Full Focus Used Mobile Apps to Understand and Serve Their Customers on a New Level

Full Focus, previously known as Michael Hyatt & Company, is a leadership coaching organization based near Nashville Tennessee. Their team worked with MobiLoud to build apps that helped them understand and serve their customers on a new level. Michael Hyatt is a former CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, New York Times bestselling author and renowned authority on leadership and success.

They help their audience to achieve their goals and become better leaders through their coaching programs, products, courses, blog, and podcast. Their motto: win at work, succeed at life, lead with confidence.

One of their most popular products is Leaderbooks. Leaderbooks is a membership program aimed at busy professionals that helps them to glean ideas and insights from the best books out there. They describe it as:

“A monthly reading experience designed for busy leaders who want to grow, but just don’t have the time. With a focus on application over retention, LeaderBooks provides expertly curated tools, fast summaries and action ideas designed to help you apply the best insights on leadership”

We worked with them to build the native apps that Leaderbooks subscribers use to really get the most out of their memberships. The apps have been a great success, giving them:

• Better insights into their customer base
• An easier way to share content with their readership
• Better real-time engagement with their audience
• A more effective way to market and deliver their digital product

We wanted to share their story, so we chatted with senior developer and man behind the app project Dave Yankowiak about his experience working with MobiLoud.

Why build apps in the first place?

“Leaderbooks was a physical product in existence for almost two years as a monthly reading subscription. But we realized we wanted everything to be digital, instead of having to ship it out. That’s when we started to realize that it would make sense to have an app for this”

There were a few other factors that persuaded Dave and the team that native apps were the way forward. They considered basing the product around email but reasoned that it would be too much noise in people’s inboxes. A central part of the product is an activation guide that comes with the plan and a load of other resources as well, so having somewhere as a central hub for them all to live made sense.

Isn't a mobile-optimized site enough?

Native apps outclass mobile sites in several ways. Dave put it this way:

“The actual native app is what makes it easy for people. They don't have to log in every time. It's right on their home screen, they can click the button. Another benefit of the app is the push notifications. There's more real time convenience that comes with having those push notifications versus email”

Now sold on the benefits of basing Leaderbooks on a native app, Dave and his team started thinking about the best way to build one. First they thought about having a fully custom native app built from scratch. This is the old school way of doing it. It can make sense if you have a huge budget and a lot of time, as these projects often involve teams of developers working for months with invoices pushing into the tens of thousands of dollars.

“We talked about having a custom native app built. We move so fast though, I think it would have taken too long. Also the cost. It would have taken a lot of things out of our hands and given them to someone else”

Since we build the app around your pre-existing site - it cuts down the time, cost and you retain more control over the end result. You aren't so much building an app as much as buying one for 10% of the usual cost.

“With the MobiLoud setup, I can just build the site on WordPress and any changes I make are in the app. I don’t have to run that through somebody. I have the power to do what I do well, and push it to the app. There’s more ownership without a crazy cost or amount of customization. MobiLoud stood out with both the product and the people on their team”

Realizing this, they came across our solution and started to consider it.

“We explored other options. There were some similar services to MobiLoud that, after looking at them, they didn't really stack up”

Dave got in contact with us and we started to go over the requirements for the app. Every project is different with unique requirements, but we’ll assess what’s needed straight away and come up with a plan to get there.

“There was a lot of interaction before we even signed up. I was able to converse with them and say, ‘Hey, is this possible? We have this membership site, is this going to work?’ They gave me the answers that I was looking for”

Communication is key early in the process, we work together with clients to make sure we completely understand their vision for the app so we can bring it to life.

“I'd say definitely ask as many questions as you want before you even sign up because they're very responsive. They will be honest”

Going Live

We got to work building the app and soon had something great to show for it. When you work with us you’ll be able to test the app within a few weeks. This was an exciting part of the process for Dave and the team.

“I think I really realized that it was a good decision before we even launched the app. It was when we got the test flight version of the app. Just seeing it and being able to do a recording of the interaction of it and send it to my team. I think that was probably moment number one when I realized this is actually going to work”

Along with building custom native apps, we also handle the publishing process. This is often quite straightforward, but sometimes has its challenges. Apple are known for having stringent requirements for apps published on the AppStore.

“There are some things that are unique about our membership model that made it a little tough to get approval from Apple”

This can be a little challenging if you’ve never gone through the process before. We’ve published over a thousand apps though and understand the process inside and out, and handle it 100%.

“I think through the whole process you always have a little doubt because you've never done it before but the folks at MobiLoud just kept fighting for us”

We’ll made sure the app got all the tweaks it needed to go through.

“Ultimately, we did get approval from Apple. So, it all worked out in the end. The more I worked with the folks at MobiLoud, the more confidence I had in what we were doing and what they were doing”

A Stronger Brand

The apps are now bringing in great results for Michael Hyatt and company, helping them to grow Leaderbooks and understand their users on a new level.

“I think when we released the app, it gave us insight into the customers and how they wanted to interact or how they wanted to consume the content. We learned many things”

Their users love it too!

If you want to learn more about what we can do the same for you too, get in touch with one of our app experts today.