Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts)

David Barnard:

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 Barnard. My guest today is Yuliya Lennox. Working across some of the biggest apps on the planet, including BetterMe, Replika, and Solid Starts, Yuliya has spent a decade doing one thing, growing apps. On the podcast, I talk with Yuliya about why founders belong in the marketing trenches more often, what makes ugly ads perform so well, and why stable ad performance is actually a red flag.

Quick programming note before we start the podcast. Yuliya will be joining me on YouTube live on July 30th, 9:00 AM Pacific, 1800 Central European Time. I've heard from so many of you over the years that you love the podcast, but you end up in your car or on a walk just shouting into the void, "What about this?" or "What about that?" So now's your chance. Take some notes as you listen to the podcast, listen carefully and join us on July 30th to ask Yuliya some questions.

Hey, Yuliya, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Yuliya Lennox:

Thank you for having me. Nice to see you again.

David Barnard:

Really looking forward to this conversation. We met in person just a few weeks ago at the WWDC mansion party and you actually spoke on a little panel I hosted during the mansion party. It was so fun to get your insights. I though it'd be great to have you on the podcast so we could do a much deeper dive. You didn't get to talk a lot on that panel. It was two other people and people were asking dumb questions a lot. But anyhow, you've had quite a career at mobile, and so I wanted to go through some of your top lessons across all these different companies. So you were at Coca-Cola in the Ukraine doing standard marketing and you got thrown into the deep end. Your first ever experience with a mobile app was BetterMe, and you joined as essentially the CMO. Maybe we should start with just a little bit of what that was like, and then we'll get into the practical lessons and takeaways from all the different amazing companies you've been at.

Yuliya Lennox:

Thank you. Yes, I do think that the experience in BetterMe was a shaping one, but in the same time, it's very similar what a lot of app founders are probably going through right now. At that time, we didn't know anything and we were kind of dipping our toes in the water. And this is basically what I see when a person launches their app they're trying, they're looking at different angles. They're trying to learn as much as they can. And this is why I'm here now. I want to talk about 10 years of experience so that people don't make the same mistakes and also take some lessons that I had to live through. Some of them are painful. But this would be, as you know, BetterMe is an amazing company that grew so much and I would like to talk about something that made them special.

And this is not looking for the stability in their performance marketing. They're performance marketing-heavy obviously. So when you're going into the business, what I would recommend to you if, for example, you launch your traffic, you're spending some money, you are spending 100, $500 per day, and then you see same CPMs, same CTAs, you see that, "Oh, one user costs me $30, I'm getting $50. Yes, I have my margin. I will scale. I will go further."

This is bad for you actually because you stop trying and you think, oh, my LTV RI, whatever, it looks great. I'm doing everything fine. You are not doing fine. You are doing very, very badly. Because your first tries, your first creatives, your first results shouldn't be good in any way. They will not be very good. What do you need to see in your performance market? Has there ever been a moment when you thought, wow, this is so much better than everything that I've done before where your CPAs went down, doubled down, when your amount of purchases tripled in one day.

This is the moment when you know that this is actually happening for you. If it's just happening, it's not okay. But when it's happening all of a sudden with one creative and it will happen with one creative, one concept, one something, that's when you think, oh, I kind of made it. I understand what it's about now. So never settle for mediocracy and always, always be looking for those creatives that will move the needle to the points where you never expect it. You never expect it, but when it happens, you're like, "Ah, that's what Yuliya talked about.

David Barnard:

I love the framing you started off with that all along the way from 10 years ago till today, there's always been change. App tracking transparency was a huge change. People got really good at UGC in the last couple of years. It was new. You had to write the playbook. And really it seems like that's where the outside returns are is not in the safe, this is what everybody's doing. It's actually writing your own playbook and figuring out the new thing where there is opportunity versus just doing what's been done before. And then I really like the framing of you shouldn't seek out too much stability because that means you're not swinging for the fences. And it's a swinging for the fences that really give you those outside returns as well.

Yuliya Lennox:

Fun fact actually. You're talking about UGCs and the first people that were with UGCs in the fitness sphere, it did happen around 2017 and it was Bending Spoons that just got into the IPO. So they're switching it a little bit and getting all their traffic and then building their company. Obviously, it's not just about that, but for them finding those UGC angles first really helped them a lot. So yeah, you're right.

David Barnard:

So other than just setting the expectations of the marketing team that you should expect some big failures and you should expect some uncertainty and some big movements, how do you organize around this idea and how do you find and try weird things that are going to give you that? And then also maybe there's some amount of safeguards you should put in place to not go too crazy with it.

Yuliya Lennox:

No, nothing is too crazy. And also nothing is too, if I can say it, nothing is too ugly. There is this famous saying like make ugly ads. I think we invented that and I believe in that hundred percent because people don't want the TV shots at any point. They want something that catches them on the first glance. And it is hard to do that. And now that I turn into creative marketing a little bit, I have to stop myself knowing this and telling this on all the podcasts all the time that please, please don't make the pretty ads. Don't listen to Claude when they tell you which creatives to create and then they give you a 15-second creative. No, don't do that. Always be like first, second. You need to understand what you are selling and what you are doing.

This is very, very important. Yes. So guardrails should be around really knowing that you are not a marketer that is a Coca-Cola marketer that sells a brand that is 200 years old, that is known by everybody already. You are selling something that nobody knows about basically. And when you come to traditional marketing actually, what they tell you first, when you're launching a brand, you should start with something that is super about the product. So for example, you're launching juices on the market and there has been never been a juice company on the market. First, you need to talk about how good they are for your health. You need to talk about how you get nutrients from them. And then you go to happiness and their feelings and worry. So when you start, and with performance marketing, we are always on this starting point.

You should be about the product that you're selling and obviously about the pain that you're solving for the users. And if I can actually talk about it a little bit more, I want to tell a lot of people come to me sometimes, not a lot of people, some people come to me. One or two people have come to me and asked me a question about launching their product. And a lot of times they come up with the idea and they're like, "I've already hired a developer or I'm a developer. I'm vibe coding it. I know that you're a big vibe coder, so obviously you know what I'm talking about." And it pains me so much to always tell them, start with marketing first. No, you cannot vibe code the whole product and then hope for it to be needed. Just start with marketing, sell an idea, sell something and then refund because you don't have a product.

It's okay. Just see if there are enough people even interested in this product because you can do something that is very interesting for me and for yourself. And I feel it all the time. I'm like, "Oh." Not even I. My husband really likes aquariums and he thinks, wow, we will do these apps for all these aquarium people and it'll be so popular. And if we did marketing, because I'm obviously stopping him from chasing his dreams, meaning bad wife.

So if we did that, we would see that the audience is very small, that it's very expensive to bring new people to the app, and that we would never make the organization happen. So don't think that your idea is bad, but always prove it with marketing before you actually put some money into launching something. This is my super heartfelt advice that also I fall into the steps all the time. Everybody does.

David Barnard:

Well, let me push back on that because I'm curious you're thinking, and maybe I'm just naive on this front, not having done it myself, but for an aquarium app, would there not potentially be a way to make that kind of app work with UGC? Because I imagine there's people who are into aquariums are very much into aquarium-related content on Instagram. And then aquariums are expensive. I mean the fish are expensive, the maintenance is expensive, the fake plants are everything about that. I've never had an aquarium, but I've looked at them and it's so expensive. And so that's maybe a category where you can charge a lot and then there's enough of a dedicated niche where you could create content that speaks directly to that. From your perspective, was it just too small of an idea or do you think it's still just too hard to reach those people and you just couldn't charge enough to make it worth it?

Yuliya Lennox:

No, I do have to say thank you for telling me that because obviously we believed in this idea, we wanted to do it, but we wanted to do it before Claude. And I even came to Lovable, made my first sketches and stuff, but I'm not a vibe coder at any point, so I gave up before trying it, obviously. So it is a good idea. We agree on that. Please don't steal it. Anyone who listens to it, please don't steal it. But yeah, it is probably very doable. Anything it's doable, let's be honest. But we also need to understand what is the reason for doing it. So if for example, you want to be making, I don't know, 20K per month so that you just don't have to go to work a nine to five job, yes, that's an amazing idea. But if I came with that to ABC, I would probably not have the LTV to CAC that wouldn't be needed to sell the app.

Or could you do partnerships with brands and sell specific products? Yes, probably a good idea. Yes, I will do that idea. So thank you, David, very much. But what I was talking about is that just because it was a good idea, you agreed with me, but if it was a not very good idea, you would be like, "Yeah, you should try. You should try. Of course you are." Because we all want to support people around us and we would be like, "Yes, this is such a great idea." This is how Eastern Europeans and Americans are super different because you seem to always be supporting ideas and supporting people around you. And in our countries it would be like, "Who would need that? Nobody would need that obviously." So yeah, that's different mindsets. But yeah, so don't fall into traps by having the support of your family. That's also a big one probably.

David Barnard:

Yeah. Yeah, totally. And I guess what that even boils down to in your framing is even to get to that 20K a month in profit that you would be able to quit your nine to five job, unless you're just an amazing UGC or find creators that you could pay dirt cheap or find affiliates. There are a lot of creative ways to do it, but if it were just traditional performance marketing, you'd probably be having to spend 100, 200K to eke out that 20K a month. Now-

Yuliya Lennox:

And it would have to be a full-time job, let's be honest.

David Barnard:

Yeah, it's hard to bootstrap. And maybe this is really good for people to hear who are just starting out. It is really hard to bootstrap to that level, especially on paid because you could just spend every dollar that comes in into paid marketing and then you're working full-time and not actually making any money. The beauty of subscriptions though is if it's at all retentive, then by the next year you should start cash flowing a little better. But then you got to think about it as this year-long investment where you're working full-time, making almost nothing to hopefully get it out of retention in year two to make it work. So back to your original point, it's like it's probably a pretty hard app to bootstrap into and would take a lot of work.

Yuliya Lennox:

Well, talking about bootstrapping actually, the second app that I moved to was fully bootstrapped. And when I joined it, it was doing 35K per month in traffic with a lot of spending. So it was quite a challenge. And it actually taught me something that is also very important for all the app founders. And it is don't look for a silver bullet, don't look for a CMO, don't look for a person that will save you from your own troubles. It will happen if you meet someone great, if you're super, super lucky. But most of the times, if you are the founder type, you will figure it out in marketing yourself and you need to put a lot of effort into understanding marketing. You are probably a smart person that have understood much harder things in your life. And please don't think that it is... It's not hard.

It's not hard at all to understand marketing, but to feel it with your own hands, this is something that every founder needs to know. Why I'm talking about it here, because it was an app called EWA: Learn English, and at some point it was number two after a Duolingo and it has an amazing team. And the founder, he actually was super into marketing. He was on every marketing meeting. He was doing it all himself. He was thinking of creatives himself. And when I left, he actually was like, "Well, I want to do it. I want to do it because it's also my passion. It's my product. I want to make sure that I talk about my product in a way that people will understand it." And I appreciate that greatly because in people when they understand that they love their product enough to actually promote it and to talk about it very, very much.

And so basically you should do it all yourself on... We talked about at some point about the first one-person startup, unicorn startup, something like that where you don't need anyone anymore. And this is the first fear where I do still think that you need developers because that's too hard to understand for any normal person, sorry. But I do think that marketing is something that everybody's a marketer and you can understand it. As a founder, you need to understand it definitely. I don't know, do you agree?

David Barnard:

I was thinking of an example where you're talking. The Ladder CEO, Greg, have been on the podcast a couple times, and that's one of the things he talked about was that they were really struggling with marketing and he as a CEO was just like, "Okay, I am going to figure this out and then I'll pass it off to somebody else." And I think that probably something more CEOs, even of bigger companies today, not just bootstrapping, but even if you're already at a fairly large company and you're running the company, or if you're a marketer at the company, you should be encouraging your CEO or whatever, that when there's a big hurdle, the CEO should probably be pretty hands-on trying to solve that specific thing. It is something I respect a ton about RevenueCat CEO, Jacob. It's one of the things he's done really well over the years is when there is a big blocker or a new thing that we really need to push on, he gets really involved in a way that I think shows the company this is a priority.

It also engages all his experience and knowledge and effort and passion to make it work. A founder is just going to have the passion to make it work in a way that an employee just never will. No matter how good of an employee, there's just a difference. And so yeah, I totally agree. And I would say not just for bootstrapping, but any CEO when you're facing a roadblock should really jump on that and get into the nitty-gritty and help be part of the solution. It's funny when you were talking earlier about ugly ads, it reminded me that the most kind of shocking ugly ad that I saw in probably, it was probably the time you were there at BetterMe was this really gross belly fat ad.

Yuliya Lennox:

It's the best one. It's the best one. I love it so much. Yeah.

David Barnard:

And that ad, I mean I saw it for years after that, so it must have been an incredibly performant ad. And it was one of those things where it really grabbed your attention because it was almost shocking to see this illustration with this fat just hanging off the front. And it's like to your exact point, I vividly remember that one specific ad from a decade ago because it was so shocking. And that's kind of the point. The point is that it got people's attention. Do you remember that ad specifically? And then any other thoughts on-

Yuliya Lennox:

That is the best ad ever. I loved it completely. Yes, it was invented during the time I was there. But it also means that you have a very good eye for it because you don't remember the skinny girls that were working out obviously, but you do remember something that chocks you and that this is the thing. Yes, it's completely about taking the person out of the grid of scrolling your feed. And sometimes your feed is so pretty that you need something ugly to take your attention from it. So yes, this is why it works for sure.

David Barnard:

How do you think about those kind of ad as you do become a brand though? So for example, I was just talking about Ladder. Ladder is at a point in scale and what they're trying to do, they partnered with a massive influencer, actually movie star, music star. And so at their level, they wouldn't want to run that kind of ad. When do you think you shouldn't be doing those kind of ugly ads? When does it actually tarnish the brand? Or are we just too precious about brand? Everybody should be trying those kind of ads.

Yuliya Lennox:

I shouldn't say it because what if my future employer, I hope not to have future employers, but what if they see it? But brand is something unless you are something like, I don't know, Coca-Cola, brand is something that doesn't exist and nobody cares about your brand but you. And I do agree that it is very important for some brands to have the integrity and to not do certain things, but you don't have to... Let's talk about this particular example. You can have Hillary Duff doing her thing, amazing, amazing ads. Love it, love the messaging stuff. And at that panel, I actually asked them, "Do you think it'll bring you their eye that you're hoping for?" And they're like, "Well, it's a brand marketing. Obviously you cannot do the ROI yet." And that's the thing. Nothing brand-y will ever work as good as something performative.

So you don't have to choose actually if you think about it with Meta, with everything that we are doing, you want to run awareness ads, please be my guest. Do that, spend your money. It will not bring you anything short-term. If you need short-term results, you go performance. You don't say your brand, you say fitness app, you say whatever, horoscope app, whatever you are doing. And this way you can still do performance marketing and have your results and then you can afford brand marketing. But other than that, yes, I don't believe in brand marketing and I wish all the best to Ladder obviously, but I don't think you said, oh, they're so big. They are at that point already. Are they though? At which point do you become so self-obsessed that you think that you are now the Nike or whatever? But the Nike's playing different game.

We are playing the monetization app subscription game and they don't have any other choice as well. Their products wouldn't sell if you were making them ugly. They are selling the prettiness. We are selling a function and that is something that is different there. Yeah.

David Barnard:

I agree generally as far as I think folks are way too precious on brand and think it matters. And you're just making 10K a month on your little side project and you're like, "Oh yeah, I would never do an ugly ad." And like you said, and then my branding is too important and I want to make sure the colors in the ad align with the colors of the app. And I love how you pointed out don't take Claude's advice because Claude is just going to tell you brand matters and everything needs to be pretty and the colors need to align and all this kind of stuff. But I do think there is a transition point. And with Ladder, even though he did say it's tough to determine the exact payoff, but they took a huge bet signing Hillary Duff as a influencer for the app, and it has already paid off.

And he shared in the panel that almost immediately they saw a pretty big influx. And so at some point, maybe it's okay to let yourself, if it's performing and if it's working, to let yourself make that transition. But generally, I do think we are all too precious about that. So it's good to have that kind of pushback. And then you just have to justify it too. Then you have to like, why does brand matter and how is this going to pay off? And are we sure it's going to pay off? And you have to ask yourself those kind of questions where if you just default to like, "Oh, no, we need to be careful with the brand," then you're having to justify the performance marketing and it should really be the opposite.

Yuliya Lennox:

I can give you a couple of examples here, but one of the big mistakes that I did regarding the branding in Solid Starts, for example, I came there and I was like, "Nobody cares. Nobody thinking." But for some people when the brand is big enough, and Solid Starts is a very big brand. They care a lot about what it represents. And this is where it is. When you're talking about babies, when you're talking about real doctors, and that was like AI baby, not AI babies as in real babies, but babies made out of fruit. We are about feeding babies. Fruit babies are super popular on Instagram. I should definitely do an ad like that. And then we saw some feedback of, should we trust a company that invented this to feed our babies? And then I'm like, "Okay, yes, we will do brand now because that's just..."

I understand that it's no big deal in the grand scheme of things. The universe wouldn't collapse if you do one ad that isn't in your brand voice, of course. But in the same time, if you are something that is selling trucks, maybe it's not good to sell it with, I don't know, AI strawberries, I don't know, whatever. So basically see what you're selling and if making ugliest applies to it, but also don't assume that it doesn't apply just because you love your brand so much. The brand that only exists in the heads of you, your family and some of your employees, not even all of them.

David Barnard:

Yeah. Well, that was a really fun digression. I think people will enjoy that pushback on both sides. So what was the net philosophy you learned at EWA?

Yuliya Lennox:

This one is actually very applicable now when you see that a lot of people, they don't use their strengths. A couple of people came to me at some point and they were from different countries. They were from Lithuania, they were from India, they were from different markets and they're like, "Oh, help us grow." And what they want to do first is to go America, of course, let's start with the US market because it has a lot of cash value. It is right, but in the same time, you should look first at what you know best. So Babbel, a great example, what's their name? Blinkist also. They started with Germany and they're super big in Germany and they're getting the same results in Germany as some people are getting in the US, which is what, 10 times bigger. So if you have a benefit of knowing some local market better, definitely use it because this is what Eva did.

It was very good in speaking their native language and they started this super funny, super whimsical app that everybody in their local country liked. Then they grew it to all their other languages. But the actual lesson here is not that the actual lesson here is the world is really, really big. And with current AI, when you can translate any service in three hours into any languages, why don't you try different languages? Why don't you try localization? Because this is something that can double your income just by trying, let's be honest. And there are markets that if you go to conferences, you know that everybody's talking about like, "Oh, go to Japan. They're so rich and they will bring you a lot of money." It's kind of hard. It's kind of hard to go to Japan because they have very local things. But at the same time, there are a lot of countries that are just as Americanized, Europeanized, can even say that, but it's okay where you can find a lot of benefits for yourself.

So localization is something I would definitely bet on if I had to join any company. And I see it also happening in a lot of companies. When one door closes, the other ones open. What we found, for example, in my last company, it was that testing your ads, testing your ads is super important. You need to test 500 ads per week. And if you do that on US CPMs, you will definitely go broke. But if you do that with countries that have the similar conversion rates like, I don't know, Indonesia, and you will see the same tests for $10 a day instead of $1,000 per day, this is where you can actually help yourself scale in the US as well by testing different locals. That's for sure.

David Barnard:

Any top fails or lessons from localization? I know, and you kind of hinted at it with Japan. We've talked about this on the podcast a few times now that certain markets, you really do have to understand the local customs. They need to feel like you understand them. You, in Japan, almost have to have a low local partner or even a partner agency to not just localize the text in the app, but localize the kind of images you use, the kind of paywall you do. Is there any other top lessons on localization?

Yuliya Lennox:

I can say that in Replika we did make a big bet on Japan. We even have person that knew Japanese in the team and we did the actual localization, the culturalization of the app didn't work in any way because it is harder than we think. But in the same time, there are so many good examples. You wouldn't think Turkey's the biggest market right now. Who would have thought? Who thinks about Turkey when they are not going on a vacation? But still it is converting in a lot of ways. So don't go countries you cannot understand obviously, but don't go hard on countries you cannot understand if it's not like something... I would never probably be able to understand Taiwanese people, for example. But in the same time I sell stuff there, but I do understand that it's a fraction of what it could be if I actually understand the culture and it's okay.

And I don't know if you have something to say here, but I want to also add from my personal experience and why I came to the States in the first place was to learn different cultures of the people. And here you can actually see how different people are, but at the same time, how sane people are. For example, you wouldn't think, but my friend is Korean and she has the same childhood traumas as me because the parents are the same level of harshness. And it is easier, for example, for us to talk to people from Central America, for example, because they also didn't have this happy childhood that everybody thinks about. So especially when you are working to solve people's problems, all the problems come from childhood. So understanding those small things, this is kind of important. Yes, that's my main lesson on localization. Don't even try it, but also try it very, very much.

David Barnard:

I love the way you framed it. And that's a great lesson too, as far as don't look for the differences, look for the similarity. That's a really great framing is to go in and understand how those countries are similar, not just how they're different. So after EWA, you ended up at Palta, the parent company of Flo, which I think everybody listening to the podcast should know. It's one of the biggest apps in the world right now. What are some of the lessons you learned there at Palta?

Yuliya Lennox:

What I learned there was more about the culture and how you build big companies. And the thing I want to say here is actually why I'm on this podcast as well is that they have a very good culture of sharing things. So you would have a lot of companies coming together and just sharing like today we did this test, this test performed this way. You can steal this test and localize it and put it in your app and see how it works. And sharing doesn't mean that you are losing something. It always means that you are gaining something. So I would actually tell to more marketers, share your wins. It doesn't mean that everybody will get the same results because no matter what we are sharing, no matter how we are doing it's so much different from industry to industry. It just keeps your creative juices flowing and this is what we actually need.

Because I think that at some point, someone somewhere added a blink on the continue button. You know the... And turned out it increases your conversion. And these ideas that don't come to just one head and this is why my dream goal for this is what I talk about with every RevenueCat representative out there, that we should have a camp for marketers where we work on one problem and actually try to solve it because this will be beneficial for every company actually in the world. This is why we are not failing, but as an industry, we are not growing fast enough because everybody's so siloed. If we were doing it all together, if every company in America as well, if we were trying to raise it all to grow it all together, it'll be much bigger results. But of course there are so many people that come to presentations and don't show their best creatives because no, don't show your best presentations, do your best experiments.

That is bullshit. You shouldn't do that. You should share. And the faster we iterate, the faster we grow. But also just have a peer group, just have a peer group where you can set up these weekly calls and say, "Oh, I tested this. How did it go?" Because we met at the mansion party and one of the things about it was that there were nobody selling anything and you could actually talk about with app founders. And it is such great conversation where when you actually get deep into what works, what doesn't work, you see people on the bleachers just roasting each other's apps. And it is amazing experience as well because how often do you see someone who knows what they're talking about actually to take a look at what you're doing because no company has enough budget to hire two CMOs, let's call it that.

So that's my main thing, just share. It's okay.

David Barnard:

I love that idea of doing some kind of summits or camp or even the camp framing is fun. Rent a huge Airbnb and bring 15 people from different apps in and sol some major problems over a weekend and then share some of the results with the rest of the industry. That's fantastic. I'll run that up the chain and see if RevenueCat can be the one to do something like that. Sub Club sponsored marketer camp and do exactly that. But it was the point of the mansion party and a lot of the events that we do try and do is to get people together and have those conversations. But to your point, finding those kind of communities across the industry, and it is tough when you obviously wouldn't want to share your best stuff with your competitor, but they probably see it anyway because they can just look at the Meta ad.

But find three or four apps that are adjacent to yours where you can share and that can be a really powerful thing. And what was cool with Palta is because it was portfolio company that had a lot of different apps, you were all kind of aligned to make money for Palta and so you could share those things more easily amongst each other. And so that was a really cool thing. What something else you learned with your time at Palta?

Yuliya Lennox:

And as a big company, obviously they have the budgets to hire really good consultants. And we did have people come to the company talking about marketing at a different level and people that are thinking ahead. And this is what I noticed also about some other companies that I worked in like Higgsfield, Replika, like Palta as well. They have ideas that will be working in five years from now. So it was 2021 when I was there. And at that point, there was no ChatGPT or some ChatGPT. It was ChatGPT 2.0 only in America as well. And then there was very, very basic AI. At that point they started Zing, which is AI training app. And when you think about it, there was nothing there. It was obviously a scam, not scam. But they were like, "Okay, in five years, AI will be there. We will be ready. We will be already positioned on the market as an AI company and it will be okay."

The same thing with Higgsfield when I talked to the founder of it and he told me next year AI agents will be a thing. I'm like, "I don't know what AI agents are, but if you say so, okay." And what do you know? Next year AI agents are a thing. And so this, I don't know how to become a visionary. I'm not a visionary, but at the same time, think about what doesn't exist now and what might exist in the future and go that way. This is something that somehow you need to do. Maybe do tarot cards or something like see the future and then go that way. That's my main idea here. Yeah.

David Barnard:

No, I really like that. It is like looking to the future. And right now is a really great moment where it does feel like for some tasks AI is too expensive, but it does task that in two years as AI continues to get smarter and then the current models get cheaper, maybe it is. And so right now it's a great time to take that exact advice and figure out what's going to work in two years that doesn't work today and build toward that. And for some companies, it's also accepting lower margins and accepting higher cash burn if you've got venture capital to burn today because in two years it will work. So that's really good advice. And speaking of all this AI stuff, you did spend some time at Higgsfield. What was your top lesson at Higgsfield?

Yuliya Lennox:

Yeah, Higgsfield, it was an amazing experience. This was like looking in the future. And that's also the thing that you just talked about. When we started, it was too early for the market. It was a video model and at that point it looked like, what's his name? Who was eating the pasta?

David Barnard:

Eating spaghetti.

Yuliya Lennox:

Yeah. Eating spaghetti on the earlier versions. And then we did understand that in a couple of years, and it did turn out in a year, it will be much, much better. But we came to all these VCs or we came to all these presentations talking about how it will be the future. And they looked at what was there now and they were like, "Oh no, I don't think so." And now I think they're biting their lips so hard for not investing earlier in Higgsfield. So that was an interesting one.

But overall, what I can say about that, they are a very special team. So they were founded by people that obviously won Physics Olympiads and very, very, very smart people. But besides being smart, what made them super different from everybody else is that they could sleep in the office. They worked 17 hours per day. They made all the people work 17 hours per day, but the people that were there, the core team, they were keen to do it. This is their opportunity and they took this opportunity. They are now super rich people as well. So it was the first time where I saw someone grind that hard. At all the other companies, you would see a founder grind or you would see someone being... Or not even a founder. Sometimes founders are like, "Oh, I will go surf in Bali or something." And when you see someone who is engaged in a way that everybody in the team is working 12 hours a day or whatever time a day and also they officially have six days per week workdays, whatever you call it.

Yeah. So that's too much for everyone. Would I want to work that at my age? Probably not. But in the same time with the product being so interesting, so good, so ahead of everyone else, maybe you need to. And after that company, I actually started to work more in my next companies because I'm like, "While you are sleeping, the other ones are shipping releases and I'm starting to push everyone." And obviously I see a lot of pushback because like, oh, we are Gen Z. We want our comfort. We are not used to suffering. And as a millennial, I'm used to suffering. And we all know what it takes to build a career and we all know what it takes to become successful. And to remember that even when you decided to not remember that, that's kind of important. So when you work really hard, when you are resilient, you will get where you want to be.

That's the main lesson, I think, because they are now above everybody else. I love them so much. Also, great service. I cannot promote them enough. Sorry. If you need a UGC, it's not even about loving them as a company. It's about trying the product and being like, "Oh, AI can do that now." Because before I was using Kling, for example, and I would give them the picture and it would put it into thing. I had to think about everything. And here, just as an example, I gave them the app logo and I created an avatar for a UGC person. I didn't put any prompting. I didn't put even the text in and they just gave me a perfect UGC that didn't even look like UGC. And I'm like, "Is this the future? Are we in the future now?" Because I still react to it as a person who should be used to it, but I'm not used to it.

And that's why if you work 16 hours a day, people will talk like that about your product. This is why I don't believe in working two jobs or working part-time on your own project.

David Barnard:

It's tough. I mean, as a father of four and I'm almost 50 years old, I can't anymore. And that's almost depressing. But if I think back when I was in my 20s, I actually worked at a recording studio and that's what I studied in college and that's what my passion was recording. And that's exactly what I did was I went to work at noon because musicians stay up late and sleep in by necessity oftentimes because they're playing at clubs till 2:00 AM or whatever. And so that's just their natural cycle. And so we would work from noon till 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 AM, go home, go to bed, wake up and come back at noon and do it all over again for weeks on end to make an album. I had so much fun doing that. When it's something you're passionate about, when you really care about what's going on, when you're doing something meaningful, it's very different than just being an employee where the boss is cracking the whip and it's just always so stressful.

I don't think enough people in those kind of conversations about founder mode and grinding and all that kind of stuff have maybe just not had that kind of experience of being so passionate about something and young enough to make it happen and not having kids. And there are different life situations. But it's a really good point. And if you're in that position where you can grind and you're super passionate and excited, you do often see outside results from those kind of people in those kind of situations versus the employees where you're cracking the whip to work 10 hours a day and that just doesn't work. And I think you can have great outcomes with both, but it's just a different mentality. It's a different situation. So if you can, it's pretty amazing. So after Palta, you ended up at Replika. What were some of your lessons from your time there?

Yuliya Lennox:

I want to talk about both Replika's experience and Solid Starts' experience in the same way because they are completely different apps obviously, but they are in a way same because they both had huge organic. And this is what everybody dreams about obviously. I want to be growing organic. I wanted to bring me money without spending any dollar paid ads. And this is the goal. And now I can see that goal is pretty achievable, let's be honest. Pretty achievable if you put a lot of effort on it, obviously. There is no magic bill to go viral obviously. But if you find something that doesn't exist yet, this is where your potential for organic is huge. And this is why I will talk about it later, but this is why finding something unique is 50% of your success. And with both these apps, it was very fun experience to have just money flowing in without, and you didn't have to rely only on being profitable day-to-day to actually grow the company.

But it is a double-edged sword. And if you think that it'll make you super happy to have huge organics, at some point it'll play super against you because you will see that, for example, you start with the US because you know English and you are an American person and there is no niche that would cover all the people that leave. So you need to find your niche. And at some point your niche will be all your Instagram following, TikTok following. Everybody who could have joined in five years, they will all join. And you will see that your organic stagnates. And for example, you will be like, "Oh, I want to sell my company. I want to show them great results." But your organic is already very stable and you cannot show growth. So you're like, "Oh, I will go into paid marketing Because my product is so good, everybody likes it and I can get even more money by promoting it."

50% of the time it will be cannibalization and you will not know what to do with it. And if at any point you will have investors and people pushing you to grow, it'll be very, very hard to grow without just bringing in the same money but spending more. And I have noticed it a couple of times now, this is a sad story, sad lesson, but it is a very nice feeling at first, but then you have to think about the future or always think what will be happening five years ahead. So with Replika, it was fun because it was also super ahead of its time. And in five years we didn't know that it would become super commodity because ChatGPT will be there and everybody will be doing these wrappers and stuff. So you cannot predict that all this organic will, for example, drop.

And when you are building performance marketing, performance is more or less stable. You see every day what you are getting, you are adjusting, you are obviously stressed out every day, but in the same time you can influence it with organic, you cannot influence it per se. So what do you need to do? You like, "Okay, Yuliya, you just told a situation, what's the solution for it?" Yes. So what you need to do is when you start a brand, start with performance marketing as well, because it'll definitely help you grow your organic as well. So every ad that you're showing on TikTok or on Facebook, it is bringing you new subscribers. And for example, with EWA where we have a 10 million Instagram, probably seven million Instagram, it was just a small idea and we started it and we started getting a lot of people from the ads that were just coming for free.

And then when you became a big Instagram account, you became also organically... So it grew up your organic. So a lot of people are thinking, is PR important? Is putting out things on TechCrunch? And I don't know PR, so I don't know. Is going on TV important? It is not for your performance, but in the end, it will bring you a lot of organic. But it is all only possible if you have something unique to offer to people and that's it. So if you are doing a time checker, please don't worry about organic at any point or about cannibalization or a clear for your app. No, this will not be happening. The same as branding won't be happening. But if you are something unique like an aquarium app that doesn't exist anymore yet, doesn't exist yet, then obviously you can think about organic and it is quite easy to do.

And also who I met on the mansion party is the founder of Minutes app, a great guy who is very good in bringing organic traffic. Maybe you should have him on your podcast. He gave me a masterclass on that. And I'm like, "Oh, so doing organic is pretty easy actually." So that's something you should definitely look forward for then it's new podcast.

David Barnard:

Yeah, that's such great framing around organic that you really do need to have something. The reason people share, the reason word of mouth happens, the reason you press, the reason UGC can go viral and Cal AI is a great example of this, is that it was so visual that you could take a picture. It was new, it was unique. And I imagine now three or four years on, those ads didn't perform as well because now every calorie app has that same standard functionality. And so even with the uniqueness, and it's kind of to your point, organic at some point does start to slow down, you saturate your market, competitors come in, the uniqueness is no longer unique. And so all those factors in play, you need to be looking around the corner at what's next and not just relying on the same playbook for years. And App Store search is the one area that if you're a utility and you've locked in that number one spot, those kind of things really hard to accomplish.

And the algorithms seem to favor older apps, so it's almost more hard than it's ever been to capture ASO. But that's one of the examples of organic that just seems to keep trucking along that people, I mean maybe over time trends shift and right now there are a bunch of GLP-1 apps and people are searching GLP-1s. Well, at some point it'll just be more commonplace and the trend will slow down and people won't be searching that as much or whatever. But yeah, that's the one area where man, it's the one organic channel that just seems to just deliver, deliver, deliver for years on end for some apps.

Yuliya Lennox:

I have a funny story actually about when ChatGPT came out and they didn't have their own app because they were doing it with you actually, not because they were doing it with you, but before they started doing it with you, ChatGPT was already word of mouth, but there were a lot of rappers that were released that most of them were Turkish for some reason as well. And now they are still number one, not number one, but super, super high on that. And we talked to them at some point and a lot of people wanted to play on that. And they're like, "Okay, I will do my own ChatGPT rapper. I will be your personal assistant, whatever, whatever." Because they saw that it was number one in the store for these apps. But the fun moment was that they actually got that initial install influx and they solidified their first place on the store and all of their traffic was organic.

And when you tried to actually replicate their monetization strategy, their paywalls and stuff, it didn't matter at all because they weren't getting money from there. They didn't know what to do with that as well. They couldn't even sell it because that's all just dumb luck. But we as a people who don't know that, we are like, "Oh, they must be making a lot of money. So if we replicate it, maybe we will get the same." No. No. But yeah, ASO is something you want to get into for sure. But also I look at Steve Young all the time and he has his ASO agency and I'm like, "The work is so mysterious, mysterious and I cannot understand what they're doing that it is working for them." But if you know someone who's ready to spend all their days looking for keywords and stuff, yeah, definitely be friends with that person because it's a very interesting topic to do. I'm [inaudible 00:56:12] that topic.

David Barnard:

All right. Any other top lessons from your time at Replika and Solid Starts?

Yuliya Lennox:

I was hired in a lot of companies. A recruiter reached out and they're looking for a CMO and I'm like, "Okay, I'm available, not available, blah, blah." And now also in my company, I'm also looking for some people and I'm also just like, I'm just looking for someone. And just looking for someone is not as cool as having to work with people that are actually super, I would say, almost religious about what they do. In Replika, when you have people that were like ML, and ML wasn't a super popular thing, we will think of LLMs, we will test that, we will know what to do. And you're like, "Okay, you have a super great app on the market because of that." Because at that point, we literally got millions of messages saying that you have a person in Ohio that is responding to me, this is not real.

But no, it wasn't LLM that was that good. And with Solid Starts, that's 10 times higher because everybody on that team is keen on baby led weaning and on feeding babies. And I know they're all stories and it's crazy to think that each one of them messaged the founder being like, "I'm so passionate about that, that I want to be on your team no matter what." And this is where you see the results being so amazing because if I'm just doing my job, I'm just doing my job. I clock in, clock out. If you have a person that is passionate about it, that is already a super beneficial thing for your team. But if you have 20 people that are just about that, this is why Solid Starts is actually changing the whole baby-led weaning, not even category, the baby-led weaning in the USA in the world.

They're changing the way that people start allergens and therefore there are less allergic people in the world. That is super, super important. And when I grow up, I really want to have a team of people that will be super interested in what they're doing. I think what the market is actually lacking because I'm a little bit in a mental health space right now, the market is lacking an app, for example, that will be made by actual doctors, the team of doctors, the team of doctors that understand what this whole thing is about because every app that is in the market is just created by someone who went to therapy once or twice. And it is already helping. But what would happen if people would actually start thinking about how to make it more affordable, not more affordable, more accessible to people? And this is my personal pain obviously that there are so many people that start their apps, so many companies that now are like, "Oh, we will start another app because we know that somebody's getting money from it."

And I see that, for example, with Solid Starts, there were people that would just put a GPT rapper again in the app and be like, "Yes, baby-led weaning with ChatGPT and you are reading what it offers and you understand that it's bad. It's bad for your baby. It's bad for what you are doing." And you're like, "Why would you not consider the effect of your action?" And this is why I would like for more people to not launch apps and just think about what they're doing for And I understand we all want an extra 5K. Yes. Okay. That would be nice. You would go to a taco trip. But if you will harm people by doing that, is it worth it? Probably, yes, of course. 5K. I mean, yeah, sure, sure it was. But yeah, I mean I hope that with time and this is what we are seeing now with vibe coding making it all very accessible and everybody can launch any app now.

There will be a lot of apps that will flood the market. And you know the numbers of how many apps are being released every day. And I am pretty sure that none of them are to the standards of what we want them to be. So I do hope that still the investors will not only invest in AI stuff, but they will also invest into something that will be of good quality and will have medical teams, professional teams, whatever behind it and it will change the future of the humanity. We are here to make a greater world as well.

David Barnard:

Speaking of making the world a better place, you recently did an interview that I stumbled upon preparing for the podcast where you called the end of black hat growth. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on what Black Hat growth is and why it should end or is ending.

Yuliya Lennox:

You obviously know about what's happening in the industry and how even the government is now against everything that is happening with subscription-based quizzes, let's call them that. And the problem is that it got too far. So when it started, it became a great way to not worry about ADT. And this was only that. You try that, you get the results, you don't pay the commission to Apple. Amazing. Great. But then a little bit of greed came in and we are all greedy. It's okay to be greedy, obviously. What is not okay is to make it on purpose. That's the whole thing. Because what started was like, "Oh, what if we actually do this?"

It ended up with how can we actually lie to the user so they don't understand that they were lied to? And it hurt the whole industry, I think. I don't like the results of it because with some companies they did it or they did it to some source and it was okay and now they're being hurt as well as companies that were just doing super... It almost became as bad as sweepstakes even though it's a completely different thing. You don't understand what you're signing, you don't understand what you're subscribing to, and that's not okay. And I know that for a lot of time, a lot of big companies that started this then understood what they've done. They've been trying to grow back. They've been trying to like, okay, now we send emails saying this is the... So that some people just want to not know what they're subscribing to.

Let's be honest, there were so many people that were like, "Start free trial." On the apps, start free trial. Then they confirm that it will take money from them and then they say, "Well, I didn't know it'll take my money." Obviously some people just want to not notice things. But this is when with those quizzes, they started sending emails, they started showing full prices as well. But in the same time, everybody else who got it on the market who tried to make it work for them, they're like, "Oh, what if you don't say the full price? What if we only say price per day or something like that?" And it hurt the whole market. It's not okay. But in the same time, some people are being punished while some people are still doing that and they're not getting anything. And they also don't read the room, I think, because obviously they're now benefiting from it. And there is almost no reason for government to come for them because they're too small.

They don't care too much, but they should just be ashamed of themselves. As a marketer, I do understand this thrill of how else can I sell? And if you think about bad things that anyone can do, and if you brainstorm about it, there are so many things that you can do obviously, but it's important not to play these games. But in the same time, I was in a lot of apps and a lot of the times Apple just deleted the app from the store for some black hat tactics, for example. And then they obviously came back. It wasn't a black hat tactic per se. And then I go to all these conferences where people are knowledge sharing and I'm like, "We got deleted from the store from this last month. What is happening?" And I'm talking about, they're like, "No, no, everything is okay there." So the standards don't exist.

Even talking about the pre-roll standards for App Store, they have the whole article about that. Can you understand from the article what can be done and what cannot be done? No, you cannot. And playing these games another form of sport. That's why I don't go to the gym because you have to play this game.

David Barnard:

It's really hard to know when you've crossed that line. And then there's probably a little bit of the kind of boiling the frog where... I mean, I haven't even though about this some of the things we've talked about on the podcast before, even from Duolingo. Duolingo is the one who popularized the, or at least the first ones I've heard it from, try for $0.00. Big dollar sign, 0.00. Is that black hat? The biggest CTA says $0 and zero cents, but it is actually going to charge you a subscription. Was it clear enough on the rest of the page that they were going to be charged a subscription? And there's something like Duolingo, a $5 billion publicly traded company was doing. There are things like that and you'd be so subtle. But then there are other things that aren't. And this is what your point was.

And a perfect example, I think I've shared it on the podcast before, but my wife did one of those funnels that you were talking about on the web where Apple's not scrutinizing it at all and there is kind of the wild Wild West. And the technique they used, which I think everybody's clamped down on from Apple Pay to Stripe and others is that she went through this whole flow and I think it was a dieting app or something like that. And so you get 60 questions in, you've got your sunk cost fallacy and then it's like, "Hey, you can get your plan for a dollar." And she's like, "Okay, cool." And then she authorized Apple Pay for a dollar. And then it takes her through a whole nother flow where it was like, "Do you want to add on this PDF? Do you want to add on?"

Well, she wasn't reading. She was just trying to get to like, "Where's my plan? I paid a dollar for this plan. Let me get to the plan." And so she was just continue, continue, continue. And again, the boiling the frog, it was super effective, I'm sure. The companies doing things like that were printing money hand over fist. And the reason I ended up figuring out about it is I looked at my credit card and it was like 350 or $400 that it ended up charging. And I was like, "Hey, sweetie, just checking in, was this authorized? If this is a really great plan and you're getting personal-"

Yuliya Lennox:

They should send you GLP-1 for that price.

David Barnard:

[inaudible 01:08:04] for that much money, I had super high expectations. And she was like, "What? What do you mean? I only authorized a dollar." And then that's when I went back through and I did the whole quid funnel myself and I found that pattern.

And I can see the little logical steps of, "Oh, well, the $1 thing works really well." And then like, "Oh, but we say on there that... But it's in fine print and people don't read." And so you can justify it. Well, it's their fault because they didn't read the fine print, but then really? Is it their fault for not reading the fine print?

Yuliya Lennox:

No, that's so bad. Yeah. But at some point in apps, I was like, "If you can scan me into paying, you are good enough. You deserve that money." But with that one, no, because you need to be good enough for Apple. And here you don't need to be good enough. You can just take 360. But that's crazy money. Yeah.

David Barnard:

It was one of those situations where she contacted support and said, "I want a refund." And they said, "Well, our terms and conditions are you have to give it 30 days before you get a refund." And she was like, "No, wait, you scam me." And I think we ended up getting half of it back. And then I meant to do a chargeback, which that is the best way to handle those is just do a chargeback because it punishes them more than, especially if the support is not responsive in those ways. Yeah, it was a pretty frustrating experience. That's why I wanted to bring up that post. I do think it's hard as a marketer to know when you're crossing that line. And sometimes you just slowly move more and more in a direction and then really take a step back. You're like, "Wait a minute, what am I doing here?"

Yuliya Lennox:

You're making a lot of money apparently. Yeah.

David Barnard:

Making a lot of money, but maybe not sleeping as well at night when you realize it. And I hope that's the way people end up feeling about it. But I think it's great to talk about these things more. And so since you brought that up in an interview, I thought it'd be great to chat. And so I think it'd be a really interesting thing for folks to think about and take your perspective and some examples we gave and stuff of what does feel like it pretty far crossed the line. But as we wrap up, and this has gone so long, but I did want to still do our lightning round. So what's the most impactful experiment or change or something that you implemented this year, your biggest win?

Yuliya Lennox:

I would say localization. I would bet on it over everything else. That's the way to open markets that you have never took money from.

David Barnard:

What is the worst experiment, the biggest fail of the past year that you learned from?

Yuliya Lennox:

But I would say that starting too many products, starting too many pots, boiling water pots, whatever, doing too many projects is too hard. So I recently joined a team where they had three apps in the same time and they were trying to do it all in the same time. And that's something that no matter how many people you have, no matter how many ideas you have, good ideas, bad it is how similar even the projects are, you cannot put enough attention to them. And I've seen a lot of teams that are like, "Oh, we had another great idea. We had another great idea. We'll start it right now because it costs nothing to develop it because we already have the developer on salary." No, no, don't do that. In order to not make mistakes, you need to prioritize one thing and you need to literally treat it like a war room where every day you come in, you are like, "What are we doing today?" If you want to scale, if you want to not fail.

That the biggest lesson that I learned that don't let anything go like, "Oh, it's the same. You scaled one app, you can do another app." No, no, it's not like that. So that's it.

David Barnard:

I feel seen. I'm vibe coding two different apps right now. I'm not doing any marketing for the app. I already released. I've got too many. It's an exciting time vibe coding where I can spin out apps without having to rely on a developer, but I'm falling exactly into that trap. And a year from now, I will probably say my biggest fail of the year was taking out too many projects.

Yuliya Lennox:

But also if vibe coding is what drives you, why do I need to do marketing? That's the whole thing. It's about doing what you like. And my main task for the summer is to try to do more things that make me feel alive. And if that's vibe coding for you, don't even care about marketing. You'll hire a good agency, you will hire a good CMO, and it will all happen. Yeah.

David Barnard:

All right, last question. Growth would be easier if...

Yuliya Lennox:

If we were still in 2017, obviously this is not a thing. But also it would be much easier if growth that I have to do would happen in blue markets instead of red markets. Because if you're entering a red market, it's crazy. You cannot do it. I haven't entered the red market in a long time. So now that I'm back into it, I'm like, "How are people even surviving?" I do understand why the same people are in the industry because it's so hard to make it right now if you don't have a unique product that you're working on. So don't go chasing waterfalls. No, go chasing waterfalls. Don't stick to the lakes.

David Barnard:

What you mean by red market or red ocean is a crowded, I was looking it up to say it more succinctly, is it represents a crowded, highly competitive existing market. So if you're building the 2000th food scanning app that Cal AI proved the market for, if you're building yet another AI note-taker, that's very much a red ocean market where you're just faced so much competition, it's so hard right now.

Yuliya Lennox:

Yeah. As I said, I'm trying mental health and it's mental out there. Yeah, you just cannot do that. Yeah.

David Barnard:

Oh, wow. But I mean, this is where I think there are still some opportunities and Cal AI proved this. It's like you would've thought five years ago that calorie counting was a red ocean market. It was so competitive, so hard. I thought the same with Ladder. When I first met the Ladder team, I was like, "Oh, no, you're building a fitness app. It's such a brutal market. It's so hard." But if you have that unique spin and you have that unique value prop, and it's defensible, that's the hardest thing today is if people are just going to rip it off. And for Cal AI, really, it wasn't the product itself that was defensible. It was the hustle and the marketing that was defensible is that they were just able to out execute and do it so quickly that they were able to grow so quick and be that defacto player even as the competition rushed in. So yeah, it's tough. It is tough out there.

Yuliya Lennox:

Definitely. But in the same time, you enter those markets because you know that there is money there. Because in 2017, we though there was no place for another fitness app on the market. And by this time there are companies bigger than BetterMe that originated from the same source and still there is enough space for everyone. So I think was mental health or was any other a niche, it's the same when it's big enough, you can play there for as long as you want. Yeah.

David Barnard:

Yeah, for sure. Well, this has been such a fun conversation. As we wrap up though, I do want to share with people on July 30th, we are going to do a live stream on YouTube with Yuliya. So I haven't talked about this on the podcast very much, but we are now doing live streams every Thursday. And the reason I've been doing them is because I've had so many people over the years say they love the podcast, but they're sitting in their car just shouting to the void like, "What about this?" Or, "What about that?" And so this is the perfect opportunity. If you've been listening to this podcast and you're like, "Oh, that was a really great point, but what about this?" Or, "I want to challenge you in that way," or whatever, this is your opportunity. And if you're listening to this after July 30th, it's your opportunity to go get even more insights from Yuliya and see what kind of questions people asked on the live stream.

But yeah, at 9:00 AM Pacific Time, 1800 Central European Time, we will be live on YouTube July 30th. So really excited that you agreed to do that. And this is going to be our first time to actually have a podcast guest so quickly after the podcast released on the livestream. So should be a ton of fun.

Yuliya Lennox:

Please bring you all your questions. I love answering questions, especially tough ones.

David Barnard:

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining. Was there anything you wanted to share as we're wrapping up? Any jobs you're hiring for you wanted to shout out or anything our audience could do from you?

Yuliya Lennox:

I think I'm okay. Thank you so much for having me and this was a very fun conversation. You are amazing as an interviewer.

David Barnard:

Thanks. Well, it's so fun having you. I though there's a lot of great insights in there, so thank you.

Thanks so much for listening. If you have a minute, please leave a review in your favorite podcast player. You can also stop by chat.subclub.com to join our private community.