Lakeside Trades. He’s like, "Look, love Desmond’s content. Excited to hear about the meta ads.
Currently struggling to understand how to scale mine. I spent only about $50 to $100 a day and around a $25 to $30 trial start price." So, Desmond, you hear all these, you know, like meta ads experts saying go broad. What was your because you didn’t spend, you know, the $500 a day that people might say that you need to spend. Spend only $5,000 a day, which, you know, for some could be a lot of money, but it’s not a whole lot of money yet just to test it out. And you’re able to break even. So, what worked for you in the campaign setup?
So, I my campaign setup is pretty simple. It’s really just the board and then the advantage plus setup that the guru or the expert would recommend. Yeah, that’s really just it. But um I well I had to shout out to resume again. I really just I’m using that structure. I was using that structure and I’m still using that structure. I don’t know if the resume guys uh is watching this video. I love you guys. Um and >> we’ll be there in New York, bro. Yeah, I should. I should. I love to. But um
well, they’re pretty they pro I don’t I don’t know if they’re cool to share their strategy, but um my strategy at least um it’s just really the testing campaign and then the scaling campaign is structure like just two campaign and then you throw your ad creative every every week make as much as possible to the testing campaign and then structure each of your um creative concept to one assets, right? and then just um see which adsets perform the best after a week. So, and then each adset should get
some budget. My my budget until right now is still I give them 300 Hong Kong dollars per day, which is around just 40 USD per day per adsets though, per adsets. Okay. So um that means um typically uh in the first in the first month I was want I was running five ads per week, five new ads per week because that’s what I can I can make max uh the maximum amount I can I can make. So I I make five new ads per week and then test
them give them three days to run on meta. So in total that means um I’m spending around just um around 4K to 5K HKD every week on testing ads. Yeah, that’s that means it’s around 500 $500 for testing the ads. And then after testing it, you will figure out which one got the best ROS. And if some of them get more than 1x rorowass, that’s what I’m looking for. Then I will move them to the scanning campaign. So the
scanning campaign um I don’t have a fixed amount of budget uh or like a I don’t I don’t think you even need a minimal budget because you just need to give it money and it would run and it would be it would go through the earning phase and you will see that whether the grow is increasing or not. So that’s my scamming structure. But I think I I need to mention one thing though. Uh the reason that it worked for me so well in the beginning even I was at small budget uh small spending is because I did a lot of organic already right in last year
and I was using the same Instagram page and then the organic views give meta a lot of signals on what kind of audience would react to my page content. So that is a very special um exclusive like uh scenario like for resume. I don’t I don’t I don’t think they did a lot of organic content back then. So that means you would need to pay more on on ads to to let the algorithm knows about your your audience. So for me um that’s what I did a lot of organic so that I skip
the I think I skip a lot of a lot of like learning phase effort. So that’s why every time I give advice on marketing, I always tell them to go organic first because when you want to scale on paid, the organic effort that you you you aggregated, you accumulated would help you so much on scaling paid ads. >> I love that. Were you using any I give you a point, Desmond, were you using any like of the organic viral videos as ads or did you just start all over and start
creating new ads? >> Yeah. So, um, that’s a really funny question because every time I saw people giving advice, they would say, “Hey, reduce your organic, reuse your influencers.” But that unfortunately really never worked for me. I did try to reuse my organic influencer, but it never worked for me. And then I I really tried to think about the reason behind like why it just didn’t work for me. And then but what I noticed is that um generally it it really didn’t work for other people. Like if someone said some
of the influencer video work at worked well as ads, it’s probably just very rare case. My rationale is that um ads is a very different content style or format that you should uh that you need to optimize for comparing with like organic. So organic video you are working for the algorithm. You want to appeal to the algorithm which is people’s attention span. So that you need to make your content um non as as non- salesy as possible as uh attention
grabbing as possible. That’s why a lot of hook that um is very work work well. But for an ad you are not appealing to the algorithm. You’re not appealing to the um to the uh audience. You’re appealing to the uh buyer. I would say people who have the intent. Um so or people who want to install. For me um I will always structure my ads such that it is very it it is salesy. I don’t try to pretend that it is organic. I will
make it showing the app very quickly because um to the algorithm if somebody swipe away your ad immediately that’s actually good because you want the algorithm to knows who to not distribute your ads to. So that if you run organic as ad you will attract all people who like to re watch organic but they may end up never convert. So that’s a problem. And then my ad I always make ad that’s is just for ads. I don’t reuse organic anymore. >> That’s that’s the reason. Yeah.
How did you come up with those initial videos? Because breaking even on that first Okay. Let me phrase it this way maybe. Desmond. How were you able to break even? because I’ve heard from a lot of people sometimes it takes like eight months to finally get Meta to work for them. What do you think was your secret sauce to I know you said hey me being on organic for a whole year definitely helped with that but what else helped with sort of taking yeah getting it break even on first on the first month man >> hard pay wall because we were running on
hard pay wall. Yeah. And then um answer that’s really just the reason we’re running on hard pay wall and we’re optimizing for purchase so that’s why we break even >> that’s >> but um um and in terms of content >> I guess that’s also matter but I mean a lot of people test so many creatives right but it didn’t break even for them so I don’t think my creative production or testing strategy is very different from other people but um we’re running on hard pay wall and also we are a health and fitness product so that um people’s purchasing intent is generally
really high So uh and also maybe our our positioning is maybe just um very attractive to people in general. So I think that’s why >> yeah I love it because you know I usually say you don’t want to combine everything into one but you literally did combine all five mini apps meditation book summary pomodoro workout counter screen blocker all in one >> and I think that that was an advantage to you from like I think even the organic and the paid side of things. >> You agree or no? I I actually well I
didn’t really run content or ads on the app the mini apps. >> Yeah, >> I Yeah, because um well I I just had to think about that. I just never thought about making content surrounding that. But um generally what what what we did though is we run ads spec specifically for a a target demographics. So we are a life reset program app and a lot of people
need to transform their life. They want to change their life to become better. But there’s also a lot of like sub um subcategories. Maybe someone who who have like addiction on something and they want to quit that addiction. That’s for like quitter porn addiction is a really huge market. And then maybe there’s women or men who want to be uh who who want to um get lean or get stronger. Muscle building fitness in general. That’s another subcategory. So we did what we did is instead of running
ads or content on a that many ad you mentioned we run ads and content that is for this sub subniches we did web app campaign for say corn addiction as a funnel and then also uh we also try to run web app campaign for um fitness men who want to build muscle as a as a demographic separate campaign. >> Yeah that’s what we did. >> Wait web app I thought you were sending people to the app store. You’re you have a web app. We also experimented with web 2 app and it didn’t really work that
well for us. Um, so we didn’t do it anymore right now. >> Okay. In the beginning of the meta campaign when you were testing this, so you said, “Hey, shout out to me.” Each ad set has a concept and you you have like five or six or five to 10 videos underneath each concept. Then you have another adset. You’re giving about you said about $40 to $50 a day per adet and letting it run. Were you targeting trials from the very jump or what were you targeting? What was the event that you were optimizing for?
I’m optimizing for purchase. When I say hard pay wall, we don’t have free trial. >> It was a hard pay wall with u money back guarantee. >> So that um we just directly optimize for the purchase events. Um because I think free trial, we had free trial previously actually. Um and then when we run ads on free trial, it was the first week of January. We we we have free trial then we realize that the uni economics just doesn’t make sense. We could we cannot run run ads on free trial so that we
just get rid of the free trial go with hard pay wall and then that’s um how we get profitable on day zero. >> That’s amazing bro. All right. Robot robot Shakespeare said love from Des London Desmond and Steve goated combo. So there it is. We made it happen bro. I love it. Okay. Deem James Jim Lock has a great question. How do you allocate the percentage of testing campaign versus scaling campaign now that you’ve sort of at this you know 200,000 $200,000
MR level like what is the the split still? the split is um I don’t really account for that actually because um I don’t I I actually don’t think that’s meaningful because your scaling or testing the the total budget depends on how much money you have, how much credits you have or how or is your ro positive and then the percentage the testing once you just like um you need to test as much as
possible within your own capacity. I now test um I now test a 100 new creatives per month. That’s what I can make right now, but probably I would want to ram it run up even at the 200 and 300 uh starting in the next couple months. And then um I still have like $50 per day budget per per ad creative um as for now. So that um and then for so but the testing is you have to run create new
creatives to keep finding new alpha. So that um I just keep running them without really calculating the total to the total budget. And for the scaling I just also run as much as I can at the positive rorow s and then as long as the rorow is rorow is positive and then we have we are we are not losing money then I just keep ramping it up. If it is if ramp ramping it the span up to a certain level and then the wor drop hugely then I would decrease the numbers that’s a very like um that’s not a very uh
systematic way to run ads but that’s what worked for me so far and then yeah but I think in general nowadays meta is so smart that you don’t really need a a very systematic or structured way like the agency that always told you hey you need to do this or do that but instead um you just need to get enough credits or cash to run ads and then make sure your progress is positive by making very good creatives. That’s my whole rationale. >> Yeah. Do you still do one adset, one creative for adset?
I do. >> Yeah. >> Still the same. I I just have one scaling campaign and just one asset and then um inside that scaling asset right now, I think it got like 50 different creatives. Okay. And then it’s on advantage plus so that the algorithm will figure out who to which one to allocate budget to and then now I I think like in the last seven days among those 50 adsets probably just seven to eight of them get spent. Yeah. But I think that’s pretty normal for in
terms of like the the way that matter run as right now. >> Okay. But for the testing one, you have multiple adsets and multiple videos within each adset because each adset is like a concept you’re targeting >> or like a demographic you’re targeting. >> Yeah. On this I do have another like uh tips because um on in January January when I was beginning to make ads, I was grouping concepts or grouping ads sets
in terms of formats. I would have a format called cinematics videos >> and then I would have another format called Mims. I would have another format called maybe say um uh a POV videos. So um I’m grouping in terms of formats because that’s what I could think of. I I thought okay that’s that’s um how you group videos, right? But later I talked to some Yeah. Later I talked to some people who really run ads and they told me hey bro >> don’t group your ads in formats. Group them in pain points. script them in um
all uh audience persona. So instead of having your ad grouping in say uh cinematics as one assets or format anime memes as one assets, try something like um um people who want to uh get better in their studies uh as one assets or people who want to lose weight uh to get fit in summer as another assets. So that’s also is better in terms of for you to scale your creative production because um if you’re thinking about
assets in formats there’s just so much formats in the in the world that you can think of like maybe just couple 50 or 100 formats but if you’re thinking like um persona then there’s so many more formats and then uh uh uh assets that you can think come up with and then persona can also combo with format. So for me for example a cinematic videos that target people who want to lose weight is one is one adset and then a cinematic videos uh and people uh a a a
UT videos that target people who want to lose weight could be another assets that that’s how you could expand more ideas to test on. >> Do you ever mix like the the format still like images versus videos or are you mostly exclusively video for the ads? >> I’m doing exclusively videos. I don’t do any image. I saw that the meta ad manager always tell me to add some more image. Um but I did follow the advice but it don’t work. So um I but I think
the rationale behind is that the CPM for image is slightly lower. So that if you add image to an asset then it learns faster. But for my case, my my testing strategy is that I let a batch of ads runs together, right? So that they are just competing with each other and I need to find the out the the most the highest performing one. So that if all of them doesn’t have image, then they are on the same equal ground. They are equally debuffed. And then um but that’s
that’s that’s actually probably an excuse. I’m just I just don’t have it. Um I just don’t want to make image because video mostly works. >> I like it man. The what was it I gonna say? How did you decide? There’s a couple of questions I have. Okay. So when you’re just starting out you said I can do you know porn addiction. I can do habit tracking. I can lean in on the the workout fitness. How did you decide Desmond? Was it like hey I want to have
one ad. Did you start with those three ad groups and you just said, “Hey, let’s just see which one does better.” How did you decide on which ones to start with? >> You mean uh how do I decide which ad concept to to test with? >> Yeah, especially in the beginning. >> Um in the beginning I I didn’t really think that much because in the beginning I was even thinking in the wrong way. I was thinking in like okay maybe in terms of ads I could make cinematics ads I could
make UGC ads that’s what I was thinking >> and then luckily like luckily I I came up with some all right ideas that it it brought me positive ros so that I didn’t give up and then after I saw that ads could work I was literally just climbing the learning curve so that I asked some friends they say hey bro try to make ads based on persona then I come up with a lot of persona come up with a lot painoint from the users. Um I talk to users of course and I I know very well
about my users and then um so that I can observe different pain points or things that they care about and so uh through that I come up with all a lot of different ideas or angles to sell the app and then yeah that’s really just how I I think about this. >> Yeah. And then your scaling campaign you’re taking all the winning concepts. So you can have a winning concept about a certain what do you call it Desmond like a certain concept. So you have all the
different concepts in that scaling campaign in that under that one adset >> um for the scaling. Yes. So I would group because >> um because you don’t want to my my rational is that you don’t want to split your your budget to too thin across different campaigns or across different assets. you as long as your ads or as long as your adset is is
focused on the same audience because um in my scaling campaign uh those ads could have different messaging. Maybe some of them talks about um uh fitness or some of them talks about quitting addiction. But for my p for my case specifically people they are all people who want to change. They are all people who want to improve themselves. They all have a common human common human desire. So meta will figure it out on how to
distribute your ad efficiently in this case. So and you also don’t want to split split your budget too thin because the more budget you give better the better it learns. It needs data to get more information on who to distribute to. The more the the uh more the more money you give it the smarter it gets. Were you just creating all the ads in the beginning yourself? >> Yeah. Yeah, I was creating all the ads for maybe >> the first 500 500 ads that I’ve ever
made and then after uh it’s after somewhere like July or August um I started to get like some freelancers because we work with a lot of like influencers uh when when I was doing influencer marketing. >> Mhm. Um I talked to a lot of influencers, right? So that I get back to them saying, “Hey, um you want to help us to make some ads?” So now I’m mainly scaling the production through having influencers to help me make creatives. >> Are they still posting or organic or
they just still just creating the creatives? >> They don’t post organic because it’s a different like a charge. It will be expensive. So it’s mainly just them making ads creative um for me and then I run them as ads. >> Yeah. Well, hey, thank you. the two people that I was learning from finally together. Thank you for all the value, guys. Mon, thank you. >> Leonardo says, “You talked about the money back guarantee, Desmond, in terms of request, process, returns. Is that just on the payw wall that you put, hey, money back guarantee?”
Yep. >> Okay. I’ve seen certain apps do this because obviously Apple handles all that stuff and you can kind of >> let that go. All right. Uh let me see if I can find some other stuff. >> Okay. What else? So, talk to me about the scaling it from that initial $5,000 a month to wherever you’re at right now. What were some of the lessons you learned along the way?
I realized that um I realized that you can like there’s a famous saying, right? you can just do things like a lot of people think that you need so much budget or so much like an agency or team to help you on but uh in reality uh you don’t need that much but you need to figure out some uh the very basic logic of ads. So um to me or couple fundamentals uh like laws for ads you
need you need to make money on ads. So don’t think about like uh um L uh acquiring user at a negative CAC and thinking and dreaming that you could scale on someday that’s doesn’t doesn’t work. So get your unit economics positive as as soon as possible. Um and then to do that the best way is to optimize your app and your payment model for ads. So that means hard pay wall. Har is generally just the best way to um
run ads because that’s the most unique economically efficient uh money model and then um but hard pay wall is not good for other marketing channel like for organic for influencer maybe you want to try other marketing channel and then if you want to run run ads I would suggest you to really consider heart pay wall but there’s also of course some nuance maybe in some niche say language learning app no one wants to pay upfront but maybe in say health and fitness. So maybe
somebody maybe it’s a workout counter app uh maybe people are more more willing to so that also you need to also consider those and then figure out your yeah so figure out your um money model and then also figure out how to um start to make creative. So, I always just think that you need to start with making you need to make videos on your own because if you want to if you want to really get good at this, you can’t escape the difficult work. So, I make
all the all all the videos uh in the first couple months by my on my own. Um most of them is pretty pretty pretty bad and then but um as as you climb the learning curve, you’ll figure out some really good one. And so and then the la last most most important thing I think is to is to try to ride on trend. Some of our most popular or most efficient highest rows videos
are videos that is riding on a certain self-improvement trend. say these days people love talking about something like uh that’s called winter arc which is like a self-improvement um uh a a challenge that you want to lock in during winter. So that um our ads that is targeting winter arc or with winter arc as a whole generally perform pretty well. And then uh earlier this year there’s an anime called solo leveling and funny funny enough that the concept
of solo leveling is really similar to our app but we made we made our app before soling leveling anime even comes out. So that’s a huge coincidence. So then we made a lot of ads surrounding that niche saying that okay so um like rise is an app that turns your life into solo leveling and then people love that we got a lot we got a very good um performance on those videos so on trend >> you call it >> it’s called solo leveling so it’s an anime >> okay >> interesting sorry go ahead continue
please >> yeah I mean um writing on trend is um because in the end what you are trying to do is you are you are buying you’re buying audience attention from meta and then you want to convert the audience attentions with something that they want and what is better than than than trends like trend in general are someone something that everyone
could resonate or relate to and then so always try to observe the latest trend and then adapt your your product your project to those trend and make accurative some of it or just like what I did last year I did my organic strate organic strategy is also writing on trend basically right so writing on trend is the most important skill that you could develop for organic marketing or paid marketing >> yeah I love it all right for a boomer like me Desmond and Jamie how do you
find and follow these trends and which ones are hot and active to replicate success So um you really need to just be scrolling social media uh for long enough. Um, for me I although I’m trying to be like a detoxing on social media but >> yeah same >> I still I still schedule like a some people call it like a schedule distraction like you have to s scroll on IG to to um to be immersed in among your
target audience because my target audience are mostly like Gen Z people who want to improve themselves like just like myself. So I also need to be like them. I need to scroll on social media. That’s there’s no better way. The the better way the only better the only um inferior way is to find someone who who are your target audience and tell tells you about what they like and what’s the trend. But I think that’s not very efficient. Like you just need to
understand your customer enough, right? So that means to me I just scroll social media long enough so that I know what is trending. >> Are you the only person doing this Desmond or you have like how big is the team? And here’s what Marco says too. what other members of the team work on you know like what’s the division? uh three three members. So there’s no there’s three departments. There’s the marketing department and there’s the engineering department and there’s the design department. And then each department have one guy. So I’m in the
marketing department right now. And then um and then my co-founder Peter, he’s in the engineering department. And then we also hire a designer. Um he’s from Brazil. Uh he’s called Micah. And then he he is he he is actually a a Rice user. We recruited we recruited him from our discord channel >> and then he’s handle all the design now. Previously I did all the design. So I was also in the design department. Now I can finally focus on marketing. >> Yeah that’s awesome. Marcos I think this
might be too complicated but he asked what type of headlines work best and you can find that Marco if you just you know meta ads library but do you segment users based on the onboarding data and show different pay walls at all? So first question I don’t think that matters a lot because headlines in general >> people don’t really read that right like some meta expert might might um might really hate me for saying that but I don’t think just think of from first principle like headline is a maybe it’s
the third or fourth steps of a customer of a of a of a uh user journey of someone who watch your ads. The most important thing is your videos. So um if there’s any optimization is probably just 2 to 3% or 1%. So I won’t really care about headlines. Of course you could test it but the result I don’t think that matters that much. Rather you should focus your your focus on optimizing for the videos the ad itself. The second the second question yes I did try to sec set segment on boarding with
the couple on boardings for couple persona funnel them through the questions and then the result is that there is some improvement but not very significant so that we are now just doing one on boarding sorry I was on mute what does your tech stack look like is it do you have an MMP are you just doing the meta SDK post you know what what else you got going on in So our our um tax stack is very much
like my one asset and prey strategy. We really just try to try to don’t rely on other platform of SAS as much as possible. um we don’t use MMP we just use meta SDK um which is uh the ADM aggre aggregated event measurement to do the attribution and then we don’t use revenue cap we don’t use like a super wall and then we handle our own like subscriptions um and then we use uh we don’t use react native we don’t use uh
we we just write uh swift write cotlin natively yeah because our philosophy is that you well honestly in the beginning we don’t know much so we thought hey um writing native or don’t use uh writing natively is the best is fastest way right right and we didn’t really expect to build an Android in the beginning that’s why we go native and then for MMP I did think about that but I think I
figured that I should test AM first and then to see whether it at least the whether the roy is very very bad. So then um AM worked pretty well um all along so that I never change and then for like referend um if I’m building a new project I might consider using refer cat to be honest because subscription management is is honestly a headache but we have overcame that by building an internal like a subscription management system. So yeah
we could we could happily save that 1%. >> Yeah that’s awesome. I love it man. the have you thought about the conversion API at all? What are your thoughts on that? >> We we um we set up conf I think when we’re doing web to app uh we set up conversion API. So I think we still we’re now we’re using it but I don’t think there’s like a huge change. >> Yeah, I like it. Finn says, "Will this entire podcast be on your channel
permanently?" Yes, it will be until Desmond says, “Hey man, too many competitors coming.” Yes. I think yeah I think it will be permanently yeah because >> yeah I think it really helps a lot of people especially people who started like me with like with bootstrapping um >> who like especially I’m from Hong Kong I don’t know anyone like if you’re in SF you’re in New York you can meet so many brilliant founders who could give you some advice but if you are not in the tech center then you really just need to watch YouTube so yeah I hope this video
can help someone and then inspire someone um yeah that’s all I want to Absolutely, man. Thanks for doing that. I appreciate that. All right. I’ve got Lakeside Trades says, "Thoughts on copying ad formats from competitors? I’ve got a meta campaign running with three ads currently. The main competitor has like 250 ads running. good approach or come up with your own. Essen >> I didn’t really experience that because my app doesn’t have a very strong
competitors or my competitors in is in a quite different positioning that we are not competing essentially for the same audience. >> Say my biggest like competitors or the app that is most similar to mine is probably Finch. They’re doing a brilliant brilliant job. I love I love the whole project and then I also tried to copy their ad format to be honest because they run a lot of ads >> and um but what I realized is that the ad format didn’t really work well for me
because every single subculture has their own nuance and then they their format works because they’re targeting a specific audience and those audience might not really work uh work for may may not be people who are who I’m targeting. So instead of copying your your competitors, try to really look at what your own target audience are scrolling or reacting with. So um what I would
suggest is like um just become your target audience by some people might open a new Instagram page and follow all the page that your target audience might be following and then scroll on social media see what went viral. those video went viral then that means they at least they got something that your target audience might like but my but I I said earlier right don’t try to replicate or or don’t try to make organic video an ad so you have to extract what worked in an organic and readdapt it to a an ad that
sells a product so that is a better strategy than uh replicating your competitors or following your competitors because um in the end they might be burning money you you never know >> that’s True. Do you like to use Tik Tok or Instagram when you’re trying to find these new trends? >> Unfortunately, I’m from Hong Kong and Tik Tok is banned. So that I never use Tik Tok actually. I just use Instagram. Yeah. >> All right. Beautiful. I love it. Look, I’m on your ads library, Desmond. So if
you want me to share anything, but I see some ads that you’ve been running since June 2025. Is there any ad that you’re extremely proud of? Yeah. So, that’s one that um is is called I built an app that turns your life in slow leveling. And then um did you see that one? I think it’s probably Oh [ __ ] Yeah. I’m I’m removed it because the I have it’s not not that good anymore. >> Okay. Hold up. Yeah. Let me Let me see if this is it. Okay.
Here. I will play it if that’s okay with you. What do you think? Play it. >> Yeah, sure. >> Okay. Is it this one? Oh, not this one. Not this one. This is uh one that I show my face. >> You No, no, not not not this one. Um, you have to >> uh It’s not active anymore. You have to switch off the active ad status. >> Let me pull it. You want to go old?
Yeah. Oh man, we’re going to go forever, bro. I love it. Okay, I think it’s going to be worth it. What do you think? Do you want me to go any later? >> Um, it’s it’s it’s probably there soon. Just um scroll up a bit longer. It’s somewhere. >> Yeah. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Uh the one that I was playing a phone >> in the second column. Yeah. I love the
one that says I love solveing in the caption. This one? No. No. Above about the the row the row above it. The the second one. The second one. >> Oh, my bad. >> Yeah. Okay. Let’s play this one. Love it.
That’s awesome. >> And you have the code right behind it. >> I like this one because uh well it’s the it’s this it’s the highest r one first of all. So, >> and then um it’s very authentic and some
people make ads and they’re lying like um of course like ads itself is a it’s a it’s a is you’re filming something you’re an actor and then somehow you would maybe make up some stories or scripts but I didn’t but this video is like all it is all authentic um and then it’s everything I said is um what I truly truly did so very interesting And then also um it is riding on a trend
that uh was was just really popular at those at at those times. So with this video um it really unlock a lot of like um new learnings for me. I learned that the video that worked the best have a couple traits. So they should show your product as soon as possible for me. At least for me, I show in this video I show that the UI in around the four third to the four
seconds. >> Um and then >> right in the third seconds is relatively already pretty pretty soon >> and then um that’s why I learned because >> because the earlier you show the app then more people would of course scroll away because they don’t want to see an ad but people who stay they have high intent. That’s what you need to optimize. That’s what I learned. And also showing your showing a face is very important because people people um buy from real people. And then showing
yourself is even better because um it creates a real relationship and then you would you would want to um become the customers of at least a real person. You don’t want to become a per customer of some huge corporation that you don’t know who is in charge of or who that is just a huge machine. So an indie founder story block or like a an approach is is really like a I think it’s is um is good in general for uh
conversion and then um what else? Yeah, people call this like a founder driven ad. I think if you are making any app, you could try this format. >> It worked very well for me and it worked especially well because it’s a combo of founder story plus trend writing. >> We are riding on a solo leveling trend plus it’s a founder story. So it is literally the the two biggest alpha that
you can have and we combine it together. That’s why the is so good. >> Yeah, I love it. Thank you. Thank you for sharing all that. All right, Desmond, how are you on time? I know it’s late, bro. Should we I can take it the rest of the way. Do you want to stick around for the app audited side or do you want to go home? >> I’ll leave it up to you. >> I can stay for maybe another 15 minutes. >> 15 minutes. Okay, we’ll make it quick then. Well, let’s do this. Desmond, if >> let’s go into the app audits. We’ll go fast and then when you got to go, you got to go. So, let’s start off because
we need that dad joke from you, right? That that is important. So, let’s start off with the dad joke. [Music] All right, my friend. Do you want to go first or you want me to go first? >> I could go first. >> All right, bro. Go for it. >> So, why did the football coach go to the bank? >> Why? >> To get his quarterback. >> All right. I like it. To get his quarterback.
Yep. >> The reason I picked this though is because um I’m from Hong Kong, right? I know nothing about football. And then I was the football that I was thinking was like soccer. >> And then I I found this that joke and I was thinking I I didn’t understand it for maybe for for a long while only to realize that oh this football is not the football that I was thinking. Yeah. So that’s how I found it funny. >> Yeah. I love it, man. All right, Desmond. I asked my son, “Name a country without the letter R in it.” And he said,
“No way.” >> He says, "What? >> No way. No way. >> No way. >> No way. >> That’s what I’m doing. >> Put D if you thought Desmond joke was better. Put S if you thought my joke was better. And Desmond, we’ll play for a drink in New York when we see each other at Des at the Revenue Cat event. >> Let’s do it. Yeah, absolutely. >> Let’s do it. All right. If you guys are going to be at the Revenue Cat event, the app growth annual, please reach out to me. I’m going to be there speaking about some of the Black Hat strategies and Desmond’s going to be there as well
as a bunch of cool people. So, I recommend you checking out and just by voting, you’re going to get a free indie app Santa promo on us thanks to our friends from Web2. If you’re looking for to web to app funnels and building them super simple and easily, check them out. And then arcads.ai for any AI UGC video content. Desmond, are you using anything from the AI realm, UGC’s at all, or is it all real humans for you? >> It’s all real humans so far and is so good. So that I think maybe a couple months later we’ll be all using AI.
There he goes. All right. And if you want your app featured in a future live stream, just go to appmasters.com audit. Look, we just go in order. There’s a long list. I know somebody was like K was like, “Hey, can I please audit your app?” It’s a long list, man. So fill it out and we’ll be there as well. All right, Desmond. Let’s get into Let’s Let’s get your insights on some of these apps. We’ve got Marvin’s app. I’m going to go straight into Marvin’s app. He’s got a a personal workout app. So, you know, you’re familiar with this
health and wellness space, but anything just from the screenshots that you’ve been that you want to highlight to Marvin? H >> I think I don’t know if I don’t know if it shows the main UI like for Dualingo the main UI might either be the for example for them it might even either be the lesson UI like there’s a four uh the multiple choice >> or there’s the uh >> that’s the main screen where you you
have different like a lesson in a like a road map design. So I think that’s pretty important because that gives your audience an a understanding on what your app does. So now it looks like it’s showing mainly on boarding. Um but I guess it’s because yeah for me I immediately post use my main UI. That’s the main screen. So that it lets the user know what your app does. >> But um for some app in particular maybe they’re content driven. Personal training is probably content driven so
that they want to they don’t want to show their main UI. That could be a reason. But yeah, I generally what I try to do is just show my main UI in the first couple of screenshots. >> Yeah, I love the the messaging on your screenshots, too. And I love that it’s still a personal developer. >> I tried to change this, but uh it takes some time. So, >> dude, I’ve been there. I I know. I’ve been through that hardship. And bro, it’s to change the name on this. You have to It’s another person. Yeah, it ain’t easy. I’ve done it. But anyways, I
like you said you reset your life in 66 days instead of calling it a habit tracker. Stay on track with daily task and then level up your life in 66 days. Great stuff for an app like this. The paid stuff like because you’re so many apps into one like ASO probably not a big deal for you. So, congrats on your success with this. >> Thank you. >> All right, let’s get into Marvin’s. It looks like Marvin’s app is doing well in Germany, but we’ll get we’ll get your insights on the app stuff right now.
Oops. I’ll go through just tapped on your app, man. You want me to go through your flow or what? Let’s go through Marvin’s first. He waited long. MCAI. >> Well, you’re pushing. >> Cool video. So, I’m going to go through what I’m expecting to be a long onboarding sequence. How how long is your onboarding sequence, Desmond? >> I think it’s around 30 30ish something
screens. >> Wow. Okay. So, pretty pretty big. I don’t know about centimeters, but I’m just going to guess 160. Again, I have no idea in kilometer kilograms. So, I’m going to pick that body weight percentage probably more like 10 training experience, bro. Yeah. Elite
build muscles. I like these little animations. What do you think about these animations? >> I think it’s all right. is not the best because like but the animation that it was showing the mark key one is good but in general the the question layout could be better like there’s too much empty space for example I think yeah there’s some something wrong with the responsiveness
I like it that’s a good that’s good feedback I like how you’re more anal than I am about that uh I don’t even know what I I just have Where’s dumbbells? I’m almost like uh >> you got you don’t got dumbbells. >> No, I don’t I don’t even know. >> Alphabetical orders, right? >> Yeah. >> Scroll scroll a bit down. Yeah, you got
it. Dumbbell. >> I would almost just lead with that. Okay. your free time. What’s question? What position? Standing baby. All right, here we go. Magic moment. Yeah.
Looks like it’s not a hard pay while I see an X. One trial. under 30. You know, do you still not have a trial, Desmond? >> I don’t. I still use a hard pay wall, but we are going to change. We’re going to do a like a really big change. We are ditching the hard pay wall and go uh full premium soon. >> Oh, why? What made your decision? because I think there’s more potential
if we if we go for the optimizing for user volume path instead of optimizing for short-term like sub subscription revenue. >> Mhm. >> Yeah. I think there’s more marketing channel we could use once we’re at premium because we could like really leverage on like a word of mouth like and um organic viral growth and that’s what I want to do in 2026. So that’s why we are switching to fremium. >> I love it. I love it. Hey, you got very far with just going with hard payroll
and premium only. So, what I found here with the fitness app is sometimes what we found is for one of our clients we we did he did a bunch of tests. He found that 1 312 so 1 month 3 months 12 months actually that combination had the best performance rather than 3612. Think about that Marvin might work for you. I personally don’t like these scrolling things as right here because that’s just
what I focus on rather than the start free trial and frankly like what I’m focusing on is very close to the X so I more visible on the X side of things. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. All right. I’m going to hit okay. So it is a hard payable. It just goes back to this. >> All right. Anything else you want to provide for here, Desmond? M I agree with you on the like the scrolling here. It doesn’t make sense. >> Yeah. >> Um I would try to
show the the the change that you want the user to see. >> Yeah. >> After using your app, >> maybe show a bit more on statistics or if you if you want a social social proof, then show it above the fold because right now it is it is hidden. You need to scroll so that you can see the success stories, right? But it should be above the fold so that so that on the screen people immediately see them because they are powerful. >> Yep. Great. I love it. Yeah, these work.
Great. All right, Marvin. There it is. All right, H. Want to pick a winner right now before we get to the next app? >> Yes. >> All right, let’s pick that winner. >> You want to Yeah, you do everything. >> Yeah. All right, >> let’s do the spin. Well, we got a lot of jokes. >> Yeah. >> All right, we got some new people, too. >> Wow. Nice. Koopo.
Koopo. Okay, let me see if I can find that person. All right, Koopo, just reach out to me. Email me stevemasters. Hey, Koopu rocks. You voted for the wrong person, but fine. Just email me stevemasters.com or do.co and I will hook you up with our team and we’ll set you up with the free India app Santa promo. H, more importantly, what was the score and who won the dad joke round? >> Okay, the score is eight on 10. >> Okay. >> And the winner is Desmond.
What? >> Yes. Thank you, guys. Thank you. >> Good job, baby. All right. I owe you my friend. The the last one. You got one more in you, Desmond? >> Of course. Yeah. All right, bro. Well, Karth, I’ll just call him Karth. I think he’s here, too. He says, “More installs, add suggestions.” So, here’s his app. It’s a happy Quotesmaker type of app. What do you think, Desmond?
Um, I think it kind of sucks because like in a way that like I don’t know like the UI design, the screen, it’s just like the 20 2010 vibes. >> Yeah, >> you can’t really get users in this kind of design anymore. >> And then um the icon, you you probably don’t want to put put two lines of text on the icon, right? Because that’s so that’s um Yeah. So I think there’s no
use to give specific feedbacks on like uh how to improve the screen the design because there’s something fundamentally wrong which is um I think happy quote or like motivational quote in general is a is a okay niche definitely is a okay idea but you need to improve on the design maybe really try to go to um dribble or look at what other apps design is like and then optimize for iOS. I think some this is probably some
React native project that um is um crossplatform so that and very much developed on an Android phone. So you probably wants to optimize for iOS if you if you yeah you want to go bigger in this niche and then yeah improve on the design. That’s what I would do. >> Yeah, I like it. You don’t mince your words. >> Yeah, like that savage did not hold back. I was going to say the same thing. the design doesn’t look good like before and design’s so important one of our
apps way back in the day Desmond I launched it it was completely paid up front because that’s what you had to do in those days and it wasn’t making any money until I really invested in designs I used 99 designs to like revamp the UI and then finally it started making money so I think that’s what I would start off with before you invest more money into other apps and Desmond like you said right like you were making apps for a couple I think you said a couple of years before you really settled on life reset. Yeah. >> Of those years like tell me like when
you were making those apps you didn’t see them really getting any traction. What lessons did you learn from those failed quote unquote failed projects that you brought into Life Reset? >> So I was doing two different projects uh for two years. The first year I was working on a mobile app. It was an app that helps you um bookmark some articles to remind you to read it later. >> Yeah. >> And then um the second project, it was
not mobile app anymore. It was a web platform that let you share learning resources with each other. So two of them taught me so many things. But um in a nutshell, the first one taught me that you you need to figure out your distribution before building anything because I was building that thinking that it would help some people and then I wasn’t even having much ambition. I think getting a thousand in store would be very nice. I was still a stu uh a college student back then. And then what I would do again is probably I would
make a lot of like Instagram res or Tik Tok to promote the app. I didn’t do that back then. That was a mistake. And then the second project it was a web platform. What I learned is that so the two project is both B2C and then um I realized that you shouldn’t build mostly you shouldn’t build web uh web app B2C products or like a website or web platform in general because most consumers they only use
their phone as their only computer. If you think about something like yourself, you might think that okay, I use my uh that laptop all day. But in reality, if you really want to go B2C, then you only should build mobile. Uh you really should should should just seriously think about mobile app because that’s where most people spend uh half of their day on. Um yeah, but that’s what we are doing here in in app masters, right? So I don’t need really to emphasize that. >> Yeah. Um but what I learned also is that
um think about from the market or the psychology or even like a human behavior in general. That’s what I always ponder on these days. Um uh like people uh the reason that apps itself works so well these days is because a lot of like social sociological factor like people’s screen time is increasing every day. They’re using their phone so much and then mobile payment is getting mature. you pay on Apple Pay is just so easy. That’s why um we can run ads is because
of Apple Pay. Seriously. And then um also people watch so many Shop videos. Shop video is the latest most most developed most mature kind of entertainment. And then Shop videos uh it happens on a phone and then if you plug in an app uh integration or an app promotion within the shop videos then it makes the audience very easily directed to the app store and install app and pay
for it. So that’s why app is is growing so fast these days and like app industry in general. So I think about this a lot and then I feel like if um you’re building apps uh if you also think about the human behavior behind why they use an app or why is app getting more popular you would have a better you have a deeper understanding on marketing strategy design strategy and then that’s what really will elevate your project. >> Yeah I love it. Well the app is called
life reset. You can find that at liferreset.com or just search for liferreset in your favorite app store 60-day habit. We’re going to link up this video as well that Desmond created. Go check them out on Twitter. That is linked up in your favorite podcast app and YouTube video. A great follow. But if you just want to type it in, it is Desmond Honx. Desmond, if the audience wants to connect with you in any other way, do you want to send them anywhere else, my
friend? >> Um, my YouTube channel. Yeah, my YouTube channel. Uh, I would appreciate a subscribe and then otherwise just my Twitter. Yeah. Um, shoot me a DM if you have any questions. >> All right. H will link up your YouTube channel as well into your favorite podcast app and YouTube description. Desmond, thank you so much for coming on and doing this, man. >> Thank you, Steve. Yeah, I really appreciate um you doing this like Yeah, let’s let’s let’s really do more of this and help more people. >> Absolutely, bro. And then next week, we’ve got Mike that I got to meet in New
York at APS. He’s going to he runs Growth for Abide, a Christian meditation app. So, we’re going to talk about how he’s been able to drive growth, the retention, the stickiness, and all of that jazz. Every Friday, 9:00 a.m. Pacific. I’ll see you next week. Have a great weekend. Bye.