hello everybody welcome to another
YouTube hang out super excited to be
back on with you guys today I have a
special guest and new fellow Canadian
friend Liam Martin who is one of the
guys behind staff calm in time dr. calm
which is a pretty cool website and app
that helps people manage their time so
if you want to track the time of the
people on your team and see what they’re
doing and making sure they’re being
productive that’s what they do we’re
going to talk to you today about how to
build a remote team things that you have
to think about and worry about so Liam
welcome aboard thanks for having me Evan
and yeah let’s let’s get right into it
so you know I gave a kind of super high
level but if you want to give a couple
extra sentences and what you guys are
all about what you’re doing at a time
doctor sure for so for most people that
and I’m sure that your audience is in a
particular niche that I’d be able to
speak to we basically produce something
kind of like Google Analytics for your
work day so if you want to be able to
figure out all the metrics connected to
how efficiently you work during your
workday an app like time dr. staff calm
is probably the app for you so it
collects all of the website and
applications most movements and keyboard
movements throughout your day and then
it will be able to give you insights on
that so like are you going to do you how
efficiently did you work today did you
work more efficiently today than
yesterday how are your other co-workers
working and are they more efficient even
cooler stuff like are you going are you
less interested in your job bayesian
basically artificial intelligence that
can allow you to figure out okay are you
going to quit your job pretty soon or do
you need to change to do something else
or you really engage with one type of
worker this is another type of work so
we give all of those insights inside of
our software and you as a worker can be
able to get access to it and really see
what am i doing with my time and not
just not just how much time you’re
spending in work but how much work are
you actually getting done 11 so that
that’s the uses like a personal
productivity tool okay maybe I’m
spending too much time on Facebook
cut that back or kind of tracking what
I’m doing it also allows you for
building your team managing a team and
tracking what they’re doing to see their
productivity right exact an example
Facebook one of the ones questions that
I always get so I have inside of the app
when you go to Facebook within about
three seconds and i’m currently on the
task of podcast with evan it would i
have a pop-up that would pop up after
about three seconds to go into facebook
saying are used to working on and i
would say either yes or no but it’s
giving you that gentle reminder to say
hey you’re leaving productivity and
you’re entering into a non-productive
state and we just want to tell you hey
you know you’re leaving that state you
should probably try to get back to work
so those gentle reminders or one
component of their empty state of
components to productivity so as an
example and what do you think the
average amount of time that people spend
on Facebook per week is per week let me
look their work week so they’re working
in their work week that they’re working
you know in their job I would go so like
a nine-to-five job how much i spending
on facebook yes Yuri yes per week for
work week I would say I’m let me go out
say five hours an hour a day Wow okay
that’s that’s a little that’s a little
early estimate actually if you had two
hours in seven minutes that’s what the
global average is now that changes
dependent upon the country that you’re
in so in in Russia they don’t use
Facebook they use another version of
Facebook so there’s completely different
variables and I can talk for hours about
all the interesting metrics connected to
it but did you also know that if you do
not go on to facebook during your work
week we’ve shown definitively
quantifiably that you are less
productive than the average employee so
there’s counterintuitive components to
Facebook and we actually when we do with
this analysis we recognize that going to
Facebook is sometimes just something
that you need to do you need to talk to
your you know to your wife for your
or your husband or something like that
about a particular issue and you need to
just get that solid and if you don’t
have that communication available to you
it creates a big problem throughout your
workday so we’re really just focused on
productivity we actually don’t care a
lot of the people that end up using
their saw this software for their for
our team I’m sorry for their teams they
actually end up having really
counterintuitive understandings of
metrics and how those how that data
relates to really creating a productive
organization so as I said before do you
want people that just work in an office
do you want someone that’s you know
working along a lot amount of time you
know hours for you or do you want
someone that’s actually doing something
someone that’s actually getting things
done and that’s what you really need to
focus on so our tool helps facilitate to
understand what are the people that are
getting things done versus the people
that are just sort of like in the office
cool so we’re talking ability a remote
team something that a lot of
entrepreneurs are looking at a lot of
them are afraid of doing it even just
building a team at all you know if I do
it myself I’m going to be you know make
sure it’s done right I don’t know about
hiring somebody and having them do it
but then the added fear of this person
isn’t going to be with me you know how
do I know if they’re working hard all
the extra stress what advice do you have
for someone who’s looking at building a
remote team for their business well so I
mean I noticed even in our chat you had
an assistant that was setting up your
call for you so you probably know the
process better than most with regards to
how to sort of systematize these things
the biggest thing that I would tell
people when they’re looking to build a
remote team is they have to understand
that there’s a fundamental management
shift from local versus remote employees
so a local employee if I have someone
that’s right next to me um you know even
if you were right here and I was
teaching you something I’d say okay this
is how you do it and then I could see
what you were doing and I can help fix
you on you know fix your problems on the
go when that person is 10,000 miles away
it’s completely different you have to be
able to build systems and processes
inside of the business so you have to
have operational procedures in place and
be able to allow those employ
means to follow those operational
procedures really quickly and easily we
have a company saying instead of our
company it’s actually Napoleon’s but I
tweaked it a little bit which is orders
shouldn’t be easy to understand they
should be impossible to misunderstand
and once you have that tweak right so
you could have very simple what appear
like very simple instructions for you
but in reality your employee doesn’t get
them at all so you need to be able to
constantly push back with that employee
and say what do you not understand it’s
okay if you don’t understand this
information I need to be able to figure
out how to build instructions that are
not just easy to understand but
impossible to misunderstand so that
would be my biggest piece of advice for
people is if they’re looking to build
out and hire remotely which is by far
one of the cheapest and most efficient
ways to hire you need to be able to have
those processes in place and be able to
communicate them in some digital way so
that your employee can always have
access to them interesting um so we’re
getting we have a live audience for
getting some questions coming in
millville is running in run a huge
paragraph so try to condense it
basically he’s a programmer uh he wants
to build a remote team to offload some
of the responsibilities because he is a
developer himself he’s super concerned
about the quality of the code being
great if he gives it to somebody again
was you know potentially receives and he
can’t manage so he loves developments as
I love developed but I need to take some
of that burden off my back should I just
go with cheap developers freelancers and
have some faith that it will work out uh
well so I think it would come down to
your managerial skill set so can you
manage those people effectively and i
would say in the majority of cases
there’s a lot of onboarding problems
particularly when we talk about
development but the beauty but
development is you can get a github
repository you can get JIRA you can get
a project management system that can
manage all of these tickets digitally so
that’s basically your online
documentation and then on top of that
you know automated testing as an example
is a very easy way to be able to go out
and make
sure that that software is working
appropriately and have systems in place
to be able to check up on those
developers and if they’re no good get
rid of them as quickly as humanly
possible and that sounds a little bit
harsh but that’s really what will
usually do when we hire the people is
we’re just hiring to hired seven new
people this month as an example and what
we did and we probably will not keep all
of those seven employees we’re probably
going to end up with only three or four
so we ended up interviewing minimum
would be to interview 100 people per
position and we break that down to a
shortlist of five people then after
we’ve looked at that shortlist you give
them a paid task so in terms of
development a codex or code why as an
example you figure out you know whether
their code is any good also too for
developers check their github
repositories if they don’t have one then
that would be a red flag for me in terms
of just them being able to do really
cool and effective work so once you get
down to that short list of five give
them a paid task from that we usually
choose two maybe even three developers
and then we actually work with them for
a month fully paid for an entire month
and we find out whether they’re good
because sometimes and this is
particularly applicable for salespeople
some of these developers and salespeople
all that kind of stuff they can look
good resume wise but they can’t actually
execute what you need to be able to do
is not just hire one it’s almost like
it’s almost like dating fundamentally
right if you’re if you’re if you’re
dating one person that’s the only person
that you’re at you’re looking at you
can’t measure that person between with
somebody else so if you have to
developers you can vary quantifiably
measure those two developers and figure
out which one is the best one in which
one isn’t and be very disciplined in
being able to make sure that you’re
making the right hiring decisions
because realistically your company is
people don’t hire you know SF guys are
ten twenty thousand dollars a month you
can effectively get good developers for
between one and two thousand dollars a
month in Eastern Europe and even cheaper
in countries like India or the
Philippines so I would look at that as a
target and really try to figure out what
those
higher quickly to hire a few people and
then basically pull the you know the
chap out afterwards yeah i agree i think
a lot of the hiring process is broken
for for many companies it’s great to get
you know dating advice from liam to hear
i’m the chat for the you tell my
girlfriend about that but it’s true like
you know you look at the interview
process for a sales person maybe because
they’re selling themselves and so that’s
a good sales audition for them but for a
programmer their ability to write a
cover letter or ace an interview and
sell you is not important in their skill
set that you’re hiring for in-app a
trial is way more effective to see if
this guy can do what you needed to do
absolutely so I love I think and I think
so many entrepreneur’s interview process
before they even get to any kind of
trial and it’s so exhausting reading
everybody’s resumes and cover letters
and interviews that by the time they get
to the end that person has to work out
because I don’t want to go through all
that crap again to find somebody and
then you end up hiring somebody was
mediocre and you’ve never tested them on
the actual skills that you’re looking
for recently we’ve implemented a full HR
process because we’re at the headcount
now where we need to have someone who’s
in charge of HR and head hunting and now
we set up the discipline so I don’t have
to go through the process of
interviewing those hundred people but we
make sure that we interview those
hundred people to just sort of like dot
our i’s and cross our T’s and then at
the end of that process you’re
absolutely right the biggest thing that
you can do is the biggest mistake you
can make is by doing nothing if you hire
nobody in like this if you don’t hurt
anybody this month then no development
will get done this month so you can
always throw a crappy code but you can’t
like the time that you have right now
you need to build this thing out you
need to bring it to market in a certain
amount of time like set a hard date say
hey it’s six months and we’re actually
going out and we’re building out this
quote and making it happen yeah one of
the things that I’ll do to make that
part a little easier and I have you know
16 people on my team so not as big as
what you guys are doing but in
job application I’ll make I’ll bury
something in the job description to say
hey in the first line of application
tell me how many youtube subscribers i
have right and what it shows is did the
person actually read my job application
so many people juicy Oh PHP developer
great submit submit submit submit
copying page takes in five seconds to
apply to a job where for me and it takes
me time to read the application do an
interview and so if somebody hasn’t
taken the time to actually read the
application and find my youtube channel
tell me how many subscribers I had then
I’m not going to take the time reading
your thing and that reads out a huge
chunk of people one of the tweaks that
we did recently for our SEO team which
has been great and I learned this from a
fantastic growth hacker called Luke
Levesque who is an advisor to basically
everybody now on traffic and growth down
in the valley is he put inside his
robots.txt file which is basically a
robots.txt file is a the file that tells
Google how to index your site right so
the only human beings that would
actually be looking at that our SEO guys
ready so he put in he’s like hey if
you’re reading this you should send me
an email because I want to interview for
a job and he got so many candidates for
that and we implemented that and when I
get two to three candidates a month
coming in that are actually like you
know they’re trying to check out what’s
going on with our website and it’s it’s
an awesome little piece like I like
putting on those little keywords and
putting in those little codes it really
allows you to filter down to the people
that are at the end of the day and I the
word passion is overused but I
restructure in a different way the
person that you’re hiring should be
somebody who in their free time they
would still be doing the same job if you
can hire somebody that does that like if
I’m gonna hire a developer I want a
developer who’s working on like three or
four side projects and likes developing
in general and has a github repository
that’s public as an example because
someone who does it just is a
nine-to-five they’re not really going to
care yeah
I like that I like that okay so speaking
of the valley the next question comes
from Roderick and he’s saying as you
look at Silicon Valley startups how can
we and other startups learn from them in
their systems so terms of hiring remote
teams have you seen something happening
the valley that that we can learn from
here so remote actually isn’t that big
of a model in SF and the reason being is
the cost is so it’s so much cheaper to
hire remotely and the SF model is raised
a whole bunch of money you know Raisa
raised around of 5 10 million dollars
well now you can afford to be able to
hire $250,000 a year developers but in
reality a 30,000 40,000 dollar developer
could probably get you ninety percent of
those results in for someone like me we
run a bootstrap company we’ve always run
bootstrap companies all of the ones that
we’ve built up until this point venture
capital is something that if you’re
going to do the SF model go with venture
capital hire the best possible talent
that you can hire but if you’re
bootstrapped you know I would just
continue to go the remote method and I
don’t think that a lot of the only
example that I can come up with off the
top of my head in terms of SF guys that
are building large remote teams is
automatic the the company that built
WordPress so they have about 500
employees and they’re all remote um so
that’s that’s the only example inside of
SF for large-scale remote teams and
there’s a couple great blog posts just
Google like automatic remote and you’ll
be able to check out how they run their
operations it’s very very cool they kind
of had slacked before slack they had
like these public chat boards for email
communication because they hated email
so much and that is a problem when you
have a remote team you’re just gonna get
so many emails it’s insane slack’s all
the lot of those problems for us so I
would look at those people to be honest
with you I think that there is a new
evolution in work happening we’re number
one request for people that are looking
for jobs under 30
is can I have a remote work agreement
that’s the number one new request for
people under the age of 30 and I think
that’s just going to push up into like
the 40 range and once it’s in the 50
range people want to be a remote and
it’s not just you know guys on their own
that are down in Bali or something like
that its people with families it’s
people that are just like running their
regular lives and they don’t want to be
restricted to one particular place so
that’s those are the models that I see
happening and I don’t feel that they’re
well aligned with the SF model which is
Riggs a whole bunch of money work 18
hours a day every single day for three
years and hopefully by the end you have
about five percent of equity left and
you’re able to sell it for you know five
million bucks or something like that
right interesting Raul is asking that
thinking thinking is for the chat and
asking Liam where do you get inspiration
from oh boy from a lot of different
places to be honest with you I get it
from my co-founder Rob very
inspirational guy a very powerful you
know someone who can really inspire you
to do new and interesting things in
terms of just entrepreneurs I mean
there’s the basic ones that you kind of
look at like Elon is one that I just
massively respect I wish I can hang out
with that guy that’s the only guy that
I’d probably just get like weak in the
knees and hanging around outside of that
i would say inspiration for me is also
sort of like self-referential so you you
can the inspiration that I’m looking for
and really connected to what we’re doing
and I’m sure it’s the same case for you
Evan is you have to be inspiring for the
people that you hire and it’s kind of
almost a feedback loop where you get
everyone’s so excited about what’s
happening that you kind of almost get
excited too but you sort of started the
seed and I’ll do these Monday meetings
where I’m getting everyone just sort of
excited about what we’re doing next and
what we’re launching and people are
getting all powered up from it and then
I get powered up because they are now
getting powered up so those are the
types of things that really sort of
gets me to the next week and outside of
that even technological inspirations are
something that I think is just that
inspires me on a weekly or monthly basis
where I’m thinking myself wow look at
all the new technologies that are coming
out there are so many amazing
innovations think about it like the
mobile phone as we know it the iphone
came out in 2008 it’s nine years old and
like that’s completely changed computing
artificial intelligence and machine
learning really hasn’t even come onto
the market yet it’s basically like one
to two years old it’s going to
completely change the way that we
interact with work and interact with our
lives so there’s all these things that
are coming out and you want to be the
person that’s just sort of like even
being there as it’s being built that’s
exciting to even just sort of like see
what’s happening and see how technology
is shaping our society that is also a
huge place for me like it well your your
people are liking your answers again I
like the answer thank you thanks nice so
you getting some good feedback in the
comments from the live chat um all right
to managing the team I feel like a lot
of people uh a lot of people their first
hires feel like I could just off load
this on to this person and you know
almost treat them like a robot and not
really care about them and just like get
the work done because I don’t want to do
it anymore and I feel like that’s
especially true on a remote team when
you’re not sitting with the person next
to you and seeing if they’re you know
crying because of like you know in their
life and it’s too easy just to see them
as a just gonna it’s an automatic thing
and not treating them like people um so
what advice do you have in terms of
managing a remote team as an
entrepreneur for the audience watching
to try to build it up how do you manage
that team well so number one if you
can’t afford it meet them at / in person
at least once a year so we do huge leads
at least once a year for everybody on
the team and that’s really useful to be
able to get them aligned into what we’re
talking about and where we need to go
forward for the next year we also have
smaller team retreats
that will fund between our employees so
as an example if the Eastern European
team wants to meet with the Indonesian
team they can and will actually fund
that for them and they usually just go
and hang out and party for a week and
they love that because you know they get
they get access to those new people and
make a tab basically a free vacation and
for us it allows us to to to tighten the
bonds that are created that you really
don’t get when your remote you know
that’s one of the major drawbacks is
when you’re in an office they’re all
together and you’re communicating on a
daily basis in a face-to-face manner
another method that I would implement if
you can’t afford to meet these people in
person per year is I would really try to
be able to clearly define um who you are
what you need from them I as an example
I have a document which is the Liam
Martin like HR manual which is like how
to figure out what Liam wants and I have
eight major points on it so like one of
them is I am an entp which is like you
know it’s a myers-briggs test and google
that and you’ll learn more about me I
want just I want decisions over you know
no action I go off on tangents you need
to stop me when I go off on tangents
there are all these things that I have
it’s like an operating manual for me and
every time I hire somebody who’s brand
new I go on on video and by the way
every single call that we have is on
video we don’t do we don’t just do voice
we don’t do chat we call people on you
know video chat on skype or on Google
Google Hangouts and I go through this
document with them and I say this is who
I am I want you to write up the same
document to be able to tell me who you
are so I really know what is you know
what little corks you have and how I can
best navigate you and get what I need
out of you and that process really
humanizes the person to be able to know
that hey you know what this isn’t just
like this isn’t Evan some digital guy on
the internet who you know is is
somewhere that’s not here I know what
he’s like
what his family life is like I know the
guy likes baseball I know that it you
know the all these things that connect
to him and it really gives you more of a
human component as opposed to just
treating them like input/output devices
which by the way if you continue to do
that your B players will stay with you
in your egg players will leave so your
top tier people will always you can find
something new to do yeah I think also
making time with a remote are not making
time to have a discussion with with the
person that’s not just project-based
that’s not just like hey how we doing on
this so what’s the progress report yadda
yadda yadda check it in but actually
like hey how you liking it here you know
what’s going on in your life right now
something else you want to work on or we
you know do you have ideas it could take
the company forward just a higher level
conversation every now and then that’s
not just project-based to make them feel
valued and important completely what do
you guys do around that do you have like
a so once a year you’re meeting up in
the location and then what is there
anything in between that you guys do so
we actually have multiple ones with
smaller ones then we have one large tema
tree we do we do Miami we do pet in
Thailand we usually do Bali we do Costa
Rica and we do the Philippines so we’re
usually we’ve got a lot of these oh and
we also do a couple in Eastern Europe
too that’s mostly for the development
team so we’re doing all these little
meetings to be able to meet up with
people and just sort of touch base with
them and make sure that everybody’s is
happy and is content in during those
meetings it also is really great for
intensive activity because I find that
those every time we have one of those
meetings it kind of like puts us into
hyperdrive for two weeks so we’ll say
okay guys we’ve got to push out a new
product at the end of these two weeks
and everybody needs to rally and we’re
all in the same house as opposed to a
regular office where you couldn’t just
say you couldn’t just steppin in the
office one day and say okay guys
everybody needs to rally like because
there’s no change of environment and
people aren’t excited so what I usually
try to do through these meetups and
through a couple other techniques is
just shake stuff up there’s a great
entrepreneur
Ian um who is a very famous coo you’ve
helped build 1 800 got junk and he
talked about how he would move people’s
offices without telling them so
literally on like Friday he would tell
everybody ok so we’re moving offices and
like on Monday here’s your new address
and it’s just be like what the hell is
going on and it would scare the crap out
of people would be a much nicer office
but then from that he’d get a huge boost
in productivity because everyone’s
excited and just like those types of
things it just sort of shaking step up
is sometimes a great way to get an extra
month or two boost and counting all
those up actually results in much faster
and better development on dev side sales
marketing whatever you you know are
trying to do cool next question coming
in is I’m I’m terrified of my first hire
it’s like giving my power to someone
else if you have any advice yes I’m a
micromanager as well so I’m there with
you take it slow you know don’t be
scared you want to start on so I I have
the philosophy that explosions will
happen but you can minimize the size of
those explosions so I’ll give you an
example the very I’m like that yeah so
the very first business that I ever had
after grad school was a online tutoring
company and I was very small business
and basically I was tutoring kids
through skype graduate students and I
hired my first virtual assistant to be
able to manage some of the things that I
was doing and so we had the last real
major job that I had given that I gave
to her and as connects two processes to
is refunds so I didn’t give out refunds
and I didn’t give her access to my
merchant account so I said hey you know
you need to refund this student this the
student needs to be refunded for three
thousand dollars because we had charged
her over summer vacation and in my
merchant account there were
like refund with a dollar amount and
then there was refund and I didn’t
clearly again connecting two orders
shouldn’t be easy to understand but
impossible to misunderstand she did not
know the difference between refund with
dollar amount and refund and she clicked
on the refund button and she refunded
not 3,000 but eighteen thousand dollars
all of the cash that he had had with
that student well I didn’t have eighteen
thousand dollars to give to her so the
whole like I had a nervous breakdown
right there it’s just sort of like it
and you know your brand new business
trying to trying to put things together
trying to make things work and it was it
was horrible thankfully working with was
able to give us back that other money
but I literally had to go to her and say
hey you know we refunded you for two
months too much can i revert to the
charge cuz you know can you just send me
back that money and she was happy to do
it but those are examples of that could
happen the way I would have done that is
I would have had her do some small test
test Spurs to be able to test out that
you cross us to make sure that it’s not
an eighteen thousand dollar loss but
it’s a three hundred dollar loss dozen
example so always when you’re building
out a source components of your business
or remote components of the business
make sure that they are small bursts
functional get them humming properly in
Manila money because then you will end
up having to convince some of your
customers to like you know please plead
with them to get some money back into
your bank account cuz they emptied it so
yeah so that if these explosions as
small as humanly possible but you need
to make them if you don’t make them if
you don’t make these mistakes you won’t
grow it’s a cool story might not like it
um Pierre foul Tony or felt zone is
asking why is it beneficial to meet
other remote teams so they asking about
bringing people together why is that
beneficial to meet the remote teams in
person so the biggest thing for us is
we’ve got a pretty massive silo effect
inside
businesses though customer support don’t
talk to the developers and the
developers don’t have to sales and sales
don’t talk to marketing right so we have
these different silos inside of the
business but then when they all meet
together in one place the communication
that happens you get that exchange of
information and there’s ways to
accomplish that digitally I absolutely
agree we have something called coworker
coffee so every tuesday i am matched
with a random employee and my goal is to
talk to them for an hour not about
work-related stuff but just about that
ought to be able to get to know them
better so basically threw out a year
we’re able to talk to everybody in the
team so that’s one digital way of doing
it but the way to accelerate that as
quickly as possible is with these sort
of retreats so you’re able to say like
oh someone from customer support could
talk to a developer and customer support
is sending tickets to develop and saying
hey there’s this bug you know that’s
happening and the developer says aw ok
that’s a bug I’ll solve it but then when
they talk to them in person you could
say yeah there were 68 requests for this
bug to get fixed in the last week and
it’s much more important than anything
else that’s the type of communication
that just sort of like an in office
environment you’d already have you have
that type of communication and that
lacks and remote so you need to be able
to augment that with these retreats to
be able to make sure that those guys are
kind of getting that information they’re
kind of just collaborating basically i
love it liam is crazy how quickly a half
an hour flies by for people who want to
learn more about staff or time doctor or
you and connect what’s the best way to
to reach out you can connect with me
just at time dr. kirk amor staff calm
you can also email me I’m not scared to
receive emails from people it’s Liam at
staff calm if you email me actually
you’ll see you’ll you’ll experience a
very interesting process of how I filter
that information with a lot of our
promote people as well so I will respond
to every single one of you but it will
go through an interesting process so you
can email me there and then there’s
always you know Twitter rec time doctor
app and at staff on Twitter you can say
hello there
very cool well Liam thank you for
spending some time thank you guys for
watching continue to believe or whatever
your one where it is and we’ll see you
soon see you later
YouTube hang out super excited to be
back on with you guys today I have a
special guest and new fellow Canadian
friend Liam Martin who is one of the
guys behind staff calm in time dr. calm
which is a pretty cool website and app
that helps people manage their time so
if you want to track the time of the
people on your team and see what they’re
doing and making sure they’re being
productive that’s what they do we’re
going to talk to you today about how to
build a remote team things that you have
to think about and worry about so Liam
welcome aboard thanks for having me Evan
and yeah let’s let’s get right into it
so you know I gave a kind of super high
level but if you want to give a couple
extra sentences and what you guys are
all about what you’re doing at a time
doctor sure for so for most people that
and I’m sure that your audience is in a
particular niche that I’d be able to
speak to we basically produce something
kind of like Google Analytics for your
work day so if you want to be able to
figure out all the metrics connected to
how efficiently you work during your
workday an app like time dr. staff calm
is probably the app for you so it
collects all of the website and
applications most movements and keyboard
movements throughout your day and then
it will be able to give you insights on
that so like are you going to do you how
efficiently did you work today did you
work more efficiently today than
yesterday how are your other co-workers
working and are they more efficient even
cooler stuff like are you going are you
less interested in your job bayesian
basically artificial intelligence that
can allow you to figure out okay are you
going to quit your job pretty soon or do
you need to change to do something else
or you really engage with one type of
worker this is another type of work so
we give all of those insights inside of
our software and you as a worker can be
able to get access to it and really see
what am i doing with my time and not
just not just how much time you’re
spending in work but how much work are
you actually getting done 11 so that
that’s the uses like a personal
productivity tool okay maybe I’m
spending too much time on Facebook
cut that back or kind of tracking what
I’m doing it also allows you for
building your team managing a team and
tracking what they’re doing to see their
productivity right exact an example
Facebook one of the ones questions that
I always get so I have inside of the app
when you go to Facebook within about
three seconds and i’m currently on the
task of podcast with evan it would i
have a pop-up that would pop up after
about three seconds to go into facebook
saying are used to working on and i
would say either yes or no but it’s
giving you that gentle reminder to say
hey you’re leaving productivity and
you’re entering into a non-productive
state and we just want to tell you hey
you know you’re leaving that state you
should probably try to get back to work
so those gentle reminders or one
component of their empty state of
components to productivity so as an
example and what do you think the
average amount of time that people spend
on Facebook per week is per week let me
look their work week so they’re working
in their work week that they’re working
you know in their job I would go so like
a nine-to-five job how much i spending
on facebook yes Yuri yes per week for
work week I would say I’m let me go out
say five hours an hour a day Wow okay
that’s that’s a little that’s a little
early estimate actually if you had two
hours in seven minutes that’s what the
global average is now that changes
dependent upon the country that you’re
in so in in Russia they don’t use
Facebook they use another version of
Facebook so there’s completely different
variables and I can talk for hours about
all the interesting metrics connected to
it but did you also know that if you do
not go on to facebook during your work
week we’ve shown definitively
quantifiably that you are less
productive than the average employee so
there’s counterintuitive components to
Facebook and we actually when we do with
this analysis we recognize that going to
Facebook is sometimes just something
that you need to do you need to talk to
your you know to your wife for your
or your husband or something like that
about a particular issue and you need to
just get that solid and if you don’t
have that communication available to you
it creates a big problem throughout your
workday so we’re really just focused on
productivity we actually don’t care a
lot of the people that end up using
their saw this software for their for
our team I’m sorry for their teams they
actually end up having really
counterintuitive understandings of
metrics and how those how that data
relates to really creating a productive
organization so as I said before do you
want people that just work in an office
do you want someone that’s you know
working along a lot amount of time you
know hours for you or do you want
someone that’s actually doing something
someone that’s actually getting things
done and that’s what you really need to
focus on so our tool helps facilitate to
understand what are the people that are
getting things done versus the people
that are just sort of like in the office
cool so we’re talking ability a remote
team something that a lot of
entrepreneurs are looking at a lot of
them are afraid of doing it even just
building a team at all you know if I do
it myself I’m going to be you know make
sure it’s done right I don’t know about
hiring somebody and having them do it
but then the added fear of this person
isn’t going to be with me you know how
do I know if they’re working hard all
the extra stress what advice do you have
for someone who’s looking at building a
remote team for their business well so I
mean I noticed even in our chat you had
an assistant that was setting up your
call for you so you probably know the
process better than most with regards to
how to sort of systematize these things
the biggest thing that I would tell
people when they’re looking to build a
remote team is they have to understand
that there’s a fundamental management
shift from local versus remote employees
so a local employee if I have someone
that’s right next to me um you know even
if you were right here and I was
teaching you something I’d say okay this
is how you do it and then I could see
what you were doing and I can help fix
you on you know fix your problems on the
go when that person is 10,000 miles away
it’s completely different you have to be
able to build systems and processes
inside of the business so you have to
have operational procedures in place and
be able to allow those employ
means to follow those operational
procedures really quickly and easily we
have a company saying instead of our
company it’s actually Napoleon’s but I
tweaked it a little bit which is orders
shouldn’t be easy to understand they
should be impossible to misunderstand
and once you have that tweak right so
you could have very simple what appear
like very simple instructions for you
but in reality your employee doesn’t get
them at all so you need to be able to
constantly push back with that employee
and say what do you not understand it’s
okay if you don’t understand this
information I need to be able to figure
out how to build instructions that are
not just easy to understand but
impossible to misunderstand so that
would be my biggest piece of advice for
people is if they’re looking to build
out and hire remotely which is by far
one of the cheapest and most efficient
ways to hire you need to be able to have
those processes in place and be able to
communicate them in some digital way so
that your employee can always have
access to them interesting um so we’re
getting we have a live audience for
getting some questions coming in
millville is running in run a huge
paragraph so try to condense it
basically he’s a programmer uh he wants
to build a remote team to offload some
of the responsibilities because he is a
developer himself he’s super concerned
about the quality of the code being
great if he gives it to somebody again
was you know potentially receives and he
can’t manage so he loves developments as
I love developed but I need to take some
of that burden off my back should I just
go with cheap developers freelancers and
have some faith that it will work out uh
well so I think it would come down to
your managerial skill set so can you
manage those people effectively and i
would say in the majority of cases
there’s a lot of onboarding problems
particularly when we talk about
development but the beauty but
development is you can get a github
repository you can get JIRA you can get
a project management system that can
manage all of these tickets digitally so
that’s basically your online
documentation and then on top of that
you know automated testing as an example
is a very easy way to be able to go out
and make
sure that that software is working
appropriately and have systems in place
to be able to check up on those
developers and if they’re no good get
rid of them as quickly as humanly
possible and that sounds a little bit
harsh but that’s really what will
usually do when we hire the people is
we’re just hiring to hired seven new
people this month as an example and what
we did and we probably will not keep all
of those seven employees we’re probably
going to end up with only three or four
so we ended up interviewing minimum
would be to interview 100 people per
position and we break that down to a
shortlist of five people then after
we’ve looked at that shortlist you give
them a paid task so in terms of
development a codex or code why as an
example you figure out you know whether
their code is any good also too for
developers check their github
repositories if they don’t have one then
that would be a red flag for me in terms
of just them being able to do really
cool and effective work so once you get
down to that short list of five give
them a paid task from that we usually
choose two maybe even three developers
and then we actually work with them for
a month fully paid for an entire month
and we find out whether they’re good
because sometimes and this is
particularly applicable for salespeople
some of these developers and salespeople
all that kind of stuff they can look
good resume wise but they can’t actually
execute what you need to be able to do
is not just hire one it’s almost like
it’s almost like dating fundamentally
right if you’re if you’re if you’re
dating one person that’s the only person
that you’re at you’re looking at you
can’t measure that person between with
somebody else so if you have to
developers you can vary quantifiably
measure those two developers and figure
out which one is the best one in which
one isn’t and be very disciplined in
being able to make sure that you’re
making the right hiring decisions
because realistically your company is
people don’t hire you know SF guys are
ten twenty thousand dollars a month you
can effectively get good developers for
between one and two thousand dollars a
month in Eastern Europe and even cheaper
in countries like India or the
Philippines so I would look at that as a
target and really try to figure out what
those
higher quickly to hire a few people and
then basically pull the you know the
chap out afterwards yeah i agree i think
a lot of the hiring process is broken
for for many companies it’s great to get
you know dating advice from liam to hear
i’m the chat for the you tell my
girlfriend about that but it’s true like
you know you look at the interview
process for a sales person maybe because
they’re selling themselves and so that’s
a good sales audition for them but for a
programmer their ability to write a
cover letter or ace an interview and
sell you is not important in their skill
set that you’re hiring for in-app a
trial is way more effective to see if
this guy can do what you needed to do
absolutely so I love I think and I think
so many entrepreneur’s interview process
before they even get to any kind of
trial and it’s so exhausting reading
everybody’s resumes and cover letters
and interviews that by the time they get
to the end that person has to work out
because I don’t want to go through all
that crap again to find somebody and
then you end up hiring somebody was
mediocre and you’ve never tested them on
the actual skills that you’re looking
for recently we’ve implemented a full HR
process because we’re at the headcount
now where we need to have someone who’s
in charge of HR and head hunting and now
we set up the discipline so I don’t have
to go through the process of
interviewing those hundred people but we
make sure that we interview those
hundred people to just sort of like dot
our i’s and cross our T’s and then at
the end of that process you’re
absolutely right the biggest thing that
you can do is the biggest mistake you
can make is by doing nothing if you hire
nobody in like this if you don’t hurt
anybody this month then no development
will get done this month so you can
always throw a crappy code but you can’t
like the time that you have right now
you need to build this thing out you
need to bring it to market in a certain
amount of time like set a hard date say
hey it’s six months and we’re actually
going out and we’re building out this
quote and making it happen yeah one of
the things that I’ll do to make that
part a little easier and I have you know
16 people on my team so not as big as
what you guys are doing but in
job application I’ll make I’ll bury
something in the job description to say
hey in the first line of application
tell me how many youtube subscribers i
have right and what it shows is did the
person actually read my job application
so many people juicy Oh PHP developer
great submit submit submit submit
copying page takes in five seconds to
apply to a job where for me and it takes
me time to read the application do an
interview and so if somebody hasn’t
taken the time to actually read the
application and find my youtube channel
tell me how many subscribers I had then
I’m not going to take the time reading
your thing and that reads out a huge
chunk of people one of the tweaks that
we did recently for our SEO team which
has been great and I learned this from a
fantastic growth hacker called Luke
Levesque who is an advisor to basically
everybody now on traffic and growth down
in the valley is he put inside his
robots.txt file which is basically a
robots.txt file is a the file that tells
Google how to index your site right so
the only human beings that would
actually be looking at that our SEO guys
ready so he put in he’s like hey if
you’re reading this you should send me
an email because I want to interview for
a job and he got so many candidates for
that and we implemented that and when I
get two to three candidates a month
coming in that are actually like you
know they’re trying to check out what’s
going on with our website and it’s it’s
an awesome little piece like I like
putting on those little keywords and
putting in those little codes it really
allows you to filter down to the people
that are at the end of the day and I the
word passion is overused but I
restructure in a different way the
person that you’re hiring should be
somebody who in their free time they
would still be doing the same job if you
can hire somebody that does that like if
I’m gonna hire a developer I want a
developer who’s working on like three or
four side projects and likes developing
in general and has a github repository
that’s public as an example because
someone who does it just is a
nine-to-five they’re not really going to
care yeah
I like that I like that okay so speaking
of the valley the next question comes
from Roderick and he’s saying as you
look at Silicon Valley startups how can
we and other startups learn from them in
their systems so terms of hiring remote
teams have you seen something happening
the valley that that we can learn from
here so remote actually isn’t that big
of a model in SF and the reason being is
the cost is so it’s so much cheaper to
hire remotely and the SF model is raised
a whole bunch of money you know Raisa
raised around of 5 10 million dollars
well now you can afford to be able to
hire $250,000 a year developers but in
reality a 30,000 40,000 dollar developer
could probably get you ninety percent of
those results in for someone like me we
run a bootstrap company we’ve always run
bootstrap companies all of the ones that
we’ve built up until this point venture
capital is something that if you’re
going to do the SF model go with venture
capital hire the best possible talent
that you can hire but if you’re
bootstrapped you know I would just
continue to go the remote method and I
don’t think that a lot of the only
example that I can come up with off the
top of my head in terms of SF guys that
are building large remote teams is
automatic the the company that built
WordPress so they have about 500
employees and they’re all remote um so
that’s that’s the only example inside of
SF for large-scale remote teams and
there’s a couple great blog posts just
Google like automatic remote and you’ll
be able to check out how they run their
operations it’s very very cool they kind
of had slacked before slack they had
like these public chat boards for email
communication because they hated email
so much and that is a problem when you
have a remote team you’re just gonna get
so many emails it’s insane slack’s all
the lot of those problems for us so I
would look at those people to be honest
with you I think that there is a new
evolution in work happening we’re number
one request for people that are looking
for jobs under 30
is can I have a remote work agreement
that’s the number one new request for
people under the age of 30 and I think
that’s just going to push up into like
the 40 range and once it’s in the 50
range people want to be a remote and
it’s not just you know guys on their own
that are down in Bali or something like
that its people with families it’s
people that are just like running their
regular lives and they don’t want to be
restricted to one particular place so
that’s those are the models that I see
happening and I don’t feel that they’re
well aligned with the SF model which is
Riggs a whole bunch of money work 18
hours a day every single day for three
years and hopefully by the end you have
about five percent of equity left and
you’re able to sell it for you know five
million bucks or something like that
right interesting Raul is asking that
thinking thinking is for the chat and
asking Liam where do you get inspiration
from oh boy from a lot of different
places to be honest with you I get it
from my co-founder Rob very
inspirational guy a very powerful you
know someone who can really inspire you
to do new and interesting things in
terms of just entrepreneurs I mean
there’s the basic ones that you kind of
look at like Elon is one that I just
massively respect I wish I can hang out
with that guy that’s the only guy that
I’d probably just get like weak in the
knees and hanging around outside of that
i would say inspiration for me is also
sort of like self-referential so you you
can the inspiration that I’m looking for
and really connected to what we’re doing
and I’m sure it’s the same case for you
Evan is you have to be inspiring for the
people that you hire and it’s kind of
almost a feedback loop where you get
everyone’s so excited about what’s
happening that you kind of almost get
excited too but you sort of started the
seed and I’ll do these Monday meetings
where I’m getting everyone just sort of
excited about what we’re doing next and
what we’re launching and people are
getting all powered up from it and then
I get powered up because they are now
getting powered up so those are the
types of things that really sort of
gets me to the next week and outside of
that even technological inspirations are
something that I think is just that
inspires me on a weekly or monthly basis
where I’m thinking myself wow look at
all the new technologies that are coming
out there are so many amazing
innovations think about it like the
mobile phone as we know it the iphone
came out in 2008 it’s nine years old and
like that’s completely changed computing
artificial intelligence and machine
learning really hasn’t even come onto
the market yet it’s basically like one
to two years old it’s going to
completely change the way that we
interact with work and interact with our
lives so there’s all these things that
are coming out and you want to be the
person that’s just sort of like even
being there as it’s being built that’s
exciting to even just sort of like see
what’s happening and see how technology
is shaping our society that is also a
huge place for me like it well your your
people are liking your answers again I
like the answer thank you thanks nice so
you getting some good feedback in the
comments from the live chat um all right
to managing the team I feel like a lot
of people uh a lot of people their first
hires feel like I could just off load
this on to this person and you know
almost treat them like a robot and not
really care about them and just like get
the work done because I don’t want to do
it anymore and I feel like that’s
especially true on a remote team when
you’re not sitting with the person next
to you and seeing if they’re you know
crying because of like you know in their
life and it’s too easy just to see them
as a just gonna it’s an automatic thing
and not treating them like people um so
what advice do you have in terms of
managing a remote team as an
entrepreneur for the audience watching
to try to build it up how do you manage
that team well so number one if you
can’t afford it meet them at / in person
at least once a year so we do huge leads
at least once a year for everybody on
the team and that’s really useful to be
able to get them aligned into what we’re
talking about and where we need to go
forward for the next year we also have
smaller team retreats
that will fund between our employees so
as an example if the Eastern European
team wants to meet with the Indonesian
team they can and will actually fund
that for them and they usually just go
and hang out and party for a week and
they love that because you know they get
they get access to those new people and
make a tab basically a free vacation and
for us it allows us to to to tighten the
bonds that are created that you really
don’t get when your remote you know
that’s one of the major drawbacks is
when you’re in an office they’re all
together and you’re communicating on a
daily basis in a face-to-face manner
another method that I would implement if
you can’t afford to meet these people in
person per year is I would really try to
be able to clearly define um who you are
what you need from them I as an example
I have a document which is the Liam
Martin like HR manual which is like how
to figure out what Liam wants and I have
eight major points on it so like one of
them is I am an entp which is like you
know it’s a myers-briggs test and google
that and you’ll learn more about me I
want just I want decisions over you know
no action I go off on tangents you need
to stop me when I go off on tangents
there are all these things that I have
it’s like an operating manual for me and
every time I hire somebody who’s brand
new I go on on video and by the way
every single call that we have is on
video we don’t do we don’t just do voice
we don’t do chat we call people on you
know video chat on skype or on Google
Google Hangouts and I go through this
document with them and I say this is who
I am I want you to write up the same
document to be able to tell me who you
are so I really know what is you know
what little corks you have and how I can
best navigate you and get what I need
out of you and that process really
humanizes the person to be able to know
that hey you know what this isn’t just
like this isn’t Evan some digital guy on
the internet who you know is is
somewhere that’s not here I know what
he’s like
what his family life is like I know the
guy likes baseball I know that it you
know the all these things that connect
to him and it really gives you more of a
human component as opposed to just
treating them like input/output devices
which by the way if you continue to do
that your B players will stay with you
in your egg players will leave so your
top tier people will always you can find
something new to do yeah I think also
making time with a remote are not making
time to have a discussion with with the
person that’s not just project-based
that’s not just like hey how we doing on
this so what’s the progress report yadda
yadda yadda check it in but actually
like hey how you liking it here you know
what’s going on in your life right now
something else you want to work on or we
you know do you have ideas it could take
the company forward just a higher level
conversation every now and then that’s
not just project-based to make them feel
valued and important completely what do
you guys do around that do you have like
a so once a year you’re meeting up in
the location and then what is there
anything in between that you guys do so
we actually have multiple ones with
smaller ones then we have one large tema
tree we do we do Miami we do pet in
Thailand we usually do Bali we do Costa
Rica and we do the Philippines so we’re
usually we’ve got a lot of these oh and
we also do a couple in Eastern Europe
too that’s mostly for the development
team so we’re doing all these little
meetings to be able to meet up with
people and just sort of touch base with
them and make sure that everybody’s is
happy and is content in during those
meetings it also is really great for
intensive activity because I find that
those every time we have one of those
meetings it kind of like puts us into
hyperdrive for two weeks so we’ll say
okay guys we’ve got to push out a new
product at the end of these two weeks
and everybody needs to rally and we’re
all in the same house as opposed to a
regular office where you couldn’t just
say you couldn’t just steppin in the
office one day and say okay guys
everybody needs to rally like because
there’s no change of environment and
people aren’t excited so what I usually
try to do through these meetups and
through a couple other techniques is
just shake stuff up there’s a great
entrepreneur
Ian um who is a very famous coo you’ve
helped build 1 800 got junk and he
talked about how he would move people’s
offices without telling them so
literally on like Friday he would tell
everybody ok so we’re moving offices and
like on Monday here’s your new address
and it’s just be like what the hell is
going on and it would scare the crap out
of people would be a much nicer office
but then from that he’d get a huge boost
in productivity because everyone’s
excited and just like those types of
things it just sort of shaking step up
is sometimes a great way to get an extra
month or two boost and counting all
those up actually results in much faster
and better development on dev side sales
marketing whatever you you know are
trying to do cool next question coming
in is I’m I’m terrified of my first hire
it’s like giving my power to someone
else if you have any advice yes I’m a
micromanager as well so I’m there with
you take it slow you know don’t be
scared you want to start on so I I have
the philosophy that explosions will
happen but you can minimize the size of
those explosions so I’ll give you an
example the very I’m like that yeah so
the very first business that I ever had
after grad school was a online tutoring
company and I was very small business
and basically I was tutoring kids
through skype graduate students and I
hired my first virtual assistant to be
able to manage some of the things that I
was doing and so we had the last real
major job that I had given that I gave
to her and as connects two processes to
is refunds so I didn’t give out refunds
and I didn’t give her access to my
merchant account so I said hey you know
you need to refund this student this the
student needs to be refunded for three
thousand dollars because we had charged
her over summer vacation and in my
merchant account there were
like refund with a dollar amount and
then there was refund and I didn’t
clearly again connecting two orders
shouldn’t be easy to understand but
impossible to misunderstand she did not
know the difference between refund with
dollar amount and refund and she clicked
on the refund button and she refunded
not 3,000 but eighteen thousand dollars
all of the cash that he had had with
that student well I didn’t have eighteen
thousand dollars to give to her so the
whole like I had a nervous breakdown
right there it’s just sort of like it
and you know your brand new business
trying to trying to put things together
trying to make things work and it was it
was horrible thankfully working with was
able to give us back that other money
but I literally had to go to her and say
hey you know we refunded you for two
months too much can i revert to the
charge cuz you know can you just send me
back that money and she was happy to do
it but those are examples of that could
happen the way I would have done that is
I would have had her do some small test
test Spurs to be able to test out that
you cross us to make sure that it’s not
an eighteen thousand dollar loss but
it’s a three hundred dollar loss dozen
example so always when you’re building
out a source components of your business
or remote components of the business
make sure that they are small bursts
functional get them humming properly in
Manila money because then you will end
up having to convince some of your
customers to like you know please plead
with them to get some money back into
your bank account cuz they emptied it so
yeah so that if these explosions as
small as humanly possible but you need
to make them if you don’t make them if
you don’t make these mistakes you won’t
grow it’s a cool story might not like it
um Pierre foul Tony or felt zone is
asking why is it beneficial to meet
other remote teams so they asking about
bringing people together why is that
beneficial to meet the remote teams in
person so the biggest thing for us is
we’ve got a pretty massive silo effect
inside
businesses though customer support don’t
talk to the developers and the
developers don’t have to sales and sales
don’t talk to marketing right so we have
these different silos inside of the
business but then when they all meet
together in one place the communication
that happens you get that exchange of
information and there’s ways to
accomplish that digitally I absolutely
agree we have something called coworker
coffee so every tuesday i am matched
with a random employee and my goal is to
talk to them for an hour not about
work-related stuff but just about that
ought to be able to get to know them
better so basically threw out a year
we’re able to talk to everybody in the
team so that’s one digital way of doing
it but the way to accelerate that as
quickly as possible is with these sort
of retreats so you’re able to say like
oh someone from customer support could
talk to a developer and customer support
is sending tickets to develop and saying
hey there’s this bug you know that’s
happening and the developer says aw ok
that’s a bug I’ll solve it but then when
they talk to them in person you could
say yeah there were 68 requests for this
bug to get fixed in the last week and
it’s much more important than anything
else that’s the type of communication
that just sort of like an in office
environment you’d already have you have
that type of communication and that
lacks and remote so you need to be able
to augment that with these retreats to
be able to make sure that those guys are
kind of getting that information they’re
kind of just collaborating basically i
love it liam is crazy how quickly a half
an hour flies by for people who want to
learn more about staff or time doctor or
you and connect what’s the best way to
to reach out you can connect with me
just at time dr. kirk amor staff calm
you can also email me I’m not scared to
receive emails from people it’s Liam at
staff calm if you email me actually
you’ll see you’ll you’ll experience a
very interesting process of how I filter
that information with a lot of our
promote people as well so I will respond
to every single one of you but it will
go through an interesting process so you
can email me there and then there’s
always you know Twitter rec time doctor
app and at staff on Twitter you can say
hello there
very cool well Liam thank you for
spending some time thank you guys for
watching continue to believe or whatever
your one where it is and we’ll see you
soon see you later
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