GA 110 | How to Use Apps to Improve Your Life with Kevin Holesh

You're listening to episode 110 with Kevin Holish.

Welcome to the Gemba Academy podcast, the show that's focused on helping individuals and companies achieve breakthrough results using the same continuous improvement principles leveraged by companies such as Toyota Del Monte and the U.S. department of Defense. And now, here's your host, Ron Pereira.

Hey, there. This is Ron Pereira with Gemba Academy, and I'd like to welcome you to another edition of the Gemba Academy podcast. As always, thank you so much for taking time out of your day and your week to listen to the show and for watching our Lean and Six Sigma trading videos over@gembacademy.com we definitely appreciate each and every one of you. Now, today I have a very different type of show, and I know I've said that before, but this one really is truly different. Today I have Kevin Holish on the show. Now, Kevin is not a Lean thinker. In fact, he admitted to me that he had no idea what Lean or Lean manufacturing or Lean thinking was all about. But Kevin has created an incredible iPhone app that has really impacted my life profoundly. And the app is called Moment, and Kevin is going to talk all about it. But basically it's an iPhone app that tracks how often you use your iPhone. So the idea is that you want to, you know, use your phone less so you can be more productive, spend more time with your family and so forth. So it's had a huge impact on me, and we talk a little bit about that in the show. But I emailed Kevin after I had downloaded the free version of the app, and I had a couple questions, and so I shot him a note, and I was like, well, I've shot other app developers notes, and, you know, you never hear anything back. Within minutes, Kevin responded to my question with a great answer, told me exactly what I needed to do, and I was so impressed with that. I was like, man, I need to support this guy. So I went and I upgraded to the paid version of the app, which still, it's not too expensive or anything like that, but it gives you some more features and whatnot that I've also used. So just was very impressed with them. And I got to thinking, man, you know, this is kind of a productivity thing, and, you know, Lean, you know, a big part of what we do is trying to be more productive, more effective, be more respectful to people by not staring at your phone when you should be talking to them, that sort of thing. So I said, hey, Kevin, you want to come onto our podcast? And that's when he you know, so I don't know anything about Lean. I said, don't worry, we won't talk about Lean. So if you are here this week looking for a hardcore Lean thinking conversation, this isn't it. Go back into the archives. There's probably a one of the 100 that we've done that you've not listened to. So go listen to that. But if you want to hear a really cool story of how a guy created an app that's really changing the world, this thing's been downloaded 2.5 million times, New York Times written about him, and so forth. It's a really fun story. So show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com just look for episode 110. Again gembapodcast.com and look for episode 110. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. All right, Kevin, well, thanks so much for coming onto the show. Where are you calling in from?

I'm calling in from Western Maryland, actually, up in the mountains.

Nice. Nice. It looks like it's a beautiful day there. I could see in the background there.

Yeah, it's weird weather here in the springtime. It's sunny and raining right now, so it's bright sun and pouring rain. So it's bizarre.

Interesting.

Okay.

All right. Didn't know that was even possible.

Only here.

Yeah. All right, Very good. Well, Kevin, so I kind of mentioned in the intro for everyone that this is a different style of interview and you and I met, I guess over email and so forth, because I downloaded one of your apps moments. And so that's what I want to really talk about today. But before we get to that, why don't you just kind of tell everybody about maybe your background and I guess how you got into the kind of the app and web development world.

Sure. So I started out kind of as a nerdy teenager and stumbled upon what I web development and web design when I was about 15. And I did that for about 10 years, eight or nine years. And then as soon as the iPhone app store came out, I started making apps. So I have a background in basically everything software from the back end database architecture to front end web design and app design. That's kind of how I stumbled into app development.

And now this is kind of your full time gig now. It's what you do.

Yes, it is. Now I was a freelance contract web developer for most of my career and then as soon as moment came out, it really hit a nerve in the market. Since then it's been about Two years at that moment. And a few other apps have been my full time job, if you could call it that. But independent iOS developer.

Nice. One day Apple will buy the app for a billion dollars and that'll be it.

Hopefully I'd settle for like 10 million. All right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very good. All right. Don't want to be greedy, right?

Yeah, exactly.

All right, well, Kevin, as you know, we like to start all of our shows with our guests sharing a quotation. So do you have one?

Sure I do. Actually, fitting with the Apple theme, I guess is from Steve Jobs. It's your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. And it's from his famous, like Stanford graduation speaker. And it's something that I constantly have to think about. I'm always sort of pressured by society or my parents or my friends to do things a certain way. Get a job, Right, Exactly. Get a job, buy a house, have kids. I'm newlywed, so that's what I'm hearing a lot now. So I'm just trying to think about the decisions for myself and not just kind of blindly follow everyone else, I guess.

Got it, got it. All right, so what's a day in the life of a professional app developer look like?

It's pretty easy going. Like, I wake up whenever I want to. Usually it's about 8am or so. And lately I've been taking a slow morning. So not diving into email right away, which is very tempting. So I make myself a cup of tea, I take the dogs out, I take the dogs for a walk and basically test myself to see how long I can not pick up my phone or not check email. And right now it's about 45 minutes from when I wake up.

It's not bad, man.

Yeah, I'm happy with it.

Not bad. All right, well, let's jump into Moment. So I guess for folks that don't know what it is, what's the app about and why did you create it?

So Moment is an iPhone app that you put on your phone and it runs invisibly in the background and it basically just logs how long you're on your phone. So it gives you one big statistic inside the app that says you've been on your phone for 3 hours and 24 minutes today. So it's kind of like you're a Fitbit for how much you're on your phone. And that is basically a measure of how much you've. It's called Moment because I want people living in the moment, not Being distracted on their cell phones for the most part. So it's an app to make you hopefully more conscious of how much you're using your phone, because it's a really hard thing to estimate unless you have a tool like Moment tracking it because, you know you're distracted on your phone. You have no idea. Time just flies by. So that's why I created Moment, and I mostly built it for myself, you know, three years ago or so, I was, you know, kind of using my phone too much, and my wife was using my phone or her phone too much, and I just wanted a tool to measure it and improve it.

Yeah, well, I found Moment. Actually, my colleague Tony, our IT guru, I said, tony, I need a way to track how much I'm using my phone. Do you know of any. And he sent this. He said, well, a combination of Moment and then use the battery stats or whatever, if you want to see which one you're. Which app you're using the most. But between those two, I was like, what's Moment? And he sent it to. So thank you, Tony.

Yeah, thank you, Tony. I appreciate it.

Yeah, yeah. Now you program that. He wants me to geek all out. You program on Ruby on Rails or whatever, Is that right?

Yes, that's correct. So that's like a web backend architecture, and that's what I use there. IOS apps are objective C or Swift, but I am a huge Ruby on Rails fan for sure.

Well, he is, too. So you guys are lost cousins or something?

Totally. Yeah.

All right. Sure.

I'd like them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, all right, well, I'm really curious to know, and I guess you have access to a lot of data, so how much do people use the. Their phones total?

That's a great question. Right now, the average over every Moment user, which is about like 2 1/2 million.

Wow. 200 and a half.

2 million definitely is 2 hours and 44 minutes a day, which, you know, is pretty good, I thought, because, you know, all the headlines are like, you know, the average teenager uses their phone for nine and a half hours a day, and it's, you know, kind of like the end of the world, the sky is falling thing. But what I've seen with Moment is a little bit less than that. So about 2 hours and 45 minutes a day, and they actually pick it up. The average person picks it up 44 separate times. So that's, you know, checking a text and answering a text. You know, 44 separate little sessions on your phone a day.

So I'm not ignoring you I'm staring at my phone, staring at the moment. I'm in the moment.

But, hey, yeah, great.

Now I'm at work all day, so I don't normally use my phone much during the day, so today is a little misleading. It's about 3 o' clock in the afternoon, so I vlogged a whole seven minutes on my phone because I've been on my computer all day.

Yeah, I mean, that's incredible though.

But yesterday, Saturday, April 30, I don't know if you can see that.

I can't really.

Yeah. 41 minutes screen time, 22 pickups.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, that's some of the lowest I've ever seen. You know, I've seen a lot on the higher end, but, you know, that's great. Even better than mine, which I'm embarrassed to say, but.

Well, my. My highest was on Tuesday, April 26th. I was an hour and 32 minutes. 35 pickups.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, that's still really good. You know, you're way ahead of the curve if that's your highest. I. I think the highest I've seen on someone's is like, consistently they were averaging like 13 hours and 10 minutes a day. It was just insane. And that was like over a month, period. It wasn't just one day. So there's people on either extreme, but most people are kind of in the middle now.

Have you heard any success stories or anything of how people have improved their lives by kind of breaking free from their iPhone addiction?

Definitely, so a couple stick out in my head. But just in general, people using Moment, just knowing how much you're on your phone can be the motivation to improve it. And most people want to lower the time on their phone. You might want to increase it, but there aren't many people like you. So the average person drops about half an hour in their first couple weeks of using Moment just by installing the app and seeing how much they're using it. But honestly, I mean, the biggest success story for me is just myself and my wife. You know, it's been three years since we've been using the app, and we still use our phone to distract ourselves sometimes, but we're more conscious of it and we have a conversation before we do it. We don't just zone out and ignore each other for two hours. We say we're going to zone out for 20 minutes and then after that we'll do something else. Not on a screen. So that's been definitely one success story. Another is from a family in Indiana I believe, or Iowa. I get those mixed up. But either one. And it was they had a teenager who was on their phone, like an extreme amount, and she would kind of use the excuse like, oh, I'm doing it for school, I'm on my phone. She was on her phone like 10 hours a day or something. And I gave him that battery screen hint so they could see what their daughter was doing. And, you know, it was a lot of Snapchat, basically. So Moment and Moment Family have helped that family at least keep an eye on their daughter being, you know, super distracted. While she should be paying attention to school, she's kind of going through Snapchat stories and everything.

So talk about moment family, because we haven't talked about that.

Sure. So moment family is basically just a family version of how much everyone is on their phone each day. So it's a leaderboard that just shows how much everyone in the families use their phone today. So with me and my wife, it's just me and my wife, we don't have kids yet, but you can kind of see everyone's phone use from your own phone. And then the kids can actually see how much the parents are using their phone, too. So it's really just a conversation starter. More so than a parental control, like get off your phone kind of thing.

Now, I started with the free app, and then I emailed you and I was so impressed that you replied, like, I don't know, within five minutes. Maybe I got lucky and you're at your computer or something.

Probably, yeah.

But I was very impressed with that. And a few minutes later, I upgraded and bought the paid account.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

So what's the difference, though, between the free and the paid? I know there were some more stats.

And so forth, but, yeah, definitely. So the free version just lets you track how much you're on your phone. So you have to open the app and see. The paid version is basically tools to help you limit your phone use. So you can set a daily limit for you. You might set your daily limit at 45 minutes, which is fine for most days, but it's on the Saturdays that you're on your phone a little bit too much. It'll help with those days. So that's the main feature. There's a couple other big sort of, you know, coaching and training features to actually help people use their phone less, more so than just setting up a wall.

So one of my business partners, he made me promise I would ask this question. He's a bit of a tech, tech geek Himself, and he's really interested in, like, why you gotta track location. And he read the website where you kind of explained, and he's like, yeah, but why? You know, I know.

Yeah, I get that question a lot, for sure. Basically, iOS apps, at least compared to Android apps, Apple puts a lot of restrictions on what apps can do. So there is no way that Apple gives you to see if a person's on their phone. There's no simple API call for that. So what I've had to do is develop, and it took me like a year to do, really develop, sort of like a pattern matching algorithm, sort of that takes into account every other sensor on your iPhone, including location. But it's things like, are you connected to the Internet? How are you connected to the Internet? You know, basically, are you walking, Are you running? Are you driving? That sort of thing. And Moment can sort of detect patterns in your phone use and use all those sensors to make it possible to track how much you're on your phone. So it's a hard problem solved in a very complex way that basically just gives the app a number of how much you're on your phone today.

So what's the hardest part of creating an app that's been downloaded 2.5 million times? Or is there any hard part?

I mean, for me, Moment's been kind of the easiest app I've ever made. Every other app or business idea I've had a website has kind of been an uphill battle. I felt like I've had to cold email people and there just wasn't getting traction. And a year later, you kind of have to have that discussion with yourself, like, is this really necessary? But Moment's been the exact opposite experience for me. Like, I released it and the next day it was on TechCrunch, and like a month later it was in the New York Times. And I didn't do any marketing. I tweeted at a couple people when I first released the app and that was it. So it was just super easy. So I don't know if I have a good answer to that question, but.

Did you have a paid version from day one?

The app when I launched was actually paid up front. It was five bucks to download it. There was no free version, actually.

Nice. Well, that's good for you, I guess. I mean, why did you do a free version then? Just to kind of convert people to.

Paid if they like it, definitely. So I wanted to get it in the hands of more people. So, you know, when I say two and a half million people have Downloaded it. That's mostly free people. I think I was paid up front for three or four months. Months? Months. But as soon as I free, you know, kind of like a free trial, then you can pay to upgrade inside the app. The downloads obviously went through the roof and my revenue stayed the same. So at the end of the day, I'd prefer to have more people using the app, even if they're free users, and then upgrade. Maybe sometime in the future.

Yeah. So you and I. One of the emails that I was sending you was, I use that sleep cycle alarm clock. And I really. I love that app as well. And you gave me some good tips on how to make sure Moment wasn't tracking my thinking I was on my phone when I wasn't. Because one night I did. I had eight hours, and it was. Because it was. But I didn't. Didn't do it. Right. But are you a fan of that app? And what other apps do you like?

Yeah, absolutely. I'm a huge fan of Sleep Cycle, actually. I've been using it for, I don't know, four years or so, sort of on and off, but definitely a huge fan of that. And then as far as other apps, it's kind of like a fitness kind of thing. I like the Apple Watch. I like the newer app Activity. It's kind of a Fitbit sort of statistics, but a little bit more complex. So it doesn't track number of steps. It kind of tracks how much you stand, how much you move around, and how much you exercise each day.

Now, what about. You have other apps as well? Talk about those.

Sure. So I have basically one other app that I update. It's called Focus, and it tracks when you're on your phone, but only when you're driving. So it'll automatically detect if you're driving a car and then basically yell at you in my voice if you're on your phone while you're driving. So as soon as you unlock your phone while you're driving, my voice will come over your screen or your stereo and say, like, put down your phone. Like you're endangering yourself and other people around you, that kind of thing. And it'll kind of get progressively angrier the more you're on your phone.

And it's always you getting angrier.

Yes, exactly. So it's my awesome radio voice getting or podcasting voice, I guess, getting progressively angrier and a little bit ruder, too.

Yeah, well, I mean, that's a big problem. So maybe I'll download that one as well. Is that Paid or free.

It is free to download, and then it's the same as Moment. Free to download, to track how much you're using your phone while driving. But if you want the voiceover training and you want me to annoy you to put down your phone, it's five bucks inside the app.

So the last question I have for you, it's just more of a kind of a motivational type question. Let's say there's people listening to this right now who maybe they have dreams, not necessarily be app developer. But I think you're a perfect story of you persevered through, obviously, some products that didn't go to TechCrunch in New York Times. Right. But you kept at it. So what did you learn through that process?

I mean, I learned a lot of things. I learned that I was on TechCrunch, but the kind of hot startup scene like Airbnb just raised a billion dollars and they're worth $14 billion. That kind of wasn't my scene. I learned that that was fun, and that's kind of where I started my career. Not necessarily that big of companies or that much money, but I'm kind of more of a lifestyle business kind of guy. Like, I like the flexibility to work whenever I want and whenever or on whatever I want to. And it's not. It's great not to have investors in my ear or a boss or, you know, even, you know, basically anyone dictating what I'm working on. So it's nice to have that flexibility, but it's tough at times. If I'm the only one working on Moment, then it's totally up to me to make it a success or make it better.

So what happens if, in the next version of iOS, there is a Moment, I don't know, app that Apple creates and it comes on the phone. Like, what would you do?

I've thought about it, and it's. Apple kind of seems to be headed that way. Like with iOS9, they put that battery screen we're talking about. It basically tracks how much battery each app uses, but it'll actually annotate each app that says four minutes on screen. Moment was on screen for four minutes today. So they're kind of headed that way. Apple usually does the sort of simplest version of a particular feature. So if they did have something like Moment, it would be super simple. And then Moment would kind of be the pro version of that. So I would actually be really happy if Apple released a feature that competed with Moment, because that would make people aware of that. Sort of tool. And then Moment's definitely the biggest app like it in the App Store. So I think a lot of people would outgrow the Apple version quickly and then come to Moment, hopefully.

Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. All right, well, I'm a believer. I love it, so thank you for creating it. It's helping me and I look forward to continuing to use it. So how can people connect with you, Kevin?

Sure, they can always email me. My email's on Moments website. Or they can catch me on Twitter at Kevin Holish. K E V I N H O L E S H Very good.

All right, well, thank you, my man. Enjoy your sunny, rainy weather there. And if I'm ever in the area, I'll definitely look you up.

Yeah, that sounds great. Thanks for having me on, Ron.

All right, you take care.

All right, bye.

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