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[00:00:00.320 --> 00:00:04.560] Hey, it's Arvid, and this is the Bootstrap Founder.
[00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:12.560] Today, I'm talking to Amar Ghosh, the founder of Senmate.
[00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:18.160] That's a SaaS platform that's been helping mate service owners grow their businesses since 2013.
[00:00:18.160 --> 00:00:23.200] Amar is one of those amazing founders who really embodies the bootstrapping spirit.
[00:00:23.200 --> 00:00:35.440] Because when his co-founder left early on just around 15K of MRR, he could have easily given up, but instead he stuck with it and relentlessly focused on customers and persisted.
[00:00:35.440 --> 00:00:42.000] He had built Senmate into 150K per month business over the past 12 years.
[00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:49.280] And what makes Amar's story particularly inspiring is that he's a non-technical founder who used this customer development approach from day one.
[00:00:49.280 --> 00:00:54.160] And he really listened to his market and built exactly what mate service owners needed.
[00:00:54.160 --> 00:01:00.640] He also created this incredible content marketing ecosystem around Senmate, from YouTube channels to the Mate Summit.
[00:01:00.640 --> 00:01:03.120] That's a conference, podcasts, all that kind of stuff.
[00:01:03.120 --> 00:01:07.680] He's always focused on helping mate service owners succeed rather than just selling his software.
[00:01:07.680 --> 00:01:09.120] So it's very inspirational.
[00:01:09.120 --> 00:01:12.000] And there's a couple of really, really interesting insights in here.
[00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:23.600] We're talking about the power of persistence and bootstrapping, how to build as a non-technical founder, how important customer development really is, and how you can create content that truly serves the community that you're serving.
[00:01:23.600 --> 00:01:32.560] We'll also dive into building this remote-first location-independent company and stay focused on your customer success over quick growth.
[00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:34.240] Like I said, 12 years, right?
[00:01:34.240 --> 00:01:36.480] That's a long while to stick with a business.
[00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:39.200] A big shout out to the sponsor of today's episode.
[00:01:39.200 --> 00:01:42.880] That's Paddle.com, my merchant of record payment provider of choice.
[00:01:42.880 --> 00:01:49.760] They're taking care of all the things related to money so that founders like you and me can focus on the things that only we can build.
[00:01:49.760 --> 00:01:54.240] Paddle handles all the rest, sales tags, credit cards failing, all that kind of stuff.
[00:01:54.240 --> 00:01:55.480] I highly recommend it.
[00:01:55.360 --> 00:01:57.680] So, so please check out paddle.com.
[00:01:57.680 --> 00:01:59.760] Now, here's Amar Ghosh.
[00:02:01.960 --> 00:02:14.200] Amar, you have been with Sandmate for 12 years now, just over 12 years, and I have met very few founders who had the tenacity and the resilience to stick with any business for over a decade.
[00:02:14.200 --> 00:02:17.880] I want you to take me back to your 2013 when it all started.
[00:02:17.880 --> 00:02:21.240] Did you know back then what journey you were signing up for?
[00:02:21.240 --> 00:02:29.000] So, I think anyone that says yes to this question that's a successful entrepreneur is lying, unless it's like their second or third business.
[00:02:29.400 --> 00:02:33.400] No, I had absolutely no idea what I was signing up for.
[00:02:33.400 --> 00:02:57.720] I recognized an opportunity both in the actual industry where we've built our solution, but also just in the fact that one of the smartest people that I knew in my life that was getting his PhD at Stanford University was offering me the chance to be like an equal founder with him in a software business.
[00:02:57.720 --> 00:03:09.880] And, you know, just looking at how much he was valued on the open market and how much I was valued on the open market, not as entrepreneurs, but just as people, it was very clear that, you know, I was getting a better deal here.
[00:03:09.880 --> 00:03:16.520] I think, I think it's evened out since then, but I just recognized an opportunity and just like moved forward with it.
[00:03:16.520 --> 00:03:39.800] And I think, in terms of sticking with it for 12 years, I think that because I read the four-hour work week quite early on in my like entrepreneurial journey, I think that I had it in my head that it's like, hey, if you play your cards right, if you can get to a couple thousand dollars a month, you can essentially live like a king in Thailand.
[00:03:39.800 --> 00:03:44.120] And I think that I was really good about never like forgetting that.
[00:03:44.120 --> 00:03:51.280] And so my initial co-founder, he left the business after four years, after his shares like fully vested.
[00:03:51.600 --> 00:04:01.360] And he was looking at it's been four years of time that we've been focused on this, not full-time, but like it's been our thing for four years now.
[00:04:01.360 --> 00:04:04.640] And it's making $15,000 a month, right?
[00:04:04.640 --> 00:04:10.640] Like, you know, we're adding, you know, $4,000 a year in like monthly recurring revenue.
[00:04:10.640 --> 00:04:13.200] So from his perspective, this was pathetic.
[00:04:13.200 --> 00:04:30.240] From my perspective, I was just like, yes, but think about all of the aspiring entrepreneurs out there that would kill to have a SaaS business making $15,000 a month, no matter how much time it had taken them, right?
[00:04:30.240 --> 00:04:33.040] Like $15,000 a month is $15,000 a month.
[00:04:33.040 --> 00:04:37.760] Now, granted, we weren't paying ourselves anywhere close to that, but I think I just kept that in perspective.
[00:04:37.760 --> 00:04:43.040] And so, yeah, I mean, he walked away after four years and we were at $15,000 a month.
[00:04:43.040 --> 00:04:47.040] And four years later, we were at $150,000 a month.
[00:04:47.040 --> 00:04:48.960] So, I mean, both of us won in that.
[00:04:48.960 --> 00:04:51.760] We're still very good friends, very amicable, all that.
[00:04:51.760 --> 00:04:54.640] But that's kind of how like the journey started.
[00:04:54.640 --> 00:04:59.040] But there's absolutely no way like I knew what I was signing up for.
[00:04:59.040 --> 00:05:01.360] Just, oh man, it's been so much.
[00:05:01.360 --> 00:05:06.400] Yeah, it does sound like a slow burn, but a bright burn nonetheless, right?
[00:05:06.400 --> 00:05:07.680] Because you just stuck with it.
[00:05:07.680 --> 00:05:11.520] And I feel that's the tenacity I'm trying to kind of highlight here.
[00:05:11.520 --> 00:05:14.000] That's the stuff that we don't talk about much.
[00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:15.280] We talk about numbers a lot.
[00:05:15.280 --> 00:05:17.440] We talk about growth and strategies and all that.
[00:05:17.440 --> 00:05:29.280] But to stick with a thing when it's kind of working, but it feels like everybody else is talking about product market fit and how things just, you know, hockey stick explode doesn't seem to be working for me.
[00:05:29.280 --> 00:05:33.400] A lot of people seem to just cut it at that very point, yet you stuck it out.
[00:05:33.640 --> 00:05:34.280] Why was that?
[00:05:34.280 --> 00:05:40.280] Like, why did you see that there was still beyond the fact that other people would like to have something like this in the first place, obviously?
[00:05:40.280 --> 00:05:42.520] But what did you see that he did not see?
[00:05:42.520 --> 00:05:49.160] Well, so one thing is in my initial co-founder's defense, he had made a lot of money on crypto by that point.
[00:05:49.160 --> 00:05:56.840] So it was more that he just had more opportunity like elsewhere than it was necessarily an indictment of the business.
[00:05:56.840 --> 00:06:01.320] It was more just how he was choosing to prioritize his time and attention and resources.
[00:06:01.320 --> 00:06:03.000] And so that was like good.
[00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:28.920] But the main thing I think that was different was that because he was building the software and I was the one actually talking to all of the customers every day, I think that I was quite intimately aware of how similar all of our customers were and how we were clearly solving a problem where there was a wider sort of pattern of behavior that this was going to help and to solve.
[00:06:28.920 --> 00:06:32.840] And so I knew that there were way more made services out there.
[00:06:32.840 --> 00:06:41.240] And it was almost just like at every point I kept looking at it and just being essentially thinking to myself, why can't we double?
[00:06:41.240 --> 00:06:48.760] You know, and now we're getting to a point where it's like, okay, maybe that would actually be tough to do within like the size of the market.
[00:06:48.760 --> 00:06:52.840] Still possible, but at that point, you're talking about a significant chunk of the market.
[00:06:52.840 --> 00:06:53.800] Okay, interesting.
[00:06:53.800 --> 00:07:01.080] I always wondered about your journey in particular, because 12 years, that's a lot of time for things to shift in the world, right?
[00:07:01.080 --> 00:07:03.080] In the reality of how things are done.
[00:07:03.080 --> 00:07:10.840] So I wonder, like, how quickly did you find your maid service owner customer, your main customer, target customer, I guess?
[00:07:10.840 --> 00:07:12.600] And did that change since?
[00:07:12.600 --> 00:07:17.920] Like, has there been movement enough for you to re-orient your ICP, your ideal customer profile?
[00:07:18.240 --> 00:07:24.720] So not since day one, but the reason for that is, is because we started with the ICP, not with the software, right?
[00:07:24.720 --> 00:07:30.560] So we went through a course called The Foundation that was by Dane Maxwell and Andy Drisch.
[00:07:30.560 --> 00:07:32.560] That was back in 2013.
[00:07:32.560 --> 00:07:44.000] And they essentially presented this course that the idea was a non-technical founder could start a software company without knowing how to code or even having an idea.
[00:07:44.000 --> 00:07:50.480] And they took very much like the customer development sort of framework by Steve Blank or something like that.
[00:07:50.480 --> 00:08:01.840] That essentially it was very like kind of similar to that, where they essentially were like you pick a cohort of customers, whether that's lawyers, real estate, you know, whatever it might be, they're very focused on B2B.
[00:08:01.840 --> 00:08:08.240] And then it's you go into those companies and you find what sort of problems can you solve with software.
[00:08:08.240 --> 00:08:12.960] And then it talked about pre-selling and like essentially how to get money and then to go and hire.
[00:08:12.960 --> 00:08:18.160] And so I think that's a little more commonplace now, but at the time, I think was a bit more kind of like out there.
[00:08:18.160 --> 00:08:22.000] And so we like, I had actually run a maid service previously.
[00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:34.400] The interesting thing was initially we didn't explore made services as an idea because we thought that my experience there was actually going to be a crutch and was going to give us a false positive for a good idea.
[00:08:34.400 --> 00:08:53.440] And then after we essentially got no traction in any other industry, we came back to main services and my ability to, you know, start those conversations with other maid services and talk through the challenges that I had experienced and they were experiencing and all of that really hit home.
[00:08:53.440 --> 00:09:03.480] And so, yeah, it's kind of an interesting thing that, like, we were so naive back then that we actually thought that me having experience as a maid service owner was going to somehow like mess things up.
[00:09:03.480 --> 00:09:08.920] Would you suggest like having this kind of insight knowledge to a founder in general if they want to start a business?
[00:09:08.920 --> 00:09:11.160] I mean, I would suggest it like where possible.
[00:09:11.160 --> 00:09:12.760] I don't think it's necessary, right?
[00:09:12.760 --> 00:09:36.360] Like, I don't think that it should stop you, but also, like, I think that if you are blessed enough, if you have savings, if you, you know, are still living with your parents and are quite young or whatever, I think that there is something to be said of it's like, you know, you want to build a software for valets, go work as a valet for a couple of months and build on the side and then like in weekends, right?
[00:09:36.360 --> 00:09:38.600] Especially if you're technical, right?
[00:09:38.840 --> 00:09:42.120] If you're if you're less technical, I mean, it's probably still just as useful.
[00:09:42.120 --> 00:09:47.080] I think it was quite helpful for me, but honestly, it was more about the confidence than the experience.
[00:09:47.080 --> 00:09:56.280] It was more about, yeah, how I was able to present myself on calls and sort of the story that that has allowed us to tell about ZenMaid.
[00:09:56.280 --> 00:10:11.560] It was a lot more about that because honestly, the more that I have developed at ZenMaid as a person, as a CEO, as an entrepreneur, the more I realize just like how much of an idiot I was when I was running the maid service back in the day, right?
[00:10:11.560 --> 00:10:17.720] Where to like to act like I'm, you know, teaching people how to do what I did, like, no, nothing could be further from the truth.
[00:10:17.720 --> 00:10:23.560] That's funny because that's a big risk that a lot of founders see when they have inside knowledge is that it's bias.
[00:10:23.560 --> 00:10:25.960] It's effectively just codified bias, right?
[00:10:25.960 --> 00:10:30.200] And that they take the bias, they build something for who they think is going to use their product.
[00:10:30.200 --> 00:10:35.400] And it turns out that they're just not that because nobody else is as biased as they are.
[00:10:35.400 --> 00:10:44.600] But it sounds like you found a way to do a customer development and the product validation in ways that kind of alleviated the bias that was inside it.
[00:10:44.600 --> 00:10:45.680] Yeah, exactly.
[00:10:44.920 --> 00:10:48.080] You'd asked about if we had any like pivots or whatever.
[00:10:48.240 --> 00:11:04.960] The only one that I would say that's worth like noting is early on, we released the software thinking that these booking forms that we'd built out, we thought that these were going to be the greatest things since sliced bread in the industry.
[00:11:04.960 --> 00:11:10.000] And in some ways they were, but not for us, that we just completely missed the mark on the execution.
[00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:18.080] And we had a couple competitors that came out with much better versions of those forms that did genuinely have that impact on the industry.
[00:11:18.080 --> 00:11:20.960] We thought that was going to be our bread and butter.
[00:11:20.960 --> 00:11:26.880] But along with that, we built a basic calendar system and the start of what is now ZenMaid.
[00:11:26.880 --> 00:11:45.440] The interesting thing was from the get-go, people didn't really care about the booking forms, but the simple calendar combined with email and text reminders that we had pre-written for their cleaning business, that was just like mind-blowing to people for, I think it was $19 a month.
[00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:47.520] And so that's how we kind of got off the ground.
[00:11:47.520 --> 00:11:53.120] That's probably the one big thing that we really thought all of our positioning was going to be about grow your maid service.
[00:11:53.120 --> 00:11:55.920] And like really, it's about organize and manage your schedule.
[00:11:55.920 --> 00:11:58.800] How much competitive pressure is in that particular industry?
[00:11:58.800 --> 00:12:03.760] Like how many maid service SaaS businesses are you competing with at this point?
[00:12:03.760 --> 00:12:05.600] So there's some interesting things that I've heard.
[00:12:05.600 --> 00:12:21.120] I think it was first from like from Ramit Saithi that was talking about how like if you're going for scholarships or like a job applications that if there's like hundreds of people applying, generally there's like five to 10 that you're actually competing with if you really take it, like take it seriously.
[00:12:21.160 --> 00:12:35.960] Um, that's kind of how it feels here, where there's probably three or four competitors that I would say are relatively often in the conversation with us to be considered as like a solution.
[00:12:35.960 --> 00:12:44.680] And then there's another probably like 35 or 40 kind of like, you know, smaller ones or whatever that also come up.
[00:12:44.680 --> 00:12:56.840] You know, it's important to note with that that out of the three or four like major competitors, I would say at this point, one is specific to made services like us.
[00:12:56.840 --> 00:13:04.600] And then two of the other ones are general for all service businesses, but happen to be very strong in our industry.
[00:13:04.600 --> 00:13:15.080] And then there's quite a few smaller ones that are made specific that are oftentimes, you know, like the first thing they publish on their blog is them versus ZenMade and trying to plug into like our SEO, right?
[00:13:15.080 --> 00:13:17.480] Which, which I take as a compliment these days, right?
[00:13:17.480 --> 00:13:19.960] Like, you know, it's like the first thing like they do or whatever.
[00:13:19.960 --> 00:13:22.680] So we've got quite a few that are that are like that.
[00:13:22.680 --> 00:13:29.960] But honestly, with those guys, there's such a moat in this industry just because it's old-fashioned.
[00:13:29.960 --> 00:13:35.080] It takes people a while to get comfortable with new brands, with new technology, all of that stuff.
[00:13:35.080 --> 00:13:47.720] I pay attention to all of our competitors, but I don't really take competitors seriously as like a long-term threat until they get to maybe four or five years in business because that like it's making it past there.
[00:13:47.720 --> 00:13:52.360] It's easy to stay motivated like year one, year two, maybe even into year three.
[00:13:52.360 --> 00:13:57.400] But year three to year five is where like a lot of people lose motivation.
[00:13:57.400 --> 00:14:01.600] And so like if they don't make it to that point, like I've seen so many competitors that pop up.
[00:14:01.600 --> 00:14:06.600] And around that three-year point, it's like they still exist, but it's clear no one's at the helm.
[00:14:06.600 --> 00:14:08.600] Yeah, you really have to like what you're doing.
[00:14:08.920 --> 00:14:12.280] You may even have to love what you're doing to stick with it at that point, right?
[00:14:12.280 --> 00:14:12.680] Yeah.
[00:14:12.680 --> 00:14:13.000] Yeah.
[00:14:13.000 --> 00:14:17.920] It's nice that you mentioned this kind of reluctance in terms of product adoption.
[00:14:18.160 --> 00:14:26.480] Like if I think about the product adoption curve, it seems that they're not necessarily the cutting-edge technologists using your products, right?
[00:14:26.800 --> 00:14:35.840] And one way that that was kind of very visual to me, very clear when I was looking at your website in particular, is that there's not a single mention of AI on your website.
[00:14:35.840 --> 00:14:50.320] And for somebody who's in the indie hacker world where everything is AI right now, where everybody is talking about, you know, wipe coding and AI as a feature and all of that, none of this, at least overtly, seems to be part of your product.
[00:14:50.320 --> 00:14:53.360] I presume it's an intentional choice.
[00:14:53.360 --> 00:15:02.960] And I wonder what your perspective is on this, both as a feature, as something that you would give to your customers, and maybe also as something like to be used inside of your business.
[00:15:02.960 --> 00:15:06.560] How much AI is there and how much AI will there be?
[00:15:06.560 --> 00:15:07.360] Yeah, for sure.
[00:15:07.360 --> 00:15:18.720] So, in terms of it being presented on the website, you just mentioned, and the word that you mentioned specifically is that it's a feature, right?
[00:15:18.720 --> 00:15:21.360] We're very, very benefit-driven, right?
[00:15:21.360 --> 00:15:42.240] So, to me, it's, you know, we don't actually have AI yet in the product, but we're thinking about using it to essentially power some of our reporting where it's just like, cool, like, you know, you can just ask questions and it can just tell you of like, you know, is the second Tuesday more profitable for you than the third Thursday of the month?
[00:15:42.240 --> 00:15:47.280] And just lots of random, like, generative reports that we would never build ourselves.
[00:15:47.280 --> 00:15:50.080] Chat GPT is perfect for doing that.
[00:15:50.080 --> 00:16:03.720] But the thing is, is that what I think a lot of indie hackers and everyone like don't realize is that, especially for an audience, I think it's just heightened for an audience for like Zen maids, is they don't care that it's AI that's doing that.
[00:16:04.040 --> 00:16:08.440] They only care that they can conversationally get any information that they want.
[00:16:08.440 --> 00:16:12.840] So even if that, it's like, hey, like the best reporting in the industry, right?
[00:16:12.840 --> 00:16:18.120] Like verbalize what you want and we will give you the exact report that you are looking for.
[00:16:18.120 --> 00:16:20.280] Not AI generated, right?
[00:16:20.280 --> 00:16:24.600] Like, you know, true, but just there's no reason to like to say that, right?
[00:16:24.600 --> 00:16:26.280] Maybe that'll change at some point.
[00:16:26.280 --> 00:16:31.320] If we start getting more people that are explicitly asking us, like, do you have AI features?
[00:16:31.320 --> 00:16:40.920] Then at some point, like, that will be on my radar as, hey, at this point, we're going to say like AI because, you know, it's essentially a marketing point now, right?
[00:16:40.920 --> 00:16:45.880] That people are expecting to see it and they think that we're not taking our job seriously if we don't.
[00:16:45.880 --> 00:16:50.520] But it's more about showcasing the use of AI, not AI itself.
[00:16:50.840 --> 00:16:55.560] But like I said, we're not using AI within the product too much at the moment.
[00:16:55.560 --> 00:17:02.360] The interesting thing, and I think this is where we're doing things a little bit differently, is inside the company, that is quite different.
[00:17:02.360 --> 00:17:10.520] That I've seen a lot of people that are using AI, like especially indie hackers, where it's like they know all the systems and like, and all that.
[00:17:10.520 --> 00:17:12.520] I realized that wasn't going to be me.
[00:17:12.520 --> 00:17:13.560] I'm non-technical.
[00:17:13.560 --> 00:17:15.000] I have ADHD.
[00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:27.000] I literally will ask ChatGPT a question and then tab to something else and then completely forget about it until the next day and be like, oh, yeah, I should really pick up that conversation again and go back and look at whatever.
[00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:30.680] You know, like it just, you know, it doesn't doesn't really work for me.
[00:17:30.680 --> 00:17:39.320] But at the same time, I realized how important it's going to be for all companies and for just generally being like more productive and stuff.
[00:17:39.320 --> 00:17:49.840] So I have a friend who was staying with me for a decent amount of time and he used ChatGPT on a daily basis more than anyone else that I'd like met in person like before.
[00:17:44.760 --> 00:17:53.120] And he's using it as a thought partner, using it for a variety of things.
[00:17:53.120 --> 00:17:58.240] So I actually brought him in-house into Zenmade, and he's now working with our various team members.
[00:17:58.240 --> 00:18:01.680] So we have, I don't know, 20, 25 team members.
[00:18:01.680 --> 00:18:06.400] He's working with team members individually to help them implement Chat GPT.
[00:18:06.400 --> 00:18:15.200] For a lot of the guys, he's helped them to do like a Fit GPT where it's like they can enter in like their macros or like their meals and stuff like that.
[00:18:15.200 --> 00:18:20.880] So he's helping them with personal stuff and then also with business stuff to just be like better at their jobs.
[00:18:20.880 --> 00:18:30.320] And then also a nice surprise is my co-founder and CTO let me know the other day, I think that we upgraded to the most recent version of Rails.
[00:18:30.320 --> 00:18:33.760] And he said it probably cut down the time by like 80%.
[00:18:33.760 --> 00:18:40.000] He said that it was literally like, you know, I don't know if his cursor, but he just said like, hey, I just went in and just cleaned up a bunch of stuff.
[00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:47.200] And he was like, you know, I just had to, you know, check a couple of things, but he was talking about how it's already making a difference within the product.
[00:18:47.200 --> 00:18:56.000] So I'm taking it very seriously, but more to get more output out of like the team members so we can deliver more value to our customers.
[00:18:56.000 --> 00:19:00.720] We're not trying to deliver value necessarily using AI yet.
[00:19:00.720 --> 00:19:07.120] That makes perfect sense, particularly knowing that the customers that you talk to, they're just not there yet.
[00:19:07.120 --> 00:19:17.600] They might, like you said, in a couple of years' time, when everybody, their family, not just their nephews, but also, you know, their brothers and sisters, and maybe even their parents talk about AI, right?
[00:19:17.600 --> 00:19:19.200] That becomes a bigger deal then.
[00:19:19.200 --> 00:19:20.320] I like how you do this.
[00:19:20.320 --> 00:19:32.200] I like that you use AI very effectively internally to optimize whatever you have going on, not just the business itself, but also people's personal lives, which probably then bleeds back into some kind of efficiency.
[00:19:32.200 --> 00:19:40.440] And then you're very focused on positioning the product in a language that appeals to the people that it's for, right?
[00:19:40.440 --> 00:19:45.960] Even if you were to use AI, and I'm just reiterating this because I think it's an important lesson here.
[00:19:45.960 --> 00:19:49.640] Even if you were to use AI, you wouldn't call it AI because it's not what people need.
[00:19:49.640 --> 00:19:51.080] People need reports.
[00:19:51.080 --> 00:19:54.360] And it's really smart to know what people need.
[00:19:54.360 --> 00:19:59.000] And that tells me that you having run a business like this before is super beneficial.
[00:19:59.000 --> 00:19:59.960] Like, obviously, right?
[00:19:59.960 --> 00:20:06.920] You know what they want and what they care about, which is obviously understanding their business better and the technology needed for that.
[00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:10.840] They don't care if you run on Rails or if you were running on Vercel or whatever, right?
[00:20:11.160 --> 00:20:13.000] The tech stack doesn't matter to them.
[00:20:13.000 --> 00:20:17.240] That's maybe an interesting question too, because I know a lot of indie hackers may be listening to this.
[00:20:17.240 --> 00:20:23.320] Like when you chose the initial tech stack for this whole business, did you expect to keep it?
[00:20:23.320 --> 00:20:28.360] Like did you ever do a massive rewrite or is it still the thing from back in the day?
[00:20:28.360 --> 00:20:33.160] Yeah, I mean, the decision was just made by blind trust in my co-founder, if we're being completely honest, right?
[00:20:33.160 --> 00:20:35.400] Like I was just very young at the time.
[00:20:35.400 --> 00:20:37.640] We didn't know we were doing what was interesting.
[00:20:37.640 --> 00:20:40.200] So I had mentioned that he was very, very smart.
[00:20:40.200 --> 00:20:52.200] And the reason that I underwent the like the project with or whatever was because I realized there was a massive gap and it wasn't every day that somebody that smart offered to like work with me on kind of like an equal level and stuff.
[00:20:52.200 --> 00:21:01.480] But he essentially, when we were talking about the idea and when we decided to move forward with it, I sat down at his place and he essentially was like, cool.
[00:21:01.480 --> 00:21:09.240] So I did some research and it looks like Ruby on Rails is going to be the best language for us to build this business like on.
[00:21:08.480 --> 00:21:10.920] Like on, there's a bunch of existing libraries.
[00:21:10.920 --> 00:21:16.960] It'll just make it easy for me to like piecemeal together, like, you know, a CSS here or whatever.
[00:21:16.960 --> 00:21:18.800] And so I was like, okay, cool, like, great.
[00:21:18.800 --> 00:21:20.160] I'll start calling people, right?
[00:21:14.520 --> 00:21:22.480] Like, I'll, like, I'll get, get on the phones.
[00:21:22.480 --> 00:21:23.920] And he goes, okay, great.
[00:21:24.160 --> 00:21:25.840] There's just one problem.
[00:21:25.840 --> 00:21:28.640] I don't know how to code Ruby on Rails.
[00:21:28.640 --> 00:21:32.320] And he literally started coding the project one week later.
[00:21:32.320 --> 00:21:33.680] Now, he knew Python.
[00:21:33.680 --> 00:21:36.000] So it was, so he, he was just like, it's just math.
[00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:40.080] It's just a different way of communicating, but the principles are all like all the same.
[00:21:40.080 --> 00:21:46.560] But he essentially spent like a week sort of figuring out the differences and then started coding like a week later, right?
[00:21:46.560 --> 00:21:48.640] So he put in the thought there.
[00:21:48.640 --> 00:21:52.720] And I honestly didn't do any research beyond that.
[00:21:52.720 --> 00:21:54.720] Like I just trusted him with that.
[00:21:54.720 --> 00:22:02.720] At some point, I did realize that I got very lucky with that and realized that Ruby on Rails was probably the choice language to pick.
[00:22:02.720 --> 00:22:07.120] But yeah, that's one that, you know, if we're being completely honest, it was not thought through at all.
[00:22:07.360 --> 00:22:08.800] We have done big rewrites.
[00:22:08.800 --> 00:22:14.160] We had a big rewrite in 2017 that did not go well.
[00:22:14.400 --> 00:22:29.360] Essentially, it came down to communication issues, but effectively, we critically took down our software from something like Monday to Thursday of like a busy week in November where our customers of this, you know, our software is like the backbone of their business.
[00:22:29.360 --> 00:22:33.120] And we essentially critically took them down for like three days.
[00:22:33.120 --> 00:22:39.920] That cost us something like 30% of our recurring revenue over the following, like maybe like six months or something, something like that.
[00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:43.040] And for that, it was like, yeah, we did a big redesign.
[00:22:43.040 --> 00:22:45.920] We changed some of the database structuring and stuff like that.
[00:22:45.920 --> 00:22:50.800] And it was the type of thing that, um, you know, I asked the team, can we revert this?
[00:22:50.800 --> 00:22:51.840] Cause this is pretty bad.
[00:22:51.840 --> 00:22:54.160] And they were like, if we revert it, we make it worse.
[00:22:54.160 --> 00:22:57.760] I was like, all right, we just got to like stick through it or whatever.
[00:22:57.760 --> 00:23:00.520] So, yeah, you know, lessons learned.
[00:23:00.520 --> 00:23:03.400] Yeah, I think that's just the journey of every SaaS founder.
[00:22:59.840 --> 00:23:05.800] You do a thing and it's like, whoops, everything exploded.
[00:23:06.120 --> 00:23:07.960] And then you kind of figure it out.
[00:23:07.960 --> 00:23:11.080] And that's a learning that you take into the next generation of this.
[00:23:11.080 --> 00:23:20.520] I think you were lucky in the sense that he made the right choice, but he was capable of making the right choice because he was good at making these choices, right?
[00:23:20.520 --> 00:23:23.400] Like Rails is a spectacular choice.
[00:23:23.400 --> 00:23:30.360] And even back in the day, back in 13, when it was rather new, I don't know, like Rails is like a 2008, 2009 kind of technology.
[00:23:30.360 --> 00:23:31.000] I'm not sure.
[00:23:31.720 --> 00:23:36.680] I could be completely off here, but it's been around already for a bit at that point.
[00:23:36.680 --> 00:23:42.120] And there's, you know, the Lindy effect for things that have been around for a while that will likely stick around for a bit longer.
[00:23:42.120 --> 00:23:51.960] So looking at Rails now, still going, still strong, still very much the same framework in the sense of its robustness and of the community around it.
[00:23:51.960 --> 00:23:54.760] That is an important right choice to make in the beginning, right?
[00:23:55.000 --> 00:24:02.600] I've started several SaaS businesses myself building on more obscure technologies, and that made it hard to find people to help.
[00:24:02.600 --> 00:24:09.000] Like just hiring somebody to build your tool, that's very easy now if you build a PHP or in Ruby or JavaScript.
[00:24:09.000 --> 00:24:11.240] There's a lot of people out there for that.
[00:24:11.240 --> 00:24:19.480] But for the kind of more esoterical languages that are also very cool and the frameworks are nice, but hiring people is expensive and hard.
[00:24:19.480 --> 00:24:21.000] So you have to think about this.
[00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:22.520] How quickly did you guys hire?
[00:24:22.520 --> 00:24:27.800] Like how quickly did you get into a team size that was not just the founders anymore?
[00:24:27.800 --> 00:24:32.600] So we started the company in, I think, April of 2013.
[00:24:32.600 --> 00:24:36.120] And so then I believe it was early 2015.
[00:24:36.120 --> 00:24:38.200] So we were still both working part-time.
[00:24:38.200 --> 00:24:39.400] I had a full-time job.
[00:24:39.400 --> 00:24:41.240] He was a full-time student.
[00:24:41.240 --> 00:24:46.400] Around that time, we brought on help for support from the Philippines.
[00:24:44.840 --> 00:24:50.320] And that was something like we were paying for maybe 10 hours a week.
[00:24:50.400 --> 00:24:58.560] So it was like two hours a day, literally, to jump on and to just, you know, answer some of the low-hanging fruit tickets so that I could just focus on the more important ones.
[00:24:58.560 --> 00:25:00.080] And that's where it started.
[00:25:00.080 --> 00:25:07.600] And then, yeah, 2016 was when we really brought on our first kind of like real like team team member.
[00:25:07.840 --> 00:25:17.280] And then around that time, the person that became our CTO and is my current like co-founder, he joined the company sometime around then as a freelancer.
[00:25:17.280 --> 00:25:22.160] And so, yeah, I mean, it grew, grew a bit, a bit like from there, but it really started.
[00:25:22.160 --> 00:25:25.200] The team really started, I would say, in 2016.
[00:25:25.200 --> 00:25:30.560] And then it's grown slowly but consistently similar to the business since then.
[00:25:30.560 --> 00:25:31.440] Three years.
[00:25:31.440 --> 00:25:34.960] That's a lot of time, particularly in internet time, right?
[00:25:34.960 --> 00:25:41.040] Like right now, when everything is very fast and you have to launch, and if it doesn't work within two weeks, you're a failure, right?
[00:25:41.040 --> 00:25:43.520] That kind of logic unfortunately exists.
[00:25:43.520 --> 00:25:46.160] Three years to get started with hiring.
[00:25:46.160 --> 00:25:46.720] Interesting.
[00:25:46.720 --> 00:25:51.520] I did not expect it to take that long, but again, slow burn, right?
[00:25:51.520 --> 00:25:52.720] We talked about this earlier.
[00:25:52.720 --> 00:25:57.440] You said Philippines, and I think in your Twitter bio, you also say you're location independent.
[00:25:57.440 --> 00:26:00.320] Has Senmate been remote first, like from the start?
[00:26:00.320 --> 00:26:02.400] Yeah, we were remote from the start.
[00:26:02.400 --> 00:26:07.760] You know, Arun and I were both in Palo Alto in California when we started the company.
[00:26:07.760 --> 00:26:16.000] And so I'd go over to his place in the evenings when he was done with classes at Stanford, but we were working very different schedules.
[00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:18.480] That I was waking up at 5 a.m.
[00:26:18.480 --> 00:26:24.080] and working and then going to work, whereas he would sit down and start coding at 11 p.m.
[00:26:24.320 --> 00:26:28.880] So, like, we might get together between like 9 and 10 and essentially talk strategy.
[00:26:28.880 --> 00:26:33.000] And it would almost be like that was the end of my day and the beginning of his day.
[00:26:33.320 --> 00:26:37.880] So, even at that point, even though we were in the same location, we weren't really working together.
[00:26:37.880 --> 00:26:42.840] And then, yeah, like I was traveling the world doing the digital nomad thing for eight years.
[00:26:42.840 --> 00:26:44.440] And now I'm based in the UK.
[00:26:44.440 --> 00:26:50.200] So, now I have a home base and you know, a puppy and all that stuff where I'm like truly settled and everything.
[00:26:50.200 --> 00:26:52.520] But that was after a long time traveling the world.
[00:26:52.520 --> 00:26:55.960] Yeah, the optionality of remote is wonderful, right?
[00:26:55.960 --> 00:26:59.320] You can be there if you want to be, but you don't have to.
[00:26:59.320 --> 00:27:06.200] I think the post-pandemic lockdown world has shown to a lot of people that that actually may work.
[00:27:06.200 --> 00:27:17.960] I mean, obviously, the infrastructure of certain companies is not meant to facilitate this, but a lot of people found that it's really nice to be home and to work from whatever place you want to work from doesn't have to be home either, right?
[00:27:18.280 --> 00:27:19.880] Cool, that is wonderful.
[00:27:19.880 --> 00:27:24.520] It is also, I would say, something rare in 2013.
[00:27:24.520 --> 00:27:32.200] It's been all the rage, like from the 2017, 18, 19, the digital nomad time, the whole Peter Levels experience, as I would call it.
[00:27:32.200 --> 00:27:40.680] Then it became normal for this to seep into software companies, but remote work is to me at least a fairly rare thing in 2013.
[00:27:40.680 --> 00:27:46.360] When you were saying like you, you hired people as CTO and all of this, like how quickly did you go into sales?
[00:27:46.520 --> 00:27:56.200] I wonder about particularly with your kind of customers that you serve, do you have to do a lot of direct selling or do leads come in organically and you just pick them up?
[00:27:56.200 --> 00:28:00.440] Like, how does that work in the world of made services?
[00:28:00.440 --> 00:28:06.520] Well, so with that, I mean, I think that has a lot to do with just when, right, of when you're talking about, right?
[00:28:06.520 --> 00:28:12.200] So, our first 100 to 150 customers was like essentially hand-to-hand combat, right?
[00:28:12.200 --> 00:28:20.880] Like, that was like cold emails, literally a VA sending through like a fake Gmail account and setting up like calls for me and everything.
[00:28:21.200 --> 00:28:25.680] And then I would cold call people that we had already emailed.
[00:28:25.680 --> 00:28:29.360] So, the line was, of course, hey, you know, like, can I, can I speak with Ken?
[00:28:29.440 --> 00:28:31.680] I sent him an email earlier, right?
[00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:34.320] And so, you know, that was my like primary skill set.
[00:28:34.320 --> 00:28:40.000] And so, we did about 100, 150 customers where I essentially was selling like one-to-one.
[00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.000] And that was very much a do things that don't scale like men mentality.
[00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:47.760] And so, that was how we started.
[00:28:47.760 --> 00:28:50.800] Around that time, we had two things that happened.
[00:28:50.800 --> 00:28:56.240] We had a partnership where just by chance on LinkedIn, somebody came across us.
[00:28:56.240 --> 00:28:59.920] They had, you know, a nice group of coaching students.
[00:28:59.920 --> 00:29:02.400] They weren't happy with the software they'd been recommending.
[00:29:02.400 --> 00:29:06.960] And so, they were looking for someone new, liked our attitude, and started recommending us.
[00:29:06.960 --> 00:29:09.920] So, that was the first successful partnership that we had.
[00:29:09.920 --> 00:29:14.720] And then, at some point along the way, I lucked into content marketing essentially.
[00:29:14.720 --> 00:29:19.920] That I just went through and turned a couple of things that I'd done for my maid service previously.
[00:29:19.920 --> 00:29:23.280] I turned them into little like pieces of content.
[00:29:23.280 --> 00:29:32.640] And so, one of the very first ones that I did that is still a lead magnet for us to this day is 47 keywords that every maid service must know for Google.
[00:29:32.640 --> 00:29:34.640] And that was something that I had done the research.
[00:29:34.640 --> 00:29:38.240] So, I just put it into a spreadsheet and made it downloadable.
[00:29:38.240 --> 00:29:40.320] And that began getting us leads.
[00:29:40.320 --> 00:29:47.280] And so, now we don't do any outbound that we generate, you know, 50 to 100 new leads like a day.
[00:29:47.280 --> 00:29:51.680] And yeah, so they're all coming to us and raising their hands and saying that.
[00:29:51.680 --> 00:30:04.440] But again, that's after 12 years of showing up every day, having a really strong brand reputation, you know, having like great SEO, you know, where we're getting leads from from all sorts of directions now where we just don't have to chase anymore.
[00:30:04.760 --> 00:30:21.720] Yeah, I can tell, I guess, because when I look into your ecosystem, into your kind of marketing presence, I see a YouTube channel that is really strong, like has hundreds, 500 or so videos, 10,000 subscribers, which is substantial for anything in a very niche kind of SaaS market, right?
[00:30:21.720 --> 00:30:25.080] So I was so impressed to see this and the work you put into this.
[00:30:25.080 --> 00:30:26.760] And then there's stuff like Mate Summit.
[00:30:26.760 --> 00:30:33.880] Talk to me about this because I don't see many SaaS businesses that actually do a conference-like thing.
[00:30:33.880 --> 00:30:34.680] Yeah, definitely.
[00:30:34.680 --> 00:30:53.160] So one thing that I do just want to say, just almost like before, is like almost like a caveat to answering this is so like if you're technical and you're listening to this, what I'm about to tell you that I spent my time on might not be the best use of your time when you can be building a product that's actually solving people's problems.
[00:30:53.160 --> 00:31:12.040] For me as a non-technical founder, though, the best question that I feel like I've ever asked myself in terms of like helping the company move forward is what can I do like almost independently of the product team without relying on a rune who is busy enough building the product?
[00:31:12.040 --> 00:31:16.920] What can I do to help or to add value to maid service owners?
[00:31:16.920 --> 00:31:24.760] And so that question has essentially determined a ton of our marketing because essentially it's just how can I help made service owners?
[00:31:24.760 --> 00:31:35.560] And then if I'm helping made service owners, I have the option to help them for free, which is marketing, if we then ask them to sign up for the software, or we can charge for the service.
[00:31:35.560 --> 00:31:41.080] So I've gone through lots of courses, including a course on how to run a virtual summit.
[00:31:41.080 --> 00:31:57.680] And so, yeah, that was essentially like the question that I asked myself to arrive at the virtual summit was: what's something that we can do that folks in the industry can endorse and share without endorsing or sharing ZenMaid?
[00:31:57.680 --> 00:31:59.840] And that was what I kind of like arrived on.
[00:31:59.840 --> 00:32:03.680] And so, if you guys want to check that out, that's made summit.com.
[00:32:03.680 --> 00:32:10.080] And that's the first, you know, virtual summit, the biggest virtual summit for made services in the world, which is quite cool.
[00:32:10.080 --> 00:32:12.240] We've been doing that for, I think, six years now.
[00:32:12.240 --> 00:32:16.080] And so, for that, we bring together 50 experts.
[00:32:16.080 --> 00:32:21.520] We are very specific that they have to specifically work with cleaning businesses or made services.
[00:32:21.520 --> 00:32:25.200] We don't bring in just like a random small business accountant.
[00:32:25.200 --> 00:32:29.520] We want it to be strongly overlapping audiences for all speakers.
[00:32:29.520 --> 00:32:37.120] And then we take all of those talks from the summit, we publish them to the YouTube channel, which is why you see 500 like videos there.
[00:32:37.120 --> 00:32:50.320] We also have a very talented writer who will pull out parts of every talk and turn them into standalone articles that are like, you know, you'd read the article and not realize it was about like the same video because it's completely like different.
[00:32:50.320 --> 00:32:57.120] And so, yeah, I think we have like a thousand articles or something like that on the blog, and all of it goes into like the Zen Maid kind of ecosystem.
[00:32:57.120 --> 00:33:01.840] Then, yeah, we have like the Zen Maid podcast where we'll interview those speakers.
[00:33:01.840 --> 00:33:12.560] And then we have a Facebook group of about 10,000 made service owners that are on like Zuck's platform that will be in there chatting with the speakers and all of that stuff.
[00:33:12.560 --> 00:33:22.320] And so, yeah, it all kind of ties together, but I've just always asked myself, how can we build community, help maid services as much as possible?
[00:33:22.320 --> 00:33:34.520] And then we happen to monetize that through amazing software, kind of be behind the scenes, but really, the marketing machine at the front of everything is just help people for free.
[00:33:34.840 --> 00:33:39.160] It is unsurprising to me that you guys are successful if this is your mission.
[00:33:39.160 --> 00:33:44.440] If you want to help maid services and not just make money with the SaaS, which is very distinct, right?
[00:33:44.440 --> 00:33:46.520] These two are very, very different things.
[00:33:46.520 --> 00:33:49.720] Then you come up with ideas and genius ideas.
[00:33:49.720 --> 00:34:08.680] Let me say that, like the MAID Summit, because I think the idea of having other people bring their expertise into this cohesive place where people can consume it, and then taking this content and redistributing it in different shapes into different kind of categories, into different kinds of media where people can then consume it on their own time when they need to find it.
[00:34:08.680 --> 00:34:10.760] Now, that is really, really smart.
[00:34:10.760 --> 00:34:13.640] It's outsourcing everything and pulling in the value of it.
[00:34:13.640 --> 00:34:14.760] It's spectacular.
[00:34:14.760 --> 00:34:19.880] And I think that's something you can definitely do when you are in a niche like the one that you are in.
[00:34:19.880 --> 00:34:26.520] When you are so very specifically aiming at one particular kind of customer, then you know all of their problems.
[00:34:26.520 --> 00:34:30.280] And all of these problems at some point intersect with somebody else's expertise.
[00:34:30.280 --> 00:34:31.560] So you can just pull them in.
[00:34:31.560 --> 00:34:32.440] I think that's genius.
[00:34:32.440 --> 00:34:34.600] I'm just so happy for you to have found this.
[00:34:34.600 --> 00:34:40.840] And what I hear, the through line here, it's kind of meta in a way, is that you took a course on how to do this.
[00:34:40.840 --> 00:34:44.520] And earlier you were saying you took a course on how to find your ICP.
[00:34:44.520 --> 00:34:50.440] How many courses on what kind of subjects did you take to enrich your own knowledge in the world of running a business?
[00:34:50.440 --> 00:34:52.680] Yeah, I definitely rely a lot on courses.
[00:34:52.680 --> 00:35:12.680] I think it's something that I don't know if everyone arrives at, but I think that a lot of folks that are into self-development, like self-help and personal development and everything, I think, kind of end up at this almost like naturally, especially if you're entrepreneurial and just make more and more money like over your career, which is at the beginning, I could mainly afford books, right?
[00:35:12.680 --> 00:35:18.240] So, when I was a teenager, I was mainly reading books that would have a big impact.
[00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:26.880] And it's mind-blowing the amount of knowledge that you can download from somebody's brain for $20, like absolutely mind-blowing, right?
[00:35:26.880 --> 00:35:33.440] So, that's something where we're now, it's just like, yeah, any book that I see that I want to buy, I just buy it, and there's no like no second thought.
[00:35:33.760 --> 00:35:38.160] I am very much a visual and audio person, though.
[00:35:38.160 --> 00:35:41.920] So, like, for me, it was a massive game changer when I discovered audio books.
[00:35:41.920 --> 00:35:55.040] But before I discovered audio books, I was essentially trying to get to that almost like course level where I can afford to pay low four figures to get the videos and all that, because I found that I learned much more effectively from that.
[00:35:55.040 --> 00:36:04.400] From there, after courses, you can get into like masterminds or into like group coaching where you get a little bit more, like more help, a little bit more customized.
[00:36:04.400 --> 00:36:09.760] And then now I'm at the point where by default, I'm looking for one-on-one help, right?
[00:36:09.760 --> 00:36:14.800] That I'm looking for the, you know, the person who does the course.
[00:36:14.800 --> 00:36:19.680] I'm looking to find out if they do, if they do coaching and that sort of approach.
[00:36:19.680 --> 00:36:28.560] But yeah, I've done a ton of different things that I realized at some point along the way that I could take almost any internet marketing course.
[00:36:28.560 --> 00:36:36.800] So, like, there are lots of internet marketing courses that are essentially trying to teach you how to build a business around a specific business model.
[00:36:36.800 --> 00:36:46.160] So, there's SAS, there's the summit one was the person who was trying to be like, hey, like, you can live anywhere in the world by just running three summits a year, right?
[00:36:46.160 --> 00:36:50.320] And so, that's like the marketing angle that they all take.
[00:36:50.320 --> 00:37:08.120] I realized at some point that just by luck and happenstance and whatever, I had already lucked into the best business model that like I think there is in terms of just truly like recurring revenue, like you know, software like robots doing like most of the heavy lifting and like all of like that stuff.
[00:37:08.120 --> 00:37:22.760] So what I recognized with all of these almost like get rich quick courses was that if I could implement those business models in a way that helped made services, but then didn't charge for it, it was essentially marketing.
[00:37:23.000 --> 00:37:23.800] That's awesome.
[00:37:23.800 --> 00:37:24.040] Right.
[00:37:24.040 --> 00:37:25.800] So that's how I invested in that.
[00:37:25.800 --> 00:37:34.120] And in like, you know, we did the same thing of like, I think it was authorityhacker.com where they're teaching you building amazing like content sites, right?
[00:37:34.120 --> 00:37:41.240] So we took that, applied it to made services, and then just ignored all of their monetization stuff and replaced it with ads for Zenma.
[00:37:41.320 --> 00:37:45.640] And we've pretty much done that with almost every marketing channel like across the board.
[00:37:45.640 --> 00:37:47.000] That is such a great idea.
[00:37:47.000 --> 00:37:47.720] I love this.
[00:37:47.720 --> 00:37:50.280] I'm going to steal this from you for my own stuff.
[00:37:50.280 --> 00:38:00.040] I love the idea of taking somebody else's like hype, like just trying to make people make money kind of course and take the monetization out and just plug yourself.
[00:38:00.040 --> 00:38:01.720] That is really, really smart.
[00:38:01.720 --> 00:38:07.240] And that only works if you have something valuable to sell, which most of the time people don't just yet, right?
[00:38:07.240 --> 00:38:21.960] But once you do, those models all of a sudden have a, yeah, you get all the virality and all the positive kind of effects that they have, the internal dynamics, without the stench of the monetization approach that people often take.
[00:38:21.960 --> 00:38:23.400] I love that you share this kind of stuff.
[00:38:23.400 --> 00:38:27.720] I love that you share it here right now, that you share it on Twitter, that you talk about it all the time.
[00:38:27.720 --> 00:38:32.040] You're kind of a build-in-public kind of person without calling it building in public.
[00:38:32.040 --> 00:38:37.320] That's what I feel about you because you've done this for so long, much longer than it had a name.
[00:38:37.320 --> 00:38:39.160] And I love that you share so much.
[00:38:39.160 --> 00:38:43.160] And also, I think you recently started a podcast yourself.
[00:38:43.160 --> 00:38:46.880] Like you've been sharing this in the format that you like so much, which is audio.
[00:38:46.880 --> 00:38:48.080] Tell me more about that.
[00:38:48.080 --> 00:38:49.040] Yeah, definitely.
[00:38:44.840 --> 00:38:51.360] So I've started recording my podcast again.
[00:38:51.520 --> 00:38:58.880] That's Surround Sound SaaS Marketing is the current name because I'd launched it a long time ago where it was much more focused on marketing.
[00:38:58.880 --> 00:39:12.880] Right now, it's really more just sharing kind of about like not necessarily the journey, but I essentially wanted, you know, you always hear of like recording podcast episodes where it's just like conversations that people are actually having.
[00:39:12.880 --> 00:39:24.320] So what I decided to do with mine is I'm really just recording it more for myself, where I'm more almost bringing on friends of mine who want to talk to me about specific things.
[00:39:24.320 --> 00:39:28.800] So a really good example was Jesse Schoberg from Dropin Blog.
[00:39:28.800 --> 00:39:36.640] He sent me some messages probably like two months ago or something like that, asking me how Zenmaid's new pricing release went.
[00:39:36.640 --> 00:39:42.560] And so we just jumped on a Riverside link and spent an hour talking through the price release.
[00:39:42.560 --> 00:39:48.320] And that was something that, you know, that's not the kind of thing that most people are going to find really interesting.
[00:39:48.320 --> 00:39:53.120] It's a perfect thing for me to upload the transcript into ChatGPT and to get to know me.
[00:39:53.120 --> 00:40:17.600] But what was really cool about that was that I had quite a few friends and folks that I think most listeners would know from Twitter and everything that actually reached out after this conversation because they were thinking about, you know, like raising their pricing and that it was actually a valuable conversation for them because we just like went into more depth, maybe without context for like your average listener, but enough that there was a lot of value there.
[00:40:17.600 --> 00:40:19.520] So I'm just really, really like enjoying that.
[00:40:19.520 --> 00:40:22.640] Like, we'll see if I actually end up finding much of an audience there.
[00:40:22.640 --> 00:40:31.320] But that, I mean, along with Twitter and LinkedIn, are where I'm really like documenting kind of what I'm doing, because I didn't start sharing until essentially the start of the pandemic.
[00:40:31.640 --> 00:40:39.000] And so there was, you know, almost 10 years of entrepreneurial experience before then that I wish that I'd, you know, documented.
[00:40:39.000 --> 00:40:47.080] Yeah, well, looking at the history of you sticking with a thing for 12 years, I have a feeling that the podcast might be around for a while.
[00:40:47.080 --> 00:40:53.800] Because, you know, like most shows don't make it past 10 episodes, even just in planning, because people don't have that tenacity.
[00:40:53.800 --> 00:41:05.080] But I see you having enough things to talk about, obviously, and knowing more and more enough people who might be interested in sharing their own expertise or like pulling yours out of you and having a conversation around it.
[00:41:05.080 --> 00:41:06.360] I love these kind of shows.
[00:41:06.360 --> 00:41:07.160] And that's the thing.
[00:41:07.160 --> 00:41:11.000] Like we learn, and I'm also an audiovisual learner, just like yourself.
[00:41:11.000 --> 00:41:20.200] I learned so much more from the nuance, the hidden stuff in a conversation than I could ever learn from being expressly told what exactly I need to do.
[00:41:20.200 --> 00:41:33.480] So just being a fly on the wall when you chat about pricing is going to fill my mind with pricing ideas that maybe a year down the line is going to give me that one little lightning bolt moment of what I should be doing, right?
[00:41:33.480 --> 00:41:34.040] Exactly.
[00:41:34.040 --> 00:41:47.400] And I'm really glad that you said that because I have a couple of friends actually that like they have a tendency to take podcast episodes and then, yeah, put them into ChatGPT and get them, get them summarized.
[00:41:47.400 --> 00:41:52.680] And it's like, there's a value in that if you don't actually have time to listen to it.
[00:41:52.680 --> 00:42:03.000] But one of the things that I've been trying to get across is that in a lot of those cases, the importance is not the conclusion, it's how the conclusion was arrived at.
[00:42:03.000 --> 00:42:09.720] And so you want to hear the conversation where they're talking about like, we did a summit and here's why.
[00:42:09.720 --> 00:42:14.120] Here are the things that we considered going into it, not just we did a summit.
[00:42:14.120 --> 00:42:14.520] Yeah.
[00:42:14.520 --> 00:42:21.840] And I think the journey being more important than the destination, and let's be as cliche as we can get, right?
[00:42:21.840 --> 00:42:28.800] That is especially true for people like us who have to solve novel problems every day.
[00:42:28.800 --> 00:42:33.360] And the destination, like the solution to it, effectively doesn't really matter.
[00:42:33.360 --> 00:42:38.080] Your understanding of the problem and of the challenge and how to overcome it that matters.
[00:42:38.080 --> 00:42:40.320] And that's what you need the journey for, right?
[00:42:40.320 --> 00:42:42.720] So I'm super glad you're doing this.
[00:42:42.720 --> 00:42:43.840] And I'm excited.
[00:42:43.840 --> 00:42:51.600] I'm going to follow your podcast a little bit more than I have in the past because I've been like in your little ecosystem, in your surrounding ecosystem for a while.
[00:42:51.600 --> 00:42:56.560] But I'm excited to listen to you sharing these little stories of your own experience.
[00:42:56.560 --> 00:43:03.920] If people want to find out more about you, both about you personally, your show, the businesses that you're running, where should they be going?
[00:43:03.920 --> 00:43:07.440] So best places would be Twitter and LinkedIn.
[00:43:07.440 --> 00:43:12.720] It's Amar Ghosh, like A-M-A-R, and last name is G-H-O-S-E.
[00:43:12.720 --> 00:43:15.840] My personal website is theamericandream.com.
[00:43:15.840 --> 00:43:18.240] So like the American Dream, but Amar.
[00:43:19.040 --> 00:43:22.640] And yeah, like I said, podcast is surround sound like SaaS marketing.
[00:43:22.640 --> 00:43:26.400] And if you happen to be a maid service owner listening to this, check out zenmaid.com.
[00:43:26.400 --> 00:43:29.360] Don't know why, why you would be, but I mean, you know, that's cool if you are.
[00:43:29.360 --> 00:43:31.520] So yeah, those would be the places.
[00:43:31.520 --> 00:43:33.440] And I'm totally an open book on these things.
[00:43:33.440 --> 00:43:38.480] Like if you guys want to drop me an email, it's easy to find my email out there or drop me a DM on Twitter.
[00:43:38.640 --> 00:43:44.960] I'm always happy to answer questions, go more in depth into things, and just, you know, meet up and coming indie hackers.
[00:43:44.960 --> 00:43:47.840] So feel free to reach out if you want to have a quick chat.
[00:43:47.840 --> 00:43:49.600] Yeah, I highly recommend chatting with this guy.
[00:43:49.640 --> 00:43:51.120] Omar, you've been amazing.
[00:43:51.120 --> 00:43:52.880] Thanks so much for sharing everything today.
[00:43:52.880 --> 00:43:53.920] That was really awesome.
[00:43:53.920 --> 00:43:55.120] Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
[00:43:55.120 --> 00:43:56.240] It's been a lot of fun.
[00:43:56.240 --> 00:43:57.440] And that's it for today.
[00:43:57.440 --> 00:43:59.640] Thank you so much for listening to the Bootstrap Founder.
[00:43:59.640 --> 00:44:03.160] You can find me on Twitter at AvidKal, AIVID, K-A-H-L.
[00:43:59.360 --> 00:44:16.040] And if you want to support me in this show, please share podscan.fm, my SaaS business, with your professional peers and those who you think will benefit from tracking mentions of their brands, their businesses, and names on podcasts out there.
[00:44:16.040 --> 00:44:20.520] PodScan is a near real-time podcast database with a stellar API.
[00:44:20.520 --> 00:44:23.640] We have 32 million podcast episodes in the back now.
[00:44:23.640 --> 00:44:25.560] The database is humongous.
[00:44:25.560 --> 00:44:29.880] Please share the word with those who need to stay on top of the podcast ecosystem.
[00:44:29.880 --> 00:44:31.320] Thank you so much for listening.
[00:44:31.320 --> 00:44:33.880] Have a wonderful day and bye-bye.

Prompt 2: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 3: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 4: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Full Transcript

[00:00:00.320 --> 00:00:04.560] Hey, it's Arvid, and this is the Bootstrap Founder.
[00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:12.560] Today, I'm talking to Amar Ghosh, the founder of Senmate.
[00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:18.160] That's a SaaS platform that's been helping mate service owners grow their businesses since 2013.
[00:00:18.160 --> 00:00:23.200] Amar is one of those amazing founders who really embodies the bootstrapping spirit.
[00:00:23.200 --> 00:00:35.440] Because when his co-founder left early on just around 15K of MRR, he could have easily given up, but instead he stuck with it and relentlessly focused on customers and persisted.
[00:00:35.440 --> 00:00:42.000] He had built Senmate into 150K per month business over the past 12 years.
[00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:49.280] And what makes Amar's story particularly inspiring is that he's a non-technical founder who used this customer development approach from day one.
[00:00:49.280 --> 00:00:54.160] And he really listened to his market and built exactly what mate service owners needed.
[00:00:54.160 --> 00:01:00.640] He also created this incredible content marketing ecosystem around Senmate, from YouTube channels to the Mate Summit.
[00:01:00.640 --> 00:01:03.120] That's a conference, podcasts, all that kind of stuff.
[00:01:03.120 --> 00:01:07.680] He's always focused on helping mate service owners succeed rather than just selling his software.
[00:01:07.680 --> 00:01:09.120] So it's very inspirational.
[00:01:09.120 --> 00:01:12.000] And there's a couple of really, really interesting insights in here.
[00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:23.600] We're talking about the power of persistence and bootstrapping, how to build as a non-technical founder, how important customer development really is, and how you can create content that truly serves the community that you're serving.
[00:01:23.600 --> 00:01:32.560] We'll also dive into building this remote-first location-independent company and stay focused on your customer success over quick growth.
[00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:34.240] Like I said, 12 years, right?
[00:01:34.240 --> 00:01:36.480] That's a long while to stick with a business.
[00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:39.200] A big shout out to the sponsor of today's episode.
[00:01:39.200 --> 00:01:42.880] That's Paddle.com, my merchant of record payment provider of choice.
[00:01:42.880 --> 00:01:49.760] They're taking care of all the things related to money so that founders like you and me can focus on the things that only we can build.
[00:01:49.760 --> 00:01:54.240] Paddle handles all the rest, sales tags, credit cards failing, all that kind of stuff.
[00:01:54.240 --> 00:01:55.480] I highly recommend it.
[00:01:55.360 --> 00:01:57.680] So, so please check out paddle.com.
[00:01:57.680 --> 00:01:59.760] Now, here's Amar Ghosh.
[00:02:01.960 --> 00:02:14.200] Amar, you have been with Sandmate for 12 years now, just over 12 years, and I have met very few founders who had the tenacity and the resilience to stick with any business for over a decade.
[00:02:14.200 --> 00:02:17.880] I want you to take me back to your 2013 when it all started.
[00:02:17.880 --> 00:02:21.240] Did you know back then what journey you were signing up for?
[00:02:21.240 --> 00:02:29.000] So, I think anyone that says yes to this question that's a successful entrepreneur is lying, unless it's like their second or third business.
[00:02:29.400 --> 00:02:33.400] No, I had absolutely no idea what I was signing up for.
[00:02:33.400 --> 00:02:57.720] I recognized an opportunity both in the actual industry where we've built our solution, but also just in the fact that one of the smartest people that I knew in my life that was getting his PhD at Stanford University was offering me the chance to be like an equal founder with him in a software business.
[00:02:57.720 --> 00:03:09.880] And, you know, just looking at how much he was valued on the open market and how much I was valued on the open market, not as entrepreneurs, but just as people, it was very clear that, you know, I was getting a better deal here.
[00:03:09.880 --> 00:03:16.520] I think, I think it's evened out since then, but I just recognized an opportunity and just like moved forward with it.
[00:03:16.520 --> 00:03:39.800] And I think, in terms of sticking with it for 12 years, I think that because I read the four-hour work week quite early on in my like entrepreneurial journey, I think that I had it in my head that it's like, hey, if you play your cards right, if you can get to a couple thousand dollars a month, you can essentially live like a king in Thailand.
[00:03:39.800 --> 00:03:44.120] And I think that I was really good about never like forgetting that.
[00:03:44.120 --> 00:03:51.280] And so my initial co-founder, he left the business after four years, after his shares like fully vested.
[00:03:51.600 --> 00:04:01.360] And he was looking at it's been four years of time that we've been focused on this, not full-time, but like it's been our thing for four years now.
[00:04:01.360 --> 00:04:04.640] And it's making $15,000 a month, right?
[00:04:04.640 --> 00:04:10.640] Like, you know, we're adding, you know, $4,000 a year in like monthly recurring revenue.
[00:04:10.640 --> 00:04:13.200] So from his perspective, this was pathetic.
[00:04:13.200 --> 00:04:30.240] From my perspective, I was just like, yes, but think about all of the aspiring entrepreneurs out there that would kill to have a SaaS business making $15,000 a month, no matter how much time it had taken them, right?
[00:04:30.240 --> 00:04:33.040] Like $15,000 a month is $15,000 a month.
[00:04:33.040 --> 00:04:37.760] Now, granted, we weren't paying ourselves anywhere close to that, but I think I just kept that in perspective.
[00:04:37.760 --> 00:04:43.040] And so, yeah, I mean, he walked away after four years and we were at $15,000 a month.
[00:04:43.040 --> 00:04:47.040] And four years later, we were at $150,000 a month.
[00:04:47.040 --> 00:04:48.960] So, I mean, both of us won in that.
[00:04:48.960 --> 00:04:51.760] We're still very good friends, very amicable, all that.
[00:04:51.760 --> 00:04:54.640] But that's kind of how like the journey started.
[00:04:54.640 --> 00:04:59.040] But there's absolutely no way like I knew what I was signing up for.
[00:04:59.040 --> 00:05:01.360] Just, oh man, it's been so much.
[00:05:01.360 --> 00:05:06.400] Yeah, it does sound like a slow burn, but a bright burn nonetheless, right?
[00:05:06.400 --> 00:05:07.680] Because you just stuck with it.
[00:05:07.680 --> 00:05:11.520] And I feel that's the tenacity I'm trying to kind of highlight here.
[00:05:11.520 --> 00:05:14.000] That's the stuff that we don't talk about much.
[00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:15.280] We talk about numbers a lot.
[00:05:15.280 --> 00:05:17.440] We talk about growth and strategies and all that.
[00:05:17.440 --> 00:05:29.280] But to stick with a thing when it's kind of working, but it feels like everybody else is talking about product market fit and how things just, you know, hockey stick explode doesn't seem to be working for me.
[00:05:29.280 --> 00:05:33.400] A lot of people seem to just cut it at that very point, yet you stuck it out.
[00:05:33.640 --> 00:05:34.280] Why was that?
[00:05:34.280 --> 00:05:40.280] Like, why did you see that there was still beyond the fact that other people would like to have something like this in the first place, obviously?
[00:05:40.280 --> 00:05:42.520] But what did you see that he did not see?
[00:05:42.520 --> 00:05:49.160] Well, so one thing is in my initial co-founder's defense, he had made a lot of money on crypto by that point.
[00:05:49.160 --> 00:05:56.840] So it was more that he just had more opportunity like elsewhere than it was necessarily an indictment of the business.
[00:05:56.840 --> 00:06:01.320] It was more just how he was choosing to prioritize his time and attention and resources.
[00:06:01.320 --> 00:06:03.000] And so that was like good.
[00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:28.920] But the main thing I think that was different was that because he was building the software and I was the one actually talking to all of the customers every day, I think that I was quite intimately aware of how similar all of our customers were and how we were clearly solving a problem where there was a wider sort of pattern of behavior that this was going to help and to solve.
[00:06:28.920 --> 00:06:32.840] And so I knew that there were way more made services out there.
[00:06:32.840 --> 00:06:41.240] And it was almost just like at every point I kept looking at it and just being essentially thinking to myself, why can't we double?
[00:06:41.240 --> 00:06:48.760] You know, and now we're getting to a point where it's like, okay, maybe that would actually be tough to do within like the size of the market.
[00:06:48.760 --> 00:06:52.840] Still possible, but at that point, you're talking about a significant chunk of the market.
[00:06:52.840 --> 00:06:53.800] Okay, interesting.
[00:06:53.800 --> 00:07:01.080] I always wondered about your journey in particular, because 12 years, that's a lot of time for things to shift in the world, right?
[00:07:01.080 --> 00:07:03.080] In the reality of how things are done.
[00:07:03.080 --> 00:07:10.840] So I wonder, like, how quickly did you find your maid service owner customer, your main customer, target customer, I guess?
[00:07:10.840 --> 00:07:12.600] And did that change since?
[00:07:12.600 --> 00:07:17.920] Like, has there been movement enough for you to re-orient your ICP, your ideal customer profile?
[00:07:18.240 --> 00:07:24.720] So not since day one, but the reason for that is, is because we started with the ICP, not with the software, right?
[00:07:24.720 --> 00:07:30.560] So we went through a course called The Foundation that was by Dane Maxwell and Andy Drisch.
[00:07:30.560 --> 00:07:32.560] That was back in 2013.
[00:07:32.560 --> 00:07:44.000] And they essentially presented this course that the idea was a non-technical founder could start a software company without knowing how to code or even having an idea.
[00:07:44.000 --> 00:07:50.480] And they took very much like the customer development sort of framework by Steve Blank or something like that.
[00:07:50.480 --> 00:08:01.840] That essentially it was very like kind of similar to that, where they essentially were like you pick a cohort of customers, whether that's lawyers, real estate, you know, whatever it might be, they're very focused on B2B.
[00:08:01.840 --> 00:08:08.240] And then it's you go into those companies and you find what sort of problems can you solve with software.
[00:08:08.240 --> 00:08:12.960] And then it talked about pre-selling and like essentially how to get money and then to go and hire.
[00:08:12.960 --> 00:08:18.160] And so I think that's a little more commonplace now, but at the time, I think was a bit more kind of like out there.
[00:08:18.160 --> 00:08:22.000] And so we like, I had actually run a maid service previously.
[00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:34.400] The interesting thing was initially we didn't explore made services as an idea because we thought that my experience there was actually going to be a crutch and was going to give us a false positive for a good idea.
[00:08:34.400 --> 00:08:53.440] And then after we essentially got no traction in any other industry, we came back to main services and my ability to, you know, start those conversations with other maid services and talk through the challenges that I had experienced and they were experiencing and all of that really hit home.
[00:08:53.440 --> 00:09:03.480] And so, yeah, it's kind of an interesting thing that, like, we were so naive back then that we actually thought that me having experience as a maid service owner was going to somehow like mess things up.
[00:09:03.480 --> 00:09:08.920] Would you suggest like having this kind of insight knowledge to a founder in general if they want to start a business?
[00:09:08.920 --> 00:09:11.160] I mean, I would suggest it like where possible.
[00:09:11.160 --> 00:09:12.760] I don't think it's necessary, right?
[00:09:12.760 --> 00:09:36.360] Like, I don't think that it should stop you, but also, like, I think that if you are blessed enough, if you have savings, if you, you know, are still living with your parents and are quite young or whatever, I think that there is something to be said of it's like, you know, you want to build a software for valets, go work as a valet for a couple of months and build on the side and then like in weekends, right?
[00:09:36.360 --> 00:09:38.600] Especially if you're technical, right?
[00:09:38.840 --> 00:09:42.120] If you're if you're less technical, I mean, it's probably still just as useful.
[00:09:42.120 --> 00:09:47.080] I think it was quite helpful for me, but honestly, it was more about the confidence than the experience.
[00:09:47.080 --> 00:09:56.280] It was more about, yeah, how I was able to present myself on calls and sort of the story that that has allowed us to tell about ZenMaid.
[00:09:56.280 --> 00:10:11.560] It was a lot more about that because honestly, the more that I have developed at ZenMaid as a person, as a CEO, as an entrepreneur, the more I realize just like how much of an idiot I was when I was running the maid service back in the day, right?
[00:10:11.560 --> 00:10:17.720] Where to like to act like I'm, you know, teaching people how to do what I did, like, no, nothing could be further from the truth.
[00:10:17.720 --> 00:10:23.560] That's funny because that's a big risk that a lot of founders see when they have inside knowledge is that it's bias.
[00:10:23.560 --> 00:10:25.960] It's effectively just codified bias, right?
[00:10:25.960 --> 00:10:30.200] And that they take the bias, they build something for who they think is going to use their product.
[00:10:30.200 --> 00:10:35.400] And it turns out that they're just not that because nobody else is as biased as they are.
[00:10:35.400 --> 00:10:44.600] But it sounds like you found a way to do a customer development and the product validation in ways that kind of alleviated the bias that was inside it.
[00:10:44.600 --> 00:10:45.680] Yeah, exactly.
[00:10:44.920 --> 00:10:48.080] You'd asked about if we had any like pivots or whatever.
[00:10:48.240 --> 00:11:04.960] The only one that I would say that's worth like noting is early on, we released the software thinking that these booking forms that we'd built out, we thought that these were going to be the greatest things since sliced bread in the industry.
[00:11:04.960 --> 00:11:10.000] And in some ways they were, but not for us, that we just completely missed the mark on the execution.
[00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:18.080] And we had a couple competitors that came out with much better versions of those forms that did genuinely have that impact on the industry.
[00:11:18.080 --> 00:11:20.960] We thought that was going to be our bread and butter.
[00:11:20.960 --> 00:11:26.880] But along with that, we built a basic calendar system and the start of what is now ZenMaid.
[00:11:26.880 --> 00:11:45.440] The interesting thing was from the get-go, people didn't really care about the booking forms, but the simple calendar combined with email and text reminders that we had pre-written for their cleaning business, that was just like mind-blowing to people for, I think it was $19 a month.
[00:11:45.440 --> 00:11:47.520] And so that's how we kind of got off the ground.
[00:11:47.520 --> 00:11:53.120] That's probably the one big thing that we really thought all of our positioning was going to be about grow your maid service.
[00:11:53.120 --> 00:11:55.920] And like really, it's about organize and manage your schedule.
[00:11:55.920 --> 00:11:58.800] How much competitive pressure is in that particular industry?
[00:11:58.800 --> 00:12:03.760] Like how many maid service SaaS businesses are you competing with at this point?
[00:12:03.760 --> 00:12:05.600] So there's some interesting things that I've heard.
[00:12:05.600 --> 00:12:21.120] I think it was first from like from Ramit Saithi that was talking about how like if you're going for scholarships or like a job applications that if there's like hundreds of people applying, generally there's like five to 10 that you're actually competing with if you really take it, like take it seriously.
[00:12:21.160 --> 00:12:35.960] Um, that's kind of how it feels here, where there's probably three or four competitors that I would say are relatively often in the conversation with us to be considered as like a solution.
[00:12:35.960 --> 00:12:44.680] And then there's another probably like 35 or 40 kind of like, you know, smaller ones or whatever that also come up.
[00:12:44.680 --> 00:12:56.840] You know, it's important to note with that that out of the three or four like major competitors, I would say at this point, one is specific to made services like us.
[00:12:56.840 --> 00:13:04.600] And then two of the other ones are general for all service businesses, but happen to be very strong in our industry.
[00:13:04.600 --> 00:13:15.080] And then there's quite a few smaller ones that are made specific that are oftentimes, you know, like the first thing they publish on their blog is them versus ZenMade and trying to plug into like our SEO, right?
[00:13:15.080 --> 00:13:17.480] Which, which I take as a compliment these days, right?
[00:13:17.480 --> 00:13:19.960] Like, you know, it's like the first thing like they do or whatever.
[00:13:19.960 --> 00:13:22.680] So we've got quite a few that are that are like that.
[00:13:22.680 --> 00:13:29.960] But honestly, with those guys, there's such a moat in this industry just because it's old-fashioned.
[00:13:29.960 --> 00:13:35.080] It takes people a while to get comfortable with new brands, with new technology, all of that stuff.
[00:13:35.080 --> 00:13:47.720] I pay attention to all of our competitors, but I don't really take competitors seriously as like a long-term threat until they get to maybe four or five years in business because that like it's making it past there.
[00:13:47.720 --> 00:13:52.360] It's easy to stay motivated like year one, year two, maybe even into year three.
[00:13:52.360 --> 00:13:57.400] But year three to year five is where like a lot of people lose motivation.
[00:13:57.400 --> 00:14:01.600] And so like if they don't make it to that point, like I've seen so many competitors that pop up.
[00:14:01.600 --> 00:14:06.600] And around that three-year point, it's like they still exist, but it's clear no one's at the helm.
[00:14:06.600 --> 00:14:08.600] Yeah, you really have to like what you're doing.
[00:14:08.920 --> 00:14:12.280] You may even have to love what you're doing to stick with it at that point, right?
[00:14:12.280 --> 00:14:12.680] Yeah.
[00:14:12.680 --> 00:14:13.000] Yeah.
[00:14:13.000 --> 00:14:17.920] It's nice that you mentioned this kind of reluctance in terms of product adoption.
[00:14:18.160 --> 00:14:26.480] Like if I think about the product adoption curve, it seems that they're not necessarily the cutting-edge technologists using your products, right?
[00:14:26.800 --> 00:14:35.840] And one way that that was kind of very visual to me, very clear when I was looking at your website in particular, is that there's not a single mention of AI on your website.
[00:14:35.840 --> 00:14:50.320] And for somebody who's in the indie hacker world where everything is AI right now, where everybody is talking about, you know, wipe coding and AI as a feature and all of that, none of this, at least overtly, seems to be part of your product.
[00:14:50.320 --> 00:14:53.360] I presume it's an intentional choice.
[00:14:53.360 --> 00:15:02.960] And I wonder what your perspective is on this, both as a feature, as something that you would give to your customers, and maybe also as something like to be used inside of your business.
[00:15:02.960 --> 00:15:06.560] How much AI is there and how much AI will there be?
[00:15:06.560 --> 00:15:07.360] Yeah, for sure.
[00:15:07.360 --> 00:15:18.720] So, in terms of it being presented on the website, you just mentioned, and the word that you mentioned specifically is that it's a feature, right?
[00:15:18.720 --> 00:15:21.360] We're very, very benefit-driven, right?
[00:15:21.360 --> 00:15:42.240] So, to me, it's, you know, we don't actually have AI yet in the product, but we're thinking about using it to essentially power some of our reporting where it's just like, cool, like, you know, you can just ask questions and it can just tell you of like, you know, is the second Tuesday more profitable for you than the third Thursday of the month?
[00:15:42.240 --> 00:15:47.280] And just lots of random, like, generative reports that we would never build ourselves.
[00:15:47.280 --> 00:15:50.080] Chat GPT is perfect for doing that.
[00:15:50.080 --> 00:16:03.720] But the thing is, is that what I think a lot of indie hackers and everyone like don't realize is that, especially for an audience, I think it's just heightened for an audience for like Zen maids, is they don't care that it's AI that's doing that.
[00:16:04.040 --> 00:16:08.440] They only care that they can conversationally get any information that they want.
[00:16:08.440 --> 00:16:12.840] So even if that, it's like, hey, like the best reporting in the industry, right?
[00:16:12.840 --> 00:16:18.120] Like verbalize what you want and we will give you the exact report that you are looking for.
[00:16:18.120 --> 00:16:20.280] Not AI generated, right?
[00:16:20.280 --> 00:16:24.600] Like, you know, true, but just there's no reason to like to say that, right?
[00:16:24.600 --> 00:16:26.280] Maybe that'll change at some point.
[00:16:26.280 --> 00:16:31.320] If we start getting more people that are explicitly asking us, like, do you have AI features?
[00:16:31.320 --> 00:16:40.920] Then at some point, like, that will be on my radar as, hey, at this point, we're going to say like AI because, you know, it's essentially a marketing point now, right?
[00:16:40.920 --> 00:16:45.880] That people are expecting to see it and they think that we're not taking our job seriously if we don't.
[00:16:45.880 --> 00:16:50.520] But it's more about showcasing the use of AI, not AI itself.
[00:16:50.840 --> 00:16:55.560] But like I said, we're not using AI within the product too much at the moment.
[00:16:55.560 --> 00:17:02.360] The interesting thing, and I think this is where we're doing things a little bit differently, is inside the company, that is quite different.
[00:17:02.360 --> 00:17:10.520] That I've seen a lot of people that are using AI, like especially indie hackers, where it's like they know all the systems and like, and all that.
[00:17:10.520 --> 00:17:12.520] I realized that wasn't going to be me.
[00:17:12.520 --> 00:17:13.560] I'm non-technical.
[00:17:13.560 --> 00:17:15.000] I have ADHD.
[00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:27.000] I literally will ask ChatGPT a question and then tab to something else and then completely forget about it until the next day and be like, oh, yeah, I should really pick up that conversation again and go back and look at whatever.
[00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:30.680] You know, like it just, you know, it doesn't doesn't really work for me.
[00:17:30.680 --> 00:17:39.320] But at the same time, I realized how important it's going to be for all companies and for just generally being like more productive and stuff.
[00:17:39.320 --> 00:17:49.840] So I have a friend who was staying with me for a decent amount of time and he used ChatGPT on a daily basis more than anyone else that I'd like met in person like before.
[00:17:44.760 --> 00:17:53.120] And he's using it as a thought partner, using it for a variety of things.
[00:17:53.120 --> 00:17:58.240] So I actually brought him in-house into Zenmade, and he's now working with our various team members.
[00:17:58.240 --> 00:18:01.680] So we have, I don't know, 20, 25 team members.
[00:18:01.680 --> 00:18:06.400] He's working with team members individually to help them implement Chat GPT.
[00:18:06.400 --> 00:18:15.200] For a lot of the guys, he's helped them to do like a Fit GPT where it's like they can enter in like their macros or like their meals and stuff like that.
[00:18:15.200 --> 00:18:20.880] So he's helping them with personal stuff and then also with business stuff to just be like better at their jobs.
[00:18:20.880 --> 00:18:30.320] And then also a nice surprise is my co-founder and CTO let me know the other day, I think that we upgraded to the most recent version of Rails.
[00:18:30.320 --> 00:18:33.760] And he said it probably cut down the time by like 80%.
[00:18:33.760 --> 00:18:40.000] He said that it was literally like, you know, I don't know if his cursor, but he just said like, hey, I just went in and just cleaned up a bunch of stuff.
[00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:47.200] And he was like, you know, I just had to, you know, check a couple of things, but he was talking about how it's already making a difference within the product.
[00:18:47.200 --> 00:18:56.000] So I'm taking it very seriously, but more to get more output out of like the team members so we can deliver more value to our customers.
[00:18:56.000 --> 00:19:00.720] We're not trying to deliver value necessarily using AI yet.
[00:19:00.720 --> 00:19:07.120] That makes perfect sense, particularly knowing that the customers that you talk to, they're just not there yet.
[00:19:07.120 --> 00:19:17.600] They might, like you said, in a couple of years' time, when everybody, their family, not just their nephews, but also, you know, their brothers and sisters, and maybe even their parents talk about AI, right?
[00:19:17.600 --> 00:19:19.200] That becomes a bigger deal then.
[00:19:19.200 --> 00:19:20.320] I like how you do this.
[00:19:20.320 --> 00:19:32.200] I like that you use AI very effectively internally to optimize whatever you have going on, not just the business itself, but also people's personal lives, which probably then bleeds back into some kind of efficiency.
[00:19:32.200 --> 00:19:40.440] And then you're very focused on positioning the product in a language that appeals to the people that it's for, right?
[00:19:40.440 --> 00:19:45.960] Even if you were to use AI, and I'm just reiterating this because I think it's an important lesson here.
[00:19:45.960 --> 00:19:49.640] Even if you were to use AI, you wouldn't call it AI because it's not what people need.
[00:19:49.640 --> 00:19:51.080] People need reports.
[00:19:51.080 --> 00:19:54.360] And it's really smart to know what people need.
[00:19:54.360 --> 00:19:59.000] And that tells me that you having run a business like this before is super beneficial.
[00:19:59.000 --> 00:19:59.960] Like, obviously, right?
[00:19:59.960 --> 00:20:06.920] You know what they want and what they care about, which is obviously understanding their business better and the technology needed for that.
[00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:10.840] They don't care if you run on Rails or if you were running on Vercel or whatever, right?
[00:20:11.160 --> 00:20:13.000] The tech stack doesn't matter to them.
[00:20:13.000 --> 00:20:17.240] That's maybe an interesting question too, because I know a lot of indie hackers may be listening to this.
[00:20:17.240 --> 00:20:23.320] Like when you chose the initial tech stack for this whole business, did you expect to keep it?
[00:20:23.320 --> 00:20:28.360] Like did you ever do a massive rewrite or is it still the thing from back in the day?
[00:20:28.360 --> 00:20:33.160] Yeah, I mean, the decision was just made by blind trust in my co-founder, if we're being completely honest, right?
[00:20:33.160 --> 00:20:35.400] Like I was just very young at the time.
[00:20:35.400 --> 00:20:37.640] We didn't know we were doing what was interesting.
[00:20:37.640 --> 00:20:40.200] So I had mentioned that he was very, very smart.
[00:20:40.200 --> 00:20:52.200] And the reason that I underwent the like the project with or whatever was because I realized there was a massive gap and it wasn't every day that somebody that smart offered to like work with me on kind of like an equal level and stuff.
[00:20:52.200 --> 00:21:01.480] But he essentially, when we were talking about the idea and when we decided to move forward with it, I sat down at his place and he essentially was like, cool.
[00:21:01.480 --> 00:21:09.240] So I did some research and it looks like Ruby on Rails is going to be the best language for us to build this business like on.
[00:21:08.480 --> 00:21:10.920] Like on, there's a bunch of existing libraries.
[00:21:10.920 --> 00:21:16.960] It'll just make it easy for me to like piecemeal together, like, you know, a CSS here or whatever.
[00:21:16.960 --> 00:21:18.800] And so I was like, okay, cool, like, great.
[00:21:18.800 --> 00:21:20.160] I'll start calling people, right?
[00:21:14.520 --> 00:21:22.480] Like, I'll, like, I'll get, get on the phones.
[00:21:22.480 --> 00:21:23.920] And he goes, okay, great.
[00:21:24.160 --> 00:21:25.840] There's just one problem.
[00:21:25.840 --> 00:21:28.640] I don't know how to code Ruby on Rails.
[00:21:28.640 --> 00:21:32.320] And he literally started coding the project one week later.
[00:21:32.320 --> 00:21:33.680] Now, he knew Python.
[00:21:33.680 --> 00:21:36.000] So it was, so he, he was just like, it's just math.
[00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:40.080] It's just a different way of communicating, but the principles are all like all the same.
[00:21:40.080 --> 00:21:46.560] But he essentially spent like a week sort of figuring out the differences and then started coding like a week later, right?
[00:21:46.560 --> 00:21:48.640] So he put in the thought there.
[00:21:48.640 --> 00:21:52.720] And I honestly didn't do any research beyond that.
[00:21:52.720 --> 00:21:54.720] Like I just trusted him with that.
[00:21:54.720 --> 00:22:02.720] At some point, I did realize that I got very lucky with that and realized that Ruby on Rails was probably the choice language to pick.
[00:22:02.720 --> 00:22:07.120] But yeah, that's one that, you know, if we're being completely honest, it was not thought through at all.
[00:22:07.360 --> 00:22:08.800] We have done big rewrites.
[00:22:08.800 --> 00:22:14.160] We had a big rewrite in 2017 that did not go well.
[00:22:14.400 --> 00:22:29.360] Essentially, it came down to communication issues, but effectively, we critically took down our software from something like Monday to Thursday of like a busy week in November where our customers of this, you know, our software is like the backbone of their business.
[00:22:29.360 --> 00:22:33.120] And we essentially critically took them down for like three days.
[00:22:33.120 --> 00:22:39.920] That cost us something like 30% of our recurring revenue over the following, like maybe like six months or something, something like that.
[00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:43.040] And for that, it was like, yeah, we did a big redesign.
[00:22:43.040 --> 00:22:45.920] We changed some of the database structuring and stuff like that.
[00:22:45.920 --> 00:22:50.800] And it was the type of thing that, um, you know, I asked the team, can we revert this?
[00:22:50.800 --> 00:22:51.840] Cause this is pretty bad.
[00:22:51.840 --> 00:22:54.160] And they were like, if we revert it, we make it worse.
[00:22:54.160 --> 00:22:57.760] I was like, all right, we just got to like stick through it or whatever.
[00:22:57.760 --> 00:23:00.520] So, yeah, you know, lessons learned.
[00:23:00.520 --> 00:23:03.400] Yeah, I think that's just the journey of every SaaS founder.
[00:22:59.840 --> 00:23:05.800] You do a thing and it's like, whoops, everything exploded.
[00:23:06.120 --> 00:23:07.960] And then you kind of figure it out.
[00:23:07.960 --> 00:23:11.080] And that's a learning that you take into the next generation of this.
[00:23:11.080 --> 00:23:20.520] I think you were lucky in the sense that he made the right choice, but he was capable of making the right choice because he was good at making these choices, right?
[00:23:20.520 --> 00:23:23.400] Like Rails is a spectacular choice.
[00:23:23.400 --> 00:23:30.360] And even back in the day, back in 13, when it was rather new, I don't know, like Rails is like a 2008, 2009 kind of technology.
[00:23:30.360 --> 00:23:31.000] I'm not sure.
[00:23:31.720 --> 00:23:36.680] I could be completely off here, but it's been around already for a bit at that point.
[00:23:36.680 --> 00:23:42.120] And there's, you know, the Lindy effect for things that have been around for a while that will likely stick around for a bit longer.
[00:23:42.120 --> 00:23:51.960] So looking at Rails now, still going, still strong, still very much the same framework in the sense of its robustness and of the community around it.
[00:23:51.960 --> 00:23:54.760] That is an important right choice to make in the beginning, right?
[00:23:55.000 --> 00:24:02.600] I've started several SaaS businesses myself building on more obscure technologies, and that made it hard to find people to help.
[00:24:02.600 --> 00:24:09.000] Like just hiring somebody to build your tool, that's very easy now if you build a PHP or in Ruby or JavaScript.
[00:24:09.000 --> 00:24:11.240] There's a lot of people out there for that.
[00:24:11.240 --> 00:24:19.480] But for the kind of more esoterical languages that are also very cool and the frameworks are nice, but hiring people is expensive and hard.
[00:24:19.480 --> 00:24:21.000] So you have to think about this.
[00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:22.520] How quickly did you guys hire?
[00:24:22.520 --> 00:24:27.800] Like how quickly did you get into a team size that was not just the founders anymore?
[00:24:27.800 --> 00:24:32.600] So we started the company in, I think, April of 2013.
[00:24:32.600 --> 00:24:36.120] And so then I believe it was early 2015.
[00:24:36.120 --> 00:24:38.200] So we were still both working part-time.
[00:24:38.200 --> 00:24:39.400] I had a full-time job.
[00:24:39.400 --> 00:24:41.240] He was a full-time student.
[00:24:41.240 --> 00:24:46.400] Around that time, we brought on help for support from the Philippines.
[00:24:44.840 --> 00:24:50.320] And that was something like we were paying for maybe 10 hours a week.
[00:24:50.400 --> 00:24:58.560] So it was like two hours a day, literally, to jump on and to just, you know, answer some of the low-hanging fruit tickets so that I could just focus on the more important ones.
[00:24:58.560 --> 00:25:00.080] And that's where it started.
[00:25:00.080 --> 00:25:07.600] And then, yeah, 2016 was when we really brought on our first kind of like real like team team member.
[00:25:07.840 --> 00:25:17.280] And then around that time, the person that became our CTO and is my current like co-founder, he joined the company sometime around then as a freelancer.
[00:25:17.280 --> 00:25:22.160] And so, yeah, I mean, it grew, grew a bit, a bit like from there, but it really started.
[00:25:22.160 --> 00:25:25.200] The team really started, I would say, in 2016.
[00:25:25.200 --> 00:25:30.560] And then it's grown slowly but consistently similar to the business since then.
[00:25:30.560 --> 00:25:31.440] Three years.
[00:25:31.440 --> 00:25:34.960] That's a lot of time, particularly in internet time, right?
[00:25:34.960 --> 00:25:41.040] Like right now, when everything is very fast and you have to launch, and if it doesn't work within two weeks, you're a failure, right?
[00:25:41.040 --> 00:25:43.520] That kind of logic unfortunately exists.
[00:25:43.520 --> 00:25:46.160] Three years to get started with hiring.
[00:25:46.160 --> 00:25:46.720] Interesting.
[00:25:46.720 --> 00:25:51.520] I did not expect it to take that long, but again, slow burn, right?
[00:25:51.520 --> 00:25:52.720] We talked about this earlier.
[00:25:52.720 --> 00:25:57.440] You said Philippines, and I think in your Twitter bio, you also say you're location independent.
[00:25:57.440 --> 00:26:00.320] Has Senmate been remote first, like from the start?
[00:26:00.320 --> 00:26:02.400] Yeah, we were remote from the start.
[00:26:02.400 --> 00:26:07.760] You know, Arun and I were both in Palo Alto in California when we started the company.
[00:26:07.760 --> 00:26:16.000] And so I'd go over to his place in the evenings when he was done with classes at Stanford, but we were working very different schedules.
[00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:18.480] That I was waking up at 5 a.m.
[00:26:18.480 --> 00:26:24.080] and working and then going to work, whereas he would sit down and start coding at 11 p.m.
[00:26:24.320 --> 00:26:28.880] So, like, we might get together between like 9 and 10 and essentially talk strategy.
[00:26:28.880 --> 00:26:33.000] And it would almost be like that was the end of my day and the beginning of his day.
[00:26:33.320 --> 00:26:37.880] So, even at that point, even though we were in the same location, we weren't really working together.
[00:26:37.880 --> 00:26:42.840] And then, yeah, like I was traveling the world doing the digital nomad thing for eight years.
[00:26:42.840 --> 00:26:44.440] And now I'm based in the UK.
[00:26:44.440 --> 00:26:50.200] So, now I have a home base and you know, a puppy and all that stuff where I'm like truly settled and everything.
[00:26:50.200 --> 00:26:52.520] But that was after a long time traveling the world.
[00:26:52.520 --> 00:26:55.960] Yeah, the optionality of remote is wonderful, right?
[00:26:55.960 --> 00:26:59.320] You can be there if you want to be, but you don't have to.
[00:26:59.320 --> 00:27:06.200] I think the post-pandemic lockdown world has shown to a lot of people that that actually may work.
[00:27:06.200 --> 00:27:17.960] I mean, obviously, the infrastructure of certain companies is not meant to facilitate this, but a lot of people found that it's really nice to be home and to work from whatever place you want to work from doesn't have to be home either, right?
[00:27:18.280 --> 00:27:19.880] Cool, that is wonderful.
[00:27:19.880 --> 00:27:24.520] It is also, I would say, something rare in 2013.
[00:27:24.520 --> 00:27:32.200] It's been all the rage, like from the 2017, 18, 19, the digital nomad time, the whole Peter Levels experience, as I would call it.
[00:27:32.200 --> 00:27:40.680] Then it became normal for this to seep into software companies, but remote work is to me at least a fairly rare thing in 2013.
[00:27:40.680 --> 00:27:46.360] When you were saying like you, you hired people as CTO and all of this, like how quickly did you go into sales?
[00:27:46.520 --> 00:27:56.200] I wonder about particularly with your kind of customers that you serve, do you have to do a lot of direct selling or do leads come in organically and you just pick them up?
[00:27:56.200 --> 00:28:00.440] Like, how does that work in the world of made services?
[00:28:00.440 --> 00:28:06.520] Well, so with that, I mean, I think that has a lot to do with just when, right, of when you're talking about, right?
[00:28:06.520 --> 00:28:12.200] So, our first 100 to 150 customers was like essentially hand-to-hand combat, right?
[00:28:12.200 --> 00:28:20.880] Like, that was like cold emails, literally a VA sending through like a fake Gmail account and setting up like calls for me and everything.
[00:28:21.200 --> 00:28:25.680] And then I would cold call people that we had already emailed.
[00:28:25.680 --> 00:28:29.360] So, the line was, of course, hey, you know, like, can I, can I speak with Ken?
[00:28:29.440 --> 00:28:31.680] I sent him an email earlier, right?
[00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:34.320] And so, you know, that was my like primary skill set.
[00:28:34.320 --> 00:28:40.000] And so, we did about 100, 150 customers where I essentially was selling like one-to-one.
[00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.000] And that was very much a do things that don't scale like men mentality.
[00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:47.760] And so, that was how we started.
[00:28:47.760 --> 00:28:50.800] Around that time, we had two things that happened.
[00:28:50.800 --> 00:28:56.240] We had a partnership where just by chance on LinkedIn, somebody came across us.
[00:28:56.240 --> 00:28:59.920] They had, you know, a nice group of coaching students.
[00:28:59.920 --> 00:29:02.400] They weren't happy with the software they'd been recommending.
[00:29:02.400 --> 00:29:06.960] And so, they were looking for someone new, liked our attitude, and started recommending us.
[00:29:06.960 --> 00:29:09.920] So, that was the first successful partnership that we had.
[00:29:09.920 --> 00:29:14.720] And then, at some point along the way, I lucked into content marketing essentially.
[00:29:14.720 --> 00:29:19.920] That I just went through and turned a couple of things that I'd done for my maid service previously.
[00:29:19.920 --> 00:29:23.280] I turned them into little like pieces of content.
[00:29:23.280 --> 00:29:32.640] And so, one of the very first ones that I did that is still a lead magnet for us to this day is 47 keywords that every maid service must know for Google.
[00:29:32.640 --> 00:29:34.640] And that was something that I had done the research.
[00:29:34.640 --> 00:29:38.240] So, I just put it into a spreadsheet and made it downloadable.
[00:29:38.240 --> 00:29:40.320] And that began getting us leads.
[00:29:40.320 --> 00:29:47.280] And so, now we don't do any outbound that we generate, you know, 50 to 100 new leads like a day.
[00:29:47.280 --> 00:29:51.680] And yeah, so they're all coming to us and raising their hands and saying that.
[00:29:51.680 --> 00:30:04.440] But again, that's after 12 years of showing up every day, having a really strong brand reputation, you know, having like great SEO, you know, where we're getting leads from from all sorts of directions now where we just don't have to chase anymore.
[00:30:04.760 --> 00:30:21.720] Yeah, I can tell, I guess, because when I look into your ecosystem, into your kind of marketing presence, I see a YouTube channel that is really strong, like has hundreds, 500 or so videos, 10,000 subscribers, which is substantial for anything in a very niche kind of SaaS market, right?
[00:30:21.720 --> 00:30:25.080] So I was so impressed to see this and the work you put into this.
[00:30:25.080 --> 00:30:26.760] And then there's stuff like Mate Summit.
[00:30:26.760 --> 00:30:33.880] Talk to me about this because I don't see many SaaS businesses that actually do a conference-like thing.
[00:30:33.880 --> 00:30:34.680] Yeah, definitely.
[00:30:34.680 --> 00:30:53.160] So one thing that I do just want to say, just almost like before, is like almost like a caveat to answering this is so like if you're technical and you're listening to this, what I'm about to tell you that I spent my time on might not be the best use of your time when you can be building a product that's actually solving people's problems.
[00:30:53.160 --> 00:31:12.040] For me as a non-technical founder, though, the best question that I feel like I've ever asked myself in terms of like helping the company move forward is what can I do like almost independently of the product team without relying on a rune who is busy enough building the product?
[00:31:12.040 --> 00:31:16.920] What can I do to help or to add value to maid service owners?
[00:31:16.920 --> 00:31:24.760] And so that question has essentially determined a ton of our marketing because essentially it's just how can I help made service owners?
[00:31:24.760 --> 00:31:35.560] And then if I'm helping made service owners, I have the option to help them for free, which is marketing, if we then ask them to sign up for the software, or we can charge for the service.
[00:31:35.560 --> 00:31:41.080] So I've gone through lots of courses, including a course on how to run a virtual summit.
[00:31:41.080 --> 00:31:57.680] And so, yeah, that was essentially like the question that I asked myself to arrive at the virtual summit was: what's something that we can do that folks in the industry can endorse and share without endorsing or sharing ZenMaid?
[00:31:57.680 --> 00:31:59.840] And that was what I kind of like arrived on.
[00:31:59.840 --> 00:32:03.680] And so, if you guys want to check that out, that's made summit.com.
[00:32:03.680 --> 00:32:10.080] And that's the first, you know, virtual summit, the biggest virtual summit for made services in the world, which is quite cool.
[00:32:10.080 --> 00:32:12.240] We've been doing that for, I think, six years now.
[00:32:12.240 --> 00:32:16.080] And so, for that, we bring together 50 experts.
[00:32:16.080 --> 00:32:21.520] We are very specific that they have to specifically work with cleaning businesses or made services.
[00:32:21.520 --> 00:32:25.200] We don't bring in just like a random small business accountant.
[00:32:25.200 --> 00:32:29.520] We want it to be strongly overlapping audiences for all speakers.
[00:32:29.520 --> 00:32:37.120] And then we take all of those talks from the summit, we publish them to the YouTube channel, which is why you see 500 like videos there.
[00:32:37.120 --> 00:32:50.320] We also have a very talented writer who will pull out parts of every talk and turn them into standalone articles that are like, you know, you'd read the article and not realize it was about like the same video because it's completely like different.
[00:32:50.320 --> 00:32:57.120] And so, yeah, I think we have like a thousand articles or something like that on the blog, and all of it goes into like the Zen Maid kind of ecosystem.
[00:32:57.120 --> 00:33:01.840] Then, yeah, we have like the Zen Maid podcast where we'll interview those speakers.
[00:33:01.840 --> 00:33:12.560] And then we have a Facebook group of about 10,000 made service owners that are on like Zuck's platform that will be in there chatting with the speakers and all of that stuff.
[00:33:12.560 --> 00:33:22.320] And so, yeah, it all kind of ties together, but I've just always asked myself, how can we build community, help maid services as much as possible?
[00:33:22.320 --> 00:33:34.520] And then we happen to monetize that through amazing software, kind of be behind the scenes, but really, the marketing machine at the front of everything is just help people for free.
[00:33:34.840 --> 00:33:39.160] It is unsurprising to me that you guys are successful if this is your mission.
[00:33:39.160 --> 00:33:44.440] If you want to help maid services and not just make money with the SaaS, which is very distinct, right?
[00:33:44.440 --> 00:33:46.520] These two are very, very different things.
[00:33:46.520 --> 00:33:49.720] Then you come up with ideas and genius ideas.
[00:33:49.720 --> 00:34:08.680] Let me say that, like the MAID Summit, because I think the idea of having other people bring their expertise into this cohesive place where people can consume it, and then taking this content and redistributing it in different shapes into different kind of categories, into different kinds of media where people can then consume it on their own time when they need to find it.
[00:34:08.680 --> 00:34:10.760] Now, that is really, really smart.
[00:34:10.760 --> 00:34:13.640] It's outsourcing everything and pulling in the value of it.
[00:34:13.640 --> 00:34:14.760] It's spectacular.
[00:34:14.760 --> 00:34:19.880] And I think that's something you can definitely do when you are in a niche like the one that you are in.
[00:34:19.880 --> 00:34:26.520] When you are so very specifically aiming at one particular kind of customer, then you know all of their problems.
[00:34:26.520 --> 00:34:30.280] And all of these problems at some point intersect with somebody else's expertise.
[00:34:30.280 --> 00:34:31.560] So you can just pull them in.
[00:34:31.560 --> 00:34:32.440] I think that's genius.
[00:34:32.440 --> 00:34:34.600] I'm just so happy for you to have found this.
[00:34:34.600 --> 00:34:40.840] And what I hear, the through line here, it's kind of meta in a way, is that you took a course on how to do this.
[00:34:40.840 --> 00:34:44.520] And earlier you were saying you took a course on how to find your ICP.
[00:34:44.520 --> 00:34:50.440] How many courses on what kind of subjects did you take to enrich your own knowledge in the world of running a business?
[00:34:50.440 --> 00:34:52.680] Yeah, I definitely rely a lot on courses.
[00:34:52.680 --> 00:35:12.680] I think it's something that I don't know if everyone arrives at, but I think that a lot of folks that are into self-development, like self-help and personal development and everything, I think, kind of end up at this almost like naturally, especially if you're entrepreneurial and just make more and more money like over your career, which is at the beginning, I could mainly afford books, right?
[00:35:12.680 --> 00:35:18.240] So, when I was a teenager, I was mainly reading books that would have a big impact.
[00:35:18.400 --> 00:35:26.880] And it's mind-blowing the amount of knowledge that you can download from somebody's brain for $20, like absolutely mind-blowing, right?
[00:35:26.880 --> 00:35:33.440] So, that's something where we're now, it's just like, yeah, any book that I see that I want to buy, I just buy it, and there's no like no second thought.
[00:35:33.760 --> 00:35:38.160] I am very much a visual and audio person, though.
[00:35:38.160 --> 00:35:41.920] So, like, for me, it was a massive game changer when I discovered audio books.
[00:35:41.920 --> 00:35:55.040] But before I discovered audio books, I was essentially trying to get to that almost like course level where I can afford to pay low four figures to get the videos and all that, because I found that I learned much more effectively from that.
[00:35:55.040 --> 00:36:04.400] From there, after courses, you can get into like masterminds or into like group coaching where you get a little bit more, like more help, a little bit more customized.
[00:36:04.400 --> 00:36:09.760] And then now I'm at the point where by default, I'm looking for one-on-one help, right?
[00:36:09.760 --> 00:36:14.800] That I'm looking for the, you know, the person who does the course.
[00:36:14.800 --> 00:36:19.680] I'm looking to find out if they do, if they do coaching and that sort of approach.
[00:36:19.680 --> 00:36:28.560] But yeah, I've done a ton of different things that I realized at some point along the way that I could take almost any internet marketing course.
[00:36:28.560 --> 00:36:36.800] So, like, there are lots of internet marketing courses that are essentially trying to teach you how to build a business around a specific business model.
[00:36:36.800 --> 00:36:46.160] So, there's SAS, there's the summit one was the person who was trying to be like, hey, like, you can live anywhere in the world by just running three summits a year, right?
[00:36:46.160 --> 00:36:50.320] And so, that's like the marketing angle that they all take.
[00:36:50.320 --> 00:37:08.120] I realized at some point that just by luck and happenstance and whatever, I had already lucked into the best business model that like I think there is in terms of just truly like recurring revenue, like you know, software like robots doing like most of the heavy lifting and like all of like that stuff.
[00:37:08.120 --> 00:37:22.760] So what I recognized with all of these almost like get rich quick courses was that if I could implement those business models in a way that helped made services, but then didn't charge for it, it was essentially marketing.
[00:37:23.000 --> 00:37:23.800] That's awesome.
[00:37:23.800 --> 00:37:24.040] Right.
[00:37:24.040 --> 00:37:25.800] So that's how I invested in that.
[00:37:25.800 --> 00:37:34.120] And in like, you know, we did the same thing of like, I think it was authorityhacker.com where they're teaching you building amazing like content sites, right?
[00:37:34.120 --> 00:37:41.240] So we took that, applied it to made services, and then just ignored all of their monetization stuff and replaced it with ads for Zenma.
[00:37:41.320 --> 00:37:45.640] And we've pretty much done that with almost every marketing channel like across the board.
[00:37:45.640 --> 00:37:47.000] That is such a great idea.
[00:37:47.000 --> 00:37:47.720] I love this.
[00:37:47.720 --> 00:37:50.280] I'm going to steal this from you for my own stuff.
[00:37:50.280 --> 00:38:00.040] I love the idea of taking somebody else's like hype, like just trying to make people make money kind of course and take the monetization out and just plug yourself.
[00:38:00.040 --> 00:38:01.720] That is really, really smart.
[00:38:01.720 --> 00:38:07.240] And that only works if you have something valuable to sell, which most of the time people don't just yet, right?
[00:38:07.240 --> 00:38:21.960] But once you do, those models all of a sudden have a, yeah, you get all the virality and all the positive kind of effects that they have, the internal dynamics, without the stench of the monetization approach that people often take.
[00:38:21.960 --> 00:38:23.400] I love that you share this kind of stuff.
[00:38:23.400 --> 00:38:27.720] I love that you share it here right now, that you share it on Twitter, that you talk about it all the time.
[00:38:27.720 --> 00:38:32.040] You're kind of a build-in-public kind of person without calling it building in public.
[00:38:32.040 --> 00:38:37.320] That's what I feel about you because you've done this for so long, much longer than it had a name.
[00:38:37.320 --> 00:38:39.160] And I love that you share so much.
[00:38:39.160 --> 00:38:43.160] And also, I think you recently started a podcast yourself.
[00:38:43.160 --> 00:38:46.880] Like you've been sharing this in the format that you like so much, which is audio.
[00:38:46.880 --> 00:38:48.080] Tell me more about that.
[00:38:48.080 --> 00:38:49.040] Yeah, definitely.
[00:38:44.840 --> 00:38:51.360] So I've started recording my podcast again.
[00:38:51.520 --> 00:38:58.880] That's Surround Sound SaaS Marketing is the current name because I'd launched it a long time ago where it was much more focused on marketing.
[00:38:58.880 --> 00:39:12.880] Right now, it's really more just sharing kind of about like not necessarily the journey, but I essentially wanted, you know, you always hear of like recording podcast episodes where it's just like conversations that people are actually having.
[00:39:12.880 --> 00:39:24.320] So what I decided to do with mine is I'm really just recording it more for myself, where I'm more almost bringing on friends of mine who want to talk to me about specific things.
[00:39:24.320 --> 00:39:28.800] So a really good example was Jesse Schoberg from Dropin Blog.
[00:39:28.800 --> 00:39:36.640] He sent me some messages probably like two months ago or something like that, asking me how Zenmaid's new pricing release went.
[00:39:36.640 --> 00:39:42.560] And so we just jumped on a Riverside link and spent an hour talking through the price release.
[00:39:42.560 --> 00:39:48.320] And that was something that, you know, that's not the kind of thing that most people are going to find really interesting.
[00:39:48.320 --> 00:39:53.120] It's a perfect thing for me to upload the transcript into ChatGPT and to get to know me.
[00:39:53.120 --> 00:40:17.600] But what was really cool about that was that I had quite a few friends and folks that I think most listeners would know from Twitter and everything that actually reached out after this conversation because they were thinking about, you know, like raising their pricing and that it was actually a valuable conversation for them because we just like went into more depth, maybe without context for like your average listener, but enough that there was a lot of value there.
[00:40:17.600 --> 00:40:19.520] So I'm just really, really like enjoying that.
[00:40:19.520 --> 00:40:22.640] Like, we'll see if I actually end up finding much of an audience there.
[00:40:22.640 --> 00:40:31.320] But that, I mean, along with Twitter and LinkedIn, are where I'm really like documenting kind of what I'm doing, because I didn't start sharing until essentially the start of the pandemic.
[00:40:31.640 --> 00:40:39.000] And so there was, you know, almost 10 years of entrepreneurial experience before then that I wish that I'd, you know, documented.
[00:40:39.000 --> 00:40:47.080] Yeah, well, looking at the history of you sticking with a thing for 12 years, I have a feeling that the podcast might be around for a while.
[00:40:47.080 --> 00:40:53.800] Because, you know, like most shows don't make it past 10 episodes, even just in planning, because people don't have that tenacity.
[00:40:53.800 --> 00:41:05.080] But I see you having enough things to talk about, obviously, and knowing more and more enough people who might be interested in sharing their own expertise or like pulling yours out of you and having a conversation around it.
[00:41:05.080 --> 00:41:06.360] I love these kind of shows.
[00:41:06.360 --> 00:41:07.160] And that's the thing.
[00:41:07.160 --> 00:41:11.000] Like we learn, and I'm also an audiovisual learner, just like yourself.
[00:41:11.000 --> 00:41:20.200] I learned so much more from the nuance, the hidden stuff in a conversation than I could ever learn from being expressly told what exactly I need to do.
[00:41:20.200 --> 00:41:33.480] So just being a fly on the wall when you chat about pricing is going to fill my mind with pricing ideas that maybe a year down the line is going to give me that one little lightning bolt moment of what I should be doing, right?
[00:41:33.480 --> 00:41:34.040] Exactly.
[00:41:34.040 --> 00:41:47.400] And I'm really glad that you said that because I have a couple of friends actually that like they have a tendency to take podcast episodes and then, yeah, put them into ChatGPT and get them, get them summarized.
[00:41:47.400 --> 00:41:52.680] And it's like, there's a value in that if you don't actually have time to listen to it.
[00:41:52.680 --> 00:42:03.000] But one of the things that I've been trying to get across is that in a lot of those cases, the importance is not the conclusion, it's how the conclusion was arrived at.
[00:42:03.000 --> 00:42:09.720] And so you want to hear the conversation where they're talking about like, we did a summit and here's why.
[00:42:09.720 --> 00:42:14.120] Here are the things that we considered going into it, not just we did a summit.
[00:42:14.120 --> 00:42:14.520] Yeah.
[00:42:14.520 --> 00:42:21.840] And I think the journey being more important than the destination, and let's be as cliche as we can get, right?
[00:42:21.840 --> 00:42:28.800] That is especially true for people like us who have to solve novel problems every day.
[00:42:28.800 --> 00:42:33.360] And the destination, like the solution to it, effectively doesn't really matter.
[00:42:33.360 --> 00:42:38.080] Your understanding of the problem and of the challenge and how to overcome it that matters.
[00:42:38.080 --> 00:42:40.320] And that's what you need the journey for, right?
[00:42:40.320 --> 00:42:42.720] So I'm super glad you're doing this.
[00:42:42.720 --> 00:42:43.840] And I'm excited.
[00:42:43.840 --> 00:42:51.600] I'm going to follow your podcast a little bit more than I have in the past because I've been like in your little ecosystem, in your surrounding ecosystem for a while.
[00:42:51.600 --> 00:42:56.560] But I'm excited to listen to you sharing these little stories of your own experience.
[00:42:56.560 --> 00:43:03.920] If people want to find out more about you, both about you personally, your show, the businesses that you're running, where should they be going?
[00:43:03.920 --> 00:43:07.440] So best places would be Twitter and LinkedIn.
[00:43:07.440 --> 00:43:12.720] It's Amar Ghosh, like A-M-A-R, and last name is G-H-O-S-E.
[00:43:12.720 --> 00:43:15.840] My personal website is theamericandream.com.
[00:43:15.840 --> 00:43:18.240] So like the American Dream, but Amar.
[00:43:19.040 --> 00:43:22.640] And yeah, like I said, podcast is surround sound like SaaS marketing.
[00:43:22.640 --> 00:43:26.400] And if you happen to be a maid service owner listening to this, check out zenmaid.com.
[00:43:26.400 --> 00:43:29.360] Don't know why, why you would be, but I mean, you know, that's cool if you are.
[00:43:29.360 --> 00:43:31.520] So yeah, those would be the places.
[00:43:31.520 --> 00:43:33.440] And I'm totally an open book on these things.
[00:43:33.440 --> 00:43:38.480] Like if you guys want to drop me an email, it's easy to find my email out there or drop me a DM on Twitter.
[00:43:38.640 --> 00:43:44.960] I'm always happy to answer questions, go more in depth into things, and just, you know, meet up and coming indie hackers.
[00:43:44.960 --> 00:43:47.840] So feel free to reach out if you want to have a quick chat.
[00:43:47.840 --> 00:43:49.600] Yeah, I highly recommend chatting with this guy.
[00:43:49.640 --> 00:43:51.120] Omar, you've been amazing.
[00:43:51.120 --> 00:43:52.880] Thanks so much for sharing everything today.
[00:43:52.880 --> 00:43:53.920] That was really awesome.
[00:43:53.920 --> 00:43:55.120] Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
[00:43:55.120 --> 00:43:56.240] It's been a lot of fun.
[00:43:56.240 --> 00:43:57.440] And that's it for today.
[00:43:57.440 --> 00:43:59.640] Thank you so much for listening to the Bootstrap Founder.
[00:43:59.640 --> 00:44:03.160] You can find me on Twitter at AvidKal, AIVID, K-A-H-L.
[00:43:59.360 --> 00:44:16.040] And if you want to support me in this show, please share podscan.fm, my SaaS business, with your professional peers and those who you think will benefit from tracking mentions of their brands, their businesses, and names on podcasts out there.
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[00:44:31.320 --> 00:44:33.880] Have a wonderful day and bye-bye.