how do you plan your day and you know manage five clients that pay you so much how much does your agency net right now and how many hours do you have to work I pretty much worked 7 days a week 14 hours a day almost I went to college for one semester and then completely quit going started studying in my hostel dorm room all right hi everyone and welcome to another podcast today we have Manu Manu has a super interesting Journey he's suddenly popped off on the internet uh because of a library that he has created we'll talk about his experience how he got into coding what does he do right now his experience creating and working on his own agency without any further Ado let's get right into it so hey Manu welcome to the Pod would love to have a brief introduction about you hey hey har thanks for having me so I I'd start off with uh when I started coding I started coding back in 2016 I believe when I was in second year I passed out in 2019 and I started off working with JavaScript initially because I was into this thing that if you make websites you're cool but back then that was that was a thing so I sort of got into it and I I went to college for one semester and then completely quit going started starting in my hostel dorm room so from there it picked up I got into JavaScript web development and general started off with HTML CSS and then from there on I picked up many many Frameworks and surprisingly angular was my first one mhm so that was that was disappointing for quite some time but then I switch to react because it was popular back then and I was I was rigged whatever was popular I was into getting this thing like I want to have a job as soon as possible so whatever was popular at that time I sort of picked it up and I started coding then from there on I also started to I mean I had this thing like I don't want to have a job in the longer run I want to have something of my own so I started freelancing on the side and I built websites for local restaurants and businesses or agencies which were there uh in that area and from there on I also started working on eity on the side which is my freelancing agency I I used to freelance with that name earlier but now it's registered in two places so that is that is a bit about me and I primarily work with react and react based Frameworks and I built websites for agencies and companies which are startups mostly and are based out of us all right makes L sense so could you mention what was your degree and like what college you go by to so I went to UPS deun it is a college in utarak deun and I did B Tech in computer science and engineering sounds good and you said after second semester you you dropped off uh as I stopped going to college I didn't drop off I completed my degree uh I I flung mathematics in the first semester and then I passed it later on but then after second semester I realized like I don't want to I won't I I'm I'm pretty sure nobody's going to teach me this in college whichever College you in so I had to do it myself so I enrolled in many of the courses which were available back then on udy and udity and I started learning on my own on my own page so that's where it picked it up from cor that makes a lot of sense cool so you left your college in second semester as like stopped going to college then you started freelancing when did you grab your first paid gig I think it was in third semester like I said uh third or I think fourth semester when I reached out to a local restaurant which was right drinks to my hostel so we told them like we build your website we'll give you email addresses and we'll also work on your digital marketing aspect which is nothing but uh starting some Instagram Pages or some sort of things I didn't handle it we had one more person working with us so he sort of tackled that and I built the website earlier what I used to do was I used to code it up in HTML CSS drop it off to some hosting provider hostinger was famous at that time so I've been through that I also had my strength at PHP and I mean yeah it was it was good back then I don't I don't blame it yeah it worked it it got me money so that makes a lot of sense to me right on yeah I think PHP is hated for some reason but still I think I've heard like one third of the internet still works on PHP which is like yeah makes a lot sense uh cool so next up um how did you learn how to code and you mentioned you saw a bunch of courses do you think that's the right path for a beginner to take now I look back at it the courses I took the projects I made that helps you but somehow you also need someone to guide you into the right direction is what I feel lately because once I started working in a real job is when I realized uh there is so much you can do with a course or a tutorial and it will only take you so far you need someone or maybe a mentor he doesn't have to be with you all the time you just have to get your code reviewed and someone who is experience enough or even if it is like 2 months more experience than you who can tell you that this is wrong and this is right even if it is a code review and a pull request that is also a teaching moment and then you sort of get into the habit of building things the correct way and there is no correct way whichever works works that at least that is what I feel but uh if someone is there to check your code and help you out also it can be a peer as well that helps a lot so when I was working in my job my previous job there was this Mentor uh his name is vij he amazing T coder he taught me most of the things like how things work in production so he initially he handheld me to the point that he had to shout at me for things to work because I was such I mean I thought I was the best because I had done so much work previously I was already freelancing on the side and stuff like that but then I realized there are more things to goe than just writing and pushing it makes a lot of sense I think I totally agree I think the learning that you get working in a job with with smart people is 100 times better than what a course can teach you you're you're you have like tunnel vision I think when you're in a course because you're doing you're pretty much copying a tutorial super interesting I I totally align on that next question did you do DSA at all yes yes there's a funny story I have the cracking cracking the coding interview book also with me I've tried a lot but then lately I realized I'm not meant for it because for me DSA is like uh 12th grade ke mathematics the more you solve the better you get at it and there are only handful of patterns that you have to apply to different problems and I was never good at it I failed my 11th standard mathematics I failed maths all the time in college and you know I was never that disciplined person who could just sit and solve problem till it gets solved when it comes to DSA so I didn't click with it I tried a lot of times but the discipline Factor was not just kicking in and I thought I'd ditch it completely I mean I do arrays and strings and when it comes to dynamic dynamic programming I quit doesn't like someh so yeah I tried I mean coding in C++ putting my Solutions on gab I also created algo churn for that matter to get good at DSA so I built that platform so that I could push more code and people could also see my solution like uh what's correct and what's wrong but then I realized I was not enjoying it then I completely switched it to front end because that's what I love doing now it's it hosts like 30 40 Front End questions got it oh wow super interesting what is this website again it's called alo.com I'll bring in the chat also Al super cool yeah man I think most deaf people this is like the first project that every deaf person who was forced into TSA makes like a lead code clone as yeah makes a lot of sense cool this is super interesting let's see what what else I have uh so what was your motivation behind building a UI Library it looks like an extremely professional one if I'm being honest like I super I super surprised and happy to see like someone from core of India like born and brought up in India build something like this I would love to know what was the motivation behind it how long did it take for you to build and how did you you know Market it considering you know it's suddenly become very famous so right now it has become famous because now it's eity UI earlier it was called Tailwind Master kit which was three years back so I've been I've been building compound for around five six years now I really like building UI which looks good and gives you that wow factor so I've been doing it for quite some time now and the reason I built tailin Master kit initially was to get my hands dirty with SAS so how SAS applications work how real world users use your application and the ones which are paid how do you actually deal with those people how do you handle support how do you handle updates to your components and all those things so I sort of released a product which was called Tailwind Master kit and which was Tailwind component it's still there 100 100 components are there I started off with that but it didn't perform that well because I was relatively new to this field but then I stopped working on it and I started building components for blogs when I write blogs as well for free code camp and my my own blog section so I keep on Silling out these components just for the for the heck of it like why not if you like doing something share it with the world is what what I think I do and from there on meanwhile I registered aity as well so I sort of had a component page there where I shared a blog post on how I built this component it picked up SEO wise like it was performing really well if you search frame motion components or something eity pops up but then I realized people are not really interested in blogs or learning how things work with framer motion or how I built it with framer motion they just want to click a button copy it into their code and just use it and make a landing page out of it so from there on I thought of why not make a separate project out of it wherein we already have Shaden right so e is a fog of shad's uh web page which is already there so I foged it I added my components into it and I had some to begin with I think it was six or seven components that I already built some for clients some for my own personal purposes and then I simply deployed that project on a separate separate instance it's now it's called e UI ui. estry.com and you can just copy paste and you know request components and all sorts of things and I was not really ready for it to be picked up like that so some of the components are not that great because I didn't care much back then but now I have to sit down and improve on all the components which are there currently performance- wise at least but I picked up pretty pretty wild yeah it's pretty well I think I saw it uh I was super uh intrigued considering yeah okay I didn't know it was a folk off Shad I knew it was like built the same way where you can copy over components over to your code base and super interesting that you took that path how did you think of monetization did you even think of monetization when you were building it yes yes I did think of monetization actually the code is also there I released it as a as a paid product uh I had a payall setup but then I realized I really didn't want to get into the get more users to sell out more components race I was like let people use it for free and if they want anything custom I can redirect them to my agency business so a person comes who's a Founder he sees that he can build this component he can see my code he doesn't have to interview me to see if I can write code for his company or his product so the friction is drastically reduced once you reduce that friction then it goes to the pricing page that's a really high intent person who really wants to buy it not everyone clicks on pricing if you see if I if my website gets 1 million page views it'll be hardly 100 person clicking on the pricing page so those 100 people are high intent people who really want their websites to be really good and they sort of trust me on that front so I wanted to boost my agency business with it um A7 is a byproduct of that I think cor that makes a lot of sense I think so suddenly it's become really popular to you know have a subscription agency business is that similar to what you're building I have a subscription model uh but the lower tier doesn't generally work for me as an engineer so let's say if I if I have four tiers $2,000 5,000 10,000 most of them are 10,000 people 2,000 ones really doesn't work because it's a lot of work and a lot less money compared to the what we are getting in the bigger bigger clients one so that is that is my target audience currently subscription model generally works even I didn't believe if it'll work or not when I started with this but it picked up all right super interesting so so you're saying most of your clients are picking the $10,000 a month package and and what do they get in that they get Landing w b basically anything related to front end or if they want full stack prices go higher that starts at 10,000 but if it is just a landing page or let's say five pages for their startup they want to have uh landing page or five other pages with it or some of the dashboard Works which comes inside of the application that comes under that cor and is this is this is a one time Fe or is this a subscription until they work with you 10,000 is a subscription generally what happens with that is once they pay 10,000 they switch to the subscription month because most of my clients are long-term all right so they they see okay for them that's less friction like they pay 10,000 and then then then they see if that works or not if it works for them they switch to the 5,000 monthly retain all right super and and then I'm I'm going to increase prices man I can't I can't take more clients with this one all right super interesting prising wow insane so you're saying okay uh super cool and how so if you don't mind me asking uh how much does your agency net right now and how many hours do you have to work I pretty much work 7 days a week 14 hours a day almost uh this was last month which because it was picking up initially and then some of the videos also know build mean went through and last month actually I stopped counting after a point right now I'm currently working with five clients at this time got and all 10 ones and it becomes increasingly difficult if you're doing it singlehandedly because uh the worst thing that you can do with code is context switching so you're working for one client and then you have to switch your context work for a different one work for a different one all the time you're feeling the stress that you're missing out you're not providing value and stuff like that so now I'm what I'm trying to do is trying to help uh get some help from Freelancers initially and see if that works out I mean not me all the clients are not super happy when it comes to me asking other developers but and I informed that beforehand that this is going to happen I'm not having that much of bandwidth to work on all these projects so I'll be requiring some design help some developmental help and the and stuff like that but I overview all the work yeah I think eventually an agency will can only scale scale if you increase the prices or or get more people on um and interesting that so it is super interesting that you've build almost like 50k a month 600k year business uh Alone um zero expenses uh you don't have employees as you said and you can pretty much increase prices and and you're working 14 hours but but at the same time you know you can probably do that for a year and you know that's enough money um and I don't think a lot of agencies in India do that I think agencies in India are famous for you know underpricing themselves and giving up like the shittiest code a lot of agencies in Delhi Pune small ones are like famous on a park I'm glad to see like someone who's providing value and you know people are also super happy with you know being overcharged or even charged as what you feel is fair U this is super cool uh and I don't think I've heard many stories from India doing this so like I've seen I've seen this a lot the clients who I charged $1,000 for a complete projects were more difficult to deal with the people who are paying me 10,000 and they're like do it and and it's totally a s uh this's this person John who runs moon beam and Rogue I'm working for him fulltime so I've been I've been working with him for over two years now we built moon beam we have built R and there is absolutely zero calls that has happened it was just one call for five minutes that was the day I joined after that it's totally acing it's WhatsApp and slack and we buil products which are like scaling to thousands and thousands of users yeah I agree I think the the more the price bracket the more the trust the clients have and yeah once you get into the $1,000 $500 range it's just super nitpicky um so oh wow so you mentioned you have a full-time job and you have an agency on the side yeah I mean full-time as an Eastern is providing full-time consultation to Rogue right now earlier I was an employee there but then we switched to this exterity model go makes a lot sense and exterity is is it uh Incorporated in India or is it a foreign entity both both Solutions private limited is in India Labs LLC is in the US LLC because I was working with us clients and they they were facing some issues transferring money to a private limited here in India so I through the stripe Atlas rout of incorporation then now it's smooth I've got to maintain to when I understand zero financials I have zero idea how taxation Works where do I have to pay taxes so my CA takes care of it but then I'm trying to learn as I go all right yeah makes a lot of sense I think so few agency owners I know and which this might be a path that you might take is open a company in Dubai stay out of the country for like 6 months and you know pretty much don't pay any taxes uh only pay taxes on the income that you bring to India something to think about in case you're you know thinking of continuing down this route because I think you're reaching the range where you're going to make like a lot of money um probably going to hit a mill every year very soon um the 30% of that is is a lot of money to save in a very legal path by moving my money to the buy I'm still thinking about it because uh the moment I hire a freelancer I become a manager which I don't really like I like to write my own code and you know the feeling is different when you push something and the client really likes it people really like it that's a different feeling yeah but have to be a lot of on the manager front which I don't know if I like it or not but that's the way to scale nothing you can do about it for sure it's the difference between being a developer and an entrepreneur right you think you have to be an entrepreneur you eventually have to take the like bite the bullet and become a manager U that's said you don't have to do it so whenever I freelanced I almost had similar you know uh working hours thought of doing it in the end it's just so much pain to make a junior engineer understand things and a sen engine is going to charge a lot of money so uh I don't know if you know agencies scale that said in your case if you know U you can like if you're charging 10K you can hire someone for like 3K which is you'll probably get a good developer for 3K in India I'd be curious to see I I it never worked for me but yeah maybe do it for a year and then see if you if you want to skill that way definitely I'll have to try a lot of things there whichever whichever work I mean I think I need one good engineer that sees some long-term Vision with me and willing to be a part of aity as a whole and then I think things will be easier from there makes a lot of sense yeah super interesting man let's see if I have more questions here uh all right I had a question around full-time job experience well which you don't really have a full-time job um but let's say agency experience you mentioned a lot of context switching so would love to know how do you plan your day and you know manage five clients that pay you so much I have linear setup on my system for my company I pretty much do everything with linear for those who don't know it's a task management sort of jira if you have experience with it so I dedicate time for every client how much time it will take me to realistically push this update and how much bandwidth I'll have for that to be reviewed and if there are any changes to make it for example if I'm working for X client I'll be dedicating this amount of cars let's say in the morning I wake wake up I do this and I push it then I have a two days bandwidth for feedback and stuff and from there on it picks up I mean right now it is all ad hoc basis been tackling all things and juggling things at once I'm really trying to streamline it with linear I think it has a lot of help there so I write up my tasks I prioritize them and I sh them so that's what working for me right now but I think in the long run when I hire people I'll be delegating these tasks to them instead of me doing it correct I'll be managing a linear board is what I see later on right on yeah that makes a lot of sense are you so you mentioned your clients might be little Del tally about this how are you thinking of you know scaling this out considering yeah you'd hire employees still figuring out out out options I think people what I think is people hire me for my design and developmental skills the speed I work I think these three factors come into picture if I find someone who can do something similar and provide the same amount of things things and quality in that time frame I think I think I'm pretty much done with it I'll be I mean I'm anyway open to clients that I have a team working with me and they'll be doing it for you even if I don't have it I say it in a way so that even if tomorrow I hire someone they'll not be complaining about it but if it is the quality which is getting suffered it it makes no sense right then I have to uh reduce the amount of clients that I'm working with and focus on quality otherwise they will be no business Ian there are many agencies like you said working in India doing the same amount of things what makes me stand out from them is the quality and the speed at which I build things I think I think that might be a factor but I'm still figuring out it is it is very new to me too all right makes a lot of sense uh super interesting um oh I had a question skipped my head one second uh I think I'm out of questions uh but this was super interesting thank you Manu for taking out the time do you have any questions for me yeah I think uh you you have a YouTube channel I've seen some of your videos on remote jobs and I think you're doing a great job by promoting it I don't see many people uh many people post like uh do this do that there are job portals you you show them path which is like proven with your experience I think that helps a lot I resonate with one of your videos wherein you say you were hired at upwork and then you sort of went off of upw work and then started working up there that's my story too with uh with John oh up work initially because I started upw work in college itself but then I was not getting anything then I started building products which helped me get that proposal phase off and reach clients uh in a way that they trusted me with their code so I worked for him there and then we went off of he paid some piece to up work and then we we started working off of it and from there on we've been working till now so that my journey with that one client and I've got a lot of those as well I've stopped working on upwork now because Twitter and you know Word of Mouth goes on but yeah that is how I started with my my first big paycheck was $3,000 and it was from upwork that sort of opened everything that that crossed all the lpas that I had in mind like 20 LPA 40 LPA 60 LPA that crossed of everything I was like 15 days I can make $3,000 then sky is the limit and it was such a simple project it was just a UI thing where I had the data from the back end I had to display a dashboard was really simple today task but that sort of open doors for me like what's possible and what people are paying realistically people outside and then Co happened eventually and open the doors for you to work anywhere so I think I resonate with you on that one for sure uh yeah I think I don't up do you think up is still relevant for someone who's just starting out today do you think they I don't I don't personally it's it's all personal opinion I think if you're building your thing on Twitter and coding and sharing it with the world on Twitter it will give you more chance and more opportunity rather than submitting on proposal where people are unting like crazy like I mean I get a lot of hate on my chat box as well people say you're charging 10,000 are you crazy I mean they abuse for no reason I don't know why this my first time encountering that but they can't believe that this can be done with this much of money which is very normal for people working outside of India I mean if I think about it $5,000 for a dashboard application I still think I'm undercharging if it was me three years four years back I would have thought I would do it for let's say $500 but then off upw work I mean if if you start off with up work right now it is very difficult because the competition is too high people are bidding you here and there everywhere your your if a project is realistically 2,000 people are pitching it for $100 which makes no sense and if the client is good he won't go with the $100 person it anyway go with the bidder who thinks he's is is right for the job sometimes they relate money with quality too which is which is human nature I mean I started 3 four years back so it was easier right now you've got AI all over I mean I use it also in my code editor also cursor I use by the way if you're not familiar with it I build their landing page as well mhm so you the cursor landing page yeah oh wow super interesting that's awesome it's a funny story I reached out to report a bug into their application was not working for me and I had that aity and mantin in the signature so they said looking for a landing guy I said I can help that that's opportunities all over the place so what I would say is keep yourself open to these sorts of things wow that's that's insane I think uh yeah I think your brand is like word of M brand is working like really well for you considering companies as biggest cursor which I think raised I don't know some 100 Mill or something like that are like willing to Outsource the landing pages to you so I think this is a super interesting strategy um yeah this is this was insane my last question to you is do you know other people in japur otherwise who who have followed a similar path doing remote work I'm I'm not in touch with many people who are doing remote work mostly are in jobs here in India mhm but uh I have a lot of friends on Twitter who are doing it one is MH name is sandep he built dogs right and he's also building his Loom alternative he he's a really great coder and he was doing this remote work for quite some time for this this gaming platform called Blitz blitz. GT if I'm not wrong he was working for them then he worked for two desktop he was the CTO there he's doing it and Rishi from p. style if I'm not I'm not sure if you know about it but p. style is an app where and you can customize screenshot and it looks really cool on Twitter twit so he's doing remote work he was I mean he's doing it for Hive do1 if I'm if I'm not wrong some Twitter scheduling tool is there so he's doing remote work none none from jaur I think go it yeah so makes sense I think still extremely Niche but but as you said people stand out and you know um the people who do have like outsized outcomes like you did um so this was super interesting thank you Manu for coming on the Pod uh do you have any more questions for me uh none so far you are doing already a great job helping people out this I'm really really happy someone from India is doing it not I see many controversies here and there but I sort of stay away from them yeah I think it's part of life I think India's little zero some as you mentioned people surprised that you know $10,000 which I guess just the phase of life you're at I think $10,000 seems like a lot of money at some point for a dashboard but as you you have a lot of experience you you'll build the thing in like an hour and some people might take days so makes a lot of sense for you to charge and plus it's your product you get to charge it at like price it at what whatever price you want I think right I mean if I'm going to price it like I was thinking of changing the pricing yesterday but I think I'll wait for one more client and then I'll switch it once I switch it to ,500 I don't $115,000 I'm not sure how what what I'm going to get in the chat box because that's really scary chat box is there for clients but then people ask all sort of questions but it's part of the game I think yeah I think you can just ignore uh there super interesting people are coming to your website reaching the landing page and then trolling you in your chat box that's meant for cents not even trolling they're like brutally rude and know I was initially it bothered me but then I stopped caring all together like yeah whatever yeah I think it's part of life I think expect a lot more hate in your comments after this video I'd say uh but yeah I think what matters is a lot of people taking more value from this and a lot of big products coming out of India so super excited to see that and thank you so much for coming on the part this was super interesting would love to have you on some more time for like a technical discussion if you're open to it definitely definitely would love to all right thank you Manu [Music] thanks
