App Life Podcast - Grow Your App Business

In this episode we talk about our new process of hiring A players. As we got more applicants for certain roles, we added another interview to the process.

We talk about:

- Our current process of selecting and interviewing candidates
- The screening interview
- The case study interview
- The Who interview
- The reference interview
- Interview best practices

Resources mentioned: 

Geoff Smart - Who https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Geoff-Smart-ebook/dp/B001EL6RWY

Our previous episode on hiring: https://anchor.fm/app-life-podcast/episodes/36---How-Do-We-Hire-A-Players-esei1s

Today we talk about ways to analyze your app and web audience with Google Analytics 4.

We cover

- Ways to setup Google Analytics 4 on mobile and the web
- The difference between Google Analytics 4 and Google Analytics Universal
- What events to track inside an app
- How to plan your tracking
- Limitations of Google Analytics
- Alternatives to Google Analytics

In this episode, we talk about sponsored startup programs and our experience with it.

We talk about
- The programs we successfully applied for
- What are the benefits of sponsored programs?
- How to apply?
- Pitching best practices
- What to do when you're excepted?
- Examples of local government programs

This episode is all about in app purchases!

We talk about

- What types of in app purchases exist (one offs, subscriptions)
- How to implement in app purchases in your app
- Should you use your own server?
- Apple's and Google's payment system vs Stripe
- Consequences of the recent decision in Epic's lawsuit against Apple
- Frequent in app purchase problems and how to fix them

Resources mentioned: https://www.revenuecat.com/

Let's talk about our blog today, https://ling-app.com/blog . It's been a wild ride from starting the first few posts about learning Thai to creating a content machine that churns out over 20 articles per week (and counting).

We cover:

- Why we started our language learn blog in the first place
- Initial strategy and how we shift over time
- When should you start hiring content writers?
- Tips and best practices for SEO
- What kind of content should you focus on?

Note: We decided to switch to a bi-weekly release schedule from now on. Stay tuned!

- Resources mentioned: Auto video creator via AI https://lumen5.com/

This time we talk about our experience with working with clients. How does this compare to developing your own product?

We share

- The pros and cons of working with clients and making your own products
- What do to when you're just getting started
- Things we learned when working with clients

In this episode, we talk about our 3-monthly retrospective sessions and how they helped us building a great company culture.

We talk about

- The beginnings: How and why we started the retrospective with 3 team members
- How to organize a retrospective
- Best practices when running the sessions
- Examples of what we learned from the feedback

Today's episode is all about translating your app, or app localization.

We cover

- Why you should consider translating your app
- How to find out what languages to translate into first
- How to find good translators
- How to setup a process to ensure great translation quality
- Take it to the next level: Automate the process via OneSky app

Resources mentioned:

- Translation service: https://gengo.com/
- OneSky app: https://www.oneskyapp.com/

In this episode, we discuss the Getting Things Done (GTD) method invented by David Allen. Simon has been using this method for the better part of a year, and has had a great experience with it.

We talk about
- What Getting Things Done is and why you might wanna use it
- The method in detail: Collect, clarify, organize, review
- The value of cleaning your inbox daily and having a weekly review
- Tips and best practices
- Alternatives to GTD

While we focus on learning languages at Simya, this week we talk about an app we built for a completely different industry. Smart Court is an app that lets people book badminton courts easily. The idea of the app originated when Simon regularly took badminton training and realized the bookings were all done manually.

We cover

- How we validated the idea & decided to create Smart Court
- Requirement gathering and staff interviews
- Building the MVP
- Challenges along the way
- Where we stand now and future plans

Try the app here: https://simyasolutions.com/smart-court/ Only Chiang Mai is supported at this point in time ;)

Time for another installment of the "How We Built..." series! This time, we talk about our brand new app, Ling Live. It's a platform app to connect students and teachers, enabling everyone to book a language lesson in seconds.

We talk about:

- How we came up with the idea of Ling Live
- How we did market research
- How we validated the initial prototype
- Marketing and business development
- Challenges along the way
- What's next?

Check out the app here and book your free Thai trial lesson (trial lessons are limited): https://live.ling-app.com/

Today, we talk about team outings. At Simya we're doing them regularly and are amazed again and again how much fun they are.

We cover

- Why we do team outings
- When and how we got started
- 3 examples of our past team outings
- Best practices and benefits of outings

Enjoy!

This episode is Khwan's turn to talk about her experience before we started our app business. She shares how she grew up in a village in the North East of Thailand, how she came to Germany to study and eventually worked as management consultant before quitting her job. Learn about her challenges, lessons learned, and turning points in her life that lead her to where she is today.

How was our life like before we quit our jobs, went to Thailand and started an app business? This episode, Simon talks about his life story and some lessons learned along the way. Enjoy!

Inspired by the "20% project" famously once implemented by Google and other big names, we started to do hackathons at Simya. The idea is to devote some of our time to side projects and try to create something cool in the process. Last week, we did our first hackathon day (we call it "Awesome Time") and it was a great success.

In this episode, we cover

- How we came up with the idea of Awesome Time
- What to prepare if you want to implement it
- Our experience doing our first hackathon
- Was it worth it?
- Examples of what you can create during a hackathon

Resources:

20% project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20%25_Project

About 18 months ago, we bought an office building in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Our main motivation for this was to fulfill the capital requirements for our BOI company. It turned out to be a great decision in all respects. So today we talk about the process of buying a house in Thailand.

We cover

- Why we made the decision to buy an office building
- How to go about finding the perfect place
- Financing options
- Due diligence before singing a contract
- Should you hire a lawyer or do it yourself?
- Tips for transferring the property

This is episode is about our app Flow Yoga. It's a pretty cool app to learn Yoga. What's special about it is that you can configure your lessons in any way you want it.

We cover

- How we came up with the idea of Flow Yoga
- How we researched and validated the idea on the market
- UX planning, mockup and design
- How we used our network to create the app content
- Challenges we faced on the way
- How the app is doing now

Check out the app here and let us know your feedback: https://simyasolutions.com/flow-yoga-app/

A slightly off-topic but fun episode today: Our favorite board games! As LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman said though: Board games can teach a lot business, too.

We'll cover

- What we learned from board games about real life
- How Khwan discovered the world of board & computer games
- Khwan's favorite board game: Terraforming Mars
- Parallels of strategy in gaming and business
- Simon's favorite board game: Chess
- Great cooperative game: Spirit Island

Automation is the key for small business to succeed nowadays. We spend a lot of time and energy in finding new ways how to automate things to make our life easier.

Trello Bots via a Trello power up called "Trello Butler" is a great example of this.

We talk about

- How and why we use Trello in our projects
- How Trello Butler works
- Simple automations via rules
- Integration with Gitlab and Slack
- Custom Trello buttons on boards and cards
- Best practices to use it in your daily processes

Resources mentioned:

- Trello: https://trello.com/
- Trello Butler: https://help.trello.com/article/1198-an-intro-to-butler
- Jira: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira
- Gitlab: https://gitlab.com/

At Simya, we do a informal meeting called "Coffee Break" every 6 weeks with every team member. It's been a great way for us to give and get feedback, improve teamwork and make the team overall happier.

We cover

- Why and how we started regular coffee breaks
- Benefits of regular feedback
- How to give open feedback in the Asian culture
- Creating a good meeting atmosphere
- How to prepare the meetings
- Can you delegate coffee breaks?

As your team grows, it's getting more important to ensure a smooth onboarding for your new team members. In this episode, we share the process we use at Simya.

We talk about

- What to do once the employment or freelance contract is signed
- The template we use to send out to all new hires
- A simple checklist that makes sure everyone is on the same page
- The importance of a good communication guideline
- The system we use to manage holidays and sick leaves
- Last but not least: How to offboard leaving team members

Resources mentioned:

- https://hr.my/ - Free HR management system

GSuite is a great portfolio of apps you can use to make your business more effective. In today's episode we talk about

- Why we started using GSuite
- What apps we use and how to use them most effectively
- Alternatives to GSuite
- Is it the right choice for you?
- Should you get the free legacy edition of GSuite?

Resources mentioned:
- Example of a GSuite legacy account provider: https://ggslegacy.net/
- Interesting GSuite competitor: https://www.zoho.com/one/

What is it like to be a business owner and parent at the same time? Today, Khwan will talk about her own journey and how her life changed after the arrival of our little daughter Layla.

She talks about

- How she managed her work and recreation before becoming a parent
- What was her life like in the months before and after birth?
- When and how to return to the work life?
- How a baby changes your priorities and time management
- Is it even possible to run a business with a young child without outside support?

It's not always easy to manage our time effectively when you're a small business owner. In this episode, Simon talks about how he manages his daily tasks and how his system evolved over time.

Here's what you'll learn:

- How to manage the transition from developer to biz owner
- The benefits of the Getting Things Done method by David Allen
- How the method works - Inbox, Context, Weekly Reviews
- Some challenges in the practical application of GTD

Ressources mentioned:

David Allen - Getting Things Done: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0143126563 

Since Covid 19, remote work has become pretty much mainstream across companies of all sizes. At Simya, we've been working remotely for 5 years now.

In this episode, we talk about our experience with remote work, including

- Why did we start going remote in the first place?
- What are advantages and benefits remote work?
- What are some of the challenges and how to overcome them?
- How to communicate effectively when doing home office

In the past year, we started driving traffic to our biggest app Ling by asking affiliates and users to promote our app. This works best if you have an affiliate program in place, so the influencers get rewarded by attracting paying customers.

In this episode, we share

- What's the idea behind affiliate programs, and why we started it

- How to implement an affiliate program in mobile apps and the web

- How to promote your program to drive traffic

- How the signup process works

Resources mentioned: https://www.osiaffiliate.com/

Once your business grows, hiring probably becomes your most important task as a founder.

In this episode, we talk about

- When and how we started hiring

- How we gradually discovered a good hiring process

- Strategies on how to find, interview, and select people

- How to delegate parts of the process

Resources mentioned: Smart, Street - Who (book): https://whothebook.com/

Today's episode is all about organizing your finances.

We cover

- Should you care about accounting right from the start?

- The accounting software we recommend (Zoho Books)

- Features to look for in accounting software

- How to automate your book keeping

- How to effectively outsource your finances

Resources mentioned:

- Zoho Books: https://www.zoho.com/us/books/

- Quickbooks: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/

- Xero: https://www.xero.com/

- Stripe: https://stripe.com/

- Airwallex: https://www.airwallex.com/

- Wise: https://wise.com/

Wordpress is still the market leader when it comes to publishing content. Our site ling-app.com is powered by Wordpress. In this episode we share five of our favorite plugins to improve site speed, SEO & traffic.

Plugins covered:

• RankMath: SEO Plugin
• Hurry Timer: A neat little tool to create custom timers for your promo pages
• LinkWhisper: Automatically build internal links
• Stories by Google: A new plugin that might help pushing your traffic
• NitroPack: Our favorite plugin to speed up your site

Other resources mentioned:

• Yoast SEO: https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/
• Google speed test: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
• WP Rocket: https://wp-rocket.me/

As your team grows, it's more and more important to share know-how effectively. In this episode, we talk about 5 of our favorite tools we came to love in the past years:

- Google Sheets: Powerful filtering options, easy collaboration + pivot tables
- Dropbox Paper: Free for organizing your how-tos and SOPs, great formatting options
- Facebook Live: For recording/lifestreaming our regular face to face workshops
- Loom/Bubbles Chrome Extension: For recording your screen and create video SOPs
- Google Drive/Dropbox: For file management

A couple of months ago, we started to reach out to influencers to promote our apps. It has been a great success so far, so we want to share some of the lessons learned.

We talk about

- How we implemented our affiliate program

- How to find the correct influencers to contact

- How the outreach process works

- The best tips on how to get new influencers on board fast

Links mentioned: 

- Affiliate tracker: https://www.osiaffiliate.com/

- Hunter: https://hunter.io/

In this episode, we do a deep dive on iOS ASO. We share some useful hacks you might not know about App Store Optimization on the App Store.

Today's hacks include

- Don't use stop words
- Inflections: Do you need to use them?
- Should you mention your competitors in your store listing?
- English/Mexican keyword trick
- Much more!

To learn all about ASO, check out Simon's complete ASO course: https://thrivecart.com/affiliates/seotoollab/img-courses-monthly/

At Simya Solutions, we constantly test new ideas on how to increase our app downloads. This week, we share 7 tips you can instantly apply to your store listing to level up your downloads.

Here are the quick tips:

- Add social proof to your short description or screenshots
- Use horizontal screenshots
- Add a badge of the current year to your icons
- Add a call to action in the beginning of your long description
- Add emojis to your short and long description
- Include text in icons
- Put real people in screenshots

For all you need to know about ASO, check out Simon's complete ASO course (paid): https://thrivecart.com/affiliates/seotoollab/img-courses-monthly/

This episode is all about localizing your app. Localization is one of the most underrated tool to increase your app downloads. We have several apps that saw 10x increases in downloads just by translating the store listings in multiple languages.

Here's what we cover in detail:

- How to decide if you should localize your app?

- What languages should you start with?

- How to find good translators

- What technology do we use to automate part of the process

Links mentioned in the episode:

https://www.oneskyapp.com/

https://www.fiverr.com/

http://upwork.com/

This week, we talk about how we use UX interviews to continuously improve our apps. A UX interview can be as simple as asking your family and friends about their opinion on your app. If done correctly, they are a powerful tool to get feedback from your users.

We talk about

- Why did we decide to have regular UX interviews?

- How do we find interview partners?

- How to structure a good UX interview?

- Questions to ask

- How to take action based on the interview responses

Last time we talked about how to hire non-technical staff. As for hiring developers, the hiring task involves some interesting decisions. Should you hire a new developer on an existing project? How do you find the right person? How to check the quality if you're not a coder yourself?

We're covering all this, plus

- Hiring with existing code base vs. new project

- Why and how we hired our first developer

- Where to find developers

- Hiring online vs offline

- Should you outsource the whole process?

- How to evaluate the work quality?

Hiring the first employee is a huge milestone in any small business or startup. But how do you know when the time has come? What are the risks? And how to find that new hire?

In this episode we talk about these questions.

Here's what we will cover:

- Our thought process behind our first hire

- Automating as an alternative to hiring

- How to get started

- How to find great people and the hiring process

- Online vs offline hiring

Links mentioned

Fiverr: https://www.fiverr.com/

Many small businesses start with side projects next to a full time job. So did ours. How long should you wait before you take the leap and quit your job?

- What was our decision process for quitting our jobs?

- Our experience before and after starting the business full time

- Do you need a backup plan?

- Tips to keep going and motivate yourself

Links mentioned:

- Tropical MBA: https://www.tropicalmba.com/

- Four Hour Work Week: https://fourhourworkweek.com/

When we just got started with email marketing, we didn't know what we were doing. Blasting out 150,000 emails to an unsegmented audience was just one of our early mistakes. This episode is all about our experience with email and what we learned along the way.

Topics covered:

- Why bother doing email marketing for mobile apps?

- Our email marketing journey and lessons learned

- Tools we have used and recommend for email marketing

- Strategy we use to improve retention and sales via email

Links mentioned in this episode:

Zoho Campaigns: https://www.zoho.com/campaigns/

Sendy: https://sendy.co/

EmailOctopus: https://emailoctopus.com/

Mailchimp: https://mailchimp.com/

ActiveCampaign: https://www.activecampaign.com/

Last week was Black Friday! We run our first campaign ever using landing pages, ads and email promotion. It was a big success thanks to the joint effort of many people: marketing team, developers, POs, and designer.

Today, we talk about

- How we run our first Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions

- How we created landing pages and sales tracking

- How we promoted the pages via email marketing and ads

- Lessons learned and what to improve next time

In today's episode we talk about our favorite books, which include fiction and non-fiction.

We cover

- Our yearly reading goals

- Goodreads, our favorite book platform

- Eric Ries - The Lean Startup

- Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead

- Nelson Mandela - Long Walk to Freedom

- JK Rowling - Harry Potter

- The Three Kingdoms

- Jared Diamond - The Third Chimpanzee

- Will Durant - The Story of Civilization

Let's talk about increasing your downloads! This week, we share 5 free tactics to increase your downloads:

We share

- How we utilized Facebook Groups to drive early downloads

- Apps Gone Free strategy for 3000 free downloads in a day

- Post your app on Product Hunt

- Seeding on boards like Quora, Reddit etc.

- Instagram automation

Links mentioned in this episode:

App Advice: https://appadvice.com/

Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/

Quora: https://www.quora.com/

Reddit: http://reddit.com/

Jarvee: https://jarvee.com/

Customer support is a very important part of our business. Today, we do a deep dive into our customer support process.

We'll cover:

- How we did customer support when just starting out

- How we transitioned from doing it ourselves to delegating it

- What software we use to do effective support

- What's our current process

- How we classify our tickets and templates

- How we ensure good service quality

Links mentioned in this episode:

Ling App: https://ling-app.com/

Zoho Desk: https://www.zoho.com/desk/

Slack: https://slack.com/

In this episode, we lay out our strategy that we use to get backlinks for our apps and websites. Backlinks are an important factor to rank your site on Google.

Specifically, we cover...

- Why do we want backlinks as app developers?

- Outsource or do it yourself? 

- How do we identify high quality backlinks by spying on our competitors?

- How to get leads?

- How to reach out via campaigns?

- Are backlinks free? Is it worth to pay for them?

- How to close the deals.

Links mentioned in this episode:

https://ahrefs.com/
https://authority.builders/
https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo
https://hunter.io/

Today we talk about KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). At Simya, we have half-yearly meetings with all employees where we review past KPIs and set new ones. KPIs are for tracking performance but also about giving and getting feedback, as well as setting effective goals for personal development.

In this episode, we talk about

• What are KPIs?
• Why do we use them?
• How does a typical KPI meeting work?
• What are good KPIs?
• How do we collect feedback for KPIs?
• How to effectively prepare for KPI meetings?
• Tips for running good KPI meetings

In this episode, we talk about how we share feedback within our teams. An important part of this are the Retrospective meetings. They are extremely useful for reviewing the past teamwork and improving for the future.

Learn how we

- What is the Retrospective team in agile?

- What are purposes of the meeting?

- Examples of how to run a Retrospective successfully

- Schedule of a typical Retrospective

- Best Practices of good feedback

- How to take action based the Retrospective