I built a simple mobile app, scaled it

to $44,000 in monthly recurring revenue,

and then I [music] sold the business.

The app had one simple feature that

solved one painful problem for a large

number of people. I didn't raise any VC

funding. I didn't take outside

investment. I didn't even have a massive

team. It was just me, my phone, and one

outsourced developer. And the craziest

part is I didn't write a single line of

[music] code. So, in this video, I'm

going to break down absolutely

everything. how I came up with the app

idea, how I validated that idea, how I

built it without writing a single line

of code, how I marketed the app and got

millions and millions of views on Tik

Tok, how I monetized the app

effectively, sold that app to a massive

app studio, and everything I learned

along [music] the way. I'm not a genius,

but if you watch this video and follow

these steps, you can do the same with

your mobile app idea, and you can see

results like [music] mine. because I

messed up a lot and it took me a lot

longer to get to $44,000 per month than

it should have. And if I knew what I'm

about to tell you in this video, I would

have done it 10 times [music] faster.

So, buckle up, lock in, and take out

your crayons because this video is going

to be packed with value. But first,

before we do, thank you so much to

everyone who's been subscribing to the

channel. We just hit 50,000 subscribers.

It means the absolute world that you are

enjoying the videos and the free value

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like this video and drop a sub. It will

train the YouTube algorithm to show you

more content like this that actually

teaches you something instead of the

brain rot videos that we're all used to

watching on YouTube. Let's get into it,

ladies and gentlemen. Here it is. The

blueprint for how I scaled my app to

$44,000 per month in monthly recurring

revenue. Here it is. We're going to take

you through the idea, how we validated

the idea, how we built it without

coding, marketed and monetized. First,

what is the app you're asking? It was a

quit vaping app called Puff Count that I

built in college. I know what you're

thinking. And this guy's capping. He

didn't actually do that. Yes. Yes, we

did. We scaled it to $44,000 per month

in monthly recurring revenue before we

sold the business. It took me a long

time to get there. I started the app

back in November of 2019. That is when

the first sales from PuffCount came in.

We made $2 in November of 2019. And then

we made $3 the next month. And then

after $3, this is probably still in the

development phase here or I don't know

what I was doing back here. Eventually,

I started to market the app and we made

2K for a long time and then we made 8K

one month and then boom, right here, we

started to scale like crazy and we never

looked back. I had this app for about 3

years before I became successful with

it. I want that to sink in a little bit.

You should not be giving up on your

ideas too early. A lot of the times,

even with my newest businesses, it takes

time to get them off the ground. That's

just the nature of the game as an

entrepreneur. As you can see, every week

we were doing around 10K in revenue

before we eventually sold the business.

So, here it is. My sales. So, let's get

into how we did this. The idea. How did

I come up with the idea? And this is the

most important part. This is where you

start. And it's very important that your

idea for your mobile app is good. I like

to come up with mobile app ideas that

solve a problem for people. If you solve

a problem for people, the marketing and

the sales become so much easier because

they have some pain that they're feeling

that your app solves. So, my story with

Puff Count started all the way back in

college. I was a sophomore in college

and overnight jewel became the most

popular thing ever. You remember those?

The small little black rectangles of

smoke? Well, everybody got addicted to

those, including me. I watched all my

friends around me. I was in a fraternity

at the time. We were like partying or

whatever. I watched everybody slowly get

addicted to nicotine. And it was through

jeweling. I knew this would be the

future. Previously, before jeweling

became popular, no one had cigarettes.

No one was smoking anything. No one was

addicted to nicotine. And overnight,

boom, everybody was addicted to

nicotine. And it very quickly became a

habit that I got caught up into. I felt

the health side effects of it. I felt

the side effects of my of my wallet. You

know that those things weren't cheap.

So, it was a painful problem. It

affected your health and it was

expensive. That is a golden problem to

solve. And look, I tried to quit vaping,

but it was hard. I didn't have the

willpower enough to do so. Right?

Because if you go from vaping a lot to

not vaping at all, sometimes you get a

little bit of withdrawals and you you

miss that feeling. So naturally, what I

try to do was slowly wean off of the

vape. But there was no way to track

that, right? So boom, that's when the

idea popped into my mind. What if I

built an app that would help you slowly

reduce your usage? And from that day,

Puff Count was born. Once I had the idea

for this, and I knew it was a problem

amongst my friends, but I really needed

to validate this idea before I spent a

lot of time building it and spending my

money in the development and all that

sort of stuff. So I had to further

validate the idea and it was very easy

for this product. I went on Tik Tok. I

went on Instagram. I watched the news

and I saw vaping going absolutely mega

viral everywhere. Simple little videos

on Tik Tok were going crazy viral about

vaping. Same on Instagram. And news was

covering it like crazy. Vaping is an

epidemic. Vaping is affecting our teens.

Everybody's parents were talking about

it. Are you vaping son? You shouldn't be

vaping. It was absolutely global. And if

we look at the Google trends worldwide,

vaping was up and to the right. So, I

looked at social media. I looked at

Google Trends. I even looked at Sensor

Tower. I went on a Sensor Tower and I

looked up other quit smoking apps and I

saw that they were making a boatload of

money. That is all I needed. I saw other

competitors in the space. And mind you,

these other competitors were only

focused on cigarettes. There was nothing

centered around vaping. So, we had

competitors making good money. It was

going viral on social media. It was a

worldwide epidemic. The news was

covering it. These are all the key

elements that you need for an amazing

app idea. I knew it would work. I didn't

need to do any testing. I didn't need to

MVP and run paid that. I didn't need to

do any of that. I knew the idea was fire

because guess what? Marketing is the

most important part of a mobile app

idea. If you can market your app, it

doesn't matter how good or bad it is,

you will make money. And I knew the

marketing was on lock. So, we had the

idea. Now, how did we build it? I'm a

lazy guy. I don't want to code. I don't

want to do a ton of work. Especially

when I was in college, I was even lazier

back then. So, what I did was I sketched

out what the app should look like on a

piece of paper, simple sketch, and then

I uploaded the sketch to 99 designs. And

I'm going to show you that that design

contest looked like right now. As I just

showed you, we had the sketch. And this

is a very simple three-step process that

I followed. Sketch to 99 designs to

outsource developer. The easiest,

fastest way to build an app without

writing a single line of code. By the

way, if you want my full mobile app tech

stack that I use to build and scale this

app, I will have that linked in the

description. It includes all the tools

from your business setup to research,

design, development, optimization,

marketing, and scaling. Absolutely

everything you need. This is a master

list of all of the mobile app tools and

it will be in the description. So, we

had the sketch and then we built a 99

designs contest and I'm going to show

you what this brief looked like. So, I

explained what my product was, what I

wanted it to look like. I had a

description of all the screens and then

boom, here are my original sketches from

six years ago.

I drew on a piece of paper what I wanted

the app to look like and then I launched

this contest and our guy George Will

knocked it out of the park. We got 102

different designs from different

designers. A lot of these you won't be

able to see, but we can click through a

couple here and you'll get the idea.

Boom. This is one design that came in.

Obviously didn't win. We had all of

these different designs come in and I

was able to pick the best. And obviously

some of these weren't very good. But

that's okay because we got to see them

all and eventually we picked the winner.

And this was our winner, this guy named

George. And this is what the app

eventually looked like when I launched

it. So I took these UI designs that I

got from our man George Will and I put

them into Figma. And obviously there's a

lot more screens here that you see.

These were all future updates, but the

app started very simple in just a couple

screens. and I mapped them out where

they would go, how they would interact

with each other and I map them out on

Figma. And the greatest thing about

Figma is you can come in here even if

you're not a talented designer. And you

can go and you can start to edit these

things if you need to, right? So you can

take this initial design from your 99

designs contest and you can make small

adjustments and you can build new

screens all on your own, right? You

don't need another designer. You don't

even need to hire a designer to make

small adjustments to your UI. So I laid

out the entire wireframe on Figma like

this. And then it was time to hire a

developer. And I know what you might be

thinking, Stephen, why on earth would

you hire a developer when you could just

build it with AI? For sure you can. But

back in 2019 when I built this app, AI

coding tools did not exist. Chat GPT did

not exist. So for the purposes of this

video, I'm going to be explaining how I

hired a developer. I dropped a full

hourong video explaining my exact

process of building apps with AI. So if

you want to watch that, it's going to be

in the description somewhere. So go

check that out. But yes, I hired a

developer. And let me paint the picture

for you. I was fresh out of college at

this point when I started to get puff

count like off the ground. I was working

a 9 to5. I had some disposable income

from my job. I was living with

roommates. So, it made sense for me to

outsource this to hire someone to focus

on this app full-time while I did my 9

to5 and I did all my other whatever

college stuff that I was doing back

then. Who knows? It made sense for me to

hire someone, get it done perfectly, get

it done quickly, get it done

professionally so that I could focus on

what I knew I was good at, which is

marketing. Before we get into how to

hire, I think it's very important that

you understand this concept of building

an MVP because hiring and outsourcing

talent can be expensive, but not if you

do it correctly. The first version of

your app should be dead simple. One

feature, that's all you need. What is

that one feature? What is the main

feature that is important for your app?

And this is exactly what I did. I hopped

on a call with four, five, six

developers even, and I talked to every

single one of them. I asked them

important questions like, "What's your

history been? What's your experience

building apps? How long is this going to

take you? How much money is this going

to cost me to build? And after you talk

to five or six people, you have a very

good understanding of who is the best

option. Do they present well? Are they

on camera? Do they have ideas about your

product? Are they excited about your

project? All of these things matter. And

maybe money is the most important thing.

Well, after you talk to 5, 6, 7, eight

people, they will give you an itemized

list of how much all the features are

going to cost. And based on their

quotes, you can go with the developer

who cost the least or the one that you

like or whatever it is, right? It's your

choice. But this is the most important

part. You need to understand how much

each one of these developers is going to

cost, how long it's going to take them,

and how much each feature costs. The

first person you talk to might try to

charge you 20 grand. Maybe they're just

trying to take advantage of you. But

maybe the fifth person you talk to is

like, I can knock this out for 2K, 3K,

whatever it is, right? You need to talk

to multiple people. You need to get

these itemized quotes to understand what

features in your app are going to cost

what. And that is how you control your

cost. And that is how I hired my first

app development team. Now, we have a

developer. And I know this can be

overwhelming at first glance. But I've

put together a group of founders. We

meet three times a week and we talk

everything about app development from

idea to marketing to scale to pay walls

to onboarding. We talk about absolutely

everything in this group. So if you want

to join in and you want to join this

driven group of app founders, that link

is going to be in the description. We

will help you build and scale your

mobile app. Whether you're hiring

developers or whether you're building

with AI, we have founders in the group

who are at all stages and we learn

together. So, let's move on to the

marketing. How did I market the app to

get users? Staying on theme with my

broke, just out of college self with a 9

to5 that was barely paying me anything.

I couldn't hire creators. I couldn't run

paid ads. I simply did not have enough

money to do all that. So, what did I do?

I got out my phone and I started filming

Tik Toks. And back in 2020, this was not

the most popular thing to do. It was

actually cringe, people might say. But

it worked out. And I eventually grew the

account on Tik Tok to 120,000 followers,

6.3 million likes across all of our

videos, over 50 million organic views.

It was absolutely crazy. But it did not

start that way in the beginning. This is

my personal Tik Tok account, and you can

see how bad these videos truly were.

Like look at this. This would never work

nowadays, but these are things that I

built. This is my little brother. You

should use Puff Count available in the

app store. Like I made the simplest,

dumbest videos back in the day, but I

just kept working and I committed to

making one video every single day.

Actually, very quickly, our third video

blew up, 80,000 views. Our fifth video,

80,000 views. And this when the installs

started to come in. And this entire

time, I was doing market research. I was

looking at other Tik Toks that were

going viral in my niche. And eventually,

I came across this one video where

someone was dropping a vape in a glass

of water. Went absolutely ballistic. So,

I copied that same format. simple text

on screen and it absolutely crushed. A

little call to action at the end there.

So, I committed to making a video every

single day and that's exactly what I did

for years on end. I recruited my

friends. I made dumb videos in my

apartment. But, it worked. And this is

how I got my app off of the ground. But

this story doesn't end there because

although I was getting millions and

millions of views on my Tik Toks, I

still wasn't making that much money.

Let's see. This one got 3.6 million

views. This was in 2021, January of

2021. January of 2021. Yep, that was our

first big bump here. We went from $200

per week, almost $1,000. So, this was

our first $1,000 week after this video

right here. But on the grand scheme of

things, that wasn't a lot, right? We

scaled a ton further. And that's where

the next part is going to come in. When

we scaled with paid ads, we figured out

the onboarding, figured out the hard pay

wall. Back when I was making these

videos, I had no idea how to monetize my

app. I didn't know what I was doing.

Although, we were getting a ton of

installs. January 2021. Yeah, we got

20,000 installs that one day. I didn't

know how to turn those installs into

revenue. But I kept grinding. I kept

making content. I kept copying the

formats that were working. And

eventually, I built up this amazing

library of content that I was able to

then take and run on paid ads in the

future. So, we went crazy on organic

content. I made videos until I couldn't

possibly make videos anymore. And I

realized, okay, I need to outsource this

video making process. And that is when I

started to hire creators. And the

interesting thing about our creator

strategy back in the day is we only paid

creators if they got views. And we went

through a very distorted process to do

this. I had to DM a ton of creators. I

had to go on all these different

marketplaces and hire creators. It was

an absolute pain. But that is exactly

why I built my new project, which is

Posted. And you can hire creators on a

performance-sonly basis. You can launch

a deal for free and you only pay for

what you love. Creators will make

content for you upfront for free. And

you only pay for what you love. I wish I

had this back in the day, but this is

exactly why we built Posted. If you want

to check it out, go to postedapp.com.

So, I had my organic content. I had

creators making content for me. I would

only pay them if their video was really

good. And then eventually, I was able to

take all this content both from my

TikTok and from the creators that we

hired, and I was able to scale on paid

ads. Paid ads is going to be a video in

itself, and I recently dropped a video

on my exact paid ad strategy. That is

also going to be in the description

somewhere. So, check that out. But this

is how we were really able to scale.

Now, the most important part, how did we

monetize? Because again, even though we

were getting all these installs, our

sales were still very low. If we go to

the monthly, our sales were still at

only $2,000 per month, maybe around

$3,000 per month until I figured out the

monetization strategy. And that is very

simple. In your app, for it to be

successful, you need an onboarding and a

hard pay wall. And you need to charge

recurring subscriptions. I'm going to

show you exactly what that looks like.

Bringing it back to the Figma. So before

I had an onboarding and I had a hard pay

wall, people would just come into the

app and I would rely on them to be

upsold, right? This is our old payw

wall, try for free, then just $3.99 per

month. We were only charging $4 per

month. This did not make me any money.

As you saw, we were getting millions of

views on TikTok. We weren't making any

money until I figured out how to build

an onboarding. And this is it. We had

the welcome screens. We had the value

screens. We had a social proof screen.

And then we made the users take a

survey. What brings you to the app? How

long have you been vaping? Have you

tried to quit before? How often do you

feel the desire to vape? Asking specific

questions to make the user feel their

pain, feel their problem more. I want

the user to think about their problem. I

want them to think about their vape

usage. I want them to understand that we

are a product that will help them quit.

How much money do you spend per month on

vaping? Wo, your average yearly spend is

this. Puff count will help you quit. So,

we're going to create your quit plan.

And then boom, they hit the hard payw

wall. Ignore the X's here. We did not

have those. But the user had to start

their free trial in order to get into

the app. So we had this long onboarding

reminding them of their pain, of their

problem, letting them know that

PuffCount can fix it. And then boom,

PuffCount will help you quit for real

this time. Try it for free. You get 3

days for free, but you need to opt in to

the free trial. We made users commit to

the quit and opt in to the free trial.

And the second we implemented that,

boom, our sales jumped from 3K to 14K

per month. And then we went to 20 and

then 28 and then 30 and then 35 and then

40 and then 44 and we eventually sold

the business. By implementing this

onboarding and this hard pay wall

strategy, we were able to successfully

scale on paid ads and scale the business

to 44K per month. And that's my

strategy. That is the sparknotes version

of it. I recorded a full hourong video

explaining my exact process in detail

again on how to ideulate, build, scale,

and eventually exit mobile apps. That is

going to be in the description. But this

is my process. very simple, easy to

follow. You don't need to know how to

code. This is exactly how you build

winning mobile apps. And I've done it

time and time again. My latest mobile

app posted that I built using these

exact same strategies that I showed you

in this video. That app is about to

cross $1 million in revenue. We did over

$100,000 last month in sales following

this exact strategy. You don't need to

be a wizard. You don't need to know how

to code. You don't need to be a

marketing genius. You just need

dedication and effort and you too can

build and scale a mobile app. Hope you

enjoyed the video. I'm going to be

dropping value like this all the time.

So like the video if you enjoyed and

subscribe to the channel. I'll see you

in the next one.