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Prompt 1: Context Setup

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Transcript section:
[00:00:01.440 --> 00:00:11.040] I end up at a strip club with a bunch of like 50 or 60 year old female maid service owners until like 3.30 in the morning.
[00:00:11.040 --> 00:00:17.760] I wake up at 5.30 in the morning after two hours of sleep to my phone absolutely blowing up, right?
[00:00:17.760 --> 00:00:20.320] Because the redesign launch did not go well.
[00:00:20.320 --> 00:00:25.360] Hello and welcome back to Indie Bytes, a podcast where I bring you stories of fellow indie hackers in 15 minutes or less.
[00:00:25.360 --> 00:00:26.960] Today I'm joined by Amar Ghosh.
[00:00:26.960 --> 00:00:31.920] He's the founder of ZenMaid, a maid service that has just crossed 200k MRR.
[00:00:31.920 --> 00:00:36.480] Amar is a seasoned bootstrapped entrepreneur having started ZenMaid back in 2013.
[00:00:36.480 --> 00:00:44.800] Ammar's story shows the power of sticking with something through the hard times and having a somewhat unsexy niche, aka not selling to other indie hackers.
[00:00:44.800 --> 00:00:46.640] I see you in the audience.
[00:00:46.640 --> 00:00:50.400] This can lead to a phenomenal business which Amar has today.
[00:00:50.400 --> 00:00:58.640] Now if you're inspired by this episode and want to go out and make your own newsletter or side project in a niche of your choice, I have just a tool for you.
[00:00:58.640 --> 00:01:03.200] That is of course Email Octopus who are an email platform focused on affordability.
[00:01:03.200 --> 00:01:08.720] They have a very generous free plan and ace of use without all of these bloated features that I certainly hate.
[00:01:08.720 --> 00:01:14.240] So you can focus on shipping and growing your audience which regular listeners will know is essential for your growth.
[00:01:14.240 --> 00:01:21.040] So to get started with an email platform that just gets out of the way, you can contact up to 2,500 people for free.
[00:01:21.040 --> 00:01:24.320] Head to emailoctopus.com or hit the link in the show notes.
[00:01:24.320 --> 00:01:28.960] Or if you upgrade to their free plan, you've got 30% off using the coupon IndieBytes.
[00:01:29.280 --> 00:01:30.480] Amar, welcome to the pod.
[00:01:30.480 --> 00:01:31.200] How are you doing?
[00:01:31.200 --> 00:01:31.680] Doing great.
[00:01:31.680 --> 00:01:32.960] Thanks for having me, James.
[00:01:32.960 --> 00:01:35.440] So take us back to 2013.
[00:01:35.440 --> 00:01:41.360] What were you doing sort of before ZenMaid and how did a service for maize come about?
[00:01:41.360 --> 00:01:44.240] It seems like such an odd niche for an indie hacker to get into.
[00:01:44.240 --> 00:01:46.800] From a career perspective, I was working in sales.
[00:01:46.800 --> 00:01:50.880] I was doing sales for a tech company in Southern California.
[00:01:50.880 --> 00:02:03.160] And during that time, I came across a blog post that was essentially how to start a home services business, specifically a cleaning business, like from home without doing any of the cleaning.
[00:02:03.480 --> 00:02:07.800] And essentially, a friend of mine, you know, we were having a conversation.
[00:02:07.960 --> 00:02:11.560] It came up that he had seen the same post and actually begun working on it.
[00:02:11.560 --> 00:02:17.720] So, fast forward, approximately a year, and we'd been running a maid service together for like for that time.
[00:02:17.720 --> 00:02:19.640] So, that takes us to 2013.
[00:02:19.640 --> 00:02:26.920] I switched jobs, moved from Southern California to Northern California, and we shut down the maid service in the process.
[00:02:26.920 --> 00:02:40.600] But the hidden benefit of that was that during that year, we had built in a very simple back-end scheduling tool into our actual website that essentially we turned into a SaaS.
[00:02:40.600 --> 00:02:48.920] So, this is like the Slack story where they were at a studio and then they spun off Slack, which is their internal meshing tool for you with your own maid service.
[00:02:48.920 --> 00:02:51.880] You couldn't find any software that fit your needs exactly.
[00:02:51.880 --> 00:02:53.240] So, hey, you built it.
[00:02:53.240 --> 00:03:00.280] And talk me through your first two years because starting in 2013, 2015, you started paying yourself and you went traveling.
[00:03:00.280 --> 00:03:01.560] We will talk about that.
[00:03:01.560 --> 00:03:05.320] But those first few couple of years, I believe you scaled to around 8k MRR.
[00:03:05.320 --> 00:03:06.040] What were you doing?
[00:03:06.040 --> 00:03:11.960] And were some of those things you were doing back in 2013 still relevant now, or is it a completely different game now?
[00:03:11.960 --> 00:03:20.840] Do you think essentially, in a nutshell, what we did was we used cold email to get the first hundred customers or so.
[00:03:20.840 --> 00:03:26.760] And at some point along the way, my co-founder applied to join one of the cleaning groups.
[00:03:26.920 --> 00:03:33.080] The admin of the cleaning group, she wasn't happy with her software vendor at the time, contacted us.
[00:03:33.080 --> 00:03:38.360] And I think the first day that we talked to her, she told us one thing that she wanted in the software.
[00:03:38.360 --> 00:03:47.120] And me and my co-founder pulled an all-nighter to go back to her the following day and to show her, hey, this is the exact customized work order that you asked for.
[00:03:47.440 --> 00:03:52.960] And so that single partnership opened up the next probably 50 or so leads.
[00:03:52.960 --> 00:04:02.400] In terms of do these things still work, I do think that lots of things are more challenging because in general, the world has just gotten noisier.
[00:04:02.400 --> 00:04:04.320] So for us, we did it with cold email.
[00:04:04.320 --> 00:04:05.760] Now it's a little bit more difficult.
[00:04:05.760 --> 00:04:08.640] It's easy for any company to send cold email.
[00:04:08.640 --> 00:04:10.880] Back then, we had to generate our own lists.
[00:04:10.880 --> 00:04:15.920] We were using like, you know, Gmail for a while until a couple of the tools came out and all of that stuff.
[00:04:15.920 --> 00:04:26.880] And so because there was that friction and that barrier to entry for lots of other people, it made it that much more effective for us because we were able to jump through those obstacles and through those hurdles.
[00:04:26.880 --> 00:04:38.720] So I do think the same principles work, but you know, anything that's been around for a long time, you're going to have an increasing like ad cost, whether it actually costs you money or whether it costs you time.
[00:04:38.720 --> 00:04:52.480] Unlike the made niche, I guess you could call it, when indie hackers are trying to like discover niches that they're going to build their products in, they're often thinking, okay, well, what are like high-value niches?
[00:04:52.480 --> 00:04:55.200] Those that are not as price sensitive.
[00:04:55.200 --> 00:05:00.400] Were you thinking about that when you said, because obviously you understand the made businesses a lot more.
[00:05:00.400 --> 00:05:04.080] Were they like kind of price sensitive or were you like, we've done our own thing.
[00:05:04.080 --> 00:05:05.760] This is a problem that needs to be solved.
[00:05:05.760 --> 00:05:10.400] And we think there's enough businesses out there that can buy this software at whatever the price we put it at.
[00:05:10.720 --> 00:05:27.840] When I started the company, my initial co-founder actually approached me and suggested that we actually tried contacting doctors, lawyers, a couple of other professions before we moved to maid services for the exact reasons that you just outlined.
[00:05:28.240 --> 00:05:37.000] So it felt like we were kind of throwing in the towel and going for maid services, which are much more price sensitive and just complain about the silliest things.
[00:05:37.320 --> 00:05:57.160] In hindsight, though, that's actually been really big for us because it's really difficult, even for a company that came in to compete with us, even if they had funding, it would probably still take them four to five years to get traction within the industry and to make enough money to justify those sorts of things.
[00:05:57.160 --> 00:06:09.560] And so, with that in mind, like we were kind of the incumbent now, and just the difficulty of the industry and the low willingness to pay, that in and of itself is a massive moat for us, which is pretty amazing.
[00:06:09.560 --> 00:06:10.360] That's interesting.
[00:06:10.360 --> 00:06:12.520] Yeah, the first five years sucked.
[00:06:12.520 --> 00:06:16.920] I've never heard like price sensitivity being an advantage.
[00:06:16.920 --> 00:06:24.360] And I don't know if it's rep you can replicate it, Amar, because you started this 10 years ago and you started it while doing your full-time jobs.
[00:06:24.360 --> 00:06:27.880] And then when you left, you did not take much money from it because you were traveling.
[00:06:28.200 --> 00:06:40.520] I mean, if someone wants to be in it for the long haul and they're willing to deal with price-sensitive customers and want to build that moat that makes it really hard to break into, then I suppose it's a niche to choose, eh?
[00:06:40.520 --> 00:06:40.920] Yeah.
[00:06:40.920 --> 00:06:42.920] And I mean, it is hindsight, though, right?
[00:06:42.920 --> 00:06:44.920] It's not like I went in with this plan, right?
[00:06:45.320 --> 00:06:46.920] It's just 10 or 11 years later.
[00:06:46.920 --> 00:06:50.920] Oh, I'm like, you know, a new competitor enters and I'm like, come talk to me in five years.
[00:06:50.920 --> 00:06:54.440] If you still exist in five years, then I will take you seriously.
[00:06:54.760 --> 00:06:57.160] So you didn't pay yourself to choose in the business.
[00:06:57.160 --> 00:07:02.280] After that point, you went traveling in Thailand, which I believe is where you met your wife, Fran.
[00:07:03.080 --> 00:07:03.800] Why travel the world?
[00:07:03.800 --> 00:07:08.520] Is this because of that freedom thing you found from 4-Hour Workweek?
[00:07:08.520 --> 00:07:21.360] Yeah, I think the Four Hour Work Week one, I mean, the reason that I think it's impacted so many people is because it was such an inspirational book, not because it was necessarily a great tactical guide to traveling the world or starting a business.
[00:07:21.680 --> 00:07:22.800] But I do think it was another thing.
[00:07:22.800 --> 00:07:25.360] If it was like, it was, you know, I was young and impressionable.
[00:07:25.360 --> 00:07:26.960] I think it was like the cool thing to do.
[00:07:26.960 --> 00:07:30.720] It was something that I genuinely did want to do of going in and traveling the world.
[00:07:30.720 --> 00:07:37.120] But the other thing is, I'm from California, so I grew up in a really high cost of living area.
[00:07:37.120 --> 00:07:49.280] I looked at my finances at some point when I was still working my day job in Palo Alto and just realized that even with staying there and making all of this money, I wasn't actually saving any money.
[00:07:49.280 --> 00:07:51.920] I wasn't putting more money in the bank than I was before.
[00:07:51.920 --> 00:08:12.320] And when I realized that, I realized that I could jump on a flight to Thailand, lower my expenses to $600 or $800 a month, and then all of a sudden the money that Zenmaid could pay me would actually cover my costs and I could focus full-time on my thing instead of spending, you know, nine to five every day focusing on building someone else's dream.
[00:08:12.320 --> 00:08:17.920] Well, Amar, like traveling, building the business, it all sounds very lovely at this point.
[00:08:17.920 --> 00:08:26.320] But at one point in 2017, you chose to redesign the business and you lost 40% of your revenue over six months.
[00:08:26.320 --> 00:08:29.520] What made you stick with that and not like revert it?
[00:08:32.160 --> 00:08:32.880] Let's see.
[00:08:33.040 --> 00:08:34.560] I was forced essentially.
[00:08:34.560 --> 00:08:37.680] If we like rolled it back, it was just going to make everything even worse.
[00:08:37.680 --> 00:08:42.960] That it wasn't just a redesign of how everything looked, but it was like a change to various data structures.
[00:08:42.960 --> 00:08:45.520] And that was part of the reason it was such a mess.
[00:08:45.520 --> 00:08:49.840] So, in a nutshell, what happened was we'd been working on this redesign.
[00:08:49.840 --> 00:08:53.120] We put in probably $100,000.
[00:08:53.120 --> 00:08:56.000] And this is when we were not making a ton of money.
[00:08:56.000 --> 00:09:07.480] And as we got closer to being ready to release it, we decided the perfect time to release it would be at the annual cleaning industry convention in Las Vegas.
[00:09:07.480 --> 00:09:11.480] I get to Las Vegas for this event.
[00:09:11.800 --> 00:09:18.520] The team and I decide that they will take it live around midnight on, I believe it was Monday night.
[00:09:18.520 --> 00:09:28.760] The idea was they're going to take it live and then they're going to be awake for a couple of hours after that to monitor everything, to debug things, to make sure that nothing goes like goes wrong, all of that stuff.
[00:09:28.760 --> 00:09:42.360] So, I end up at a strip club with a bunch of like 50 or 60-year-old female maid service owners that dragged me and one of the other industry guys to a strip club until like 3.30 in the morning.
[00:09:42.360 --> 00:09:49.160] I wake up at 5.30 in the morning after two hours of sleep to my phone absolutely blowing up, right?
[00:09:49.160 --> 00:09:51.800] Because the redesign launch did not go well.
[00:09:51.800 --> 00:10:02.280] Critically take down the software from Monday to Thursday, all the while while I'm at this annual convention and having to show my face everywhere and still having to show up for this stuff.
[00:10:02.280 --> 00:10:15.560] And so, me and my team members that were there, it was me and two other team members, we were locked in a hotel room for the next like 18 or like 22 hours that, like, from 5 in the morning, I left the room at like 9 p.m.
[00:10:15.560 --> 00:10:19.800] because I had to make a cameo appearance at one of like the industry events for like for drinks.
[00:10:19.800 --> 00:10:23.800] But other than that, we were just locked in this room, just like doing support.
[00:10:23.800 --> 00:10:30.920] And like, the devs were on the other side of the world, essentially doing the same things in their homes, just all hands on deck.
[00:10:30.920 --> 00:10:32.360] It went terribly.
[00:10:32.360 --> 00:10:48.240] Although, I do have to say that when it was all said and done, and when the dust settled, every new user that came in and used the new redesign and didn't go through the actual transition period were blown away by like the new version of the software.
[00:10:48.560 --> 00:10:56.800] And so, that's why, like, even though we lost 40% of the recurring revenue, it was 40% of like the existing recurring revenue when we launched it.
[00:10:56.800 --> 00:10:59.120] The new business that we picked up more than made up for it.
[00:10:59.120 --> 00:11:02.480] So, it still ended up like working out, but it was not a fun one.
[00:11:02.480 --> 00:11:04.720] It was not a fun experience.
[00:11:04.960 --> 00:11:13.760] No, I can just imagine what thoughts must have been going through your head at that networking drinks you went to while your company was crumbling.
[00:11:13.760 --> 00:11:17.920] So, Amar, you've gone through some impressive growth over the years.
[00:11:17.920 --> 00:11:22.560] There were three growth tactics that I noticed that I've heard you've done on other podcasts.
[00:11:22.560 --> 00:11:29.680] You had your maid summit, you created free logos for maids, and you've also got your Facebook group that you started back in 2014.
[00:11:29.680 --> 00:11:34.960] Have you had like one main growth driver of the years, or can you talk about some of those things that I mentioned?
[00:11:35.280 --> 00:11:44.240] There's never been any sort of magic bullet, but the closest thing to a magic bullet for ZenMaid was doing the Maid Summit, which you can see at maidsummit.com.
[00:11:44.240 --> 00:11:54.960] We literally saw the first year that we did that, the following six months after doing the maid summit, we saw every single one of our metrics across our like sales and marketing funnel increase.
[00:11:54.960 --> 00:12:00.240] That we saw higher conversion rates, more leads, all of like that stuff.
[00:12:00.240 --> 00:12:04.880] That there was something about like the brand building and the trust that was built through that.
[00:12:04.880 --> 00:12:10.320] And so, in a nutshell, the maid summit, I think most listeners are going to be familiar with what a virtual summit is.
[00:12:10.320 --> 00:12:17.520] In the maid service industry, we bring together anywhere from 40 to I think one year as high as 60 industry experts.
[00:12:17.520 --> 00:12:24.800] We're very focused on people that specifically serve our industry, not a random accountant for small businesses and stuff like that.
[00:12:24.800 --> 00:12:26.720] And yeah, that's been massive for us.
[00:12:26.720 --> 00:12:33.240] It's helped to drive a ton of partnerships for us because now we deliver the audience to some of the consultants.
[00:12:33.560 --> 00:12:38.520] So yeah, that would be the biggest single thing that we have done.
[00:12:38.840 --> 00:12:41.240] The Facebook group, we have two Facebook groups.
[00:12:41.240 --> 00:12:44.680] We have the Zen Made Mastermind and the Zen Made Inner Circle.
[00:12:44.680 --> 00:12:47.160] One is for our users and trial users.
[00:12:47.160 --> 00:12:51.560] The other is for all-made services in the industry.
[00:12:51.560 --> 00:12:55.480] And that was one we started, I think, in 2014 or 2015.
[00:12:55.480 --> 00:13:12.440] And the second year, I think, that we had that running, when I went to the annual industry conference, I would walk around the hallways and would hear people asking if others saw XYZ thread in the Zen Made Mastermind.
[00:13:12.440 --> 00:13:20.120] That a lot of folks in our industry heard about the Zen Made Mastermind, the Facebook group, long before they heard about Zen Made the software.
[00:13:20.120 --> 00:13:24.040] So it kind of led our marketing a bit there.
[00:13:24.040 --> 00:13:36.200] I want to talk about something that I've noticed about you having looked at your background here, having listened to another podcast, which is like, I feel like you're inspired by a lot of these hustle porn gods.
[00:13:36.200 --> 00:13:38.040] You're Gary Veeja, Tim Ferris.
[00:13:38.040 --> 00:13:42.760] And like, a lot of indie hackers, I don't know, could it be snobbishly, look down on this stuff?
[00:13:42.760 --> 00:13:45.720] It's like, no, no, no, I'm trying to build a better life for myself.
[00:13:45.880 --> 00:13:49.560] I don't want to do this hustling that all these guys talk about.
[00:13:49.560 --> 00:13:54.760] Do you think that some indie hackers just don't work hard enough because they don't want to?
[00:13:54.760 --> 00:13:55.640] And maybe they should.
[00:13:55.640 --> 00:13:58.360] Maybe they should take some inspiration from these hustle porn guys?
[00:13:58.680 --> 00:13:59.640] Yeah, I do.
[00:14:00.200 --> 00:14:07.240] What I think that it really comes down to is I think that a lot of people have defined the life that they want to live.
[00:14:07.240 --> 00:14:22.400] And instead of trying to do the work that's necessary to get to that point, they instead try to live that life immediately while also trying to accomplish the goals that they like need to long term to sustain that lifestyle.
[00:14:22.720 --> 00:14:30.960] And so, for me, my ultimate goal is to see how far I can grow Zen Maid while keeping my current lifestyle.
[00:14:30.960 --> 00:14:37.280] And so, with that in mind, I like going to these guys that are the business gurus that are maybe saying you've got to hustle, hustle, hustle.
[00:14:37.280 --> 00:14:44.400] That doesn't necessarily mean that I have to hustle, hustle, hustle, but I think that their messages are really actually like actually on point.
[00:14:44.400 --> 00:14:54.560] And that if you're not living the life that you want to, like right now or today, you could probably take something out of a lot of these hustle porn like books, right?
[00:14:54.880 --> 00:15:12.000] And what I'll also say is on people wanting the ideal life but not being prepared to put in the work to get there, I think I see often, and also for me, like I know what life I want, and I've tried to live that, but I've not done the work to get there.
[00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:16.720] And I've had to go through like a little bit of like rediscovery of myself.
[00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:20.160] Like, James, you've got to work a little bit fucking harder, dude, if you're going to get to where you want to be.
[00:15:20.480 --> 00:15:27.600] And you need to put in these hours while you still can, while you're young and have the time to do it, so then you can live the life that you want.
[00:15:27.600 --> 00:15:31.520] But like, make that as enjoyable as you can, make that as flexible as you can.
[00:15:31.520 --> 00:15:35.520] But there are going to be times where it's kind of shit and not that enjoyable.
[00:15:35.520 --> 00:15:39.680] And then you'll like enjoy the times where it is really enjoyable.
[00:15:40.640 --> 00:15:42.640] Well, Amar, you've been a great guest, mate.
[00:15:42.640 --> 00:15:45.760] Thank you so much for coming on and sharing some of the Zen Maid story.
[00:15:45.760 --> 00:15:50.640] Now, I end every episode on three recommendations: no explanation needed.
[00:15:50.640 --> 00:15:52.800] A book, a podcast, and Indie Hacker.
[00:15:52.800 --> 00:15:58.880] The book is The Fish That Ate the Whale by Rich Cohen that I have up here.
[00:15:58.880 --> 00:16:03.080] This is the best book for entrepreneurs that most entrepreneurs have never heard of.
[00:16:03.400 --> 00:16:08.600] Podcasts, I have two, just the recent ones that I've been listening to that I wasn't familiar with before.
[00:16:08.760 --> 00:16:12.760] The Exit 5 podcast by Dave Something.
[00:16:12.760 --> 00:16:13.320] Yeah.
[00:16:13.320 --> 00:16:23.080] And then the other one is the new podcast from Sam Parr, which is Moneywise, which is on like, yeah, like just dealing with finances and stuff like that.
[00:16:23.080 --> 00:16:28.200] It's just money talked about in a way that you don't hear about very often.
[00:16:29.320 --> 00:16:35.560] I'll give a shout out to Jesse Hanley from Bento, from bentonow.com.
[00:16:35.560 --> 00:16:36.040] For sure.
[00:16:36.040 --> 00:16:38.760] Amar, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Indiebites.
[00:16:38.760 --> 00:16:39.960] Thanks for having me, James.
[00:16:39.960 --> 00:16:41.960] Thank you for listening to this episode of Indiebuz.
[00:16:42.040 --> 00:16:45.160] A big thank you to my sponsor, Emo Octopus, for making the show happen.
[00:16:45.160 --> 00:16:46.120] That's all from me.
[00:16:46.120 --> 00:16:47.800] See you next week.

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

[00:00:01.440 --> 00:00:11.040] I end up at a strip club with a bunch of like 50 or 60 year old female maid service owners until like 3.30 in the morning.
[00:00:11.040 --> 00:00:17.760] I wake up at 5.30 in the morning after two hours of sleep to my phone absolutely blowing up, right?
[00:00:17.760 --> 00:00:20.320] Because the redesign launch did not go well.
[00:00:20.320 --> 00:00:25.360] Hello and welcome back to Indie Bytes, a podcast where I bring you stories of fellow indie hackers in 15 minutes or less.
[00:00:25.360 --> 00:00:26.960] Today I'm joined by Amar Ghosh.
[00:00:26.960 --> 00:00:31.920] He's the founder of ZenMaid, a maid service that has just crossed 200k MRR.
[00:00:31.920 --> 00:00:36.480] Amar is a seasoned bootstrapped entrepreneur having started ZenMaid back in 2013.
[00:00:36.480 --> 00:00:44.800] Ammar's story shows the power of sticking with something through the hard times and having a somewhat unsexy niche, aka not selling to other indie hackers.
[00:00:44.800 --> 00:00:46.640] I see you in the audience.
[00:00:46.640 --> 00:00:50.400] This can lead to a phenomenal business which Amar has today.
[00:00:50.400 --> 00:00:58.640] Now if you're inspired by this episode and want to go out and make your own newsletter or side project in a niche of your choice, I have just a tool for you.
[00:00:58.640 --> 00:01:03.200] That is of course Email Octopus who are an email platform focused on affordability.
[00:01:03.200 --> 00:01:08.720] They have a very generous free plan and ace of use without all of these bloated features that I certainly hate.
[00:01:08.720 --> 00:01:14.240] So you can focus on shipping and growing your audience which regular listeners will know is essential for your growth.
[00:01:14.240 --> 00:01:21.040] So to get started with an email platform that just gets out of the way, you can contact up to 2,500 people for free.
[00:01:21.040 --> 00:01:24.320] Head to emailoctopus.com or hit the link in the show notes.
[00:01:24.320 --> 00:01:28.960] Or if you upgrade to their free plan, you've got 30% off using the coupon IndieBytes.
[00:01:29.280 --> 00:01:30.480] Amar, welcome to the pod.
[00:01:30.480 --> 00:01:31.200] How are you doing?
[00:01:31.200 --> 00:01:31.680] Doing great.
[00:01:31.680 --> 00:01:32.960] Thanks for having me, James.
[00:01:32.960 --> 00:01:35.440] So take us back to 2013.
[00:01:35.440 --> 00:01:41.360] What were you doing sort of before ZenMaid and how did a service for maize come about?
[00:01:41.360 --> 00:01:44.240] It seems like such an odd niche for an indie hacker to get into.
[00:01:44.240 --> 00:01:46.800] From a career perspective, I was working in sales.
[00:01:46.800 --> 00:01:50.880] I was doing sales for a tech company in Southern California.
[00:01:50.880 --> 00:02:03.160] And during that time, I came across a blog post that was essentially how to start a home services business, specifically a cleaning business, like from home without doing any of the cleaning.
[00:02:03.480 --> 00:02:07.800] And essentially, a friend of mine, you know, we were having a conversation.
[00:02:07.960 --> 00:02:11.560] It came up that he had seen the same post and actually begun working on it.
[00:02:11.560 --> 00:02:17.720] So, fast forward, approximately a year, and we'd been running a maid service together for like for that time.
[00:02:17.720 --> 00:02:19.640] So, that takes us to 2013.
[00:02:19.640 --> 00:02:26.920] I switched jobs, moved from Southern California to Northern California, and we shut down the maid service in the process.
[00:02:26.920 --> 00:02:40.600] But the hidden benefit of that was that during that year, we had built in a very simple back-end scheduling tool into our actual website that essentially we turned into a SaaS.
[00:02:40.600 --> 00:02:48.920] So, this is like the Slack story where they were at a studio and then they spun off Slack, which is their internal meshing tool for you with your own maid service.
[00:02:48.920 --> 00:02:51.880] You couldn't find any software that fit your needs exactly.
[00:02:51.880 --> 00:02:53.240] So, hey, you built it.
[00:02:53.240 --> 00:03:00.280] And talk me through your first two years because starting in 2013, 2015, you started paying yourself and you went traveling.
[00:03:00.280 --> 00:03:01.560] We will talk about that.
[00:03:01.560 --> 00:03:05.320] But those first few couple of years, I believe you scaled to around 8k MRR.
[00:03:05.320 --> 00:03:06.040] What were you doing?
[00:03:06.040 --> 00:03:11.960] And were some of those things you were doing back in 2013 still relevant now, or is it a completely different game now?
[00:03:11.960 --> 00:03:20.840] Do you think essentially, in a nutshell, what we did was we used cold email to get the first hundred customers or so.
[00:03:20.840 --> 00:03:26.760] And at some point along the way, my co-founder applied to join one of the cleaning groups.
[00:03:26.920 --> 00:03:33.080] The admin of the cleaning group, she wasn't happy with her software vendor at the time, contacted us.
[00:03:33.080 --> 00:03:38.360] And I think the first day that we talked to her, she told us one thing that she wanted in the software.
[00:03:38.360 --> 00:03:47.120] And me and my co-founder pulled an all-nighter to go back to her the following day and to show her, hey, this is the exact customized work order that you asked for.
[00:03:47.440 --> 00:03:52.960] And so that single partnership opened up the next probably 50 or so leads.
[00:03:52.960 --> 00:04:02.400] In terms of do these things still work, I do think that lots of things are more challenging because in general, the world has just gotten noisier.
[00:04:02.400 --> 00:04:04.320] So for us, we did it with cold email.
[00:04:04.320 --> 00:04:05.760] Now it's a little bit more difficult.
[00:04:05.760 --> 00:04:08.640] It's easy for any company to send cold email.
[00:04:08.640 --> 00:04:10.880] Back then, we had to generate our own lists.
[00:04:10.880 --> 00:04:15.920] We were using like, you know, Gmail for a while until a couple of the tools came out and all of that stuff.
[00:04:15.920 --> 00:04:26.880] And so because there was that friction and that barrier to entry for lots of other people, it made it that much more effective for us because we were able to jump through those obstacles and through those hurdles.
[00:04:26.880 --> 00:04:38.720] So I do think the same principles work, but you know, anything that's been around for a long time, you're going to have an increasing like ad cost, whether it actually costs you money or whether it costs you time.
[00:04:38.720 --> 00:04:52.480] Unlike the made niche, I guess you could call it, when indie hackers are trying to like discover niches that they're going to build their products in, they're often thinking, okay, well, what are like high-value niches?
[00:04:52.480 --> 00:04:55.200] Those that are not as price sensitive.
[00:04:55.200 --> 00:05:00.400] Were you thinking about that when you said, because obviously you understand the made businesses a lot more.
[00:05:00.400 --> 00:05:04.080] Were they like kind of price sensitive or were you like, we've done our own thing.
[00:05:04.080 --> 00:05:05.760] This is a problem that needs to be solved.
[00:05:05.760 --> 00:05:10.400] And we think there's enough businesses out there that can buy this software at whatever the price we put it at.
[00:05:10.720 --> 00:05:27.840] When I started the company, my initial co-founder actually approached me and suggested that we actually tried contacting doctors, lawyers, a couple of other professions before we moved to maid services for the exact reasons that you just outlined.
[00:05:28.240 --> 00:05:37.000] So it felt like we were kind of throwing in the towel and going for maid services, which are much more price sensitive and just complain about the silliest things.
[00:05:37.320 --> 00:05:57.160] In hindsight, though, that's actually been really big for us because it's really difficult, even for a company that came in to compete with us, even if they had funding, it would probably still take them four to five years to get traction within the industry and to make enough money to justify those sorts of things.
[00:05:57.160 --> 00:06:09.560] And so, with that in mind, like we were kind of the incumbent now, and just the difficulty of the industry and the low willingness to pay, that in and of itself is a massive moat for us, which is pretty amazing.
[00:06:09.560 --> 00:06:10.360] That's interesting.
[00:06:10.360 --> 00:06:12.520] Yeah, the first five years sucked.
[00:06:12.520 --> 00:06:16.920] I've never heard like price sensitivity being an advantage.
[00:06:16.920 --> 00:06:24.360] And I don't know if it's rep you can replicate it, Amar, because you started this 10 years ago and you started it while doing your full-time jobs.
[00:06:24.360 --> 00:06:27.880] And then when you left, you did not take much money from it because you were traveling.
[00:06:28.200 --> 00:06:40.520] I mean, if someone wants to be in it for the long haul and they're willing to deal with price-sensitive customers and want to build that moat that makes it really hard to break into, then I suppose it's a niche to choose, eh?
[00:06:40.520 --> 00:06:40.920] Yeah.
[00:06:40.920 --> 00:06:42.920] And I mean, it is hindsight, though, right?
[00:06:42.920 --> 00:06:44.920] It's not like I went in with this plan, right?
[00:06:45.320 --> 00:06:46.920] It's just 10 or 11 years later.
[00:06:46.920 --> 00:06:50.920] Oh, I'm like, you know, a new competitor enters and I'm like, come talk to me in five years.
[00:06:50.920 --> 00:06:54.440] If you still exist in five years, then I will take you seriously.
[00:06:54.760 --> 00:06:57.160] So you didn't pay yourself to choose in the business.
[00:06:57.160 --> 00:07:02.280] After that point, you went traveling in Thailand, which I believe is where you met your wife, Fran.
[00:07:03.080 --> 00:07:03.800] Why travel the world?
[00:07:03.800 --> 00:07:08.520] Is this because of that freedom thing you found from 4-Hour Workweek?
[00:07:08.520 --> 00:07:21.360] Yeah, I think the Four Hour Work Week one, I mean, the reason that I think it's impacted so many people is because it was such an inspirational book, not because it was necessarily a great tactical guide to traveling the world or starting a business.
[00:07:21.680 --> 00:07:22.800] But I do think it was another thing.
[00:07:22.800 --> 00:07:25.360] If it was like, it was, you know, I was young and impressionable.
[00:07:25.360 --> 00:07:26.960] I think it was like the cool thing to do.
[00:07:26.960 --> 00:07:30.720] It was something that I genuinely did want to do of going in and traveling the world.
[00:07:30.720 --> 00:07:37.120] But the other thing is, I'm from California, so I grew up in a really high cost of living area.
[00:07:37.120 --> 00:07:49.280] I looked at my finances at some point when I was still working my day job in Palo Alto and just realized that even with staying there and making all of this money, I wasn't actually saving any money.
[00:07:49.280 --> 00:07:51.920] I wasn't putting more money in the bank than I was before.
[00:07:51.920 --> 00:08:12.320] And when I realized that, I realized that I could jump on a flight to Thailand, lower my expenses to $600 or $800 a month, and then all of a sudden the money that Zenmaid could pay me would actually cover my costs and I could focus full-time on my thing instead of spending, you know, nine to five every day focusing on building someone else's dream.
[00:08:12.320 --> 00:08:17.920] Well, Amar, like traveling, building the business, it all sounds very lovely at this point.
[00:08:17.920 --> 00:08:26.320] But at one point in 2017, you chose to redesign the business and you lost 40% of your revenue over six months.
[00:08:26.320 --> 00:08:29.520] What made you stick with that and not like revert it?
[00:08:32.160 --> 00:08:32.880] Let's see.
[00:08:33.040 --> 00:08:34.560] I was forced essentially.
[00:08:34.560 --> 00:08:37.680] If we like rolled it back, it was just going to make everything even worse.
[00:08:37.680 --> 00:08:42.960] That it wasn't just a redesign of how everything looked, but it was like a change to various data structures.
[00:08:42.960 --> 00:08:45.520] And that was part of the reason it was such a mess.
[00:08:45.520 --> 00:08:49.840] So, in a nutshell, what happened was we'd been working on this redesign.
[00:08:49.840 --> 00:08:53.120] We put in probably $100,000.
[00:08:53.120 --> 00:08:56.000] And this is when we were not making a ton of money.
[00:08:56.000 --> 00:09:07.480] And as we got closer to being ready to release it, we decided the perfect time to release it would be at the annual cleaning industry convention in Las Vegas.
[00:09:07.480 --> 00:09:11.480] I get to Las Vegas for this event.
[00:09:11.800 --> 00:09:18.520] The team and I decide that they will take it live around midnight on, I believe it was Monday night.
[00:09:18.520 --> 00:09:28.760] The idea was they're going to take it live and then they're going to be awake for a couple of hours after that to monitor everything, to debug things, to make sure that nothing goes like goes wrong, all of that stuff.
[00:09:28.760 --> 00:09:42.360] So, I end up at a strip club with a bunch of like 50 or 60-year-old female maid service owners that dragged me and one of the other industry guys to a strip club until like 3.30 in the morning.
[00:09:42.360 --> 00:09:49.160] I wake up at 5.30 in the morning after two hours of sleep to my phone absolutely blowing up, right?
[00:09:49.160 --> 00:09:51.800] Because the redesign launch did not go well.
[00:09:51.800 --> 00:10:02.280] Critically take down the software from Monday to Thursday, all the while while I'm at this annual convention and having to show my face everywhere and still having to show up for this stuff.
[00:10:02.280 --> 00:10:15.560] And so, me and my team members that were there, it was me and two other team members, we were locked in a hotel room for the next like 18 or like 22 hours that, like, from 5 in the morning, I left the room at like 9 p.m.
[00:10:15.560 --> 00:10:19.800] because I had to make a cameo appearance at one of like the industry events for like for drinks.
[00:10:19.800 --> 00:10:23.800] But other than that, we were just locked in this room, just like doing support.
[00:10:23.800 --> 00:10:30.920] And like, the devs were on the other side of the world, essentially doing the same things in their homes, just all hands on deck.
[00:10:30.920 --> 00:10:32.360] It went terribly.
[00:10:32.360 --> 00:10:48.240] Although, I do have to say that when it was all said and done, and when the dust settled, every new user that came in and used the new redesign and didn't go through the actual transition period were blown away by like the new version of the software.
[00:10:48.560 --> 00:10:56.800] And so, that's why, like, even though we lost 40% of the recurring revenue, it was 40% of like the existing recurring revenue when we launched it.
[00:10:56.800 --> 00:10:59.120] The new business that we picked up more than made up for it.
[00:10:59.120 --> 00:11:02.480] So, it still ended up like working out, but it was not a fun one.
[00:11:02.480 --> 00:11:04.720] It was not a fun experience.
[00:11:04.960 --> 00:11:13.760] No, I can just imagine what thoughts must have been going through your head at that networking drinks you went to while your company was crumbling.
[00:11:13.760 --> 00:11:17.920] So, Amar, you've gone through some impressive growth over the years.
[00:11:17.920 --> 00:11:22.560] There were three growth tactics that I noticed that I've heard you've done on other podcasts.
[00:11:22.560 --> 00:11:29.680] You had your maid summit, you created free logos for maids, and you've also got your Facebook group that you started back in 2014.
[00:11:29.680 --> 00:11:34.960] Have you had like one main growth driver of the years, or can you talk about some of those things that I mentioned?
[00:11:35.280 --> 00:11:44.240] There's never been any sort of magic bullet, but the closest thing to a magic bullet for ZenMaid was doing the Maid Summit, which you can see at maidsummit.com.
[00:11:44.240 --> 00:11:54.960] We literally saw the first year that we did that, the following six months after doing the maid summit, we saw every single one of our metrics across our like sales and marketing funnel increase.
[00:11:54.960 --> 00:12:00.240] That we saw higher conversion rates, more leads, all of like that stuff.
[00:12:00.240 --> 00:12:04.880] That there was something about like the brand building and the trust that was built through that.
[00:12:04.880 --> 00:12:10.320] And so, in a nutshell, the maid summit, I think most listeners are going to be familiar with what a virtual summit is.
[00:12:10.320 --> 00:12:17.520] In the maid service industry, we bring together anywhere from 40 to I think one year as high as 60 industry experts.
[00:12:17.520 --> 00:12:24.800] We're very focused on people that specifically serve our industry, not a random accountant for small businesses and stuff like that.
[00:12:24.800 --> 00:12:26.720] And yeah, that's been massive for us.
[00:12:26.720 --> 00:12:33.240] It's helped to drive a ton of partnerships for us because now we deliver the audience to some of the consultants.
[00:12:33.560 --> 00:12:38.520] So yeah, that would be the biggest single thing that we have done.
[00:12:38.840 --> 00:12:41.240] The Facebook group, we have two Facebook groups.
[00:12:41.240 --> 00:12:44.680] We have the Zen Made Mastermind and the Zen Made Inner Circle.
[00:12:44.680 --> 00:12:47.160] One is for our users and trial users.
[00:12:47.160 --> 00:12:51.560] The other is for all-made services in the industry.
[00:12:51.560 --> 00:12:55.480] And that was one we started, I think, in 2014 or 2015.
[00:12:55.480 --> 00:13:12.440] And the second year, I think, that we had that running, when I went to the annual industry conference, I would walk around the hallways and would hear people asking if others saw XYZ thread in the Zen Made Mastermind.
[00:13:12.440 --> 00:13:20.120] That a lot of folks in our industry heard about the Zen Made Mastermind, the Facebook group, long before they heard about Zen Made the software.
[00:13:20.120 --> 00:13:24.040] So it kind of led our marketing a bit there.
[00:13:24.040 --> 00:13:36.200] I want to talk about something that I've noticed about you having looked at your background here, having listened to another podcast, which is like, I feel like you're inspired by a lot of these hustle porn gods.
[00:13:36.200 --> 00:13:38.040] You're Gary Veeja, Tim Ferris.
[00:13:38.040 --> 00:13:42.760] And like, a lot of indie hackers, I don't know, could it be snobbishly, look down on this stuff?
[00:13:42.760 --> 00:13:45.720] It's like, no, no, no, I'm trying to build a better life for myself.
[00:13:45.880 --> 00:13:49.560] I don't want to do this hustling that all these guys talk about.
[00:13:49.560 --> 00:13:54.760] Do you think that some indie hackers just don't work hard enough because they don't want to?
[00:13:54.760 --> 00:13:55.640] And maybe they should.
[00:13:55.640 --> 00:13:58.360] Maybe they should take some inspiration from these hustle porn guys?
[00:13:58.680 --> 00:13:59.640] Yeah, I do.
[00:14:00.200 --> 00:14:07.240] What I think that it really comes down to is I think that a lot of people have defined the life that they want to live.
[00:14:07.240 --> 00:14:22.400] And instead of trying to do the work that's necessary to get to that point, they instead try to live that life immediately while also trying to accomplish the goals that they like need to long term to sustain that lifestyle.
[00:14:22.720 --> 00:14:30.960] And so, for me, my ultimate goal is to see how far I can grow Zen Maid while keeping my current lifestyle.
[00:14:30.960 --> 00:14:37.280] And so, with that in mind, I like going to these guys that are the business gurus that are maybe saying you've got to hustle, hustle, hustle.
[00:14:37.280 --> 00:14:44.400] That doesn't necessarily mean that I have to hustle, hustle, hustle, but I think that their messages are really actually like actually on point.
[00:14:44.400 --> 00:14:54.560] And that if you're not living the life that you want to, like right now or today, you could probably take something out of a lot of these hustle porn like books, right?
[00:14:54.880 --> 00:15:12.000] And what I'll also say is on people wanting the ideal life but not being prepared to put in the work to get there, I think I see often, and also for me, like I know what life I want, and I've tried to live that, but I've not done the work to get there.
[00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:16.720] And I've had to go through like a little bit of like rediscovery of myself.
[00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:20.160] Like, James, you've got to work a little bit fucking harder, dude, if you're going to get to where you want to be.
[00:15:20.480 --> 00:15:27.600] And you need to put in these hours while you still can, while you're young and have the time to do it, so then you can live the life that you want.
[00:15:27.600 --> 00:15:31.520] But like, make that as enjoyable as you can, make that as flexible as you can.
[00:15:31.520 --> 00:15:35.520] But there are going to be times where it's kind of shit and not that enjoyable.
[00:15:35.520 --> 00:15:39.680] And then you'll like enjoy the times where it is really enjoyable.
[00:15:40.640 --> 00:15:42.640] Well, Amar, you've been a great guest, mate.
[00:15:42.640 --> 00:15:45.760] Thank you so much for coming on and sharing some of the Zen Maid story.
[00:15:45.760 --> 00:15:50.640] Now, I end every episode on three recommendations: no explanation needed.
[00:15:50.640 --> 00:15:52.800] A book, a podcast, and Indie Hacker.
[00:15:52.800 --> 00:15:58.880] The book is The Fish That Ate the Whale by Rich Cohen that I have up here.
[00:15:58.880 --> 00:16:03.080] This is the best book for entrepreneurs that most entrepreneurs have never heard of.
[00:16:03.400 --> 00:16:08.600] Podcasts, I have two, just the recent ones that I've been listening to that I wasn't familiar with before.
[00:16:08.760 --> 00:16:12.760] The Exit 5 podcast by Dave Something.
[00:16:12.760 --> 00:16:13.320] Yeah.
[00:16:13.320 --> 00:16:23.080] And then the other one is the new podcast from Sam Parr, which is Moneywise, which is on like, yeah, like just dealing with finances and stuff like that.
[00:16:23.080 --> 00:16:28.200] It's just money talked about in a way that you don't hear about very often.
[00:16:29.320 --> 00:16:35.560] I'll give a shout out to Jesse Hanley from Bento, from bentonow.com.
[00:16:35.560 --> 00:16:36.040] For sure.
[00:16:36.040 --> 00:16:38.760] Amar, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Indiebites.
[00:16:38.760 --> 00:16:39.960] Thanks for having me, James.
[00:16:39.960 --> 00:16:41.960] Thank you for listening to this episode of Indiebuz.
[00:16:42.040 --> 00:16:45.160] A big thank you to my sponsor, Emo Octopus, for making the show happen.
[00:16:45.160 --> 00:16:46.120] That's all from me.
[00:16:46.120 --> 00:16:47.800] See you next week.