How to build a $1M+ Consumer SaaS App (step-by-step guide)

Join me as I chat with Joseph Choi, Founder of Viral App Founders Community, as we discuss his frameworks and strategies for finding and building profitable Consumer Apps. Learn his step-by-step formula to building and growth hacking apps. Episode Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 04:01 Ecom Marketing Strategies applied to Consumer Apps 11:07 TikTok Shop Affiliate Center = goldmine for app ideas 22:16 Profitable Niches that are Underserved 33:26 Influencer Marketing 2.0 40:58 Capitalize on internet "cults" & movements 1) TikTok organic = BIGGEST underpriced distribution channel right now - Cost of creating & distributing content = low - Potential reach for consumer apps = high - Time to leverage this opportunity! 2) E-commerce tactics are invading the app world - Remember Tabs Chocolate? 0 to $10M/year with mass UGC creators - Now these tactics are being used for consumer SaaS - Higher margins + better exit multiples = Bigger Opportunity 3) Carousels perform better than Short-form video on TikTok?! - Surprising trend: Photo carousels are CRUSHING IT - Easier to create + more scalable than talking head vids - Pro tip: Use Midjourney for quick, eye-catching visuals 4) TikTok Shop Affiliate Center = goldmine for app ideas - Find top performers in any niche - Build apps to help them sell better - Get free marketing from influencers Win-win-win situation! 5) High LTV niches are UNDERSERVED on TikTok Think: Golfers, poker players, niche sports Example: Golf swing analysis app - 10k downloads / month - $70k revenue / month - Huge potential for more! 6) Myth: TikTok users are all young - Reality: Diverse demographics, especially in niche content - Serve content to underserved niches = Underpriced reach 7) Rethink influencer marketing for TikTok - Old way: Pay for followers - New way: Hire creators as ACTORS, not for their audience - TikTok algorithm favors good content, not follower count 8) Capitalize on internet "cults" & movements Examples: - Looksmaxing (YouMax app) - Make money online (Crayo app) 1. Find passionate communities without products 2. Build the app they need 3. Profit Bonus tip: Product quality is CRUCIAL Nail your metrics before scaling marketing efforts! Want more free ideas? I collect the best ideas from the pod and give them to you for free in a database. Most of them cost $0 to start (my fav) Get access: https://www.gregisenberg.com/30startupideas Work with me and my team: LCA — world’s best product design firm to build apps, websites and brands people love. https://latecheckout.agency/ BoringAds — ads agency that will build you profitable ad campaigns http://boringads.com/ BoringMarketing — SEO agency and tools to get your organic customers http://boringmarketing.com/ Startup Empire - a membership for builders who want to build cash-flowing businesses https://www.startupempire.co/ Stop Building Websites That Look Good But Don’t Sell: https://www.designscientist.com/design-store?b=https://www.designscientist.com/ FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/ FIND JOSEPH ON SOCIAL Viral App Founders Community: https://whop.com/viral-app-founders/ X/Twitter: https://x.com/JosephKChoi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/choi-joseph/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Isenberg?

  There are apps that are getting millions of downloads because they've mastered TikTok. And it's kind of a black box for most of us. So I brought on Joseph Choi. This guy knows exactly the formula for how these apps are getting users. He breaks it down and you're gonna love it. People charge $5,000 for this sort of thing, but I'm giving to you for free. All you gotta do is listen and take notes. Enjoy the episode.

• 0:53Greg Isenberg?

  All right, Joseph Choi on the pod. This guy doesn't want to talk about B2B marketing at all, and that's okay. Cause he's the guy to talk to when you want to blow up your consumer app. And today, he, I mean, you tell us, Joseph, what do you want to talk about today?

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's talk about viral consumer apps. I've been seeing a lot of people making a lot of money on pretty much getting all their users from these really simple TikTok videos. So I want to go through a few things. Some quick wins, like that you can just copy these apps and get 10K MRR within a couple of months, probably if you just copy the content, copy the app, do some slight differentiation. But I think there's also like legit opportunity for people who are more ambitious, want to build bigger businesses and like Tik, yeah. The overall theme is I think that TikTok organic is probably the biggest

• 1:57Speaker 01

  underpriced distribution channel right now. And yeah, just the cost of creating, distributing content is just so low that I think all types of consumer apps can be using these strategies.

• 2:12Greg Isenberg?

  Great, you know, yes, the answer is yes, we want to know more about that. We see, we've been seeing more of that on Twitter. People have been like sharing like how this company got, you know, 4 million, uh, 4 million downloads in like 90 days and are making $3 million a month with some AI app. So people, people want to know and they want to figure it out and, and let's, let's learn.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the biggest trends that I've seen is that these, all these tactics are basically being stolen from the e-commerce space. So TikTok Shop got released, I think in November of 2022. So it's only been two years since TikTok Shop came out. And so we've only had like two years of TikTok, uh, marketing innovation. So the space is still super new, but, um, what I've seen is like, for example, Tabs Chocolate, they went from zero to 10 million a year, um, for an e-commerce product, this chocolate company. And they basically use these mass UGC creators, hiring tons of teenagers, putting them all

• 3:23Speaker 01

  in a Discord server, and then just mass producing content every single day. And the founder of that, Oliver, he, he pivoted from Tabs Chocolate to a micro SaaS that helps people do their homework, uh, in college. Um, and it's really interesting because they're basically using the same tactics, um, in their marketing, but now it's a SaaS, it's a consumer SaaS business. So instead of e-commerce where you have like 20, 30% margins, it's now a micro SaaS and you get, you know, 90 plus percent margins and a higher exit multiple if you decide to sell the business. So I wanted to show you a couple of, uh, marketing trends that the e-commerce space is doing right now.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  And I think there's a lot of ideas that you can take from the e-commerce space and then kind of build apps around the same marketing strategies. Uh, so one of them is.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Colostrum. So this is like an example of a video POV you divorced bread. So this video got, I think, something like 700,000 views. It starts, by the way, this is all AI. So this picture is mid journey. It's not even real food, but it's POV you divorced bread is kind of a funny hook. And then it just goes through, by the way, the audio is, I think, a Joe Rogan like clip or, I don't know who this is, maybe it's Hugh Moon or someone, but you know, common pain points, energy, brain fog, metabolism. By the way, also I use Colostrum and you should go to Miracle

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Moon Amazon. So if this video gets, I don't know, 700,000 views and you know, 0.5% to 1% of the people actually close their app, they go to Amazon, they check it out. Even if that conversion rate is pretty small, they're going viral with the same types of videos every single day. And this is not even the same, this is not even the only account. So they figured out this one content format that works and now they pump out these mid journey stories like every day. But they're pushing all the traffic to e-commerce, which is interesting because you know, you

• 5:43Speaker 01

  could do the same exact story like theoretically with similar pain points, but then solve the pain points with an app instead. So here's an example of the same thing, but for an app. So TikTok, a strong negative hook. Our guest hated the controversial rules we enforced at our wedding. And then it goes through the rules. Don't ask photographer for pictures. No kids at the wedding, no plus ones, don't post photos before us. And then the last slide is we had our guests use the POV app, which is a disposable camera app that they can use to take pictures, pictures at the wedding. And this account does the same thing. So they

• 6:28Speaker 01

  have all these slideshows and it looks like they're experimenting with some AI actors more recently, but they, they pretty much post these wedding, wedding angle stories.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  For like, you know, every day. And this is also mid journey. The, the faces and stuff are getting really realistic. This is also kind of weird, but they have the, like, I think they, at some point, they realize that the like cake on the face image as the first image like gets views for some reason. So they just prompt the mid journey to do that same hook every time. So I don't know, just weird stuff like that where like you, you can never predict what consumers will respond to. So I think a lot of this game is just like

• 7:18Speaker 01

  trying a bunch of random stuff and then seeing what works. But then, once you figure out what works, you can just spam it every day. So the POV app is doing super well with this content format.

• 7:29Greg Isenberg?

  So, quick reactions so far. So one is that when people think TikTok, they think short form video and the examples that you're showing is carousels.

• 7:44Greg Isenberg?

  So that's just a surprise for me, I guess, is that

• 7:51Greg Isenberg?

  it's, it's by the way, a happy surprise. Like it's way easier for me to create a photo on mid journey than it is to go and create a video just from a effort perspective. So just surprising that, that carousels are working so well.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  That's completely true. And I, what I've heard from people in both the e-commerce and the app space is that slides are generally lower converting because there's less of that human feeling of an influencer talking to you, you know, with a talking head video. But, you know, there's a lot more scale and it's like the, the barrier to entry, like you said, is so much easier. So I have seen talking head and I wanted to get to that too, of influencers, you know, talking to the camera, selling various things. But if you're just getting started and you don't know how to hire influencers, you don't have the budget,

• 8:48Speaker 01

  then this is like super easy way to start out. One issue that the industry has right now is

• 8:58Speaker 01

  This company called Goalie. Basically, they're a supplement company. And they sell all sorts of supplements, including ashwagandha is like one of their most popular ones. And they do these talking head videos. The, so basically what TikTok shop is, is it's a platform on top of TikTok where you can, as an e-commerce brand, you can upload your brand and your products to the site. And then creators can sign up to affiliate for your product. And they just make videos automatically. So you don't have to hire them, sign contracts or anything. You just upload the product and they just start making videos and then they take an automatic affiliate cut.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  So you can set your affiliate cut at whatever you want, 15, 20% is typical. And then people will just start making videos. So TikTok shop was a huge gold rush in the past like two years, but then over time, brands started to catch on. And Goalie was one of these brands. And now if you search like Goalie creator prizes, they give away, they're giving away like insane prizes to top affiliates. To just basically have a monopoly on all the creators. So for example, they have these like, and if you sell $7,000 in GMV, you get a MacBook Pro. If you sell, you know, 45K, you get a Rolex.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  If you sell 250K, you get a BMW, 500K, you get a Tesla. And this is on top of the affiliate commissions. So you get the 20% commission and you get these prizes. And Goalie has said themselves that this is not profitable, but it just makes it really hard to compete for these talking head creators because they're just all making videos for, for Goalie. Goalie is not the only one. There's a couple of other supplement companies that are sort of monopolizing all these creators. So that's another reason to go to slideshows. It's just, yeah, the, the competition is a lot less.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  But I also wanted to talk about an opportunity potentially to ride the Goalie wave. If you wanted to hear about that, unless you had some more stuff to say about these.

• 11:19Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, yeah, let's, let's do it.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  So. Here's an interesting tool that I think not many people are looking at right now. So if you go to the TikTok Shop Affiliate Center, you can find a lot of really good data on exactly what TikTok Shop products are being sold in high volumes on TikTok. So you can sort it by industry too. So you can find creators that are selling all these different products. So and the filters are really good. So for example, let's, let's try to find supplement creators. Or let's do, let's do a different one. Let's say like skincare.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  So here's, here's all this stuff that has to do with skincare. And you can sort by

• 12:13Speaker 01

  performance too. So you can find people that have between 100 and 10,000 total GMV. So now basically I've selected all the skincare TikTok Shop affiliates who do medium range GMV. So the opportunity that I see with this is all these TikTok Shop creators are being incentivized by these huge e-commerce companies to make all these videos. But they're just selling e-commerce products. And I feel like they could all be selling apps instead. So if you

• 12:55Greg Isenberg?

  Dude, you read my mind like, what are you doing? You know what I mean? It's like,

• 13:05Greg Isenberg?

  I almost, it's crazy that we're going to publish this episode because I think that so many people are going to listen to this. And I think it actually will change the dynamics of TikTok Shop.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  I think so too. I kind of held this in for a little bit because I run the community of consumer app founders and I've been sharing this with the members. So I'm sorry to my members, but I'm gonna leak the alpha. But I mean, this is just kind of the game with TikTok. Like the tactics are always evolving. There's always going to be something new, some new edge. But this is something that I think, I think the entire industry will benefit from. If everyone starts making videos for apps instead of e-commerce, then there'll be more content formats, more video trends to follow. And yeah, just like a lot more innovation in the space. So I mean, you can do this for so many different niches.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  It doesn't have like skincare, like for example, there's this app called

• 14:12Speaker 01

  What Colors and it's a color analysis app. So basically it's like people that wanna know what type of clothes or what type of makeup works best with their hair color and their skin tone and their eye color. They can use color analysis and typically it's like a, it's a, you know, high, high paid consultant who's, you know, doing the color analysis for you. But now they've put it into an app and they use AI to analyze your, you know, the colors on your face and your hair and stuff like that.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  And this app promotes, this video promotes this app. So this video got almost a million likes. So this app is doing very well.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  And it's, yeah, it's just another simple slideshow. And then CTA is, you know, download the What Colors from the App Store.

• 15:10Greg Isenberg?

  And do we know, do we know the business model of What Colors? Like how they charge?

• 15:15Speaker 01

  It's a, so a lot of these apps that are like single, single utility apps are just a paywall. So you onboard onto the app, you answer a few questions and then they hit you with the paywall. You pay weekly or annually and then you can scan your face. Typically they have you scan your face first. So you're kind of brought in and then it says the paywall and then you pay subscriptions. Which is also, by the way, Subscriptions, I think one of the other reasons why the consumer apps are having such a boom is because of the double tap to pay. Like, I think that Apple Pay, that simple UX change,

• 16:00Speaker 01

  has changed people's perception of iOS subscriptions. Like, if you look at the past five, 10 years of iOS subscriptions, the revenue is just blowing up. Like, apps have always existed. You know, there was the 2000s, you know, app boom and then, but none of those apps were monetized, they were all free. Now, like, people are actually paying for apps. So, this is, yeah, this is one of these apps that you pay for as a subscription.

• 16:34Greg Isenberg?

  Well, I can give a little more color to that. So, as someone who was building apps during, like, when the App Store came out, and, you know, back then, 2009, 2010, you know, 2011, back then, the distribution, like, how you got people, how you got millions of users into your app was the App Store. The App Store would feature you, and you would get hundreds of thousands of downloads per week. And that worked until it didn't work. Now, what is the equivalent of the App Store to today? It's TikTok, it's Instagram.

• 17:18Greg Isenberg?

  These are places where people discover content. How many people are opening up the App Store and thinking, "Oh, give me a app to download today"? Like, that's just not how it works anymore. It worked when you were getting your first iPhone, and you wanted apps to make your phone more functional. It just doesn't work anymore.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  That's great, that's really great context. And, but the thing is, also, is like, once you get that top-of-funnel distribution through TikTok,

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Then people start downloading your app, then you do rise in the ranks. And then now you have a search, you know, ASO, App Store optimization. So you will, so you'll actually start getting organic downloads just from, from the App Store. If you get a kind of boost, so you do this TikTok stuff once and you benefit forever.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  So yeah, great context with that. But yeah, the reason why I was bringing up what colors is like, if you go to these, like, if you think about what kind of app could you do for skincare? Like you could do a skincare version of what colors where you analyze your face and then you suggest skincare products, for example. And one of the hardest parts of going viral on TikTok is making videos that

• 18:45Speaker 01

  get views, but then also convert. So you want to sell, you want to actually sell a product. You don't just want, you know, the vanity metric of number of views.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  And typically, the more, the harder you sell the product, the fewer views that you get. But these TikTok shop creators are the top 1% of the people who know how to do that, right? Because they're getting organic views and they're selling high volumes of GMV. So I think this is actually the goldmine, like finds TikTok shop creators because they know how to make the style of video. And then have them promote apps. To take it a level deeper, you could actually make an app that helps them, that helps them sell the products that they're already selling. So if they're selling skincare products, e-commerce, you know, creams or whatever.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  You can, like, for example, you could make a skincare app that analyzes your face and you could do a before and after video. Where you say, hey, today I'm going to, you know, try this skincare versus this skincare product. And then, uh, you know, look at the results after a week. And then you, you briefly show the app and you show the interface and you scan the, the influence, like the influencer scans her face. Before and after, and then shows the transformation. And it's about, it's about the e-commerce product. But then the app is being used as a utility to show that transformation.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  And you don't even need to mention the app, or you could mention it very casually in a non-threatening way.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  And this is another, it's just another scale thing. Like if you reach out to all these influencers, I bet they would use it, use the app in their TikTok shop affiliate videos for free. Because it actually helps them make content. So you could get, you could get the marketing completely for free and you could do this for any niche. Like, it doesn't have to be skincare, so many niches, like makeup, personal care, um, fashion, you know, electronics, sports. Home improvement, um, collectibles, jewelry, home supplies. So whatever people are selling, just help them to sell the thing better.

• 21:16Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah, I also think that what's cool about the, the app approach is it's way harder to get a stranger to drop a hundred dollars on some product from an influencer that they've never heard about. And way easier for them to just double click on, uh, you know, download an app, double click again and spend five bucks, you know? So that's another interesting thing about digital products is, uh, yes, the, the price point might be a lot lower. But the actual volume might be a lot higher.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  That's so true. Yeah, like some of the weekly prices on these apps is like $2 a week or $10 a week, or the annual is like, you know, $30 to $60 a year.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  But the cost of goods on that is basically zero. So if you just, it's, it's, you know, infinitely scalable.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  I have some like high revenue per user ideas that we could look at if that would be interesting.

• 22:26Greg Isenberg?

  You're an angel. You're an absolute angel.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  So, um, okay, think about, okay, so the, I think there's a myth that TikTok users are all young. I think generally it's, it's basically true, but there's still wide range of demographics on TikTok. And if, if you, if you serve content to a niche of people on TikTok where there's not as many creators,

• 22:58Speaker 01

  your content's going to be underpriced and you're still going to be reaching these demographics. So, uh, like who, who has a lot of money to pay, to pay for products? It's like, one idea is golfers. And this, this idea has been circulating on, on Twitter for a little bit. But if you search, like,

• 23:19Speaker 01

  uh, if you go onto TikTok Creative Center and you go on Keyword Insights, you can see what people are searching for on TikTok. And then you can find related videos to these things. So one idea that a couple of people are already jumping on right now is the golf swing analysis. And, you know, you could build an app that takes, that takes a live view of your, uses the camera to take a live view of your golf swing, analyzes it, the angle and the speed and everything, and gives you tips on how to improve that. And, um, it's like a golf, it's like an AI golf coach, basically.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  And if you look at the videos that exist in this niche, for example, improve your golf swing, like these videos already exist.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  So they're promoting these app. This app, I think, is talking about,

• 24:22Speaker 01

  it's like a GPS tracker, so it shows you how far you hit the ball.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  But there's also this other swing analysis. If you go on Sensor Tower and you search

• 24:36Speaker 01

  like golf swing, there's the top app, I think, is has 10,000 downloads a month and it's making $70,000 a month, which is a pretty crazy revenue per download ratio compared to some of these other apps.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  You know, probably because, you know, this demographic is willing to pay a lot more for for things.

• 25:00Greg Isenberg?

  Well, also the alternative, that's one piece. And I actually, I signed up for golf. I'm horrible at golf, like horrible. I've only golfed a few times in my life. And I signed up for a golf swing analysis.

• 25:18Greg Isenberg?

  Just like randomly, it's $125 for 60 minutes. And so I don't know what these what they're charging, but I already feel like uncomfortable like going and some like random person is going to analyze my crappy golf swing. And I have to go and like drive there and park and walk and like doing it out of the comfort of your own home. Like that's for like $20. Like I would do that all day.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, exactly. And then an app is just like so much more scalable than than a bunch of coaches. That you can get some good content ideas from TikTok itself, too. If you just search golf swing, like there's people that already sort of make this content where they analyze the the angles of, you know, famous golfers' swings. And another app that I like in this space is KO. Their MMA app, so they help you train

• 26:26Speaker 01

  like boxing and mixed martial arts. So if you go to,

• 26:31Speaker 01

  you know, if you search KO,

• 26:34Speaker 01

  watch some of these videos. It's basically

• 26:40Speaker 01

  a product demo.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  You know, there's lessons in the app, but then there's also this like wireframe skeleton thing. I really like this concept. I think this could be applied to so many other apps like tennis, golf, pickleball. If you draw this wireframe over people and you kind of use that to analyze their movements, it works really well on TikTok because it looks, it looks really cool. It's like visually it has this kind of wow factor. And you know, the, the content already sort of has this, uh, this analysis in the organic videos. It would be so easy to plug in an app on this and just have a little screen recording in

• 27:23Speaker 01

  the corner that shows the interface of, uh, the app analyzing the golf swing. Um, it's a super easy product integration.

• 27:37Greg Isenberg?

  I like it. I, I mean, I like it cause I mean, it works. It's, it's, you know, tennis,

• 27:45Greg Isenberg?

  pickleball, like what are other, like skiing, you know, I'm just trying to think of like, what are high value, like what are, what are sports that people, the lifetime value of a customer is high as well as that they're interested in analysis of, of how, you know, of how they, uh,

• 28:09Greg Isenberg?

  how they swing or play or whatever. There's actually, I forget the name of it, but there's a camera that does this and it's specifically designed for tennis players and pickleball players. Have you heard about this?

• 28:21Speaker 01

  I have a friend who does it. He, he like, he sets it up every, every time we play tennis, he like puts it on the fence and then the camera. And then I think there's an app component too. It says the camera and the app together.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 28:34Greg Isenberg?

  And that's really.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  I don't know if the camera is completely necessary, though. I feel like GPT.

• 28:39Greg Isenberg?

  That's the point.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Vision is like, good enough to kind of, yeah.

• 28:43Greg Isenberg?

  Like, the camera on the iPhone is pretty damn good.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you can just use the APIs, like the GPT. This is super fresh, by the way, like, GPT Vision just came out this year, and, you know, all the other LLM companies are building better and better versions of the AI vision stuff. So, the opportunity is very fresh, like, there's not that many competitors in the space yet.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  One more high-LTV niche is poker. I still have not seen a really, really good, like, well-monetized poker app, but when you think about it, poker players are probably the best customer that you can have when it comes to, like, sports and, you know, games and people who would use apps.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  I mean, typically, these, a lot of these poker videos and, like, content gets monetized via gambling sites, because obviously, they make a lot of money, too. But, you could build, you know, an app that helps poker players analyze their, their hand history, like, analyze the, the strategies, did I make a mistake here or there?

• 30:12Speaker 01

  You could even position it more towards beginners and show them, you know, tips on, hey, here's what you did this hand, here's something that you might want to do next hand, and sort of have an educational component, similar to, similar to KO. But, a lot of these poker videos are unmonetized. So, just, or at least, undermonetized, like, they either sell a poker course, where they say, hey, here's how they learn poker,

• 30:43Speaker 01

  or they're sponsored by gambling

• 30:46Speaker 01

  websites, but you could reach out to all these poker, poker creators and integrate the app into the, into the gameplay videos. Like, for example, this video has, like, 90,000 views.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  It's like biggest tip for poker players. Oh, it clicks the wrong one. This one.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  How to play the straddle? And it's just, I think the person's probably talking voiceover.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  So for here, he calls. But imagine if you just put a little interface right here that said, okay, let's look at, you know, what are my, what are my pot odds? Like, what are my?

• 31:31Greg Isenberg?

  Right.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  You know,

• 31:35Speaker 01

  what, what's the range? What's my range right now? Like, how should I bet here? Should I fold? Should I check?

• 31:43Speaker 01

  You could put the app interface right there. Just flash it for two seconds. And then continue on with the video. And then people in the comments are going to be like, oh, what was that app? Like, how did you do that? And then you can just reply. And people read the TikTok comments. So you're going to get a lot of people getting downloads from that. And there's tons of accounts that just post these poker videos every day and they're completely unmonitored. So this is a, I think it's a big opportunity.

• 32:14Greg Isenberg?

  When I hear you talk, I just, I'm, I was, okay, I'll tell you a little bit. I had coffee with someone this morning who he, he's a founder. He sold his last company for like $180 million. And he was kind of complaining to me that it's so hard to stand out now. It's so hard to come up with ideas for stuff. And I was like, dude, what are you smoking? Like, what are you smoking? Like, there's the amount of opportunity right now, like, and these aren't even like,

• 32:51Greg Isenberg?

  you know, I call them super niches, which is like a niche of a niche. These are like large categories that you're, you're talking about.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  That's true. Yeah, you could even more micro with these, but I just like TikTok is just, yeah, like I said, it's mostly monetized through e-commerce and there's just not that many people that have figured out this content yet. I like one thing, one thing that I've noticed is that

• 33:27Speaker 01

  people also get stuck on like influencer marketing because everyone views influencer marketing through the lens of like the Instagram era, which was an influencer, you know, you pay an influencer, they have millions of followers and you know, people, the theory was that, oh, people follow people, not brands. And I think that's true. I think influencers, the access is a niche audience, but TikTok is is different. It's different because people watch content on the for you page. They don't watch content from people that they actually follow. Like if you scroll through your for you page, 95% of the content is brand new accounts that you've never

• 34:11Speaker 01

  seen before. So because of that, you can't do influencer marketing in the same way. With influencer marketing, you're the creators that you hire are actually three different roles. It's like they're an actor, which most people think about, but then they're also a director. They're creating the video. A lot of times you give them a brief, but best practice is usually, hey, you get, you know, get creative freedom. And then they're also, they have a built in audience.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  But this, the director portion is often a huge, a huge mistake that a lot of brands make is that they either give too much creative freedom or not enough creative freedom. If you give too much, then

• 35:04Speaker 01

  The influencer is just gonna make whatever video they want and not sell the product. Because influencers don't like selling stuff. They don't like the feeling of selling out or, you know, shilling things. So they, they're artists. Like a lot of influencers, they feel like artists. They don't wanna shill products and feel like a sellout. But then on the other hand, if you're over-prescriptive and you say, okay, you actually have to mention these, here's the brand guidelines, then the video is not gonna get any views because it, it'll feel like an ad and this happens a lot. So because the TikTok algorithm is for you page-based, it's all about making good content. So you can skip, you can skip the audience part.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  So if you find, if you cut out the director role and the audience role, you can now hire creators just as actors, like just to be the talent in the video. So they can have zero followers. So when people say, oh, influencers are overpriced, this is my response, like because you don't have to find people who have big audiences. You just have to find people that know how to make good videos. And if they have a thousand followers or 10,000 followers, you can just make a new brand account and make content on there. So for example, if you look up Tabs,

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Tabs Chocolate, this is their strategy. They just make all these brand accounts and they hire a creator for each one. Same thing with all these other apps that I'm mentioning, like the,

• 36:43Speaker 01

  what's, what was the, what was that app where people did, it's like a widget on your phone and then you can listen to the music?

• 36:53Greg Isenberg?

  Oh, AirBuds, is that what you're talking about?

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Yes. So the AirBuds does the same thing. It's like Leila AirBuds, Stacy AirBuds, Will AirBuds. So all of, all of these accounts, they're new, they're brand new accounts that they found the creator and then they had them create a new account. So this was, this is very cheap to do. They just found small creators and then have them make new accounts.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  So I think it's still underpriced. I think if you do traditional influencer marketing, it's definitely going to be a little bit expensive, especially if you go after influencers with big follower accounts. But I think there's still lots of ways to do TikTok in a very underpriced way.

• 37:45Greg Isenberg?

  I agree, especially, you know, like, we've both been saying, especially if you are creating digital products, I see you have Locks Club as an example here.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, Locks Club is great. Yeah, they're, they're a member of my community. They are. I really like their content strategy. They do, um, so Locks Club is a exclusive dating app for Jewish people with very high standards. So it's sort of like Raya, but more niche down. And they're starting to do this content series where it's like, how to find a nice Jewish boy in NYC?

• 38:30Greg Isenberg?

  These are like Jewish inside jokes.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So like, if you find someone like this who knows the culture, knows, you know, how to talk to the target audience, um, this can go viral on a brand new account as well. So I was just talking to them, to the founder this week, and like, I noticed that this video was the most popular out of the most recent ones, like 400,000 views. So they could create a whole new account just dedicated to this type of like street content.

• 39:08Greg Isenberg?

  So when you, when you find a format that's working and scalable, does it make sense to create new accounts for it? Is that what you're saying?

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it does. Yeah. Cause the algorithm works in a way where, um, if you think about like TikTok wants, if, if content is good, TikTok wants to show it to the right people, like it's in their best interest to get more watch time. So if they're, if they know that a certain account has a lot of, uh, so for example, if this, if this reached XYZ audience.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Then now TikTok or Instagram Reels, they know that this account, sir, this content did well with this audience. So if you make another video that looks similar, has the same face, the same format, then it'll be a lot easier for it to, for the algorithm to serve that content to the same audience again. So if you see, if we go back to the colostrum videos, this account figured out that the food content works, so they just spam the same thing every day. So the algorithm knows and expects what audience to serve it to.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  It just helps with the algorithm. If you put too many faces in a single account, then it'll hurt your, your reach. The algorithm kind of gets confused, like who do I, who do I show this to? So it's, it's not so much about making the whole page look aesthetic. It's more because people don't really look at the page anyway. It's more like optimizing it for the algorithm and making sure it knows who to serve the content to.

• 40:56Greg Isenberg?

  That's good to know. You had one last thing I want to talk about on your list. I think it was something to do with cult movements. What did you mean by that?

• 41:08Speaker 01

  So, one of the biggest names in this space is Blake Anderson. So Blake did the Looks Maxing app called UMAX. Basically, there's this movement of basically men who want to improve their physical appearance. It's pretty, it's pretty simple, but it does go very deep because when you think about, like what are, like what are people motivated by? It's like people want to look good. There's a lot of insecurities attached to physical appearance. And especially with young men these days, I think there's a lot of challenges with dating

• 41:52Speaker 01

  and, you know, I mean, teenagers will, will always be insecure about something. So there's this app called UMAX and it scans your face. So it has this interface.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  So this this app, it scans your face and then it shows you your potential and all the scores about you. And then

• 42:19Speaker 01

  and then it, you know, gives you tips on how to improve your jawline, how to fix your skincare, your hair, you know, these various things about your about your face. And this app makes a lot of money.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  I don't remember what the revenue is, but it's several million a year.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  And they mostly used TikTok as their distribution. But it's really interesting because looks maxing.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  I don't know if everyone knows this, but looks maxing is sort of a a really deep internet movement like it came from sort of these red pill slash incel kind of Reddit communities from several years ago. And it was sort of this very niche thing. And now it's gone mainstream, but it has deep roots and like people really believe like, you know, you need, it's almost an ideology. It's like, you need to be maximizing your physical appearance. Like, you know, looks maxing.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  So they like Umax was one of the first apps that capitalized on this movement.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  So if you if you think about

• 43:34Speaker 01

  you know, other movements

• 43:38Speaker 01

  that haven't really, that don't really have a product attached to them yet. I think that's sort of the 10 million dollar business that can be started in all kinds of niches.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Another one is, well, and a framework, I'm not gonna like,

• 43:58Speaker 01

  if I had the idea, I would build it, but I can give a framework for like finding these ideas, which is, you know, like, what do what do people want in general in life? It's it's health, wealth and relationships. And this this one is relationships. It's like you improve your physical appearance, sort of health in a way, but it does have a lot to do with, you know, finding finding love and dating and things like that.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  And I guess self-improvement is is pretty health as well. But if you think about health, wealth, relationships, those are the three main things that people want.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  What are the movements that can be built around that? Wealth, obviously, there's lots of cults related to wealth. Like, I don't know if you know Crayo. This is a app. I think they have more than five million annual revenue right now. They basically partnered with this guy and a couple of other YouTubers and TikTokers who teach teenagers how to make money on TikTok and YouTube Shorts. And they show them basically like, you know, find these streamers clips, clip up the videos and then mass post them on TikTok and YouTube Shorts. And then they sell a course. So they monetize by selling a course on how to do it.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  It's like a, you know, several thousand dollar course. But then, you know, so they have this existing audience of all these people trying to make more money. And then Arab Khan is the guy who started this SaaS. He just created Crayo, which basically productizes the course. So instead of teaching a course on how to make these videos, you just make the videos with the software in a more automated way. So if you've seen these like Reddit, Minecraft, park horror videos that get mass posted on YouTube. Now, instead of promoting his course, Daniel gets to promote the software instead.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  This is another sort of the cult of money, I guess you could you could think of it.

• 46:15Greg Isenberg?

  Cult of young money too, right? Like it could have gone after everyone, but they focused on really teenagers. I guess like them too, you know, like people who look like Daniel, like young, you know? So interesting. I think, you know, what's interesting to me there is it's it's cult like. I'm always a believer in, you know, the best businesses are cult like. And then someone's listening to this and being like, well, that's spammy or sleazy. It's like, well, no, like Apple scaled as a cult like business. There's plenty of. Reputable businesses, the best businesses in fact, are always cult based, cult like.

• 46:55Greg Isenberg?

  So I think that that's that that comes to mind.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  That's how.

• 47:04Greg Isenberg?

  The other thing I just have, yeah, I was just gonna say, the other thing I just have to say is your product has to be good baseline, though, you know what I mean? Like, just because you have great distribution, if you're sending people to a product that isn't high quality, and I'm not talking about Crayo, I'm just talking about in general, looks, maxing, any of the stuff we're talking about, you know, the baseline is the product needs to resonate. So before you get millions of people, I guess this is champagne problem, but before you get millions of people to try your app, make sure that it isn't a leaky product, that it's retaining, that there's some product led growth, get those metrics right, and

• 47:49Greg Isenberg?

  then layer on all of the stuff that we talked about today.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Totally, yeah. I would say like the, and it'll help you, it'll help your marketing too, because once you figure out, okay, I got a thousand downloads and this many people paid, and then here's how many actually retained and stayed for another month because they valued the product. Now you can see your LTV and your CAC, and then you can spend more on marketing and you can make your marketing better if you know your product is good. So I think if you don't know that your product is good and you're spending all this money on marketing, then yeah, you have a leaky bucket. You don't want a product that's not retentive. Then you're getting, then, then it's basically an e-commerce product all over again, because you're just selling a product once.

• 48:36Greg Isenberg?

  That's right.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  In the funnel.

• 48:37Greg Isenberg?

  Exactly.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  The point of it is that it's scalable and it's retentive, right?

• 48:43Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, if you made it this far in the, in the episode. I don't know about you all, but I'm obsessed with Joseph. I think he needs to come back on. So like, comment, subscribe. Let's get this video to go viral. Because I think that you're criminally under-followed and I'd love to get you more well-known. And I think that there's just so many nuggets of insight in this video that I think is really gonna help people avoid a lot of pain in actually building out their ideas. So I thank you for that. Joseph, where could people get to know you and some of the stuff that you're working on?

• 49:26Speaker 01

  You can find me on Twitter. I post content about the latest trends I'm seeing in TikTok and consumer apps. And I also have a community of consumer app founders where we discuss the latest tactics. So check out my Twitter.

• 49:45Greg Isenberg?

  Check his Twitter. All right, my man. I'll see you around. And you know, this has been real. Catch you later, dude.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  It's been great. Thanks, Greg.