As Stephanie, one of our amazing owners and a guest, pointed out, it's probably closer to "$5 billion or $6 billion" when you account for all the ways our clients process payments. This incredible growth and impact didn't happen by accident.

It's the result of a focused, brick-by-brick approach to organizing and educating our customers. But the truth is, we're just getting started. We're now entering ZenMaid's next chapter, one focused on massive innovation and a radical commitment to giving back to the industry we serve.

Our Foundation

For the past 13 years, our primary focus at ZenMaid has been to organize our customers' businesses. This means solving the 'back office' and owning all the admin tasks: scheduling, invoicing, payroll, and everything else our core product offers.

We've built a stellar reputation on reliable releases and exceptional customer experience. Our team goes above and beyond to make maid services successful, and we're committed to being the best value tool in the industry.

We started as simple scheduling software, but we've grown to do so much more. We ensure every cleaner knows exactly where and when they need to be, automate communications to save time and look professional, and enable owners to take vacations knowing their business is running smoothly.

This growth is thanks to our amazing product team and our unique pricing model. We scale with our customers: when they grow, we grow. This gives us the freedom to invest where others can't, knowing that any success we help our clients achieve ultimately helps our mission and our bottom line.

We have, what I believe, is the best monetization engine in the industry. Once someone uses ZenMaid, it becomes a critical system, allowing us to invest in many other ways.

Educating the Industry

We know we can't solve every problem with software or tech alone. And honestly, I don't think we should strive for that. The human element of ZenMaid is special, and we want to use tech to scale that human element. When software isn't the best solution, we guide our customers.

We point them to consultants, coaches, or our ZenMaid Mastermind group. We also differentiate ourselves through our content marketing, going 'content beyond the product.' Many SaaS companies only create content directly related to their core product, but we're willing to help maid services far beyond what's related to our scheduling software.

Take hiring, for example. We don't directly fix hiring inside ZenMaid, but we teach a better process through podcasts with experts like Stephanie, and through blog articles. When we help our clients hire better, they get more cleaners and a better business, which in turn means they pay us more. It's a win-win loop.

This approach has allowed us to build an incredible audience: 10,000+ Maid Summit attendees, over 232,000 listens on our "Filthy Rich Cleaners" podcast, 3,500 monthly readers on our magazine, 10,500 Mastermind members, 11,000 YouTube subscribers, and 32,000 active email newsletter readers.

This scale creates a powerful flywheel: when clients win, they pay us more, we invest in better product, get more users, make more money, invest in better content, and clients win again. We want to win with our users, not at their expense.

Innovating Now

Now, this is where it gets really interesting. We've got 13 years of product-building experience and muscle, and a trusted brand with a massive audience. This means we can now aim our attention at the rest of the industry's problems, beyond what our core product has solved. And don't worry, the core ZenMaid product will always be our main focus.

Why now? AI changes everything. What previously required 300 people, 30 people can now accomplish. This gives us a temporary window to launch many products and get a head start. AI allows everyone to innovate, not just developers.

Marketers, success, support - everyone is now a builder. Of course, there are levels to this; for tier four and five products (complex SaaS or platforms), developers are absolutely essential to ensure quality and reliability for our customers.

We're already building some exciting new things. We have Plutus and MaidPop, pop-up widgets that help clients get more email leads. MaidPath is a new product to help owners onboard and train cleaners more consistently.

Then there's Zoe the Maid Genius, an AI trained on client data, our knowledge base, and all our educational content. It's an AI that combines everything from steps one and two, and we're exploring making it available even to non-ZenMaid users. We've also got fun projects like MaidType, a personality test for maid service owners.

When someone asked if these new tools would be paid, my answer is that we're focused on solving our clients' problems and adding value first. The monetization strategy comes later, once we understand the value we're providing.

For example, MaidPop is free with branding, or you can pay a small annual fee to remove it, or even refer us three clients. There's such a thing as offering too much value for free, but we're finding the balance to ensure our offerings are valued while still helping us get our foot in the door so that eventually, everyone is using ZenMaid.

Our unfair advantage is distribution. We can literally launch these new products to hundreds, if not thousands, of people on day one. This cuts down the time to bring things to life and to market massively. Other people can build similar AI tools, but our reputation, brand, distribution, and the trust we've earned are what set us apart.

This trust is hard-earned, built by our approach to product and customer experience. We have "permission to play" and to tinker, to solve problems in cool ways, and to bring more fun to the industry. These things don't have to make money now or ever, because steps one and two have earned us that right.

Giving Back

This is ZenMaid's newest chapter, and it's a shift that has challenged my own thinking. The old question I used to ask was: How do we charge more? How do we make more money from each user? While that can lead to good conclusions about feature selection and pricing, I've recently been challenged by friends with a new question: How can we charge less?

Consider this thought experiment: what if we spent the next two years improving our core product, fixing bugs, adding features, and then dropped the price by 20%? How much more of the market would we capture? How much more trust and word-of-mouth would we earn? As one friend, who runs a highly successful Shopify plugin, put it, "Only a psychopath would try to compete with me" if his price was so low and value so high. It's a provocative idea, but it makes you think. There's a balance, of course; we need to make money to invest in our mission, but finding that sweet spot is key.

We have concrete ways we can give back. Our ZenMaid starter plan currently makes up about 2% of our revenue. We could make that entirely free, giving back to those in the industry who need it most. Imagine the marketing asset of having legitimately free software, with some limitations, that a solo cleaner could use forever. We're also exploring payment processing. If we took a percentage of the $3 billion (or more) in payments run through ZenMaid, we could use that margin to drop prices across the board or offer lower credit card processing fees than competitors, making our base software even more appealing.

Here's the thing: "The free stuff that we offer at ZenMaid, it's not bait, it's also not charity, right? It's not something that we do just entirely out of the goodness of our hearts, but it is who we want to be as a company." We want to be the company that is able to be more generous, that can do more for this industry simply because we can. This is how we become the most trusted brand, and I believe we're still just at the tip of the iceberg.

So, our path forward is clear. We'll continue to help our clients organize and educate, a never-ending game of Whac-A-Mole and continuous content creation. But now, we're also focused on steps three and four: innovate and give back. We're going to bring new solutions, unlocked by AI and our accumulated experience, and we're going to be generous in ways this industry hasn't seen before.

We're getting to a size now where what's best for the industry is what's best for ZenMaid. It's a 'rising tide raises all ships' approach, where we are the rising tide. This is about building a generational company, thinking long-term, and prioritizing our clients' best interests. The opportunity is massive, not just for ZenMaid as a nebulous entity, but for every individual in this room. Everyone can contribute in new and different ways to help our clients on a completely different level than ever before.

Ultimately, we want to continue being the one-stop shop for Stephanie and every other maid service owner out there, helping them find amazing clients, deliver amazing cleanings, and make it all look easy.

Or at least, resumes now are all so AI-polished now that you can't really trust them.

And that's only the start of new hiring challenges in the age of AI.

I recently recorded a quick conversation with my friend Noel Andrews from JobRack about how AI is completely breaking the traditional hiring process. He sees a massive volume of applicants and has practically cracked the code on how to filter and hire truly AI-native talent.

If you're thinking about adding more AI-fluent roles to your company, I highly encourage you to give our conversation a watch (put it on 2x speed!).

But to save you some time right now, here are a few useful takeaways Noel from the conversation:

1. Deploy a "Killer Question": Add one highly specific, role-based question to your application that candidates can't easily fake with a basic ChatGPT prompt. If the answer isn't great, you can instantly disqualify them without reading pages of fluff.

2. Ask candidates how they used AI to apply: Stop discouraging AI in applications. Instead, ask them directly how they used it. Their answer will tell you immediately if they are just blindly copy-pasting or if they are genuinely resourceful and agentic.

3. Conduct live screen-share tests: The best way to test AI skills is to give a candidate an impossible task, give them 10 minutes, and ask them to share their screen while they work. You get to watch exactly how they think and what tools they juggle in real-time.

4. Filter out the deepfakes: People are literally using AI teleprompters and video avatars in live interviews. Noel's quick trick to catch a fake avatar is to ask the candidate to pass their hand in front of their face to see if the video glitches.

Watch the full video below! 👇

That very real person is my wife, Fran, but hey, gotta start somewhere, right? ;-)

It took about 7 or 8 hours and I don't even know how to code.

I need to back up for a second, but only a second.

Fran is doing a 100-day painting challenge where, as is possibly evident by the name, she’ll paint something every day for 100 days, share each day publicly and track the streak. She was managing the whole thing manually. Posting to Instagram, keeping count in her head. And I thought: what if she had her own app for this? Something where she could log each session, see her progress climbing a visual mountain toward Day 100, and share a link with anyone who wanted to follow along.

It ended up being more a cool thing to show her friends and family and we highlighted her IG profile so she got some followers (maybe even broke 500?)

So I built it. It's called Fran's Peak. (The AI named it. Neither of us are fans. But it's V1, whatever, we moved on.) An important note: despite being the CEO of a software company, I’m non-technical. I spent about 60 days learning to code around 5 years after we started the business. That’s it.

So how did I build an app?

I'd been watching friends in Lisbon use an AI coding tool called Claude Code. My friend Noel showed me a personal motivation app he'd built for himself, saved it right to his phone's home screen, looked and felt like a real app, no App Store needed.

Now I’m used to seeing stuff like this because many of my friends are technical. But my friends building things this week weren't engineers. They were people like me. That broke my brain a little about what finally might be possible (for me).

So Saturday morning, I opened Claude Code and told it what I wanted to build for Fran. At the advice of friends I asked the AI to interview \me\. To ask every question it needed to get clarity on what I actually wanted. It asked maybe 20 questions. What's the challenge? How does she track progress? What should the morning ritual feel like? What's the vibe?

Then I asked it to take all my answers and create three documents: product requirements, technical requirements, and design guidelines. I went through each one with a fine-tooth comb. Gave feedback. Iterated. And once they felt right, I basically said "go build this."

And Claude Code did.

I chose to build with Rails and React, the same stuff ZenMaid runs on. This gave me an added benefit in that while I was learning to build, I was also starting to understand our own codebase a bit. Two birds, one stone.

As the AI built, I asked it to explain what it was doing. Not all of it stuck. A lot flew over my head. When it told me to type commands into the terminal, I'd look up what they actually meant. Really basic stuff. Stuff an actual developer would find embarrassing. But here's the beautiful thing about AI, no question is too stupid. I had the same concept explained to me three, four, five different ways until it finally clicked. And some of it didn’t click, and that’s ok. Progress is progress!

Somewhere in there, time disappeared. The kind of flow state I haven't felt since the early days of ZenMaid, when everything was new and every small win felt enormous. I was tucking little surprises into the app, easter eggs for our pup Lola, custom milestone messages, little delights because I knew she'd be the one opening it every morning and I wanted her to smile. It’s fun to think about all these details while creating something :-)

Saturday night, it worked on my computer. Sunday morning, I got it live on the internet with a real URL. Fran started using it. I sat there staring at my laptop like an idiot thinking \holy shit, I actually made this.\

I should be honest about the AI's role here because I don't want this to read like a sponsored post. I'm not a developer now. I know I'm not. The best way I can describe working with Claude Code is like having a really talented but slightly overeager junior dev team sitting in the room with me.

They're fast, they're brilliant, they'll build whatever you ask. But they might cut corners or make decisions that a seasoned engineer would side-eye. You have to check their work. You have to stay engaged. You have to think.

Which is kind of the perfect setup for someone trying to learn.

I'm already planning to rebuild the whole thing from scratch, not because it's broken, Fran uses it every day but because I made enough mistakes along the way that I want to run it back with everything I know now. The app was the output. Education was the point.

But here's the part I can't stop thinking about. Four days. That's how long it took me to go from "I barely know what a terminal is" to "there's a live app on the internet." Most of that was a single Saturday afternoon. Me, a guy whose only code contribution to his company is the year changing automatically on Jan 1 each year (yes I’m proud of this), built a working app between lunch and dinner (a very late dinner).

I don't know exactly what comes next. Actually, that's not true. I'm rebuilding this for multiple users so Fran's artist friends can join. But for the first time in a long time, the list of things I \could\ build feels way longer than the list of reasons I can't.

I still can't code. But I can build.

Listen to this episode on

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Amazon Music

Highlights from my conversation with Craig:

I had a fun chat with Craig Hewitt on the Rogue Startups podcast on quite a few topics:

• Transitioning ZenMaid from David to Goliath (but still winning)
• Navigating internal disagreements and managing tough decisions
• Running a "benevolent dictatorship"—and why that sometimes works
• How to deal with boredom, complacency, and staying sharp as a CEO
• The productivity paradox: what being "productive" means at the top
• Entertainment vs. distraction: protecting your focus
• Is AI a threat to SaaS companies, or a tool for growth?

Resources and Links from This Episode

• Rogue Startups
• Follow Craig on LinkedIn
• Connect with Craig on Twitter/X: @TheCraigHewitt
• ZenMaid
• Follow me on LinkedIn
• Connect with me on Twitter/X: @itsjustamar

Chapters

• (00:00:00) - How to Build a 12-year-old SaaS Company
• (00:01:15) - Squarespace CEO on How Far Along the Business Is
• (00:03:39) - How We Went From Fast Follower to Industry Leader
• (00:08:35) - Jeff Bezos on Decisions Made by the Team
• (00:13:52) - Zenmaid's CEO on Never Enough
• (00:18:10) - How to Get More Out of a Manager
• (00:19:30) - Craig on His Side Businesses
• (00:25:49) - Kastos on What Would He Tell You?
• (00:28:03) - How Do You Continue to Evolve As a Founder?
• (00:33:16) - Brain tumor patient on work life balance
• (00:39:46) - Jordan G. on AI and the Economy
• (00:44:55) - Brands and the AI revolution
• (00:46:33) - Amar Ghosh on Connecting With People

Episode Transcript

\[Craig Hewitt\] (0:08 - 1:24)

Hello, welcome back to Rogue Startups. I'm your host, Craig Hewitt. Today, I'm joined by Amar Ghose of ZenMaid.

Amar and I talk about everything from being 12 years in the business. He's 12 years into ZenMaid, doing kind of millions of dollars, I think. Largely kind of like the business running itself, him having the dream of working kind of when and how he wants in the business.

Talking about what longevity in a business really gets you as far as a competitive advantage. And he talks about how he just doesn't really pay attention to newcomers until they're several years in. Talking about what we're seeing in the market when it comes to AI and the threat that it is or isn't to us as SaaS companies.

And talking about being a while into the business and what it's taught us about the perspective we have on our business as a whole. If you are in SaaS or thinking about it, I think you're really going to enjoy this perspective on building a really kind of tame, sensible, but ambitious SaaS company. I sure did.

Here's my conversation with Amar. Like how far along are you guys like in the business? Like customers, headcount, revenue, whatever you're comfortable kind of giving just to give folks a context.

\[Amar Ghose\] (1:25 - 1:56)

Yeah, so we're at about $3 million annually. Team is probably around 20. I'm never sure exactly because it's a lot of contractors.

We consider everyone to be team members, but of course the relationships are quite different. But yeah, I mean, we follow a profit first model. So we make about 10% off the top of about $3 million a year.

And so I think that we're pretty people heavy, I think, compared to most software businesses are our size.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (1:56 - 2:12)

But that's just the way I prefer to do things. Profit first. We follow it as well.

We bank at Mercury. It has automatic stuff all set up to do that automatically. Do you instrument that yourself like on the first of each month?

Or do you have it automated? Or how does that work?

\[Amar Ghose\] (2:13 - 2:49)

Right now it's my executive assistant that handles it, but I'm passing it off to my COO. I may look into if it's possible. We've just been with Chase for so long.

It's kind of a don't fix what's not broken. I do own a maid service as a side business that someone else owns and operates alongside me. And for that, we use one of the more modern banks.

I think it's Relay. And that one does all the automatic transfers as well. And it's like, oh, this is kind of nice.

Not worth switching my entire company's banking for, but it's nice. It's a good feature.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (2:50 - 4:03)

So they're not a bank. They're FinTech. And they have a bank that is underneath that.

And they switched that underlying bank recently. And that was a motherfucker because all of our payroll and benefits and direct debits. We had a big enterprise deal coming in with the old information.

And I'm like, yo, we're about to get like 50 grand. That's coming in. You guys need to figure out.

And so they're like, okay, you have this grace period, but you need to update it. And I'm like, fuck. Now, every big enterprise deal that we renew every year, we have to update.

And that's just anyways. Mercury is a really impressive company, but that stuff is really disruptive for no benefit. We get nothing out of it.

Well, congratulations. Three million is really, really significant. I know I was co-hosting with Rob on startups for the rest of us, and you had sent in a message about what happens when you go from fast follower to leader in the space.

What is that for you? Because I would consider us a follower for sure. We're definitely not an industry leader in podcasting.

But how has that transition come about, I guess?

\[Amar Ghose\] (4:04 - 7:20)

So it's an interesting one where I feel like due to the market that we're in, it's not as sexy. It doesn't attract as much young hot shots or whatever. And so it feels like for a long time, our brand and our marketing has been well ahead of our product.

Because for a long time, we were much better known than our product was actually good. Still good enough, but you would have thought that we had the best product in the entire industry just based on the number of people that knew us. And I think that with enough time, because we've been doing this for 12 years, and I think if you show up and commit to any market for 12 years, you're going to end up with a pretty darn good solution.

And it feels like at some point, we crossed that chasm. It's actually a combination of things where it took us a lot of time for both. A lot of it was just me maturing as a person, as a CEO, all of that, and being able to lead the team through all of this.

So it was a lot of me maturing, it was a lot of the company maturing, and then it was a lot of the product maturing. Is that being bootstrapped, we have been limited in what we can do every year and what we can actually accomplish. And so I would say around maybe year eight or nine, I think at that point, we probably hit that feature parity where it's like, okay, we pretty much check all of the boxes now that all of our major competitors do.

And so what that's allowed us to do is now we're able to look a little bit more into the future and to actually be ahead on some stuff. And it's essentially, we have time to almost build things that may or may not work, whereas before we had to continuously take safe bets of it's like, we don't offer proper invoicing, most of our competitors do, so we're going to green light that. So yeah, an example there would be recently, and this was a cool one for me because I was pretty much not involved.

This was entirely the team's idea and then full implementation and all of that stuff is one of our team members that hosts our podcast and everything. She has her own maid service and was just randomly telling some of our developers about one of her girls that essentially got cornered in a house by a client that was drinking at like 10 AM and was trying to get her to do shots with them and all this stuff. And one of the developers was like, hey, Uber has an SOS button.

Would it be helpful if we had an SOS button in there for your cleaners so they could easily let you and the rest of your team know if they were feeling unsafe? And that was something that the team designed, put together, released and all of that. That's the kind of thing that I wouldn't have green lit in the past simply because there were obviously more important things to work on, even though that would have been a brilliant idea just as much today, right?

Or just as much 12 years ago as it is today. But our abilities to sort of take those shots has changed massively. And I think that when you get enough of those, enough of those right, then you begin to get seen as like the innovator and as like the industry leader.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (7:20 - 8:29)

Yeah. What happens if you don't agree with that? What happens if teams like we're going to build that's a really like what you said is a really good idea.

And I totally I totally kind of vibe with that. What if it's like what if the team's like, hey, we're going to split off and fork the code base and build this thing for like lawn care people and they and they kind of just do it because you've you've empowered them and they're free to make decisions. And you're just like that.

That's not like that. That's not it. Like I ask because I still feel like like I definitely still make at the end of the day all of the big product roadmap decisions of like what we're going to build.

And like sure enough, like you'd ask our team like we don't all agree. Like there are certain things that people want, whether it's from support or development or, you know, product in the market. And sometimes it's just like we build stuff that I don't really want, but I know we kind of have to.

But but sometimes like we build stuff that only that only I want and nobody else like really, really cares about. But it's not so often that like we build something I don't really agree with. Yeah, I don't know.

Has that come up?

\[Amar Ghose\] (8:31 - 10:58)

So it it's come up with with with some with some of the things. I mean, I think I think one one big thing here is what Jeff Bezos talks about of like the mental model or like frame of just disagreeing and committing. So one thing here is like with the example that you gave, changing like who we serve is like a massive strategic decision.

That's not picking how the team is going to spend the next two or four weeks of their time. And so I I feel like the best way to describe it, if it's like it's a benevolent dictatorship where it's like, let's be let's be completely clear here, like my word goes, but I want to hear everybody's like sort of like opinions or whatever. And generally, I leave decisions to the team.

And there are Yeah, it's essentially I've let them know where it's like, hey, like, I will leave you to like to to make like your your your own like, like decisions that doesn't give you full reign to just go and do whatever you want. We still talk through these things and all that. And I will verbalize when I think that something is a bad decision and why and we can talk through that.

And the idea is for it to generate a productive discussion. And then there are times where I will put my foot down and be like, hey, like, we're not we're not doing that. Like just, you know, I don't want to say like, just because because I sound like my mother, you know, just because that's Yeah, but there are like times like that.

But I think that I've also seen enough times in the past where the team argues with me on something being like a good idea or something being useful. And I've argued with them over it eventually relented. And then it's been very obvious that they're right, that that's happened to me enough to know that, like, generally to me, it's like whoever has the higher conviction, right?

If I tell you like, hey, this is why I don't think it's a good idea. And I'm the CEO of the company. And I have a junior team member that's like, cool.

I disagree. And it's like, after I verbalize that, it's just like, okay, like, you know, and this is how we ended up signing up for Salesforce as our CRM and like lighting like $4,000 on fire. And I just like I was just like, guys, like, it's fine.

It's my money. It's a $4,000 training exercise. That's fine.

And then they came to me within like within like, I think it was like 63 days or something after signing the contract. And they're like, yeah, this was a terrible idea. I was like, I told you like I was the Salesforce admin in a previous life.

It is the worst. It is the absolute worst. I told you that you disagreed.

Here we are.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (10:59 - 12:26)

Yeah, yeah. 12 years. Um, that that's a hot minute.

Like we're eight years like right to the week, I think eight years at Castos. Congrats. Thanks.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I don't know. Like that's an interesting thing to say.

Congrats. Because like, I'm just chatting with someone and they were like, Oh, man, we should have sold in like 2021 or 22. Yeah.

Because like multiples and like you can never time the model. And if a novel set is listening, he'd be like, that's dumb. Don't don't even think like that.

But but I think like the typical lifecycle of a business is call it three to five years. And like, if that's the case, then you and me and like Joel from Buffer and Nathan Barry and you know, a bunch of folks who have been doing these kind of things for like a really long time are kind of outliers, I would say like not not like extreme, but but like outside the normal distribution. What do you think?

I don't know. What do you think it means? Like for me, I definitely have been bored in the last year.

And so I started doing some coaching and do some kind of like a little more personal stuff. But like I was sitting there this morning, and I was like, this is so dumb. Like I really like my business.

I definitely don't like everything about my business. And maybe that that's probably the answer for me is like, sorry, I'm answering the question for you. I'm answering my side of the question.

And I'd love to hear what it's good.

\[Amar Ghose\] (12:26 - 12:26)

It's interesting.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (12:26 - 13:49)

I love it. I don't love being in charge of growth. And that that's kind of like where where the company from a headcount perspective has been is like we have product, we have development and we have support nailed and an amazing team members.

It kind of only leaves me for sales and marketing and being the CEO and kind of like what I've come to realize. And it's like this process of like almost grief is like that just doesn't work. You know, I can't be a good CEO and in charge of sales and marketing eight years into a business.

You can for three years. And that's probably why a lot of businesses sell at three to five years because they people just go super hard and run to the wall and then sell. But if I'm like, cool, this is a good business, which it is.

And you're saying the same thing yourself. It's like, why the fuck would I sell this thing? Like, yeah, it affords me an amazing lifestyle.

It's pretty stable. Like, yeah, AI is probably not going to completely fuck us. I can't say that about many other things.

Yeah. Why would I do something different? Probably better to just optimize that one little bit of like we need a marketing person so I can take a step back and really operate at like a C level and start like enjoying things again.

That's kind of where I am. And that's that that dude that's been two years in the making. I just feel like such a fucking idiot for it taking that long.

But like just in the last couple of weeks like that, that's where we are.

\[Amar Ghose\] (13:49 - 13:49)

Yeah.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (13:49 - 13:55)

I'd love to hear your perspective, like 12 years. Do you love the business? Like, do you love where you are in the business?

\[Amar Ghose\] (13:55 - 17:36)

Yeah. So I'm I feel like I'm really lucky when it when I listen to a lot of like the podcast, I hear a lot of people where it's just like, I mean, Andrew Wilkinson from like Tiny and all those, he's got the book Never Enough, right? And the more that I listen to like podcasts and stuff, I feel like that's one of the greatest gifts that I seem to have just picked up like naturally of just like, I feel like I have enough like I am enough like I just don't feel the need for like much more.

I mean, like there's plenty of things that I would love to do if I had more money. But also like, there's not that much that would actually change about my day to day. Like if I had more money, it would change a couple of things.

Like instead of flying business class, I would fly first class, right? Like, you know, instead of going and getting like relatively cheap seats at like the football games, I'd want to get box seats, right? It's like once a month kind of things that I would want to spend, you know, four figures instead of three figures, right?

Like nothing like nothing like crazy, but day to day, I'm already just like happy and content and everything. And so I feel like that's like a really big one that there's a lot of people out there that I feel like it's almost like the challenge that it's more just that like they can't almost like sit still with something for like that that long or like or whatever. And so it's like they constantly want to be moving on to the next thing.

And I wouldn't even say it's necessarily shiny object syndrome, because shiny object syndrome kind of implies that you're like almost chasing something, whereas I think for a lot of people, it's just like fulfillment. A big thing for me, where I feel just very lucky is that I, I really just enjoy the building of the business. And I like kind of the challenge.

And like, essentially, the game that I'm playing, at least right now in life is how far can I build Zenmade while keeping my current like lifestyle and work life balance. And more and more, I'm seeing that it's possible to do both if you have the right team. And that's kind of what you're going through, right?

It's like you're what you're talking about. So for me, about two years ago, I made that key marketing hire, where now all of a sudden, it's like, finally, I can actually step away from the business, and things continue to get better. And it continues to grow in my absence.

I'm still not necessarily like needed, but I'm still the one who's looking forward, like really far into the future and everything. But like, yeah, for me, I'm just enjoying, it's almost like a game to me, it's just like, I'm enjoying each level like as we go, but it's not really like out of the need for anything else anymore. And so yeah, and also, honestly, to be like a little bit like vulnerable here, like, honestly, like, I think that doing it again is like, I mean, it's definitely not guaranteed, right?

As like, as different an entrepreneur as I am right now, going back to the beginning and doing zero to one again, I would much rather just continue to get better and to grow in my current position. And for that to be the game that I play, like, I just I don't really want to go back to like the early years. Like I was telling you, I think before we started recording that I have a quite like a quite like high number of team members given like our amount of revenue.

That's because like, my personal philosophy is I really like getting things done, but I really, really don't like doing things. So to me, having a team is the best thing ever. Like some people having a team is a prison.

For me, I spend half my week on calls and the rest of my week just like thinking and walking around and spending time with the dog and like whatever and just thinking through problems. And I could not be any happier. And for some people, they're just like, when I'm on calls, I'm not doing any work.

And I'm like, for me, calls is the work. So yeah, I don't know.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (17:37 - 17:48)

Yeah, so that's interesting. So like, I, where did I see this? Oh, it was a Hormozy thing.

I'm like drinking the Hormozy Kool-Aid these days. I went to one of his events a couple of years ago.

\[Amar Ghose\] (17:48 - 17:59)

Yeah, with Laura. Yeah, I work with, Laura and I share an office in Brighton. So she gave me the full like the full debrief.

And she was saying you were I think the only other SaaS person there, actually.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (18:00 - 18:26)

Yeah, it was weird. It was weird. But yeah, it was a really good event.

Like for anybody, I'm going to release a video on my YouTube channel, kind of breaking it down. But yeah, it was good. One of the things that he talked about not there, but in one of his other videos is like, as a manager, your definition of productivity is talking to people.

As anyone who's not a manager, their definition of productivity is not that it is doing shit. It's writing code, answering tickets, designing stuff.

\[Amar Ghose\] (18:27 - 18:27)

Yeah.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (18:27 - 18:53)

And I think that that's like hard for us to see sometimes until somebody verbalizes it like that. And I think like, Hormozy does a good job of like verbalizing stuff like that in a straightforward way. Yeah, I am in the same boat.

I see these like solopreneurs out there. And I'm like, that seems like the worst possible thing ever is like, even if you're fucking Justin Welch and making a bunch of money.

\[Amar Ghose\] (18:53 - 18:53)

Yeah.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (18:53 - 20:25)

If he doesn't show up, he's cooked, right? Like, as my kids would say, like, he's cooked. I could go.

Yeah, if we make this marketing hire, which actually we just working with Mark Thomas. Yeah. Like, cool.

Mark's gonna do marketing, team's gonna do everything else. I would just put an autoresponder out for the couple of like, enterprise clients that email me and shit like partnerships and stuff like that. Payroll runs automatically.

I probably couldn't actually go on vacation for a month. But but it wouldn't be I could do like an hour a day, probably. Which, which is pretty cool.

Do you think I'd like to talk about like your side businesses, you've talked about like, you have the the kind of maid service and stuff like that. I think that's the other side of this coin, right? Because like, one part of it is like, I'm going to grow this thing, I'm going to sell it for five or $10 million.

And then you got a whole nother set of problems, which is like, how do I make money from that? Like that, that's what our traditional investing. The other which like my friends here locally who are not in SaaS advocate for and they're like, Craig, you have this amazing business that can probably generate extra cash for you take that and go do something else with it, which sounds kind of like what you've done.

I'd love to just hear more about that. Because that's kind of like where we are now is like, we have some cash, the business is pretty stable, I want to start doing more stuff with it. Like, yeah, how do you think about stuff outside the business?

Is it a distraction? Like how, how important to your kind of personal financial path is that?

\[Amar Ghose\] (20:26 - 22:37)

So to me, I would say, I'm probably not the best to ask about kind of like what to do like outside of like of like the business. But really, the way that I think about it is pretty much anything outside of the business is entertainment. And some entertainment like playing poker has financial upside along with financial risk.

Although like even like playing poker, I just consider that like spending $200, right? And occasionally it turns into 400. But in my head, like it's already gone, right?

And so that that's the best way that I that I can kind of think about it. And that's because just in the past, I have chased a couple of other things. So like with this maid service that I have as a side project, that's literally one of the team members who works for ZenMaid who had run a maid service in the past.

She approached me and was like, Hey, I need a tiny bit of like financial backing and want to go and do this and showed me a plan and everything. And I was just like, Yeah, cool. Like, that's fine.

Like, you know, the worst case scenario here is just I get, you know, even more of a firsthand glimpse into like, kind of how our customers work and everything. So to me, it's like, you know, if that like, I'm not really thinking about that as anything until we sell it. And if it goes to zero, it's not going to impact my finances.

But in terms of just like cash that like that, that ZenMaid like spits off, first of all, we're moving to London for some reason. So like most of that money just isn't mine anymore. It just goes straight to I don't know, you step outside in London, and it seems like you're taxed money, which is which is fun.

But essentially for that, we're very boring with it. My wife and I I mean, it just it literally go goes into into crypto and into an into like a Vanguard like index fund of essentially your typical like barbell strategy. I think that at some point in the future, I think it's more likely that I will bring a CEO in to take over ZenMaid or promote somebody internally to CEO, and then we'll likely move on to like another like venture that's more likely than selling.

But I really don't think that I'm the type to do like multiple things at once. Every time I've tried that in the past, it's just you know, ZenMaid backhands me and goes give me give me attention, you know, just every every time.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (22:38 - 23:23)

So yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, I definitely haven't talked about this like publicly, but like, yeah, so like, I do a little bit of coaching on the on the side. And like, it's fun.

It's really rewarding. I work with tiny seed as their like advisor in residence and help some of the companies there go to some of their events. I was in London last May.

London in May or the UK May is amazing. I think it's maybe the only good time of year from what I hear from weather perspective. And like, I wonder sometimes like, is that just as a distraction?

Like am I just am I just trading short term gains in terms of like, yeah, I make a little bit of money for like the sacrifice of the long term potential and like growth of of castos.

\[Amar Ghose\] (23:24 - 25:26)

Yeah, for sure. So I do a little bit of coaching as as well. It's just occasionally, you know, I've had some people that have reached out after conversations and have asked to kind of like formalize things and everything.

And so I've done that like a little bit as well. In every case, it's literally I would do this for free. So in most cases, like when my wife was supporting a couple of like select charities, I was just taking the money and just donating it like there.

And it was more just, you know, kind of placing a value on it, making sure people like signed up for further calls. But that's kind of how like how how I thought about it. Like to to me, what I would be asking myself if I were you is other than the money, what is this giving me because I get the feeling that for you that coaching is actually quite meaningful, and that it actually has nothing to do with the money.

At least if you're anything like me, I find it refreshing. And I feel like I show up to Zen made more energized when I'm able to just help out somebody that's a little bit like, you know, like earlier than me on the journey. And I'm able to just sort of help them through a couple of problems just because I've been there.

It's just kind of an empowering thing. I think that in a lot of cases, it's more like the way that I show up in Zen made is where it's actually like it's actually worth it. But to me, it's like, you know, if castos is already like, you know, successful enough and everything, then like you don't have to maximize it, right?

Like, it's kind of like balancing it of like, I'm definitely trying to keep Zen made growing at a fast enough rate that we're not at risk. And like, honestly, I'm kind of feeling a bit of the pinch from that, like right now, that in the past 18 months, it's we've jumped a significant amount in revenue, but it's been from a price increase. It hasn't been from actual like business growth.

And that's something that I find like find concerning. And it's something that I'm like turning my attention like back to. But yeah, I mean, in terms of like the coaching, it's probably not about the money.

And if it was just a financial decision, I doubt that you would do it. But I bet you it's still the right decision for you to do if you like who you're talking to.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (25:26 - 26:48)

So yeah, I think that yeah, I think that's right. I think that like, it being a side business, literally just like a page on my personal site is good. The money is nice, you know, like the I mean, it's all just savings and investment like that.

It's all just like on top of of like what what we need, which like that's nice. I think the biggest thing is, you know, I've always I've asked this on Twitter, like, I've always wondered the like the journaling people, like, what is it about journaling that makes you so superhuman? And and I think that coaching is a similar thing in that it helps me reflect on like, it's a mirror for myself, too, right?

Like I am a mirror for my clients. And I'm kind of a mirror for myself of like, I tell people stop doing dumb shit, or focus on this thing, or no, you shouldn't launch a second product. And then I go to myself, like, Hmm, that's pretty good advice.

Like, I should probably, I should. And I think about, you know, the people that I really, you know, kind of look up to and respect and I say, like, what would they say in the situation as like a data point? And then and then I kind of like take that perspective back to Castos.

So yeah, 100% that like, I think that's how I show up better. Yeah, energized, you know, you know, whatever, at like my my real job.

\[Amar Ghose\] (26:49 - 27:52)

Yeah, I feel like I feel like I have like, you know, it's like people have like the angel and the devil on like their shoulder. Yeah, like, I feel like I've got like a hippie like stoner on like on on one side, and then I've got Alex Hormozy on the other, right. And it's like, that's like, always like the like a kind of a battle, or maybe something a little bit like more like more like reasonable, but I definitely do the same thing where it's like when I'm looking at something, you know, I'll definitely run through essentially the question of like, what would Alex Hormozy do here?

And then usually my first reaction is that's way too extreme, I'm going to pick something like less extreme, you know, but it's still a good like, it's a good point. Like you said, it's a data point. And if you ask yourself about how would a couple different smart friends, right?

How would how would Rob think about this? How would how would Laura think about this? And you ask yourself a couple of those, you can very quickly, I mean, you can do that in real life and actually ask the question.

But honestly, as a thought exercise, I find it very helpful as well. And yeah, you're right. That's the big thing with coaching, is it's like, what would I tell someone else if they came to me with my exact problem?

And that's almost always, you'd say something different than what you're about to do.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (27:52 - 28:51)

Yeah, yeah, no, I was like, literally happened yesterday. I was like, Oh, what's he gonna ask? Oh, okay.

So one thing that I one thing I wonder about for some of these folks, we're talking about, like, we would go to them for advice. I wonder, like, who does Rob Walling go to for advice? Not a lot of people who I would consider like significantly further along in their kind of business development or personal, like professional development than someone like him.

I certainly have a couple of people I go to, but I'm curious how you think about like continuing to evolve as a founder. You're, you're significantly into this, right? Yeah, someone called me a seasoned founder the day after, I was like, fuck you.

I was like, okay, thanks. But I definitely, I definitely, I definitely talk more than I listen these days. And I think that's not always great.

Like, how do you, how do you continue to like level up?

\[Amar Ghose\] (28:51 - 29:23)

Yeah, so I think it's about, I found, I found the same thing a little bit. But I think it's just in terms of continuing to kind of like, maybe not like expand your network. But it's essentially just continuing to get into like bigger and bigger, like, like rooms.

And I think that it's kind of finding the right pace for that. I think that if you push that too hard, then people get uncomfortable and discouraged and then don't like it. So for me, let's see, you've I think I've heard you on the dynamite circle on the tropical MBA podcast, I think, right?

Or have you not been on that one?

\[Craig Hewitt\] (29:24 - 29:28)

I haven't not been on that one. Yeah. Okay.

I listen and be a part of the DC. Yeah, but okay.

\[Amar Ghose\] (29:28 - 31:51)

Yeah, yeah. So, um, so, so yeah, so for the DC, I've been in the DC for almost like 10 years now. So I joined their like higher program when they released that of DC black.

But then more and more recently, I joined Hampton from Sam par and the my first million crew. And that's been just kind of another, another kind of like level. I did, I did like SAS Academy for for for a bit there.

And really, the funny thing there is that with a lot of these things, it's I know going in with SAS Academy, we didn't use much of the content, it was entirely for the network that it was just cool. Like, it's a little bit annoying, because it's like, I know that I'm essentially giving somebody my money to essentially just like, like meet the people that are like there, but it's essentially buying your way like in into a network. And from that, it's like, you know, pulled out a couple of people that are on like similar journeys.

And I think that just like over time, you just find more and more people. So I think for you and me, we probably do find ourselves talking more and like listening a little bit less because it's just of the people that we talk to, we're ahead of the vast, like the vast majority of them. So what I'm generally looking for these days is I'm less looking for founders that are necessarily ahead of me, although that is always great when when you find that.

And of course, there are tons out there that you that you realize of just like how small like we, we like really like really are when it when it all like is said and done. But for me, it's more like I'm looking for people that are ahead of me in very specific areas, right? So it's like, I don't need somebody that's ahead of me, like overall at like $10 million or whatever.

But I might be looking for a head of growth that has taken two or three startups to $10 million. And then I'm trying to do essentially a development interview with them to try to pick their brains on stuff, right? The other thing actually is also just just leveling up of like, when when we were really early, it was all books, then it became like courses or torrented courses before that, then paid for them later, right?

And like in all that group coaching and etc. Now I'm very much in like the one on one sort of like, so sort of like area where, you know, I need something, I go directly to the best person that I can find and pay for an hour or a couple of hours like of their time, and then go go from there. And so I think that has really helped me to level up a lot, like a lot as well, that I'm able to sort of force myself up in in levels with finances and just all sorts of things.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (31:51 - 33:15)

Yeah, yeah. I'm a sucker for for all that kind of stuff, man. Like I dabbled in SaaS Academy, I went to one went to one of the events, it just like kind of wasn't wasn't for me.

I joined the digital marketer, like, oh, yeah, call it m three, like, similar, similar kind of thing, but just for marketing, which was really good. Like Ryan Dice is a stud, like, yeah, he is incredible, incredible stuff there. You know, went to the Hormosa thing, which is just a one time thing, and really wasn't that expensive.

But yeah, I've looked at like Hamptons and the DC black stuff. Yeah, that's probably like a later this year kind of thing for me. Because yeah, like community, community is so important, man.

I mean, like, you're gonna be in London, there's a ton of, you know, startup, I know more startup people in London than I do, like where I live. But but even then, like you're, you know, you might share an office with Laura, but you're still kind of freaking by yourself all the time. Like, I know you had a bit of a health scare earlier this year, like, as we get further into our business, like you got to start saying, like, okay, that balance of like, for the first few years, I'm just gonna run into the wall and kill myself for the make this thing work.

Now, I'm kind of looking at like, a lot of days, I don't start my day till 930. Because I dropped the kids off at school, then I go to the gym, like that, that needs to happen at some point, like, tell me, tell me about what kind of like what happened and kind of like, how you think about that balance?

\[Amar Ghose\] (33:15 - 35:38)

Yeah, definitely. So yeah, in in at the end of January of this year, I got diagnosed with a brain tumor. And I had about about three weeks where it was just completely unknown of it was like, we knew there was something seriously wrong in like in in my head, but we had no idea if it was terminal or if it was going to be completely okay.

Thankfully, completely okay. They just gave me a couple of like of pills. But three weeks is a lot of time to be like questioning everything and to not really know kind of what like your future, your future kind of kind of looks like.

I'm quite thankful to say that that I did like sort of zoom out and look at everything and did feel like I was already living quite a bit like or like like quite quite like in alignment with sort of like who I wanted to be. I think the only thing that maybe was missing a little bit not like missing a little bit, but it definitely made me want to see my friends like immediately, right? That was one of those things.

And it's like, I haven't checked in with like quite a few of my friends and far too long. And so you know, that kind of woke me up to that of like with like with the relationships and everything. But yeah, I know what you mean about like the work life balance and stuff.

And for me, it's just less. Yeah, less of that kind of early morning, middle of the night sacrifice that, you know, I built the business while traveling the world and stuff. So I had, you know, extended periods of time where I might be waking up at 5am to do sales calls, or be staying up until midnight and all that stuff's like out the door.

Now, my favorite thing about being in the in the UK now, though, is that we run on kind of like half us half European hours, but all of our calls are in the afternoon. And like the rest of my time is just thinking time. So I'm the same as you that, you know, oftentimes, I'm not sitting down at my computer until after lunch.

But you know, occasionally, that means that I'm on calls until eight or 9pm as well. But that comes with the territory. So I definitely like having the mornings to myself.

But uh, yeah, I think that work life balance, at least for me, like, like a lot of people, it's like they work because like they get a lot of fulfillment out of it and everything. And I definitely get fulfillment out of out of the work. But for me, it's very much like a means a means to to to an end.

And you know, the work is part of my work life balance that I wouldn't trade the company for like a bunch of money because I wouldn't find it fulfilling without the company. But um, yeah, you know, I work three to four days a week pretty hard. And then I pretty much have a three to four day weekend every week.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (35:38 - 37:26)

So yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. I, um, oh, sorry.

It's, it's kind of late. So so we have like, my dad has some pretty like significant like, like Parkinson's and dementia. Like he's he's getting quite sick as he's older.

Yeah. And it's tough. That's why I was pausing.

But I largely tie that back to like, he kind of retired, um, in his mid fifties. And, and I think there's like, there's a lot of data around this, right? Like when you retire, like your purpose goes away, you hear about founders selling their business and they just like lose it.

I think that is those two things, like knowing those two things at the same time are really significant for me and my, um, my path, right? Like, um, you know, my wife would would love for me to sell Castos and like have some money and like sense of security. And I, and I'm kind of like, gosh, I, I think it would be worse.

Like, I think it'd be, it'd be great to look at the bank account and see like zeros and stuff. And then I would be like, oh, wow. Like I got to figure out how to make money with that money.

I got to figure out what the heck I'm going to do because like she works, we have kids in middle schools who like we have years until we can just go fuck off and do whatever we want. Um, and like, I have firsthand context of like it actually being pretty bad for you to not have something to do. Um, and so I think that like, we're kind of, it goes all the way back to the beginnings.

Like we talked about like you're 12 years and we're eight years in, like I'm kind of sitting here saying like, Hey, how can we be 20 years into the business? Um, and gosh, like it'll probably look really different. Uh, but I definitely am not going to start over like you, like that, that's the worst possible, uh, thing.

I don't, you know, like the dumb thing probably would be like, oh, I'll go sell this and go buy another one.

\[Amar Ghose\] (37:26 - 37:26)

Yeah.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (37:27 - 37:59)

A ton of risks. Cause I don't understand the market. Like there's shit about Castos and podcasting.

That's not great. Like customers are pretty price sensitive. There's not a lot of expansion revenue, blah, blah, blah, but there's a lot.

That's pretty good too. Um, yeah, I don't know. I do.

I do kind of kick myself sometimes because I like, I kind of have one shot at SAS and you probably do too. Like I think we're similar age. Um, I'm not going to do this again.

I knowing what I know now, I wouldn't have done this. I wouldn't do this again, but I won't throw it away to do something else.

\[Amar Ghose\] (38:00 - 39:01)

Yeah. I feel very, very, very similarly of, yeah, in, in hindsight, I probably had better opportunities. There were better niches that could have been picked.

There were all sorts of things that could have been done differently. But I recognize from a very, very early point in the business of like, this is kind of my opportunity and finding a product market fit where like, I'm the founder, I'm in control. Like I'm able to do these things.

That's not something that comes up every day. Another thing that, that just like I remind myself of is when you think about more like traditional small businesses and stuff, there are plenty of very happy, um, and successful business owners around the U S that just own like the local maid service that makes 800 K or 1.5 million dollars like a year. And they're taking home a reasonable percentage of that living a great life.

And that's something that I sometimes have to remind myself because it's really tough not to compare myself to these 17 year olds using AI to make $20 million like a year.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (39:01 - 39:01)

Right.

\[Amar Ghose\] (39:01 - 39:42)

And it's to remind myself that it's like, Hey, like right now, if I never grew another day, but just kept this business stable, even at half of where it's at right now, that's still an amazing business with way better margins than like these other small businesses and like, and, and stuff. And so I, I feel like it's all like, it's all relative and it's also like what you compare to, right. That like, we already have amazing small businesses.

It's nice that like our, our, our, like the goals that kind of sit, not like society, but like the SAS community is telling us is to, you know, be pushing for like 5 million or 10 million a year. But also we're pretty successful without accomplishing those things. Right.

And it's, it's important to just remember that every now and again, I'm just like, Hey, like we're bootstrapped. We've already made it.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (39:43 - 40:00)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. Um, I want to wrap up by just kind of getting your take on AI, uh, like there's a lot, a lot to it.

Um, I guess first, like, are you kind of bullish or bearish scared or excited?

\[Amar Ghose\] (40:01 - 42:08)

Um, I'm definitely, I'm definitely excited for, for, for, for AI. I, um, I think that, um, I mean, I think just overall, I think the world is just going to get a lot cooler with, with AI. Like personally, I'm excited for all the things.

I think that you, you know, like the, the world's always changing. So I feel like the people that are like against it, it's just like, Hey, like, you know, you probably would have been against the industrial revolution too. You know, like back in the day of it's like, you know, that's fine.

That's entirely your, your, you know, opinion or like, you know, you're, you're right to do that, but it's not, it's not going to slow Sam Altman down. Right. Like he's not, he's not going to care.

Um, so, um, yeah, I, I don't feel threatened by it in the business. So I think that, I think that it's kind of like a mix of things. If you have like developers and you have people that are saying that like SAS is dead because people can just like throw together their own SAS, it's like, well, guess what?

Somebody still has to manage that system, right? Those systems still break just because you can say into, you know, cursor build me this thing doesn't mean that that's going to work or that you want to like have your organization relying on that internally. Right.

So for me, I'm looking at it and I'm like, what, I think that, you know, enough made service owners are going to go out and like verbalize and build their own competitor to Zenmade to like affect my business. Probably not. They're probably going to pay us a hundred dollars a month.

Let us figure out how to make these things better. And if anything, I could see us in the future becoming the ones where it's like, Hey, you sign up for Zenmade. We tell you all these things that we put together for you.

And then you can like use AI to maybe describe a couple of other things that you would like about your setup. And then we will kind of modularize and put together all the things that we built and that we put together. So you get the perfect made service that's for your actual software, but we've thought through all the details.

And so I can see it being something like along, like along those lines. But, yeah, I think there's some people that think that it's not going to affect anything. And I think that's silly.

And then I think there's other people that are just saying like, Oh yeah, like now there's no need for humans to work anymore. And it's just like, that's also not true at all.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (42:08 - 44:42)

Right. So, you know, I, I'm excited. You mentioned crypto.

I look at it just like crypto. Like it's, it's a whole new thing. Jordan Gall was on and he was like, you know, before there was like, you can answer the phone, you can have a person, you can have an answering service.

And now there's a third option, you know, and I kind of think AI is the same thing. It's a, it's a tool for a lot of us. I think the thing I'm most nervous about though, is I think it could affect us when I, when I put my paranoid hat on, it is like, it could affect us in a really negative way that like there could be, I always say just like less economy.

Like there, there could be a lot of people that lose their jobs because they're just redundant and AI will just kind of do this for you or make the person who's still there so much more effective that they don't need 20 people. They need 10 or 15 people. And I think that's the, you know, it's not a black swan cause I kind of see it already, but, but that's the, like the thing that, yeah, like, you know, people are not going to go build their own podcasting platform, but what's probably more likely, I guess, is like the economy is just really affected and people just can't afford to do stuff.

I think that there's, that's the thing I'm most worried about. Everything else is like, dude, we're getting the autonomous robot as soon as it's available. Like I'm, I'm just like, I'm, I'm a maximum, the axiom is on AI.

Like I told one of our team members the other day, I was like, look, if you're not using this and like trying to use this every day, you're like being like delinquent and your job, like, you know, we're, we're taking a pretty hard stance. We have like kind of show and tell every week. We're like, Hey, I tried this thing and it, you know, or it sucks or I'm using cloud in this way or whatever.

Um, we're, we're putting AI into our products like really soon, like next week, maybe in a pretty significant way. Um, yeah, that'll be cool. Um, and I guess I can feel like that because we're not a content marketing agency.

That's just going to get decimated. Like if anything, like you podcasting is going to be positively affected by, by AI, I think, because like, you know, fucking blogging is a joke. Now social is becoming a joke.

Uh, video is like where it's at and podcasting is right behind it in terms of like authentic content. Um, so just from a platform or like medium perspective, like we're really well positioned. Um, and I think you, you are more so right.

Like in service in person services is like not go anywhere. It can't go anywhere.

\[Amar Ghose\] (44:42 - 46:33)

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

It's like until, until everyone can afford, like, you know, the Japanese, like self-cleaning toilets and like everything else takes care of itself. It's like, there will always be room for this and, and, and, and everything. Um, yeah, I really enjoyed your chat.

I think it was with, with Tim, I think, I think his name was on, on AI that was on, I think it was like one of the more, more recent like episodes. I enjoyed that conversation about it. Um, where, yeah, I mean, obviously like, yeah, the world world's changing and, um, yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna make, make some, some like some big, um, some big differences to, to, to things.

Um, so yeah, I'm definitely very interested to see how, like how, how it all plays out. I do think that it'll work quite nicely. Like for us that I feel like I feel like the AI revolution is going to, there's going to be a lot of new competitors that are going to like pop up and because of AI, like they can, they can just pop up like so much faster than like then, then before.

But I think that essentially brand and reputation is going to be more valuable than ever. And so us having already been in the game for so long, I think is actually going to make a big difference as long as we're able to sort of get on the AI train enough. Right.

And I think that there's going to be a couple of folks or a lot of folks that maybe started what, like six, seven years after us or something that are going to get kind of caught in no man's land where they've spent three, four years building stuff up. They can't quickly transition to AI, but they don't have like the brand and the reputation to kind of carry them, like carry them through. So, um, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll see.

Like, um, yeah, I'm not really taking anyone in our industry seriously until they essentially like keep showing up for five years. Just, we just see so many that quit by like year two or two or year two or three that we just, yeah, we just, we just don't worry until they, they, they show that they're going to keep doing the work for longer than three years.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (46:33 - 46:42)

Yeah. Super interesting. Super interesting.

Um, dude, really good to catch up. Thank you for, for coming on, uh, folks who want to like connect with you, like where's the best place?

\[Amar Ghose\] (46:43 - 47:13)

Yeah, definitely. Uh, so used to be most active on Twitter or X. Now I'm kind of moving over to LinkedIn.

So that's probably like the best, the best spot. I'm just a Margo. Um, uh, personal website is the American dream.

Um, so like the American dream, but I'm are, so it's the American dream.com and uh, yeah, I've got a podcast, but like, if you're listening to this and you don't know me, then I don't really recommend my podcast. If you're listening to this and you're like, Oh, I know, Craig, I know him are, you might enjoy my podcast. So, you know, give it a look if you want.

\[Craig Hewitt\] (47:14 - 47:16)

Awesome. Awesome. All right, buddy.

Thank you.

\[Amar Ghose\] (47:17 - 47:18)

Yeah. Thanks, Craig. This is great to do.

High Signal is a community of digital nomads and lifestyle business owners who are building companies they love while pursuing their passions. They help people like get their ideas off the ground by providing access to resources and information that can help them succeed.

We talked about so many interesting business and life-related stuff such as:

• Sharing views on changing the world vs having a lifestyle business
• Why don't more Americans become digital nomads?
• What would I do differently if I were starting ZenMaid today?
• Discussing product founder fit
• How did industry competition affect ZenMaid’s growth?
• and so much more…

Sit back, relax and enjoy 43 minutes of casual yet resourceful AMA.

By 2017 I’d hired folks to handle ZenMaid’s operations, tech, support, and more. I even had help on the paid advertising side. But I was still creating all the content myself.

The dreaded content hamster wheel.

There’s a classic dilemma when we try to hire writers to create content for our audiences. Our audiences want to hear from industry experts, not content writers. Makes sense, right?

Here’s how we solved the problem:

We started the #MaidSummit, the cleaning industry’s first virtual conference, where we invited ~40 industry experts to speak on various topics ranging from mindset to marketing to lifestyle design as a maid service owner.

After the event we gave the videos to a talented content writer. Each week she takes the actual expertise of one of these consultants, coaches, and agency owners, and creates 1, 2, or sometimes even 3 unique pieces of content to our blog the ZenMaid Magazine.

I no longer have to write or record bits for ZenMaid to keep our team churning out legitimately great content.

I can if I want to, the same way I can step back into almost any department in the company if it strikes my fancy.

But the fact that I don’t have to (in any part of the business) is what make me free.

Enjoy this article? You might enjoy my popular post ‘Freedom is worth it.’

I believed I already knew the ‘point’ of the lesson, so I was surprised to see he presented a slightly different perspective.

Below is what I expected to read from Seth (the first bit is almost verbatim from him, I’ve bolded where I ‘took over’)

“If you’re at the station, sitting on a train, you might notice that the train next to you is moving.

But, perhaps, that train is sitting still and _you’re_ moving. Or both are in motion. It’s hard to tell. Without the lurch of sudden acceleration, the only clue we have is that our relative position is changing.

The same thing happens when we compare ourselves to others.

It’s hard to tell whether we’re moving at all or others are just moving that much faster.

And that’s ok.

Like the train, you’re going to get there at your own time, on your own pace.

Everything else is just perception.

You may be familiar with the flywheel concept from high school physics, usually shown with a hefty disc that is challenging to start moving, but spins with increasing ease with each rotation.

This idea can be applied to many areas of our life, where each additional ‘rep’ or ‘iteration’ becomes easier and more effective.

I’ve listed the ones I’m currently thinking about in the article below. For each I’ve included other links for you to dive deeper into. This article is a work in progress - my goal is to link you to other useful resources about flywheels and generate discussion on where this mental model can help us in our lives.

If any of these are of interest to you, or if you’ve seen others that you’d like to share, I would absolutely love to hear from you on Twitter.

🕴️The Business Flywheel🕴️

“Over time, a simple innovative idea becomes a well-oiled machine, which translates into a predictable and profitable business.”

Introduced by Jim Collins (excerpt from his site here)

“The Flywheel effect is a concept developed in the book _Good to Great._ No matter how dramatic the end result, good-to-great transformations never happen in one fell swoop. In building a great company or social sector enterprise, there is no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant, heavy flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond.”

Hubspot makes this concept more applicable with this mic drop blog post. My big takeaway here was to ask the question: how can our customers at ZenMaid help our marketing?

If: Better marketing = more customers is TRUE And: More customers = better marketing is TRUE Then: As we add more customers we improve our marketing which gets us more customers which helps our marketing which gets us more clients

Get the idea?

Implementation: we may follow a similar system/process to @thepatwalls of Starter Story where I’ve been featured recently. The magic of this process is that I never spoke with Pat. He collected info from me via TypeForm and created awesome high-quality content that featured me (which I’ve now shared here and elsewhere) without talking to me, in a highly scalable way.

Why not do the same thing at ZenMaid and feature as many of our customers as possible on our blog and social media?

💰The Wealth Flywheel💰

There’s a great example in this article from Rob Berger about the investing flywheel:

You invest $100 per month with an 8% return. In 9 years your investment will be able to pay $100/mo (congrats!)

Here’s where it’s a flywheel - let’s look at how long it takes for you to make ANOTHER $100/mo by re-investing your returns. Here’s how long each $100 increment would take for you to start generating EVERY MONTH

• 9 years: $100 a month
• 5 more years: $200 a month
• 3.5 more years: $300 a month
• 2.7 more years: $400 a month
• 2.3 more years: $500 a month
• 1.9 more years: $600 a month
• 1.7 more years: $700 a month (26.1 years total)

Here’s the key point. The first $100 of income is the hardest. As the power of compounding grows, it gets easier and easier. It takes us nine years to generate $100/mo, but less than 2 years to go from $500/mo to $600/mo - also a $100 increase.

This very closely follows my personal wealth journey with ZenMaid. We re-invested into ZenMaid and paid ourselves peanuts in the early years. I didn’t take a dime for almost 2 years but now we’re compounding at a rate I could have never imagined when we first began.

🏋🏿 The Fitness/Health Flywheel🏋🏿

Took me quite awhile to find the health/fitness flywheel well verbalized - it’s beautiful:

I’ve experienced this first hand. Getting back into the gym and making initial progress is much harder than keeping with the habit once I’m seeing positive results and feeling good. Every time I try to restart my lifting journey I know I have to hit the tipping point or I won’t stick with it again. Maybe this next time it’ll happen ;-)

🤝🏾The Paid Marketing Flywheel🤝🏾

By selling info products ClickFunnels makes $40 for every $20 they spend they spend on marketing, and that’s before their new lead sees their software!

That’s business magic!

We spend $5k per month on ads for ZenMaid. 3-4 months later we’ll recoup our investment from software subscriptions. This is actually a good ROI for a SaaS like ours but we run into cash flow issues. I’d love to spend $50k a month but we can’t wait 4 months for that amount of money.

But what if we could recoup our investment immediately?

That’s why we added an info product to our funnel that shows when someone joins our email list. As of today we spend $5k and recover ~$500 with 1 quick ask. Not a huge amount but we’ve validated there is potential here. Next we’re going to try other products that are higher in value and could sell better in attempt to get to $2500 (meaning we recover 50% of our ad spend immediately).

In a perfect world, we’ll get to a 1:1 ratio and beyond.

Other flywheel concepts I’m thinking about:

The Social Flywheel

The more people you know the easier it is to meet new people. This is why it would be hard to break into a group of celebrities but once you’re in, you’ll be introduced to so many more.

It occurs to me often that I have access to people now that I couldn’t have dreamed of in my late teens. And making new high-quality connections these days is 1000x easier than it was when I first started trying to build my network.

The Twitter Flywheel

This is very similar to the Social flywheel. When you’re first on Twitter you’re shouting into the void. Few folks care, even when you share something brilliant. As you push harder and harder however it gets easier and easier. Over time people will engage because they know you and as your content generates more shares, more people will follow you. This higher engagement means more folks discover you and the cycle continues.

Reaching this level on Twitter is not easy (I’m working on it now!)

The best example I’ve seen of this is from David Perell, who breaks down his business flywheel, including Twitter, in this post.

The MVF - Minimum Viable Flywheel (tweetstorm)

Final thoughts (for now):

I’m constantly thinking about how the concept of flywheels can push ZenMaid further forward, and for personal benefits. Have you noticed anything that works well in your personal/professional life? Let me know!

Join at least my wife on the mailing list - maybe even another entrepreneur too!

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Sources and additional resources:

https://theleanminimalist.com/2019/03/08/from-intentional-business-to-intentional-living-adapting-the-flywheel-concept-to-drive-your-personal-development-journey/

https://www.hubspot.com/flywheel

https://www.getrichslowly.org/flywheel-of-wealth

https://twitter.com/itsjustamar/status/1265715495409500160 (me)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PLzcq79B1g (also me)

ABSTRACT:

Anyone with an internet connection in 2020 can live the life I do. And I want you, my friendly reader, to join me. Because I'm awesome, and you're awesome. And we should meet. We should meet somewhere you never imagined you could venture for longer than two weeks because of your soul crushing day job.

Maybe you don’t want to travel as much as I do. You can still benefit from the freedom of time and choice that only earning a living on the internet can provide. From the comfort of your own home.

Creating this life is simple, but it’s not easy. In fact, it’s an insane amount of work and anyone that tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something.

Three things that will set you up for success are: honing your network, public accountability, and reading the right books.

I made my first $1 online playing poker when I was in high school. I didn’t realize how significant that moment was. I could live anywhere with good internet. And earn a living in $USD.

This article isn't going to teach you how to make $1 million online. Hell, I'm not even going to show you how to make $1.

But, by the end of this article, I want you to believe - to truly believe - that if you can earn $1 on the internet you can live an awesome life. I want you to believe you can choose how and where to spend your time.

Benefits of Lifestyle Design

_Above (left to right): Sri Lanka morning walk, Komodo Island in Indonesia, Rare beach working (idk where), and finally, atop the Stromboli Volcano in Italy as part of the Volcano Retreats I used to host ;-)_

Tim Ferriss brought lifestyle design and digital nomadism to the mainstream with ‘the 4 Hour Work Week’:

“The New Rich are those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility. This is an art and a science we will refer to as Lifestyle Design.”

The essence of lifestyle design is making decisions to live life the way you truly want. Examples include everything from van-lifers and nomads, to university professors and authors. Each have consciously chosen to spend their days doing what they love, on their own schedule, with complete autonomy.

For me, lifestyle design has meant traveling the world since 2015, visiting 31 countries along the way. Soon, lifestyle design will mean settling down in a country of our choosing. My wonderful wife Fran and I are currently deciding between Chiang Mai, Thailand (where we met), and the UK (the place that gave her words like ‘chuffed’, ‘knackered’, and ‘stodgy’).

More importantly than freedom of location, I have freedom of time. I make my own schedule. As long as my work at ZenMaid gets done, I'm good to go.

In addition to working at any time from anywhere in the world, I've found other benefits that might make you jealous. Or maybe they're just important to me. That's the beauty of this. It's your life, design it how you want.

My rich life:

• Only set alarms to catch flights and wake up from naps
• Work out whenever I want
• Nap almost every day
• Have a leisurely lunch with my wife every day
• Lower cost of living (higher quality of life for less money)
• Constant change of environments (I'm ADD so I like this; you might hate it)

$1 = Freedom

I know what you're thinking… “Amar, all this sounds great, but how on Earth does $1 help me do it?”

Stephen Pratley explains it perfectly:

Unless you've somehow found the only way to make $1 and only $1 online, your first dollar will be just the start. Dollar #1 is just to show you that it's possible. Don't worry about making a 'scalable' dollar. Don't worry about making a million dollars. Focus on just $1.

The bottom of the article has free resources that lay out the path from your first dollar to freedom.

Getting Started / Next Steps

Step 1. Read the Four Hour Work Week

Buy the 4 Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferriss. Audio, visual, I don't care if you inject this book into your veins, just get it done.

This book is considered THE Digital Nomad Bible. He does a great job of laying out what your perfect life might look like (it's very different for everyone!), figuring out the roadmap to get there, and in depth first steps well beyond what I can cover in this article.

It’s both inspiring and actionable. My two favorite takeaways from the book are both mental models I still use daily:

• Pareto’s Law (aka the 80/20 principle) - for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Examples include wearing 20% of your clothes 80% of the time, and 20% of your relationships causing 80% of the stress (hello, in-laws).
• Parkinson’s Law - The adage that ‘work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion’. Example: every essay you’ve ever written on a tight deadline.

Dug up this video from my YouTube (from London in 2018)

I recommend the 4 Hour Work Week to friends more than any other. Go buy it right now. Thank me later (on Twitter)

BONUS: Another book I highly recommend is the more-actionable How to be a Capitalist without Any Capital, by Nathan Latka. This book came out in 2019 but I wish I'd had it back in 2010 when I was starting my entrepreneurial journey.

Nathan also references “The New Rich”:

“…they’re part of the “New Rich,” as Tim Ferriss calls the segment of the population who have figured out how to maximize everything in their life — even if it’s not much — so it becomes an asset that works for them. The New Rich are resourceful with their time, their money, and their energy. They get what they want when they want it. They travel however much they want. They have blank calendars. And they have very, very few expenses.”

_(this perfectly describes my life - I don’t earn a lot, but I do a lot with it)_

"Joining the New Rich has only two requirements: a desire for more free time to do what you want while making money on your terms, and ambition. I can’t teach ambition, so you’ll need to bring your own.”

_(I hope this post helps your ambition)_

Step 2. Hone Your Network

Honing your network is one of the most important steps you can take to design your perfect lifestyle. When times get tough, it’s your network - your friends and family - that will keep you going. And times will get tough.

Having a great network doesn’t guarantee success but having the right support in your life from day one (today), significantly lowers your chance of failure.

How to hone your network:

Honing your network is about about spending more time with good influences, and less with bad. Don’t worry, you don’t need to say Sayōnara to anyone today.

_Which of your friends & family do you know are bad influences on you?_

_Which of your friends & family help you accomplish your goals?_

_Which of your friends & family believe this lifestyle is possible, even if they are not living it yet?_

Answer these questions and you'll immediately know how to better allocate your time. You don't need to entirely cut out friends and fun. Instead of a night drinking with a negative influence, replace it with a night with a positive friend. This alone is a HUGE step in the right direction.

It all comes back to the 80/20 principle I mentioned above. 80% of the negative social influences in your life come from just 20% of the people. Spend a little less time with that 20% and your quality of life, and belief in yourself, will skyrocket.

I first implemented this towards the end of college. My fraternity brothers were not a good influence on my life and I began to consciously spend time with them only when I was planning to relax (ie not be productive). Simultaneously I took notice of my friends that were striving for similar goals to me, like my teammates in Club Soccer.

I started by shifting one night a week. I essentially shifted Thursday nights from drinking nights to more positive, uplifting nights in many ways.

Positive changes like this are often small and go unnoticed. In the short run, you won't notice these decisions one way or the other but over time they compound.

Step 3. Be Accountable Publicly

Start writing. Even if no one is reading. ESPECIALLY if no one is reading.

My biggest regret of the past 7 years is that I didn’t start documenting my thoughts and work better back when we first started ZenMaid. My decision making would have been a lot better, and we would have received a lot more help along the way.

An important caveat: I do NOT mean to share that you’re going to be a digital nomad and travel the world.

What I DO mean is to start documenting your personal journey and your professional journey. This will help you across the board. If you’re working on a new blog or business, write about it. This doesn’t mean you have to share it much or stuff it in the faces of your Facebook friends. Focus on documenting your thoughts and what you’re working on, and you’ll find ways to attract people that want to support you in various ways.

Failing publicly (and thoughtfully) will open more opportunities to you than you can possibly imagine.

And you will likely fail at first. Writing is one of the best ways to turn that into a positive no matter what.

If you have the money, I highly highly recommend Write of Passage by David Perell. I’m finally writing the words you’re reading right now because we’re going through the course.

Here's your permission. Make $1. Change your life.

There are thousands of ways to earn money online that you can Google based on your own strengths and preference (or drop me a line on Twitter and I’ll point you in the right direction)

It’s not that different to earning money as a job, or building your own company. The difference is in the mindset and the way you use your time/money.

That’s the reason for this article: to plant the idea in your head that you can do this. If you’re interested in joining me around the globe, it is possible. Google is your friend. There’s always a way to earn online using your unique skillset.

I’m happy to answer any questions if you have them (hit me up on Twitter here or email me amar at zenmaid dot com)

Additional Links On Money Mindset:

https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stairstep-approach-to-bootstrapping/

To the point that I’ve stopped doing Facebook Lives for my business because it was too frustrating to set up.

I did some digging this morning and finally found a solution that worked for me. I hope it works for you too.

Step 1. Open Facebook on Google Chrome (desktop)

Step 2: Navigate to Security in Settings

Step 3: Log out of all devices you’re unnecessarily logged into

That’s all it took for me! I brought my devices down to my 2 true ones and saw speeds on Facebook.com immediately jump.

Didn’t realize how stressful that was getting until this morning!

Are you active on Twitter? I am!

Follow me here.

He saw what many of my friends saw: that it couldn’t even pay me $1k a month in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

He wanted to know why I hadn't quit and focused on my actual job a bit more.

I didn't have a good answer then. I do now.

Because Freedom is Worth It.

ZenMaid's humble beginnings

Arun Devabhaktuni and I started ZenMaid in 2013 after noticing no one was truly focused on serving maid services with great scheduling software.

Two guys in a house in Palo Alto (how cliche). We weren’t trying to change the world, just to make enough money to be our own bosses.

From 2013 - early 2015 ZenMaid consumed every hour of my life available outside of our day jobs and sleep.

During the week I'd wake up at 5 am PST to call maid service owners on the East Coast before commuting 1.5 hours to San Francisco for work. Every Saturday I would sigh, ask myself what my life had become, pop a modafinil and make sales calls for 8-10 hours.

After two years of hard work, we were barely making $5k a month and every penny we made went right back into the business.

Hell, we couldn’t afford to pay ourselves even a measly $1000 per month.

The only money we for ourselves during this time was to pay for 3 sushi dinners to celebrate small milestones, a tradition we continue to this day.

Discovering the Dream Life

To understand why I persevered, we need to go back ~14 years. It's important to consider my motivation for starting ZenMaid in the first place -

To attain Freedom of Time and Freedom of Location.

To work: _Where_ I want _When_ I want With _whom_ I want

At 18 I first read the 4 Hour Work Week (4HWW) by Tim Ferriss. It changed my life. It’s the first book I can remember reading that made me feel hopeful about what life could be for me personally.

This book popularized the concept of the 'digital nomad' and planted the idea in my head that I could ball out of control without being a baller.

It was a novel idea that I could travel the globe, work from a beach, have international friends, and be a man of the world. All without having to sacrifice my independence.

All you need is $2-3k per month as long as you earn on your own terms.

When I read the 4HWW I was playing online poker for money (the aptly named Chris Moneymaker had recently won the World Series of Poker). I had friends who had moved to Costa Rica, living like kings on a few grand a month exactly how Tim describes in the book.

I was still in high school, but I'd seen the dream. No 9-5 life for me, no siree.

If only it were that easy.

Fast Forward 9 Years

Over the following 9 years I tried everything I could to move towards freedom, usually ending in miserable failure:

• Poker (lost 3 months rent in a single day, emotionally unstable)
• Amway (a MLM where I lost money but did meet my future best man)
• Micro-niche sites like BambooComforter.org (maxed out at $400/mo, never going to turn into a real business)
• A maid service, Fast Friendly Spotless (horrible experience, I made so many mistakes - but it led me to ZenMaid)

I have most definitely forgotten or left off other embarrassing attempts at winning my freedom.

At some point after all of this I started ZenMaid and spent 2 years building it into a ‘real’ business.

My newfound success has me making a measly $1000 a month. Others saw a terrible ROI.

I saw the beginning of Freedom because I earned that money from anywhere. Every month.

I thought the 4HWW had taught me:

It doesn't take much money to live well, you just have to make it on your own terms.

And that’s 100% true. But what it truly showed me was:

No matter how long it takes, the freedom is worth it.

I didn't realize it until recently, but my greatest learning from the 4 Hour Work Week was patience/perseverance. I knew that no matter how long it took, I would continue down the path of achieving that lifestyle.

Seeing things differently

When my boss called me out, it didn’t feel good. I didn’t have a good answer, at least not one that I could vocalize, to his question.

I knew we had something real, but I couldn’t verbalize what the numbers weren’t showing.

The reason I stuck with ZenMaid when others saw little reason to is because they only evaluated the timeline (return on 4 years of time) and not at the long-term asset creation.

I never strongly considered quitting ZenMaid once we got to around $2k per month (meaning that 50 people had committed to our software). It started slow but the work we did compounded as we built more systems and gained more experience. I knew we were onto something.

We had over 50 maid service owners running their businesses daily using our program, and there were at least 100k more just like them. To me, it was only a matter of time before we went to 1000 customers, 10,000 customers, and beyond, if we wanted to.

We just have to find them.

And ultimately, that all translated to _“If I find enough customers like these, Freedom will be mine”_

That's what has kept me going through the toughest of times, and now it feels easier by the day (life flywheels, baby, a post for another day).

I recently posted on Twitter that ZenMaid broke that magical 1000 customer mark and a friend asked me what my motivation was to persevere in the early years.The times when it was all hard work and little to show for it.

Why?

Because Freedom is worth it.

Join at least my wife on the mailing list - maybe even another entrepreneur too!

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I was recently interviewed on my good friend Monique Lindner’s podcast, Efficiency on Demand.

We spoke about how I started my business, ZenMaid, our biggest mess-up as a business and why I routinely hire customers.

This is the first time I have publicly spoken at length about the launch of ZenMaid’s redesign in late 2017.

To check out the podcast, head over to Efficiency on Demand here.

The Saas Christmas Campaign I share brings us leads throughout the year, generates a ton of brand awareness, and is a top of funnel (TOFU) that literally every B2B company should use in their #saasmarketing.

This Holiday Logo Campaign is an example of using goodwill to market your product and do something positive in the world.

Learn about LinkedIn Marketing for your SaaS here \[e-book\]: https://amzn.to/2QTThtN

That's how I stumbled upon the Ultimate Dog Fooding - Hiring your customers. Now the ZenMaid sales team has 7 maid service owners, the support team has 3 former office managers or owners.

Not only do they form the back bone of our Customer Success team, they all contribute to our awesome marketing department and provide invaluable feedback which informs product decisions.

Check out my ebook: LinkedIn Marketing for your SaaS here

I initially posted it as a response to a question on Quora:

Before answering this question I want to make a quick note that why you’re asking this question is important. If you’re looking for digital nomad inspiration your list is going to be different than if you’re looking to become a digital nomad as an entrepreneur or freelancer (remember: a digital nomad is simply someone that can earn money online/from anywhere and chooses to take advantage of that freedom. Being a digital nomad is NOT a career or profession)

I’ve tried to include 10 podcasts below and noted which category they fall into

First category (1) - nomad/travel inspiration Second (2) - aspiring or current/growing entrepreneur Third (3) - aspiring or current freelancer or employee looking to travel

#1 - The Tropical MBA podcast (all 3 categories)

#2 - The Nomad Capitalist (1 & 2)

#3 - The BecomeNomad Podcast (all 3 categories)

#4 - The Openworld podcast w/ Danny Flood (all 3 categories) ————————— _Note: I was featured on this podcast after spending 5 years traveling the world while running a software business —————————_

#5 - NomadTopia Radio (all 3)

#6 - The Gary Vee Experience (not nomad related but still highly relevant to any looking to be on top of their game and live their best life)

#7 - SuperFastBusiness (all 3 categories) Great interviews and sometimes bite sized content from James Schramko who makes business simpler than anyone I’ve ever met. He builds his work schedule around ideal surfing times, quality facetime with the kids, and more. Definitely one to aspire to.

#8 - The Foundation (for entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs) The Foundation is a course for non-technical entrepreneurs wanting to start software companies however it’s success rate with turning employees into self-employed consultants is second to none. Their podcast is/was awesome (not sure if it’s still running) - I was featured on this one as well as their course is a big part of my success with https://get.zenmaid.com

#9 - The Minimalists - Most nomads are, by necessity, minimalists. I travel with a backpack and travel backpack (shout out to Tortuga bags) but used to travel with only the travel backpack (with a daypack packed inside). If you haven’t left your home base yet, this podcast will help.

#10 - Nomad Together - focused on nomad families. I’m about to deep dive into this one after being recently engaged :-)

Hope this helps!

This is a question asked recently in the SaaS Growth Hacks group (great group, highly recommended) that I wrote a brief answer to, also posted below:

Question: “As a SaaS provider, how do you leverage influencer marketing? Have you got decent results?

Especially interested to collaborate with Youtube influencers in the e-commerce niche.

Representing an e-commerce SaaS, I have tried to offer them 40% recurring affiliate revenue, offer the co-marketing and even promote their video to help their channel grow, but haven't got many positive responses.

What worked/didn't work for you?”

Answer (my personal opinion) : “Don't offer to promote their videos, just do it without asking for anything in return. Do this on 10-20 influencers and let them know or let them find out and it's guaranteed a few will be interested in chatting further with you.

Give before you take.”

We've just wrapped up an A/B test on the ZenMaid website that literally took 6 words and replaced them with a better thought out 11 words.

The result?

Almost TRIPLE the number of maid services who hit our website now sign up for actual ZenMaid trials (meaning we're now getting almost double the new customers on a daily basis compared to last week - \\without finding any new traffic or running any new marketing campaigns\\)

So, what did we change? What 5 words did we add?

Three changes were made to our top menu navigation and One change was made to our buttons. Here they are:

1\. We changed "Success Stories" to "Who uses ZenMaid?" - maybe there's a bit more intrigue here? More than double our visitors now visit our case studies page - https://www.zenmaid.com/the-chozen-ones

2\. We changed "Pricing" to "Your Pricing" - Let's be honest: if you're considering ZenMaid for your maid service right now do you really care about our pricing? Or do you care about the price that YOU are going to pay? I'm betting it's the latter ;-) - This increased the number of visitors to www.zenmaid.com/plans but not as drastically as the 1st change above

3\. We changed "Demo" to "How it works" - Not really sure why this is more effective - maybe the implication that "it works" makes people read the rest of the site differently?

And finally:

4\. We have Call to Action buttons on our website to either get maid services to start their trials or to "View Demo" - all we did was change "View Demo" to "How it works"

And that's it ...

4 changes, 5 additional words on our website and literally double the people who hit our site now go to our sign up page - and triple the people who hit our website end up signing up for a trial

So ... if you've got a bit of traffic coming to your business website at the moment, you might want to run similar tests or revisit your website wording :-)

(this test took us 5 days and 800 website visitors to get definitive proof that our new variation is better than the last one)

If you’re trying to lead your industry and truly innovate, I can not recommend this biography highly enough.

Steve Jobs was well known for his unreal attention to detail and this biography shares a lot of his whys and much more.

There’s so much in this book it’s hard to do it justice without reading it but as an entrepreneur I’ve noticeably taken more pride in my product, company, and the little details that make everything tick.

I can’t say I learned anything positive about Jobs’ treatment of people but some of his dickish tendencies were part of the same “skillset” or character attribute that allowed him to innovate on such a massive level. Reminds me a lot of Travis K. of Uber whose obviously a huge huge douchebag but at the same time couldn’t have changed the world without his accompanying attitude.

Here’s the summary from GoodReads (you can follow me on GoodReads here)

“Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.

Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.”

The Fish That Ate the Whale is my most recommended book for entrepreneurs, primarily because so few have heard of it.

The entire \[true\] story would make you believe you were listening to a book about a drug cartel, not a business that sells bananas. Everything about Samuel Zemurray is epic, from his humble beginnings to his boardroom takeovers.

When I’m having a bad day at ZenMaid this is the book that reminds of the hardship other entreprenuers have gone through to make their dreams a reality and it quickly brings me back to both how lucky I am, and how ruthless I could need to be if necessary.

Here’s the summary from GoodReads (you can follow me on GoodReads here)

”When Samuel Zemurray arrived in America in 1891, he was tall, gangly, and penniless. When he died in the grandest house in New Orleans sixty-nine years later, he was among the richest, most powerful men in the world. In between, he worked as a fruit peddler, a banana hauler, a dockside hustler, and a plantation owner. He battled and conquered the United Fruit Company, becoming a symbol of the best and worst of the United States: proof that America is the land of opportunity, but also a classic example of the corporate pirate who treats foreign nations as the backdrop for his adventures. In Latin America, when people shouted “Yankee, go home!” it was men like Zemurray they had in mind.

Rich Cohen’s brilliant historical profile _The Fish That Ate the Whale_ unveils Zemurray as a hidden kingmaker and capitalist revolutionary, driven by an indomitable will to succeed. Known as El Amigo, the Gringo, or simply Z, the Banana Man lived one of the great untold stories of the last hundred years. Starting with nothing but a cart of freckled bananas, he built a sprawling empire of banana cowboys, mercenary soldiers, Honduran peasants, CIA agents, and American statesmen. From hustling on the docks of New Orleans to overthrowing Central American governments, from feuding with Huey Long to working with the Dulles brothers, Zemurray emerges as an unforgettable figure, connected to the birth of modern American diplomacy, public relations, business, and war—a monumental life that reads like a parable of the American dream.”

Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

Scott Adams (quickly becoming my favorite author) breaks down Trump's behavior and use of persuasion/influence. Whether you're a fan of Trump's or not (I'm not) you'll likely find lots of things here interesting, perhaps even fascinating

Great read, recommended for all my friends but particularly the entrepreneur ones. A quick learning I took away was on the "higher ground" approach which would have helped me with a ZenMaid situation last week. He provides an example unrelated to Trump about how Steve Jobs handled the iPhone 4 controversy and why it worked. Had I followed the same thought process I would have saved myself, team, and customers some pain, just by changing the way the same reality was perceived

Speaking of realities: how Adams presents different realities (how the same statement made by a politician means completely different things to democrats vs republicans, for example) is one of the most eye-opening parts of the book (reality and how it's perceived is an ongoing theme)

Have you read this? I’d love to know what you thought!

You can stay in the loop with what I have been reading by following me over on Goodreads.

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