This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Welcome to Side Hustle School. Welcome as well to Throwback Thursday, our weekly segment where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. We've been going for more than 2100 days consecutively. That would mean in a row, haven't missed a single day since January 1, 2017. So we have had a lot of stories over that time.
Lots of people to go back to and say, "Hey, what's going on? How did this work out? What was difficult? What was easy? What surprised you and so on?
What lessons did you learn that might be helpful for someone else out there?" So it's been a fun series to work on. And of course, I hope you enjoy it as well, because we make this show for you. Now, last week we heard from Brian Sonia Wallace in West Hollywood, California. He's the founder of Rent Poet. Rent Poet offers typewriter poetry for events and custom commissions.
Today, we're gonna go to the opposite side of the country and hear from Justin in Raleigh, North Carolina, or just outside Raleigh, I believe. He's gonna tell us more. He's the founder of Lazyjar, an app that makes fitness pay. An app that makes fitness pay, at least for him, at least for the developer. The tagline is, "It's like a gym where you only pay if you don't go." Which sounds like a good idea to me, because I think I'm probably a member of two or three gyms, now that I think about it.
And I do go to them, but do I go to them enough to justify the monthly payment? I'm not sure. I'm gonna think about that a bit, inspired by Justin. So, let's hear more from him. What's happened since we first featured Lazyjar?
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My name is Justin Aion. I'm the founder of Lazyjar, which is a side hustle I've been working on. I think I was featured on episode 465. I am located right now in Raleigh, North Carolina. The premise behind Lazyjar came about when I got a little frustrated with my journey to stay in fit and being active.
What I noticed was that whenever I joined a gym, the first couple weeks, I'm very enthusiastic about it. I attend regularly, but eventually it tapers off. And by the time I know it, I have a gym membership that I'm paying for, but I'm not attending. And so, ultimately the reason I joined is never achieved. I am still out of shape and not happy with my physical state.
So, but I am down multiple gym membership fees. So, I came to the realization that my problem was a lack of discipline and consistency. And I needed a way to hold myself accountable to my desire to stay fit and stay active. So, that was how Lazyjar came about. Initially, when I started Lazyjar, I had hired some developers out of Pakistan to create it for me.
And it was a little frustrating, the experience, because the first version had a lot of bugs. And I found myself paying these developers this time to come back to fix bugs. And I just hated the idea that I was beholden to these individuals to fix this. So, about two years ago, I took it upon myself to go ahead and learn iOS development. And I decided to completely revamp the app and I rebuilt it myself, according to my own desires and how I wanted it done.
So, as it stands right now, Lazyjar has managed and developed by me, myself. And I currently run it all by myself. So, when I first got featured on the show, the app was bringing in $500 a month. I wish I could say that this is like a wonderful turnaround. It's increased a little bit.
We're now averaging between $800 and $1,000 a month. However, there was a period of time where I kind of took a break because of COVID and I had a little bit of, I don't want to call it depression, but oh, it's more like a depression or anxiety. And so, I took time off the app. I didn't shut it down. I just let it run on its own.
I didn't make any effort to market it. But what I did notice is that it continued growing. It's user-based organically. As a matter of fact, it's one of the reasons I noticed that there might be something here. And so, when I got out of this cloud that derailed me for a bit, I decided to get back on it.
My plan is to actually add more features. The biggest challenge by far is marketing or getting users. We used to run Facebook ads and around 2020, Apple introduced its iOS 14.5 feature that basically blocks pertinent user information from Facebook's ad engines. And it was basically night and day the moment they switched that on. The cost of user acquisition basically went off fivefold.
It no longer made any sense to keep running ads. So, I think moving forward, my focus is going to find a way to engineer more organic exposure for the app. I'm not sure how I'm going to do that, but I'm going to have to spend some time to try and figure that out. Getting featured on podcasts like yours, like Side Hustle School has also proved to be invaluable. So, I try to leverage those whenever I can.
So, yeah, so long story short, the biggest challenge we're dealing with right now is marketing. [Music]
>> Awesome, thanks so much to Justin for sharing his updates with us. I want to encourage you to check out lazyjar.com. lazyjar.com, just like it sounds. The fitness app that focuses on consistency and building discipline at a natural and sustainable pace.
Now, of course, this is an app. So, you can also check it out in the iOS app store. If you've got an Apple watch or a Fitbit, you might want to download and try it out. Let me know what you think and who you'd like to see featured from our archives of more than a thousand stories. If you've got a question or an update for us, sidehustleschool.com/questions.
Of course, you can follow me on social media. You can join my newsletter. You can do all those things, but mostly I hope you will take care of yourself. And I hope you will make progress on your own side hustle, on your own quest to make extra money without quitting your job. That's what it's all about.
We're going to keep supporting you with a new episode every day. And I hope you'll continue to tune in. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
