Hiring the first employee is a huge milestone in any small business or startup. But how do you know when the time has come? What are the risks? And how to find that new hire? In this episode we talk about these questions. Here's what we will cover: - Our thought process behind our first hire - Automating as an alternative to hiring - How to get started - How to find great people and the hiring process - Online vs offline hiring Links mentioned Fiverr: https://www.fiverr.com/

When we just got started with email marketing, we didn't know what we were doing. Blasting out 150,000 emails to an unsegmented audience was just one of our early mistakes. This episode is all about our experience with email and what we learned along the way. Topics covered: - Why bother doing email marketing for mobile apps? - Our email marketing journey and lessons learned - Tools we have used and recommend for email marketing - Strategy we use to improve retention and sales via email Links mentioned in this episode: Zoho Campaigns: https://www.zoho.com/campaigns/ Sendy: https://sendy.co/ EmailOctopus: https://emailoctopus.com/ Mailchimp: https://mailchimp.com/ ActiveCampaign: https://www.activecampaign.com/

In this episode, we talk about how we share feedback within our teams. An important part of this are the Retrospective meetings. They are extremely useful for reviewing the past teamwork and improving for the future. Learn how we - What is the Retrospective team in agile? - What are purposes of the meeting? - Examples of how to run a Retrospective successfully - Schedule of a typical Retrospective - Best Practices of good feedback - How to take action based the Retrospective

This episode is all about goal setting. In our company we do this with OKRs (Objectives & Key Results). It's a modern goal setting framework used by Google, Twitter, Amazon and others. We will cover: What are OKRs? Why do we use OKRs? How do we use them in Simya? Examples of OKRs How did OKRs help us to move forward? Tips for running good OKR meetings Tips for keeping on track with the goals you set Resources mentioned in this episode: John Doerr - Measure What Matters

Today's episode it's all about growing your downloads. We talk about what App Store Optimization (ASO) is and how to do it for iOS. We apply this process to our own apps and grew the downloads of Ling App by 142% in 2 months. What you can expect in this episode: Basics: How to get found in the store, and how to increase conversion rate How to get found in the store: Title, Short Description, Keywords How to brainstorm and select keywords What tools we use for keyword research What process do we use for continuous ASO? Examples and Success Stories Trick how to get more downloads in the USA Mentioned links: - App Radar: https://appradar.com/ - Google keyword planner: https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/ - Thesaurus: https://www.thesaurus.com/ - OneLook: https://www.onelook.com/

In this episode, we talk about how we opened a company in Thailand. It was by no means an easy process but it has several benefits. We applied for a Board of Investment (BOI) promotion. This allows us to hire local Thai talent, operate on a zero tax basis for years, and have equal ownership in the company (in a regular Thai company, foreigners can only hold minority ownership). We will cover: Why did we open a Thai company? How to open a company? We walk you through the process. How to get promoted by BOI? How did we apply for BOI? Advantages and disadvantages of a Thai company? How does accounting work? Mentioned in the episode: Board of Investment Thailand: https://www.boi.go.th/en/index/

This episode is all about opening a company for your business. In 2016, we opened a company for our app business in Hong Kong and never looked back. Today, we discuss, - Do you even need a company? - Why open a company in Hong Kong vs. other places? - Is it true that you pay 0% company taxes in Hong Kong? - Our story: How we opened a company and bank account in Hong Kong - How to do the accounting Links mentioned in this episode: Corporate Agency Bridges: https://www.bridges.hk/en/

Today's episode is very special. We have our friend Greg Hung on the show. He has been a business owner traveling the world since 2013. He sells a host of products on his websites such as video footage and online courses. He also runs a videography freelance business, several YouTube channels and a Podcast. In this episode, he shares his learnings from years of hustling, including - How he quit his job, sold most of his belongings, and started a business in Asia - How he got into the Google top rankings for competitive keywords - How he attracts customers for his local video editing business - His tactics to grow his online presence through email marketing Check out Greg's sites here: Website: https://chicvoyageproductions.com/ YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/chicvoyagegroup Podcast: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-greg-hung-show

In this episode, we talk about what's it like to be location independent. We discuss why we chose Chiang Mai as a starting point of our journey. Some other points we cover: - What are digital nomads/location independent entrepreneurs? - How to choose a good location to start a digital nomad lifestyle - What are the pros and cons of working location independent? Khwan's digital wifestyle Blog: https://digitalwifestyle.wordpress.com/ Our Ling App to learn Thai: https://ling-app.com/

This episode is all about agile development and Scrum. We talk about how we use Scrum to manage our development teams. We cover - What is Scrum and how do we use it? - How does it compare to other models? Is it worth it? - Typical actors and meetings in Scrum - much more

Trello is a great tool for managing all sorts of tasks. We manage all our projects with Trello, both for business and private.  In this episode, we discuss - How we use Trello to manage multiple teams - Cool Trello plugins that can make your life easier - Automation and smart notifications with Trello Butler - How does Trello compare to other project management tools, such as Jira You can get Trello here for free: https://trello.com/

Fastlane is an amazing tool that allows you to automate lots of things for free. In this episode, we talk about how we use it to make our release process faster and easier. Learn how we - Automatically create and upload thousands of screenshots - Integrate Fastlane with Gitlab to release a new version in Testflight with every build - Use Slack to trigger Fastlane (Chat Ops) You can check out Fastlane here: https://fastlane.tools/

App Store Optimization (ASO) is one of the most important things to do to increase your downloads. In this episode we talk about how we optimize every aspect of our store listing and run biweekly A/B tests. We also share some of our most successful tests, increasing the daily downloads by 5-30%.

Learn how we do the market research for our apps. This is an important step before even designing any screen. We discuss: - How we did the market research for our first own - How to analyze competitor apps and find ideas on improving them - How to brainstorm ideas for a new app

In this episode, we discuss how to live in a relationship while running a business. It's a lot of fun and can be incredibly inspiring, but there are also challenges. Learn about - Our own experience: How we started working in a relationship - What is needed to make it work - Challenges and how to overcome them

In this episode, we discuss native vs. cross platform development. Should you code in Swift/Kotlin or React Native/Flutter when creating an app? We discuss these points: - Pros and cons of each approach - What are some of the limitations of cross platform development? - What should you choose when you just get started?

In the first episode we talk about how we started our mobile app business. Seven years ago, we decided to create a simple mobile app called Simply Learn Thai. It took us over 2 years to launch the app. By that time, we both were working in full time jobs. We will talk about - Why and how we quit our full time jobs in Germany to pursue our app business. - How we made our first income - Why we went to Chiang Mai, Thailand to create more apps - How we grew our business to over 10 full time employees