IAM094 – Co-Founder & CMO Helps to Further Outsourcing & Insight Into How People Work

Liam Martin is the co-founder and CMO of TimeDoctor.com, Staff.com and is a co-organizer of RunningRemote.com the largest conference on building remote teams. After working with remote employees for over 10 years, Liam works on furthering outsourcing and is passionate about how to gain insights into the inner workings of how people work.

• CEO Hack: Time Doctor & Twist App
• CEO Nugget: Focus on what you're really good at and double down and triple down. / Working harder will move you forward.
• CEO Defined: Responsibility and freedom (business owner)

Website: http://timedoctor.com
Other Site: http://staff.com
Other Site: http://runningremote.com

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Liam Martin of TimeDoctor.com, Staff.com, and RunningRemote.com. Liam, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Liam Martin 0:39

Thanks for having me, man, I really appreciate it. I also really appreciate that you pimped out three different URLs of mine.

Gresham Harkless 0:45

I had to, I had to you doing so many things, I have to make sure to let everybody know all the awesome things that you're doing. And Liam is the co-founder and CMO of TimeDoctor.com, Staff.com and is a co-organizer of RunningRemote.com the largest conference on building remote teams.

After working with remote employees for over 10 years, Liam works on furthering outsourcing and is passionate about how to gain insights into the inner workings of how people work. Liam, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Liam Martin 1:15

Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 1:16

Awesome. Let's do it. So the first question I have was just to hear a little bit more about your story. And what kind led you to co-found and co-start your organizations?

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Liam Martin 1:23

Sure. So, I was probably like a lot of people that are in their 30s. I was finishing grad school around 2008-2009. I don't know if you know what happened around then. But the kind of economy completely collapsed. And I was going to actually was teaching a class in university. And I thought I was just going to pursue a career in academia. That was really my goal. And then I taught my first class and very quickly realized that I was absolutely horrible at teaching. I remember I started the first class, I started with about 300 students and ended up with around 150.

By the end of the semester, that's really bad by the way. I got some of the worst Professor reviews in the entire department. I remember coming into my supervisor's office, and I said, I don't think I'm very good at this. And he said, no, you're not. And I said, so where does that leave me, he's like, well, you really got to get good at this teaching thing if you want to actually enter academia because you got to do this for about 10 to 20 years before you get to do anything fun.

So I instead submitted a master's thesis, I was out of grad school, and then entered another tier of my life, which was doing online tutoring, because I figured out that I really liked teaching, but I didn't like lecturing. And that actually turned into a business. So I had dozens of online tutors throughout North America and Europe that were teaching people primarily their pre-med prerequisites to be able to make sure that they got really good marks on those pre-med prerequisites. And the problem that I had inside of that business was I couldn't scale the business any further because a tutor and a student would have discrepancies in the number of hours that they did.

So, I would build a student for 10 hours. And then the student would say, I only worked with my tutor for five hours. And then I'd have to go to the tutor and say, Hey, did you work 10 hours with the student? And the tutor would obviously say yes, so I ended up refunding the student for five hours and paying the tutor for the full 10 hours. And I would make no money out of that deal. So, TimeDoctor, which was one of the first businesses that I really got into that was pure software was with me and my co-founder, Rob, and it basically completely solves that problem.

So it very clearly quantifies exactly how long you worked when you're working remotely, and how effectively you actually worked in that lead into staff.com or enterprise product. And then running remotely, which is really a passion project for me. And for the rest of the company, which is trying to figure out how to get more people to work remotely. Our mission statement as a business is we want to empower people to work wherever they want, whenever they want. So, that connects to software that connects to conferences, and it could connect to a whole bunch of other stuff in the future.

Gresham Harkless 4:02

That makes perfect sense. And I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper and hear a little bit more about TimeDoctor and all the awesome things that you're doing with that organization.

Liam Martin 4:09

Sure. So, TimeDoctor is primarily a tool that doesn't just measure how long someone worked, but what they did while they were working. So, it measures all the variables connected to work. So, right now, I'm doing podcasts as my task. And I know that I've been doing this particular task for see here, 17 minutes and 32 seconds. And at the end of this, I can compare this to all the other podcasts that I've done and measure exactly how much time I spent on zoom Gmail and Google Calendar, all of those different variables, and then signals will start to jump out of the data so I can actually make myself a lot more productive.

So, all of those things kind of just amalgamate and we use a lot of machine learning to be able to also understand how people are productive and where they can become more productive. But fundamentally, it's a tool to number measure what people are doing when they work remotely because that's a major component of barriers towards people really openly working remotely, particularly in the large corporate world. And then secondarily, on top of that, let's actually make you more productive while we're measuring all this data.

Gresham Harkless 5:14

Yeah. And that makes perfect sense. And time is one of those resources that you don't get back. So I wanted to ask you now for either you or your organization, or maybe a mix of both for what I call your secret sauce, where what you feel kind of distinguishes you or sets you apart. So, do you have kind of an example for us?

Liam Martin 5:27

Sure, I would probably say it kind of boils down to two variables, and I'm going to talk about one product advantage. And the other one, which is just sort of a mission advantage. The first one is mission advantage, which is we are not necessarily focused on how much money we make. And I think that that opens us up to other opportunities that we wouldn't have otherwise gone after.

So, as an example, running this conference, we have this beautiful conference that we run in Bali, it was the first year that we ever ran it last year, and it became the biggest conference on remote work in space. And that was very exciting for us. So, it was definitely something that kind of took us back in for us, we weren't really doing this for the purpose of making money. We were doing it for the purposes of what we really wanted to learn about this. And we're, we're genuinely interested.

And then on our product side, for us, me and my co-founder have had a real passion to pursue insights into productivity. I'm a sociologist, by training, and my desire to unlock the secrets of how people work and the insights into work has been something that's been a very strong signal for us throughout the years that we've been working on these businesses. And I think that brings us into other directions that initially, we didn't necessarily think were that important, but we really liked them.

And we found out that they were critically important names and points. We currently have the largest second-by-second work database on the planet that measures websites, applications, and most women's and keyboard movements. So, that was useful to our customers. But it's infinitely more useful. If you're trying to build an AI to be able to gain insights into how people work and how to make them more productive. We didn't necessarily think about that when we first built it, we just really wanted to build something for ourselves that would make us more productive. But now it's much more effective for us to be able to build out something like that because we have those insights that just for any data would come 10s of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.

Gresham Harkless 7:30

Yeah, absolutely. And it's super interesting because sometimes you don't know where the industry necessarily is going to go. But it sounds like again, you guys had that maybe if I can call them maybe intuition of what things you wanted to build. And you tried to develop something for yourself in the business kind of developed from that standpoint. But it helped because I guess it was kind of somewhat of a new type of industry. So maybe there wasn't like you have to go from A to B, necessarily, there wasn't the direction to take it to that level, is that correct to say?

Liam Martin 7:56

Yeah, I think probably for anyone that, let's say is running a business over a million dollars a year, I would if you can take 10% of your budget and put it directly into pure research because that's where you're going to get if anyone has a million dollar business right now. And you're in software, as an example, you pretty much could walk away with over half a million dollars a year in your pocket if you wanted to.

And you'd be okay, maybe you'd get to two or 3 million over the next couple years that you had a pretty good product. But if you take that money and you reinvest it back in, then you can really have the opportunity to target a $100 million business or a billion-dollar business. And a lot of people go for the short when and cash out and say yeah, I'm going to get a Tesla and get a big house, when in reality, at least for me, it's a lot more fun to go after these other passions of mine in work.

And if one of them pops, you're doing really cool stuff. And that's the other thing that's kind of neat about software, too, is that we're doing stuff that governments can't do, we're doing stuff that just you just even look at most of the tech startups today. A lot of them are doing things that maybe governments will catch on to in the next 10 to 15 years. So, you've got open seas, and you can go out and do whatever you want over the next decade, and they're really not going to catch up. So it's a very exciting time. And also a very profitable time if you know where to put your energy.

Gresham Harkless 9:26

Awesome, awesome, awesome. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack, and this could be an app or resource, or software tool that you use to be kind of super effective and efficient.

Liam Martin 9:36

Other than TimeDoctor, obviously.

Gresham Harkless 9:37

Yeah, are you can you talk a little bit more about TimeDoctor and how people can use it too.

Liam Martin 9:41

Know so like, I do use TimeDoctor every single day. It's something that we use as a tool to improve our personal productivity and report back all our data inside of our company. But I would probably say another one which has been not really well received or not, maybe not well received, it's just not known that much is a Twist.

So I've been using this new app called Twist app. And it's by the makers of Doist, which is another task management tool. And they have a very interesting philosophy as it applies to instant messaging and remote work. And they believe that synchronous communication is actually really problematic to overall productivity, and I would tend to agree with them.

So, we've been using Twist very recently inside our company. And it's been great because I have not been getting instant messages at three o'clock in the morning that I have to then respond to. And it's this, I call it the distraction economy. Usually online products, the better they are at distracting you, and usually the more money they make. And that's a little disingenuous, when you look at where Facebook is right now, Instagram, one of the major reasons why I think Twitter hasn't succeeded is because it's not as visual, it doesn't distract you as much. Something like Instagram in comparison is very visual, and it distracts you very quickly and easily.

So whoever can distract you the most usually wins, and you are the one that ends up losing. So Twist is kind of in conflict with another very popular app for remote teams right now called Slack. So anyone really kind of wants to just focus on work and remove distractions from their workday, I would say Twist is one of the best tools to use. And we've been using it at the company with significant success.

Gresham Harkless 11:26

Nice, nice, we appreciate those CEO hacks. And I think there's definitely things like you said, you know, whoever has the thing that can distract you the most and keep you to check, it usually is the most profitable company, so to speak. So I'm glad you kind of touched on that. And I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO, nugget. And you might have already, touched on this, but do you have any kind of additional words of wisdom that you would give to us as entrepreneurs and business owners?

Liam Martin 11:47

I think that there are two major variables that make you a successful entrepreneur or person in general. But I think it actually particularly applies to entrepreneurship, you're either you either have a work ethic, or you're intelligent. So, it's one of those two things. And you can read a whole bunch of books that will make you wiser, but it won't actually improve your hardcore, just IQ, generally.

So, everyone tries to get better at things that they're not good at. And I would suggest that you do not do that. Instead, just focus on what you're really good at, and double down, triple down on it. So, if you're not really good at data analysis, as an example, then don't do data analysis, hire someone to be able to do it, and just work really hard on the things that you are really great at. And you really have to know who you are to be able to know that type of information. I know, I'm very quantifiably, and I have a very quantifiable mindset.

So I prove everything with data. I'm not as much of a people person. So it's a little bit more difficult with for me to be able to create partnerships as an example, well, I have a partnerships manager, someone that actually worked with me to be able to handle the human side of the business. And then I can focus on what I'm really good at. So, I had to give you that nugget. It just focuses on what you're really good at. And then once you figure that out, work as hard as you possibly can to be able to maximize it.

Gresham Harkless 13:06

That makes perfect sense. And yeah, that's great information. If I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is kind of a definition of what it means to be a CEO. And I wanted to ask you specifically, what being a CEO means to you.

Liam Martin 13:17

You asked me that question a couple of weeks ago, and the first thing that popped up into my head was responsibility because there are almost 90 people right now that are in the company. And my responsibility is to make sure that those people don't lose their jobs. Number one, that's the kind of the first emotional snap that came into my own mind. But then I would also say the freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want, however long you want with whoever you want. But that's more of a business owner mindset that isn't necessarily the CEO that works inside of it. But if you're the founder and the CEO, that's a big advantage.

And or founder and CMO, in my case, me and Rob, you know, we can choose whether we want to wake up in the morning and go to work or if we want to just sit on the couch and eat Cheetos all day long. And watch Ozarks, which by the way, the second season just came out, it's really good. So, you can just make those decisions and you have a responsibility to the people that you work with to be able to make sure that you're riding the ship at the end of the day.

It really comes down to just making sure that you don't build a business that you hate because then you won't be coming in as often and you'll be doing more Ozark binges instead of focusing on what you really love. But I would say it's responsibility but responsibility that I welcome because I'm very excited about what I do in the morning. Something that I get up for and very rarely do I not want to go to work.

Gresham Harkless 14:36

Makes perfect sense. I love that definition. And Liam, I appreciate you truly taking some time out of your schedule. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic so to speak, see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know, and then also how best people can get a hold of you and find out more about TimeDoctor.

Liam Martin 14:50

Sure. So, if you want to learn more about TimeDoctor just go to timedoctor.com. If you want to join our passion project, go to runningremote.com. This is something that I've been very excited about learning over the last couple of months just doing a deeper dive into remote work. And if I can leave anyone with just a couple of points of wisdom, in my opinion, working harder is always something that will not pull you back. So, if you work an extra hour today, it's only in a worst-case scenario, you're going to stay exactly where you're at right now. But the chances of that happening are incredibly low.

So, if you work an extra hour today, that's what I would suggest you do. Stop listening to podcasts other than this one, stop going on to YouTube videos, other than this one that you might be watching, and focus on an extra hour and be mindful of the distraction economy where trillions of dollars have been spent to be able to try to distract you with what you really want to do, which is continue to build your own business, focus on that. Keep going, don't stop until you hit the target of your life. And that's something that I just constantly see. And it's always, in my opinion, the biggest barrier to success.

Gresham Harkless 16:01

Makes perfect sense. Well, awesome. I appreciate you, Liam, and we'll make sure to have those links in the show notes so that you anybody can follow up if they're interested. But again, I truly appreciate your time. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Liam Martin 16:12

Thank you.

Outro 16:13

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