- 21 hours ago
What if your biggest growth problem is not a lack of spending, but spending too much money on assumptions that have never been tested?
Jonathan Maxim, CEO of Viral App Launch, has helped scale hundreds of apps and led more than 1,000 growth campaigns for over 330 technology companies, including TikTok and Universal Music Group. After raising $9 million and reaching one million downloads in six months as a founder, Jonathan learned why profitable growth requires disciplined testing, accurate data, smart pricing, and a business model built to support expansion.
In this episode of The Mason Duchatschek Show, Jonathan explains how CEOs, founders, and business owners can replace guesswork with a structured, data-driven growth system.
You will learn how to tell the difference between real traction and a temporary spike, why customer acquisition cost and customer lifetime value must be measured before increasing marketing spend, and how onboarding, pricing, retention, referrals, and audience selection affect profitability.
Jonathan also breaks down his 10 by 10 by 10 testing method, a practical approach for identifying the best audiences, offers, and marketing messages before committing a large budget.
The conversation includes real examples of companies that improved their economics by changing who they targeted, how they packaged their offers, and what they charged. In one case, testing uncovered an audience that cost five times less to acquire than the company’s original target market.
In this episode, you will discover:
• How to separate sustainable traction from short-term momentum
• Why data should carry more weight than opinions
• How to test marketing without burning through cash
• How customer acquisition cost and lifetime value affect growth
• Why pricing, packaging, upsells, and multi-seat offers matter
• How to improve onboarding, activation, and customer retention
• How referral, ambassador, affiliate, and influencer programs support growth
• Why rapid growth can expose a weak business model
• What makes a company more attractive to investors
• Why humility, focus, and adaptability matter for founders and CEOs
Jonathan’s central message is simple: one test can be more valuable than a thousand opinions.
Before spending more money, gather the data that reveals where growth is profitable, where cash is being wasted, and which constraint must be solved next.
This episode is especially valuable for CEOs, business owners, startup founders, technology executives, marketing leaders, sales leaders, and anyone responsible for profitable business growth.
Subscribe to The Mason Duchatschek Show for more conversations about leadership, business growth, profitability, workforce strategy, and better decision-making.
Connect With Workforce Alchemy
Website: https://workforcealchemy.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReverseRiskConsulting
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workforcealchemy/
X / Twitter: https://x.com/WorkAlchemist
Jonathan Maxim, CEO of Viral App Launch, has helped scale hundreds of apps and led more than 1,000 growth campaigns for over 330 technology companies, including TikTok and Universal Music Group. After raising $9 million and reaching one million downloads in six months as a founder, Jonathan learned why profitable growth requires disciplined testing, accurate data, smart pricing, and a business model built to support expansion.
In this episode of The Mason Duchatschek Show, Jonathan explains how CEOs, founders, and business owners can replace guesswork with a structured, data-driven growth system.
You will learn how to tell the difference between real traction and a temporary spike, why customer acquisition cost and customer lifetime value must be measured before increasing marketing spend, and how onboarding, pricing, retention, referrals, and audience selection affect profitability.
Jonathan also breaks down his 10 by 10 by 10 testing method, a practical approach for identifying the best audiences, offers, and marketing messages before committing a large budget.
The conversation includes real examples of companies that improved their economics by changing who they targeted, how they packaged their offers, and what they charged. In one case, testing uncovered an audience that cost five times less to acquire than the company’s original target market.
In this episode, you will discover:
• How to separate sustainable traction from short-term momentum
• Why data should carry more weight than opinions
• How to test marketing without burning through cash
• How customer acquisition cost and lifetime value affect growth
• Why pricing, packaging, upsells, and multi-seat offers matter
• How to improve onboarding, activation, and customer retention
• How referral, ambassador, affiliate, and influencer programs support growth
• Why rapid growth can expose a weak business model
• What makes a company more attractive to investors
• Why humility, focus, and adaptability matter for founders and CEOs
Jonathan’s central message is simple: one test can be more valuable than a thousand opinions.
Before spending more money, gather the data that reveals where growth is profitable, where cash is being wasted, and which constraint must be solved next.
This episode is especially valuable for CEOs, business owners, startup founders, technology executives, marketing leaders, sales leaders, and anyone responsible for profitable business growth.
Subscribe to The Mason Duchatschek Show for more conversations about leadership, business growth, profitability, workforce strategy, and better decision-making.
Connect With Workforce Alchemy
Website: https://workforcealchemy.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReverseRiskConsulting
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workforcealchemy/
X / Twitter: https://x.com/WorkAlchemist
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LifestyleTranscript
00:05welcome to the mason duke check show and before we begin this episode is brought to you by
00:12workforcealchemy.com helping leaders uncover hidden profit leaks inside their business operations
00:18jonathan maxim has helped scale hundreds of apps but what makes his approach different
00:25is structure after raising 9 million and hitting a million downloads in six months as a founder
00:33himself he's gone on to lead over 1 000 campaigns for more than 330 different tech companies including
00:41tiktok and universal music group today he helps founders turn early traction into scalable repeatable
00:51growth jonathan thanks so much for joining us pleasure to be here mason thank you for the uh
00:56excellent intro when you first engage with the founder what are the biggest signs that their
01:04product is not actually ready to scale yet well the product ultimately is an extension of their
01:11personality and their mindset and really what makes great companies is not hitting the right product and
01:17getting lucky but it's more the founder's mindset of grit resilience persistence ability to learn
01:23humility so i'm actually looking at that first and how that manifests into their product and a lot of
01:29times what i'll see in an early stage product is a lot of people building with ai which totally cool
01:34totally respect it but the ai essentially works on averages and what does the average 1 000 apps have
01:42for their onboarding experience and it will build that rather than building something super personalized
01:46to the audience that their product's built for so the main thing that i'm looking at is the first time
01:51user experience with their product do i feel the magic within a few moments am i automatically
01:56quickly connected to the product's problem and solution does the app solve the problem for me within that
02:02onboarding experience does it go for the call to action does it go for a referral so i'm really looking
02:07at how quickly it hooks the user and oftentimes they don't even some of the best apps out there
02:12today still don't weave that psychology in as early as possible but that's one of the things that i've
02:17seen as a major lever for success on these products so after i understand the founder's mindset and where
02:22they are standing and how how open they are to learning the craft and actually being a tech ceo
02:28then we move into auditing that product so how do you know when a business has real traction
02:34versus some early momentum that'll just fade well a lot of new app founders get momentum at first
02:42they'll post it to their social pages their linkedin and and you know email lists and family and friends
02:47and they'll get a burst of traffic and get excited but then it dies off and that's very common and
02:53that's usually when they land on my doorstep and so the way that i look at traction i'm i guess
02:59it's
02:59just through osmosis or natural maturation working in this industry the trends are obvious once the
03:06apps hit about 10 000 users in one category that creates statistically significant data we can
03:11actually look at this thing in terms of volume micro macro will this scale with the current metrics
03:16that it has 10 000 is that benchmark and then on top of that this game is no longer about
03:22hitting a
03:23lottery and having a product go viral and getting lucky it's more about building a real business model
03:28out of it so are they monetizing what's their pricing and packaging strategy do they have an
03:32upsell downsell strategy do they have a referral program rewarding users for sharing it and getting
03:36you know let's just say a month free so if if they don't have real revenue and they don't have
03:42real
03:42users and when i say real users i mean an engine or a pipeline that can send them users on
03:47demand
03:47a business can't sail along like a sailboat it needs to have an engine mounted in the back of it
03:53pushing it forward as a speedboat so what should a ceo focus on
03:58in the early stages if their goal is to reach that first 10 000 users quickly and sustainably
04:04so the first milestone i always work to hit with the founders is a thousand users because once you
04:08get to a thousand users again statistical significance on the onboarding journey between
04:13the time that somebody clicks sign up and becomes an active user what's the drop-off there what's the
04:19registration rate 50 percent 80 percent how many people make it through start to finish
04:23so that's where i will audit how effectively the product is intaking users and activating them and
04:29getting them excited and inspired but really what we call the alpha phase that first three months
04:35getting that first thousand users on there is also about establishing the customer acquisition costs
04:39for example we just launched a project management app for construction businesses the average customer
04:44acquisition costs a thousand bucks when we discovered that through doing split testing initially the first
04:49only took about 250 users to establish that benchmark but the guy is pricing this product at 20 bucks a
04:55month the customer would have to stick around for what like three years to get profitable on a
05:00thousand dollar customer acquisition costs so that's like a major reality check and it's like okay
05:04my product is either not competitive enough to command a thousand sorry a hundred or two hundred or
05:11three hundred bucks a month to where it can be profitable on a thousand dollar cac which is the
05:14industry average or you know we need to find some other way to drive down customer acquisition costs
05:19open up other channels build referral programs i'm always looking at how much it costs to acquire a
05:24customer because that that sets the barometer of where they sit in the industry and it's like okay
05:29how long of a road do i have before this thing's going to get profitable what did you do with
05:33that
05:33particular company did you find ways to cut their customer acquisition costs or did you find ways to make
05:38more valuable or a combination of both that's actually a really good question so first of all i had a
05:44hard
05:44talk with the founder and i said look man you might not be happy with the metrics but you need
05:48to
05:48understand that every founder runs into this barrier this is the first barrier that they run into they
05:52get a reality check on how hard it actually is to run a tech company this is why you need
05:57guidance
05:57and systems and support i'm really big on systems as you mentioned so i told him like this is normal
06:02in fact we're actually beating the industry benchmarks by having you know a thousand dollar cac within the
06:08first week so we're doing what mature companies have been in business for five years we're
06:12achieving that in our first week so that's actually not bad the weakness is on your sales strategy
06:17first you should be selling multi-seat engagements so if the average construction team is five people
06:22you sell a program with one seat one with five seats and one with 10 seats based on you know
06:28your
06:28industry research so now instead of getting 20 bucks a month you're getting 100 bucks and then instead
06:33of charging 20 bucks per seat let's charge 25 and so now we're up to 125 per month average customer
06:39you know average revenue per user and then you add in a pipeline component where you call the you know
06:46the bigger companies to sign up for the platform and say hey we'll discount this if you buy three
06:50months in advance and if you add in you know five extra seats now you're talking about a multi-thousand
06:56dollar transaction on a thousand dollar cac see what i'm saying i do so hey maybe we sell a 12
07:01-month
07:01pit for pay in full so the sales strategies that people learn from working in phone sales and other
07:07aspects of business those all apply to apps too even if you've got a b2c app that's seven bucks a
07:13month you can still sell it through a church or through a non-profit or through a business to
07:18their audience in bulk and so that's how a lot of these businesses early on are are getting profitable
07:23quicker because b2c apps low ticket apps any low ticket business i mean you got a long road ahead of
07:30building enough revenue that the snowball is bigger and rolling on its own rather than you having to push it
07:36uphill and based on how the ceo responds to you maturity wise and ego wise that lets you know
07:43whether or not they're someone that you can even work with early yeah or not that's why that's why
07:49we do a close-ended three-month initial release because if we find that their product's not going
07:54to be strong enough to perform in market we want to tell them as soon as possible or if the
07:57founder
07:57is not willing to modify the user experience or change the pricing strategy we know this isn't going
08:02to work we're not going to we're not going to sell them something that that we're not confident we can
08:07deliver on because we know customer acquisition costs got to come down ltv got to go up if you're
08:12not going to let us pull those levers you know let's just part ways now so you don't waste any
08:17more time or effort on this and you can go back to drawing board and figure out or he says
08:21yes let's do
08:22it and we make those changes before we go back in the market before we spend any meaningful money on
08:25marketing so we know hey a thousand bucks in but this comes out five thousand bucks average revenue per user
08:31from now on
08:33so what are some of the biggest mistake leaders make when they're trying to grow their user
08:38acquisition user acquisition too early they jump the gun a little bit and they're like oh let's just
08:43and they start going for growth before it's ready what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see
08:48happening on a regular basis yeah they essentially overpay or they waste money on marketing because
08:54what we do like we keep it to a bare minimum i'll spend five ten bucks a day per ad
08:59you know maybe run
09:00ten ads and have it spend a hundred bucks a day for like ten days so that's our core principles
09:05ten
09:05by ten by ten rule ten ads ten split tests different messages on each of them ten bucks a day
09:11for ten days
09:11that will get you enough data to establish your customer acquisition costs which audiences age gender
09:16location which hooks messages are performing highest and so we'll bring that back to them and say you
09:22know before you invest any meaningful money in marketing here is the most profitable audience you should
09:27target right for some apps it's you know males over 50 and other apps it's you know females 18 to
09:3334
09:34if males over 50 are delivering you 5x roi and females 18 to 24 giving you 3x yeah females are
09:40still
09:41profitable but you want to target the one that's giving the 5x and so what a lot of the mistake
09:47that
09:47a lot of new tech ceos make is they start dumping money into marketing and into product like heavily
09:52front-loading and thinking i'm just going to push growth but what ends up happening is they don't have
09:56all those metrics and so they don't understand what a waste is happening and then they burn through
10:00budget and then they run out of runway and so as soon as i get involved i'm like i'm auditing
10:04right
10:05away and say like hey let's make sure you're not burning too much right now because you need to learn
10:08on a hundred or a thousand bucks not on a hundred thousand bucks right that's that's the main misconception
10:13that what we were taught in school was develop this big marketing campaign spend a hundred thousand
10:18bucks and hope for the best nowadays we can measure it on a granular basis and make sure it gets
10:22profitable as we spend so can you maybe walk us through a real example where a company was
10:27struggling with growth and what specifically you did that changed or what specifically you did or
10:34whatever you changed that made the difference well i always think about this one app in tennessee
10:41they would deliver fresh organic groceries that were like overstock essentially and so they would go get
10:47it from the grocery stores and they would deliver these fresh boxes of food 50 bucks a month
10:52initially we launched the ads and it was 50 bucks to acquire a customer for somebody who pays 50
10:57a month meaning they the return on ad spend breaks even in month one they start making profit month two
11:02or three but we did this split testing we ran it across all these different audiences and we found
11:07that females over 65 were ten dollar customer acquisition cost versus the index or the millennial who
11:14they they initially asked us to target millennials with one kid millennials were 50 bucks to acquire
11:19old ladies were 10 bucks to acquire so they're five times more profitable targeting old ladies maybe
11:25they don't want to drive to the store maybe they can't drive to the store maybe they just you know
11:29value that more so or maybe it's a less competitive industry right the old ladies versus the young
11:34ones so that's the that's the mindset that's the refresh or the cold shower that i want to bring
11:40founders and say wake up you're wasting money over here right now let's let's put this into a more
11:45profitable audience and if they can comprehend that and get with that then that shows the agility
11:49that's needed to be a successful founder because working most people who are launching apps these
11:54days are coming from another industry they're guys like you who are successful in their business and
11:58then they start an app thinking i want to go take on the app world but you have to have
12:03that agile
12:03mindset because you're in the most competitive industry the fastest moving space and it requires like
12:08a very technical and different skill set than running a services business a consulting firm
12:13it's it's much more technical and different so i always try to just be really upfront with them
12:17about that so that they can understand what they're getting into every business has its pros and cons
12:21the grass is always greener on the other side pick a business commit to it because the the tail might
12:27be longer in software but you have a bigger upside whereas in services you can make more cash up front
12:32but it's much harder to scale and so there is no wrong battle to fight it's just about which battle
12:37do you
12:37want to fight as a founder you're reminding me of a conversation i had with a guest on the podcast
12:43maybe a few weeks ago his name was john malura and he shared a quote because what i hear you
12:48talking
12:48about is test test test test test test that's a common thread and theme that i've picked up in our
12:53conversation so far and he made the comment he said one test is more valuable than a thousand opinions
12:58couldn't say it better myself what's that i couldn't say it better myself and you don't care what
13:05these people's opinions are you have the data because you've tested and the data is telling you
13:08the truth i don't even care about my own opinion i might hypothesize that millennials are going to be
13:15more profitable than boomers but we don't know until they get in market there might be 100 apps
13:20competing for that click in the market you want to be in and only two apps competing for the click
13:24in the boomer market so we just always have to let the data speak and when we do that then
13:29then it's a
13:30lot easier to have these conversations because it's like it's not about what you think or what i think
13:33it's what's the data telling us and that's that's just a healthy way to go because i feel like it
13:37creates a bridge between two people and says okay he said she said but we do have one bridge between
13:42us
13:43one one unit that we've created which is the data and that's the the source of truth that we can
13:48agree
13:49on and i could see where a ceo and i don't know how much you've dealt with this if at
13:56all i'm sure you
13:57have but i could see where a hard driving ceo has surrounded himself with folks that are competent
14:04and capable but might be a bit on cheerleader side and they don't want to bring the boss bad news
14:08and they want to offer opinions that support the boss's opinions so they stay in good favor
14:13it's like the little story about the emperor has no no clothes no one wants to tell the guy that's
14:19paying
14:19them that hey this isn't a good idea or i don't agree or here's why because everyone knows it's
14:26the messenger that gets shot but to have a third party such as yourself to come in and just say
14:32hey
14:33here's the data and this is what is and isn't working your opinion is secondary to what the data
14:40is telling us and i just i see the value in that and i can see where it would be
14:43an expensive cost of
14:46education for businesses to do this by trial and error now imagine nason you went to your five best
14:54friends from college and you asked them for a hundred thousand bucks each and you go take 500k
14:59and start deploying someone else's money and you don't know these things it's not uncommon where i'll
15:04meet a founder like yourself who comes in and has spent a million dollars building a product that
15:08should have cost it a hundred thousand dollars and they'll burn through their runway before they can
15:12actually get live and validate the product and so that's a super common issue and so then we're
15:17scrambling to raise more capital for them but they don't have the metrics to prove it the way i see
15:21it
15:21is like you know love me or hate me if i can be a conveyor of truth to help you
15:27avoid those pitfalls
15:28and those potholes my job is complete here so what does a structured growth system actually look like
15:35behind the scenes for the successful app well you know over the years you know starting with back in
15:412016 or 2014 when i founded my first app to 2016 when i launched my first growth agency that's where
15:46we ended up getting tiktok as a client working with triller some of those bigger more enterprise
15:50clients i was observing how they build and what what what levers open the next door that's really
15:57what this business is about it's not about doing everything all at once it's about focusing on the one
16:01constraint that is going to open the next door for you and so it's it's a heavy game of focus
16:07and again
16:07that's a different mindset than people coming from other industries it's not always so cut and dry and
16:13clear so our process always starts with an alpha that's where we validate does the product actually
16:18work that's what we're looking at the activation rate out of 100 people who download the app how many
16:23become actives some apps 20 of them right you're talking about 80 percent of people are getting left at
16:28the front door because they were not compelled to complete the onboarding
16:31after we establish that stronger conversion rate on the onboarding so we'll redo the first time user
16:37experience the onboarding experience make it interactive you know hook problem solution social
16:42proof call to action things like that then we move to the beta phase and the beta phase is where
16:46we
16:46actually start investing in marketing during that first phase we spend a few thousand bucks just to
16:50validate the product second phase the beta that's where we go and scale up to those 10 000 users once
16:56we've identified the most profitable audience that way they're not bleeding money while they scale
17:00and then after we've established that 10 000 user mark then we move on to doing the retention and
17:06engagement marketing this is called the optimize and monetize phase in our process so we'll make
17:11sure that all these new users that are coming onto your platform get retained for 30 days through email
17:15sms push push notifications and then we also restructure the pricing and packaging strategy like
17:21i talked about before because a lot of them are either undercharging or overcharging or they're not
17:27maximizing their rpu their revenue per user in an intelligent way and and now we have data right we got
17:3210 000 users of data we can read and see okay where are these users dropping off you know who
17:37are the most
17:37high spenders what does that icp that ideal customer profile look like and then we start morphing the
17:43business more around that profile if it's older guys or younger women or whoever then we start building the
17:49experience more around that niche ultimately we niche the product through this process
17:54after optimizing monetize is done then we move to virality that's where we build in the viral component
17:58so you know reward users give them a month free for every friend who signs up and you know starts
18:03a
18:04free trial or who pays so give them a mechanical incentive to share it with a friend and then also
18:09we look at that like a yin and a yang on one side is a user ambassador program so they're
18:13telling
18:13people about it get rewarded for it on the other side you got the influencers or the creators the
18:17affiliates who are bringing people on people like yourself youtube channel make a mention make a few
18:22thousand bucks off of it just by sending users to the platform and getting paid on a performance basis
18:27not just shelling out five thousand bucks to have and post an instagram story but saying every customer
18:32signs up i'll give you 50 bucks and that's a win-win i love what you're talking about there because
18:38they're only paying for a fraction of the additional revenue that they're getting that they wouldn't have
18:44gotten otherwise yeah and a lot of people like i've seen so many people go pay influencers a few
18:48thousand bucks and you know what's funny sometimes like the first post with an influencer sometimes get
18:5310 000 downloads off of one post they'll be like oh my god i've cracked the code but the issue
18:57is that
18:57influencer posts a second time and the audience maybe gets 100 downloads why because all the people
19:02are hot and ready to buy a click the first time and now their audience is tired they're gonna have
19:06to
19:06cultivate that audience for months before it'll start delivering so people will get that kind of false
19:11sense of hope by having a spike but the other issue with having a spike let's just say you get
19:1510 000 users in a day this exact thing happened to me with my first startup my onboarding wasn't
19:19optimized and only 35 of those people signed up for an account so i still lost 65 because they didn't
19:25have a good onboarding nor did i have monetization so i didn't make any money off of those 10 000
19:29users who downloaded 14 000 users to be exact so unless you build these systems in advance
19:36a little spike a flash in the pan really does nothing for the business it's not sustainable
19:40oftentimes the product is not ready to handle that kind of traffic sometimes you'll have crashes
19:45other times it's just the product is not monetized effectively and they don't make any money on it so
19:50those are the four stages alpha beta optimize monetize and virality once those are done then
19:55we take them in front of investors at that point you're talking about a business that has product
20:00marketing sales virality all woven into the model you got one growth engine that has can be turned
20:05up like a dial it multiplies users through the virality program it maximizes revenue makes it
20:10it makes app into a real business and then that's what i consider investable so how do you balance
20:17speed and structure when a company's under pressure to grow fast that is definitely a hard part that
20:23man you are so sharp it's that that is the the the main battle that founders are fighting in their
20:28mind is i want to move faster and i'm telling them oh only spend you know 50 100 bucks a
20:32day on ads
20:33they're like i want to spend 500 bucks a day i want to grow faster and i'm like all you're
20:37doing
20:37is is accelerating toward a brick wall essentially you'll run out of runway and so this is where the
20:45mindset component is so so important i mean i'm sure you've experienced this right to get good
20:49performance out of your team you need to understand their craft enough that you can guide them direct
20:53them meanwhile maintain kpis and so a lot of founders who get into tech think i'll just delegate
21:01everything that worked in my last business i mean it doesn't work like that because you don't know
21:04what they're actually doing technically so you can't enforce a good installation of an sdk you can't
21:09enforce the good reporting system because you've never done it you can't set up a smart creative and
21:14growth engine because you haven't done it so this is where i really encourage founders to immerse
21:20themselves in knowledge like the only reason i'm good at this stuff is because i'm 24 7 consuming
21:25knowledge around how to make apps better and i'm launching them so they need to be thinking in the
21:30same way not just kind of thinking band-aid approach i'll just slap this performance marketer on who's
21:36worked for tiktok that won't always save the day if you're not willing to to learn the craft yourself
21:42and to make some modifications to the product and so that's always a reconciliatory moment for the
21:47founders and and again my hope is that i get them truth my goal is to be respected not to
21:54be liked
21:54right i mean sure that's great if i'm liked but if i can help the founder succeed by not burning
21:59through a million dollars that they raised and then being on the hook for all their best friends
22:03and from church and from their social life that's one more founder that might succeed so what should a
22:11ceo do when their growth starts to plateau after an initial spike well growth usually plateaus when
22:20you either are not optimizing your engine or when you're when you're using methods that are not
22:26evergreen i used to be a growth hacker so that's how like uh for one launch we did we got
22:33like a
22:33hundred thousand users in a day another one when we with tiktok we got 25 000 users in a day
22:38those are great but again unless you can control volume it's not really that useful and that's why we
22:45build growth pipelines so we have an ad driven pipeline we have an organic pipeline like for
22:50example my stuff for i use i post to youtube to instagram i have ads retargeting people who watch
22:56my youtube i also have email marketing i'm outbound so that way i'm no not overly dependent on one
23:02growth channel and so when when founders start hitting a flat line it's usually because they don't
23:08actually have control of their growth mechanism and that's just another reminder you got to build a
23:12growth engine that can can be turned up like a dial so ads and organic are just a key piece
23:17of that
23:18so what's something because you've mentioned companies like tiktok and some of these big
23:22big companies what's something that smaller companies consistently misunderstand about how
23:27big companies approach growth big companies get the user to the value of the app really really fast
23:33so with tiktok they didn't require people to set up accounts all they did was when i was working with
23:38them they were just focused on making the algorithm super addictive don't need to register don't need
23:43to set up anything you just jump in and you're hooked in the in their videos right that was their
23:49way of presenting the value very quickly to users whereas some apps will have a really long
23:54onboarding process or won't even be thinking about solving the user's problem within that first
23:58interaction so if i could leave one thought with founders it's it's how quickly can your users feel
24:04the magic i like to have the users feel the magic within three taps first screen is a splash screen
24:09that's the hook capture their attention second screen what brings you here today which is diagnosing their
24:13problem and then the third screen is okay cool we can help you with that i think of the wimhoff
24:18app i
24:18downloaded it the other day or reinstalled it the other day and first screen said hey here's what the
24:24wimhoff app does obviously breathing and meditation cold plunges and then on the second screen it said what
24:29brings you here today anxiety sleep blah blah blah it selected those and it said boom screen three okay
24:34let's jump in and do a quick three minute breath work and so right there three taps into the app
24:41i'm doing
24:42my breathing techniques i'm feeling the magic of the app i'm getting goosebumps just saying that and that
24:46that's that's what you want the user to feel you want them to get goosebumps on their arm and feel
24:50the magic
24:50with as quickly as you possibly can because once they feel the magic they're sold and guess what on screen
24:57for he pitched me the free trial sign up now eight bucks a month free for seven days get started
25:02now
25:03but because i already felt the magic i heard i already had my problem diagnosed and solved and i felt
25:08the
25:08experience i went ahead and signed up i paid nice so what are the key metrics that actually matter if
25:17your goal is profitability and not just downloads well another great question from you mason a lot of respect
25:24free events reach impressions clicks installs cpi these metrics all matter but they are not the
25:31ones that are determining the success so the way i like to think about it is your business is a
25:35funnel
25:36at the top you reach let's just say 10 000 people 1 000 of them click 100 of them download
25:4150 register
25:43five customers something like that and a lot of businesses they'll have one stage where it's like
25:48100 people start the onboarding only 10 finish it so then we look at that major bottleneck and
25:54we optimize that metric so that's that's the best way to do it is to find the biggest constraint in
26:00the business where revenue is getting stopped up and unblock that you know it's like a traffic jam
26:04happening so part of it is knowing like basic funnels are like impressions clicks downloads registrations
26:13free trial starts purchases and so all of those metrics matter but the metric we're optimizing is at the
26:18bottom avenue right so purchases but we have to unblock the top of the funnel first we have to put
26:24it in front
26:25of 10 000 people then we have to make a call to action that's strong enough to get them to
26:29click and so on
26:30so it's not that those other metrics are less important it's just that they're ancillary to the to the core
26:36goal they all they all serve a purpose it's like a flywheel and so we always start top of the
26:41funnel
26:41optimize their movement funnel and then down funnel and if you try to optimize down funnel before you've
26:47optimized top funnel for example if you don't have a thousand people come to your app you only have 10
26:50how much data can you really get from purchase data right 10 users is just not enough to make any
26:56meaningful decisions on so i always learn from examples and stories they always stick with me so
27:03i'm gonna ask this thing here can you maybe give a example of a time when a company was focusing
27:09on
27:09the wrong metrics and how you helped redirect them yeah we have this dating app that we launched
27:15about six months ago and they were paying 23 bucks per customer registration the goal was nine dollars
27:21per registration once we get there then the app could be profitable well we hit that goal basically
27:27the way you get the cost per acquisition on an app down is you launch a bunch of new creative
27:30whether
27:31it's organic or paid so in our own company we launch 50 ads a week so you know basically the
27:37more
27:37variations the more chances the more at bats that one of them is going to hit and it's going to
27:41you know be massively profitable so we we optimize this app it was it's a dating app for progressives
27:47in colorado you know these people are coming to meet people of like mind and it all sounds good we
27:54got the customer acquisition costs in by like 60 percent more than more than in half but the pricing
28:00strategy wasn't there right he's charging 40 bucks a month 40 bucks a month is what tinder and bumble
28:05these super mature companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue that's what they're
28:09charging these guys have market dominance they can charge basically whatever they want so i kept
28:14pushing him i kept saying you know we need to get that we need to have like a seven-day
28:18free trial in
28:19here so people can try it before they buy it again feel the magic we need to have a lower
28:24ticket so that
28:24they can you know get a taste of it before they go and you know make a meaningful purchase
28:31that that advice was not taken seriously until about six months in and now we're doing it
28:35but if we had done that three months earlier we would have made been making more revenue per user
28:39all along the way and so again i'm not claiming to be right i'm just claiming that this is what
28:45the
28:45data is telling us and um and yeah it costs a lot of capital to to run a company for
28:51nine months so
28:53now we're doing different question and you may already have the answer for this and i'm sure that
28:57people smarter than me already figured this out but that sounds to me like something you could test on
29:02one niche and turn around do the exact same thing with any particular group you just name it something
29:06different you could do the same thing for conservatives that want to meet and have like
29:09minds people that want to date conservatively every basically all the tech would stay the same you're
29:14just all the only thing you're changing is your marketing and your delivery but you might find out
29:20just by testing instead of having an opinion that those people are willing to pay more or are more
29:24interested and pretty sure the conservatives are going to have more buying power leave politics out of this
29:29well i'm just saying that that if your guys haven't thought of that that would be my first
29:34guess i was like well that sounds like a platform you could apply for to any specific niche whether
29:38it's politics whether it's interests could be the cats whatever nostrils yeah it's it's really
29:46empowering you know when you look at it like that it's like wow i actually have this massive research
29:51tool that can tell me exactly how profitable my business is going to be i just got to spend a
29:55thousand
29:56bucks and be a little bit patient but people are not patient that's the problem they say no this
30:00is the business i made this is what i want to go for with and so then we end up
30:05pushing a rock up a
30:05hill but again that doesn't necessarily mean the business doesn't work it's just going to be more
30:09difficult or you you want that road is that what you want um you know and in some cases like
30:14we
30:14launched this app um that is a meal planning app the other day and he was getting nine dollar
30:19installs initially we did the split testing got it down to two bucks per user and he was targeting
30:24millennials another meal planning app for millennials and it like takes you to instacart helps you shop
30:30males over 55 were most interested in it and guess what they're most interested in reducing cholesterol
30:36so that audience was a dollar 30 per user versus our old nine dollar index right down to 260 when
30:42we
30:42blended it so we niche down even further to males over 55 and put cholesterol control into the ads we
30:50put that into the onboarding experience and boom his profitability 5x because he's paying one fifth of
30:56the cost right so you know whether you want to go that avenue and again we could have done more
31:01testing
31:01we could have tested meal planning for new moms right another group that's probably very challenged about
31:06cooking so that's the kind of thing that this unlocks and and then a lot of people as you've
31:11probably seen think okay if i go for a a really tight audience like males over 55 which is really
31:16not tight there's probably like 100 million people like that in america but maybe not that much but
31:20still you conquer that niche and then you start serving females and then you start serving people
31:2540 and above you see what i'm saying so you can you can grow the business concentrically around the
31:30core business and that's that's what we're doing here at viral app launch like we only launched apps at
31:33first and then we got into launching sasses and then we got into launching b2b sasses but we made sure
31:38that core model was profitable before we started bolting stuff on because every time you you take
31:43a directional change you essentially reset the shot clock and you have to redo a lot of the work so
31:48i'm always pushing people to just find that real sweet spot you know i'll help you find it but when
31:53when you see it let's let's double down and let's let's scale massively there because that's where you're
31:57going to get the quick profits my mom always said that if you don't have the time to do something
32:03right the first time you'll never had the time to do it over and i listen to guys like alex
32:08harmosi
32:09talking about people who try to do everything themselves and he says sometimes you got to write
32:14a check for speed but what i hear you telling me if i have an app or a vision of
32:21an app is that oh i'm
32:23going to write a much bigger check and go slower if i try to do this myself and i don't
32:28recognize
32:28recognize the value like you have dropped a ton of value and i'm sitting here thinking that i would
32:36actually get paid faster because by doing these processes that you're talking about by doing as
32:45opposed to trying to bootstrap this thing and figure it all out myself i mean that could take
32:48forever and just a little thing that you said that struck me you talked about oh do we send sms
32:55messages and emails someone can make a simple mistake like oh we're just gonna send out emails
33:01we're gonna tell people my emails i got hundreds of emails sitting in my thing every single day and i
33:09skim them at best someone sends me a text i know it's someone i know i'm gonna take the time
33:14and i'm
33:14gonna read it so someone getting me involved if they just sent me an email i might not even notice
33:22it
33:22it's gonna get buried and you do both just simple little thing like that could make the difference
33:28whether or not this works or doesn't it's email email open rates 15 sms open rates 85 it's literally
33:34an 80 20 and and this is another common misconception is people think that they're being annoying when they
33:40market but if you're providing a solution that somebody's asked for you're not annoying them you're
33:44helping them solve a problem a lot of people are busy and need to be reminded the average user has
33:49to
33:50see an app four times before they download it they have to see seven times of seven impressions of
33:54your marketing before they purchase you're actually doing yourself a disservice if you're not doing a
33:59multi-touch type of campaign like that and this is why i just try to convey everything that i've observed
34:04because like you said before it's not about how much you're doing it's about what you're doing
34:09like the the founders who end up stepping on their own shoelaces and stringing out and tripping
34:14are the ones who are trying to do influencers trying to do a referral program trying to do you
34:20know organic and trying to do ads at the same time and trying to build a bunch of product when
34:25i'm when
34:25i'm working on an app all i'm focused on is one avenue at a time and this is something that
34:29hormosi
34:30taught me i went to his conference and he told me this one-on-one he said focus only on
34:33the main
34:34constraint of the business and then what he also told me and this is something i applied in our own
34:38business crazy hr strategy he said don't don't just focus your efforts on that main constraint of the
34:44business but focus the whole team's efforts so you get media buyers copywriters developers all
34:51contributing their range of experience to solving a unique kind of problem it reminds me of this book
34:56called range where cancer the oncologists observed how firefighters put out fires and basically the
35:03firefighters don't shoot one hose into the big fire they shoot a bunch of small hoses from all angles
35:08and so that helped the cancer the the uh the oncologists who are doing operations to zap the
35:16the the cancer tumor from a bunch of different angles break it up and then it dissipated so when
35:23you apply this principle to business it's it's like the you know putting a piece of paper in the sun
35:28and
35:28expecting it to catch on fire no you have to put the magnifying glass and focus the the energy into
35:33one place and so we applied that into our business as well again same principle with apps focus just
35:38on the main constraint is it users is a registration rate is it purchase rate and then optimize that and
35:44so we started applying that to our quarterly rocks you might know from eos like we do our rocks in
35:49a
35:49week at a time now instead of a quarter at a time focus the whole team's effort on one rock
35:54and then we
35:54knock it out and it gets done completely and we do it on a call so nobody can hide and
35:58go async and all
35:59that kind of stuff been super transformational for our business and i know you specialize in
36:04people operations and all that so i wanted to at least make mention of that because as a tech startup
36:09it is still human powered the software is an augmenter and it's a tool but it is powered by
36:14humans who are writing the copy who are making the decisions about where we're going to put our
36:18budget how we're going to spend it what kind of ads are going to make and all that so the
36:22people
36:22operations are just as important i love your description of focus i get challenged with that all on a
36:28regular basis on a personal spirit of authenticity i i get an openness i get challenged to that a lot
36:33and i just have to keep reminding myself chew what's in my mouth before i take another bite
36:37me too and if i if i'm not finished with what i'm focused on i refuse to take another bite
36:44and i the people
36:46around me know like he's not listening i literally will tell people i'm not doing that and you can have
36:51a great idea but i'm not doing that until i finish this isn't it amazing how many great opportunities
36:57you had to turn away to become successful today i'm not afraid to say no i say no a lot
37:02it's one
37:03of my favorite words that's a great practice and it's difficult you know most people haven't mastered
37:09that they haven't practiced it it's it's liberating because then i'm not getting pulled off in other
37:15directions and i i feel progress and i don't get slowed down it's i'm not surprised that you're into
37:21to alex from oldie stuff i have read a hundred million dollar offers hundred million dollar
37:25leads and his money models book too and i've got i think i took somewhere between 100 and 150 pages
37:30of handwritten notes in my journal from the stuff in the book handwritten that's how i i mean it was
37:35because i can carry it with me i'm not going to lose it i know in fact i might even
37:39have it just
37:40right over there but uh i review that stuff in every places i wasn't i didn't go through his
37:44didn't listen to his videos i didn't read his books like oh i'm looking for one cute idea or
37:49or confirmation that what i'm doing is right i wanted precision and efficiency and that guy's
37:57a genius i just love what he lays out and the way he does it spectacular so when you started
38:02talking
38:03about some of those little things like up i understand what you're talking about um a couple
38:07questions quick and then we'll head up but wrap it up but what are founders and executives not paying
38:12attention to right now that will become critical for growth over the next few years in your opinion
38:18i think that people will focus on basic problems instead of what i would call like nuanced problems
38:23like some of the most successful apps today are quit porn quit vaping looks maxing these are like
38:30weird gen z niches but cal ai another great example like take a photo of your food analyze the macros
38:36these are like nuanced business models and when you try to go with let's just say a proven model like
38:42a
38:42daily deals app that's a long road ahead so i encourage executives founders and ceos to really
38:49take time and reflect and guess what you have the best research tool on your side these days what is
38:53the most difficult industry of these five apps that i'm thinking about making or what are the top five
38:57apps that have a major gap in the industry where i can build something ask those questions you know
39:02the quality of of your your responses that you get from your ai is based on how how well you
39:09ask
39:09questions and so i encourage this is also a meditation of mine is to stop and reflect more
39:14often to slow down because i've made so many just speaking from personal experience i mean so many
39:20hair trigger decisions and and so many of those i mean look we got to be fast got to be
39:25agile got to
39:26be aggressive in business but as we mature as executives you have to get out of the woods if you
39:32will and
39:32you have to really zoom out and reflect so i've actually been taking as much time as i can away
39:37from my
39:38desk so that i can reflect and think on things for example like if you give me a strategy that
39:44is
39:44challenging my whole worldview around my business i'm not going to go act on that right away i'm going
39:49to take time and reflect on it and kind of let it percolate and see what comes up and it's
39:54hard to do
39:54that because everything is so fast nowadays you see it like on instagram dudes are building all these ai
40:00chat bots and and and agents and stuff like that and i feel like i'm behind because i'm not doing
40:04all
40:05that stuff but i'm intentionally not doing it so that i can be methodical and where that led me in
40:10my own personal case was building a single source of truth database for the whole company before i
40:15build any agents so that i have good data from every aspect of the business every client campaign every
40:20employee free the client every you know new hire onboarding all that's in one database whereas before
40:28i might have just hopped to building agents now i'm really taking time and saying like what's the
40:32infrastructure and the bedrock that's going to make this work well and and whether you're founding
40:37an app or whether you're leading a team like that time i forget who said it maybe tony robbins or
40:42dalai lama or something just like the time between response and reaction or between stimuli and response
40:48that's where the magic happens and so i just want to remind everybody of that because personally i've
40:54just felt such a positive impact from slowing down not hurrying just my personal enjoyment goes up my
41:00wife and my family noticed it i'm more present but at the end of the day it just makes me
41:04a better
41:04leader you know not so trigger happy when it comes to my team i don't yell at them i don't
41:10humiliate
41:11people these are things that kind of happen when you get emotionally charged and somebody makes a
41:14mistake so i just i really encourage people to slow down to speed up it's a i'm going to piggyback
41:20on
41:20what you're saying there because i'm also a huge tony robbins fan so not a big surprise there
41:24but what he talks about questions are the answer and your ability to ask powerful questions directs
41:31your reticular activating system and decides what you pay attention to and what you don't
41:34and how you can attract things i solutions to the problems if you give yourself the time but
41:40you know his questions are things like what's not perfect yet and that helps what's not perfect yet or
41:47if a problem comes up how can i use this or how does this help me instead of why is
41:53this screwed up well
41:54you'll get the answer why it's screwed up but if it's like you know how does this help me what's
41:58the benefit of this what's not perfect yet those questions redirect your energy in a very very
42:03positive and resourceful and helpful way so i'm i'm completely in alignment with what you're talking
42:09about and i just shared that for the benefit of those watching and listening been very very useful
42:13to me and it sounds like you and i are on the same wavelength there so i really really appreciate
42:18everything you share if people want to know more about you and your company and the work you do
42:23what are the best ways for them to to connect because i'm sure there's people listening out
42:27there who have these ideas and have these visions and right now are realizing i don't want to go this
42:32alone i might want some guidance on this and we say that what's that old saying you think the cost
42:38of education is experience try ignorance so i appreciate your time and your wisdom and i'm sure
42:44everyone watching listening does too what's the best ways for people to connect with you and learn more
42:49first of all i just want to thank you for being a great question asker and for being an empathetic
42:54person who who genuinely listens it's very rare these days so thank you for that and i i'm sure
42:59your audience appreciates it too i have a ton of tools and resources the first place is always in my
43:05opinion always start with education get up to speed on what you're what you're trying to do i have a
43:09playbook that i built for founders that goes over the five-step app launch process i also have a one
43:14-hour
43:14internal training that i've now made public because just people loved it just you know pure value
43:19dropping of each three-month block of launching an app and exactly what to do in that time so if
43:25you
43:25want those just follow me on instagram or dm me on instagram uh at it's jmaxim or at it's viral
43:30app
43:30launch sorry at viral app launch and just dm i mean mason and then i'll note to give them the
43:36playbook for
43:37free in the one-hour training whatever other resources and and of course we also help founders launch
43:42their app so if they're at the stage where they're like okay cool i'm trying to bring in the big
43:45guns
43:45you know feel free to hit up our website viralapplaunch.com or you know apply on one of the
43:51forms on on our instagram pages at the end of the day like my hope is to get you the
43:57tool set to make
43:58good decisions whether or not you work with us so i i just hope that you take the time to
44:04really
44:04absorb the knowledge because like you said it's it's a small price to pay now for a lot of time
44:08effort
44:09and money saved later so do your dd do your homework also i'm very active in the dms if you
44:14just want to like chit chat with me on instagram or whatever hit me up like i will always just
44:18try
44:19to drop as much value bombs as i can or at least you know give you the context on your
44:22industry so
44:24happy to help any founder out you know this is i do this all because i was an app founder
44:28and i made
44:28an app that ultimately failed with 50 000 users on it and i just learned that lesson and i just
44:33hope that
44:34you know i can save the next guy all the four years of effort that i put into building that
44:39first
44:39company and actually make us successful right get the payoff today has been wonderful i've loved
44:45every minute of it thank you so much i appreciate you mason man this is awesome i hope we can
44:51hang
44:51out in person one day you seem like an awesome dude and uh love to chop it up well i
44:56know you
44:56surf and i know you snowboard i'm not very good at either i've done done both but neither
45:00wells next time i'm out in la you you wouldn't have to twist my arm to give it another give
45:05it
45:05another shot yeah man well sir if you get a little less bruised up in that but uh yeah we
45:11had an
45:11office over here in century city if you ever want a place to you know chop it up or a
45:16place to co-work
45:17just hit me up i'd love to host you all right sounds good bud thanks
45:30you
45:30you