Turning WordPress Sites into iPhone Apps with Scott Bolinger and AppPresser

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And now on with the show.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of How I Built It, the podcast that asks “How did you build that?” Today, My guest is Scott Bolinger of AppPresser. Scott, how are you doing?

Scott Bolinger: I’m doing good, Joe. Thanks for having me.

Joe Casabona: No problem. Thanks so much for joining me. So,  I’m pretty excited to talk to you today because,  you,  AppPresser, is a really interesting product I’ve been following it kind of since its launch. So,  why don’t we start off by getting a little bit of information about you and about the product and how you came up with the idea?

Scott Bolinger: Sure. So it was, I believe about three years ago, we attended the WordCamp, San Francisco back when WordCamp US was working in San Francisco and Matt Mullenweg was talking about WordPress and apps and how you wanted WordPress to become an app platform. And for me, that sort of,  sort of, I was thinking mobile apps, I think he was thinking more web apps. But for me, I was thinking like, oh, mobile apps in WordPress wouldn’t that be cool? And I was kind of looking for something new to do at the time. And so and it was like, Hey, I’m just going to go for it with WordPress and mobile apps. didn’t know how it was going to happen or how to do it. but just kind of went for it. And so, you know, partnered up with Brad, Brian, and Lisa from web dev studios and we decided to go for it.

So we built the product and in a few months released it. And since then we’ve been through, let’s see, we’re now on our third version. So we had a released AppPresser. Then we released AppPresser two, which had a lot of great improvements. And then we just recently released AppPresser Three, which is basically an entirely new platform with a ton of great changes.

Joe Casabona: Awesome. Yeah. So, this was like you said two years ago, I remember that keynote cause he was,  Matt was highlighting like Google maps, right. That was like powered by Custom Post Types in WordPress and stuff like that. So this was like before the rest API was like a twinkle in WordPress is I too, right? So, you know, we’ll talk about this in a bit. But this was a very like forward-thinking thing on your part. I mean like mobile apps weren’t new, but the notion of powering mobile apps with WordPress was a relatively new idea at the time at least for me, it was.  I know, like I was working at the University of Scranton and we wanted to do a mobile app. And I heard about AppPresser and I was like, I know WordPress, so we should do this.

Scott Bolinger: Yeah, yeah. You know, mobile app people were doing mobile apps and kind of integrating WordPress in different ways, you know, as for custom projects. But there hadn’t really been a product that came on specifically for WordPress and mobile apps. And that really helped us gain a lot of traction early on because it was so different from what other people were doing. You know, it wasn’t a new theme company. It was like something new. And so that really helped us a lot when we launched just getting a lot of attention and traffic and, you know, helping out our marketing efforts a lot. 

So, yeah. And getting WordPress pages into a mobile app is not the most straightforward thing. And supporting plugins, you know, like Gravity Forms, it’s, there are different ways to do it. And so at this point, we’ve kind of figured out the best ways to get WordPress content in. And yeah, like you said, with a rest API, you know, that added a whole new dimension to it. And that didn’t come out until the AppPresser paradox had already been launched and they were just starting to work on the rest of API. I think it wasn’t even alpha yet. But, once it came out, we started working with the Rest API when it was an alpha. And there’s obviously been a ton of changes since. And when you guys are hearing this podcast, it’s now on core. Most of it is in core, all the content endpoints and everything. So we’ve really come a long way. Which is exciting. 

Joe Casabona: Yeah. That’s awesome. And the other thing I like is that you’ve been pretty transparent about marketing and how you’re doing, which is totally cool to see that. But first I want to ask, you know when you were building AppPresser, you know, like it was the impetus Matt Mullenweg was talking about at WordCamp San Francisco, but did you do any other research to see like what the competition was like? Or how would you do this? I’m sure you researched that a lot.

Scott Bolinger: So, you know, we didn’t do as much research as we probably should have. And I just thought it was a really cool idea. And I was like, “I’m doing this no matter what” Like, you know, even if I didn’t research and it said, “Oh, maybe you shouldn’t do this.” I probably still would have done it which is not the way, not the best way to do things.

I think, you know, we obviously looked at some competition, but nobody was really doing specifically what we wanted to do, which was a product specific to WordPress and mobile apps and integrating custom plugins and themes and things like that. So there wasn’t really any competition in that area. But there are tons of app builders and they support WordPress in one way or another.

One thing that I do wish we had looked at was market size. I mean, if you think about the audience, the amount of people that use WordPress, so say it’s 27% of the internet now, and then the amount of people out of that 27% that need mobile apps is quite a bit smaller than that 27%. So the market size of people who need WordPress and mobile apps is actually fairly small. And we’ve been able to, you know, dominate this niche. So it’s been done well for us. But I think if we had done the research at first, and you were, you know, a real savvy kind of marketing guy, you might’ve said, “Hey, this market is too small.” And so that’s definitely something we could have done a lot of the research. 

And just the know-how that we’ve learned over the years has really been through trial and error. It’s been through putting out this product and having our customers tell us what they like and don’t like about it. And I think it would have been really difficult to figure out the things that we figured out just by kind of serving people or doing research. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t do research. I just think that most of the valuable things that we’ve learned have been after we actually built the product and people have been using it.

Joe Casabona: That is advice that I’ve been hearing a lot of, you know, it’s basically the minimum viable product generated interest. And then the most valuable research has been from customer feedback. So that’s, I’m glad to hear that. That’s kind of a consistent message, right? Because sometimes people spend too much time researching to make sure it’s perfect when it launches. And then that’s of course, a product that doesn’t launch and then other people just never listen to their customers.

Scott Bolinger: Yeah, I’m very much the type of the like ready fire aim method. and maybe to a fault, you know? And so, I’m very big on just let’s build something and get it out there, and then we’ll refine it as we go.

And, you know, a lot of the most successful companies started out as something completely different. You know, Twitter started out as Odo and like Instagram. I think we were some type of a like full social platform, but they decided to just go images and you know, of course, Facebook was just kind of that college-based like sort of meat market type thing. But it does help to do research. You obviously have to know what competition is out there. You have to know your market size. You have to know how you’re going to get these people to buy your product. But asking people about something and then having them purchase it and actually use it are two very different things.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. That’s I mean, that’s such great advice. You know, it’s a very loaded question. Like, “Oh, would you use this? Yeah, sure. I mean, sure. I would use it, I guess if I needed to.” But that’s not a hard yes by any means.

Scott Bolinger: Yeah. And no, there is no validation except for people taking out their money and giving it to you for your product. So, I mean, if you have, when you’re telling people an idea about your product, they’re going to say, “Oh”, of course, they’re going to say, it’s awesome. Because they’re your friends or just because they haven’t put any stake into it. Or if you have a free product and they’re using it, you know, people are gonna like it. But there really is no validation until you actually have people pay for it because that’s when you really see the separation between what people say and what they do. Because that’s a bigger separation than most people think when they’re first starting out.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Awesome. That’s such great advice. That’s a great takeaway. So you did a little bit of research and then it’s mostly your customer feedback. Are you part of like a mastermind group or anything like that? You know, the impetus for this show was being a mastermind or talking to other people in the business and them sharing their advice. So do you get business advice from your peers or anything like that?

Scott Bolinger: Yeah. Definitely, I am part of a mastermind group and I actually started it because I wanted to be in a mastermind group too. And I was like, “Hey, who’s mastermind group can I join?” And I didn’t know any is inviting me to one. So I just started one and I just invited, you know, some people that I know. And so, yeah, that’s been great and I definitely learn a lot from that. Learn a lot from my peers doing that.

We also did hire a consultant and we had a couple of calls with the consultant. And we probably haven’t done as much in that area as we should. It would be great if we had some type of mentor for our business. I would love to have somebody who’s like, you know, years ahead of me in the product business that I could continue to learn from. I just haven’t found anyone like that. I mean, there are consultants out there that are great, but I don’t know. It’s a difficult thing for me to get outside advice and to get calf consultants and things like that. I tend to be kind of hard-headed and I don’t always do the things that they say I should be doing. And I tend to just learn best just by doing stuff and failing at it. And that has certainly been my best lesson, although that’s not the best way to learn.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. Well, I can tell you what. I just gave a WordCamp talk recently. Well, at the time of this recording, where I talk about basically, that was Walt Disney’s approach to business too. So he would do something, it would fail or like, it wouldn’t go as well as he thought. And then he would just kind of iterate and do it again. Applying the lessons that he learned. So, you know, it’s maybe not the best way for everybody, but it certainly worked for Walt Disney, so.

Scott Bolinger: Yeah. It just takes a really long time to get things right when you do it that way. But I tend to not be able to learn any other way.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. And you know, when I was in college, I was starting a business and everybody who wanted to say, I knew him when came and gave me advice. And most of it was pretty terrible advice. Like one guy was like, “You got to wear a suit to work every day.” And I’m like, “I work from home. Like I don’t even, I don’t even want to wear pants and you’re telling me to wear a suit.”

Scott Bolinger: Yeah.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. So, I mean, that absolutely makes sense.

Scott Bolinger: Yeah. Advice is an interesting thing because everybody wants to give you advice. And It’s, I  remember talking to Tony Prez about this and he just kind of said, like, you just have to take it all with a grain of salt and basically don’t listen to any of it, unless the people know you really well and know your business really well. And even then you still might not want to listen to it because nobody knows your business in and out as well as you do. And so they may be like, this has worked for other businesses so you should try this. But it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right for your business. Because there are plenty of counterexamples of times where things, certain advice that kind of works generally. Like about pricing or about, you know, free trials or whatever it is did not work for any certain business. And like, there’s a lot of people out there who say you should build a freemium software, you know, let people try it for free, get an audience and then upgrade. There are many examples, bare metrics. It has a good blog post on why it was terrible for their business. And it almost exploded their servers and killed their support team and almost ruined their business doing, you know, doing freemium.

So yeah, you just kind of have to take advice with a grain of salt.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, Absolutely. It’s a, you know, when somebody says, “Oh man, you know what TV show you would really like? This TV show is what they’re really saying is “I like this TV show.” like that. You know, that worked for me. Therefore it will work for you. That’s I mean, that makes perfect sense.

Okay. So we’ve talked all sorts about business and things like that, but let’s get into, you know, you’re a technical guy, you’re a great developer. Let’s talk about how did you built AppPresser. And I know it’s gone through a few iterations. Maybe we could talk about how you built AppPresser three. And then, you know, throughout the rest of the show, kind of walk it back to where it came from.

Scott Bolinger: Sure. So at episode three is moving to more of a software service model. And we actually built it on WordPress multi-site. So when people sign up, they get a site created and that has everything that they need to build multiple apps. And we’re actually using WordPress as a great system for this. Because an app will be a custom post type and then all the data about that app is saved as…well it was saved as a post-mortem, but now it’s being saved as options. But essentially it’s just data about that app that is kind of saved right there.

And then we’re actually using the theme customizer to allow people to customize their apps. So it’s pretty cool. We actually replaced the customizer preview with like an app preview and it’s actually the live app files and it, you can actually click it and everything works. And then you can change the colors or color pickers, which are very similar to changing theme colors. You can change menus and options and things like that.

One of the big changes that we made from previous products that we did is instead of doing everything in the admin area, we’re actually doing everything on the front end with, I guess, the exception of the customizer, which is technically the admin. But what we found is that doing everything in the admin was very difficult. It’s difficult to customize. It’s slow. It’s just harder to do the things that we wanted to do. So we kind of moved everything to the front end and we’re just using a theme and the customizer to actually help people edit apps and build them. And, you know, do different things, send push notifications and all that kind of stuff. And, it really works great. I love multi-site for software service applications because it just has so much stuff already made for you as far as user management. And, you know, post types and data and all that kind of stuff. So, yes.

And as far as the app files themselves. So we basically have two products now cause we have our software service like app builder, and then we also have the apps themselves. Well, actually we have three and then we have plugins and integrations for the WordPress site. So there are several different things and this is a little, a word of advice. If people are thinking about getting into software as a service, you have to keep in mind that when you have a software service application, the actual application itself is a separate product from whatever it is you’re selling. So, you know, like OptinMonster, they’re selling a pop-up plugin, but they have this software service application that helps people build and configure their public plugin. So now you have all these other issues that come up, like you have to deal with server load and onboarding and the actual building process itself and storing data and all this kind of stuff. So it becomes quite a bit more complicated in billing and cancellations and all that kind of stuff. 

So Software as a service gets quite a bit more complicated. But in our case, it’s definitely worth it because it’s such a great experience for being able to build these apps in a centralized dashboard.

And then, so the app files themselves, the apps that we built are using the Ionic Two Framework. And that’s basically a hybrid mobile app framework, and it’s all built-in Angular Two and TypeScript. And The apps are just awesome and really fast. And we connect to the WP REST API to grab some of the content. And we use I-frames to display other content. And we have custom pages that are just like static HTML that works offline and sort of a mix of all this stuff so that people can build any type of app they want to build.

Joe Casabona: Man, that sounds awesome. That is a big departure from, you know, I think, well, so when I was at the university, we were using, I think, the AppPresser One. It might’ve even been in beta at the time. And so there’s quite an evolution there, right, from, of one or the beta to three. And I remember like we had to download some application files and make modifications that way. Is that right? Am I remembering that correctly?

Scott Bolinger: Yes, which yeah, which wasn’t the best, you know, customer experience. And so now all of that stuff is contained in our builder. So all the app files are compiled, you know, in the background so people don’t have to touch those at all.

Joe Casabona: Nice. So it almost sounds like, you know, if I’m a marketing guy and I just want to have like a simple app for whatever it is, let’s say my WP in One Month, right? That’s an online courses thing. It almost sounds like I could do that in AppPresser. I wish I asked you this before we started recording because I’m going to look like a dummy If I’m wrong. It almost sounds like you don’t need to be a developer to get like a simple, like content-driven app going. Is that right?

Scott Bolinger: Yeah. So we’re definitely making things easier, but at the same time, we like building, you know, fun apps with cool functionality. And so we’re not limiting anything. We’re kind of just making it easier to put all this stuff together. And so developers can extend the functionality and do lots of custom stuff.

It’s kind of like building a WordPress site to just throw up a WordPress site with a theme. And some simple content is easy. Like anybody should be able to do it, right. And so that’s, but then, you know, a lot of us have jobs as WordPress professionals who are very savvy developers, building crazy stuff. And so that’s kind of how I want aperture to be. If you need something really simple, you can kind of just throw that together yourself. But then there’s a lot of features for developers where they can extend, and modify, and create lots of great custom features as well.

Joe Casabona: Man, that sounds awesome. Really excited to check out three, you know, as soon as the opportunity arises, probably like over Christmas or something like that, I’ll have some downtime.

Scott Bolinger: Yeah.

Joe Casabona: Cool. So, of course, this came out, this is coming out after Christmas. 

So, man, I tried AppPresser three and it was great. So,  Cool. So we talked about one, a little bit. We talked about three. What it is now, what was like the middle portion, right? Cause you know, we’re talking about how the product has gone through a transformation. And it sounds like there’ve been a couple of big transformations in the history of AppPress. So.

Scott Bolinger: Yeah. So, basically the first version of the product was essentially, it was your website in the app. So it was an I-frame displaying your site. And we would basically connect your theme and plugins and everything through JavaScript to the native device features, but we’re still just showing your WordPress website. We’d switch out the themes so it looked like an app. We would allow you to click camera buttons and take photos and things like that. So the drawback was we’re actually loading up your WordPress site. If you don’t have good hosting, or if you don’t have a good internet connection, it could be slow, you know, loading up the site.

And so with version two, we made a lot of improvements on, you know, load times and things like that. And we also added an offline mode. The only thing with the offline mode is that it was kind of a separate experience. It would be like if you loaded up the app offline, you’d be shown separate offline content.

So with AppPresser three, what we’ve done is basically all of the display files and everything are embedded on the device so that it loads really, really quickly. And then if there’s any WordPress content, then we only go get the content and display that in the content area, and that’s it. That way, you’re not waiting for a super long time for the pages to load or for the absolute itself. And we’ve also made it so that you can have offline and online pages, you know, right next to each other. There’s not any separate experience. It’s all very seamless. And, there’s a lot of, you know, just, it works the way that you think it should work. You know, if it’s offline, it just leaves a little message. Some of the pages work, some of them don’t. And that’s kind of up to the way you build it. But it’s just very kind of seamless now. And so it’s a much better experience. We also were not using the API for anything before and the API has a lot of advantages for displaying content. And so we’re excited to use that now that it’s, you know, officially released.

So, you know, one of the interesting things is we were using the WPPI when it was an alpha. and we actually built a product called reactor on WPPI version one. And we were building that product well. The WPI was an alpha and now it’s in version two and it’s changed a ton. We also built that on Ionic one and then Angular two came out, Ionic two came out all this kind of stuff. And so we ended up building AppPresser three on like the WPPI two, ionic two, angular two, you know, made a lot of huge improvements in the build process admin area and everything. So it’s kind of cool because we started building with this stuff when it first came out, but it has changed so much that we essentially had to build a completely new product to utilize all the new stuff. And all the new stuff is so much better. So I’m just really excited about having this be the platform that we can move forward on.

Joe Casabona: That’s Awesome. And I’m glad that you started to mention all of these different frameworks and libraries and things. Because, you know, a lot of developers listen to this show. I know that the WordPress REST API and Matt encourage us to learn JavaScript deeply. There’s a lot to choose from, right. So I guess Ionic is based on Angular?

Scott Bolinger: It’s angular two. Yeah. Ionic two is Angular two TypeScript ESX. It’s all of the modern…

Joe Casabona: Which is an Angular two is like super different from Angular one. Is that right?

Scott Bolinger: Yes, it is completely night and day to me at least.

Joe Casabona: Okay. Gotcha. So when you made the decision to use Ionic, was that, you know, what was that based on, was that just like, that was a prominent framework at the time? I think this is before React came up, maybe.

Scott Bolinger: Yeah. So yeah, when Ionic one first came out at this, that was before React and they were, they built it on Angular. And so I learned that framework inside and out. It’s just the gold standard of hybrid mobile app frameworks. So I mean, kind of an unfair comparison is like a Twitter bootstrap. It’s kinda like that. But for apps except way better. So, it makes it really easy to put apps together. They have all the UI components that they have a lot of great functionality that you need to build now. And so,  it really just works great. So when they came out with version two, I was like, you know, we’re on board with that. It has a lot of huge improvements. And so I had to basically learn Angular all over again in version two and, you know, to use Ionic. So, you know, I like React. I just don’t use it very much. I decided to go to Angular two, because the Ionic Framework is built on it but the two languages are very similar. They do very similar things. They’re just different. 

Joe Casabona: Gotcha. Yeah. I mean, it’s like choosing, you know, I guess, you know, chocolate or vanilla ice cream, it’s whatever your preference is.

Scott Bolinger: Yeah, whatever’s right for your project.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. So cool. That’s great. I’m going to link to all of those things that you just named in the show notes so that people can check them out. I know I learned Angular one and I really liked it. And then I was encouraged to learn React, so I’m learning React.

Scott Bolinger: Yeah.

Joe Casabona: And I, but I mean, it really is, you know, it’s, you could connect to it like the REST API with vanilla JavaScript if you want. And it’s just, you know, your pick, your poison, I guess.

So, cool. So, okay. So, at the time of this recording AppPresser three just came out and that’s like a pretty major transformation. So, you know, is there anything big on your roadmap for the near future? Or, you know, any long-term blue-sky goals that you have?

Scott Bolinger: So for the near term, we’re just going to be, you know, fixing bugs and adding features to AppPress three and getting it, making sure everything works great and that everything’s in there that people want in there.

For the longer-term goals, I do have a kind of a vision of people being able to build apps even if they don’t have a WordPress site. So like we could allow people to create content through their app builder. And like, if they just wanted to create some, say their church and they wanted to add in an event, or they wanted to add in a sermon. Or, you know, if it’s a conference app and they wanted to add it to the schedule and some speakers and sponsors and things, and just lay that out. They’ll be able to do that through our app dashboard. So,  that way they don’t have to use WordPress. They don’t have to have a website at all. They can just go build it now. So that’s definitely one of my longer-term goals. 

Joe Casabona: That’s awesome. And I know that’ll be super useful. You know, I was just at WordCamp Baltimore, and I kept going to the website and I’m like, you know, having an app like a WordCamp app would be pretty neat. I think there’s like a WP armchair.

Scott Bolinger: That’s not, yeah, that’s they don’t have an app for it anymore, but I think they might have a website still.

Joe Casabona: Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah.

Scott Bolinger: Yeah. We’ve actually talked with the foundation a little bit about that and they just, they’re not ready to pull the trigger on it quite yet, but I definitely think it would be cool.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, definitely. I mean, especially if, you know, there are like WordCamp warriors, you know, who go to ones like every week or every few weeks. And so having that to keep all that stuff straight and link the sessions you want to see is, would be pretty neat. If anybody needs a big idea, make sure to use AppPresser for that.

Scott Bolinger: Yep.

Joe Casabona: Cool. So I’m actually really excited to ask this last question, because like I said, you’ve been really transparent with a lot of things and your learning process. So, you know, do you have any trade secrets for us?

Scott Bolinger: You know, while I was looking at this question, man, I was trying to think of something clever to say, or I just, I don’t have anything. I don’t have any secrets.

I think the biggest thing that I can say is just to keep doing stuff. I think a lot of people get hung up on things like, I don’t have time or I don’t have a good idea or my idea is not perfect in that. Or whatever it is. Keep building stuff and putting stuff out there. And that’s really how you learn. Not by reading books and going to conferences. That stuff is great. researching, that stuff is great. But really the way you’re going to learn is by building stuff and putting it out there and charging for it and seeing what happens.

And I would say the biggest thing is just don’t ever put all your eggs in one basket. Don’t be like, “Man, I have to build this behemoth of software that’s going to take me a year to build. And then if that fails, like I’m just never going to do anything again.” Take like a couple of months and build something small and charge for it and see what happens. And then if it fails, then move on to the next thing. Do it in a couple more months, build something else and you know, not saying abandon all of your projects immediately, but, that was one problem that I had when I, my first company that I started, I thought that was going to be the only company to head for the rest of my life. And, you know, that’s just not the way that it works in tech like things move really quickly and there’s always something next. Everything is a stepping stone. So that was a really long-winded way of saying I don’t have anything, any secrets. 

Joe Casabona: Oh man. Well, that might not be a secret, but that’s, I mean, that’s great advice. Chris Lema gave very similar advice back in episode 12. And, you know, work on a few things, you know. I mean, he put it in the people, in terms of having multiple streams of income. But you know, work on a small, we’re going to do a couple of small projects, you know, iterate quickly, see what works and what doesn’t. But, you know, expecting success from the one big thing that you’re working on will likely lead to disappointment, especially like the first time. You know, I’ve been in the field for like 14 years and I’ve launched many like half products or whatever. But only a couple of them have worked out really well for me and you keep iterating. So.

Scott Bolinger: Yeah. And never take a year to build something like that. To me, that’s just ridiculous. You know, scale back the features until it’s something that you can actually accomplish and get out in three months. And then after it’s out, get feedback from your customers, build this up that they want to build because it may be totally different from what you were actually going to build. Because if you just build something with your head in the sand for a year and you put it out there, most likely 90% of the stuff you’ve built, nobody’s going to use or like, anyways. they’re just going to be like this one little feature that you didn’t even think was cool that’s going to be like the main thing. And now that’s what happened with, I think that’s what happened with Instagram or Twitter, what they, they just kind of built, you know, this big thing. And then they found out their customers just like this one little feature. So then they pivoted and they just built their application around that one feature.

Joe Casabona: That’s all. Yeah. That, yeah. And then you’re not as invested, you know, you’re not as emotionally invested, you know, if I spend a year working on something, if it fails, I’m going to be devastated. But a couple of, you know, a couple of months is a couple of months. So that’s, yeah, that’s some really great advice.

And I know it’s like counter two, you know, we’re bumping up against time here, but I want to make this one point, cause I have like this weird vendetta against the base camp people, like, I recognize that they do great work, but they’re always very like, just do what you want and other people will buy it. And I’m like, that’s what you guys did and it worked for you guys. But that’s like not a great business in place. It’s like a stowaway saying no to your customers. Like the….

Scott Bolinger: No. Yeah. I mean, there’s some truth to that, but it certainly doesn’t work for everybody. Yeah. If you’re like a, you know, a Python developer and you just need some little tool to help you in your Python workflow and you build that like nobody’s going to buy it because there’s no market for that but yeah, there is. I do like, however, the idea of dogfooding and products. So build something that you’re actually going to use for yourself. Even if that’s not the impetus behind building it. It’s really important because that’ll help you make it better and better and better like Easy Digital Downloads is a good example of this. They actually use that to sell their own stuff on their own site. So anytime they encounter a bug or any improvement they make is helping them out. So that’s helping their customers out. And I love that whole, I think it works really well.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So what I said, I don’t want to, I just said to get misconstrued or anything because most of my guests here have been scratching their own itch, right? But you know, if you scratch your own itch, you launch, and then, you know, take the advice that you gave at the beginning of the show, which is, here are your customers and, you know, do ask them what they let you know, that’s the best research that you can get especially if you’re appealing to a mass market.

So, yeah. Awesome. Cool. Well, we are at the time, Scott. Thank you so much for joining me today. It was a great conversation. 

Scott Bolinger: Thanks for having me.

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Thanks so much for listening, and thanks to our great guests and fantastic sponsors. If you liked the show, please rate it and subscribe on iTunes in Google Play or whatever your podcast app choices. If you have any questions, be sure to reach out at streamlined.fm.

And finally, until next week, get out there and build something.