You can learn more about Carla at:
www.carlawhite.org
Or on her podcast, Radical Shift.
TRANSCRIPT:
Leanne Woehlke
So welcome to the podcast Carla. It is an honor to have you here. Tell us a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey.
Carla White
Yeah. So it started when I was living over in London. And it was not the best experience to say the least. I had a lot in savings and it was going away quickly. It was super stressful. I think the biggest mistake I was doing is I was still going about entrepreneurship as if I was in a corporation as an employee. And not, for example, not making quick decisions, but you know, going with my gut instinct, not doing tons of marketing, not making big offers. So I was playing kind of small. And that job went to the wayside. And I got a regular job again, I got an became a W-2 again. And then through some, some personal events, ended up keeping a gratitude journal to help me with depression. And it helped so much that I thought, why isn't everybody doing this? It's so darn simple. It's so effective. Why isn't everybody doing this? And that's about the time that the iPhone came out. And I thought, well, I'll make an iPhone app and figured it out. It wasn't easy, but I did it. And it's been on the App Store for like, well over 10 years now and doing good. I mean, just a one person shop, too just me.
Leanne Woehlke
Wow, how did you have any technical background or how did you decide, "Oh, I'm gonna make an app."?
Carla White
Yeah, so I did have texted background. I have a master's in Information Systems been dealing with computers ever since they came out. And, I was a programmer in a former life, a very bad one. But I also worked on software projects. So I knew the basics of developing software. Now, I also knew design, I knew website design as far as not making them websites pretty but making them functional. How do you make them usable? And so I was trying to take what I learned from web design and from software development and apply it to making apps, but honestly, it's a totally different ballgame. Because the screens are smaller, the way people interact with them. It's different Apple, I didn't even have an Apple product except for like those little iPod shuffles so I was in the Microsoft world. So it was a huge learning curve.
Leanne Woehlke
So, It's amazing how long did it take you to go from the idea like, hey, this gratitude thing would be a great idea to actually having your app on the market.
Carla White
Well, it took me I think, probably about five or six months. Now, the SDK, the software development kit for creating apps on the iPhone was really simple back then, you know, there wasn't a lot to it. So creating apps was simple, because there wasn't a lot of features like you weren't pinching, you weren't doing all these different things. So it's a lot more complicated, meaning making apps is a lot more complicated, but whareally was the hiccups in the road, whereas I tried to hire somebody to do the design. And let's face it, apps just came on the market. Nobody knew how to design apps. And so half of my budget went to this guy to design it, and what he brought back was horrible. It was awful. So then I invested in Photoshop courses and learning how to create UI myself. And the other half of my budget went towards a developer. And he, halfway through the project said, I don't think this is gonna work. I think apps are a fly by night thing. And they're going to be over by next year. Nobody's going to be using them. And that was like in 2008. So then I was really devastated. And I didn't have any money left. And so I thought, well, what am I going to do? And I thought, well, let's see if you can take what you've learned and apply it to somebody else's project. So I went out to one of these outsourcing websites, Upwork, something like that. And lo and behold, there were developers on that site for iOS, which surprised me because like, it was so new, and I met a guy in India, who built it out for me and he was just amazing. He was great. And the whole thing cost in the end to him was like 500 bucks.
Leanne Woehlke
Wow. You were the first female to get an app in the App Store.
Carla White
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. There was no other women in the marketplace at all, which I think I stuck out quite a bit because of that. And so, when I think back, I mean, there were only blogs, and there was a little bit of Twitter, like some people were using Twitter. Facebook wasn't a thing, you know, Instagram, none of these social platforms Medium, none of these social platforms existed. So I would tweet out, you know, who's making apps out there? Where my app developers and I'd get connected with certain people and that's how I met a lot of people was through Twitter, or just writing to them on their blog. So there were a few people blogging about it, maybe two or three.
Leanne Woehlke
When you were developing your app for you doing it against like the clock like hey, nobody has done this as a female yet. I'm going to try to get this out there before
Carla White
Was more against the budget.
Cuz, you know, I went down to zero I was able to put a little bit more in and you know, like how much do I have left and basically stripping out features trying to just fit within what I had in my bank account. Because mind you, I had a failed business behind me. And I didn't have a lot left in savings. So, I couldn't gamble a lot, which was a good thing. It forced me to be frugal and to learn a lot and to figure things out, which was really good, because then I started an app agency after that, and you know, and gave me tons of skills. I wrote a book about how to make apps, but against the clock, not really, I saw people producing apps and the success of those apps, and that was very motivating. But in truth, I was thinking if one person gets this app and they don't go through what I went through mentally, then it'll be worth it. So I wasn't really thinking how can I make my money back?
Leanne Woehlke
Right. Or even like the realization like, "Hey, there hasn't been another woman do this. This might be interesting."
Carla White
Yeah. Cuz they were gonna go apps are going away in a year, right?
Leanne Woehlke
Do you have that guy's number still just to email him?
Carla White
Yeah, we're still friends creating apps for quite a few years.
Leanne Woehlke
Okay, good. Good. It's kind of funny, you know, when you hear something like that in our world is so different.
Carla White
Yeah, right. I know. And it's interesting, who gives you advice and what you actually listen to. I'm very careful about that these days now.
Leanne Woehlke
My rule of thumb is only listen to the person if they've done it. Like, they don't get an opinion otherwise,
Carla White
yeah.
Leanne Woehlke
What's the number one mistake entrepreneurs make?
Carla White
Oh my gosh, I think it's more so doubting themselves, not taking the action. Giving up.
I'm going to speak specifically with apps because I work with so many entrepreneurs who make apps, I think the number one mistake they make is they don't put enough time, consideration, and research into their app idea. They just come up with this app idea. They hire somebody to design it out, and then they plow ahead and build it out. And they don't even spend like 100 bucks on downloading apps and seeing what's already out there. They all tell me, there's nobody else out there. And then when I asked, well, who's your target market, they say, everybody, and I just think, okay, you're gonna fail with both those suggestions. It just tells me you didn't do your research because there's over, I don't know, 100,000,000, 300 500 million apps out there. There's something similar by this point. And for you to think that there's nothing else out there tells me you didn't do your research. And, then to say that you want to serve everybody tells me that your idea isn't an app idea. It's a software, it's like for a PC or for computer. Apps are very small, tiny little bytes of activity on your phone. And unless you're Facebook, you know, they're not really much more than that. They're not supposed to be needy.
Leanne Woehlke
Yeah. And that's, you know, that's so true is really knowing your market, and understanding what your idea is specifically, and niching it down. How did you, you know, when you came up with this idea, how did you say like, this is the thing that I'm going to pursue? I know you talked a little bit about your own personal journey, but how did you know inside yourself that that was the path to take?
Carla White
Well, my depression got pretty bad. So my dad passed away when I was living in London. I was having this failed business, and wasn't dealing with any of the stress at all. I was numbing myself either through binge drinking, eating whatever, TV, working. And at one point, my husband was really scared, and he said, it's time for us to go back to the States, so you can be closer to your family. And that made it worse because then I had culture shock failed business, Winter, you know, like all sorts of other things and add it to worse I ended up in the hospital with double pneumonia. Because all that stress manifests in your your body. And the doctor said, "Here's something for your depression and your pneumonia." And nobody ever said I had depression until that point. And, it hit me. It just it was such a wake up call. And you know, I did what everybody else does when they have a big wake up call like that. You go to Google, and you search for the answer to your problems. And in that search result, there was a story about these people. They didn't call it a gratitude journal. They just said that they focused on what was best in their life, and they kept writing about it. And they made it like their center point, like all their pictures and everything in their life. And I thought, yeah, you know, I've been in this negative feedback loop. Because I blamed myself for my dad's untimely passing. I was home in the States. I saw him just before he passed. And, I noticed something was off, but I didn't say anything to anybody. And, I kept quiet. So I blamed myself for not saying anything. And, so I carried that guilt around. And, when I read this article, and I'm like, Yeah, I've been focusing on what I did wrong instead of what I'm doing, right. And, so I just started keeping a journal. And, about two months into keeping that journal, I was out for a walk, going through things I was going to put in my journal because I didn't want to have to think about it later. It's like, Okay, I'm going to write about how I got a job offer from NASA. I lost some weight. I slept really good last night. You know, I was going through all these things in my head, when it hit me that my life did a complete 180 from just a couple months earlier. And I thought, well, what did I do? Like, what pill did I take, and I was going through everything in my head. And then I landed on that journal. And, I just thought this is so simple. Like, I've got to tell the world about it. I remember exactly where I was at. And one of the first things I thought of doing was writing a book. But I also realized that all the books that I read, nothing really stuck. Like you'd read a good self help book and self development book. And, you feel good in the moment of reading it, but then a week later, it'd be like, okay, I was gonna do all this stuff. So I thought, well, I and I had my little iPod Shuffle in my hand. I said, Well, Steve Jobs just came out with the iPhone. The SDK is coming out. I'm gonna make an app. I'm just gonna do it. And it was so crazy because I live in South Dakota. Okay, that's one thing. I'm like, as far away from anybody who knows how to make apps as possible. And, I was working for a government agency that was in a building like area 51. Like it was out in the country, and in the middle of cornfields, and no internet access. So, not only was I geographically isolated, but like also from the internet all day long. So, I had to get up really early before going into my day job at like, 4:00 in the morning. I'd get up, do research on my computer, figure things out, download all the tools, play with them trying to figure all this out. And, then I go into my day job, and then I come home and I'd work on it at night and in the mornings and on weekends. And, I did that for four or five months. And then at the time back then when apps were new, you submitted your app to Apple, and then you just waited, and your wait could be like a month long. And, then they could come back with "Oh, well. We didn't like this part of your app. You'll have to fix it." So, then you it takes you like five minutes to fix it, but you go to the back of the line. And, it could take another month before it got approved. So, you just hold your breath. And, when it got approved, it was boom, right out to the App Store. Now, you can tell Apple don't release it right away. Say "Well, I want to release it on this certain day." So, when it was approved, all of a sudden it was like five in the morning. I was getting up, getting ready to do the next thing. And, I got the email from Apple saying your app is on the App Store. I fainted. I was so excited.
Leanne Woehlke
And, then did you keep your job after that? Or did you leave or what was next?
Carla White
It was interesting because Twitter was the only thing then. I had about 20 Twitter followers, and all of a sudden that day I was getting all these Twitter followers. Because I also had a blog, and I was writing about the experience. I was writing about my dad. I was writing about keeping a gratitude journal I was writing about yoga. I was writing about all these different things I was doing to help my life, and I didn't even have like a Google tracker on that to see how many views I had on the blog. I was so green. I was just putting stuff out there, and like, whatever. So anyway, that day I released, my Twitter followers were just like, blowing up. I was getting all these messages. And, then I started to get messages from major media. It started with USA Today wanted to interview me. Radio stations all over the world from BBC to like, some little podunk radio station in Oregon. Yeah, okay all sorts of media were contacting me, and it was just an all these news
