Luna Focus

Week 20 of the Luna Focus journey This week I focused on planning and creating value-driven content. I also experienced a drop in my energy level. It’s like this drop in energy was designed to help me step into the shoes of my end user to better understand and test which content would help them bring their energy levels up the most—content like personalized self-reflection questions, breath work, meditations, affirmations, etc. I talked to my coach about honoring my energy this week: - being aware and very intentional about how it is being spent - accepting where my energy is right now and not resisting it After reflecting on how my energy has been spent, I’ve decided that this will be my last weekly overview I post here. I’ve noticed that it’s been draining my energy and I’d be wise to devote that energy to the tools I am creating instead. My intention for writing these was to hold myself accountable and to share my learnings with those who are also wanting to go through the startup experience. I will continue writing these for myself and share them with those close to me. If you’ve found value in these weekly overviews and would like to continue hearing about my Luna Focus journey, please reach out! I would love to continue sharing my experience if you find value in it.

Week 19 of the Luna Focus journey This week I worked on making changes to the Luna Focus app paywall to improve conversions based on advice from the community I recently joined—App Masters. It’s been really nice having a community focused on mobile app development. The rest of my week I worked on prepping for my first fair! I created handouts with a life area quiz, filled bags with moonstones and business cards, and threw together a last minute talk on “Using the moon for self-reflection.” It is night and day doing promotions of my app in the black hole of the internet vs in person events where I can talk face to face with a human and see people get excited about my product. The fair was a wonderful experience and, combined with the App Masters community, a testament to how much community makes a difference when building a business.

Week 18 of the Luna Focus journey This week I focused on making several refinements: - App onboarding flow - App Store screenshots - App Store description - IOS app icon I also read the book “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products” by Nir Eyal The past couple months I’ve spent a lot of time on messaging and product marketing fit to narrow the scope and gain clarity around the core value proposition of the product: self-reflection. The question I’m starting to focus on is how do I make this core value delivered in a way that is “sticky” to users? Some of the book’s key takeaways to answer this question based on a process companies use to build habitual products: - Determine the top internal and external triggers that prompts the user to take the desired action - The easier the action is, the more likely the user is to engage - Provide a reward for the action and include some unpredictability to it to maintain interest - The more effort/energy the user puts in, the more likely they’ll return These takeaways can help create an experience that makes your product's core value proposition sticky and habitual for the customer.

Week 17 of the Luna Focus journey My intern started this week, and it feels like a breath of fresh air. As a solo entrepreneur, it can be isolating. Working with someone else has brought two important realizations: 1. It highlighted the gaps in my own skillset. 2. It’s pushing me to trust. My coach had me categorize my work responsibilities into different “zones” and focus on the ones that were not in my “zone of excellence” or “zone of genius.” Seeing someone else excel in areas where I struggle made me confront these gaps. Initially, I was nervous about trusting someone else with my “baby.” But acknowledging my weaknesses and recognizing my intern's strengths is helping me trust much faster than I expected. Zone of genius concept: https://lnkd.in/gJEKDbrE

This is how Hannah Pate went from Software Engineer to App Founder! Meet Hannah Pate, a remarkable software engineer who joined 7Factor in August 2021. Inspired by the moon's cycles during the pandemic, Hannah sought to enhance her life and found a unique way to share this inspiration with others. During her tenure at 7Factor, Hannah envisioned transforming her system into an application that could benefit many. In just a few months, she developed a minimum viable product (MVP) using Flutter, leveraging its multiplatform functionality, which she was already learning for a current project at 7Factor. Her journey led to the creation of Luna Focus—a mobile and web app that harnesses the Zodiac cycles of the moon to facilitate personal growth and development. With features like meditation, journaling, and habit tracking, Luna Focus aims to help users achieve their goals and improve their well-being. 👭 Hannah's journey is also a testament to the power of community and support. If you want to learn more about Hannah's story, check out our blog post here: https://lnkd.in/g_ZYAPwz 🌙 For those interested in trying Luna Focus, they are offering two free months of Luna Focus Premium with the code: LUNAX7FACTOR. #7Factor #SoftwareEngineering #SoftwareEngineer #SoftwareDeveloper #MobileDeveloper

Week 16 of the Luna Focus journey Featuring Monday’s blue supermoon🌕✨ The campaign tests that I ran last week were designed to answer the question “what feature draws people to the app?” Between the lunar guided journal, habit building with the moon cycle, and celestial inspired visualization tools, the lunar guided journal won. The journal just so happens to be the first feature I built in the app and accessible to everyone since it’s the free feature. It also tells me users are primarily interested in coming to my app for self-reflection more than anything else. I only worked a couple days this week to spend time with family visiting. The days that I did work were spent analyzing the campaign data, playing catchup on social media marketing content, push notifications, and collecting the 2025 moon data for the app.

Week 15 of the Luna Focus journey On Monday and Tuesday I developed and deployed a “focus filter” that behaves like a sticky filter so that users could filter by life focus area across their journals, meditations, goals, vision boards, tasks, and habits. It also supports filtering by rating, gratitude, improvements, goals, actions, or reflections on their journal entries. On Wednesday I focused on creating marketing campaigns and setting up Google tags + UTM links for measurement. On Thursday and Friday I recorded, developed, and deployed 4 minute focus meditations in addition to the existing 12 minute focus meditations since I’ve received lots of feedback requesting they be shorter. On a more personal note, the one thing that stands out to me from this week is the 12 minute meditations were released a year ago around this time of year using a voice AI because I was too afraid to use my voice. The 4 minute meditations were created with my own. It’s affirming reflecting on the past year and being able to measure growth.

Week 14 of the Luna Focus journey This week I spent a lot of time gathering data for my Luna Focus test account. I figured it would be a good exercise for market research, creating marketing content, and better for development. For each of the 12 life focus areas in the app I made extensive lists of things to be grateful for, positive habits, goals, and affirmations that my target audience would resonate most with (myself included). When your job becomes spending days filling out pages of gratitude, dreams, and uplifting words, something changes inside of you. I was reminded of how beautiful the core product is and the value it provides. This week Luna Focus felt less like my company and more like medicine. For that, I’m feeling very grateful.

Week 13 of the Luna Focus journey This week was a good reminder to prioritize self care. I was feeling burned out and stagnant at the start of it and because my energy levels were low things weren’t productive which brought me down even more. Midweek I took a pause to reset. I journaled, deep cleaned the house (✨inspired by the cancer moon, focus on home✨), and prioritized spending way more time on myself and way less time on my business. This reset is helping me get my energy back. Ironically, someone randomly mentioned the story of the Tortoise and the Hare to me this week. Taking more time for self care slows things down. But I would much rather go slower in order to be fully present and energized when creating than force speed and mindlessly attempt to build a business with drained energy levels. Your energy shows up in the things you create. Don’t neglect it. Take care of yourself. Slow and steady wins the race.

Week 12 of the Luna Focus journey Two really special things happen this past week. The first was a woman I never met before had my app downloaded on her phone. I didn’t believe her at first until she showed me. Such a surreal experience I was really touched by. The second was I had my first company interview with my former employer 7Factor Software. I loved having the opportunity to share my story with the company that played such an important role in my journey. Growth is slow but it’s giving me the opportunity to take it all in and appreciate the process. It also feels like it’s creating space to be more intentional and teaching me to be patient which is bringing a lot of peace.