Natal

Natal credits its checkout numbers to trust built before the paywall. Trial conversion is 68% against a 38% industry average, 93% of web checkouts download the app, and download to trial is 17% against a 6% health and fitness average, at $25 a month.

Nancy Anderson rules out the offer, checkout page, button copy and countdown timer as causes. Users at the paywall aren't asking whether it's legit because they already know the brand. The figures are self-reported with no audience or time breakdown, and she admits the trust link can't be tested.

Sub Club▶ 23:23

A small audience that trusts you outsells a large one that doesn't. Nancy made about $10,000 a month with roughly 10,000 followers, running Shopify, PDFs and Facebook groups alone. A peer with 300,000 followers and a monthly lump sum from a clothing brand sold almost nothing.

She points to her master's in kinesiology, 20 years in the industry and ten years training hundreds of people a week as what set her apart from typical fitness influencers. Her view: a quick viral audience may never really know you. "The quality of the audience is actually what matters the most."

Sub Club▶ 10:26

Every DM, comment and email gets a human expert reply within 24 hours. For eight years, every message across social platforms, email and in-app posts has been answered within 24 hours, with no AI and no canned responses.

Replies come from physical therapists, pelvic floor therapists and trainers, kept scalable with SOPs and workflows. Nancy treats online clients the way she treated in-person ones, some of whom invited her to their weddings.

Sub Club▶ 20:53

Sell softly: share the link only when someone asks. Content creators and customer service are briefed never to hard sell. Content ends with calls to action like "click here to learn more" or "DM me to chat", and DMs share the product link only on request.

Nancy rejects mass-comment tactics and giveaway groups such as a $500 prize for commenting. "I just want the connection first because I want people before they get to the paywall."

Sub Club▶ 20:17

Personal, relatable posts outperform posting only about the product. Nancy mixes product posts with funny motherhood moments, including home camera clips of her husband, so followers feel safe with her. An audit found her organic content outperforms competitors by 90%.

Engagement lives in stories and DMs more than the feed, with story views around 50,000, almost all from followers. Coaches now front the brand's UGC, since clients already know them and outside content hires struggled with the sensitive brand voice.

Sub Club▶ 17:00

Turning down brand deals protects the trust that drives revenue. Nancy refuses brand partnerships and affiliate links even though agencies say she leaves $500,000 to $1 million a year on the table. The app grew 20% in the first quarter of the year.

She will post about a brand for free if she loves it, and she pays influencers herself. She believes promoting another brand dilutes your audience.

Sub Club▶ 26:44

Dropping the monthly free trial lifted monthly subscriptions 2,000%. After removing the free trial on the monthly option, monthly subs rose 2,000%, quarterly 46% and annual 21%, and Natal made the change permanent.

Nancy took the idea from a Sub Club episode with Zumba. Her reasoning is that high-intent users who already trust the brand just buy, so the trial only delays them. No baseline is given, so the 2,000% may come from a small starting number.

Sub Club▶ 1:02:02

Segmenting onboarding by life stage cuts about 50 programs to 15. Onboarding asks whether the user is trying to conceive, pregnant or postpartum, then shows only that phase's content, so each user sees about 15 programs instead of about 50.

Onboarding stays at roughly 10 to 15 questions, with symptoms, goals and available time driving recommendations. Nancy keeps tuning it: too many questions make people quit, too few leave them confused.

Sub Club▶ 46:40

An expert posture assessment gets about 70% to a first workout. About 68 to 70% of women who complete the posture assessment go on to complete their first workout. A real expert, not AI, reviews it and recommends a starting program and custom routines.

It was built from patterns in user conversations, and getting an early first win is the team's main activation focus. It is free in the app but only soft launched, because coaches must respond within 24 hours.

Sub Club▶ 44:04

Early community and coach contact brings new users back. A real person DMs each new user, and the free in-app community has coaches answering questions all day. Of users who join it, 31% return on day two and 14% are still returning by day three.

Nancy attributes the lift to validation and feeling less alone rather than to the feature itself.

Sub Club▶ 48:27

Too many programs without routing caused users not to activate. Natal built five to seven postpartum rehab programs on client request but didn't route users to the right one in onboarding, so users hit decision fatigue and didn't activate. Nancy called it the biggest fail of the year.

Matching onboarding answers to a starting program is now a major initiative.

Sub Club▶ 1:00:59

Accepting HSA payments brought tens of thousands in two weeks, unannounced. Natal added HSA billing through the RevenueCat and Flex integration, and tens of thousands of dollars came through in the first two weeks without any announcement.

Clients had long submitted receipts to insurance. Pre-tax money works like a 30 to 40% discount and reaches people who say they can't afford it. It is offered only on the annual plan with a free trial, which suits the longer checkout, and an end-of-year push fits because HSA dollars don't roll over.

Sub Club▶ 54:05

Four white-label apps were a mistake; one app should have come first. Natal had separate pregnancy, postpartum, general fitness and personal brand apps, which were hard to maintain and cross-sell and gave users decision fatigue. Merging into one custom app allowed more content at a lower price.

The old apps still run with coached clients, but she no longer invests in growing them. "I should have just done one from the beginning."

Sub Club▶ 36:08

Name the app after the niche, not the founder. Nancy built for years under Nancy Anderson Fit and says she wouldn't again. Natal tells people in one word it is for pre and postnatal women.

A founder's name also makes it hard to share the spotlight with other coaches.

Sub Club▶ 38:19

A 30-day challenge with before and after photos started growth with no ads. From about 5,000 followers, her first challenge drew 100 signups and about 50 finishers who sent day one and day 30 photos; the next month drew 125.

She coached participants daily in Facebook groups, the winner got about $100, and the before and afters became organic marketing. Growth ran on word of mouth for years, then paid ads worked until Apple's targeting update.

Sub Club▶ 6:11

Patterns in DMs and comments revealed her biggest product, App Rehab. Women kept asking about postpartum core rehab in comments, DMs and Facebook groups, so Nancy built a scalable online program. App Rehab has had over a million users and still drives the most traffic to the app.

She chose the niche in her early 20s after seeing pregnant and postpartum women had almost no science-based support. "That never would have showed up in my Shopify reports." She skips free workouts as lead magnets, finding they attract the wrong audience.

Sub Club▶ 32:12