How to Build a Media Empire From Apps

coming up you're gonna discover how to diversify your app business and create an empire from courses and ebooks stay tuned what is up app nation it is Steve P young founder of M masters dot-com the place you go when you want action fat content in the app business and today I got a phenomenal guess he transitioned from creating apps to now an author a udemy teacher with over a one hundred and twenty four thousand students and over 120 courses on udemy so we're gonna talk about how he transitioned from apps into becoming a social-media influencer so without further ado let me introduce the guest his name is Alex gen Edenic don't even try to say I don't even know if I said it right but he is the founder of problemi Oh calm that's problem io that's how you would spell it calm check out all his apps and everything that alex has going on on that website that's also linked up underneath the youtube

description as well but Alex welcome in man I love your introductions you know you and I we do this every once every couple of years your introductions have leveled up so many fold well I appreciate them and it's better than leveling down I think you just blew me away like oh my god a new career for Steve in the Hollywood introduction world I appreciate them and anyway anyways about your business model and how you about let you talk about a little bit brief info about yourself and then let's talk let's talk about how you transition away from absent into whatever you got going on right now yeah so thanks for having me on first of all so we actually met back in the day when we were both in the app world and for me the app world was like the first successful business that I had I had previous successes as an entrepreneur before that but they were kind of lukewarm and my apps I kind of stumbled

into them and I just created some absinthe just from all the learnings I had before that was alright these apps are reasonably successful cool and um and you know we were just covering things back then now in hi inside it's clear that when happening the way that I created my apps they kind of positioned me as the main guy behind the app most people when they create apps it's just the app the founder is totally unknown out of the way and in my app I was very hands-on and that was sort of like very foundational for becoming an influencer which I didn't know that I wasn't that that was happening and also it's funny to say about your sublet you're an influencer but just let suspend that for the sake of this video so what ended up happening on my app just people don't know my apps are business planning apps and the one feature that changed everything that I had on my app was people were able to ask me questions

some of them didn't know who I was most of them didn't know who I was but for some reason they took my advice for better or worse and I ended up helping like her over a thousand people like like this typing with my thumbs and just talking through their businesses and over time learning about their businesses and then but what ended up happening is not only did that give me the confidence and the experience that I was working with all these intrapreneurs you know here I'm talking about a gym here I'm talking about a coffee shop here I'm talking about like water purification in India like Eeyore it just was always all over the place and then I started realizing hey like this can be bigger I gotta take this outside the apps and I started a YouTube channel where I literally was answering questions you know the same questions I would get on my apps where he pulled with a spike how do you start a gym and

after the 420th gym I'd be like why don't just make one video and send everybody to the video so my apps were actually not only did they start positioning me as a little bit of like him you know as the expert but they also started promoting my youtube and then when I started then I had a you know our friend Nick Loper he was like you should write a book he's the he's the guy who's probably responsible for all these like independent or half of these independent authors it seems to me at least came from his advice but what I ended up doing is I ended up like literally taking all the questions from the apps because I was so hands-on gave me the content for the YouTube but my first book was also just basically answering all the questions that it that like when I hit like 300,000 downloads just that survey the answers to those questions that everybody asked was literally my first book and actually was

one of my first courses that I made on udemy so I kind of ended up stepping out and branching out of beyond just apps but like today when I look at it it was kind of like climbing a staircase because like it wasn't overnight like he was like you know I had a little success with the apps I still wasn't really known in the business planning world but it gave me because I was hands-on like and I think that's the biggest difference at least in my path so this is that most people their hands off right they want to automate things they want to just just things to roll and be cool but I was like right there my my nose was right in people's businesses and I'm like okay we'll talk about your business and so it gave me a sense of what people were struggling with and it gave me the ideas for what to write and so all that content came about from me being in the app so the apps were like one step YouTube with another step the

books for other step and so now looking back at it that kind of created a little bit of an ecosystem that without really aiming to be you know an influencer it's a weird word and you know I don't know how influential I am because like but at the same time I think when beginners let's say start a business or you know they Luca new to me they look on Amazon and they keep finding me and they're like oh you're the guy now and you know so that and I think for people creating their apps now what I sometimes recommend like I have a lot of clients who do for example like dating apps and the classic example you know like if somebody comes to you for with the dating app you're like oh my god how do I promote this because it's so hard right you're competing his Giants you know and I'm oh I always have this yeah and no one's ever taken it but if it was me I would like nail it it just like with the business app I nailed it

and I would literally had a coaching component to the app where I would be like talking you know because a lot of people they don't want to do the work right but it's you okay we're doing the work then if I cared about the apps growth guess what I'd be doing I'd be like talking to every one of the potential daters for free getting their reviews like you know and leave me a nice tribute we all know that game in the App world and guess what you're gonna out review the biggest sites out there if you're on your app all day helping people they're gonna give you the best reviews you're gonna have the best score you're gonna jump over the hinge the coffee meets bagel and you're gonna knock it out of the park no one's done that I've told that to a lot of people like literally no one's done that I would have done it they won you know and I asked you a question the when you decided that hey it was

great content because you listened to your audience you created the content that they wanted and I found that that's the best way rather than me scratching my head and figuring out oh what content should I create just asking the audience is the best way but how did you go about earning that first sale did you do a lot of cross promotion within your apps and be like hey guys I came out with an udemy course or I came out with an e-book what did you do to cross-promote I actually found very early on that cross promotion is is actually not what I kind of should be doing because people are very comfortable with their current platform so if a person likes apps it's really hard to get them to get a book and vice versa is right they like a book it's unnatural for them to get a course but they should get more of the same thing so I actually have them you know that's why I have like my apps were like

a four app package you know so in my books are like I have 20 books and my course I vote so they like courses I don't want or you like it just keep on getting were you like so I like the catalog approach I like having a lot of stuff it's a it's a problematic and approach in a sense because quality often suffers because they you know too many of everything that's a problem but the cross promotion is the result of cross promotion art for me at least underwhelming like if I had promoted actually when I do promote stuff to my app users the the uptake is very very small what I do find the the right path is to so like we're talking about cross pollinating platforms right took app school courses to books to whatever's I found that leveraging like it's wrong to promote from the outside almost because the platform is vast and so like whatever it is if it's YouTube if it's Amazon if it's udemy we are like

one person businesses and our promotion is just just like like a tiny trickle you know when you forgot to turn off your faucet and a drip drip drip that asked there the ocean and what you really need to be doing is to make the ocean whole your way right just get the platform to like you for example like if you're you YouTube video that's amazing and udemy is like from you know promoting the bejesus out of your YouTube video you will never generate that in your life with what YouTube can bring you right but we have to make the best YouTube video and so the efforts have to be on how can I make the best YouTube video how can you leverage the platform usually in every platform there like holds Amazon or YouTube there's like four at least on Amazon let's say there's four major ways to leverage the platform and when they all play well together the magic starts happening so maybe there's more elements to it but

like Church obviously all these out search number one because that's how you get your initial bump so search keywords we all know that one that when that happens you use the system the platform gets to know about what you're doing like gets data are our users liking it our users not liking it when users are liking it way above average the platform starts promoting you in usually they have recommendation algorithms Amazon has this new udemy has this YouTube has this app stores have this so when the recommendation all agree ms algorithms weekend that's when the super growth really happens because the search is very limited because we all want to be above the search but the main problem is when you reach the search the top of the search there's no more there's no more people searching so it's a it's a ceiling but but when the platform starts promoting you there's like feels like no ceiling right because it that's where

it's the ocean at rest and so all these things have to come together and one way to push it push it push it push it is there's still two ways actually one is the free one is paid the free is to have the most best and amazing conversion rate so if it's a book or a course it's you know what people come on your sales page well there's actually sorry I'm going fast but there's really two places people always discover you first in a list next to others when they search and so your thumbnail your title has to be more i more attention grabbing but when they land on your sales page in youtube there's no sales pages but like it when they land on your sales page they have to have a high sales conversion rate when they search and none of those people they search they choose you the most and when they choose you they actually go through and buy at a high rate and when they buy the engagement signals are also good when

all that flow happens that's an amazing kind of free or free way to boost SEO and with that the algorithm and if you really really really you're almost there you feel like you're almost there but like you're just not breaking through the ceiling then you boost it with ads and you can run ads at a loss because it doesn't matter what the immediate you know that day you spent $50 but you made $25 back that's cool because that little bump gave you enough to push above the next guy on top of you and now you're the most recommended instead of the third most recommended dude that's an exponential earnings because you're at the top of the pyramid there's like you know so that and that's really much easier said than done because the people at the top they're amazing - and they're like all people who are super smart super experienced have a lot of resources maybe have teams and so we really have to bring it so the

level of the attention to detail has to be on our part as creators immense because the competitors are super smart you know yes we dis Alex yeah when you're talking about the conversion rate so when you're in a sea of search results how do you make sure that you stand out the best so I spend a lot of times on titles and it's really hard because I'm a geek of SEO so the keywords right and I have a tendency a flow of where I tend to overdo the keywords and they tend to make my titles dumb and unattractive and when they make my titles attractive that means sacrificing some keywords and it's like why don't you stab me with a knife you know okay like I don't want to lose the keywords so it's actually so it's it's a little bit of an art there's like no real right because you can have the most amazing title but it will have a very tricky word and balance you can't know the results is you can only experiment

with a lot of different titles some of them you'll lose the keywords you some of the search rankings with some of them you'll gain conversion so it's it's really an art to be honest and part of it is what makes it so hard is that it might take 25 experiments just on the title it might take more because your competitors guess what they're experiencing - so sometimes it's that's the challenge right and then that's only the title you guess what happens when you when in your listing you'll have the description the subtitle the the reviews always sometimes the review is a nice one and sometimes it's not a nice one if it drops you so it's like it's a constant like in theory when I explain that it explodes so well but in when you're in the muck of it it's easy it's really easy to out-compete the bottom 90% it's really hard I find to compete against the top 3% these guys man they're good everything I do they do better and you

know maybe I don't give myself credit I do some things well but like it seems like never enough you're doing great hey let me go some rapid-fire questions for you if you don't mind so you're on all these platforms you got a great following on all these different platforms maybe you can recommend a tool I'll say the platform you recommend your favorite tool for that platform you ready for this all right all right here we go so most people by the way YouTube what's your favorite to create my own creativity my own common sense Google Keyword tool you didn't in it in that order mutiny they actually created an amazing tool for instructors they keep they keep making tools if I say a tool now and six months from now might be different but at the moment it they created a conversion tool where you can see how well your courses are converting since they really since the day one that they released it I've been an absolute nerd

of that tool every day I go and check and I'm like 100 courses and then I go oh my god like my conversion and the next I did go checking so that's been driving me it's kind of fun but it's also driving me nuts a little bit so but they have a tool built-in Amazon Amazon jungle scout for sure let's go but out but also um Google Keyword tool thesaurus for getting more keywords and a la for keywords a lot of it is I also the autocomplete it's really easy but the Amazon like literally tells you what the popular features are so that's and sometimes autocomplete in Google and YouTube and Amazon because sometimes Amazon doesn't have all the perfect keywords that you might want anyway longtail any lesson that took you the longest to learn as you were growing this Alex get a Zdenek I'm screwed up yet your name all the time your empire any lessons that you learn along the way that you're like man if only I knew this

now when I was big beginning this would help me out so much yes and it's I think a lot of people will find a little bit unsatisfactory but what I found is that like you know how like we can always talk about tactics add keywords to subtract keywords make a better title but it doesn't it doesn't really give you a tremendous leg up it gives you a little leg up for sure but you know if you don't the tactic the big thing is when you let's say schedule you're like figure out a Productivity technique better or let's say we're doing a lot with video when I figure out like my lighting right now is not perfect right when I figure out my current setup all my videos we better YouTube will recommend anymore everything will happen out of that you know and it's like even if lighting is a struggle if you've seen how many lights are pointing at me because I it's because I'm in my living room filming right now it's not like a

perfect studio so I had to kind of do my best and so so there's but every time we kind of figure out how to make our business flow better it can be like our time management it can be like how many things we say no to and open up space for the right things to say yes and I've actually identified 50 separate skills like so all soft skills from goal-setting to time management to emotional intelligence like I have a list of 50 and that I like work on all the time and I give out to my students and like you know I tell them to do some special things like finish my course y'all send you this list school list it is actually coolest I'm a geek of that list myself I'd really try hard and I've noticed like my business is kind of like like usually it's like I wanted to just keep going up all the time but it will really happen is like plateau plateau plateau plateau I started doing something better for example I might use

better lighting right and then my god like approval money like right now I'm improving all my sales videos all my questions that I've been old and I'm seeing like immediate results and I'm like oh my God why didn't I had to figure this out earlier but anyway now I use it out and it's like I'm literally seeing like a leg up you know so when you figure out how to make something better more efficient as like a process in either in yourself or in your business and like I said there's like 50 fields of such thing you know it could be stress management but stress management is huge right because like for example I know it's a little bit of a tangent sorry but like basically you know a stress management is like we can only we can only deal with the short term when we weren't stressed we can all like our part of it that our brain that takes over is the part of the brain that only deals with removing the immediate

pain so we're only able to deal with short-term strategies which is by the way every intrapreneurs experience right my app is struggling oh my god stressed stressed stressed they can only do short-term they ask for how do I solve this right now well the solution really is a long-term one like so but but it's really partially about removing the stress and then the person will just have enough breathing room to embrace slightly longer term but actually effective strategies and then they actually implement their business well and they start doing things well and the business actually grows so something is seemingly secondary or tertiary a stress management because you know we're all like we can take it we're tough but we're not in control it controls us so in our ability to deal with different things see different things think you know just something as little as stress management which seems like important

but not totally important but see when I kind of put these high-level things I head up the media tactics that's where I started that's where the lessons are that's where I started really seeing the growth so for me that that over the years that's what really hit me I'm like I got a in just just chill not rush too much and just make sure that everything I'm doing is not about quantity which is total like because you know I have too much quantity of my work and like I'm always my problem is always too much quantity not enough quality that's my own criticism of myself because of the stress that I put myself through right and so I'm like reverse it and constantly Thomas had to reverse it and it's one of these like big you know sort of soft skill lessons that I would really recommend I love it well the website is problem you calm it is linked up into the youtube description along with all of Alex's

ebooks on Amazon and his courses on udemy Alex you want to send the audience anywhere else uh where should I send them tell me you're the influencer brother well I think if you haven't subscribed subscribe to Steve's channel where I actually let me do this Alex Alex's YouTube channel is phenomenal too he talked a lot more about business and entrepreneurship so definitely check out his youtube channel and like that into the show notes as well he's got ton more subscribers than I do but Alex thank you so much for coming on doing this man I really appreciate you I'm you know we were overdue for catching up I'm very happy for for doing it and we gotta do this more often I like our we have a good pace of like once every two years this is true this is true and we get to meeting first a couple of times to Alex a phenomenal guy thank you so much Alex I really appreciate you into the YouTube audience

I will see you on the next video go check out Alex's channel by clicking the top video and if you want to learn my hack for selling your expertise and consulting you