November 28, 2024
I had an unexpected but memorable encounter with Shaan at a dinner hosted by the Tiny Guys.
After recognizing him, I walked up, gave him a quick high five, and shared my excitement about reaching my first million. What followed was a conversation that would later become a story he’d share with his audience in their podcast, My First Million.
Video
Watch the My First Million episode where Shaan and Sam talked about my app, Rootd.
They talked about Rootd from 24:03 until 29:03.
Transcript
Shaan: So I was at the. There was a dinner the night before that the Tiny Guys hosted. And at the dinner met some people, whatever was good. One woman came up and she goes. She’s like, hey, my name’s Ania. You know, big fan, blah, blah. And then she gave me a little, like, quick high five. She goes, I just made my first million. And I was like, nice. What do you do? And. And she was like, well, you know, we. I created this app for people with panic attacks. It’s called Rooted. And I was like, panic attacks? Is that like an app for Panic attack? I never would have even thought about that niche. And she’s like, yeah, you know, I struggled with it like crazy. And so then I created this app. So she pulls out this app called Rooted and Rooted, as in, like, you know, feeling grounded instead of having, you know, this sort of panic attack. And there’s like a red panic button you can hit if you’re feeling something in the moment. But there’s also just, like, sleep. There’s, like, lessons where you can learn about, like, what is this thing and why does this happen?
Sam: Like, drills and breathing exercises.
Shaan: Exercise, breathing exercises and so on and so forth. And she said she has had two point something million downloads of this app. And I thought, okay, that’s pretty great.
Sam: That’s not even the crazy part.
Shaan: Then I was like, wow, are you. Are you just really good at Facebook ads or what? She goes, no, I don’t do any paid marketing.
Sam: Yeah.
Shaan: And I was like, so how do you get two point something million downloads off this? She goes, well, I think it solved a real problem. And also, I dominate the App Store search for this because everybody else went really broad. They tried to go for sleep or anxiety or breathing, and I went for Panic Attack because everybody else thought that was too narrow. And I just really did a good job owning that in The App Store. so, Right. Instead of SEO, the App Store optimization. And then I started getting good reviews and it just snowballed. And now I’m like the top one in that. And I thought, did she tell you.
Sam: How big the team was?
Shaan: Exactly. So I was like. I was like, she’s already halfway to being my hero at this point. And I go, and this is her first deal.
Sam: This is our first.
Shaan: I go, seal the deal for me. How big is your team? She goes, it’s just me.
Sam: Yeah. Crazy, right?
Shaan: I go, what? And she goes, yeah, it’s just me. I have a couple of contractors that, you know, help me with things, but there’s no employees. I don’t want any employees. And I was like, I want to be you. You’re, you know, you’re. She’s building something that has an impact. You know, she dominated it her way when anybody else would have. Like, if she went to go ask, you know, smart guys like us, or, you know, go ask a mentor, what should I do? They’d either say, you know, go ask an investor. They’ll say, it’s too small of a market. Go ask a mentor. They’ll say, well, you need to, you know, what’s your growth strategy? And she’s like, I don’t know. I just want to build a useful product. And, like, I’ll figure it out as I go. Third is like, you need to scale up. No way. Because she’s closing these deals now with, like, healthcare companies where they’ll just provide it for, like, you know, all of the members of their gold plan. So, like, they’ll pay for it for 50,000 members or something like that now. And do you need a BD rep and a sales team and all this stuff? She’s like, no, I just go take the meeting myself. And it took some time, but we got the deal.
Sam: She said she meets them on LinkedIn. She goes, I just messaged them on LinkedIn.
Shaan: Fantastic. So I thought, Ania, you know, shout out to her. She’s the. She’s got the, I don’t know, not Billy of the week, not blue collar side hustle. She’s something else. But, like, you know, the Riches and Niches award of the week, you know, goes to her. Because I thought that was a pretty amazing story.
Sam: No, it was amazing. And this is her first business. And so, like, you know, everything that she said or everything that she has done, if you told me, like, if she told me the idea, which is, I’m gonna. I’ve never done anything tech related before and I can’t code. I’m going to hire contractors overseas to do this. I don’t know anything about marketing. I’m like, oh, you’re everything you’re saying you’re going to lose. This won’t work. And she completely has pulled it off. And if you go to the reviews, did you look up her app? I mean it’s legit. Like there’s like, I think it’s like a 4.9 rating. It’s like a really high rating. Thousands of reviews and she completely has pulled it off. I’m almost positive it’s only 2ish years old. Like it’s not, it’s not, that’s not right. And then she also just went full time as of recently. So this was like.
Shaan: And she just started monetizing. It’s like most of the app is free. She’s like, yeah, I want most of the app to be free, you know, because obviously I’m trying to help as many people as I can. I’m trying to find that balance where it’s a sustainable business, but also most of the apps free. And I just thought that was a bad, bad ass story. There was a bunch of people there that had like really big stories. But to me that was a really, I just say incredible, incredible win. And she had a kind of a, an intensity about her.
Sam: Oh yeah.
Shaan: You could almost tell when you were talking to her like, okay, even though on paper you got no attributes, right? And we all know the rule, you gotta have some attributes if you want to win. She didn’t have the experience, she didn’t have the skill of certain things, but she did have a certain level of intensity. And you could see that just in talking to her, like just the way she came across. She came across like a person to be taken seriously and like she was like a, like a very small person. It wasn’t like her stature was, she didn’t have a natural knack at that. It was just the way she was talking that stood out to me.