Grow a following first, then build the app your viral videos and comments ask for

Pat Walls… earlier which I really loved, which is that women are going to build all these $100,000 per month apps because of one thing: women own distribution. So it's just a matter of time before the technical gets easy enough and we live in this social media world, anybody can build anything. So let's talk about that distribution piece. Take this app. How'd you get tens of thousands of users to see your app, download it, install it, and pay for it?

Sarah PearlSo if you have a personal brand and if you have a following, if you can go viral, you could sell anything. I mean, I could sell air, and it'll sell, right? First piece is how do you create a viral personal brand? And it's actually so easy. You find a niche. You look up the most viral content that's performing in that niche. You study core human psychology of what gets people to move, and literally keep recreating viral content. If you have a video that hits, like recreate it to infinity. I've been recreating the same viral content for years now, and it still continues to go viral and perform and convert. And once you have a video that really pops off, you want to like work backwards and ask yourself, what is a product that I could naturally insert into this video that would help the virality and also solve a problem that people are facing? Their first thought would be like, "I need to close out of TikTok and go download this right now."

Pat WallsOkay, cool. Let's go a little bit into the specifics of this. You kind of mentioned that there's one format you do over and over. And oftentimes, when I talk to app founders that are crushing it, there's usually like one video or one format that has led to like the majority of the signups and the revenue. Would you be able to walk me through just one of those examples of a video that has just crushed it for you?

Pat Walls… shows that you're solving a good problem rather than building a bunch of things that people don't need. Last question that we ask everyone who comes on the channel, if you could go back in time before you were on social media or maybe before you decided to actually build an app, even though you had no technical experience, what would be your advice that you would give to yourself, or for anybody watching this who wants to build apps like you?

Sarah PearlHm. Well, I would start by saying that I think spite is the greatest motivation that you could ever have. Peace and love doesn't build empires, pain does, quite frankly. And so I truly believe that usually the most successful people in the world, the reason they started was because someone didn't believe in them. Some system worked against them. I just want you to know if you're going through a really difficult chapter, you're actually in the luckiest season of your life because you have the most amount of fuel that you will ever have. Everyone works front to back, and I think the reason a lot of my products have been so successful and so fast is because I actually work backwards: create the content and the distribution first, and then I create the product.

Sarah PearlAnd it becomes so obvious. When you're creating content, it is so obvious where the gap is, what you could easily add into your content that would perform well as an app. Create the content, see what people are saying in the comments. "Oh, I wish this existed," or "I'm struggling with this." That is the blueprint, right? And also I want to say one last thing, I think there's so much copy-paste in this industry, in the app space, and I think what made Stella so successful is an app like this didn't exist. I innovated. I pioneered something. I encourage app founders, especially women, to invent something in this space that solves a problem that hasn't been solved before.

Pat WallsThat's great advice, especially on creating content first. I have a lot of people who come to me, and they say, "Hey, what app should I build?" And I say, "Don't build an app. Go build content. Then you can find your app idea once you do that." So I think that's great advice. Thank you, Sarah, for coming on and sharing your story and inspiring, hopefully, a lot of young ladies out there, or a lot of people out there. Thank you for coming on.