How Cal AI turned creators into a growth machine — Jake Castillo, Cal AI

Welcome to the sub-club podcast, a show dedicated to the best practices for building and growing app businesses. We sit down with the entrepreneurs, investors and builders behind the most successful apps in the world to learn from their successes and failures. Sub-club is brought to you by RevenueCat, thousands of the world's best apps trust RevenueCat to power in app purchases, manage customers and grow revenue across iOS, Android and the web. You can learn more at RevenueCat.com. Let's get into the show. Hello, I'm your host David Bernard. My guest today is Jake Castillo, co-founder of CaliI, the AI calorie tracker with over 15 million downloads, now a part of my fitness pal. On the podcast, I talk with Jake about the magic moment test for whether creators can sell your app. The one number that caps what you can pay them and why cloning hit apps like CaliI rarely pays off. Hey, Jake, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. Happy to be here. I'm excited to talk. So most people know you for having co-founded CaliI, quite a story behind that in the recent acquisition by my fitness pal and everything. But I'd like to go back. I know Zach and the team are like a decade younger than you. How did you meet up with them? Like what was that story? Cause it sounds like it was an interesting one. Yeah, it's really crazy to think about because there is so much luck involved and so many like fortunate wins for me that happened along the way that needed to happen in order for this all this whole journey to have occurred. So I was at the time, basically moonlight, I was working in management consulting full time. And then I was moonlighting for Oliver Bracotto in his software company called Steady Buddy. So I would work my consulting job from like eight to eight Monday through Friday. And then from like eight. Yeah, consulting is terrible. And then from eight to like 2 a.m. every day, I would work on Oliver's project at Steady Buddy. And probably like a month or so into me moonlighting there. We had an intern start. And that intern was Zach. And I remember like in college, I had like a bunch of really terrible internships that like was just a waste of time. And I didn't learn anything or grow at all. And I didn't want that to ever happen. Anyone else. So when Zach first started, like I jumped on call with him right away and said, Hey, like what would make this a successful experience for you? And he kind of explained what he wanted to learn. And I really like made it my mission to make sure that he got exposure to all of those things. Turns out he was a genius and didn't like kind of knew everything already. But in doing so me and him became like good friends. And probably and he was still in high school. He was in high school. So we were both moonlighting, right? He was going to school and juggling a social life during the day. I was working during the day. And then we were working on Steady Buddy at night, which was really fun. And yeah, like he left probably after like he left in like April of 2024. And then he went off to go start a business. I didn't know what business was, but he was going to go and start this thing. And then in May of 2024, I left all over and my consulting job because I was like, Hey, I get this internet money thing. I'm going to go and start a business of my own. And then two days after Zach DMed me on a Twitter account that I never checked, I was getting a new phone that day. So I was like going through all my accounts to make sure I was like fully backed up. And then I saw the message from him on Twitter. And he's like, Hey, like you've free to jump on a call. And that's oh, yeah, yeah, let's do it. He gave me, I've got this app I built called Cali. Do you want to help us with the marketing? So I said yes. And the rest is history. Man, what a fun story. It's just came you right? Because I think about like, what if I didn't like check my phone that day or yeah, wasn't buying any phone like it's this all could have not happened. Well, and it could have not happened for for Zach too. Like the coincidence is like equally meaningful on both sides, you know, as we'll get to, you're a huge part of like driving the marketing and really helping Cal AI scale. And so Cal AI might not have been Cal AI, you know, for Zach even, I mean, he's a killer. Maybe he would have figured it out and found somebody else or whatever. But I can't help but think that it was the, the, the, the combination of the two of you that really made it work, not just him or just you totally. Yeah, there's, so there's four co-founders. Myself, Zach, Blake Anderson and Henry Langmack and like all of us had our own domains of expertise. And I, you're right. Like none of it would have happened if not for having all four of us in those positions. Because like not only were we really good at our particular domains, but we worked together really well. And we got along so well. And it just made for this like synergistic relationship that allowed us to grow incredibly quickly. And, you know, higher than we ever thought we could, you know, a little verboten intact to go too deep on topics like this. But as someone closing in on 50, I got to say, when I work with somebody young and energetic, there's just a fun vibe at 20 in your late 20s, a decade older than then Zach and some of the other crew. What was that like, you know, working with that team? Yeah, it was really refreshing. Because at that time, I was, you know, I had like $70,000 in student loan debt. I had just bought a house. I was planning on proposing to my then girlfriend. She's now my wife. So I had all these like big obligations and responsibilities. And that kind of like resulted in me being a pretty like risk adverse, right? Because it's like, I've got a path and like in 30 years, I'll be set. And it's just like stay on the path. And it's all going to be okay. I was miserable. But I understood if I just stayed on the path, it was going to be okay. And then I meet these kids that like, they've got no fear, no responsibilities. They just wanted to do something great. And working with them every day, it got me out of my comfort zone and made me become comfortable being uncomfortable and taking risks and taking big bets. And yeah, it changed my life. So I'm like, super grateful that like a lot of times people like frame like the age gap, all that must have been weird. That must have been awkward. It must have been like so different. But it's like, I think the best thing that kind of happened. I'm so grateful for it. All right. So let's move on to kind of the next steps in Cal AI because I really wanted to dig into the growth story and kind of how you and the team really scaled, especially from the early days. And one fun story I wanted to touch on was what I just had Dawson Gibbs on the sub club live stream, which would be a fun one if you're listening to this podcast, you might go check that out. He's great and told some of his own stories about working with Cal AI. But he was like one of the first influences you ever signed, right? Yeah. Yeah. Dawson, Dawson was one of the influencers that kind of changed the whole trajectory for Cal AI. He was, he just happened to be like one of the first people who reached out to you. He responded to it and he wanted to work with us. And it was like the really cool thing about Dawson. And for any creators listening, like, I would really try to emulate this because a lot of creators, if you ask them to do anything, they're like, no, that's, I'm going to charge you for that. No, that's outside of the scope. No, I'm not doing that. Dawson was the complete opposite. There was nothing he wasn't down to do. He was always willing to take on more work. And he wouldn't, he wasn't like demanding a rate for it. So much so, oh, Dawson, like, you know, thank you so much. We're going to give you a bonus this month. And like, he became like a friend. And now he is like a very close friend. And he, like, his willingness to just put out content, iterate on content, try different angles, different formats. It allowed us to quickly find what worked for Kalei. And once we found that format that worked, we could just like copy and paste it across the millions of fitness influencers out there. And like, yeah, who knows if that would have been possible, if not for Dawson's willingness to just work with us. And like, to give it a go, rather than like, nickel and diming us for every little request we made. And yeah, it's like, for creators out there, like, I, a lot of times, like, I'll hear them complain. Like, oh, yeah, I don't, like, screw these brands. Like, they don't treat us right. So like, we're not going to treat them right. But like, when Dawson did that, like, he was always so kind to us. We were willing to do anything for Dawson, whatever he needed. And like, it's like, when, but if you treat it, the relationship strictly is transactional, it's going to always be transactional. And that's what it never was with Dawson. So shout out Dawson. And such a great lesson for brands and apps too. Like, if you find that kind of creator that's willing to go the extra mile and feels more like a partner than a hired hand or whatever, it's like latch onto that and go the extra mile in your end. So like, when you see somebody, you know, going the extra mile on their end, reciprocate, and it can build to something much better. And if you're working with a bunch of creators who aren't that, you know, sometimes you do just, and I'm sure, you know, Yellen is working with so many creators, sometimes it just has to be more transactional. But especially early on, if you can find somebody who feels a little bit more like part of the team or invested, like, that's just gold. Yeah, especially in the early days when you're not working with that many creators, there's honestly, no excuse not to build these personal relationships with the creators. You've got the time you've got the bandwidth like really foster these relationships because not only will that manifest itself in the content they produce but also like these like extracurriculars like you can have the creators go and refer their friends and like if you're miserable to work with they're not going to refer other creators to you but if they if you're like the best brand they've ever worked with they're going to be shouting it from their rooftops. Hey guys like come over here this is the place to be and that's what we always try to do. Well stepping back what was the original thesis in plan for marketing that even led to first reaching out to Dawson and then if you would kind of relate it to what your advice would be today and if you think things are different today or if you think people should kind of rerun that same playbook. Are like a thesis stemmed from the fact that we were a calorie tracker and we felt that the people that track the calorie their calories are most are people that are in a health and fitness and then when we looked in the health and fitness space we saw that there's millions and millions of creators probably there's probably more health and fitness creators than any other creator niche out there right so there's all of these creators but there's a finite number of brands available to these creators you know you got like protein powders you've got athletes you're aware that's about it right and they they can only work with so many creators so there was all of these creators that never had had a brand deal before and we finally gave them an opportunity to get a brand deal so that was like the for like there was like just a huge supply that the the well ran deep and then on top of that the content that these creators were making made it like super easy to integrate Kalei into those videos these creators were already making what I eat in a day videos in order to look like this you have to eat like this you like in those types of videos so it's like and they were making like maybe a one a week so it was super easy to ask them to just oh when you're showing your food in those videos just scan it with Kalei and that was the thesis and then Dawson proved the thesis because like when he executed on the format it converted very well so right awesome there's a million other creators doing the same types of content the same type of content is Dawson so let's just copy and paste we did that and it worked tremendously well as for should this be the the playbook for apps moving forward in today's environment I think like if all of those variables ring true for your app then absolutely right now that's not the case right like if you're an astrology app there's not millions of creators out there and what are the the brands available to astrology creators probably other astrology apps like that's kind of it and they have those apps if they got their stuff buttoned up they've probably already signed those creators to exclusivity deals which can make it tricky so it's just like yeah you got to suss out the environment yeah I know such a good point I think that's something a lot of people miss and that I've been you know trying to talk about I think Dawson I've been talked about this on the live stream is that you know when you see a calai I blow up and you try and go replicate that playbook and it falls flat you know part of it is not understanding the kind of hit the word but synergies you're a former management consultant you're sort of synergies right but but they were they were kind of inherent benefits like you described to calai I slipping perfectly into content where so many apps that try this playbook don't have that kind of hook there there's like layers to it it's like creator app fit like you said health and wellness influencers with a cow calorie tracking app but then it's even that that's a step above that is like is our product even something that can be shown in a compelling way on social that's going to hook somebody quickly or or even I mean part of the reason it works so well too is it the whole video wasn't about you know people think they need to make the video a sales pitch for their app but really by making great content that happens to mention the app is almost better if it's so compelling that that like you know 10 seconds showing calai I scanning your food is so compelling that people take action and so it's like there's layers and layers of like things that have to fit together for this kind of strategy to really pop off yeah there's so much to it right like to your point what we called it was the magic moment and calai had a magic moment it was like a one two three punch you scan analyze results and when you showed that on screen people would do like a double take they're like whoa what was it that's so cool like did that really just calculate the calories that never seen it before so it was like very impressive to them if your app doesn't have a magic moment it doesn't lend itself well to a seamless integration because it's not going to cause that double take whoa what it just happened and if you don't have the double take people probably aren't going to convert they may blink and miss the integration and just like you know miss the tree for the forest if you will and that's like maybe you're better served running paid ads for that where you do like a hard sell and you're really communicating the value prop of your app additionally the magic moment needs to be easily digestible and easily understandable in seconds it doesn't it can't have some it can't require some long explanation of how it works or why it works otherwise it's going to feel like an ad and if it feels like an ad it's not going to go viral if it's not going to go viral it's not going to be profitable yeah and you all did so many subtle things to you that I think a lot of people kind of missed that actually helped so much like like you create you did a build of the app specifically for creators so that when they were scanning it had the Kalei did have the app icon or did it have a logo or what exactly I both both yes you see Kalei and then the little logo as well and yeah there's also like we do like these little things so that like it just made it easier for our marketing materials to communicate the message that we wanted it to yeah any any other little subtlety you know almost hacks but just you know smart things you all did like that that really took it to the next level yeah so we like what one time or like we have a streaks feature right where anytime you scan your food it'll pop up the streak and that would it would it would show up right after you scanned and it would interrupt the one two three so we would make sure our influencers didn't show their first scan of the day because we didn't want to interrupt the one two three punch because like people naturally they can you see it in like chat GBT's writing it always does it in groups of three because that's how like our brains are wired to like to digest information so when we the streak added like this fourth piece in our barrage of marketing content so we had to remove that so it stayed to just the three punches and that worked really well another one like we like with certain creators it did like more subtle integrations we would have an on-screen caption that would say like tracked with Kalei just to really drive that home whereas with some creators where it was less subtle we wouldn't have that caption because then it would impact the views so a lot of like little things like that that we were constantly testing and we're still testing right like I think that's the key thing is a no marketing program should ever feel like a finished product you're always a work in progress and you're always adapting and we are as well yeah such great insights and so cool I mean these are the subtle things that you know you see the headlines and you're like oh Kalei like you know you know we can repeat this playbook and like oh we're just gonna you know copy the ads and then you just completely miss all the little subtle details that you tested and iterated and tested and iterated they've really reinforced what you were doing with the messaging yeah well and it's like I honestly attribute that to you like people would we were very public about Kalei I guess we were building right we would share all of the successes and failures on Twitter and with that came a lot of copycats and we weren't like everyone was like how are you doing that you're you're bringing so much attention to your app and like unnecessary competition but we didn't see it that way because we knew that if people were building a Kalei clone just because they heard about our success they were never gonna make it because the reason why we were successful was like we were obsessed right I would like you you know you're obsessed when you're dreaming about it right I would wake up and think about influencer deals I would like I was dreaming about signing influencers and creating content and all that stuff like I was truly obsessed and I knew it was impossible for anyone else out there to be as obsessed as me and it's like it was that obsession that led to a bunch of little small incremental improvements in those small incremental improvements compound over time to be an insurmountable mountain that competition can't climb even the clones probably added to you know people looking for AI calorie trackers and then that opt-in deliver into the Niga found Kalei or they they just search the app store or search the web for because because the other team tried to copy missed the subtleties and so they just search Google for like AI calorie tracker and and guess what pops up first. Kalei. Guess what pops up first in the app store? Kalei. So in some ways, you those competitors probably like helped trade a little mini marketing engine that drove as many clicks to you as it did to them. 100% and like even on like Twitter, there was always like a new Twitter thread being posted. Like these Kalei clones are making X amount of revenue. Like, is this the best app opportunity out there? And like all that stuff, it would just dry traffic to Kalei. So it's like, go ahead. Right. And it's that thing. Like when you're so confident in your team and your abilities, like competition doesn't scare you. You want it. It's fun. So we've been talking about a lot of the successes and things that worked out, but I always love to talk about the failures and scripts along the way too. And I know you have some really fun stories of creators that didn't work, that formats that didn't work and things like that. Yeah. So they're fun now at the time they were left front. They resulted in really good learnings about influencer marketing because we like, there is a career that may have like a cult like following and a really strong audience, but you have to understand like does this audience even care about Kalei tracking? For example, we thought like the UFC niche would crush for us. And the thesis behind that is UFC fighters have to track their food meticulously, right? Every calorie matters when they're trying to cut weight. So a tool like Kalei is not only really helpful to them, but also like really interesting because it like can alleviate the need to weigh everything, which is so tedious. So we, you know, we signed a couple UFC creators and we think, yes, it's going to crush. This is like a whole new untapped market that's going to open up doors to like a thousand more creators. The UFC creators we signed posted and crickets. No downloads like nothing. And these are big creators too, right? Yeah, thousands and thousands of dollars spent. Wow. And nothing. And we we couldn't figure out why. And then like we, as we dug deeper into the audience demographics and interests and psychographics is the average person watching UFC is doing so on their couch as they're drinking beer and eating pizza with their friends. The last thing they want to think about is tracking their calories because that's just like going to give them bad news, right? While they were watching these viewers were interested in watching someone put them through a severe calorie restricted diet, they had no interest in doing that themselves. It's like, no, I'm good. I'm good with that. And so there was a lot of instances like where we had experiences like that. And it kind of like we, you know, it hurt at the time, right? And it was a big punch in the face. But we never let that impact our ability to take what we called big bold bets as one of our core values. Because it's like for every deal that didn't work, there was one that did. And maybe it didn't work. And you, you know, you lose a couple thousand dollars. But the ones that do win, you can make hundreds of thousand dollars. So it's like we, that's like, you know, when I talk about the risk tolerance of my co-founders, it like helps change my whole mindset. And now like I'm like ridiculously risk tolerant. That's amazing. What are the stories you have of creator types that just didn't work out? Because I think it's, it really is so informative. And I think sometimes people, I mean, I'm guilty of this. Like, you know, well, put out a YouTube video on sub club where I'll have a certain Gaston. I think, oh, this is amazing. Just like you thought, like, you have to see it was the only channel. And then it doesn't pop off. And then you need to then pause and like really introspect and like, what didn't work? Why didn't it work? But too many people like skip that. And so I, yeah, I'd love to hear any other stories like that to help people kind of get in that mindset of like really digging deep on why things didn't work when they don't work to, to better propel the ones that do. Yeah. Yeah. Another instance was mukbang creators. So like, these creators would be, they'd like be sitting in their cars or in their dining rooms, kitchens, whatever, and consume 10,000 calories in one sitting just like enormous amounts of foods. And like, yeah, unfathomable amounts of calories. And we're like, wouldn't this be so much more impactful if before they did it? It's like, yeah, I'm going to eat 20,000 calories right now. And that, that would give like a huge wow factor to the audience. And like they'd see how easy it was to track like all this food. But for similar reasons to the UFC fighters, these, the viewers of these creators had no interest in counting their calories because it just gave them unwanted information. Yeah. I mean, to your point, like with the UFC fighters, like somebody watching mukbang, probably isn't your, your, your health and fitness. And like if you're watching a health and fitness influencer or track their food throughout the day, you probably aspire to something like that. Whereas when you're watching mukbang content, that that's just not on your radar. It's, it's just totally different wheelhouse. Yeah. And it's like, I think, oh man, like I, I want to do that. Like, you know, they see all that food, like they get everything on the menu and talk about it. I'll do that sounds so good. Like I can't wait to do that. Like I'm going to do that as a reward for like when I pass my finals or something, right? And it's like, you're not, you don't want to think about calories. Like, no, this is a reward. This is my cheat day. So it's, yeah, it's just like understanding like not only what kind of content your creators can produce, but like why your viewers are consuming that content and what are like the psychological motivations behind that viewership. And if you can really nail that down, then it makes it much easier to sign profitable creators. Any other like specific tactics or tips or strategies to figure out which creator niches, which types of content work and don't work? Yeah, I mean, so I think the, the main thing people need to understand is views can lie, followers can lie, but comments cannot, right? The truth is always in the comments. And for again, a couple different ways. First and foremost, if you want to understand like, is this niche relevant to my app? Look in the comment section of like the big creators in that space. And are people like looking for a solution that your app solves? If so, like that's that's prime time. Like, you know, you go full steam ahead. And then additionally, like trying like on a more granular level, if you're trying to identify whether or not an individual creator that you are, you already identified that the niche is going to work and the content type works, but it's like, will this actual creator work? Because for every 10 creators out there, nine of them probably won't convert in only one will. So how do you find out which is the one out of nine, one out of 10? The way you do that is in the comment section and you look like, I like to, I put it on like two different sides. You've got one comment section, I'll say it's a girl like going through leg day, right? And it's like her work out routine. There's, and if you go look it on health and fitness pages right now, you'll find a bunch of creators like this with comment sections like this, where the comment is like, like a bunch of guys and it's like fire emoji, fire emoji, fire emoji, or like the emoji where the guys like sweating and that stuff. So there's that type of comment section. And then there's another type of comment section where it's like, thank you so much for posting this video. I was really unsure of how to work out my hamstrings or quads or glutes. And this video gave me the info necessary. One of those comment sections is going to convert. One of them is not. And I think it's pretty obvious which one will. That's such a great insight too. I mean, and these are the things like you think, oh, you know, female creator, like she's good-looking, you know, she gets a ton of views. But then you got to introspect why is she getting those views? What kind of people are watching? Why are they watching? And you know, unfortunately for some of those, it's not what you would think. And it's not that other women like excited to try that next workout. Yeah, exactly. And that's what you've got a following and then you've got like a cult like following. The cult like following is where you want to plant your flag. Yeah. And how do you think about though these days with the algorithms, the difference between just a good creator who doesn't even necessarily have that much of an audience, but just knows how to like go viral on TikTok versus the ones that do have that kind of cult following and do have a more established audience? What I would say is a cult like following is a lagging indicator. If you're a great creator, the cult like following will come. So when you've looked at creators enough like as much as I have, you can identify like the diamonds and the rough where it's like, oh, they're already successful that time just hasn't caught up yet. And then those are the creators like, yeah, you can get them on cheaper deals because maybe they don't have the track record to warrant like a super high payment. So you can get them on a cheaper deal. And then that you're just writing that wave is their following and influence skyrockets. One creator we worked with like, he was, I remember, he's probably probably, I don't know, the 12th or 15th creator that I signed at Cali. He, I watched his kind of, oh, this is really good. He's really funny. He's really like charismatic. He's good looking like, but his views just like they're not there yet, but like I believe in this content. And we signed him. and two months, he wasn't really doing anything, he wasn't making much money with us either, but me and him were friendly. Like I said, you wanna build those personal relationships with your creators and we were friends. And month three, he had a video. And when I say, you'd get like 10,000, 12,000 views, and then month three, he had a video get 7 million views. And then from that point forward, there's like never under 500,000 views. - Wow. - And it's like, it was so cool. Like not only was I happy that he blew up, then it made Cali a bunch of money, but like on a human level, I was so happy for him. It's like, hell yeah dude, like, and I connected him with other brands. I was like, go and get your money man. Like this is awesome. Like you put in the work, you deserved it. And it's like so cool. Like, and I love the stories. And we've had a couple of them at Cali Eye. And it's a feel good thing. - Yeah, how do you think about pricing that? How do you structure deals? So like when he's doing, you know, 10,000 views posts, and then all of a sudden, when pops off, were you on the hook for a ton of money? How did you structure that? - Yeah, so this is like a key thing. I think all founders should keep in mind is, with influencer and UGC content, you are banking on, like, the real money is made in the viral hits, right? The, you know, you're a, you base your break even point or profitable rate on their average views. And it's like, okay, like this is the most likely scenario. Well, break even maybe get a little profit. And where you make your real money is when they have like one video, go mega viral, and like all that is profit. And if you're not doing like flat rates, it makes it hard to capture that asymmetric upside that is a viral hit. So whenever possible, I would try to do flat rate deals because it allows you to capture the asymmetry that is algorithmic content. - But would you do like bonuses or selling kind of scale deals or how does that work? - Yeah, yeah, we would do bonuses. We would do scale deals. And like sometimes even the creator didn't have a bonus. Like I said, like, you wanna have good relationships with your creators. And like, it's like, if we're winning, we want everyone to win. 'Cause like we couldn't have done it without you, right? So we would just give bonuses. Like, dude, you crushed it this month, here you go. And-- - That's awesome. - It no one does that, right? Like you're in space and like whenever I tell you, like, oh, like you're too nice. Like, but what I have found-- - How do you win? - Yeah, like it's like, when you treat people, right? For like, it's almost like a selfish endeavor. 'Cause like, one, it makes me feel good. But two, it always comes around. Maybe not for that single person. And like they may take advantage. But like over a long enough time horizon, it will, you will reap benefits from it. On top of just like being able to sleep at night and look yourself in the mirror, like how gross is that? Like your app is like crushing it and like your creators aren't getting rewarded for that. So they have something I'm really agatement about. - Yeah, that's a great way to think about it. What when you do structure those deals? So, I mean, just to get into the nitty gritty, 'cause people are gonna be thinking like, I want that to happen. You know, I want this 10,000 view person to pop off to 7 million views. How would you, how would you recommend actually negotiating those specific bonuses or scale deals? Like, you know, as the number of views go up, you pay less per view or like, you know, how does that actually work? And I imagine it's like you sign a bunch of different deals with a bunch of different creators, but maybe give us some of the top ways you would advise people to try and structure it. - So I think that the first thing you need to understand is like, what is your revenue per 1,000 views, right? And like, that is what it is, right? Again, it may vary from niche to niche. So like, within the niche that you're trying to sign this influencer, how much money can you expect to make per 1,000 views? What that is, like, once you get that number, it's like, you can't pay like a CPM that is higher than that RPM. Otherwise, like, you are guaranteed to not be profitable. Right? Like, it's just math. And it's like super simple. And it's like, that means that there's a lot of creators that you won't sign. They may say, no, like, that's not, I want to get paid more. But it's like, you need to understand there is no other alternative unless you are in the app, the money losing business instead of the money making business. It's just the way it worked, right? If you're trying to save money, can you spend more than you make? No, it is what it is. So that's the first thing. That's like your guiding principle. And then from there, you just want to look at like, what can we reasonably expect this creator to make? Like to how many views can we expect them to achieve? And then base your rate, your CPM, what you've deemed as a profitable CPM based on their expected views. And like, like sometimes creators will come to you with like, I want to work with you, but I need a thousand dollars a month. And a lot of times, like creators, like, if you meet their cash demands, they're less so concerned about the deliverable demands. So it's like, you can like a creator that maybe like doesn't get many views. You can pay anyone a thousand dollars and maybe just the deliverables will have to increase. And it's that thing, like if they come to you with the number and like, you try and meet them in the middle, it's like, yeah, I can work with you here. I just need you to work with me here. They're much more willing to do that. And so the other thing is like, if you're just like, you know, jump on calls with these people, show them that you're like a human being being and not like some sleazy agent, if you will, that's just trying to like maximize profit. And it's like, hey, like, I'm a regular person just trying to make it like you, like, let's work together. Let's find a way that we can both win here. And sometimes we can't like, you know, maybe based on your views, like what you need to get paid is not what we can afford. And that's all right. But I'm going to handle that situation, like with kindness and with grace and they're okay, I'm sorry, this doesn't work. But I can refer you to my friend that would be perfect for this. - How do you think about the difference between experimental creators and experimental formats versus, 'cause for some way to understand, like our RPM is X, that would, that would almost necessarily be a, a very specific format that you know that works that you've run the numbers on. But that would imagine like some formats, some hooks, some other things that you're experimenting with could deliver two or three times at RPM because it's just, it's either a different audience or the hook really landed or whatever. So, I mean, first, like, how do you, how do you even analyze what your actual RPM is when you're working across, you know, hundreds or thousands of creators? And then two, you know, even if that's your average, how do you think about the outliers and trying to find those outliers? - First off, like, how do you calculate the RPM? - In the early days of building an app, it's easy, right? Because when you don't have a creator, say you're not running any other marketing efforts other than influencers. And if you don't have a creator posting on that day, you're getting zero downloads and zero sales, right? So the second you see a creator post, you'll see the spike and then it makes it very easy. It's like, oh, like this creator posted, we got a thousand views and we made a hundred dollars. So, you know, we had this much RPM. I don't want to do the mental math and mess it up. I think it's either a $10 or $1 RPM. I always forget the zeros, but it's one of those numbers. And you, like, that's your RPM. Like, and it's easy in the early days. As your app grows and like, maybe you're getting thousands of downloads every day, you can still see spikes, right? And then like, you just get comfortable with that spike. And as you grow and become more experienced, you'll become more trained with like analyzing even the slightest spike and what that really means. It's like, I think the best app founders and marketers are experts in data analysis. And you have to be in order to do it because attribution is so murky with like organic marketing. Well, when you're looking at those things, you know, all things being equal. If you have one video pop off and do a million views, but has like four times a number of comments or likes or saves, then the other one, do you assume that that, let's say they both pop off on the same day, do you look at these kind of secondary metrics to help kind of price of this one's actually what drove that spike that day, this one they got a million views, but like nobody commented, nobody liked. It's likely that that one is not the one that drove the revenue. As you get more sophisticated in your analysis, it should, there should be like all these little data points that you take into consideration in your calculus of whether or not to like renew someone. I called it like, I created this like unique equation for Cali, I called like our renewal score that took into account like a million different metrics. And yeah, like it, 'cause like you're right. Like once you actually grow, like you do have a bunch of influencers posting on the same day, like we would have 50 to 70 influencers posting on a day. And when you're doing that, like multiple are going viral within a day. So it can get murky, but if you look at all the other metrics, you can, you can start to suss it out. Another one is like easy when like incrementality tests, right? Look at the demos of the influencers following and where did you see the spike? - How do you manage all that? - Like hundreds, thousands of creators, 100 posts a day. Did y'all build like internal tooling? What was your like ops machine to manage all that? all of this. Yeah. So that was like, I really owe that to like my management consulting days because like, that's what we had to do. We'd go into these businesses at least like really complicated problems and like, how do we scale this? Also, if I'm like, that's what I would, I did for eight years is like, figure out how these businesses can do that. So like, it got to the point where like the marketing was easy for Cali. Right? Like if we work with these creators and we have them make these types of videos, we will make money. Simple as that. But what was difficult was managing at its scale, right? Hundreds and hundreds of creators. And like, yeah, I built like systems and automations out over time that made it super easy to manage its scale. And yeah, that guy, that was instrumental to our success because otherwise we would have been like always bottled and I did bandwidth. So as a former management consultant, whether a lot of spreadsheets involved or did you actually like build custom software or how did you actually do that? Yeah. In the early days, it was spreadsheets like, yeah, everyone would make fun of me because I was like, always in Google Sheets and I was like obsessed with it. And like, it was like, I called it like my magnum office. It was like this beautiful thing that had like all these like, automations behind it. Since then, yeah, I've built out like a formal software. Yeah. I'm actually going to start like releasing it to the public for anyone that wants it. Yeah. I was actually just going to ask like, are there good tools for that now? Because I'd imagine there are, but it sounds like maybe you have one that's coming. Yeah. I was never like we up until I built it. We always used our spreadsheets because I was always left severely disappointed by the existing solutions. And I think it's because like what we did at Cali, I was so unique and a lot of the people building these tools had never done it of course because like we are the first ones to ever do it. So like my solution is built like strictly for influencer and UGC marketing and like buy someone that's actually done it. I think it is a much better solution than those available today. I didn't even know about this, but I usually give guests an opportunity to pitch at the end. But we're on the topic. I mean, is this going to be like a SaaS product, people are going to be able to pay for it. Give us a pitch. I mean, honestly, like, you know, perfect related to this whole conversation, if somebody wants to do this, they're going to need software to figure it out and it sounds like you're building that software. Yeah. So I didn't come on here to like, and I have no idea you're building this. So this was not like a planned pitch, but hey, you're taking your time out to share stuff. And I actually think this is super relevant and people will be excited to check it out. So tell us more. Thank you. Yeah. It's called by Rally. The idea is that it should like streamline and automate a lot of the tedious and monotonous work that comes with managing influencers. You store all of your deals. You can automate contract sending. You can auto track their posts so you know when they tag you and it'll update the views. It'll give you view clauses or bonus is it'll track all that and tell you like how much you're supposed to pay them when you're supposed to pay them. And then also it'll give you like the renewal score of like whether or not you should renew the influencer. Nice. Well, when does that launch? It should be a problem. I'm thinking like the end of October. Okay. Okay. It's probably a couple weeks after this podcast is released. Yeah. Yeah. So check it out. I'm sure by time this launches will at least have like a landing page we can link to or something. We'll put that in the show notes. Yeah. Awesome. Cool. I want to keep digging deeper because it's been so amazing like understanding this influencer playbook. How do you. How did you reach out to and land creators to scout? I mean, it's kind of like the hardest part of the job. It's like talking to you know, 10,000 creators to land what? 500. I mean, what was even your hit rate, you know? Yeah. It was low. It was a lot. And that's like a lot of times I'll jump on like consulting calls or something like that. They're always asking like, what is the secret, right? And like, how can I do this? And I always feel so bad. It's like, oh man, you booked this call like I hate to break it to you. But the secret is like you work really, really hard for a really, really long time, right? And you do the work that no one wants to do. So it's like, yeah, you are sending thousands and thousands of messages to creators all the time. And most of them aren't responding. The ones that do respond. A lot of them are asking for ridiculously high rates that you can't afford. And every negotiation is like your pulling teeth and can be very difficult. But that's like where the magic happens. And that's why, you know, we were able to be successful because we were willing to do the work that no one else was willing to do. Because like people can do it for a day, right? They reach out to 100. They're like, oh man, that's stopped. I'm not doing that again. We did that for 18 months every single day. Did it ever get easier? Did you ever have enough influencers where you felt like I can just slack today and not reach out to 100 new influencers or it just was a constant grind because you got to keep the machine flowing? Yeah. It's a constant grind. You got to keep the machine growing and there's just like, job's not done, right? We weren't stopping until we were the number one calorie tracker in the world. Like, so there's always more work to be done. And like I said at the beginning of that episode, there's millions and millions of these health and fitness creators. And it's probably like the biggest niche on social media. So like, there's always another creator just to be signed. You know, one thing a lot of people listening will think, and so I'm curious, your thoughts on it in 2026 compared to 2024 influencers are more savvy. Dawson and I were even talking on the live stream about how there's like influencer training courses now that like tell them you need to negotiate like this with the brand. You need to get this CPM or, you know, they're undervaluing you. It does feel like the landscape has shifted since the early days of Cali. Do you think it's harder? Any advice? You know, what do you see that's changed? Yeah. I don't want to be the guy that's like, oh, yeah, I'm glad I'm not starting from scratch today. It's like, it's a lot tougher today for sure. But like for everything that makes it more difficult, there's another thing that makes it easier. Right? We did not have codex and cloud code in 2024, right? These are new, it's crazy, it wasn't that long ago, but like, and I can't imagine life without these tools. But like, these are new tools. So like that stuff can streamline operations and make things so much easier. So like, I think it's always like a push and pull. Like, yes, it's harder in some respects, but it's also easier to do other things. Any specific advice of the kind of influencers or ways to do it today that work different from the advice you would have given two years ago? I mean, yeah, influencers are charge higher rates today than they did before. There's more brands vying for them. So like, the supply has probably remained constant of the influencer population, but demand has increased. So naturally price will adjust in its a little more expensive as a result. But it's like, it just remember, like, it's going to be very hard to sign these influencers and that's a good thing because if it's hard, that means your competitors aren't going to do it. So if you're willing to do the hard work, you will win. That's great advice. So one thing we've been talking almost exclusively about UGC in part because that's a big part of the story of Kalei. But at what point did you layer on paid ads? Because my understanding is that Kalei wouldn't be what it is today without having moved on or not moved on, but like layered on paid ads on top of what you're doing with UGC. What made you start that? How did that work? Well, paid ads, like, once you get that machine up and running, it's so much easier than influencers. You're not sourcing creative, like, that's easy. You can just like pay somebody to create creative. There's now amazing tools like tribe where you can like get creative for free and you just pay them a percentage of ad spend. And whereas with influencers, like, one, just getting in touch with them is so difficult. Once you get in touch with them, negotiating with them is extremely difficult. And then managing them is also very difficult. Loggon can be like prima donnas and like, they're not the best to work with, right? And it's like attribution is murky, the views can fluctuate. They're just all this like friction with influencer marketing. Whereas paid ads, you get the content, put it in meta, sit back and chill. So it's like, it just made like, from a work in to money received ratio, it just made sense to start like doing that. Also, like, you should always diversify your risks, right? And yeah. So like, it's basically probably after a couple of months of Cali, we started like spending on paid and then it's become a larger and larger part of our marketing mix. Yeah. That makes sense. But paid ads did you end up using some of the content that would pop off in UGC or was it just a totally different motion or would you have the same creator, but create a different version of the hook that work better as a paid or would some things that went viral actually work as paid. Yeah. So in the early days, like when we first started our paid ads program, we just recycled our influencer content and you know, it yielded some results. But as we grew and became a more sophisticated company, we invested and dedicated paid ad creative in that profile. for a better because if you think about it with organic content, you are taking a swing at the plate for a home run that is a viral hit. And in order to do that, you have to make it a subtle integration. With paid ads, whether it's super viral or not, like you're paying for every view. So if you're paying for every view, you might as well ensure that every view, they understand what it is they just saw and what it is you were promoting in that video with like a hard sell. Because like in some of our influencers, it has the integration to resettle and if they blink, they could miss it. And what if we paid for that exact impression and that's like you're throwing money away. So where we really started to see results is when we invested in dedicated paid ad creatives. And I mean, there really is an art to it too, because you talk about the hard sell, but like it's still got to be good content because as an ad, even if you're paying for views, if somebody gets five seconds in and just swipe for a pass it because it's not good content, then then meta is going to deeper, advertise that it's not going to work anyway. So talk about the art of getting that hard sell into a piece of content that's actually good, even if it wouldn't go viral on its own, but it's like good enough that people won't just scroll past it. There is an art to it. And I learned a lot from the team at Speechify. They're like close friends of mine and like they're killers at creating paid ad content. And it is so different than creating influencer content, like a completely different muscle. And you have to build it over time. So I think the key is, yeah, you got to have a great hook and you also want that hook to be related to your product, right? Like you'll see things like where it'll just be like someone like a pitcher throwing a baseball into in the camera from the POV of the catcher. And then the baseball comes and like cracks the screen. And then it'll go in and it'll talk about an accounting software. And it's like, okay, cool. Yeah, you stopped the hook, but for the wrong, you stopped the scroll, but for the wrong reason, right? If you were then going to promote a pitching app, it was going to improve your pitching. That's a banger. That's going to crush. But like it's like that. You're trying to get accountants like they're not, they probably scroll through the second I saw it was baseball. And sorry to any accountants who love baseball. But like you know, like you want it to the hook to be related to your product. And then from there, you want to communicate the value prop as quickly and as interestingly as possible. Like once you're doing paid ads, it then becomes even more important to align the ads to the app store or screenshots and like align that whole experience from ad to paying on the other end. How did you all think about building that contiguous funnel of making that experience seamless between ad to actually paying you money? Yeah, it's just about congruency, right? And it's like how weird would it be like if you go into like a hotel and it's like this like amazing hotel lobby, like five star lobby. And like there's a concierge service, all this stuff. And then the second you check in and you go into elevator, it's like some like rickety elevator. And then you go into the room and there's like cockroaches. Everyone is super dirty. It's like, wait, this is not this is not what I thought I was getting. I've been to that hotel in New York City. And like, so whereas people would be much more willing to accept that crickety and like eerie room if the lobby matched it as well, right? And vice versa, I mean, everybody's gonna be cool at the five star thing. But like, you know, you want consistency. It was like consistent communication across all channels. I know you'll spend a ton of time on onboarding. And this is another thing. If you're going to get to UGC to work, if you're going to get paid ads to work, it's not just a UGC. It's not just the ads. It's it's getting them from that ad to the moment of payment. And the, you know, you have the black box of the app store in between that. But probably the most impactful part is in once they open the app, what happens? Tell me about some of the iterations and how you thought about it from that like congruency perspective. You want to see like your marketing. That's like what gets people in the door. And like, there's a couple of pain points you want to hit on, right? In your marketing, it's like, Hey, we can solve these pain points for you. And then in your marketing, you want to reiterate that like, Hey, like, I think like, are you suffering from this pain point? Because like, otherwise, you wouldn't be on this app, right? Like, it must have resonated with you. And you want to drive home like the, the impacts of that pain, like this pain point, like it's probably caused you to do X, Y, and Z. And like, what if there's an easier way? And what if this way helped you achieve, you know, X, like, wouldn't that be nice? And you kind of like, just like, are nurturing them. And like, yeah, we framing yourself as like, we can help you with this problem. And then once you've communicated that adequately, you say, like, you know, this pain is real. This solution can solve that pain for you. What's it worth to you? And like, when that price of that is not like some astronomical fee, people are really willing to do it because it's like, oh, yeah, like, now that we've talked about it for the past five minutes in this onboarding, like, that pain is a problem. And it's worth $30 a year. That's nothing. If I can stop feeling this way totally. It sounds like that $30 price point was really intentional. I've commented on this before that I do kind of think is one of the genius moves of Cal AI that helped make that whole engine work is that you didn't try to be the price leader. You didn't put a $70 your price tag, like my fitness ball, who eventually acquired you, but like, you made it accessible to everyone, to that college student who saw the influencer. Did you experiment with price at all? Or was it just always 30 and you did that for that specific reason? So we definitely experimented a ton, you know, being a management consultant, like, maximum consultant, like 101 is like, you cut cost and increase prices. That's how you make more money, right? But like, major shout out to my co-founder Blake Anderson, he was like, always super adamant. Like, no, like, that's not what we're not optimizing for profit. We're optimizing for mind share. We want to become not only the number, like the way we become the number one calorie tracker in the world is not, I mean, of course, making the most money, but that comes secondary to being the most popular. And the way we can be the most popular is it's the easiest to purchase, which results from the lowest price. So, yeah, he was always adamant, like, you know, we keep our prices low and especially, and like, it makes so much sense, right? Like, we did go after a very young crowd that doesn't have the most disposable income and maybe hasn't suffered from this problem that we communicate to them in onboarding for nearly as long as an older demographic. So, when you haven't suffered from it as long, it doesn't hurt as much. When it doesn't hurt as much, you're not willing to pay as much to solve it. And so it just made it make sense. So, like, shout out Blake, absolutely genius. Pricing is so tough. It goes both ways because for some apps, I do think it makes sense. And maybe what you said there kind of helps inform how you think about pricing is that your strategy wasn't to maximize profit. And so that's a very different mindset and a very different approach to pricing. Then, you know, and again, it probably helped a ton that you were able to do UGC and get to a level of profitability to where you didn't have to raise it because a lot of folks is tough to make ads work below $50. And so they keep raising the price just to make it work. But then they're alienating all set of users and then retention suffers when the price is higher. There's so many downstream factors that if you can make it work at a lower price in a market that can go big, it can just be magical to leave that excess money on the table for the consumer versus trying to capture it all yourself. But then on the flip side, let's like, there's markets where like, it's just it's not going to go as viral. It's not going to be as big. It's going to cost more to acquire the user. The pain point is more valuable. The demographic is older. It's like you need to understand all of those things. And in like your philosophy of pricing, don't just price it for $30 because that's what KLAI did. And don't just raise your price because you heard that on some podcast, like you get to really think deeply like what's our motivation, what's our market, what's the pain point, how much are people willing to spend, you know, why are we doing this? And so it's really cool to kind of hear you talk through that. Yeah, I think that's you hit the nail on the head. The easiest way for an app founder to blow a ton of money is to copy what KLAI did or copy what you saw on a podcast because like my app is not your app. Your app is not my app. Well, works for us isn't going to work for you. And vice versa, like, so like figure out works for you. Really think about it. Don't just be a robot and like look at everything through a critical lens and let that inform your decision making. Yeah, totally. Well, we are coming up on time. But before I do, I think people would be mad at me if I didn't at least ask what you can talk about the my fitness pal acquisition. I mean, you know, dream scenario. So many people listening to this podcast are like, I'm going to blow up my app and then I'm going to sell it. You know, I know, you know, you can't share the price or any any details. But you know, what can you tell us about that part of the story of finally getting to that exit? Yeah, what I can't say is I absolutely like a door. the MyFitnessPal team. They have been so nice and so welcoming and so like willing to like let CaliI still be CaliI. And that's so cool. And I've learned so much from them. I think this is you know, my goal remains the same. I want CaliI to become the number one fitness app and number one calorie tracker in the world. And MyFitnessPal is helping us do that because they have a bunch of institutional knowledge and experience. And yeah, like this is like I'm so we're so lucky and fortunate. And yeah, shout out MyFitnessPal. You guys are great. Thank you so much. That's awesome. Did they call you or did you call them? Like how did that? That is Zach, like our CEO, Zach, he handled all of it. Honestly, I, and that was like, I think why CaliI worked so well is I was focused on marketing and like nothing else. Henry, development, nothing else. And like we just let each other focus on our domains of expertise, trusted each other wholeheartedly. And the outcome was greater than any, like it was like is the purpose is I couldn't have dreamed of a better scenario. Like this is just everything I ever wanted. That's awesome. I asked a question knowing you couldn't say much and you're at a bigger company now. And there's PR people and everything like that. But thanks for sharing what you did. And then maybe five years from now, if you've moved on or a decade from now, come back on and we'll get the full story because I mean, again, not to say you should because you can't and you probably even have like contractual obligations and stuff. But for the acquisitions where people can talk about it publicly, I think it just is really fascinating. And so the stories that are told are really interesting. So eventually the full story will be told and it'll be really fascinating to hear all the ins and outs and negotiations and how things happened and what the price actually was and stuff like that. But I wasn't at all expecting to hear that today. So I think it's great though. And I think, you know, what you did say is super informative those like if you're trying to sell your app and you're going to stick around. And if you really believe in the app and you're not selling it just to cash in. But like, you know, I mean, I mean, in some ways, kind of surprised that you you suck around this long, you know, a lot of these acquisitions, it's like you sell the app and then maybe you give a three month transition and you move on, but like you're there, what more than a year later or almost a year later. And it just speaks to like you, what you just said, it's like you believed in the app and you didn't sell it just to cash in and you sold it to like take it to the next level, which is really cool. Absolutely. The way I see it is that catalyzed my legacy, you know, I built this. I care about it. I love it. I was truly obsessed. And like when my kids and my grandkids are scrolling through the app store, I want them to be able to see Callie and my dad built that. Like, that's, that's like I'm proud of that. And like, so it's really important that, you know, and Callie has next phase that it continues to, to be what I envisioned it would be when we first started building it. Yeah, that's so cool. And again, I mean, I think, I think folks who, and I'll say I looking from the outside in made different assumptions and had different views on how it all went and talking to you, it's just so clear that you guys put so much work and so much passion and so much time into this in a way that, you know, people who are like, I mean, I'll call myself out, you know, I never put as much energy thought and deep introspection into into my abs. And that's part of why they never took off the way they did. And so it's like you can say, Oh, Callie, I was lucky. They launched at the right time or whatever. But like you guys really worked hard and crushed it because of those things you did and how passionate you were about it. And it was fun having this conversation with you to like really get that on the table that the success wasn't just some lucky fluke. It's like you guys grinded and you were really smart about so many little intricate details that so many people don't sweat. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And like, you know, I'd be remiss to deny the fact that there was a lot of luck involved, right? Yeah, of course. We had tailwinds that helped us. But the way I see it is hard work and dedication increases your surface area for luck. And it's like we couldn't have had one without the other. Awesome. Well, as we wrap, I'm going to ask you the three questions I ask every guest now. And it'll be especially fun now that you're, you know, I have almost a year under your belt with my fitness pal. What's the most impactful experiment or change of the past year? Your biggest win. And let's just say since the my fitness pal acquisition. Yeah, I think tribe tribe has been super helpful in like our paid ad like sourcing paid ads. It's been like a game changer. It just like allows you to source paid ads at a much faster rate. And like the quality of the ads is amazing. And so you kind of shouted them out earlier. The way that works is that you actually pay a percentage of ad spend. So instead of like paying a creator $10,000 for this or $500 for that, you just say create a bunch and whatever works, you get paid based on how much we spend behind it. So the creator can make a ton of money or not much, but it's very aligned. Yeah. It's a, that's the thing. It aligns incentives for the first time ever. Yeah. Hey, you know, I meant to ask this earlier, but since we're on the topic, what were your thoughts on affiliate marketing? That is almost like an affiliate type deal. Totally. Yeah. If you can do it, right? I think it's great. Like whenever you can align incentives, I think it creates a scenario where it's a win-win. And like I mentioned with our influencers, that's always what I wanted. I want everyone to win. There's enough to go around. So I think affiliate marketing is probably the easiest way to make that happen. Yeah. Did you all do much affiliate or at all with Kalea? Anyone that wanted to, like a promo code or whatever, they were welcome to use it. Can you share like how you thought about pricing those and how much you paid out and whether it was, you know, one of the things and you know, again, if you can't say totally understand, but you know, one of the things I've thought about with affiliate is a lot of affiliate deals will be like forever. Like if they use your promo code, you know, they're going to get the renewals for decades to come. And that is exciting to create this like passive income for an influencer. But from my side, I've always thought like, you know, if I'm going to sell an app, that can really complicate things. I've got this like money that's just sitting hanging out there that I'm going to owe to people over the long haul. Now it's tied to profit. So at least there's a tie there. But yeah, how did you think about prices affiliate deals? Yeah. So I mean, this is public. It's in the app. Anyone can sign up. And it's just it's $10 like you get $10 for every sign up. Oh nice. For every sale. Not like downloads. Yeah, right, right, right. So basically like I mean, on the gross margin, 33% of the sale, and then it's just a one-time sale. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, that's a great infrastructure. I like that. All right. Next question. What's the worst experiment? The biggest fail, the change that bombed. And probably like any influence, like a bunch of influencer deals. Right. There's always those it just yeah, they didn't work for whatever reason. But it's you never fail without learning. So like that was a key. Just as long as we learn from it. Yeah. That's great advice. And the last question is fill in the blank. Growth would be easier if growth would be easier if people would focus on the work. There's so many people that do everything but the work. And it's really not that complicated. It's not easy, but it is simple. And it's just like put in the work. Just do it. And like it sucks sometimes. Like if it sucks, that means you're probably doing something right. Right. And just do the work. It's not procrastinating. Such good advice. And I said this. I think I'm the livestream with Dawson or I've said this a few times before for those who listen to the podcast and live streams regularly. I've I could a little app. I didn't expect it to make a bunch of money or anything. But I felt for the same exact trap that every developer falls for is that I got super now vibe coating this app that by the time it launched, I just I didn't have any energy left to come market it. And I can make excuses. I mean, I got four kids. It was a summer. They were all home. But like I mean, that's that's where the rubber meets the road. And like I never expected to make like thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. But had I put a little more effort into marketing, I probably could have made enough to like take a nice vacation with the family or something like that. But you got to put in the work and it's hard. Yeah. That's where the magic lies. It's in the work you're avoiding. Yeah. Oh, man. Such good advice. All right, Jake. This was so much fun. I usually ask at the end of what you want to pitch, but you already pitched by just anything else you wanted to share as we wrap. If you want to follow me, you can follow me on Twitter. I you can follow me on LinkedIn. I've got a newsletter. The goal is just to share as much value and help you guys build the next Cali. I that's that's okay. Do you do consulting? I do. Yeah. Okay. I mean, do you you open a client? Or is it pretty just? Yeah. Yeah. Just reach out to me that on Twitter LinkedIn. I'm happy to help if I if I think I'm a good fit. Yeah. Still grinding full full time job. I can't stop. Side sass and doing consulting. That's amazing. All right. Thank you so much, Jake. This is a blast. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening. 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