by Tom Evans
Christopher Plowman, CEO of Insight Timer, talks about the latest app release and his plans for building a commercially sustainable Insight Timer.
Transcript
So hi, I'm Tom Evans, And it's a big welcome back to the podcast to Christopher Flam and the co founder of the marvellous insight timer app. How are you Christopher? I'm well Tom. It's good to be back. Thanks for having me again. Well, I'm excited to talk about the new app and all its new features. But before we do that, Can we just cut back to the first time we spoke on the podcast. Just before you launched the 365 day meditation challenge, Which is now about into its eighth month. How's it going? It's, It's going great. It's been, It's actually been a lot harder than I thought it would be. I was hoping that it would be a breeze given that I thought there'd be a few thousand people that would do it with me. I think now there's about 62, 000 people who've signed up to the 365 day challenge. And you were going for 5000 originally, Weren't you? Well, We had no idea really, I did it one Sunday night out of desperation, Because I thought I'm the CEO of a meditation app. I should be meditating every day. I understand the benefits of it. But as I said back then, Sometimes it's hard to find time in the day to set aside and do it. So we decided to set this up. And we thought we could do it all together as a community. And I think in the first five or six days, We got to about 15, 000 people, Which was incredible. And now there's about 60, 000 of us. There's a group on the app. People are posting regularly every day. I think we're on day 220 now, Or whatever it is. And my meditation has changed quite a lot over that time. Initially, I was doing 20 minutes a day, Twice a day, I've started exploring some of the music tracks, Some of my sessions are shorter, Some are longer. And we've obviously had a teacher every week curates a playlist of seven different guided meditations for that week under a certain theme. But what's really interesting is the amount of meditation that people are spending on our app has increased dramatically. I don't like to compare us to other apps, Because I think all meditation apps are out there doing different things. But obviously Headspace is sort of the most well known app. And they put out an announcement a couple of weeks ago saying that they were had just hit a new milestone, Which was 180, 000 hours of meditation in a single week, Which is fantastic. And I but I was curious, I went back and had a look at how much meditation time our community had done in the same period of time. And I think we've done 380, 000 hours. And I was kind of blown away by that, Because we have a smaller community than than than Headspace. But what's interesting is people really seem to be committing to this. And to be doing almost 400, 000 hours of meditation every week. It's just it's incredible. It's truly incredible. So obviously, We're now starting to think about what happens next year, Because the idea is not that we get to the end of the year and stop that we keep going. So we're looking at a few interesting things we can do to continue on the 365 day challenge next year. But it's been great. It's been it's been overwhelming, Actually, And had had a far greater impact than we thought. And you've now come to a lovely point where there's a brand new release out with some amazing features and and all I think features that are going to take the app to a new place and a new level. Yeah, I mean, We've been working on this. I mean, We've talked about this when you and I spoke in December. And I think I might have promised that we'd be up and launched by the end of March. It's now August. But we do, We do like to take time to do things properly and to consider them. And so the whole team's been working on this project now for about 18 months. I spent a month in America with Maddie, Our publishing manager, Meeting with teachers in San Francisco and Marin County and LA and Washington and New York, Getting feedback about things that teachers would like to see on the app. Obviously, We get daily feedback from users about things they like to see on the app. And so we've kind of spent a great deal of time taking all of those requirements and rolling them up into one big release, Which is now available on the Apple App Store to be available on the Google Play Store for our Android users in a week or so. It's been a huge effort. It's just taken us longer than we would have liked. But I'm really, Really happy with the outcome. Actually, I think it's going to change things dramatically. The idea about this release was really two things. Firstly, We wanted to make it a lot easier for our users to discover content. When we last spoke, I mentioned that it was quite difficult to search for things. It was very difficult to discover things. And so we built a number of different tools and a brand new landing page for the guided meditation library, Which means now it's vastly more simple to find things that you're interested in. So we built a new search engine. You can search for things like sleep or anxiety or Buddhism or consciousness or spirituality. You can search for teacher names directly and they'll pop up straight away. So there's a new search engine. We've also created something that I'm most excited about, Which is the ability to follow teachers and interests. So if I come across Tom Evans' page on the app, I can now click a follow button. And what that means is next time you upload some content, Tom, That will appear in my home screen feed along with all of the other things I'm following. So I don't just follow teachers now. I can follow benefits, Practices and origins. And so as you start to explore the app and discover new things, You click the follow button and then we'll go through each day and we'll crawl the app if you like, For want of a better term. And we find things that match things that you're interested in. We pop them up on your screen. So that's going to make good as one of the main complaints that I feel I pointed the app say I've got the app now, But I can't find you. So that's going to make that a lot simpler. But there's something else that's frustrated me as a teacher, Which you've solved. And I do a daily newsletter to my community. I do a daily nugget of mindfulness called Just For Today. And a lot of insight, Time, Users have come over to my site and signed up for it. And I've got a nice little community of people that love it. And I keep pointing them at meditations of mine and other teachers. And of course, There's no deep linking. So a web page, A web link doesn't take you into the app to the place you want to be. So it's like a two step process to find that that meditation. But apparently, You've now got this deep linking in both directions. Yes. And I have to thank our product manager Chris is to Christopher's at Insight Timer. I'm one and Chris is the other. He leads our development team in Sydney. He used to work at Google for many years in product strategy. And he and I work very closely together on how we can bring new technologies to the app. And one of the ideas he had was this sort of deep linking concept, Which we've now implemented. And what this means is as a user, I can go into the app and share a guided meditation or an interest or a, You know, A religion or a benefit or whatever it is, Or a piece of music that I like, And that I listen to, I can now share that with my friends. And I can share that either inside the app. So if I belong to one of our 6000 groups, I can now post something into directly into a group so that anyone who's in that group can click directly and go and access that that piece of content. But the thing I'm most excited about now is I can also share that content with people who aren't part of Insight Timer. So I'll find a guide to meditation, I click the share icon, And I can post that into Facebook or WhatsApp or messenger or whatever it is that I choose to share that in. And then my friends will get a picture of that guided meditation and a link. And if they click on that link, If they're already a member of Insight Timer, It will take them straight into that section of the app. They don't need to click through and find their way in. They'll land directly on Tom's page or directly on Tom's guided meditation. And if they don't have the app, They'll be taken to the app store where they can download the app. And once they've downloaded it, It will then take them directly into that piece of content. So we're really excited about this, Especially for our teachers. We now have about 1300 of them. Because if they share content with their students and audience, They'll actually be able to get those new users straight into their teachings directly with a couple of clicks. It's amazing to me that Insight Timer is growing so rapidly. We now have about seven or eight thousand new people downloading the app every single day. Wow. Yeah, It's more than 50, 000 a week, Actually. It's quite astronomical. And yet all of that happens without these features, Right? So we're not quite sure where these downloads are coming from. We assume it's through word of mouth referral. But we're really hoping now that this feature will allow our users who like content to share it with their friends to talk about the benefits of meditation. And their friends will then be able to find that content on the app. I'm very, Very excited about it. The app's got almost like two lots of functionalities. The original Insight Timer app, Which is just to meditate silently to a starting bell and ending bell. And you've also then grown this community of teachers and other people into the guided meditations. What split is between the base functionality app and the guided meditations nowadays? Yeah, Good question, Actually. And when we first had the app, There wasn't really, I mean, There was a couple of guided meditations on the app, But there was certainly no teacher community. Certainly there wasn't 6, 000 guided meditations. And I was actually a little bit worried when we launched the guided meditations that it would disrupt people who just use the timer, Who, You know, Are essentially perhaps, I don't like to say more advanced, But have been meditating longer and prefer a silent meditation practice. But we're now doing, And it's on the app now on the homepage, You know, We now actually say how many meditation sessions we do every 24 hours. And where we on average do now about 290 to 300, 000 meditation sessions every 24 hours and every single day. Initially, Before we had guided meditations, It was about 50, 000 timer sessions every day. Now, The timer sessions have actually grown as a result of the guided meditation, Which is interesting. So we now do about a hundred and these are rough numbers, Obviously, We now do roughly 100 to 120, 000 timer meditation sessions every day. And we do about 150 to 180, 000 guided meditation sessions every day. So it's a lot. I know. And I was surprised the other day to go past the half million listens milestone, Which was just amazing, You know, Because it was an honor and surprise to me that that that can just happen so organically. Yeah, I mean, Look, We I'm a Virgo. So I love stats, Right? Some in our community email me and tell me that stats aren't important. And we shouldn't be measuring these things. We don't measure to be competitive, We measure it to be curious. And also through measurements, You can spot trends and you can improve the app over time. And so I just have always enjoyed sort of that intersection of arts and science, If you like, Where actually there's the there's the meditation process going on. But we have this great opportunity to actually observe what that means and quantify what people are doing on the app. Obviously, We do that all in an anonymous fashion. We don't measure individuals, We were we measure sort of on mass. But it is truly astounding to see this growth in the number of meditations per day. The other thing that we did is, Just before we launched the app, We went through and looked at the usage or the downloads of guided meditations per teacher. And what I mean by that is, What you'll see on the app now is some of our teachers have, You know, 100, 000 followers, Right? I think one teacher has 160, 000 people who are following her. And we've done that based on people who interact with those teachers on a regular basis. So when you're using the app now, And you click on the guided meditation library, You'll see that you're already following certain teachers. And that's because we've gone through in an anonymous way and sort of calculated which people are interested in which teachers. And obviously, If we've got the calculation wrong, You can simply unfollow a teacher. But it's just amazing to me to see that so many of our teachers have sort of deep interactions on a regular basis with so many users. I didn't expect that. I actually thought that most of our meditators would gravitate towards a single teacher, And we would find the numbers would reflect that. And when we went through this process, What we found was most of our guided meditation meditators actually interact with eight to 10 teachers, And very different teachers too, By the way. This is what's interesting about the new app, Is we've gone through and we've mapped all of the guided meditations based on their origin as well. I think we've got 25 different origins, Things like Buddhism and Christianity and Islamic faith and Hinduism. And I mean, You'll see them all there. And what I found very interesting is that people on our app tend to actually be interested in teachings from very different origins. One of the things I found is, As I've started using the new app, And I've been playing with it now for about two months, Is I've discovered stuff that I never would have discovered elsewhere. Islamic music is something that I've become a really big fan of. And we don't have much of it yet, But we're obviously trying to build that out. There's Daoist music, There's a file that I listen to a lot. I can't think of the name now that I meditate to quite frequently. I've learned a lot about Kabbalah and Judaism, Thanks to some of our Kabbalah teachers like Alison Sehruh, Maria Gullo, Who's our Centering Prayer expert in inverted commas, Who has a Christian background. And this is what's fascinating about Insight Climbers. You jump on the app and you start exploring and you just can spend hours looking at new stuff. In fact, We had one of our testers write to us the other day and said, For the first time in about five years, I forgot to look at Facebook today. And I couldn't have had a better piece of feedback ever because I just thought, Right, That's exactly what we're trying to do. So the app's almost agnostic, Ecumenical and secular all at the same time. Yes, We are. You've probably put that more concisely than I could have. We've got a new filter actually on our app, Which didn't exist previously. You go to a listing view and you can sort by time and do I want a female voice or do I want something for 10 minutes or do I want background music? And the other thing we've implemented is the ability to turn on or off both spiritual and religious content because some of our users are very scientific. We have a huge collection of teachings based on neuroscience and psychology, Which obviously doesn't involve a spiritual or religious view, Even though some of those things perhaps originated from a spiritual standpoint. And so if you're someone that prefers to just have purely scientific teachings, You can now do that on the app. If you're someone that actually enjoys some spirituality but might not sort of delve into the religious realm, Then you can just say, Look, Show me spiritual stuff as well as scientific, But not religious. That's very neat. And if you're someone like me, I guess I don't actually identify necessarily as religious, But I find a lot of the teachings and a lot of the music that's attached to religious origins wonderfully calming. So I like it all. But we do have the ability now for users to actually specify their interests and they'll get teachings that adhere to those criteria. What's interesting as well, Sorry, I'm harping on about this one, But I think it's a really important point. What we've noticed is people who might have a scientific skew or, You know, With their teachings, Actually, As they start to interact with the app, Do start to explore stuff that's spiritual and religious. One of my good friends says the thing he likes about Insight Timer is it's a bit like religion 2. 0 because it's not controlled religion. It's like, You know, Everything's out there, Everything's open for discussion and everything's meshed in together. It's a great melting pot, Really, Of everything that all the best bits of humanity and you pick and choose and you discuss in a constructive way. And I think it's the best of both worlds. It's the best of science and it's the best of religion. It's not controlled religion. It's actually, How should I call it? I'm trying to think of a word here, Contemporary religion or whatever. I don't know what it is, But it's all there on display and it's all there to be consumed as you see fit. And are there any specific teachers or material that's not on the app at the moment that you'd like to see on it? Any teachers out there perhaps listening to this that might be interested in getting in touch? Oh, Goodness, Where do I start? I have daily meetings with our publishing manager, Maddy, And say, Why don't we have more of this and why don't we have more of that? If you are a meditation teacher, We'd certainly love a lot more content on some of our less represented religions. I mean, I think for Buddhism, We have about 1200 files, 1200 teachings. We're very well represented in the secular mindfulness, Psychology and neuroscience categories. But as you get, I'm going to pronounce these incorrectly, As you get down into the Bhakti faith or the Bhakti movement and Confucianism and Islamic content and Jewish content, We could certainly be doing a lot better there. And I'm excited about meeting new teachers. And I also think that if you've got great guided meditations to calm the kids or put them to sleep or help with exams and anxiety and those sorts of things, Or indeed adolescents and all of the trials and tribulations of becoming a teenager, Then please reach out to Maddy, Maddy at insight. Co and we'll get you up on the app. Fabulous. And this whole app cannot be cheap to run. I mean, You've got development teams spread all over the world, Haven't you? Well, I mean, You might be surprised to learn Tom that actually, It costs me, I mean, Insight Timer to run now. I always like being open and transparent with numbers. I think it creates a greater sense of trust with our users. But Insight Timer currently costs around two and a half million dollars a year to run. Wow. We've got a development team in Sydney run by Chris. And we've got a world class development team that Chris has put together there in conjunction with our CTO Cyrus. We've got a team in Bali, Eka and Pasek, Who do a lot of the web stuff. We've got customer support sort of all over. One of our customer support people, Christine in Michigan. We've got Vitaly and Sergey in the Ukraine. I'm currently in France with Madi, Our publishing manager. So we really are all over the place. And I think we're 25 staff now. So we're just lucky to have two people that have one of them is a friend that I met about five years ago at a meditation retreats in Bali. She's an Australian. And she's very committed to what we're trying to do at Insight Timer. And the other is another another person who's become a very good friend of mine, A guy called Bo Shio, Who's a Chinese American that contacted me about two years ago. He does a lot of work in tech and also in the spiritual and the meditation world. And so these two people are essentially paying the bills for us while we try and work out how we become sustainable. Because as you know, The app is free. And we've made a very big commitment to our users that Insight Timer will always be free. And by that, I mean, You will never jump on the app and have to pay to use the timer and have to pay to listen to guided meditations. You'll always have free access to the community. We believe that that's essential to building a sustainable company, Which is that a day a meaningful daily meditation experience should be provided free of charge. We believe that wholeheartedly. We're very different to every other app, Most other apps in that regard, Who try and monetize, Who try and sort of charge for that. We won't be charging for that. But as I said to you in my last podcast, At some points, We're going to have to find a way to make this sustainable. And so we've been spending the last sort of 12 months thinking about how we might how we might do that. And we've got a couple of ideas. And what that means is not charging for what the app is now, But introducing new things that might be something that you might pay for optionally, Of course. And we're going to wrap that initiative around the teacher. So really, Insight Timer is just a huge community of teachers that share their content with meditators. And we kind of take the view that if we find a way to create a vibrant teacher community, Then Insight Timer will continue to be a vibrant community. So we're actually going to launch our first idea around finding a way to make Insight Timer commercially sustainable in a month or two. And we're going to be introducing donations. So obviously, A donation is an optional payment. It's not an obligation by the user. But if you listen to a guided meditation by Tom, And you've enjoyed it, Then there'll be a very subtle button there that says, Would you like to pay Tom a dollar for his time? And if they do, Then Tom will, You know, Pay Insight Timer, You know, Maybe 10% of that or whatever it is. And the idea there is that teachers can start teachers then have a have a financial incentive as well as a conscious incentive to actually continue to create great content for the app and to continue to upload new content. And Insight Timer will take a small percentage of those donations. Well, That sounds really marvelous from a teacher's perspective, And hopefully from a meditators perspective as well. And I for one would migrate a lot more stuff into the app in that kind of donationware model. Yes. And look, We do know I mean, You know, We've been speaking to teachers for at least two years about this. And it's always been our intention to create the best free meditation app on the planet. That's the goal. That's the that's the task I've set the team. And I've been the best free one. I mean, The best app on the planet, Which is free, Even if you compare it with paid products out there, That really for us has to be the goal, Which is you jump on the app in the morning, You use the timer, You listen to some guided meditations, You chat with your friends, And you discuss ideas and concepts. And all of that is free. You don't have to pay for any of that. Soon, You'll have the option if you want to, To make a small donation to a teacher if you like their work. And over time, We'll also be introducing other things, Which are additional features or additional products that teachers might want to upload to the app. And they too will be purchasable. And insight timer will take a commission on those. So one of the ideas we're thinking about launching for Christmas is insight courses. So this will mean that teachers and we do know all of our teachers have great courses that they've built over the years. And so we'll be providing those courses on the app. And you'll be able to so if I listen to Tom, And I find one of your themes more relevant to me than others, And I think I want to go deeper with you on that topic, Then for $7 or $8, I can do a 30 day course with you. I don't know what the price will be yet. We'll discuss that with the teachers. And that too will be optional. And we think this is actually a much better way of creating a sustainable business in our space. I've never really, I have to be careful of my language here. But I've never really liked the way most of the meditation apps out there try and create sustainability. And some of them are very successful. You know, Some of the apps out there are making a huge amount of money. But I just don't think when I say I don't think they do it right. It's not the right way for us. For Nico and I, That's not the right way to build a sustainable business. What we'll be doing is we'll be building out and expanding the free Insight Timer product. And in addition to that, We'll be adding optional products like teachings or courses or donations. And hopefully, All of that revenue obviously goes to the teachers. The whole idea here is that we build a big vibrant community of teachers. And hopefully, The small commission that Insight Timer gets from the teacher off all of those transactions is enough for us to keep the company sustainable. I'm confident it will be if we do it right, We do it tastefully. I'm confident there's an opportunity here to bring sort of the conscious and the commercial together in a meaningful way. So that's what we're going to try and do. Yeah, I've just been reading Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein. And he's that's the ideas in that book really are in sort of sit very nicely with where you're going. And I've got to say just from a free perspective, The payback has already been immense and incalculable. So you're doing a good job, Just as it stands. But it sounds like this new phase is going to give everybody a bit more sustainability, Which is going to be very useful. Yes. And I think, You know, I think this is why we're very lucky to have two very supportive friends who are happy to pay our bills while we get that right. Because this is not something we want to rush, You know, It takes is that great quotes, Who's that great quote by? Can't remember. But it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to kill one. And I think we've worked so hard to really build up trust with our users that we are absolutely serious about providing them with the best daily free meditation product there is right, We're 100% committed to that. And so as we introduce things that mean, You know, I mean, Our hosting bills every month are $50, 000 a month just to host the app, Right? We have servers in five countries around the world. So these things cost money, So we need to find ways to pay for them. But we're going to do it in a way that actually doesn't dismantle that sort of community and, You know, Community feel that Insight Timer has. And I'm sure the community of teachers and community of users will back you fully on that. That sounds very responsible and very conscious. So will you come back on the podcast again and talk about these new features as and when they get released? Oh, Well, Tom, I mean, I might, I think we spoke in December last year, But I think that the donation concept will probably be sometime in September or October. So I'll let's have another chat then we can tell you about that. And we can also tell you about some other things that are coming up this side of Christmas. Fantastic. So if anyone's listening to this podcast off app, Where's the best URL for them to find the app for free? Great. Well, I mean, Just go to the App Store, The Apple App Store and type in Insight Timer. And what I might do is I might share this once once we've uploaded this podcast to the app, Maybe yours will be the first file that I share inside the app and we can see if it works properly. Let's do that. Actually, Let's let's share this podcast inside the app and let's share it on our Facebook page and see if that drives people back into the app. And I would like to say, Tom, If I could say to all of our users, Please do. If you have a moment, Please do share some of the content on the app. We don't have the financial resources that a lot of the other apps have to advertise. We don't do any advertising. We do no promotion at all. But if you do like a teacher on the app or if you do like a certain guide to meditation, Please just click the share icon and tell your friends about it. It would mean a great deal to to our development team for all the hard work they've done over the last 12 months. Absolutely. And what goes around comes around. So that gift of sharing will come right back at you from a source that you weren't expecting. I hope so. Well, Thank you for sharing your insights, Chris, And for creating a fantastic app and looking forward to meeting you in person shortly. Yeah, We've got lunch next week. I can't wait. I'm looking forward to it. Fantastic. Take care now. Thank you very much. So I've been Tom Evans and thanks for listening to this podcast. And if you want to find out more about this fantastic app, Go to insight timer. Com. And you can find out more about me, My meditations, Books and courses at www. Tomevans. Co.
4.9 (723)
Violet
June 11, 2024
This was fun to listen to 7 years later! Insight Timer has come a long way!
dora
November 28, 2021
Obrigada 🇧🇷 My goal is one day to be part of this teachers community This is one of my daily Sinkalpas 🙏
Wisdom
August 12, 2020
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE and am VERY Grateful for both of these Exceptional Human Beings for their work to make our World, and each of us, more Beautiful❣️ Thank you, Tom and Christopher. 🙏🏻💕
Tasha
September 16, 2019
I am thrilled to be a part of this community and movement. Thank you for your life changing content 🙏❣️
Shannon
July 17, 2019
So interesting and what an amazing community of kindness and generosity of spirit....bringing like minded people together to make our world more peaceful. I learned of Insight Timer during Yoga Teacher training. While the assignment was to begin at 3 minutes with the Timer and increase our time weekly, my level of stress and monkey mind was a true roadblock. So grateful that the guided meditations were offered....I have now been meditating for over 500 days, not straight but enough that I know Insight Timer has vastly improved my emotional, mental, and even physical health!! So so grateful.....thank you, Tom Evans for interviewing Christopher Plummer and thanks Christopher for sharing your “Insight” with the world. (I know this is an older interview....I’ll search for the update!) Metta 💙
KT
June 21, 2018
Loved to listen to this on my drive this morning to learn more about the creation of this incredible app. I’ve shared content with many many people and I hope others continue to do so as well. THANK YOU for this wonderful product!!
Sarah-Loreen
June 7, 2018
You are a great aspiration for many companies out there. Thank you very much!
Wendy
June 4, 2018
So glad I listened to this. Thankyou for finding new models and ways to move forward.I feel refreshed grateful and hopeful
Malia
March 26, 2018
Very grateful for you providing Insight timer Chris !! Everyone who has it is so blessed. Someone recommended to me and I am recommending it to others as I really love it!! 🙏🙏🙏
Merrilee
January 9, 2018
Thank you for sharing how you are sustaining this App
Jane
December 16, 2017
Thanks both, these updates are excellent. Looking forward to hearing the latest chat you mentioned recording this week? Best wishes. Jx 😊
Mark
November 28, 2017
Thank you to Chris and the whole team at insight timer this is by far the best thing I’ve found in many years thank you
Patrician
October 23, 2017
Great stuff! THANK YOU fkr this fabulous tool..
Amitabha
October 15, 2017
Great to hear about the cokumg features. Oookojy forward ro paid products. If you do some high quality ainfinf bowls above what us already offered for start/end bells, I am sure it will be a gift.
Tim
October 7, 2017
Good work , I have never thought about the background to your app before. This was more encouraging than I anticipated
Ajay
September 28, 2017
Thanks for such a great app😊
Julie
September 19, 2017
Great insight😉thank you
Sally
September 16, 2017
Zounds! The changes are overwhelming. Thank you and congratulations to the team. What unbelievable creativity and work. There is something for everyone. The vibrations of all these people using this app will bring about such great change. Thank you all so much. 💜
Sandra
September 15, 2017
Good information.thanks. I love insight timer. Keep it free
