The Importance Of Focus And Discipline For Professional Growth With Liam Martin
Every day is a battle on what we want to achieve in the future and what we want to have now. Are your thoughts organized, or are you on a rough road and dealing with difficult situations? We may have stressful, anxiety-filled experiences, but what matters is our ability to bounce back. Join your host Chad Burmeister as he discusses how we could level up our life through entrepreneurship with Liam Martin. Liam is the co-founder and CMO of Time Doctor and Staff.com, one of the most popular time tracking and productivity software platforms used by top brands today. In this episode, he shares his personal journey, specifically memories when he was younger and the experiences that shaped him to be disciplined and focused. He explains in detail how he discovered different ways in business, broke the rules, got fired, looked through the silver lining, and how he used that experience to grow professionally. He also discusses the role that faith plays in his life. Discover secrets in life that could help you live a better story and make your life count.
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The Importance Of Focus And Discipline For Professional Growth With Liam Martin
I'm here with Liam Martin, who is with Time Doctor and Running Remote. He's going to tell us a little bit more about what those two companies do and we're going to get to know Liam pretty well. He's in the process of writing a book. I'd love to hear more about that also. Liam, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me. The book is supposed to be top secret, but it's okay. It's a book on what makes some remote teams work and other ones don't and is very applicable to what we're going through.
Tell me more about the companies. Why not stop at one when you can have two?
I probably have more than two when I do think about it, but that's the entrepreneurial mind. For me, it's not about what I can do, but more importantly, deciding what I should not do, which is critical to my overall access at least. Company one is Time Doctor, that's a time-tracking tool for remote teams. We've been running that for several years. We have employees in 43 different countries all over the world.
We have run that entire company remotely and asynchronously since its inception. We have no offices. I am in my walk-in closet upstairs, which I lovingly like to call my office, and we've worked that way since day one. I've worked remotely for several years, because I love it, and I know that's changed with everyone's switching over to a remote work model.
This brings me to company two, which is Running Remote, which is the largest conference on building and scaling teams. We've been running that for several years and it was a conference that came out of my frustration about not seeing enough information out there on not just hiring a virtual assistant or building a small remote team to build a lifestyle business, but how do you build a unicorn, a billion-dollar evaluation company remotely. This conference is the exact playbook on how to be able to get there.
You had to have done something to get to this point and the best way I usually find to get to that answer is by rewinding the tape and asking, what are some of your first memories when you were younger? Let's say 5, 6, 7. It sounds like you've got a young one at home now that doesn't have memories yet maybe or it's just starting to formulate some of those. What were some of your first memories and passion when you were a younger child?
If you want me to go back to my earliest memory, one of the ones that I remember, I fell inside of a ditch full of stinging nettles. You probably have those in most of the United States, but up in Canada, they're everywhere. I was laying in this ditch and I couldn't speak because if I screamed than the stinging nettles would sting me. I remember just saying help for about fifteen minutes before my grandmother and mother found me.
I can see that in a kid's book where you've got this little tiny help words coming out of the talk bubble.
That's my earliest memory. I was probably 3 at that point but in terms of 5 or 6, for me, it was a lot of honestly, hustles, trying to figure out how to do things. I remember running a soapbox derby, making a little bit of money at that. I remember the standard thing like selling lemonade, trying to cut lawns, shoveling driveways in the winter up here in Canada. Those were all the things that I did to be able to try to make a couple of bucks, and some of my earliest memories that I can think of, in general, even though they're all entrepreneurial.
How does that connect to what you're doing? We covered you have two companies plus and some other ones probably that are out there.
Entrepreneurship is one of those things that people, at least for me, I had to almost come out of the closet as an entrepreneur. I originally started in graduate school and I started going to university and my goal was to finish up my PhD in Sociology. That was brought on by my family that wanted me to pursue academia, but I sold a very successful business in my undergrad to be able to fund graduate school.
If I had not sold that company, it would have been a multimillion-dollar business easily by the time I was 25, but I sold it to get the money to go to grad school. By going to grad school, I recognized that I wasn't happy and I had to do one of the most difficult things my entire life, which was tell my parents that I did not want to pursue the path that they had. They believed that I should be doing and instead, going my own way. That's fundamental to entrepreneurship.
My perspective is, I'll give you an example, I've been fired or quit from almost every job I have ever taken on in my entire life and mostly I was fired because I didn't agree with the way that they were running the business and I think that they could do it in different ways. By extension, I thought I would do things in different ways and I'd get fired due to that. If you're that type of person, entrepreneurship is the only avenue for you for survival fundamentally. You need to eat. If you get fired every three months, it's probably not super helpful.
What you described is my career. Every 2 to 3 years, I'd move to the next one. I always wondered, am I going to get fired? I'm breaking a lot of plates along the way and causing the organization, because you see inefficiencies that are extremely inefficient. It's like, "I can get you at 8X multiple return.” I remember one, the lead conversion rate was 8%, and in 90 days we moved it to 18%.
I'm like, "All we're doing is calling leads ten times each instead of the old way, which was 1 or 0.50." That was it, using technology to do it. Reps and the managers complain. "Why are we have to call the leads ten times each?" "Because we spend $1,250,000 on leads and we take it from 8% to 18%, and there's a very big payoff on the back end of that. That's why.” It's like, "You can't make me make calls. Maybe I need to go somewhere else.”
I remember I was nineteen years old and I was doing door-to-door sales and I was selling water coolers. If you want to learn how to sell, do door-to-door sales. Be a door-to-door salesman for three months, you will learn everything that you need to know, including being told no about 10,000 times. Once you're told no 10,000 times, it no longer affects you.
I remember I was nineteen of doing door-to-door sales, selling a water cooler that you could buy at Costco for $200 that I was selling for $1,000 plus a water subscription. It was not a very good product and I would go door-to-door, and then I realized. I was dealing with the retail side of the sector. I went into this office building and I spoke to the office director, the guy that was running this entire building and I sold 30 water coolers in one deal. I made $30,000.
Focus And Discipline: The secret to life is to be comfortable in having uncomfortable conversations. When you have been the most stressed, you also achieve the most growth.
I got a commission of $250 per water cooler. I was like, "For a nineteen-year-old, that's pretty awesome. This is genius.” I became the number one sales person within two weeks. Why? Because I was only talking to businesses. I wasn't talking to individual homes. I got called into their office. The big boss said, "You can't sell to offices. We only can sell to consumers." I said, "That's stupid. I'm making way more money."
They said, "We know that's stupid, but that's the rules, and you've got to go back to just selling door-to-door.” What I did, which got me fired, is I said, "I'm going to come up with a much easier system." Instead of going door-to-door working all day and selling 1 or maybe 2 water coolers, I'm going to sell 30 water coolers to that business and set up 30 different contracts. I'm going to set up 30 different purchase orders for those 30 water coolers, and within two weeks, they found that out and I was fired. I made a lot of money in the interim, which was great.
I talked to someone who does mindset coaching, like Napoleon Hill stuff, big time cool stuff. I told him that my being fired was one of my traumatic moments in life. It's what's interesting, is that you're able to say, "I was fired multiple times,” and it doesn't affect you. What mindset do you have going into that conversation? I know, you just shared, it's the entrepreneurial mindset, but how do you be okay with that? It took me a lot of years to be okay with that.
For anyone that wants to become an entrepreneur, even if you're not an extroverted person, the first thing that you should be doing is going out and doing door-to-door sales, to be completely honest with you. It is one of the fastest ways to be able to get negative news on a microcosm and become bulletproofed to those types of interactions.
Getting fired as an example, I'm sure that probably everyone reading has probably been fired once in their lives. If they haven't, I don't think they're pushing hard enough, to be completely honest with you. I would challenge people to say, "If you've never been fired, then maybe you're not passionate about what you're doing." A lot of people are not passionate about what they're doing and a lot of people confuse passion with frustration in the business or something like that, particularly if they're an employee.
For me, when I see that type of frustration inside of my company, that's something that I love to level up. If someone comes back and they've been breaking the rules, those are people that I usually give more resources to and not less. In large corporate, it's the opposite. In a large corporate of 1,000 people, that's probably the fastest way for you to get fired.
If you're also interested in becoming more entrepreneurial, join a company that has less than ten employees, that's gotten around venture capital financing. That's the second stage. Right after you do door-to-door sales, do that and do that for about two years. You're going to have a PhD in Entrepreneurship and you're going to be able to build your own thing.
Tell me about something in life that maybe was difficult for you. It felt like a gut punch of all gut punches that you're comfortable sharing on the show, other than being fired because that one we've said, it's not a big deal. What's something that was a big deal, and looking back now made you who you are?
This pulls back to a core thesis that I've heard multiple people say, and I can't remember where I got it from. It's something that I've held for a very long time, which is the secret to life is being comfortable, having uncomfortable conversations. When I think to the moments in my life in which I've been the most stressed but also achieved the most growth, it's been in uncomfortable conversations for any purpose.
Thinking of one off the top of my head, our software Time Doctor, which is a time tracking tool for remote workers. It went down due to a database issue several years ago for almost two days. We lost $1 million in annual recurring revenue, which works out to, the software is a service world, millions of dollars in lost revenue inside of the business.
I remember getting letters from people saying, "How am I supposed to do payroll for all of my employees in the next two days? Liam, I like you as a person, but your software sucks and it's not working any longer, and I got to quit." I remember that being one of the most stressful periods of my entire life because I'm not a technical person. I'm a marketer instead of an engineer and watching the last eight years of your life almost burn up.
It's a destructive experience, but then I realized as well that this was the absolute worst thing that could've ever happened to the business, and because we've gotten through that, we were effectively bulletproofed afterwards. There are things now that would have affected me in the business and now, I'm much more calm about it because I say to them, "We didn't lose $1 million." That's pretty good. We didn't lose $3 million. That's pretty good for a bootstrap company like mine that we don't have any venture funding or anything like that. A couple of million bucks hurts.
I feel that because we had about a $600,000 hit this 2021 on $1.2 million of revenue, 50% hit. It's finally now, after two quarters has fully been recovered, but that was a painful time. It does help you put it in perspective.
The other lesson that I gained from that experience, which is directly applicable to our situation, was with COVID. When COVID hit, I knew that a remote time tracking tool was probably going to expand during that period as opposed to contract. I committed myself. I've done 680 podcasts since the pandemic started as a context.
We started making as much content as humanly possible. We started giving away our conference content for free because we wanted to distribute as much of this messaging as humanly possible. We recognized our mission statement is we want to help facilitate the world's transition towards remote work. We've had that mission statement for the past years, and we realized at that point with COVID, even though COVID is horrible and we would have never wanted that to happen, there is a silver lining that people are now able to get access to remote work opportunities that they would've never been able to get access to before.
Now is our time to work, grind, and to get to the point in which we can distribute that message to more people. If I hadn't had those types of stressful, anxiety-filled experiences in my life previously, it wouldn't have prepared me for that moment, where I had the opportunity to be able to put a positive impact on what's been a horrible eighteen months.
For people reading, if you're in that moment where you're feeling like you're against all odds, there is a silver lining. You just put one foot in front of the other and before you know it, your day comes and, "Now I'm ready." I've heard that over and over again on this show. If you came back on the show three years from now and we look back and said, "These have been an amazing three years," what will have happened either in your business and in your personal life? What would be the thing looking back that you would be most proud of?
Focus And Discipline: Entrepreneurship is the concept of jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down. You don’t know how you’re going to get there but have faith that it's going to happen.
I have a little piece of paper that I write down all of my goals on and I put it in my wallet, so that every time I can grab money or something like that, I can see that little piece of paper and it reorganizes my mind to recognize what I want to work on. The reason why most people fail is they focus on giving up what they want most in the world for what they want right now. “Do you want six pack abs?” “Yes. That's what I want.” “What do I want right now? I want a piece of cake or I want an ice cream.” “How is your business functioning? What are your goals in life? Do you want to build a hundred million-dollar business, billion-dollar business?”
“I want to do all those things, but I want to buy a new house or a new Tesla.” Where I see myself in three years is focusing in on continuing to be disciplined in where I put my time, where I put my resources, and how I build my relationships. I know that's probably not the exact answer that you're looking for, but if I continue to do that, then I'm going to be able to maximize what I want in the future and hopefully deflect what I want, which is a lot of things, and it's a daily battle with me to be able to try to fight against those two sides of my personality.
I'm in the similar boat. It's easy for sales leaders and CEOs to say, "I need to sell 1 million units." If I'm in a nonprofit, I need to do X. That's outcomes. If you miss it or you hit it, then you got to go do a new outcome. If you focus on the activities, like you're saying, what mix am I doing of where I'm spending my time? If it's in the things that you enjoy doing, then it doesn't matter what the outcome is at the end. I don't care if I'm worth $10 million 25 years from now or if I'm worth $2 million or $500 million. If you have a goal, I have to be $1 billion worth in ten years. I had a friend that did that. He's probably $300 million of his way towards $1 billion and that was several years ago.
Great goal, but what trade-offs are involved? He's had to trade-off a lot in getting to that net worth. Focusing on activities, I like that a lot. It's easy, too, when you look at it that way and you look at your calendar, color code it. I'm doing about 50% of my time on this show and other things that are completely unrelated to my ScaleX business, but it's the right thing. You can easily move that needle as you need to over time. If the revenue is not there on one side, I need to move 10% off of this and move 10% over to that. It's very easy to pivot.
Regardless of wherever you end up, if you continue on with the adage of focusing on long-term growth, as opposed to short-term gains, you're always going to succeed. That is the core piece that everyone has to fight constantly. It's the cake. Having cake instead of your vegetables, it's not going to the gym. It's focusing on your business instead of watching Netflix. These are things that we all have to fight in order to do what we want to do versus what we want to do right now.
We built this app called 77Pray and it's for people who want to pray. First thing in the morning, it pops up a little reminder and you check the box. “I woke up and I had a tiny little prayer.” It doesn't say you have to pray for twenty minutes or anything. It's a really simple little thing. You read a Bible verse and then you act throughout the day, and then you read a Bible verse at the end of the day.
Then there's the ability to add other if you say workout. I added Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday workout for 30 minutes. That's not that much effort, but 30 minutes, 4 days a week, that consistency starts to add up. To your point, that to me, there's the baseline of here's what I need to do no matter what, and then you keep adding onto that and having a consistent reminder pop up on your screen every day is a nice thing.
A friend of mine, Dan Martel tells me, “Get 1% better every day. That's all you need to do. That's not a hard ask, but then in a year, you'll be blown away at how far you can go.”
I go to Dan's ski retreats and 2020 year was canceled, but 2019, the backcountry ski area. That was a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to if should Canada opens up again.
I'm almost positive we will be.
I hope so because that's a lot of fun and Dan's an amazing human being, $1 problems, $10 problems, $100 problems. Have you heard him talk about that one?
I have. I've known him for years, nice guy. That's a perfect example of someone that you can look at that's focusing on the long-term trajectory versus what they want right now.
What role does faith play in your journey? Everyone defines faith a little bit differently. There's no one right answer. How does faith play a role in your dreams?
Faith for me, and this is funny, if I didn't have faith in the universe in myself to be able to do what I have done in my life, I never would have started. Entrepreneurship is the concept of jumping off the cliff and building the plane on the way down. It's I don't know how I'm going to get there, but I have faith that it's going to happen because I know that I have the right mindset and the universe is aligned in order for me to be able to achieve that particular mindset. I'm approaching the problem from the perspective of helping the world as opposed to hurting it. As long as you have those pieces in place, it doesn't matter where your faith comes from, you'll have it and you'll be able to achieve whatever you want.
Last story I'll tell you, there was a guy who does those squirrel suit jumps out of airplanes and cliffs. He does do what you said. He said, one time he was climbing up the rope. He went to an Olympic mindset training like for the Olympics, even though he didn't compete in the Olympics. It causes you to look at the world, slow it down, and look at all the pieces of everything.
He climbs up this rope ladder and he sees a little sticker of the name of the brand or the rope ladder. He gets to the top and does the squirrel suit jump. He's going 120 miles an hour or whatever they do. He looks over and then freeze frame, he sees that little tag and he can read the sticker going that fast in a zip by. A lot of times, we go through life so quickly and we let it happen. When we cause ourselves to plan and get 1% better every day, we take a minute, look around, look at the tag and the name of the tag on that rope ladder, otherwise, the world's just going to pass you by too fast.
That's something that I have been guilty of and I try to do that a lot more often now.
What a cool impact you're having. I worked for RingCentral. I know a lot of people at Zoom and I used to work for WebEx. I've been in this remote space for a few decades at this point and a big fan of it. Keep on doing what you're doing. It's an important job that you do for everybody.
Thanks for having me.
Everybody, thanks for joining the show.
Important Links:
About Liam Martin
Remote Work is the future. The office is dead and he’s here to help move company remote or scale remote organization towards success. Projects:TimeDoctor.com is one of the worlds leading time tracking software for remote teams. They help companies to be able to manage remote workers just as if they were in the same office, maintaining a high level of productivity.
Goal: To help individuals and organizations to be more productive, to help stop people wasting time on distractions and instead finish what is important to them.
Remote workers can easily and quickly track their time so they remain productive, and business owners can relax knowing their team is being effective.
Running Remote is the largest conference on building and scaling remote teams especially for remote business owners and leaders.
