How or why you choose to get into Apps?
Well, I have always had this urge to create. I consider myself a creator, more than anything else. Apps turned out to be that one thing that gave me the most joy.The joy of creating something out of nothing and putting it in front of millions of people is un-explainable. It’s what I live for.
When I first started with apps, I didn’t monetize them cause I was just doing it for the love of them. I kept working my day job which I absolutely hated. The pain from my ‘Day Job of Doom’ (DJD) as I would like to call it, grew so much that I decided to dive into apps full time. The first month I started monetizing my apps, I made twice as much as I was making in my day job. At that time, I knew, I had made the right decision.
Although, I started with one app, my app portfolio grew on to have over 25 apps and getting over 5.9 million downloads in 3 years. I was experiencing the kind of freedom I never felt before, I started travelling around the world; stayed and visited over 17 countries. Met other awesome people and kept growing. I was living the dream life, it felt unreal at times but soon it became a part of my reality.
Can others achieve the same results as you?
I am 100% sure they can, I am not special. I don’t have an exceptional IQ or some crazy ass marketing brain. I just made a decision and stick to it. I believe, everything comes down to one thing, How badly do you want to succeed? If it means that much to you, you will find a way, just as I did. Although, I do agree having a support group of people who are heading in the same direction as you, does make the journey a lot easier and therefore I started an app business group with other successful app developers. You can drop in a join request here. To get accepted you should have atleast one published app, as I want highly dedicated individuals.
What are you plans going forward?
Right now, I am working with multiple startups and companies to help them with their app marketing efforts. I believe there is a gap; 95% of the marketing agencies don’t know the app space, they are still using old school marketing tactics that totally fail when applied to apps. Since I come from a development background, I understand all stages of growing an app and ultimately building it into a sustainable business.
Going forward, 50% of my focus would be on growing my app marketing agency and 50% on building kickass in-house apps that will delight my users and make their lives better on a daily basis. I am interested in ‘personal improvement’ space and will be developing apps focused on that market. I love the business model of ‘calm’ and ‘headspace’ and how they have made ‘meditation’ profitable.
What is that one thing you value the most in this world?
I value freedom over anything else, that was one of the reason I was so much attracted to app businesses. I wanted to make decisions, not coming from a place of urgency and scarcity, but from a place of pure motivation and abundance.
There is a mindset shift that happens when you stop thinking about how you gonna earn your next bread and I believe everybody should strive for that; eventually this will help the society as a whole. We need more visionaries than workers, we need people who are willing to bring a change in society and not just accept it for what It is, as steve jobs said “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do”.