If you’re not having fun what's the point. transcript

We just got to figure this out. We got to get it going. We got to figure out [music] how the exposure works, what the channel is cuz it's like at this early on it's just like trying everything possible. And we just need one channel to work to be able to have this take off. And so we're I don't care if people are on here and they take my ideas. [music] That's not a thing. Execution's really hard. Honestly, it's just like I think I lost touch for a bit of why I was creating these to be able to look back years from now and just see that I had been putting these in.

I want to document these authentically. for this call. And I think we could like my thoughts is we could just not show backups at all. So I know that we're trying to reduce that to them. It's a little bit hard to understand from Matthew. Like details. Um and so maybe it just becomes that doesn't exist. And then we just have the badge that explains like when they click into it like, "Hey, this is already filled, but you can join the wait list essentially." Do we want to show like essentially like a bag as the location pickup kind of thing?

Or do we want a pin marker? Do we want some of the route icon like I think just aligning on what feels the best for kind of the marketplace and how we want to convey that to So, I was watching this video on YouTube. And it got me thinking and remembering why I started this entire channel, why I was doing it. To document the whole process of me as a builder, not the cinematic thing, but really just how the journey is going.

What we're doing on a day-to-day basis, how we're trying to grow a business. We're at ground zero. We have very few users on Block Walk. I don't want to make it have this perception like this there's this crazy amount cuz I think there's enough of that online about these people lying. So, I'm going to bring back some of the raw authenticity. These are going to be probably longer time in between in the long run of these pieces of content, but I wanted to show you to partly hold myself accountable, to partly be able to show you what I'm actually doing, what the real results are, what the numbers are, things like that.

I don't care if people are on here and they take my ideas. That's not a thing. Execution's really hard. And honestly, it's just like I think I lost touch for a bit of why I was creating these. Um to be able to look back years from now and just see that I had been putting these in. I want to document these authentically. This is kind of a rant, but I don't know. Feeling like I remember why I started this channel, why I want to keep doing it.

I want to show the real stuff, the behind the scenes, the stuff that I'm working on, and kind of just share little updates throughout the week of what's something impactful, documenting the journey, doing that kind of thing, and just continually to share the share the progress. So, thanks for being here. I'm going to show you kind of what what's going on with Blockwalk lately, and why you should care. Why should I tell you?

What's the journey I'm on, and all of the stuff because you guys don't care who I am, but I got to show you in a compelling journey of the things that we're trying so that you do care and you have a reason to follow. So, thanks for being here. So, just to kind of give you an idea of what I'm doing right now on Blockwalk. So, the problems that we're having right now is we don't have many users, right? And we're struggling a bit with getting people to download the app organically because right now our views kind of suck.

Um I don't know if it's a content problem, if it's a messaging problem, if it's a positioning problem, what one of those things are, if we're just not being exposed to the right audiences, what those are. And so right now, because I've been in a little bit of a funk, and it's kind of frustrating, and you put in all this work and it doesn't actually happen. Uh, I am trying to kickstart my routine here again, and try to feel good about everything going on.

And so, I am waking up in the morning at 5:00, going to the gym, and then going to a coffee shop for like 2 hours, and basically not even opening my laptop, and the only thing I've been doing is using my iPad to edit videos and plan them. And I've been scouring TikTok and other forms of the internet to see what videos are doing good, what people in my niches are creating, how I think I could create some content. I hope we'll continue to do it, but I've just been writing down some ideas.

Three a day, and then editing those. And then editing those videos on my iPad, but basically, we're just writing some stuff here. Like POV, you stayed off your phone for the first few hours of the day before you start your work from home job. Or, no one, me walking on my break instead of scrolling. And then, how I get daily movement instead of my steps. And then I'm also running a channel for my wife with more of a female side of things, and I'm writing similar things down here.

Some more ideas. I did that the last few days on all of this. And so, when I'm pulling up and creating these videos on TikTok on my iPad, and I'm saving them into my drafts. Let's see if we can get this open without it dying here. So, we're going in, and we'll have these like saved in drafts here. So, that I can just post them pretty easily, um, and do it that way. I was creating them on TikTok and then just posting them across everything, but it seems like the results on that were not as good.

Um so that's one of the things we're doing. Right now, I'm running three Tik Tok accounts and posting now scaling it back to like once a day on YouTube and Instagram because basically nothing's working on there. So, that's where we're at with lately on this stuff. And so, we're trying now to probably do some test ads on Tik Tok because maybe it's just not reaching the audience and we don't know if we have a winning video or not.

So, uh that's kind of some of the things that we're working on doing. Um and then so like each and every day, I'm trying to get on and see, you know, what where we're at downloads-wise, where we're at conversion rates-wise. And like to be honest, like you know, we got 105 people downloaded, right? So, don't get this skewed that there's this crazy amount. We got 105 downloads, right? So, we're trying to figure it out.

But, you know, we're still in the early days and we might have to pivot some content. We might have to pivot some ideas. Um you know, we got we made some money. We have eight paying users, nine active plans right now. So, we have some, but it's not enough to keep the lights It's enough to keep the lights on cuz it made money. And yeah, so we just got to figure out how to scale it. It's like a scale thing, right? Like how do we get in front of more people?

And that is the number one priority. And I'm trying to fall in love with the process again, right? Cuz it gets a little bit daunting. So, that's a little bit what we're working on. I'll show you some more stuff in a little bit, but uh yeah. But, I will say, um whatever content we have been creating lately is working a lot better. The first few first week or the probably the last few Yeah, it's really interesting. So, since we've pivoted content type, we've started to follow a little bit more of what this plan was.

Our surge of people downloading is higher than it's been in a couple weeks. So, that's a good sign. And I think that's showing a little bit of promise. Although, people are dropping off right now at the paywall. So, can't say I'm shocked, but it is interesting to see. So, some promise, nothing for sure. >> [music] [music] >> I'll tell you, it has been a minute since we have done this uh vlog thing. It feels very unnatural and uh a little bit weird when you get out of the rhythm of doing it.

Um so, we're trying to get back in the practice of doing it here. We're going to meet up with my buddy at a coffee shop uh and get a little work done. Same different day. And uh yeah, I don't know. Trying to enjoy the process of filming and content again. It's been a little bit of a rut lately. And just trying to get that rhythm back. I feel like one of the things as you create content more and more and more and more, you kind of go through phases where sometimes it's exciting and fun and other times you just don't have the motivation, but you just kind of try to continue to pick up the camera and film even when life seems like it doesn't have that much going on or you know, your life's not that exciting.

We just kind of keep doing it. You never know when your break will come, when this will reach the right audience. When that one person will see the thing that they need to see for the day and that changes everything for them. So, I'm just keeping creating, documenting the journey, and doing that. So, today, we've got a little bit of client work to get through, and then we're going to prep um some stuff for BlockWalk, which is my app that I launched about a month and a half ago where it blocks all your tracking apps till you hit your daily step goal.

Um so, for that, we're going to try some in-person stuff. So, even though it's very hot in Arizona, we are going to go ahead and do like try to do some um in-person events, so like fitness communities, walking clubs, um potentially go to gyms and set up little booths and try to spread the word more locally, um and infiltrate kind of those communities, uh because I think that that's going to be a good use of time. Uh every weekend, so if we have like a booth set up, then on the weekends I go and I attend those meetups and I do those things, and that will kind of slowly but surely spread the organic word of mouth.

Um cuz right now our problem is just traffic. It's not the product. Every time somebody uses the product, they love it, um and they think this is a great idea. And while that's a small amount, it is um a good signal that we're on the right path. That and having paying users really early on. So, um we just got to increase the foot traffic of that, which will be good. Um and then the other thing that we're kind of working on is we're going to run some test probably ads to different segments of groups of um who we think those target markets will be.

Right, a lot of competitors in the space go after, you know, this like 18-to-24-year-old range of users. And I think while that's good, uh most of the reviews in the app store are people just bitching about it being a paid tool. And my hypothesis is that a lot of those are just going to be kids, young audience, doesn't have money for it, doesn't want to pay for it, um and those are not my target audience. Mine is like probably middle-aged moms who know they want to be active more and stay off their phones and have the budget for it.

So, um yeah, that's kind of the some of the stuff that we've been working through. And yeah, I'm just trying to fall in love with the process of building the thing, enjoying it, and not stressing too much about it. Um An interesting thing that I've kind of just realized is how much like just scrolling on Twitter will make you feel just like inadequate, like your product is not good enough, like you should be at these 40,000 a month months really quickly into your product, and I think that's a complete myth because the people that you see that get interviewed on these podcasts or the people that you see that get um featured in things or write about it often times are the anomaly, and that's not normal.

And so, a lot of the times they're just selling the dream or the media behind it to get you to purchase something, to follow them, to um do anything of that sort when 90% of people are not going to have that same result. So, I think I've learned like just stay off that, put your blinders on, and get to work, and stop talking about what you're doing, and just execute. So, that's kind of just my brain dump, what's on my mind this morning, um and where I'm at.

So, hopefully there's some nuggets in there that you guys can take away from it. So, We do look like some of the new content is resonating for us, which is pretty awesome. Um it's not anything wonderful, but it is starting to get some downloads. We were at a bit of a lull for a while, and so it's showing a little bit of promise. One of the things that is I think we're going to try doing because most of it is coming right now from App Store search, we might try to run some ads on some of that stuff because it's very early and we want to try different things out.

So, probably going to be doing that and seeing how that goes. But, overall, I'm remembering that I need to get this like content just in a rhythm that is scalable and just repeatable cuz if I keep doing all of these pieces of content that take forever, then it's just really hard to be able to like you know, continue producing a lot of volume on this content, which is half of the game while we're trying to figure stuff out.

So, it's got to be a format that's sustainable for us to be able to do that. So, that's one of the things kind of on the mind right now. We're also right now in the process of just like putting together some client work because we've, you know, got to get that going to keep the business able to keep trying on these things, right? If we have no sort of source of income coming in, then we struggle to keep moving the stuff that we want to work on forward.

And I saw a video from Colin and Samir, which I just got put on to their channel, but it was pretty cool cuz I saw that like really the name of this game is like keep doing what you're doing and the reward is to get to do more of what you're currently doing, which is true. I think I've lost some of the touch of what it means to be a creator, what it means to build things and things like that. So, I want to make sure I'm having fun in this process cuz if I'm not having fun, then it doesn't matter.

I feel very lonely in some of the day-to-day routine and some of the building and I want to make this a product that I enjoy working on, that I'm having fun with. Um I don't want to just chase the money. While that would be nice, uh if that comes in time, I want to remember why I'm doing it because it's enjoyable. I like building things. Um I'm learning marketing as we go. And if I can make this into a really a community thing that helps give people an outlet to um meet others and to be able to hit their fitness goals and stay accountable, that's a win.

So, I'm going to remember that. I think I'm going to set the vision that I want for this company and just get after it. Um and just figure it out as we go. So, yeah, this week's been a lot of just going to coffee shops, doing stuff like that. So, um just trying to do it one step at a time.