#17 - How to build a successful Shopify App 🚀

Shopify Unite London is in less than a week.

So this is the last email before Unite. And I'm so excited!

If you don't know it, I'll be a speaker this year.

This will be the first event where I'll talk about how I grew my apps. And this is also the first event where I'll speak English!

To be honest, I'm a bit nervous about it. 😅

In today's email I want to talk about a concept that I share sometimes.

It's about "daring". I've had this problem for so long.

Usually, you want to do something or you want to ask something. But even before doing or asking, you feel like you can't do it or that the person will say "no".

And that's a big problem.

I'm gonna share with you something huge that happened to me today 🤯

I want to start playing football (soccer for people in the USA, but we'll stick to football, haha).

I love watching football but I never played. And as I had just moved to my new apartment, I told myself I wanted to do something new. A new challenge.

And I decided to play football. With a team.

Now you're probably saying "What does this have to do with the subject?"

Wait, don't be in a hurry 😂.

The thing is, I never played football but I know that there are different leagues and as I never played, I can't really choose where I want to go. I didn't even know the different leagues that existed!

I was on my computer, scrolling through the different clubs near me. And the really close one, like a 10-minute walk, seemed like perfect.

Great bench, close to my house, perfect! Well... Not really. 😅

The club was in "N3". This is the 5th division. And it's a great division. Right before professionals.

Now we are coming to the point. I could have said "The division is too high for me, I never played football". But instead I told myself: What can go wrong? What if I just call them?

The worst is that they're going to say "no". But you never know!

So I tried. I walked to the club. I didn't even know where the office was. And when I found it I asked this woman: Can I play in your club?

So she asked: How old are you?

I said "25".

She said: You're a bit old, when did you start playing?

And I replied: I never played 😂

But after arguing with her, she accepted to call the coach.

As she explained the situation to the coach, I knew it would be complicated.

But I asked to get the coach's phone number. So I could talk to him. Directly!

And so here I was, outside, with the phone number. I picked up my phone and started to type the numbers.

I'm not gonna lie, I was shaking. 😂

But hey! The worst I'll get is a no!

I called the coach and I started to explain the situation. I sold myself. Told him I was here to give my best. That when I do something, I do it at 100%.

Guess what happened?

Even if he told me "You're too old to start playing football". He gave me a date. An hour. A location.

And he told me: "You'll pass a test and we'll see".

Now don't make me say what I didn't say. I will probably fail the test. I never played football 😂

But remember, you never know 🤷‍♂️

The problem is in your head. You think you're not good enough. You think that you can't make it. But the people who succeed are the people who dare.

You need to repeat that sentence. The people who succeed are the people who dare.

The more you dare, the more opportunities you'll attract.

And remember one thing, the worst you can get is a NO.

I don't know how many opportunities I created that way. And you can too! Don't wait for opportunities to come into your hand. Create them! 🔥

$32,000 MRR 🔥

Here we are! $32,000 MRR! Another step to the $500,000 ARR! We'll never stop 💪

We still have many things we want to do on WideBundle and WideReview.

I want to share with you how we grew from $25,000 to $32,000 MRR in a few months.

We were stuck. For a long time. And I didn't know what to do to break the ceiling.

Then I thought about a sentence someone told me once: If you want to get results you never had. Start doing things you never did.

But someone also told me that you must focus on your strengths rather than your weaknesses.

So I thought about that and think the best is to mix both of these sentences.

If you're growing, go on with your strengths. If you're not growing anymore, focus on your weaknesses.

That's what we did. We were good at word of mouth, App Store optimization, and influence marketing.

So as we were growing. We doubled down on it.

But once we stopped. I started to focus (unfortunately not early enough) on my weaknesses.

• The churn

• The number of app partnerships we had

So I hired Nico. His first goal was to reduce the churn. Then it was to make more partnerships.

And it worked!

Today, we're going for 41,600$ MRR (for $500,000 ARR) and nothing can stop us!

See you next week,

Mat