Rogue Startups (Episode 344):12 Years to Overnight Success with Craig Hewitt
Listen to this episode on
Highlights from my conversation with Craig:
I had a fun chat with Craig Hewitt on the Rogue Startups podcast on quite a few topics:
Transitioning ZenMaid from David to Goliath (but still winning)
Navigating internal disagreements and managing tough decisions
Running a "benevolent dictatorship"—and why that sometimes works
How to deal with boredom, complacency, and staying sharp as a CEO
The productivity paradox: what being "productive" means at the top
Entertainment vs. distraction: protecting your focus
Is AI a threat to SaaS companies, or a tool for growth?
Resources and Links from This Episode
Follow Craig on LinkedIn
Connect with Craig on Twitter/X: @TheCraigHewitt
Follow me on LinkedIn
Connect with me on Twitter/X: @itsjustamar
Chapters
(00:00:00) - How to Build a 12-year-old SaaS Company
(00:01:15) - Squarespace CEO on How Far Along the Business Is
(00:03:39) - How We Went From Fast Follower to Industry Leader
(00:08:35) - Jeff Bezos on Decisions Made by the Team
(00:13:52) - Zenmaid's CEO on Never Enough
(00:18:10) - How to Get More Out of a Manager
(00:19:30) - Craig on His Side Businesses
(00:25:49) - Kastos on What Would He Tell You?
(00:28:03) - How Do You Continue to Evolve As a Founder?
(00:33:16) - Brain tumor patient on work life balance
(00:39:46) - Jordan G. on AI and the Economy
(00:44:55) - Brands and the AI revolution
(00:46:33) - Amar Ghosh on Connecting With People
Episode Transcript
[Craig Hewitt] (0:08 - 1:24)
Hello, welcome back to Rogue Startups. I'm your host, Craig Hewitt. Today, I'm joined by Amar Ghose of ZenMaid.
Amar and I talk about everything from being 12 years in the business. He's 12 years into ZenMaid, doing kind of millions of dollars, I think. Largely kind of like the business running itself, him having the dream of working kind of when and how he wants in the business.
Talking about what longevity in a business really gets you as far as a competitive advantage. And he talks about how he just doesn't really pay attention to newcomers until they're several years in. Talking about what we're seeing in the market when it comes to AI and the threat that it is or isn't to us as SaaS companies.
And talking about being a while into the business and what it's taught us about the perspective we have on our business as a whole. If you are in SaaS or thinking about it, I think you're really going to enjoy this perspective on building a really kind of tame, sensible, but ambitious SaaS company. I sure did.
Here's my conversation with Amar. Like how far along are you guys like in the business? Like customers, headcount, revenue, whatever you're comfortable kind of giving just to give folks a context.
[Amar Ghose] (1:25 - 1:56)
Yeah, so we're at about $3 million annually. Team is probably around 20. I'm never sure exactly because it's a lot of contractors.
We consider everyone to be team members, but of course the relationships are quite different. But yeah, I mean, we follow a profit first model. So we make about 10% off the top of about $3 million a year.
And so I think that we're pretty people heavy, I think, compared to most software businesses are our size.
[Craig Hewitt] (1:56 - 2:12)
But that's just the way I prefer to do things. Profit first. We follow it as well.
We bank at Mercury. It has automatic stuff all set up to do that automatically. Do you instrument that yourself like on the first of each month?
Or do you have it automated? Or how does that work?
[Amar Ghose] (2:13 - 2:49)
Right now it's my executive assistant that handles it, but I'm passing it off to my COO. I may look into if it's possible. We've just been with Chase for so long.
It's kind of a don't fix what's not broken. I do own a maid service as a side business that someone else owns and operates alongside me. And for that, we use one of the more modern banks.
I think it's Relay. And that one does all the automatic transfers as well. And it's like, oh, this is kind of nice.
Not worth switching my entire company's banking for, but it's nice. It's a good feature.
[Craig Hewitt] (2:50 - 4:03)
So they're not a bank. They're FinTech. And they have a bank that is underneath that.
And they switched that underlying bank recently. And that was a motherfucker because all of our payroll and benefits and direct debits. We had a big enterprise deal coming in with the old information.
And I'm like, yo, we're about to get like 50 grand. That's coming in. You guys need to figure out.
And so they're like, okay, you have this grace period, but you need to update it. And I'm like, fuck. Now, every big enterprise deal that we renew every year, we have to update.
And that's just anyways. Mercury is a really impressive company, but that stuff is really disruptive for no benefit. We get nothing out of it.
Well, congratulations. Three million is really, really significant. I know I was co-hosting with Rob on startups for the rest of us, and you had sent in a message about what happens when you go from fast follower to leader in the space.
What is that for you? Because I would consider us a follower for sure. We're definitely not an industry leader in podcasting.
But how has that transition come about, I guess?
[Amar Ghose] (4:04 - 7:20)
So it's an interesting one where I feel like due to the market that we're in, it's not as sexy. It doesn't attract as much young hot shots or whatever. And so it feels like for a long time, our brand and our marketing has been well ahead of our product.
Because for a long time, we were much better known than our product was actually good. Still good enough, but you would have thought that we had the best product in the entire industry just based on the number of people that knew us. And I think that with enough time, because we've been doing this for 12 years, and I think if you show up and commit to any market for 12 years, you're going to end up with a pretty darn good solution.
And it feels like at some point, we crossed that chasm. It's actually a combination of things where it took us a lot of time for both. A lot of it was just me maturing as a person, as a CEO, all of that, and being able to lead the team through all of this.
So it was a lot of me maturing, it was a lot of the company maturing, and then it was a lot of the product maturing. Is that being bootstrapped, we have been limited in what we can do every year and what we can actually accomplish. And so I would say around maybe year eight or nine, I think at that point, we probably hit that feature parity where it's like, okay, we pretty much check all of the boxes now that all of our major competitors do.
And so what that's allowed us to do is now we're able to look a little bit more into the future and to actually be ahead on some stuff. And it's essentially, we have time to almost build things that may or may not work, whereas before we had to continuously take safe bets of it's like, we don't offer proper invoicing, most of our competitors do, so we're going to green light that. So yeah, an example there would be recently, and this was a cool one for me because I was pretty much not involved.
This was entirely the team's idea and then full implementation and all of that stuff is one of our team members that hosts our podcast and everything. She has her own maid service and was just randomly telling some of our developers about one of her girls that essentially got cornered in a house by a client that was drinking at like 10 AM and was trying to get her to do shots with them and all this stuff. And one of the developers was like, hey, Uber has an SOS button.
Would it be helpful if we had an SOS button in there for your cleaners so they could easily let you and the rest of your team know if they were feeling unsafe? And that was something that the team designed, put together, released and all of that. That's the kind of thing that I wouldn't have green lit in the past simply because there were obviously more important things to work on, even though that would have been a brilliant idea just as much today, right?
Or just as much 12 years ago as it is today. But our abilities to sort of take those shots has changed massively. And I think that when you get enough of those, enough of those right, then you begin to get seen as like the innovator and as like the industry leader.
[Craig Hewitt] (7:20 - 8:29)
Yeah. What happens if you don't agree with that? What happens if teams like we're going to build that's a really like what you said is a really good idea.
And I totally I totally kind of vibe with that. What if it's like what if the team's like, hey, we're going to split off and fork the code base and build this thing for like lawn care people and they and they kind of just do it because you've you've empowered them and they're free to make decisions. And you're just like that.
That's not like that. That's not it. Like I ask because I still feel like like I definitely still make at the end of the day all of the big product roadmap decisions of like what we're going to build.
And like sure enough, like you'd ask our team like we don't all agree. Like there are certain things that people want, whether it's from support or development or, you know, product in the market. And sometimes it's just like we build stuff that I don't really want, but I know we kind of have to.
But but sometimes like we build stuff that only that only I want and nobody else like really, really cares about. But it's not so often that like we build something I don't really agree with. Yeah, I don't know.
Has that come up?
[Amar Ghose] (8:31 - 10:58)
So it it's come up with with with some with some of the things. I mean, I think I think one one big thing here is what Jeff Bezos talks about of like the mental model or like frame of just disagreeing and committing. So one thing here is like with the example that you gave, changing like who we serve is like a massive strategic decision.
That's not picking how the team is going to spend the next two or four weeks of their time. And so I I feel like the best way to describe it, if it's like it's a benevolent dictatorship where it's like, let's be let's be completely clear here, like my word goes, but I want to hear everybody's like sort of like opinions or whatever. And generally, I leave decisions to the team.
And there are Yeah, it's essentially I've let them know where it's like, hey, like, I will leave you to like to to make like your your your own like, like decisions that doesn't give you full reign to just go and do whatever you want. We still talk through these things and all that. And I will verbalize when I think that something is a bad decision and why and we can talk through that.
And the idea is for it to generate a productive discussion. And then there are times where I will put my foot down and be like, hey, like, we're not we're not doing that. Like just, you know, I don't want to say like, just because because I sound like my mother, you know, just because that's Yeah, but there are like times like that.
But I think that I've also seen enough times in the past where the team argues with me on something being like a good idea or something being useful. And I've argued with them over it eventually relented. And then it's been very obvious that they're right, that that's happened to me enough to know that, like, generally to me, it's like whoever has the higher conviction, right?
If I tell you like, hey, this is why I don't think it's a good idea. And I'm the CEO of the company. And I have a junior team member that's like, cool.
I disagree. And it's like, after I verbalize that, it's just like, okay, like, you know, and this is how we ended up signing up for Salesforce as our CRM and like lighting like $4,000 on fire. And I just like I was just like, guys, like, it's fine.
It's my money. It's a $4,000 training exercise. That's fine.
And then they came to me within like within like, I think it was like 63 days or something after signing the contract. And they're like, yeah, this was a terrible idea. I was like, I told you like I was the Salesforce admin in a previous life.
It is the worst. It is the absolute worst. I told you that you disagreed.
Here we are.
[Craig Hewitt] (10:59 - 12:26)
Yeah, yeah. 12 years. Um, that that's a hot minute.
Like we're eight years like right to the week, I think eight years at Castos. Congrats. Thanks.
Yeah. Well, yeah, I don't know. Like that's an interesting thing to say.
Congrats. Because like, I'm just chatting with someone and they were like, Oh, man, we should have sold in like 2021 or 22. Yeah.
Because like multiples and like you can never time the model. And if a novel set is listening, he'd be like, that's dumb. Don't don't even think like that.
But but I think like the typical lifecycle of a business is call it three to five years. And like, if that's the case, then you and me and like Joel from Buffer and Nathan Barry and you know, a bunch of folks who have been doing these kind of things for like a really long time are kind of outliers, I would say like not not like extreme, but but like outside the normal distribution. What do you think?
I don't know. What do you think it means? Like for me, I definitely have been bored in the last year.
And so I started doing some coaching and do some kind of like a little more personal stuff. But like I was sitting there this morning, and I was like, this is so dumb. Like I really like my business.
I definitely don't like everything about my business. And maybe that that's probably the answer for me is like, sorry, I'm answering the question for you. I'm answering my side of the question.
And I'd love to hear what it's good.
[Amar Ghose] (12:26 - 12:26)
It's interesting.
[Craig Hewitt] (12:26 - 13:49)
I love it. I don't love being in charge of growth. And that that's kind of like where where the company from a headcount perspective has been is like we have product, we have development and we have support nailed and an amazing team members.
It kind of only leaves me for sales and marketing and being the CEO and kind of like what I've come to realize. And it's like this process of like almost grief is like that just doesn't work. You know, I can't be a good CEO and in charge of sales and marketing eight years into a business.
You can for three years. And that's probably why a lot of businesses sell at three to five years because they people just go super hard and run to the wall and then sell. But if I'm like, cool, this is a good business, which it is.
And you're saying the same thing yourself. It's like, why the fuck would I sell this thing? Like, yeah, it affords me an amazing lifestyle.
It's pretty stable. Like, yeah, AI is probably not going to completely fuck us. I can't say that about many other things.
Yeah. Why would I do something different? Probably better to just optimize that one little bit of like we need a marketing person so I can take a step back and really operate at like a C level and start like enjoying things again.
That's kind of where I am. And that's that that dude that's been two years in the making. I just feel like such a fucking idiot for it taking that long.
But like just in the last couple of weeks like that, that's where we are.
[Amar Ghose] (13:49 - 13:49)
Yeah.
[Craig Hewitt] (13:49 - 13:55)
I'd love to hear your perspective, like 12 years. Do you love the business? Like, do you love where you are in the business?
[Amar Ghose] (13:55 - 17:36)
Yeah. So I'm I feel like I'm really lucky when it when I listen to a lot of like the podcast, I hear a lot of people where it's just like, I mean, Andrew Wilkinson from like Tiny and all those, he's got the book Never Enough, right? And the more that I listen to like podcasts and stuff, I feel like that's one of the greatest gifts that I seem to have just picked up like naturally of just like, I feel like I have enough like I am enough like I just don't feel the need for like much more.
I mean, like there's plenty of things that I would love to do if I had more money. But also like, there's not that much that would actually change about my day to day. Like if I had more money, it would change a couple of things.
Like instead of flying business class, I would fly first class, right? Like, you know, instead of going and getting like relatively cheap seats at like the football games, I'd want to get box seats, right? It's like once a month kind of things that I would want to spend, you know, four figures instead of three figures, right?
Like nothing like nothing like crazy, but day to day, I'm already just like happy and content and everything. And so I feel like that's like a really big one that there's a lot of people out there that I feel like it's almost like the challenge that it's more just that like they can't almost like sit still with something for like that that long or like or whatever. And so it's like they constantly want to be moving on to the next thing.
And I wouldn't even say it's necessarily shiny object syndrome, because shiny object syndrome kind of implies that you're like almost chasing something, whereas I think for a lot of people, it's just like fulfillment. A big thing for me, where I feel just very lucky is that I, I really just enjoy the building of the business. And I like kind of the challenge.
And like, essentially, the game that I'm playing, at least right now in life is how far can I build Zenmade while keeping my current like lifestyle and work life balance. And more and more, I'm seeing that it's possible to do both if you have the right team. And that's kind of what you're going through, right?
It's like you're what you're talking about. So for me, about two years ago, I made that key marketing hire, where now all of a sudden, it's like, finally, I can actually step away from the business, and things continue to get better. And it continues to grow in my absence.
I'm still not necessarily like needed, but I'm still the one who's looking forward, like really far into the future and everything. But like, yeah, for me, I'm just enjoying, it's almost like a game to me, it's just like, I'm enjoying each level like as we go, but it's not really like out of the need for anything else anymore. And so yeah, and also, honestly, to be like a little bit like vulnerable here, like, honestly, like, I think that doing it again is like, I mean, it's definitely not guaranteed, right?
As like, as different an entrepreneur as I am right now, going back to the beginning and doing zero to one again, I would much rather just continue to get better and to grow in my current position. And for that to be the game that I play, like, I just I don't really want to go back to like the early years. Like I was telling you, I think before we started recording that I have a quite like a quite like high number of team members given like our amount of revenue.
That's because like, my personal philosophy is I really like getting things done, but I really, really don't like doing things. So to me, having a team is the best thing ever. Like some people having a team is a prison.
For me, I spend half my week on calls and the rest of my week just like thinking and walking around and spending time with the dog and like whatever and just thinking through problems. And I could not be any happier. And for some people, they're just like, when I'm on calls, I'm not doing any work.
And I'm like, for me, calls is the work. So yeah, I don't know.
[Craig Hewitt] (17:37 - 17:48)
Yeah, so that's interesting. So like, I, where did I see this? Oh, it was a Hormozy thing.
I'm like drinking the Hormozy Kool-Aid these days. I went to one of his events a couple of years ago.
[Amar Ghose] (17:48 - 17:59)
Yeah, with Laura. Yeah, I work with, Laura and I share an office in Brighton. So she gave me the full like the full debrief.
And she was saying you were I think the only other SaaS person there, actually.
[Craig Hewitt] (18:00 - 18:26)
Yeah, it was weird. It was weird. But yeah, it was a really good event.
Like for anybody, I'm going to release a video on my YouTube channel, kind of breaking it down. But yeah, it was good. One of the things that he talked about not there, but in one of his other videos is like, as a manager, your definition of productivity is talking to people.
As anyone who's not a manager, their definition of productivity is not that it is doing shit. It's writing code, answering tickets, designing stuff.
[Amar Ghose] (18:27 - 18:27)
Yeah.
[Craig Hewitt] (18:27 - 18:53)
And I think that that's like hard for us to see sometimes until somebody verbalizes it like that. And I think like, Hormozy does a good job of like verbalizing stuff like that in a straightforward way. Yeah, I am in the same boat.
I see these like solopreneurs out there. And I'm like, that seems like the worst possible thing ever is like, even if you're fucking Justin Welch and making a bunch of money.
[Amar Ghose] (18:53 - 18:53)
Yeah.
[Craig Hewitt] (18:53 - 20:25)
If he doesn't show up, he's cooked, right? Like, as my kids would say, like, he's cooked. I could go.
Yeah, if we make this marketing hire, which actually we just working with Mark Thomas. Yeah. Like, cool.
Mark's gonna do marketing, team's gonna do everything else. I would just put an autoresponder out for the couple of like, enterprise clients that email me and shit like partnerships and stuff like that. Payroll runs automatically.
I probably couldn't actually go on vacation for a month. But but it wouldn't be I could do like an hour a day, probably. Which, which is pretty cool.
Do you think I'd like to talk about like your side businesses, you've talked about like, you have the the kind of maid service and stuff like that. I think that's the other side of this coin, right? Because like, one part of it is like, I'm going to grow this thing, I'm going to sell it for five or $10 million.
And then you got a whole nother set of problems, which is like, how do I make money from that? Like that, that's what our traditional investing. The other which like my friends here locally who are not in SaaS advocate for and they're like, Craig, you have this amazing business that can probably generate extra cash for you take that and go do something else with it, which sounds kind of like what you've done.
I'd love to just hear more about that. Because that's kind of like where we are now is like, we have some cash, the business is pretty stable, I want to start doing more stuff with it. Like, yeah, how do you think about stuff outside the business?
Is it a distraction? Like how, how important to your kind of personal financial path is that?
[Amar Ghose] (20:26 - 22:37)
So to me, I would say, I'm probably not the best to ask about kind of like what to do like outside of like of like the business. But really, the way that I think about it is pretty much anything outside of the business is entertainment. And some entertainment like playing poker has financial upside along with financial risk.
Although like even like playing poker, I just consider that like spending $200, right? And occasionally it turns into 400. But in my head, like it's already gone, right?
And so that that's the best way that I that I can kind of think about it. And that's because just in the past, I have chased a couple of other things. So like with this maid service that I have as a side project, that's literally one of the team members who works for ZenMaid who had run a maid service in the past.
She approached me and was like, Hey, I need a tiny bit of like financial backing and want to go and do this and showed me a plan and everything. And I was just like, Yeah, cool. Like, that's fine.
Like, you know, the worst case scenario here is just I get, you know, even more of a firsthand glimpse into like, kind of how our customers work and everything. So to me, it's like, you know, if that like, I'm not really thinking about that as anything until we sell it. And if it goes to zero, it's not going to impact my finances.
But in terms of just like cash that like that, that ZenMaid like spits off, first of all, we're moving to London for some reason. So like most of that money just isn't mine anymore. It just goes straight to I don't know, you step outside in London, and it seems like you're taxed money, which is which is fun.
But essentially for that, we're very boring with it. My wife and I I mean, it just it literally go goes into into crypto and into an into like a Vanguard like index fund of essentially your typical like barbell strategy. I think that at some point in the future, I think it's more likely that I will bring a CEO in to take over ZenMaid or promote somebody internally to CEO, and then we'll likely move on to like another like venture that's more likely than selling.
But I really don't think that I'm the type to do like multiple things at once. Every time I've tried that in the past, it's just you know, ZenMaid backhands me and goes give me give me attention, you know, just every every time.
[Craig Hewitt] (22:38 - 23:23)
So yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, I definitely haven't talked about this like publicly, but like, yeah, so like, I do a little bit of coaching on the on the side. And like, it's fun.
It's really rewarding. I work with tiny seed as their like advisor in residence and help some of the companies there go to some of their events. I was in London last May.
London in May or the UK May is amazing. I think it's maybe the only good time of year from what I hear from weather perspective. And like, I wonder sometimes like, is that just as a distraction?
Like am I just am I just trading short term gains in terms of like, yeah, I make a little bit of money for like the sacrifice of the long term potential and like growth of of castos.
[Amar Ghose] (23:24 - 25:26)
Yeah, for sure. So I do a little bit of coaching as as well. It's just occasionally, you know, I've had some people that have reached out after conversations and have asked to kind of like formalize things and everything.
And so I've done that like a little bit as well. In every case, it's literally I would do this for free. So in most cases, like when my wife was supporting a couple of like select charities, I was just taking the money and just donating it like there.
And it was more just, you know, kind of placing a value on it, making sure people like signed up for further calls. But that's kind of how like how how I thought about it. Like to to me, what I would be asking myself if I were you is other than the money, what is this giving me because I get the feeling that for you that coaching is actually quite meaningful, and that it actually has nothing to do with the money.
At least if you're anything like me, I find it refreshing. And I feel like I show up to Zen made more energized when I'm able to just help out somebody that's a little bit like, you know, like earlier than me on the journey. And I'm able to just sort of help them through a couple of problems just because I've been there.
It's just kind of an empowering thing. I think that in a lot of cases, it's more like the way that I show up in Zen made is where it's actually like it's actually worth it. But to me, it's like, you know, if castos is already like, you know, successful enough and everything, then like you don't have to maximize it, right?
Like, it's kind of like balancing it of like, I'm definitely trying to keep Zen made growing at a fast enough rate that we're not at risk. And like, honestly, I'm kind of feeling a bit of the pinch from that, like right now, that in the past 18 months, it's we've jumped a significant amount in revenue, but it's been from a price increase. It hasn't been from actual like business growth.
And that's something that I find like find concerning. And it's something that I'm like turning my attention like back to. But yeah, I mean, in terms of like the coaching, it's probably not about the money.
And if it was just a financial decision, I doubt that you would do it. But I bet you it's still the right decision for you to do if you like who you're talking to.
[Craig Hewitt] (25:26 - 26:48)
So yeah, I think that yeah, I think that's right. I think that like, it being a side business, literally just like a page on my personal site is good. The money is nice, you know, like the I mean, it's all just savings and investment like that.
It's all just like on top of of like what what we need, which like that's nice. I think the biggest thing is, you know, I've always I've asked this on Twitter, like, I've always wondered the like the journaling people, like, what is it about journaling that makes you so superhuman? And and I think that coaching is a similar thing in that it helps me reflect on like, it's a mirror for myself, too, right?
Like I am a mirror for my clients. And I'm kind of a mirror for myself of like, I tell people stop doing dumb shit, or focus on this thing, or no, you shouldn't launch a second product. And then I go to myself, like, Hmm, that's pretty good advice.
Like, I should probably, I should. And I think about, you know, the people that I really, you know, kind of look up to and respect and I say, like, what would they say in the situation as like a data point? And then and then I kind of like take that perspective back to Castos.
So yeah, 100% that like, I think that's how I show up better. Yeah, energized, you know, you know, whatever, at like my my real job.
[Amar Ghose] (26:49 - 27:52)
Yeah, I feel like I feel like I have like, you know, it's like people have like the angel and the devil on like their shoulder. Yeah, like, I feel like I've got like a hippie like stoner on like on on one side, and then I've got Alex Hormozy on the other, right. And it's like, that's like, always like the like a kind of a battle, or maybe something a little bit like more like more like reasonable, but I definitely do the same thing where it's like when I'm looking at something, you know, I'll definitely run through essentially the question of like, what would Alex Hormozy do here?
And then usually my first reaction is that's way too extreme, I'm going to pick something like less extreme, you know, but it's still a good like, it's a good point. Like you said, it's a data point. And if you ask yourself about how would a couple different smart friends, right?
How would how would Rob think about this? How would how would Laura think about this? And you ask yourself a couple of those, you can very quickly, I mean, you can do that in real life and actually ask the question.
But honestly, as a thought exercise, I find it very helpful as well. And yeah, you're right. That's the big thing with coaching, is it's like, what would I tell someone else if they came to me with my exact problem?
And that's almost always, you'd say something different than what you're about to do.
[Craig Hewitt] (27:52 - 28:51)
Yeah, yeah, no, I was like, literally happened yesterday. I was like, Oh, what's he gonna ask? Oh, okay.
So one thing that I one thing I wonder about for some of these folks, we're talking about, like, we would go to them for advice. I wonder, like, who does Rob Walling go to for advice? Not a lot of people who I would consider like significantly further along in their kind of business development or personal, like professional development than someone like him.
I certainly have a couple of people I go to, but I'm curious how you think about like continuing to evolve as a founder. You're, you're significantly into this, right? Yeah, someone called me a seasoned founder the day after, I was like, fuck you.
I was like, okay, thanks. But I definitely, I definitely, I definitely talk more than I listen these days. And I think that's not always great.
Like, how do you, how do you continue to like level up?
[Amar Ghose] (28:51 - 29:23)
Yeah, so I think it's about, I found, I found the same thing a little bit. But I think it's just in terms of continuing to kind of like, maybe not like expand your network. But it's essentially just continuing to get into like bigger and bigger, like, like rooms.
And I think that it's kind of finding the right pace for that. I think that if you push that too hard, then people get uncomfortable and discouraged and then don't like it. So for me, let's see, you've I think I've heard you on the dynamite circle on the tropical MBA podcast, I think, right?
Or have you not been on that one?
[Craig Hewitt] (29:24 - 29:28)
I haven't not been on that one. Yeah. Okay.
I listen and be a part of the DC. Yeah, but okay.
[Amar Ghose] (29:28 - 31:51)
Yeah, yeah. So, um, so, so yeah, so for the DC, I've been in the DC for almost like 10 years now. So I joined their like higher program when they released that of DC black.
But then more and more recently, I joined Hampton from Sam par and the my first million crew. And that's been just kind of another, another kind of like level. I did, I did like SAS Academy for for for a bit there.
And really, the funny thing there is that with a lot of these things, it's I know going in with SAS Academy, we didn't use much of the content, it was entirely for the network that it was just cool. Like, it's a little bit annoying, because it's like, I know that I'm essentially giving somebody my money to essentially just like, like meet the people that are like there, but it's essentially buying your way like in into a network. And from that, it's like, you know, pulled out a couple of people that are on like similar journeys.
And I think that just like over time, you just find more and more people. So I think for you and me, we probably do find ourselves talking more and like listening a little bit less because it's just of the people that we talk to, we're ahead of the vast, like the vast majority of them. So what I'm generally looking for these days is I'm less looking for founders that are necessarily ahead of me, although that is always great when when you find that.
And of course, there are tons out there that you that you realize of just like how small like we, we like really like really are when it when it all like is said and done. But for me, it's more like I'm looking for people that are ahead of me in very specific areas, right? So it's like, I don't need somebody that's ahead of me, like overall at like $10 million or whatever.
But I might be looking for a head of growth that has taken two or three startups to $10 million. And then I'm trying to do essentially a development interview with them to try to pick their brains on stuff, right? The other thing actually is also just just leveling up of like, when when we were really early, it was all books, then it became like courses or torrented courses before that, then paid for them later, right?
And like in all that group coaching and etc. Now I'm very much in like the one on one sort of like, so sort of like area where, you know, I need something, I go directly to the best person that I can find and pay for an hour or a couple of hours like of their time, and then go go from there. And so I think that has really helped me to level up a lot, like a lot as well, that I'm able to sort of force myself up in in levels with finances and just all sorts of things.
[Craig Hewitt] (31:51 - 33:15)
Yeah, yeah. I'm a sucker for for all that kind of stuff, man. Like I dabbled in SaaS Academy, I went to one went to one of the events, it just like kind of wasn't wasn't for me.
I joined the digital marketer, like, oh, yeah, call it m three, like, similar, similar kind of thing, but just for marketing, which was really good. Like Ryan Dice is a stud, like, yeah, he is incredible, incredible stuff there. You know, went to the Hormosa thing, which is just a one time thing, and really wasn't that expensive.
But yeah, I've looked at like Hamptons and the DC black stuff. Yeah, that's probably like a later this year kind of thing for me. Because yeah, like community, community is so important, man.
I mean, like, you're gonna be in London, there's a ton of, you know, startup, I know more startup people in London than I do, like where I live. But but even then, like you're, you know, you might share an office with Laura, but you're still kind of freaking by yourself all the time. Like, I know you had a bit of a health scare earlier this year, like, as we get further into our business, like you got to start saying, like, okay, that balance of like, for the first few years, I'm just gonna run into the wall and kill myself for the make this thing work.
Now, I'm kind of looking at like, a lot of days, I don't start my day till 930. Because I dropped the kids off at school, then I go to the gym, like that, that needs to happen at some point, like, tell me, tell me about what kind of like what happened and kind of like, how you think about that balance?
[Amar Ghose] (33:15 - 35:38)
Yeah, definitely. So yeah, in in at the end of January of this year, I got diagnosed with a brain tumor. And I had about about three weeks where it was just completely unknown of it was like, we knew there was something seriously wrong in like in in my head, but we had no idea if it was terminal or if it was going to be completely okay.
Thankfully, completely okay. They just gave me a couple of like of pills. But three weeks is a lot of time to be like questioning everything and to not really know kind of what like your future, your future kind of kind of looks like.
I'm quite thankful to say that that I did like sort of zoom out and look at everything and did feel like I was already living quite a bit like or like like quite quite like in alignment with sort of like who I wanted to be. I think the only thing that maybe was missing a little bit not like missing a little bit, but it definitely made me want to see my friends like immediately, right? That was one of those things.
And it's like, I haven't checked in with like quite a few of my friends and far too long. And so you know, that kind of woke me up to that of like with like with the relationships and everything. But yeah, I know what you mean about like the work life balance and stuff.
And for me, it's just less. Yeah, less of that kind of early morning, middle of the night sacrifice that, you know, I built the business while traveling the world and stuff. So I had, you know, extended periods of time where I might be waking up at 5am to do sales calls, or be staying up until midnight and all that stuff's like out the door.
Now, my favorite thing about being in the in the UK now, though, is that we run on kind of like half us half European hours, but all of our calls are in the afternoon. And like the rest of my time is just thinking time. So I'm the same as you that, you know, oftentimes, I'm not sitting down at my computer until after lunch.
But you know, occasionally, that means that I'm on calls until eight or 9pm as well. But that comes with the territory. So I definitely like having the mornings to myself.
But uh, yeah, I think that work life balance, at least for me, like, like a lot of people, it's like they work because like they get a lot of fulfillment out of it and everything. And I definitely get fulfillment out of out of the work. But for me, it's very much like a means a means to to to an end.
And you know, the work is part of my work life balance that I wouldn't trade the company for like a bunch of money because I wouldn't find it fulfilling without the company. But um, yeah, you know, I work three to four days a week pretty hard. And then I pretty much have a three to four day weekend every week.
[Craig Hewitt] (35:38 - 37:26)
So yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. I, um, oh, sorry.
It's, it's kind of late. So so we have like, my dad has some pretty like significant like, like Parkinson's and dementia. Like he's he's getting quite sick as he's older.
Yeah. And it's tough. That's why I was pausing.
But I largely tie that back to like, he kind of retired, um, in his mid fifties. And, and I think there's like, there's a lot of data around this, right? Like when you retire, like your purpose goes away, you hear about founders selling their business and they just like lose it.
I think that is those two things, like knowing those two things at the same time are really significant for me and my, um, my path, right? Like, um, you know, my wife would would love for me to sell Castos and like have some money and like sense of security. And I, and I'm kind of like, gosh, I, I think it would be worse.
Like, I think it'd be, it'd be great to look at the bank account and see like zeros and stuff. And then I would be like, oh, wow. Like I got to figure out how to make money with that money.
I got to figure out what the heck I'm going to do because like she works, we have kids in middle schools who like we have years until we can just go fuck off and do whatever we want. Um, and like, I have firsthand context of like it actually being pretty bad for you to not have something to do. Um, and so I think that like, we're kind of, it goes all the way back to the beginnings.
Like we talked about like you're 12 years and we're eight years in, like I'm kind of sitting here saying like, Hey, how can we be 20 years into the business? Um, and gosh, like it'll probably look really different. Uh, but I definitely am not going to start over like you, like that, that's the worst possible, uh, thing.
I don't, you know, like the dumb thing probably would be like, oh, I'll go sell this and go buy another one.
[Amar Ghose] (37:26 - 37:26)
Yeah.
[Craig Hewitt] (37:27 - 37:59)
A ton of risks. Cause I don't understand the market. Like there's shit about Castos and podcasting.
That's not great. Like customers are pretty price sensitive. There's not a lot of expansion revenue, blah, blah, blah, but there's a lot.
That's pretty good too. Um, yeah, I don't know. I do.
I do kind of kick myself sometimes because I like, I kind of have one shot at SAS and you probably do too. Like I think we're similar age. Um, I'm not going to do this again.
I knowing what I know now, I wouldn't have done this. I wouldn't do this again, but I won't throw it away to do something else.
[Amar Ghose] (38:00 - 39:01)
Yeah. I feel very, very, very similarly of, yeah, in, in hindsight, I probably had better opportunities. There were better niches that could have been picked.
There were all sorts of things that could have been done differently. But I recognize from a very, very early point in the business of like, this is kind of my opportunity and finding a product market fit where like, I'm the founder, I'm in control. Like I'm able to do these things.
That's not something that comes up every day. Another thing that, that just like I remind myself of is when you think about more like traditional small businesses and stuff, there are plenty of very happy, um, and successful business owners around the U S that just own like the local maid service that makes 800 K or 1.5 million dollars like a year. And they're taking home a reasonable percentage of that living a great life.
And that's something that I sometimes have to remind myself because it's really tough not to compare myself to these 17 year olds using AI to make $20 million like a year.
[Craig Hewitt] (39:01 - 39:01)
Right.
[Amar Ghose] (39:01 - 39:42)
And it's to remind myself that it's like, Hey, like right now, if I never grew another day, but just kept this business stable, even at half of where it's at right now, that's still an amazing business with way better margins than like these other small businesses and like, and, and stuff. And so I, I feel like it's all like, it's all relative and it's also like what you compare to, right. That like, we already have amazing small businesses.
It's nice that like our, our, our, like the goals that kind of sit, not like society, but like the SAS community is telling us is to, you know, be pushing for like 5 million or 10 million a year. But also we're pretty successful without accomplishing those things. Right.
And it's, it's important to just remember that every now and again, I'm just like, Hey, like we're bootstrapped. We've already made it.
[Craig Hewitt] (39:43 - 40:00)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. Um, I want to wrap up by just kind of getting your take on AI, uh, like there's a lot, a lot to it.
Um, I guess first, like, are you kind of bullish or bearish scared or excited?
[Amar Ghose] (40:01 - 42:08)
Um, I'm definitely, I'm definitely excited for, for, for, for AI. I, um, I think that, um, I mean, I think just overall, I think the world is just going to get a lot cooler with, with AI. Like personally, I'm excited for all the things.
I think that you, you know, like the, the world's always changing. So I feel like the people that are like against it, it's just like, Hey, like, you know, you probably would have been against the industrial revolution too. You know, like back in the day of it's like, you know, that's fine.
That's entirely your, your, you know, opinion or like, you know, you're, you're right to do that, but it's not, it's not going to slow Sam Altman down. Right. Like he's not, he's not going to care.
Um, so, um, yeah, I, I don't feel threatened by it in the business. So I think that, I think that it's kind of like a mix of things. If you have like developers and you have people that are saying that like SAS is dead because people can just like throw together their own SAS, it's like, well, guess what?
Somebody still has to manage that system, right? Those systems still break just because you can say into, you know, cursor build me this thing doesn't mean that that's going to work or that you want to like have your organization relying on that internally. Right.
So for me, I'm looking at it and I'm like, what, I think that, you know, enough made service owners are going to go out and like verbalize and build their own competitor to Zenmade to like affect my business. Probably not. They're probably going to pay us a hundred dollars a month.
Let us figure out how to make these things better. And if anything, I could see us in the future becoming the ones where it's like, Hey, you sign up for Zenmade. We tell you all these things that we put together for you.
And then you can like use AI to maybe describe a couple of other things that you would like about your setup. And then we will kind of modularize and put together all the things that we built and that we put together. So you get the perfect made service that's for your actual software, but we've thought through all the details.
And so I can see it being something like along, like along those lines. But, yeah, I think there's some people that think that it's not going to affect anything. And I think that's silly.
And then I think there's other people that are just saying like, Oh yeah, like now there's no need for humans to work anymore. And it's just like, that's also not true at all.
[Craig Hewitt] (42:08 - 44:42)
Right. So, you know, I, I'm excited. You mentioned crypto.
I look at it just like crypto. Like it's, it's a whole new thing. Jordan Gall was on and he was like, you know, before there was like, you can answer the phone, you can have a person, you can have an answering service.
And now there's a third option, you know, and I kind of think AI is the same thing. It's a, it's a tool for a lot of us. I think the thing I'm most nervous about though, is I think it could affect us when I, when I put my paranoid hat on, it is like, it could affect us in a really negative way that like there could be, I always say just like less economy.
Like there, there could be a lot of people that lose their jobs because they're just redundant and AI will just kind of do this for you or make the person who's still there so much more effective that they don't need 20 people. They need 10 or 15 people. And I think that's the, you know, it's not a black swan cause I kind of see it already, but, but that's the, like the thing that, yeah, like, you know, people are not going to go build their own podcasting platform, but what's probably more likely, I guess, is like the economy is just really affected and people just can't afford to do stuff.
I think that there's, that's the thing I'm most worried about. Everything else is like, dude, we're getting the autonomous robot as soon as it's available. Like I'm, I'm just like, I'm, I'm a maximum, the axiom is on AI.
Like I told one of our team members the other day, I was like, look, if you're not using this and like trying to use this every day, you're like being like delinquent and your job, like, you know, we're, we're taking a pretty hard stance. We have like kind of show and tell every week. We're like, Hey, I tried this thing and it, you know, or it sucks or I'm using cloud in this way or whatever.
Um, we're, we're putting AI into our products like really soon, like next week, maybe in a pretty significant way. Um, yeah, that'll be cool. Um, and I guess I can feel like that because we're not a content marketing agency.
That's just going to get decimated. Like if anything, like you podcasting is going to be positively affected by, by AI, I think, because like, you know, fucking blogging is a joke. Now social is becoming a joke.
Uh, video is like where it's at and podcasting is right behind it in terms of like authentic content. Um, so just from a platform or like medium perspective, like we're really well positioned. Um, and I think you, you are more so right.
Like in service in person services is like not go anywhere. It can't go anywhere.
[Amar Ghose] (44:42 - 46:33)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
It's like until, until everyone can afford, like, you know, the Japanese, like self-cleaning toilets and like everything else takes care of itself. It's like, there will always be room for this and, and, and, and everything. Um, yeah, I really enjoyed your chat.
I think it was with, with Tim, I think, I think his name was on, on AI that was on, I think it was like one of the more, more recent like episodes. I enjoyed that conversation about it. Um, where, yeah, I mean, obviously like, yeah, the world world's changing and, um, yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna make, make some, some like some big, um, some big differences to, to, to things.
Um, so yeah, I'm definitely very interested to see how, like how, how it all plays out. I do think that it'll work quite nicely. Like for us that I feel like I feel like the AI revolution is going to, there's going to be a lot of new competitors that are going to like pop up and because of AI, like they can, they can just pop up like so much faster than like then, then before.
But I think that essentially brand and reputation is going to be more valuable than ever. And so us having already been in the game for so long, I think is actually going to make a big difference as long as we're able to sort of get on the AI train enough. Right.
And I think that there's going to be a couple of folks or a lot of folks that maybe started what, like six, seven years after us or something that are going to get kind of caught in no man's land where they've spent three, four years building stuff up. They can't quickly transition to AI, but they don't have like the brand and the reputation to kind of carry them, like carry them through. So, um, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll see.
Like, um, yeah, I'm not really taking anyone in our industry seriously until they essentially like keep showing up for five years. Just, we just see so many that quit by like year two or two or year two or three that we just, yeah, we just, we just don't worry until they, they, they show that they're going to keep doing the work for longer than three years.
[Craig Hewitt] (46:33 - 46:42)
Yeah. Super interesting. Super interesting.
Um, dude, really good to catch up. Thank you for, for coming on, uh, folks who want to like connect with you, like where's the best place?
[Amar Ghose] (46:43 - 47:13)
Yeah, definitely. Uh, so used to be most active on Twitter or X. Now I'm kind of moving over to LinkedIn.
So that's probably like the best, the best spot. I'm just a Margo. Um, uh, personal website is the American dream.
Um, so like the American dream, but I'm are, so it's the American dream.com and uh, yeah, I've got a podcast, but like, if you're listening to this and you don't know me, then I don't really recommend my podcast. If you're listening to this and you're like, Oh, I know, Craig, I know him are, you might enjoy my podcast. So, you know, give it a look if you want.
[Craig Hewitt] (47:14 - 47:16)
Awesome. Awesome. All right, buddy.
Thank you.
[Amar Ghose] (47:17 - 47:18)
Yeah. Thanks, Craig. This is great to do.