I've shared ZenMaid's revenue which looks impressive over time - but let's talk about *take home pay* so some of you guys get a more realistic picture of what it looks when you're _not_ a developer founder
(ie you're not the highest earning talent in your own company)
As the 1 doing the development his time was more valuable than mine for the first few years (it's evened out since)
Arun is no longer with the co but we're still best friends. Here's us lookin suave AF at my wedding
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ef_vecwU4AE25wv.jpg)
We paid ourselves $0
Holy shit - they're on Twitter and follow me
@Sparkle_Center was the first @zenmaid client
More on magical first dollars:
theamaricandream.com/blog/dollar
In 2014 ZenMaid earned $20,833. Almost all of it went right back into the business, mainly for paid ads
That's right. We didn't have time to do much marketing ourselves so we paid for traffic from day 1
The only money we took out from the business was for sushi
👇
We still do it to this day when we see each other. Here's us in BKK celebrating with my sister @Prigoose on the ZM dime
![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ef_8yXzU8AE4Ibs.jpg)
Like an arrogant prick that gave me the confidence to quit my job at @UserVoice and become a digital nomad
I left the US in April 2015 earning $1k per month with at least $10k cc debt
I was spending my days selling someone else's product (UV CEO @rrwhite who is one of my favorite human beings on the planet) and we thought selling our own made more long term sense (duh)
That raise made me feel richer than any paycheck I'd ever earned working for someone else
I felt baller AF in Thailand, on the level of @JohnnyFDK
So hopefully you're getting an idea of the risk/sacrifices we made to try to make this crazy dream a reality.
My take home was ~$18k for the year
We were not making a true business profit so when I say take home, I mean this is ALL I took home
The end of 2017 was our true put-up-or-shut-up moment when we f*cked up and lost 30% of our MRR over 6 mo
Luckily Arun stepped in to help save the day. He still had equity in the company and realized it was going to $0 if he didn't (lol)
Monique was with me in Chiang Mai as I dealt with the fall out of this and we spoke last year about what I learned in hindsight
theamaricandream.com/blog/podcast-e…
2018 was the first year that it began to look like it made actual *financial* sense to have started or stuck with ZenMaid
Took home $2400/mo then quickly bumped to $2800
As a nomad, I felt rich tho I was still paying off debt
I got questions about my pinned Tweet recently
"Why did you think about quitting before this if you guys were already making almost $200k a year?"
If only ...
$200k sounds nice but it's LOL when our take home is just $30k
2019: This is where all the hard work began to kick in
The flywheel was turning
We made $596k and my take home was tied to our revenue - Started the year around $3500/mo and ended it over $5k
At some point here I passed my SF salary
theamaricandream.com/blog/flywheels
We'll break $1m ARR in Oct and my take home will finally be in the dev founder range of ~$8k (and increasing 5% each month)
But we also matured a lot as a biz so ...
Meaning I receive a quarterly profit check of a couple grand
(shout out to @MikeMichalowicz for the amazing Profit First book)
This also means I can step away from the biz and it'll pay me!
The first 324 sound insane to most people.
The point, as is the point with many of my tweets, is to stick with it.
Don't give up.
My other point is that ...
If there's one thing I've learned from @tferriss it's this:
YOU DON'T NEED TO BE A MILLIONAIRE TO LIVE LIKE ONE
That's my wife @FranCresswell - remember that shit show redesign fiasco from a few tweets back?
I met Fran in the middle of that and somehow presented myself well
Seriously though, jump on my email list if you're interested in SaaS, marketing, or becoming a big baller shot caller
theamaricandream.com
theamaricandream.com/blog/freedom-i…
Don't worry. I have absolutely nothing to sell you.
That's what @zenmaid is for 🤣
Full transparency: I'm STILL in credit card debt
I was within a few weeks of making my final payment when we decided to buy @BurnChurn from @KevinUnkrich (thanks Kev!)
TLDR Do as I say, not as I do
I've had the DC (@TropicalMBA) since 2015, a software support group called The Foundation (@danemaxwell), and most recently the Trends community from @TheHustle
Wish I'd had a community like @indiehackers earlier on!