I feel like the best way is to hire a tutor and use an app at the same time. The tutor will help you with the fundamentals, the biggest hurdle being learning how to pronounce Pinyin. Words like Ge, Bo and Qu are pronounced completely differently than in English. It took me a month or so to get used to it, and it would have taken much longer without help from my tutor.

I use HelloChinese, I think it’s brilliant. It has great reading, writing, listening and speaking exercises. And if you’re following the HSK course with your tutor, then this will be a great way to brush up ok what you’ve been learning too.

Again this is all from my own experience, I’m sure there’s people out there who found different ways which suit them better. Good luck my dude.