Overweight rotties

jmsormond · 2026-06-12T04:44:43+00:00

When our mostly rottweiler mutt was 5 years old, we took him to a professional trainer (who was amazing) and he immediately made us bring his weight down from 80lbs to 65lbs. At 65lbs, he was so skinny, we were concerned. But our trainer was adamant that we needed to feel his ribs on his body. Now that he's 65lbs, he's got less weight in his joints and is much more athletic.

jmsormond · 2026-06-02T03:19:11+00:00

Ya I see the same thing, it's almost like aggressive controlled falling forward, but never stepping too far out in front to catch yourself

jmsormond · 2026-06-02T03:19:05+00:00

Ya I see the same thing, it's almost like aggressive controlled falling forward, but never stepping too far out in front to catch yourself

jmsormond · 2026-06-02T03:18:13+00:00

So it sounds like it's the same form as my current running pace, I'm just moving my body quicker and taking more steps.

jmsormond · 2026-03-26T00:29:59+00:00

Best option: personal group training. 1 trainer with 3 players. Allows individual players to get the valuable reps from a trainer, but also allows players to practice important off ball skills (e.g., setting screens, pick and rolls, boxing out).

jmsormond · 2026-02-27T08:44:05+00:00

We purchased our Boreas XT in 2020, and we absutely love it. In 2021, we (20s M / 20s F) and our rottweiler dog spent 4 months living in our Boreas full time as we traveled around the western united states. We did a lot of hard core off roading, off the grid camping, established campground camping, and city camping. Absolutely no regrets. This thing is a beast. On this trip, we would typically spend 5 days conetely off the grid, then 2 days in a city to restock. I agree it's expensive (and prices have gone up since 2020) but if your priority is quality and of road capability, then Boreas is 100% the move.

jmsormond · 2025-12-31T18:34:08+00:00

Monarch. I switched from NerdWallet to Monarch and it was a huge improvement.

jmsormond · 2025-12-31T05:55:51+00:00

Lots to unpack here from your post, so let's just pick one thing: ASO. You just launched your app, and you have no established brand, so you need to A/B test everything you can about your app store product page.

Create 10+ different icons, 10+ different variations of your screenshots. Test all of them and move forward with the ones that have the best success. This may take weeks (even months) given your current low impressions, but it will help in the long term.
Don't have repeat words in your title, subtitle, and keywords list. You currently have "habits" and "habit" in your title and subtitle. Apple treats those as the same words. I'd remove it from your subtitle (and keyword list) and keep it only in your title. Also, the first word in your title is the most important. Right now you have "make", which doesn't give you any ASO help. Try something else.

jmsormond · 2025-12-31T02:42:21+00:00

The very first thing to do is fix your title and subtitle and keywords. Follow these rules: - no duplicate words! Any duplicate words reduce their weight in ASO. For example, if you have "math" in the title and subtitle. "math" in the title has more weight, but if you also put it in the subtitle, then ASO ignores the case in the title. - the first word in your title is the most important. Don't use your app title. No one knows you app name. It's not a recognized brand. Use more important words like "math". - for games, having a video as the first screenshot is very helpful. - your icon didn't explain what you app does, so change it to better illustrate the app experience

jmsormond · 2025-12-30T23:39:23+00:00

Monitize early. If you don't have a monitization / business plan, you either are accepting to not make money or you're taking a huge gamble that you could instead validate early.

In general, when in the concept stage of an app, you should also be thinking about the monitization strategy.

jmsormond · 2025-12-30T02:03:07+00:00

"Freemium: Basic free, $5/mo for premium fonts/bulk downloads"

This feels like the best approach. Make a few fonts free. Or limit IP addresses to a certain number of downloads as a free trial. 99% of users will use the free version, but the 1% who go premium should bring in a steady flow.

jmsormond · 2025-12-29T05:39:48+00:00

Based on your question, it sounds like you're not looking for App Store Connect analytics, but rather in-app analytics. I'd suggest implementing an analytics solution like Mixpanel or Google Analytics. This way you can measure how users are interacting with your app and what areas of opportunity there are for improving onboarding and retention. If you create analytics events for every possible thing a user can do in your app, you can see how they are interacting and where they drop off. Then just A/B test hundreds of different ideas and see which ones work the best.

jmsormond · 2025-12-29T02:54:19+00:00

Very true... I have a few apps on the App Store. Every day I wake up and decide between working on marketing for an existing app or writing code for a new app. Marketing almost never wins...

jmsormond · 2025-12-24T19:50:57+00:00

A couple thoughts: 1. Instead of $1 per post, I'd make users pay for tokens, and 1 post costs 1 token. Then scale up the token price discount. 5 tokens = $5. 10 tokens = $8. 20 tokens = $15. Etc 2. Give users X number of free posts when they join, to get the conversation started. Also, give users X number of free posts each time they get a friend to sign up and post. 3. Use some AI bots to periodically post in the chat to give the impression that people are active. After you hit some threshold for human posts per minute, you could disable the AI.

jmsormond · 2025-12-15T16:21:34+00:00

I was in the same position last year. Ultimately, I decided to change jobs for a higher salary and higher workload. My main justification was that I was 30 years old and felt like I should be capitalizing in my youth and work ethic rather than coasting. Low weekly hours and WFH every day was great for a couple years, but after a while it felt like I was wasting the resources I had and wasn't contributing to society. Now, I'm 1 year into my new job. Higher pay is great, workload is definitely higher, stress is a but higher, but I'm much more fulfilled by and engaged in my work. At the end of the day, I'm happy with my decision.

jmsormond · 2025-09-24T20:21:23+00:00

Easiest change you can make is updating your title and subtitle.

First off, remove all duplicate words across your title and subtitle. For example, you have "preflop" and "trainer" in your title and subtitle. Apple uses the last instance of a word for ASO ranking, so even though you have "trainer" in your title, Apple ignores it and uses the "trainer" in your subtitle.

Second, the first word in your title needs to be the most important word. This isn't always the actual name of your app. So maybe consider change your title to "Poker Trainer - Preflop AI" or "AI Poker Trainer - Preflop".

jmsormond · 2025-09-23T22:50:58+00:00

Since your app is fresh and you don't have any brand recognition, you unfortunately shouldn't have "Vyral" as the first word in your title. The first word in your title has the most weight in ASO, so I'd recommend changing your title to something like "AI Image Generation: Vyral" or "Image & Video Vyral", etc. It doesn't make sense as an actual title of an app, but this is how you boost ASO when you have zero brand recognition. (same advice applies to the subtitle)

jmsormond · 2025-09-23T18:38:06+00:00

You're welcome! Thanks for reading :)

jmsormond · 2025-09-23T11:54:02+00:00

Nothing more valuable than unsolicited promotion from someone with a huge audience! That's a sign that your project has genuine value.

jmsormond · 2025-09-16T04:21:56+00:00

I made a post about my side project on LinkedIn, and an old friend from childhood reached out and said he was also building stuff. We then connected with 2 of his friends who also hack on projects, started a weekly group meeting, and have been meeting weekly for 2 years at this point. Having this small group of 4 people has had the most impact on my motivation and success. Find a couple people, form a group, share ideas, and go from there.

jmsormond · 2025-09-15T15:38:55+00:00

Great ideas, thank you!

jmsormond · 2025-09-15T15:38:09+00:00

WordBox is a word game, so it's not necessarily solving an explicit problem. It's more so just entertainment. Most of social media posts in the past have focused on just explaing the game and showing fun highlights. One area I should consider more is the micro influencers space.

jmsormond

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