“Playbook celebrated what we had already built and just wanted to make it bigger.”
“As someone who already had an existing business, working with Playbook was an easy choice. They are so careful and respectful of your time and your existing customers. They are willing to make the experience what the creator wants — and that’s just unique.”
—Julian Smith, The Daily Pump
Julian Smith had a $6/month product called The Daily Pump. It was daily text-message-based workouts sent to subscribers that included the exact workout he performed that day. Julian built a business from the ground up with tens of thousands of subscribers off two main pillars 1) frequent content 2) community building.
Julian was overwhelmed by all the operational work needed to manage his growing business. Users had been asking for video and a better user experience for a long time, but Julian and his wife and business partner, Casey, were hesitant to make moves in this direction for a few reasons:
Building an app is a ton of work and expensive and they knew nothing about software development.
Existing app solutions didn't make it easy for Julian to post his style of daily workouts where he had full control of the content and when it went up. He needed tools to make that transition easy.
All the companies that approached Julian and Casey always came with a big compromise to their business that they weren’t willing to make.
Playbook was different from all the other apps in terms of the way it was set up. As a creator, the fact that I could upload my own content was one of a kind. Other companies’ attitudes were ‘This is our platform, you use it this way.’ But not Playbook. I told them I needed to have the ability to program reps to failure. And their response? ‘No problem, we’ll build it for you.’
Playbook met with Julian and mapped out his entire business — what he was doing today, where he wanted to go in the future. And based off those findings put together an comprehensive migration plan to make the transition as seamless and successful as possible:
Set up a multi-touch drip campaign incentivizing his current customers to switch over to The Daily Pump on the Playbook platform.
Worked with Stripe (payment company) to transfer customers over.
Eventually shut down his old platform once there was a big enough audience that converted over.
From day one Playbook was able to fill operational needs and support the transition:
Customer support
Full web redesign and rebooted brand launch
Email strategy
Ongoing strategy support: weekly calls, deploying new growth tactics, supporting new ventures (like a podcast), etc.
Seamless community communication
The migration process was 100% easier than expected. They pushed me on the timeline and I couldn’t believe how fast everything moved. We were even able to talk directly to developers during the process. They have so much experience and wanted to make it as easy as possible for us. They walked us through things whenever we needed, sometimes until 3 a.m.
If you remember, Julian’s two main pillars were frequent content and community building. Plus, a solution for the mounds of operational work. He achieved all three with Playbook.
Technology advancements allowed Julian to create the dynamic product he built his business on.
Julian can instantly upload every day and even schedule workouts to go live.
Playbook’s content library makes it easy to post — he can tap into his library of hundreds of previously uploaded exercise videos to build new workouts.
Community building became seamless through Playbook.
Julian used to have to screenshot text message feedback. Now, with Playbook’s “Export to IG” feature, he can share subscriber feedback and success stories straight to Instagram with two taps.
Customer service solutions that took the weight off of Julian and Casey.
“Our customers are happy. We never hear complaints. Playbook works around the clock — literally, in different time zones — to assist our customers.”
Playbook was our vibe of people. They were laid back, complimentary, and didn’t want to step on our toes. They celebrated what we had already built and just wanted to help make it bigger.