# Cal AI’s Co-Founder Shares His App Growth Secrets

Channel: App Masters
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uEoWEQV5O0
Duration: 1 hr 1 min
Language: English
Words: 11892
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/_uEoWEQV5O0

---

[0:28] Oh. Um, what the I can't hear you. I I don't know. Oh, I must have been on mute. Okay, I was on mute. H. Okay. All right. Let's do this one more time. All right, Jay, get the hell out of here. I'm gonna bring it in. But I've got Jay Castillo, co-founder of Cali. He breaks down how they built and scale one of the fastest growing calorie tracking apps using speed, influencer marketing, UGC, and

[1:01] most importantly, relentless execution. All right, we are back. There's some hiccups. Let's get to it.

[1:20] Oh my god. What is going on with this? Jake, welcome to the show, my friend. Oh, you are on mute this time. Am I? There you got you now. We figured this out. All right, got it. Cool. Well, sorry for the technical difficulties, but I'm happy to be here, dude. I'm super excited to have you. So, I want to start with this. I mean, obviously, congratulations on selling the company in just 15 months to My Fitness Pal. What is but I wanted to go back a little bit to the early days and so talk to me about when you guys were thinking about the distribution and I

[1:55] know a lot of your co-founders are really young but what were you guys kind of thinking about the distribution strategy and your go to market strategy? Yeah so for this I have to give credit to one of my co-founders Blake Anderson. He was the only one of us before Cali that had had previous success in the app space and he had scaled one of his apps uh UMAX with influencer marketing to like a not the same scale as Cali but like the same principles and that kind of created the whole playbook. So, it's like, let's test this out with this influencer marketing strategy that Blake pioneered with UMAX. And we did it with

[2:35] Cali at the start and it just took off like we couldn't have imagined. And then it was our job then to just take the ball and run with it and scale it up as high as we could. We were muted. I apologize. We got the two goats. So, Jake, I'm going to call you the goat. All right. I'm just trying to ride along your shoulders, man. Well, let's break down that strategy. And I do want to plug your newsletter. So for those who are interested in learning a little bit more about the story and Jake's got some interesting stories and I love that Jake that you're so open and

[3:04] honest with everything like titles like why we let Cali bleed money the ultimate apple I mean the ultimate cheat sheet to influencer marketing. So these are great reads and the link to Jake's newsletter is in your favorite YouTube and podcast description. But Jake, let's break it down for you. What is that playbook if you don't mind sharing what you Yeah. Yeah. So essentially it's you find a niche that you think makes sense for your app. For us it was the health and fitness niche and we saw like all these influencers in the space that didn't have brand deals because the health and fitness space is unique in that it's oversaturated with

[3:45] creators and there's not that many brands available to these creators. So, we had all these creators that were just looking for a brand deal because there's only so many protein powder companies and athleisureware companies they can work with. So, a lot of them were making content but had no way to monetize. So, we came to them like, "Hey, we'd love for you to promote our app in your content." And the nice thing is the content you're already producing allows for a super seamless integration. you're already creating videos of what I eat in a day or how I lose lose how I'm losing weight for the summer or how I'm

[4:23] building muscle and you're showing your food in those videos. So, all we ask is that you before you eat your food, you scan it with Cali in the video. And so, these creators were super willing to do that because one, it was easy for them to do. it didn't like interrupt their content schedule and two they had this was the first time ever that they were finally able to monetize all the hard work they had put in. So we saw that that um this audience was willing to do it and then it was just a matter of us like reaching out to the thousands and thousands of creators and getting them

[4:58] all signed. And once you have them signed, that brings a whole host of other issues like managing 300 plus influencers, which can be a lot. But uh yeah, we figured it out. I kind of want to break down this, you know, this cheat sheet that you have here as well. So I recommend you reading to this reading this to the audience out there, the ultimate cheat sheet to influencer marketing. But Jake, was the goal to go viral for these videos when

[5:22] you were working with these influencers? Yeah. Yeah. So, and I think this is where a lot of people go wrong with influencer marketing is they'll find an influencer and like this influencer gets a million views a video and they're amaz so they calculate their CPM based on that assumption and then they have the influencer create a piece of content that's nothing like the content they normally create. they like the creator may do like what I eat in a day and like that's every video they make is that and then the brand will come in and have the creator not make that type of video and it's it's like hey guys let me tell you

[5:58] about Cali and it's just like it looks like an infomercial and then what ends up happening they calculated a CPM a profitable CPM based on the assumption it was going to get a million views but then the they force the creator to deviate from their normal content format and then the video as the result only gets 50,000 views and now they priced it assuming a million only got 50,000 and

[6:22] they're thousands of dollars in the red. So the the key is that you you get these creators making their normal content and just like sliding your app into that. And as long as you do that, you should you can at least with a high degree of confidence estimate what your average views are going to be per video. And are you you know, I've heard about like Nicole Chung who's, you know, did Glam Up. She's talked about this too, Jake, where she's like, "Look, before you even work with influencers, like figure out what's going to go viral. Like really figure out what the video content or the

[6:59] viral format should be and then use them to amplify that message." But you're are you following that similar playbook or do you guys what do you think about that concept? Yeah, so I would follow that playbook if I was doing UGC. So UGC is like when you're working with creators that are going to create a brand new like they're regular people like me, you and me, and they're just creating a brand new Instagram and Tik Tok account and it's dedicated to your brand. So it may be like Jake eatats or Jake. Tracks and then like every video on that is about Cali. And with that, yeah, I'm

[7:30] gonna want to steal from viral formats that have already been proven to go viral. For an influencer, the main thing you want, you don't want to interrupt their current content. Like they're the artists. Like, let them paint. And I think that's where people go wrong is they try and micromanage these influencers and it's like they've built a following for a reason. You don't have a following for a reason. So, let them focus on their domain of expertise. You focus on yours. Whereas, if you're working with a UGC creator that hasn't built an audience, you can micromanage them and tell them how to do it because you you're the experienced one in that

[8:02] situation. So, with influencers, no, I try not to force any formats or rules on them and instead just give them general guidelines on how to integrate the app. And then from there, it's like let them cook because they're the pros. And what's the general guideline? You're like, hey, take a picture of your food with Cali and just talk about Yeah. Show it in this way. we want it coming in within like this many seconds, etc. Um, the caption like should include this tag or whatever, but other than that, it's like you got free reign. And that's why a lot of our influencers loved working with us. They always said

[8:36] we were the easiest brand deal they ever had cuz we gave them full creative control. Did you guys figure out how did you guys figure out you wanted this caption and then the the integration, the product integration at this many seconds? How did you guys figure that part out? Yeah, just rigorous testing. So yeah, we were in the trenches and like trying everything and that's like it's like it's ABT like always be testing and like if you're not trying new things and testing new things, I think you're leaving money on the table because like for instance like at one point we had like the integration like

[9:10] it had to come in at this second mark and then we it was like because we want to do that so that it doesn't feel like an ad and it goes more viral and then we tested bring it in bringing it in a little earlier and earlier and then like we found the sweet spot where like this is the earliest we can get it in without it impacting views and well for us it was like we wanted it within like the 20 to 30 second range but with anyone listening do not like follow like that that when people listen to these podcasts or these interviews I think they go wrong

[9:43] when they hear someone talk about their experience and it's like this is the playbook and I got to copy this bar for bar and like that's not the case like what works for my app will may not work for your app and what works for your app may not work for my app. So the main thing to take away is like when you integrate your app is going like that matters but like the actual like time stamp that's going to be unique to you and you got to test. So it's like understand like what you're going to test and then just always be testing it cuz like there's another my

[10:18] friend has an app where his sweet spot is the 60-second mark. And if he tried to stick to Cali, then he would not be getting nearly as many views as he currently is. And that's what he needs to be profitable. Whereas like if we tried to copy him, we wouldn't be getting nearly as many conversions as needed for us to be profitable. So it's like take these general principles and like adjust them to fit your specific product. Jay, talk to me about this testing phase because I love it, but then you can blow a lot of budget because I mean obviously are you just being like, "Okay, this next influencer

[10:54] round with X amount of money, we're going to do, you know, 15-second in product integration versus 20 second, which by the way, bro, like that's kind of surprising. I thought it was going to be like 5-second product integration, but 15 20 seconds, I was like, okay, that's that's legit." But like, yeah, talk to me about that. Yeah. So I think there's two things like one like people would be blown away by like Cali the Cali team's risk tolerance like we were absolutely like so I'm the oldest on the team so you know I have I had like a mortgage I had uh a girlfriend at the time now she's my wife but like uh I

[11:30] had all these like obligations so I was like you're naturally less risk tolerant as a result my co-founders were 17 18 and 23 and they were just crazy. They're like, "Who cares? Like, let's just do it." And um so we we would make these crazy tests and I would just be like um like holding on to my seat just like freaking out. But um it's I think the lesson there is like you should have an incredibly high risk tolerance because like it's taking those big bets that's going to have the asymmetric payout. And like, yeah, it is um a great learning for me cuz like you got to take chances

[12:08] and otherwise you're just never going to learn. I like it, dude. Great lesson there. Jake is a legend. No doubt. All right, we got a question from Taylor. When you're looking at influencers negotiating, are you thinking a single platform like Instagram or have them cross-ost say Instagram and Tik Tok? Yeah. So, uh this is uh yeah, this is uh we always try and have people crossost and like I kind of use like a technique I use like with my wife when she's like mad at me about something like she's like, "Oh my god, like I can't believe you're doing." Oh no, it's not a big deal. Don't worry about it. Don't worry

[12:40] about it. It's it it's all good. Chill. Um and that's kind of what I do with the influencers where it's like I'll be like, "Oh yeah, you know, we'll pay you $400 for four posts." And they're like, "And yeah, just crossost it on both platforms. No big deal." And then they're like, "Wait, what?" And it's like, "Yeah, don't worry. You're already making the video. Just post it. It's all good." And like if it works, it works well. Like they're they're they're cool with that most of the time. It's like if you make it out to be a big deal, they'll make it out to be a big deal. But if you just like,

[13:08] "Nah, it's all good." I want to know how long that that works with your wife. Okay. Come back with me a couple months. It worked when we were kids. Not so much anymore. Okay. 100%. man, when you are negotiating some of the prices, 400 for for a post is really good. And I'm going to break down some of the tiers that you have in here, the S tier and the A tier, I really want to understand what that means. But you know what I've done with other ways of doing influencer marketing is kind of looking at the CPMs. Are you guys kind of looking at that too and

[13:37] being like, because I'm like, well, I can get this CPM with an Facebook ad, so here's where I would like to be with this, you know, when I'm paying out the influencer. Absolutely. Yeah. I think you want to think of it in like a I I think there's like three primary distribution channels, right? You've got paid ads, you've got influencer marketing, and then you've got UGC marketing. So paid ads, you can afford the highest CPM. You can pay the highest CPM and still be profitable because when people see that ad, there's a link they can click on directly that takes them to your app immediately. So like that's like the

[14:11] least amount of friction, meaning it's going to lead to the highest conversion rate. So, you can afford a higher CPM than you can with influencers where when people see an influencer ad, let's say they they see your ad and it's, "Oh my god, that app seems really cool. I want to go and download it." Well, if they want to do that, they have to exit out of their social media app. They have to go to the app store. They have to search for your app. They have to find your app within the search results and then download it. There's so much more friction there. So like given that added

[14:37] friction, the CPM better be significantly lower than what you're getting with paid ads. And the and then with UGC, these brand new accounts that aren't like established influencers, the CPM has to be even cheaper there than with influencers because not only do you have the same amount of friction that you have with influencers, but you don't have the brand trust that that influencer has earned over the their years of posting content. You're a brand new account that was just created last month and no one knows who you are,

[15:09] right? You know, you're not Mr. Beast. You don't have any like brand equity. So, if conversion is naturally going to be worse, so the CPM better be lower. I like that. That's the way I think about it. This is so educational for me. So, do you tend to have like a base rate with a bonus? And I can kind of pull up some chart some I'm a nerdy spreadsheet guy, so I'm going to pull this up and kind of give you guys like the way I'm didn't think about and Jake like I can poke holes on this and say like, "No, Steve, I wouldn't do it this way." So, I'm game

[15:34] for that. But like, you know, here's how we started thinking about it. This many views, we have a base rate and bonus. What do you think about it? What was your structure? And then we'll get into this dumb spreadsheet that I put together. Yeah. No, I I think this is this is a great outline. And essentially, like, yeah, you have you you want to come up for influencers, you want to come up with like a base rate like, yes, we'll do $450 or $400, 350 for four posts, and then like they they can unlock a couple of view bonuses. One thing I will say though is like what you do have here,

[16:06] you want to cap out or at least I always wanted to cap out the view bonuses because what you're getting like the the main value prop for influencer and UGC content is the opportunity of going viral and like because most of if you're doing like UGC in particular, most of your videos are not going to be profitable because like they're going to

[16:28] post it, it'll get 500 to a,000 views. And like, you know, if you're paying $20 a video, like, you're not making money there. Where you actually make your money is in the one or two videos a month that go viral and get millions of views. So, in order to offset the losses you had for the 28 videos that didn't go viral, you need to capture all of the upside of that viral post. And if you're paying for every view, it makes it hard to get that upside. So, I like it's I think it's good to have view bonuses so that the creators are incentivized to go

[17:01] viral, but like you want to cap it at a certain point. That way, like everything past that is just gravy for you. I like it. I like it. What do you guys usually cap it at? A million plus, 2 million. Yeah. Usually a million plus. Cuz like the thing it's it's weird. Like humans naturally are unable to fathom large numbers. Like a million is so much. And like but like once you get to a million people, oh yeah, like a million, 2 million, 1.5 million. Like they don't think there's a big difference there, but it's like that's literally like two times as much. But they don't see it

[17:32] that way. So like you don't necessarily need to pay it pay for all those extra views. Like once they get that million bucks, like cool. Like and if a video gets a million views, it'll probably grow to 1.3, two, four, five million views. And like it's amazing if you don't pay for that. So I I would usually

[17:49] stop at a million. Do you try? The other thing Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Go for it, dude. The other thing is um as videos go more and more viral, they reach a wider and wider audience, a less targeted audience. It's less likely to convert. So those v views are like legitimately worth less. A prime example of like there was this like rat that went viral a long time ago in New York called Pizza Rat. And it was like a little rat that was like carrying a pizza a piece of pizza. And I bet like at the start like there there's a lot of rat content in New York, right? But that's only getting

[18:26] shown to like the people that are into rat content of New York. But pizza rat went so viral. I saw it, right? And like I'm not a I don't consume rat content. Why would you? And it's like, so when a video gets hundreds of millions of views, it starts to penetrate the gen pop and then like it's like I wasn't going to subscribe to the rat guy's Patreon account, but like the first 100,000 viewers might. So it's like the the while he did get a 100 million views on the pizza rat video, they weren't really worth anything. So that's why like after a certain view threshold,

[19:02] like you should stop paying because they're probably not going to be worth much. I like it. I like that breakdown, dude. Is there a CPM that you try to aim for? Yeah. So, um it and this is the key thing here is like the CPM doesn't matter. All that matters is that your CPM is lower than your RPM. So, when you your RPM is your revenue per thousand view. So, when you run a like influencer video, you can see like how much we this video got a,000 views or a million views, whatever. How much did we make from that? And then like you calculate that to figure, oh yeah, we

[19:36] make, you know, $5 per thousand view. And if that's what your RPM is, then you just want to make sure your CPM is below that. So like, you know, some and that that's like the one of the tricky things about influencer marketing is like depending on the space that you're operating in, you could be pl competing against brands that have ridiculously high RPMs. For instance, like a clothing brand, right? Their average order value is probably going to be like $200 and their lifetime value of a customer is going to be like $1,000. And if you're an app that has an average order value of $30 and your lifetime value is $50,

[20:14] it's going to be very hard to compete on an RPM basis with that clothing brand because they just make so much more per thousand views. And um yeah, same thing with any like tellahalth company, you know, they just make so much money with their customers. So it's you you just make sure the the CPMs that they can afford are so much higher than the CPMs

[20:38] like a normal consumer app can afford. So I like I think the main thing people should take away is like don't focus on like a set CPM. Just figure out what your RPM is and make sure your CPM's always underneath that. Okay. Well, speaking of RPM, then I have this question too. Nurex says, "Jake, how are you tracking users if it's coming from viral videos?" So how do you

[20:59] how are you guys measuring the RPM? Yeah. Yeah. So this is something that gets increasingly difficult as you become increasingly successful because as and also as you have more videos Yeah. like up. So like for instance at Cali we have got millions of videos now that have been posted and like there's videos from years ago uh that are still getting views, right? Which is like polluting our data. So, it's hard to know like if we see a spike in our downloads one day, it's like, did that come from what was posted today or did that come from what was posted a month ago, two months ago,

[21:32] a year ago? Interesting. So the the key the thing you got to do is like very early on when you're like first launching the app, you want to see like what types of creators like cause a spike in like what their comment sections look like, what the content format looks like so that you can kind of like normalize and like generalize like oh this type of content converts like this and like when it can when the comment section looks like this that's like a good sign and yeah like that that's like the main way like you're kind of you have to do a lot of like

[22:03] extrapol ation and make a lot of assumptions based on how your data looked early on when you know at the early days of Cali we if we didn't have a influencer video go live we had no downloads for the day so it's like every influencer video that went live we would see a spike and then like also as we grew we may have like a baseline of like a 100 downloads an hour and then when a video would go live you'd see that spike to 200 and we'd know it's oh that correlates with you know Steve's video that just posted. So that's how we know and like you can do that to um

[22:39] it gets harder as you grow but even at like a large scale you can still do that. You just got to be a lot better at data analysis and like uh you can do yeah like there um like you can do incrementality tests and all of those things to like sus it out but it does get very difficult and that's why I always say like as apps scale you have to almost become a data analyst if you're going to succeed because like it is so murky because attribution is so

[23:07] tricky. Right. Right. I like it. Okay. The we got a lot of questions here. Um, maybe I'll get through some of these questions. Okay, Taylor says, "If your target audience is in a specific country, how important is it to find influencers in that same country? Does it change if you're thinking influencers primary channel is Tik Tok versus Instagram?" Yeah. So, it where the creator lives and creates the content is irrelevant. What

[23:33] matters is where their audience is from. So when you're signing a creator, just ask them like for their demos and see like, you know, if you want to target France, but your creator has 1% of his viewage coming from France, maybe not the best creator to work with. Um, and then as for like which platforms matter, honestly, I group Tik Tok and Instagram into the same bucket and like they really tackle like more or less they tackle the same type of person that's watching short form content. the one thing like for like some apps will do better on Tik Tok like slightly better like maybe it's like 1.2 times

[24:09] better on Tik Tok than they do Instagram but then I know other apps that do better on in like their Instagram videos do 1.2 times better than they do on Tik Tok. So it's all variable and but more or less I I wouldn't you're majoring in the minors if you're spending a lot of time trying to figure out like Tik Tok or Instagram. They're the same thing. I

[24:30] like it. Okay. And do you hire only US? This is Mr. I don't know. I'm sorry guy. I'm not gonna do you hire only US-based content creators to say let's say new accounts or what about the rest of the world? So I think he's talking about for like a UGC creator that we're hiring that's going to create like a branded like Cali account. And it it just depends on who we're for UGC like it depends on yeah who you're trying to target because like for UGC creators from my understanding and like it's always so hard to tell because like the social media platforms are pretty they're not very forthright with their

[25:06] info and the way things work. But what we've seen is that like for UGC and brand new accounts, they're going to default to showing the content in the the country that the creator is creating that content from. And then of course like as the account grows it'll get a little more diversified which is why that's not an issue with influencers because they've been creating content for a year but for a brand new account it's going to default to the country that the creator is creating the content

[25:31] in. I see. And you guys talk to me about this. I know you did high volume right? You said this hey it is about volume. How are you measuring that then Jake? Are you like playing like all right Jake's posting on Monday Steve's posting on Tuesday H is posting on Wednesday. Is that how you're sort of planning that

[25:48] out? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That at the start and then like a lot of my time was spent figuring out how we can scale this and how we can manage all this like at such a high volume. So yeah, I created like a tool that basically does it all for you. Like when you sign a you click a button and

[26:06] it sends the contract to the creator. Once the creator signs the contract, they get added to the um like the platform and then they get like sent a text where it's like, "Hey, thanks for signing the contract. here's your content brief. Let's get you posting. What day works well for you? And then when they respond with the day, that auto gets that gets piped into the content calendar. And then on the content calendar, like every morning we get like a we're sent a batch of texts like, "Hey, we need to text this person this thing because they're scheduled to post today." And like it was all like uh

[26:37] automated. Yeah. It's kind of like my magnum office. I'm very proud of it. Is this what your part of your announcement is? Uh, I guess we'll see. I guess we'll see. All right, we'll read that on Jake's newsletter as well. Jake, I want to break down the 20 plus Tik Tok accounts. What is this? Yeah. So, one of the things people don't think about like when scaling an influencer program is that you just need to reach out to a ton of influencers. And a lot of people haven't experienced this because they haven't done the volume of outreach that we did. But if you send a certain number of messages on Tik Tok

[27:13] and Instagram, after a certain point, they like, "Hey, you you've sent too many messages for the day. You can't message anyone else." So what we did, we like, "Okay, we'll just create another Cali account." And we just created like 20 of them for like all of our outreach specialists and they were all, you know, reaching out to, you know, hundreds of

[27:30] creators a day. Wow. Yeah. Insane. I love that. Are you Is it better to say like Jake Calai or just Calai? Jake like or is just Jake Castillo and then you know co-founder of Cala. What's the best way to approach them? Yeah, there's a lot of cool like interesting tactics you can try. Uh we always like to put a name to it so they know they're not just speaking to some amorphous brand. Uh there's other cool things like you can do a voice memo like like if like instead of like sending like a wall of text, it's just a voice memo because then it's oh this is

[28:02] like a real person and like I like that they sound like more legit. It's like voice that's a cool hack. It's and you can just you you save the voicemail and just copy paste it across everyone, right? Uh and that's that's like everything we did we like did with like the the thought of looking to scale like how can we scale this and like yeah the the generalized voice memo that feels personalized to the uninitiated is a

[28:28] little um hack that worked well for us. Oh, I'm glad I asked, dude. All right, we got another question from Caor. Is there any is there a creator UGC creator platform that you you like? Yeah, so I I think they're talking about like where you can source Yeah. UGC creators and I mean so the easiest platform for sure is Sideshift. You can go on Sideshift and they've got like millions of creators where you just create like a job posting and people

[28:56] will apply to it. But 99% of those people are I think not good creators. So, um, for me, agree my preference is just to go out and find them in the wild. Go and find UGC creators that you think are great. And you can find them by just typing in UGC creator in your explore page and like scrolling. It's like, oh, that yeah,

[29:18] this person feels like a real person. It's not like some NPC bot that's like reading a script like this. It feels organic and like those are the people you want to work with. Wow. Okay. Do you have a like when if you're doing base because I I did get a question about this base rate stuff. If you're doing a do you do a base rate with view bonuses and what typically is a good base rate to aim for

[29:39] for UGC? Yeah. I mean I guess influencers too. Yeah. Yeah. So for for Yeah. I think the this for influencers, right? You just want to figure out like the RPM CPM equation and like look at how many views they're going to get and then you can estimate like yeah, this person's going to get a

[29:56] million views. I want a $4 CPM, so I should pay them $4,000, right? Um I don't I said three that I think it'd be $12,000. Uh I don't know my uh I'm not I can't do it anyway, dude. It's fine. But like, you know, just figure out like how many views you can get and then um cool. So uh that's like for influencers. For UGC creators though, the CPM basic doesn't really work because like like I said, most of those videos are only going to get 500 to a,000 views, which like you're never going to be able to properly incentivize a creator by paying them a $3 CPM when

[30:36] they get So that's 30 cents a video. Not that's not going to work. But remember, you're paying for the you're really like you're taking all these hits on the chin of the 500 to,000 view videos so that you can get like the uppercut that is the million view video. So with that, like I would probably do a thing where you've got like a base rate of like $25 a video, $30 a video, and that's for all of their videos. And with that, so you're looking at like 600 a month. And if they get one video that gets a million views, then you're at a $2 CPM,

[31:12] which is pretty solid. And like, and you know, there will be a view bonus, but maybe it's like, so if you factor in all of their views plus the the view bonus, maybe you end up paying $1,000, which $1,000 for, you know, 1.5 million views or something. That's pretty solid. Yeah, that is cheap. Like a $1.50 CPM. How would you define

[31:34] influencer and then UGC? Yeah. So an influencer, these are the people that everyone knows about. That's your Alex Earl, Alex Cooper, Mr. Beast, etc. So these are people that have existing followings and like established brand pages, right? And if you go to them, they're not going to create every video that they post is going to integrate your brand. Like that's not going to happen. You're they may do like one video a month for you, two videos a month for you. It's like that's an influencer and what you're really paying for with the influencer is the audience that they have amassed over the years of their posting content and the trust

[32:11] they've built with that audience. So that's an influencer. We all know influencers. A UGC creator, none of you guys know any UGC creators because if they were a famous UGC creator, they would be an influencer. So, UGC Critter, it looks like just a regular person that's creating like just a random video and telling their story and it's a brand new account dedicated

[32:33] to your product, right? That's the Jake. And like every video that I'm creating is a Cali video and I have no existing audience. I maybe have like 10 followers and my video just pops up as people are scroll like no one's following me but my video pops up as people are scrolling through their for you page and it'll just like that's why like you got to play the algorithmic game and hope that

[32:56] your video is viral and hits their algo. I can go forever with you Jake so you just stop me but is there a minimum follower count that you see for influencers? Yeah. So, this is like one of like the the Calai like contrarian takes is we don't care about followers. I like everyone will come to me like managers, people like within the company like, "Hey, like, oh, we should work with this

[33:20] person. They have a million followers." Like, I don't care. Followers means nothing to me. What matters is how many views they get on average per video. Because let's say there's a creator that has a million followers but gets a,000 views per video. So it's not like if he posted a video for Cali, he's not speaking to his million followers. He's speaking to the thousand people that watched his video. So like why am I going to pay for a million followers when only a thousand people saw it? And vice versa. There are creators and like these are the ones you want to work with where they are already successful, but

[33:51] time just hasn't caught up yet because like they're averaging a million views a video, but they only have like 500 followers because they're a brand new account and they're just going mega viral and resonating with people. really strongly like those are the people like you know brands because like every brand is paying based on followers. So it's like if you can find those creators that don't have high followings but h get a crazy high views they're not used to getting like crazy exorbitant fees for brand deals so you can come in and offer them a reasonable rate and they'll love it because they've never seen anything

[34:24] like that. Where is like if you're working with, you know, the biggest influencers in the world, they're used to getting these stupid rates because brands are paying based on following, not based on views. I see. I love that. I love the contrarian views. So, how are there any tools that you like to use? And I like I have a few that I can point out too, but that show the average views or are you just looking at I'll point out I love I'm a big FL fan and so I follow this meme account, but are you just looking at the average views? Yep. Yeah. So, what I do, I look at what I call the

[34:54] worst case scenario average view. So, I'm looking at like their like let's say if we're looking at the 20 there are 20 recently posted videos, okay? I'm looking at the like the 10 worst performing videos or the five worst performing of those 20 and like of those five worst performing, what's the average there? And then

[35:14] that's what I'm basing my CPM on. Because if I base it on the worst case scenario, it's unlikely that like say they do four videos for us in the deal, it's unlikely that all four of those videos are going to be the worst performing ones. They're they're likely going to be, you know, more closer to the mean. And if that's the case, then everything after that's profit. So that that's how I do it. So like looking at this, I would say like their worst case scenario is probably

[35:40] like a million views. Yeah. I mean, they're pretty good, dude. Like the one I saw was maybe 500,000 right here. But yeah. And then yeah, you look like you got like 800, you got a million, uh you got 970. So yeah, it's like we'll just uh yeah, 562, but that's one of the more recent videos, so it may still be

[35:57] growing. So I would Yeah, I'd probably say like anywhere between 800 and a million views to base your average on and like you're good to go. Got it. So that would cost roughly around, you know, what you talked about about three to $4,000. Yeah. depending on what uh what you determine a profitable CPM is for your app, which you'll do by calculating the

[36:17] RPM. I like it. And are there specific minimum views that you're looking for to work with that particular influencer? I that'd be great if you can get the Oh, you're like, so yeah, like I it doesn't really The key thing to keep in mind is when you work with an influencer, it takes the same amount of work to manage an influencer that gets 10,000 views a video as it does an influencer that gets a million views a video. So like you don't want to spend all your time with these creators that don't drive like any meaningful views and therefore don't mind drive meaningful downloads or conversions and like

[36:56] instead like focus your energy like where the views are coming from. So honest like 25,000 views a video and up is like my lowest I'll go. Okay, I love that. Okay, let's throw that in there. H I know you're taking notes. Oh yeah. Um, yeah. So, like I now the other thing though, it's like so like the other side of the spectrum is also problematic because when you get a creator that's getting like millions of views a video, they have naturally like they're going to have a more gen pop audience, less of a cult-like following, and they're less likely going to take that influencer's recommendation. So, I

[37:35] feel like the sweet spot is like 25,000 views to a million views a video. And like those creators are the ones that will have like the cultlike audience that will have the highest converting type of videos. Have you guys figured out some ratio with views and installs or is it just different for everything? Like everything is different. Like you've seen videos get 5 million views but very little installs. And yeah, it's all about the creator and the format type, right? Like there's and you can sus this out like what type of audience and like cultlike following the creator has from the comment section. So you can like take two comment sections

[38:09] like where one is the person it's just like say it's a girl working out right and it's a bunch of guys like fire emoji fire emoji fire emoji it's maybe girls doing the muscle emoji um like something like that right that's one comment section and then that there's another creator that makes similar content but her comment section is a bunch of girls like oh my god thank you for posting this like I've been struggling so much to get the body in my dreams but you've made it

[38:35] so easy you've taught me how to do it. Then there's there's other there's people responding to that message be same girl like all that stuff, right? And like that's like a real community and that is going to convert far better than the fire emoji, fire emoji, fire emoji comment section. Man, I wish there was a tool out there that did all this. Jay,

[38:57] if only. If only. If only. All right. Well, look, if you guys want to if you want to thank Jake, go check out his new newsletter. go subscribe to it because he's got a big announcement for all of this to help us all out here. All right, Jake, I'm gonna run through some some questions here.

[39:12] Let's do it. All right, Taylor says, "How many iterations influencers did it take you guys to find the winning format, the Cali's first winning format, and did you see any differences in subniches in the health and fitness category?" Yeah. Um, so success and like winning formats, I think, exist on a spectrum. So like our first video, we saw like signs of life. It's like, oh, like this is like this isn't profitable, but like people are interested in this. And then like you're just like slow you're making tweaks all along the way and like it's getting like more and more profitable, more and more profitable. So like we're

[39:46] not done. Cali is not a finished product. Our marketing system is not done and it never will be. Like we're constantly iterating and improving it. So um I get like I'd say like the first video was a winning format. We just had to optimize it. Uh but like but the same way like one could argue that we still haven't found a winning format because we're still constantly trying to improve it. So that's how I'd look at that. And then the second part of that question

[40:12] was what was it? The any differences? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Like so like we we started with health and fitness and then like we expanded to like mukbang creators that didn't work. We expanded the UFC fighters that didn't work. But then we did new moms that did work and like so on and so forth. So like we're constantly exploring new

[40:33] niches and you should too. Is that every month, every week? How are you doing this? ABT always be testing. There's no time. Oh my god, bro. You're you're nuts. I love this. You're maniac. You know, the best executors I found at doing all these podcasts is just you guys are maniacs. You know what I mean? And I'm

[40:50] just like, dude. And it's cuz it's so easy like when you love it, right? like for like this is like I for so long like I would wake up every day and like I hated my job and I was not having fun and then Cali I came along and it was like the first time I was like this is amazing this is so fun like I would get mad when like my eyes were closing because I was so tired and I had to fall asleep like damn I got to take a break for eight hours but like so as as soon as I woke up the next morning

[41:14] I was ready to get after it. So it's like it's super easy to do this work when you just love it so much. That's awesome, bro. And it shows. It shows. Thank you. Do you see do you see any difference between users who come from UGC campaigns versus paid ads like meta? Interesting. Um I don't know. I don't think I I think I I'd have to look into that more. I'm not

[41:41] sure. Okay. I like it. Jake, when do you decide Okay. When do you incorporate paid ads? When did you guys start incorporating paid ads? Yeah. So, um I think it like on like paid ads can be expensive, right? So, you probably don't want to start incorporating it until you've got like some decent decent cash flow or you have like like a little like pot that you're like you put some money into it. We're going to invest that much until then I would focus on like you know you can create a UGC account yourself as a founder and do that for free, right? It's like depending on your

[42:19] budget situation, like that should inform when you bring in paid ads. But as soon as you possibly can, I would because influencers and UGC, like those are pretty volatile acquisition channels, right? Because you're dependent on views to get it. Whereas like Meta, if you're spending $500 a day, you can like you will consistently get, you know, your rorowaz, whatever that is. Um, so I think as soon as you can afford it, I would start investing

[42:48] in paid ads. Nice. I like it. And were you obviously using some of the content that in I mean actually I wouldn't say obvious, but are you using some of the content that the influencers and the UGC created for ads too? At the start we did like that's the only content we had because we didn't have the funds to like have dedicated paid ad content creators. as we've scaled up and like it's like a fullyfledged department now, we can invest in legitimate like paid ad content creators because like dedicated paid ads videos are always going to convert better than like videos that were designed to perform

[43:23] organically. So yeah, like but yeah, if you don't have the funds, like you can start with organics just like to get going. Well, I've studied a few of your videos, the paid ad videos, and the the product comes in a little bit earlier than the 2C. Exactly. Cuz it's like the thing is and like with with the organic videos, right, you're you're hoping for an algorithmic hit and like for that like it can't feel like an ad. But for paid ads, you are paying for every view, right? Whether whether they like no matter like there's no algorithmic push that you're going to get. So if they're

[44:00] if you're paying for every view, then you might as well make it a hard selling ad, right? And that was like why as soon as we could afford it, we started investing in dedicated paid ad creatives because they like you said they look so much different than our organic videos because they are like it's almost like

[44:17] hey guys let me tell you about Cali. Like it is closer to that than it than it is closer to our organics. I love it dude. All right. My buddy Nordan since he's a buddy of mine. What is the average number of downloads you can expect per a thousand views? Yeah. Yeah. So, on average, like an app should hope for like somewhere between three and seven downloads per thousand

[44:37] views. Okay. Wow. Mhm. Now, and then it's like Say that one more time. Three to seven downloads for a,000 views. Yes. um if you're if you're you're pushing like out an organic piece of content and then like you you'll have your payw wall rate which is like so you got these pe three to seven people download your app and then like you want like somewhere like at least 75% of people that download your app to get to your payw wall and then once you get to your payw wall you want at least like 10% of those people to actually like subscribe to your app and buy buy your

[45:13] app. I like it. That is great. Okay. Do you look at faceless? Yeah. I mean that I do not uh I'm a non-discriminate marketer, right? Like I don't care what it is. Like I I've I've told content creators like you guys if you guys create content that says like Jake Castillo is a terrible person. He's the worst. He's the worst. And that leads to downloads. Cool. Do it. Like I'm cool with that. So like I don't care what the content's like. As long as it

[45:39] converts, it's cool with me. That is How are you on time, dude? Because there's a lot of questions. A lot of people are here and I want to make sure your your time is good. So maybe I'll just go through all the questions and then I'll do the app audits by myself. Um yeah, I mean I'm good. I'm good. Yes,

[45:53] whatever you guys need. All right. I appreciate it, man. All right. If you start from scratch, would you do paid ads or UGC campaigns first? Uh today my financial situation is a lot different than it was 18 months ago. So I'd probably start with paid ads. But you asked me 18 months ago, I would do

[46:09] UGC. Love it. I love it. Great, great answer to a good question. All right, Jake, one last question right here before we hit the dad joke around. Jake, if you're starting today, how would you find app opportunities? Decide which one to actually build? Yeah, I think the first thing to do, and this is like so important, is like find

[46:29] something you're interested in, right? Like I talked about how excited I was to build Cali every day. I don't know if that would be the case if I was building flow, which is like a period tracker or natural cycles. And that doesn't like excite me all that much. So, I think the first thing is like figure out like what niches you're interested in. Figure out like what apps you use every day and like how could you make those apps better? Like what are what apps do you love? And like it's like I love this, but it'd be even better if it could do X, Y, and Z. And then I'd probably just

[47:00] go from there and just find an existing app and make it 10% better. reduce the friction by 10%. Just do something that makes it 10% different than the incumbents and I think there's no reason you can't win. All right, I love it. Okay. Okay, one more question. There's just too many. All right. We've worked with influencers who faked results with bot views and comments. We paid one $1,000 and he spent 300 of it on bots. How do you

[47:25] figure that part out? Yeah, I've been there, brother. Um, so I think like the key, right, is the comment section, right? And like they can bot comments, but what you want to look for, and this is what I do, like, so if I see like a really good comment section, I'll click on the profiles of the people commenting and

[47:44] I'll see like, are these real people? And like you can tell if they're a bot because it's like they've got zero posts. They've they're following like 10 people and they have zero followers. who is like and then you know there are anomalies where it's like people could have burner accounts and that's what they do but if every good comment is like that it's like come on and like every video you also see like the same people commenting on every video and there are all these like fake looking accounts like that's that tells you everything you need to know. like it. How's it feel with like so many apps that have found

[48:19] inspiration because of the Cali story and then you know we're going to look at one in the soon but like there's so many calorie trackers now. Yeah. Um there there's two things like one I think it is I I hated my job and my life before Cali. So, I'm so happy that people are like pursuing their passions and like they have an opportunity to to leave a place maybe they're not happy with. It's like that's

[48:48] really cool. I wish people would understand like you are never going to see outside success if you're just copying other successful apps. It's I think it's really cool when apps like take something Cali is doing and then they they make something unique from it and they iterate on it. Like that's really cool, right? Because like that's what we did. We weren't the first calorie tracker out here. We just took the calorie tracking concept and made it a little more interesting and a little better. So like if they take Cali and do that, that's awesome. But when they just

[49:20] like blatantly copy us, it's like cool. Like you know, make your money, but like you're never going to make like the money that you're hoping for. Unfortunately, you may never get bought up by my fitness as Yeah. Jake, inspiring story, bro. Congratulations on all your success, man. I'm super happy for you. Thank you. All right, let's get into let's lighten it up a little bit. Let's do some dad

[49:41] jokes.

[49:46] Hey, Jake, take a quick break because you need it, bro. You've been talking a lot. I want to thank my sponsors, Apps Flyier and Web Two Wave. Look, Appsfly, it's an attribution platform. If you're starting to scale and you're doing a lot of multi-channel advertising, go check out Apps Flyier. They're one of the biggest MMPs out there, mobile measurement partner. I think that's what

[50:05] it means. Anyways, platform could be. And then la lastly, if you're starting to do web two app campaigns, we'll check out web two wave. They're going to build your funnels. They're going to help you build those funnels and optimize that entire funnel so that you can start driving revenues through web to app campaigns. Have you guys started doing web to app campaigns, Jake? Out of

[50:26] curiosity? Yeah, we have. Nice. You know what's really popular, dude? It's crazy. Like, I was just at a couple of dinners because there's an event in San Francisco right now. And anyways, you see Eastern Europeans doing a lot of web to app campaigns and you see a lot of Americans doing a lot of UGC and influencers campaign. And this was Alex. He he brought this up to me and I was like, so shout out to you Alex. He's like he saw this like that's so true dude. Like every American I talked to like we should do influencer campaigns. Would you doc? Every Eastern European bro they're like we're crushing

[50:58] it with web two app campaigns. It it is so crazy how there are these like cultural differences and I think that's an opportunity, right? Like so if you're going to go and do influencers in Eastern Europe, that's probably like a huge arbitrage opportunity and if you're doing web to app in the US, there's

[51:18] probably a huge opportunity as well. Yeah. Nice, man. All right. Well, we'll have you back. This was a great conversation. So, if Jake is willing, we'll we'll have him back anytime as well. All right, Jake, let's start with some dad jokes. Do you have a dad joke ready to go? You want me to go first? You want uh Yeah, I I I can start. So, it's like, why did the mobile app

[51:38] developer go broke? Why? Uh he cleared his cash. That's a good one. Okay, that's a winning one. I like it. All right. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to do this one. Jake, why is the ocean always grumpy? Why? You'd be grumpy, too, Jake, if you had those crabs in your bottom. Nice. All right, AE tabs. Loved your joke. I like that one as well. So, put J or S if whoever thought was funnier. And then Jake, we'll we'll play for something. We'll play for a drink next

[52:08] time we see each other. Sounds good to me. Jake, uh H, you got the winning. Yep. Okay, cool. All right, H, who won? So, Steve, it's not your day to announce the score is seven on one. Seven on one. Oh my god. Congratulations, Jake. Not only are you killing it on this live stream, but you beat the champ. I'm great. That feels great. This is an

[52:38] honor. Thank you guys so much. Awesome. Jake and then Adam, you traitor. You Steve, your joke was good, but in classic pattern, I always vote for your guest. Adam, you owe me a drink, my friend. All right. Geez Louise. All right. Peak founders right here. All right, let's do one last one for Andrew Choy. Uh, Steve, I actually need to jump. I just um saw I have another meeting. Um, is it okay if if I Yeah, absolutely. So, let me give me a give you a plug. Look, go check out Jake's. It's operators

[53:07] notebook.beehive.com. You don't have to remember any of this. Just click on your favorite podcast app or YouTube description. Sign up for it. He's got a big announcement that's coming up and go check out his ultimate cheat sheet to influencer marketing. He broke down a lot of the strategies here, but you can kind of decide how he implements which creators to actually go for and so forth. But Jake, anything you want to leave the audience with if they want to connect with you in any other way do you want to send them anywhere

[53:33] else? Um, yeah, just check out my Twitter, check out my newsletter. Um, I try to provide as much value as possible. Um, yeah, I hope I can be of help. Hey, you were you were awesome, bro. Luis says, "Thank you, Jake. Amazing insights." Hey, man. Thank you so much for your time, man. I'll follow up with

[53:48] you later. Thank you. Bye, guys. See you. All right. Just me now, guys. We got Firefly from Andrew. Enough. Okay. Enough love to Jake. Give me some love. All right. Back to back to me. Okay. All right. All right. We got Andrew's app right now. Mainly the onboarding and whether it teaches users how to use the app. It's a bit technical. I want to

[54:09] make sure it's easy to use. All right. Well, let's figure this out. All right, Danielle. I hope that helps. But I think, you know, from an onboarding perspective, I would just test that as much as possible. And the payw wall, again, it seems like a distribution problem since you said you don't do marketing. So, really figure out distribution because then that allows you to test your onboarding, all that stuff. If you don't have distribution, then it might not work. And given that you're a female, I might just lean into that a little bit more for you and figure out that female angle because there's a lot of like intermittent

[54:38] fasting for women is a key word. There's intermittent fasting for men. That's a key word. And given that you're a female founder, you know, like lean into that a little bit more and then, you know, talk about this. And if you scroll up in the comments, somebody did mention about Indian food not working so well with other calorie tracker app. So maybe there's some cuisine and some market

[54:57] that you can go after as well. Thank you, Daniela. Okay. Thank you guys. See? Okay. God feels so much better. All right, Firefly. Let's go into it. AI workout coach form. So, looks like I do a workout like air, you know, squats. And then Andrew, you're going to tell me if I, you know, am doing it right. So, interesting app. You know, I've done I've seen a few of these other apps before. Let's get into it. And let's get

[55:25] into the onboarding as well. All right. Never wonder if you're doing it right. I like it. No judgment, no video. Love. Okay. What's your main goal? Probably improve flexibility at my age. Let's see. How old are you? I am. You guys keep asking for my age. Like literally, dude. Any injuries or pains? Like everything. No need primarily and lower back. How active are you most

[55:52] days? How much have you trained before? Train regularly. This is probably not the workout for this. This is not my form is spectacular. So, it's probably not the type of workout for I mean type of app for me. So, just keep that in mind. How hard do you feel, man? usually do some challenging ones and then Yeah,

[56:11] like the Yep. Yep. Okay, let's see. I love this. Thank you. Thank you, Ross. I appreciate you. Yeah, Patrick, you're not only are you late to voting, but you're putting Jake Get out of here, PJ. Jeez, your weekly plan. You're on two weeks. Okay. Yes, sure. Nudge me at 12. That's Julian. Generally when I work out,

[56:46] I like this, Andrew, that you're showing me a workout based off of my stay flexible plan. Cool. Now, look, I actually don't like this start workout again. I don't mind the check-in, but I want to get to the payw wall, and that's what you got to really do. So, I'm going to assume this payw wall is right here. Oh my goodness,

[57:12] my brother. Where is your payw wall? So, look, you the main thing that's missing from your onboarding is your payw wall. After I X out of the payw wall, you might want to show the sign up or I'm fine with you doing it like this, but you definitely want to show the payw wall before this. So that's what I would actually do to this because honestly like you need the payw wall needs to be on that onboarding process and you locking me out. I get that you want people to start working out. And I love this screen because the more people that work out, the more they're likely to

[57:46] stay on your app, but you got to show the pay wall during the onboarding. Otherwise, I think it looks pretty good. So great demo workout is free. If this is you, Andrew, then again, I appreciate it, but like you got to show the payw wall before this. that will ultimately improve all your numbers. All right. Oh, I like this question. Bruno says, "Do you think a chatbased onboarding where AI asks questions and then pitches

[58:11] the subscription would convert well?" Yes, Bruno, because you asked, I do have anecdotal data from people that I've talked to that that chat feature, other apps, I've seen other apps do it, including one of our clients, and they did mention to me that it does work better. But since you asked, I I'll answer that question. I didn't want to

[58:28] reveal that without their permission. All right. Adam says, "I got a drink for you for sure, Steve. Anytime." All right. Good. You owe me. All right, guys. I think that is it. H, you think we good with anything? Okay, we're good. All right. Again, thank you to my sponsors, Apps, Flyier, and Web to Wave. Thank you to you guys for showing up. I know we got a phenomenal guest. I know you guys came for Jake and he completely delivered. Once again, go check out Jake's newsletter. It is awesome. the

[58:55] operator's notebook. He's everywhere. We're going to do a webinar with him on Tuesday. We sent out a newsletter link. If you're not on our newsletter, go check that out as well. And we got some amazing videos that H and I have been working on for the YouTube channel. And if you want to be a potential guest on the podcast and you've got good MR, frankly, I don't need a lot. I just need some. Reach out to us. I'm always looking for awesome guests and I got to meet a few people in person, so I always get them to try to come on as well. All right, H said something to me. Let me

[59:26] look at his private chat. Oh, okay. Never mind. The webinar is canceled. Thank you. Thanks, H. All right, guys. That is it. Peak, thanks, Steve. You're welcome. Thanks, Joseph. Thanks for being here. Louise, thanks for all the thanks. All right, what is this? Joseph says, "What's your best timing strategy for iOS AT prompt? Right when the app opens somewhere doing

[59:45] the onboarding or after the payw wall?" Definitely not after the payw wall, Joseph, because you know, you need that AT prompt. I would say test, but generally speaking, it is usually the first screen that comes up. That's probably the best place to put it on because it's about 50 60% to actually, you know, do it. So, I would say like during the onboarding, definitely before the payw wall, but if you had to pick one or most apps because obviously all apps are different, I would say right on the onboarding. All right, that is it everybody. Have a great weekend. Thank you once again for being here. Thank

[1:00:18] you, Jake, for being here and going a little bit longer with me. And I'll wait, let me plug what's next week. All right, next week we got Oh, yeah. We got another phenomenal guest. So, we got my friend, longtime friend of mine, Vivec, and he really taught me a lot of great things about Facebook ads. So, he's going to kind of break down and he's really, really solid about multi- channelannel marketing. And

[1:00:40] so, it's going to be an amazing episode. He started his own career. He worked for a big media publication and now he's got his own startup as well. All right, H, give me something else. All right, thanks H. All right, guys. Have a great weekend. I will see you next week and every Friday 9:00 am Pacific. Make sure

[1:00:56] you are subscribed.

---

About this transcript
Read from YouTube's own caption track and laid out by ViewRank AI (https://viewrankai.com).
ViewRank AI finds the videos already beating a creator's own average on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, transcribes them from the audio itself in more than 60 languages, and turns what worked into new ideas and scripts.
Free transcript tools, no account needed: https://viewrankai.com/tools
How to read any video this way: https://viewrankai.com/llms.txt