[U-Boot] Standalone Application

I have found very little online about getting a standalone application up and running.
I don't have much experience in general let alone firmware level code.
What are the steps to creating my own standalone application?
I got the hello_world.bin running, but the makefiles are so complex that I don't understand why that is the only standalone app compiled when compiling U-boot as a whole.
Do I need to modify one of the makefiles?
I have read the readme.standalone, but it doesn't help much for a beginner.
Essentially I want to make my own standalone, example.bin, and have it compiled and ran.
Thanks for any insight!