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In this episode of The Remote CEO Show, I had the pleasure of interviewing Liam Martin. Liam, Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Time Doctor, pioneers cutting-edge workforce management tools to enhance remote employee productivity. He co-organizes the annual Running Remote Conference, and co-authored the bestselling book "Running Remote," advocating for collaborative and agile remote-first organizations.
The number of remote workers more than tripled between 2019 and 2021. While remote work is not at its pandemic peak, it is here to stay. Liam Martin has been an expert on remote work for over two decades – long before it became a household term. He argues that all organizations – new and old – need to adopt remote and hybrid models to remain competitive in the marketplace. His mission is to make remote work accessible for everyone, one employee and company at a time. Liam Martin is the co-founder of Time Doctor and Staff.com, co-organizer of Running Remote – the world's largest conference on remote work, and the author of Running Remote and various publications on distributed work. His expertise has helped thousands of companies around the world adopt a remote working model. In this episode, Dart and Liam discuss:- The evolution of remote work and where it's headed- The Running Remote annual conference- Starting a remote company vs. transitioning to remote work- A manager's role in a remote/hybrid model- The importance of Employers of Records (EORs) for remote work- How to build a culture of asynchronous work- Effective process documentation- The 4 epochs of remote work- And other topics…Liam Martin is a remote work expert with over twenty years of experience in the field. He has worked with thousands of companies, helping organizations worldwide to adopt a remote working model. Liam co-founded Time Doctor and Staff.com, one of the most popular productivity software platforms today. He is also the co-organizer of the world's largest conference on distributed work – the annual Running Remote Conference.Liam's latest book, Running Remote, guides for organizations that want to unlock remote work to achieve more autonomy for business owners and employees. Liam's work has also been published in Forbes, Wired, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. His mission is to empower workers to work wherever they want, whenever they want; Liam lives this out in his own life by traveling six months of the year with his family while working remotely.Resources mentioned:Running Remote, by Liam Martin and Rob Rawson: https://www.amazon.com/Running-Remote-Successful-Remote-Work-Pioneers/dp/1400232147Deep Work, by Cal Newport: https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Cal-Newport-audiobook/dp/B0189PVAWY/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=deep+work&s=books&sr=1-1 Connect with Liam:www.RunningRemote.comRunning Remote YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/RunningRemote
Today Jonny Cattani talks with the co-organizer of the Running Remote Conference and the co-founder and CMO of Time Doctor and Staff.com – one of the most popular time-tracking and productivity software platforms top brands use today – Liam Martin.They discuss:1. How Liam started Time Doctor and Running Remote2. Methods of asynchronous management and its benefits3. Digital nomadismLiam Martin consults on outsourcing and process design and is passionate about gaining insights into the inner workings of how people work.He is an avid proponent of remote work and has been published in Forbes, Inc, Mashable, TechCrunch, Fast Company, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, The Next Web, The Huffington Post, Venturebeat, and many other publications specifically targeting the expansion of remote work.The mission statement that feeds all the products and services that Liam is involved with stems from empowering workers to work wherever they want, whenever they want.Liam has an undergraduate and graduate degree in Sociology from McGill University. He lives in Canada but travels 3-6 months out of the year due to his ability to work wherever and whenever he likes. He chooses a new place to travel to a few times a year but usually spends time in Austin, Las Vegas, and Ubud each year and loves to encourage others to work remotely on his travels.Learn more about Liam:Website: https://runningremote.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liammcivormartin/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/runningremoteGrab a copy of his book: https://www.runningremotebook.com/Connect with Jonny!Cattani Capital Group: https://cattanicapitalgroup.com/Invest with us: invest@cattanicapitalgroup.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-cattani-53159b179Jonny's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonnycattani/IRR Podcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theirrpodcast/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jonnycattaniYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCljEz4pq_paQ9keABhJzt0AFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.cattani.1
Level up your remote work game and cut back on Zoom meetings with these tips from Liam Martin, the author of the groundbreaking new book, Running Remote. Whether you are a current or aspiring remote worker, freelancer, or team leader, you will gain ideas to help you improve your productivity, find better remote job opportunities, and work better remotely in this episode. Special Offers: Digital Nomads for Dummies Running Remote Apply for Ready To Relocate What you'll learn: How to work remotely without Zoom meetings How to avoid or reduce the cost of “Digital Presentism” How to be more productive working from home What remote employers are looking for in new hires How to build your remote skillset and attract employers How to land a remote job using the “Portfolio Technique” Questions answered: Is it possibly to work remotely without Zoom? What the heck is Async and why should people care? What are the top remote work companies looking for in remote employees? What to put on your CV or resume to get a good remote job? Which companies did things right and wrong during the pandemic? Is it better to get work experience or go to college or grad school? And much more Resources: Badass Digital Nomads Ep 29: How Everyone Can Work Remotely with Liam Martin of Running Remote Conference Top Remote Companies Mentioned: VidYard, Buffer, GitLab, Nomad List and Remote Ok Naval podcast Connect with Liam: Running Remote Book Running Remote Conference in Lisbon, Portugal Running Remote Podcast Running Remote YouTube Channel ........................................................................................... Connect with Kristin: Follow on Instagram Subscribe to Traveling with Kristin on YouTube Subscribe to Digital Nomad TV on YouTube Join the Badass Digital Nomads Facebook Group ........................................................................................... Support the Badass Digital Nomads Podcast: Buy Kristin a Coffee Become a Patron Leave a 5-Star Review Buy Official Merch www.badassdigitalnomads.com ........................................................................................... A special thank you to Kristin's Patrons! Become a Patron for $5/month at Patreon.com/travelingwithkristin ........................................................................................... Podcast descriptions may contain affiliate links of products and services we use and recommend at no additional cost to you.
In this episode of Enterprise Sales Development podcast, we speak with Liam Martin, co-founder, co-organizer and CMO of Time Doctor, Staff.com and Running Remote Conference. Liam previews his upcoming book, Running Remote: Master the Lessons from the World's Most Successful Remote-Work Pioneers, that comes out on August 16. He talks about working from home and remote business strategies in sales. He also shares tips for remote productivity and how to think about the future of work. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN Scaling practices for remote teams using the promotion strategy for his upcoming book as an example How engagement and familiarity has shifted with remote work and what can salespeople do to authentically connect with clients The inspiration behind his upcoming book, Running Remote: Master the Lessons from the World's Most Successful Remote-Work Pioneers Practical techniques for a new management style in remote work The unintended consequences of an asynchronous workforce QUOTES “Fundamentally, we're just trying to find the best person for the job. Because we think that actually if you just expand out your reach to a global market, you're going to continuously get better candidates that are better at their job.” -Liam Martin [03:13] “The number one thing you can do without basically buying yourself on to those lists is getting on podcasts.” -Liam Martin [04:20] “No contact should be a cold contact in my opinion.” -Liam Martin [14:46] “That's where innovation exists actually, is questioning your assumptions.” -Liam Martin [33:50] “If there is one piece of advice that I would have towards the negative aspect of asynchronous remote work, it is build those relationships so that you don't get all of your social energy from your work environment.” -Liam Martin [38:33] TIMESTAMPS [00:01] Intro [00:40] This week's guest: Liam Martin [02:14] Being a guest on 500 podcasts [14:02] Effective attribution and sampling [23:56] Pandemic panickers and Running Remote [27:43] Management style in remote work [36:43] Unintentional consequences [43:41] Liam's upcoming book and how to contact him RESOURCES The Wall Street Journal Best Selling Lists Newsweek Books and Literature New York Times Best Sellers Listen Notes Matt Mullenweg HubSpot Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com by Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler The Ups and Downs of Building a Distributed Global Sales Team with Liam Martin The Joe Rogan Experience BookScan Time Doctor Blue Ocean Ahrefs
Liam Martin is an entrepreneur and speaker, as well as the Co-founder and CMO of Staff.com and Time Doctor—one of the most popular time tracking and productivity software platforms for top brands. An advocate of remote working, Liam has been published in several publications, including Forbes, Inc, Mashable, TechCrunch, Wired, and others. Liam is the author of Running Remote and co-organizer of the Running Remote Conference. Liam joins us today to discuss remote working and helping employees become more effective in remote working or hybrid working set-ups. He shares his forecast on remote working in the country. He describes asynchronous management and reveals how it helps remote teams. Liam also highlights how employers can help prevent “work from home” from turning into “live at work.” “Today, remote work is not nice to have—it's needed. If you don't adapt and recognize that remote work is the future, you'll get left behind.” - Liam Martin This week on SmallBizChat Podcast: Resources Mentioned: Connect with Liam Martin: Become Your Own Boss Book GIVEAWAY! The 2020 pandemic has been so hard on America's small businesses - and America in general. If you're ready to start your dream business, then look no further! I'm currently giving away 1,000 free copies of my best-selling book: Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months. This book has helped over 100,000 people like you to start, build, and grow their small businesses… and now it's your time to shine. All you have to do to get your hands on a free copy is head over to www.beginmybiz.com/freeoffer to sign up for your free offer. You only pay shipping. Let's End Small Business Failure - Together! Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of the SmallBizChat Podcast - the show on a mission to improve small business success. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, and leave us a rating and review. Help us spread the word and end small business failure by sharing your favorite episodes with your friends and colleagues on social media. Visit our website or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or YouTube for more great content, tips, and strategies to improve your small business.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
I pause, take a step back and ask myselfIs this the right decision for the company or do I just want to win this argument? Are you able to take a step back, check yourself and respond accordingly? Can you constantly do this when in business to ensure your ego isnt taking the reigns? There are many challenges in business, and recognising the role of the ego in your decisions and visions will provide you and your business with the leader that is genuinely needed, especially in the remote world. In this week's episode, we hear from an entrepreneur who has not only been a pioneer for remote working but an empowering leader who has helped hundreds of professionals find success in the remote world. About Liam MartinLiam Martin is the co-founder and CMO of Time Doctor and Staff.com one of the most popular time tracking and productivity software platforms in use by top brands today. He is also a co-organizer of the Running Remote Conference. He is an avid proponent of remote work and has been published in Forbes, Inc, Mashable, TechCrunch, Fast Company, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, The Next Web, The Huffington Post, Venturebeat, and many other publications specifically targeting the expansion of remote work. The mission statement that feeds all the products and services that Liam is involved with stems from empowering workers to work wherever they want, whenever they want. Connect with Liam Martin Linkedin Twitter Instagram Some topics discussed: What does purpose mean to you? Changing your mindset from entrepreneur to executive Would you rather own or run a business? How much is enough? Spotting the trend of remote work Taking a step back & checking your own ego Creating a goal in the reality of distortion Connect with Me Website Instagram LinkedIn Twitter Email: hello@mindsetshift.co.uk I am always keen to hear your thoughts and connect with the community of listeners. If you have any comments, feedback or thoughts, please drop me an email at https://mindsetshift.co.uk/#ask-me-anything
“I pause, take a step back and ask myself…Is this the right decision for the company or do I just want to win this argument?” Are you able to take a step back, check yourself and respond accordingly? Can you constantly do this when in business to ensure your ego isn't taking the reigns? There are many challenges in business, and recognising the role of the ego in your decisions and visions will provide you and your business with the leader that is genuinely needed, especially in the remote world. In this week's episode, we hear from an entrepreneur who has not only been a pioneer for remote working but an empowering leader who has helped hundreds of professionals find success in the remote world. About Liam MartinLiam Martin is the co-founder and CMO of Time Doctor and Staff.com — one of the most popular time tracking and productivity software platforms in use by top brands today. He is also a co-organizer of the Running Remote Conference. He is an avid proponent of remote work and has been published in Forbes, Inc, Mashable, TechCrunch, Fast Company, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, The Next Web, The Huffington Post, Venturebeat, and many other publications specifically targeting the expansion of remote work. The mission statement that feeds all the products and services that Liam is involved with stems from empowering workers to work wherever they want, whenever they want. Connect with Liam Martin Linkedin Twitter Instagram Some topics discussed: What does purpose mean to you? Changing your mindset from entrepreneur to executive Would you rather own or run a business? How much is enough? Spotting the trend of remote work Taking a step back & checking your own ego Creating a goal in the “reality of distortion” Connect with Me Website Instagram LinkedIn Twitter Email: hello@mindsetshift.co.uk I am always keen to hear your thoughts and connect with the community of listeners. If you have any comments, feedback or thoughts, please drop me an email at https://mindsetshift.co.uk/#ask-me-anything
“I pause, take a step back and ask myself…Is this the right decision for the company or do I just want to win this argument?”Are you able to take a step back, check yourself and respond accordingly? Can you constantly do this when in business to ensure your ego isn't taking the reigns?There are many challenges in business, and recognising the role of the ego in your decisions and visions will provide you and your business with the leader that is genuinely needed, especially in the remote world.In this week's episode, we hear from an entrepreneur who has not only been a pioneer for remote working but an empowering leader who has helped hundreds of professionals find success in the remote world.About Liam MartinLiam Martin is the co-founder and CMO of Time Doctor and Staff.com — one of the most popular time tracking and productivity software platforms in use by top brands today. He is also a co-organizer of the Running Remote Conference. He is an avid proponent of remote work and has been published in Forbes, Inc, Mashable, TechCrunch, Fast Company, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, The Next Web, The Huffington Post, Venturebeat, and many other publications specifically targeting the expansion of remote work. The mission statement that feeds all the products and services that Liam is involved with stems from empowering workers to work wherever they want, whenever they want.Connect with Liam MartinLinkedinTwitterInstagramSome topics discussed:What does purpose mean to you?Changing your mindset from entrepreneur to executiveWould you rather own or run a business?How much is enough?Spotting the trend of remote workTaking a step back & checking your own egoCreating a goal in the “reality of distortion”Connect with MeWebsiteInstagram LinkedIn Twitter Email: hello@mindsetshift.co.ukI am always keen to hear your thoughts and connect with the community of listeners. If you have any comments, feedback or thoughts, please drop me an email at https://mindsetshift.co.uk/#ask-me-anything
Liam Martin is the co-founder and CMO of Time Doctor — one of the most popular productivity software platforms in use by top brands today. He is also a co-organizer of the Running Remote Conference and co-author of the Book - Running Remote. Liam is an avid proponent of remote work and has been published in Forbes, Inc, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, and many others. While he travels around the world a few times a year, he usually spends time in Austin, Las Vegas, and Ubud. He encourages others to work remotely while he's on his travels.
Liam Martin is the co-founder and CMO of Time Doctor — one of the most popular productivity software platforms in use by top brands today. He is also a co-organizer of the Running Remote Conference and co-author of the Book - Running Remote. Liam is an avid proponent of remote work and has been published in Forbes, Inc, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, and many others. While he travels around the world a few times a year, he usually spends time in Austin, Las Vegas, and Ubud. He encourages others to work remotely while he's on his travels.
In this episode of Championship Leadership we interview Liam Martin, Speaker, Author, Co- Founder of Time Doctor and Staff.com and Co-organizer of Running Remote Conference. He will tell his story of being a pair skater that almost got him into the Olympics until an unfortunate tragedy struck him, forcing him to discontinue his lifelong dream of joining in Olympics. Undeterred with adversity, Liam persistently still managed to get into a grad school, and is now an accomplished Founder, Marketer and advocate of Remote Work. Today, Liam is greatly involved in helping the world's transition towards remote work to free people from time and space and all the while allowing to form autonomy that can scale your business. These and more! Tune in to this episode!
In this week episode, we are diving into the operational revolution of Asynchronous Management with Liam Martin, co-founder of Running Remote, the largest in-person conference dedicated to scaling remote-first companies, happening this May 17-18 2022 in Montréal, Canada. In this episode you'll hear: - What is true time agnostic work - Who will be at the Running Remote conference and what you can expect. - EOR and hiring compliantly anywhere - Autonomy versus flexibility at work - Taking decisions as a group without face-to-face. Join me at the Running Remote Conference! A gift for listeners, use the code: RFPODCAST to get 25% off your tickets. Links Running Remote conference Youtube.com/runningremote Otter.ai Reach out - You can reach out to the host Daphnée Laforest on Linkedin :) Leave a review, and help us get discovered! - If you found value in this show, we'd love your review on your listening app of choice. It really helps to get the podcast discovered by more and more people. RateThisPodcast.com/remotefirst --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/remotefirst/message
Alan welcomes Liam Martin - Co-Founder and CMO of Time Doctor, Co-organizer of Running Remote Conference and Co-author of Running Remote Book. Alan starts the show by sharing how as an entrepreneur the need to control everything comes with the territory, yet at the same time he believes the best work comes from an employee that is able to be motivated and inspired with no time stamp. Lian says that working remote changed dramatically during COVID. He explains that a new group of workers merged onto the scene that he calls, Pandemic Panickers. Liam believes its the largest shift in work since the Industrial Revolution. With the new fundamental change of how work is done remote, he reminds us that it isn't a place. It doesn't matter where you work as long as you get it done. Asynchronous! Liam exclaims is the key along with autonomy. Not having to directly interact with people by working through a communication system allows an individual to work remote and to have maximum freedom in your life. Discipline equals freedom. Freedom allows your people to work on more difficult problems. To solve really unique difficult issues that move a business forward. Bureaucracy! No micromanaging...says Liam. He goes onto explain the fundamental of a remote business. 1. Set of processes, creating digital information that can be shared. 2. Don't have positions, become the operators. Delegate responsibility. 3. Automate all of the reporting. Have the same information available to the employees as the CEO so everyone is on the same page. Lastly Liam shares the common mistakes of remote business owners. Don't make working from home turn into living at work. Divide social space from work space. Stop requiring or asking for immediacy, it speeds you up but slows the company down, and lastly have team members tied into the same goal. [00:00:00] Control! [00:06:07] Accountability! [00:11:30] Methodology! [00:18:50] Asynchronous! [00:28:17] Bureaucracy! [00:33:49] Philosophy!
Alan welcomes Liam Martin - Co-Founder and CMO of Time Doctor, Co-organizer of Running Remote Conference and Co-author of Running Remote Book. Alan starts the show by sharing how as an entrepreneur the need to control everything comes with the territory, yet at the same time he believes the best work comes from an employee that is able to be motivated and inspired with no time stamp. Lian says that working remote changed dramatically during COVID. He explains that a new group of workers merged onto the scene that he calls, Pandemic Panickers. Liam believes its the largest shift in work since the Industrial Revolution. With the new fundamental change of how work is done remote, he reminds us that it isn't a place. It doesn't matter where you work as long as you get it done. Asynchronous! Liam exclaims is the key along with autonomy. Not having to directly interact with people by working through a communication system allows an individual to work remote and to have maximum freedom in your life. Discipline equals freedom. Freedom allows your people to work on more difficult problems. To solve really unique difficult issues that move a business forward. Bureaucracy! No micromanaging...says Liam. He goes onto explain the fundamental of a remote business. 1. Set of processes, creating digital information that can be shared. 2. Don't have positions, become the operators. Delegate responsibility. 3. Automate all of the reporting. Have the same information available to the employees as the CEO so everyone is on the same page. Lastly Liam shares the common mistakes of remote business owners. Don't make working from home turn into living at work. Divide social space from work space. Stop requiring or asking for immediacy, it speeds you up but slows the company down, and lastly have team members tied into the same goal. [00:00:00] Control! [00:06:07] Accountability! [00:11:30] Methodology! [00:18:50] Asynchronous! [00:28:17] Bureaucracy! [00:33:49] Philosophy!
Join Jennifer and Michelle as they welcome Liam Martin, the Co-Founder & CMO of Time Doctor and Staff.com — one of the most popular time tracking and productivity software platforms in use by top brands today. He is also a co-organizer of the Running Remote Conference.In this episode we explore:Remote CultureBuilding and Scaling Remote TeamsForce-quitting Your DayAsynchronous ManagementRunning Remote ConferenceConnect with Liam Martin:Click here to visit our guest page to learn more about our guest, Liam Martin!Episode Question:What are your thoughts around asynchronous management?Community Call:Join us as we continue the conversation on our monthly community call held on the 1st Thursday of the month via zoom at 7:00am ET. Email info@potentialsrealized.com for zoom room details.Follow our Podcasthttps://www.RemotePathways.com/podcast Follow us atFacebook.com/RemotePathwaysInstagram.com/RemotePathwaysTwitter/RemotePathways Let's Connect!Contact Jennifer to speak virtually on topics related to effective virtual conversations, virtual team development, virtual team leadership, growing a solopreneur business OR her own experience in leading remote teams globally in the voluntary sector. Contact Michelle Mullins to have a great conversation around your remote work and explore how you can find a HEALTHY RHYTHM in the remote working lifestyle.The Remote Pathways podcast is co-hosted by Jennifer Britton and Michelle Mullins. It is based on the writing of Jennifer Britton, author of Remote Pathways. We would love to hear from you. Please visit our Remote Pathways Podcast page.
Consider Subscribing to our Youtube Channel Mr. Bryan is a CEO & Founder of Xact I.T. Solutions and wants to help you protect your business and family from the next attack...Tune IN. Bryan is the founder of Xact IT Solutions, a leading cybersecurity firm and has earned the coveted CompTIA Security+ Trustmark Certification. He's the author of, Under Attack and Adapt & Overcome. Under Attack helps businesses with the challenge of securing data and systems and provides practical advice to help businesses identify risk and the best way to address it. Adapt & Overcome helps businesses in a similar way but looks at the current cybersecurity landscape as it relates to the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and remote work. Become a VIP Sponsor of the Show on Youtube Bryan built a strong reputation developing software for the U.S Navy and currently heads up a top cyber security firm. Bryan uses his experience to help others build rock solid cyber security programs that keep hackers away, moves the business forward, and keeps you out of reputation shattering headlines. His business is one of only 30 other firms that has earned the CompTIA Security+ Trustmark Certification. Earning the Security Trustmark+ demonstrates a true commitment to address the challenges of security compliance facing our industry today. Both book he has written hit the Amazon Best Sellers list and he has worked with hundreds of firms including the U.S. Navy, Northrup Grumman, and BET365. He was a featured panelist with executives from Zoom & Upwork at the Running Remote Conference. He hosts a weekly cyber security Podcast “Security Squawk” and has over 1500 followers on his YouTube channel. His firm has been featured on Yahoo News!, MarketWatch, and ABC, NBS, Fox, and CBS. Desired CTA Website: https://www.xitx.com/cyber-risk-eval/ Free Cyber Security Vulnerability Assessment
This week Danny interviews Liam Martin - co-founder and CMO of Time Doctor and co-organizer of Running Remote Conference. They discuss Running Remote’s survival and victory in this emergency situation when all their in-person events were cancelled. Running remote has always been able to gather absolute top innovators in the remote work space at their events. Here's what Liam talks about it in this interview - “That type of access is very, very rare. I remember interviewing Dimitri of GitLab directly for the first Running Remote. And I thought to myself that guy's a billionaire, pretty crazy.” Listen to this candid conversation as Danny and Liam discuss how the world has changed in 2020 and how remote work has been a key part of this revolution. Also you will enjoy some of Liam’s joyful experiences interviewing billionaires at Running Remote events.
One of the biggest concerns of employers when looking at running a remote work force is simple: how do I know they're actually working? Answering this question is crucial both to the employer and the employee. If the employee can prove they're working at home then they're more likely to be allowed to work from home after the pandemic subsides. Liam Martin, co-founder and CMO of Time Doctor, the Running Remote Conference, and Staff.com, joins Adam and Naresh to discuss how his software can help put everyone's mind at ease while upping productivity, as well as how the Running Remote Conference was able to go completely virtual this year. Websites: www.RunningRemote.com www.TimeDoctor.com www.Staff.com Featured Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash www.WorkFromHomeShow.com
How do you hire people with no in-person interviews? How can you hire people full time who live on the other side of the world? Team dynamics are important, and it's going to get harder to figure out as work becomes more remote. Liam Martin, co-founder and CMO of Time Doctor, the Running Remote Conference, and Staff.com, joins Adam and Naresh to discuss how to build your remote team, what resources and tools you need to manage them, finding worldwide talent, as well as what remote workers need to do their job best. Websites: www.RunningRemote.com www.TimeDoctor.com www.Staff.com www.WorkFromHomeShow.com Featured Photo by manny PANTOJA on Unsplash
#skillsformars #remotework #futureofwork On this episode, I am hosting Liam Martin, the co-founder of Time Doctor and the organizer of the Running Remote Conference. We look at remote with practitioner's eyes and dive into the economic advantages of remote work, the potential failures of Remote, setting compensation & benefits for remote teams, the advantages of hiring talent remotely, and much more. If you want to find out more about Liam, Running Remote or Time Doctor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liammcivormartin/ http://runningremote.com/ https://timedoctor.com MAKING REMOTE WORK - is a limited series led by the ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN COMMUNITY and hosted by SKILLS FOR MARS. It is a public service video-podcast in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It will host 20+ researchers and practitioners in the field of distributed work. They will share their insights and knowledge to support companies and employees who are making this transition. Subscribe to Skills for Mars: www.youtube.com/skillsformars Support the Skills for Mars podcast? https://www.skillsformars.com or https://www.patreon.com/skillsformars https://podhero.com/dashboard/show/474530/ (register, follow & support podcast) - LinkedIn @skills for mars - Facebook @skillsformars - Instagram @skillsformars - Twitter @skillsformars For more information on Iulia Istrate: https://www.iuliaistrate.com/home Support this podcast
Last week Greg & Colin had the opportunity to sit down and debrief on the Running Remote Conference with Liam Martin. Liam is the Chief Marketing Officer for both Time Doctor and Staff.com, as well as the co-organizer of the Running Remote Conference. Running Remote is normally an in-person, on-site conference. However, when the COVID crisis hit, the conference pivoted to a virtual approach, with the most recent event taking place remotely on June 17th & 18th (the week before our conversation). Although we discussed a variety of topics, our interview with Liam was mostly focused on a behind the scenes look at what went into planning the conference. We discuss what went well, what the organizers plan to improve on, and in general the kinds of challenges and opportunities faced in creating a remote conference. If you've ever thought about setting up a virtual conference or speaker event, I would not miss this episode. A big thank you to Liam Martin for making time to have a 'Valley Boys' chat. If you're interested in the Running Remote Conference, the next conference starts August 12th, 2020 and you can learn more at www.runningremote.com Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the Remotely Prepared podcast so we can get the word out and share more remote advice and experiences. Have feedback or an idea for the show? Visit us at www.upsidedownoffice.com or email remotelyprepared@upsidedownoffice.com - we'd love to hear from you!
Brie Weiler Reynolds is a writer, career coach and Human Resources professional who helps people overcome their roadblocks to discover career happiness. She is the Career Development Manager at FlexJobs, the award-winning site for remote, flexible, and freelance job listings. She is also a certified resume writer with 15 years of experience working with both job seekers and employers. Today, Brie offers career, hiring, and work-life balance advice through the FlexJobs Blog and to media outlets like Fast Company, Forbes, and NBC News. Today on the show we talk all about remote jobs: Where to find legitimate, work-from-home and remote jobs How to land a remote job What to do if you apply for jobs and never hear back The biggest mistakes people make when applying for remote jobs The top skills that flexible work employers are looking for How to organize your resume to align with job search algorithms Why you always need a cover letter when applying for remote jobs and what to put in it How to approach companies to work for them even if they don’t have any remote positions available What to do if you don’t have ANY remote work experience or skills Why you're probably not too young or old to get a remote job In the lightning round, we find out Brie's: Favorite job search tools Remote work and communication apps Ideal home office set up Work-from-home morning routine And her tips on working from home with kids and a dog! Special thanks to members of our Facebook group who contributed questions for this interview (Mindy, Marie, Delphine, Sacred, David, and Sacred)! You can join the conversation at www.facebook.com/groups/digitalnomadsuccess Connect with Brie: Twitter: https://twitter.com/briewreynolds FlexJobs Blog: https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/ Episode Resources: Free Remote Jobs Guide: http://www.travelingwithkristin.com FlexJobs Portal https://www.flexjobs.com/ Remote Co https://remote.co/ Running Remote Conference https://runningremote.com/ Jobscan https://www.jobscan.co/ ........................................................................................................ Support the Podcast: NEW: Become a Patron and access exclusive content Shop for your travel and remote work accessories in my Amazon Store Connect With Me on Socials: Follow on Instagram Subscribe to Badass Digital Nomads Podcast Check Out DIGITAL NOMAD TV on YouTube Subscribe to Traveling with Kristin on YouTube Join the Badass Digital Nomads Facebook Group
Liam Martin in the Co-Founder of TimeDoctor, Staff.com and co-organizer of the Running Remote Conference, the best conference about Remote Work in the World. In this episode we talk about the future of remote work, the impact in the economy and the impact in the companies implementing remote work. Liam is a thought leader in the remote work scene, and shared his knowledge in this podcast.
This week on the show, we have Liam Martin, co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Time Doctor and Staff.com. He is also the co-organizer of the Running Remote conference, the biggest conference on distributed teams and remote work. Liam shares his insights on growing into an “executive” role by “letting the entrepreneur inside you die,” how to help other people work with you, and the literal million-dollar mistakes that Liam and his co-founder Rob made when running their company. We also talk about why he started the Running Remote conference, the unspoken truths about running a large scale event, and what’s in store for next year’s conference in Austin, Texas. If you want to learn from the best of remote leaders, you can buy early bird tickets for next year’s Running Remote Conference here: https://ti.to/running-remote/2020
In this episode on the Remotepreneurs Podcast, Filip will introduce us with Liam Martin and how he built his 8-figure business remotely. This remote-entrepreneur is the co-founder and CMO of TimeDoctor.com which is the #1 time tracking and productivity monitoring software for remote teams. His goal is to help individuals and organizations to be more productive when working remotely. Also Liam is a co-founder of Running Remote Conference and Staff.com. After graduating as a masters in Sociology from McGill University, Liam has opened a small tutoring company which grew to over 100 employees, and looked to solve a problem with remote employees not reporting accurate work data which turned into TimeDoctor.com & Staff.com. He consults on outsourcing and process design and is passionate about how to gain insights into the inner workings of how people work. Liam’s company has over 1 million users with ~200k daily active users and has real data how you should run your remote team! If you want to learn how to improve productivity of your remote team listen to this episode! Remotepreneur’s Insights: How to improve productivity of remote teams using time tracking analytics: Liam explains how analytics of Time Doctor helps over million users be more productive Stats about Productivity: Liam reveals shocking stats about how USA remote workers are actually productive. On average, USA workers are productive only 2h45min per day from their 8 hour shift. How to get in flow state: Liam shared a handful of steps, one of which was “having everything ready before you start the task” Running Remote Conference APRIL 20-21, 2020 | AUSTIN - USA Top Key Quotes “We believe that everyone should be able to work wherever they want whenever they want” “The entire point of work is to be able to get back into flow state and be productive” “If you can keep more people interested in your website for as long as possible you win the game at the end of the day” “It doesn't matter where you are from and who you know to get you the job, it’s are you the best person to get the job done!” Connect on Social: @remotepreneurs @liamremote PLEASE RATE, REVIEW & SUBSCRIBE!
Lots of marketers talk about the importance of backlinks, but few have solid processes for earning them at scale. This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Liam Martin digs into the details of the backlinking process he's been using to 10X organic traffic to his business websites, including Time Doctor and Staff.com. If you're serious about SEO and understand the importance of backlinks, this episode is for you. Liam gets into a lot of specifics about how he hires his team of researchers and linkers, what they're paid, how they're incentivized to get links, and how he tracks performance. He also shares the copywriting formula he uses to convince other sites to link to his. So many actionable takeaways that anyone can use to build their own backlinking strategy! Highlights from my conversation with Liam include: At the time Liam started building his backlinking strategy, he'd been blogging for three or four years and had a domain ranking of around 60. Today, his sites have a domain ranking of 80, which is a significant improvement and an impressive ranking in its own right. They had been focusing on on-page SEO for quite some time and realized that if they were going to get serious, they'd need to do more off-page SEO. Liam rebuilt his entire team to be able to focus on off-page SEO and today, he has a sales team focused specifically on getting links. Liam is the CMO and has two people (an Editor and SEO Manager) who report to him. Under them, there are writers, researchers and linkers. Once they identify keywords they want to target, their researchers try to find the content that current ranks at the top of the search engine results pages for that keyword, and identify the email addresses and names of the authors of that content. They will not carry out a backlinking campaign unless they have at least 500 emails. Once the emails are identified, they are sent to the team of linkers, who are the people that conduct the outreach to the authors that they would like backlinks from. His team has a 15 to 20% conversion rate on the emails they send out. To incentive his team, Liam developed a compensation system that rewards linkers based on the domain authority of the links they get. He has found that listicles and statistical articles get the most backlinks. Because his team is remote and located all over the world, Liam spends time each quarter auditing some of the emails they are sending out to make sure they are on-brand. In the two years that Liam and his team have been executing this strategy, they've gone from getting just a few links a month to getting hundreds of links a month, all while improving domain authority and organic traffic considerably. Resources from this episode: Check out the Time Doctor and Running Remote websites Subscribe to the Running Remote YouTube Channel Connect with Liam on LinkedIn Follow Liam on Twitter Join the Running Remote Community Group Follow Liam on Instagram Get in touch with Liam at liam@timedoctor.com or liam@runningremote.com Listen to the podcast to get the step-by-step backlinking strategy that Liam Martin and his team use to build domain authority and grow organic traffic. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. My name is Kathleen Booth, and I'm your host. This week, my guest is Liam Martin, who's the co-founder and CMO of Time Doctor, Running Remote Conference, and Staff.com. Welcome, Liam. Liam Martin (Guest): Thanks for having me. Liam and Kathleen recording this episode together . Kathleen: I am excited to talk to you because I got an email from somebody who said that you had increased your organic traffic from 12,000 to 120,000 in under two years, which is a big jump. When I hear things like that, my first thought is "I want to talk to this guy and find out how he did it." About Liam Martin Kathleen: Before we jump into that, though, I want to hear a little bit more about you and your journey, and how you wound up where you are today, and talk to me about what these various companies and events are all about. Liam: Sure. Well, first of all, before we get into that, I didn't do it. Other people did it, which is actually the only way that you can do this, which we can talk about later on. So, human being, more specifically, human being on Planet Earth, more specifically in Canada, I am a co-founder of, as you said, Time Doctor, Staff.com and Running Remote, and those all kind of tie into a singular concept, which is we really want to empower people to be able to work wherever they want, whenever they want. So, we personally have a hundred remote employees in 32 different countries all over the world, and we believe that working remotely makes people happier. It reduces global suck on Planet Earth, and that's really why we do everything that we're currently doing with Time Doctor, Staff and Running Remote. Kathleen: I have to just say before you go on to the next thing, I so wholeheartedly endorse that because I have been working remotely for the last two years at a company where 60% of the team is remote, and I manage a team of eight people, and I think five of us are remote. It has not been detrimental at all to our effectiveness. So, 100% agree. Liam: It will even get better once everyone goes remote. There is a, what in the industry we call a double silo effect, or founder magic problem, which is if you have a physical office, and then you have remote employees, a lot of those remote employees feel disempowered to be able to make the same decisions as the local employees, because they're closer to the decision maker. That's actually really problematic, which is why I'm in one of my crash pads right now. We used to have eight. Now we have two because they were just so ineffective for us in terms of having office space. Even when there's four to five people in this office, and we're going to do a meeting, we all do meetings on our own Zoom accounts. So, we all meet separately to be able to make sure that everyone has the perception that we are all separate, because those remote employees will definitely feel left out if everyone's kind of around me, who is the decision maker. It creates significant long-term problems in terms of your business. Kathleen: I love that, because it puts everybody on an even playing field, and as somebody who has been remote, I can speak to that, the power of that, absolutely. It makes a huge difference. Liam: But we're here to talk about SEO. Right? Kathleen: Yes. Liam's SEO strategy Liam: So, basically, the entire SEO content strategy came from our belief that you can effectively build a content team with remote workers, and they can be as effective, if not more effective than an in-house team. So, we had basically been kind of playing around with blogging for maybe three to four years, and we had built up to maybe a DR, I'd say 60 sites, and for everyone that maybe people don't know, DR is domain rank on Ahrefs and SEO Moz. You'll be able to- Kathleen: 60 is really good. Liam: Yeah. 60 is pretty good. I think we're an 80 now, so we definitely moved up a few pegs, and it's all exponential. So, a 60 to a 70 is 10 times harder than a 50 to a 60, as an example. So, we had built that site up to about a 60, and then we realized, well, we need to get really serious about this. One of the things that we weren't paying attention to fundamentally was our off-page. So, we were doing a whole bunch of on-page. We knew how to optimize for that, and again, for anyone that is not really knowing what the heck I'm talking about, on-page is basically where you change the on-page factors of a website, and off-page is where you bring in new backlinks to a particular web page. So, we had basically rebuilt the entire team off of that premise. So, we built a sales team, which instead of getting deals, they would get links. We implemented a technology stack behind that. So, fundamentally, the way the team is structured right now is I am still the CMO, so I review two individually that directly report to me, which is the content editor and the SEO manager. The content editor has a team of about 20 writers that we all have on contract. Me, the SEO manager, and the content editor, we meet every quarter to be able to define all of the different keywords for the next quarter. We identify those keywords through Ahrefs. That's what we use to be able to do all of our SEO research. Then those particular keywords are sent out to the writers. We pre-vetted all those writers, so we know exactly what kind of quality of work they can produce. Those articles come back to the SEO manager. Then the SEO manager has his team, which is we have linkers and researchers. So, usually we'll have one researcher to every two linkers. The researcher will identify... Let's say I'm trying to rank for online collaboration tools, which we're number one for, which is about a $36 click. We also identify very clearly when we're trying to figure out our quarterly numbers or our quarterly keywords, what are we looking for. So, we may not be looking for the end traffic number. So, if we really wanted to, we could probably get a million clicks coming to the website per month, but they'd be really non-valuable clicks for us. So, online collaboration tools is a $36 click, which is very expensive, and I think it has about 2,000 searches a month. That one keyword probably does $60,000 to $70,000 worth of traffic value to the website per month. We identify that keyword. We get our researcher to basically go in and identify who are the top people in the SERPs, and then who are those top people in the SERPs that other people are linking to. We do not proceed on a keyword unless we have about 500 emails that are contextual, that are all set up. The email then goes to the linkers. So, the researcher basically researched the data, and then the linker is kind of the closer. They'll go out and say, "Hey, I need to... Hi, Kathleen. This is Liam from Time Doctor. Really excited about chatting with you today. I saw this article about X, Y, Z, about online collaboration tools. I saw that you linked to it in this context. I think I have a better link that I can redirect to you, or I would love it if you linked to my website as well, to this web page as well. However, we've looked through your site, and we've identified that you're really trying to rank for Starbucks coffee cups," as an example. "It looks like you're ninth for that, and we just happen to have an article about Starbucks coffee cups, and we put you in it. Here's the link that we gave you." Then that is really the big jump that we basically had, which was I get about 40 to 50 of these a week, of people that are just doing cold outreach emails. Fundamentally, the success rate on those, because we used to be doing those, were about 2% to 3%. Now we get about 15% to 20% success rate, because what we've done is we're actually giving out a link. So, we're telling them, "Listen. We've given you a link. Here's the context of that link, and more importantly, I'm going to make this super easy for you. We'd love to be able to be in this article. Here's the paragraph that we've already pre-written for you. So, if you want to just cut and paste and throw that in, you can absolutely do it. If not, you can write something else." Those definitely work for what I would define as the DR 50-plus range, because there's two different categorizations of the way that we do outreach. So, if someone has a domain rank of above 50, it's probably a multi-email exchange, so basically, those linkers need to act like salespeople. So, they need to be able to communicate very clearly through email. The average exchange for us is seven email exchanges before we actually end up working on a partnership. So, it's pretty intense, but it definitely works. As I said, it's a 15% to 20%, basically, conversion rate. Kathleen: Wow. All right. I have so many questions for you. This is really interesting to me, and to back up, backlinks is a topic that I think is fascinating as a marketer. I've been in this business for a long time on the agency side. I've worked with some really savvy marketers, and it has been very surprising to me how many of them give little to no credence or effort to backlinking strategies. They either discount- Liam: I mean, they're in trouble then. Kathleen: I know, I know. They discount the value of backlinks altogether, or they understand conceptually that they're valuable, but they don't put any effort into it. They just sort of wait for backlinks to happen organically. In some cases that happens, depending upon the type of content you create, but in other cases it doesn't. It's always been interesting to me because when you read online about backlinking, there's a ton of content about why it's important. There's not a ton of content about how to actually go about doing it well. So, this is why I'm really interested to dig into this. Liam: The other part that's really important that's connected to this is you can run these campaigns, but at least in my experience, I see the majority of them fail. So, if you go to an agency, a DR 50 link is going to cost you about $500, generally, $300 to $500. Our cost is, I believe last month it was $36 per DR 50-plus link, so a significant cost reduction, and that's just, basically, I know that agencies are running these links, and they're acquiring them for $36, but then they're selling them on for $300 to $500. So, it's actually very profitable to be able to do this type of work, but you're right. There's isn't that much value inside of it because I think a lot of people try and fail. How Liam holds his team accountable for backlinks Liam: So, what we did, which was different, is we didn't just implement these processes. We also made everyone accountable to these processes. It was very difficult to be able to get the right measure in place because, as an example, let's just say I said, "Well, I need to find out how many backlinks you're going to get. I'm going to measure your success by how many backlinks you get." If you're a linker, what you're going to do is you're going to approach a whole bunch of DR 10 sites, because those are really easy to be able to get backlinks on. We just got a backlink last week from Salesforce. It's a DR 89 site. It's very, very powerful as a backlink. It's probably worth a thousand DR 10s, as an example. So, how am I supposed to reward someone for working on a month-and-a-half to be able to build a really, to be able to link to a DR 89 when instead you could probably, in that same amount of time, get 10 DR 10 backlinks? Well, what we implemented was cumulative domain authority. So, in essence, what happens is at the end of the month, we count up not how many backlinks you got, we look at that measure as well, but then we also measure the amount of DR you got inside of all of those links. So, if you got a backlink from Salesforce, which was 89, you'd get 89 points, and then if you got a regular website that was a DR 11, you'd get 11 points. So, 89 plus 11, that's now your new score. You got 100 points, and let's keep going on through the week and the month. Then we just pay that out based off commission. So, literally, the top linker for that month gets a cash bonus, which they're always fighting for. What type of content is most likely to get backlinks? Kathleen: I bet. So, I want to back up for a second. You start, you identify the keywords that you want to rank for. You're creating all this content. Are there any particular types of content that you find perform better in terms of other people being willing to link to them? Liam: Yes. So, as an example, Time Doctor is a time tracking tool. It's pretty boring. No one really wants to link to time tracking blog posts, so it's very... We also have another category, which is our golden list. So, we usually have a floating list of five pages that if someone owes us a favor, we'll ask them to link to that. So, it might be something super boring, like maybe one of our integration pages, and we want to rank number one for Asana time tracking. That would be an example. No one really wants to link to the Asana time tracking page, so we would throw that up there. But outside of that, listicles, those are the ones that end up converting better than anything else, and they're very easy to be able to get links for if you're doing direct outreach. Outside of that, however, there are the statistical articles, which are basically just link juice. So, we do a lot of articles, like we tracked 10 million work hours, and here's what we found, that type of stuff. You don't even really need to do link building for that, primarily because, number one, they're going to acquire links on their own, and number two, it's very difficult to be able to optimize them for a particular keyword that we would end up seeing as a purchaser's keyword, as a buying keyword, which is a little bit unfortunate. But you can write those types of articles to basically raise your general domain rank, but you're not necessarily going to rank for anything in particular. So, you might write 10 of those, as an example, and maybe your domain rank will go from 80 to 82, whereas if you had written 10 very focused keywords for conversion, you might get an extra 50 customers a month, but your domain rank is not going to go up. Kathleen: Yeah. That makes sense. It's interesting you talk about kind of data-packed articles, because in my experience, the type of content that we've seen perform really well from an organic backlinking perspective is infographics, and that tends to be because they have a lot of data behind them, and they're easy to share, and people like to pop them into other articles and things like that, but yeah. Building a backlinking team Kathleen: So, you create this content, and then you have this team of people. You mentioned having researchers and linkers. Can you talk a little bit more about how you found those people, and what kind of a profile are you looking for? Liam: Sure. So, for anyone that kind of wants context on this, I would suggest you read From Impossible to Inevitable... Aaron Ross is the author. From Predictable to Inevitable. Darn, can't remember the name of it. Kathleen: One of those two. Liam: Just Google Aaron Ross, and read his book. He was the guy that took basically Salesforce to a hundred million a year, and his model was to divide... His big kind of aha moment was dividing a sales rep from a lead generator. So, that was a big, huge sort of moment in sales, which was people that talked to other human beings should generally not be doing the research to be able to find those leads, and by dividing those two tasks, he was able to significantly improve the productivity of his team. I'm just implementing the same thing for SEO. So, we have a researcher that literally goes out and identifies not just, as I said before, let's say the top 20 on SERP results for a particular keyword, but we'll use a tool like Ahrefs to go into those SERPs or into those links, and we'll see who linked to those people, and that's where we amass our list. We do not proceed with running a campaign unless we have a minimum of 500 emails to work with. Kathleen: So, let me pause you for a second. Let's just, for argument's sake, say your keyword is remote work. I'm just going to make this up. So, you have this keyword, remote work. You've created content, and then you say to your researcher, "Go do your thing," and they take the words remote work, and they're looking at who is already ranking for that keyword phrase. Is that accurate? Liam: Yeah. So, I'm just going to use the direct example that you just sent me right now. Kathleen: Awesome. Liam: So, the first article, or the first URL for remote work is We Work Remotely, who's actually... We know these guys. They're good friends of ours. They have a DR 74 site, and they have about $250,000 of monthly traffic value. So, they have to their main page 1,200 referring domains. Kathleen: And you're seeing this all in Ahrefs, correct? Liam: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So, all I would do is I would then grab that list, I would identify everyone that has actually linked to that base domain from that list, and then I would load it into another tool that we have called BuzzStream. BuzzStream is basically the tool that we use for outreach. So, we load everyone into that, and then it gives you the context of all of the conversations that have occurred. So, once we load those new 1,200 people into BuzzStream, we might identify that we've already actually spoken to about 273 of those people, and here's the context of one of those linkers that interacted with them. So, I can also give you context, which is, "Hey, Kathleen. This is Liam. I know that you spoke to John a couple months ago about link X, Y, Z, but I would love to talk to you about link A, B, C," so that people have that context, and they know, "Oh, okay. I'm actually being listened to," and that just allows us to be able to automate the process a lot faster and easier. So, once that's actually all loaded in, then we'll usually have some templates that we've already worked from, but usually inside of those templates there's customization that goes into every single link that goes out. We do not let a non-customized email go out for anyone that's below a DR 50. We've just found there's kind of... That's the line that we've drawn, which is there are people that get these emails all the time, like me, and there are people that don't. Usually, the ones that don't are pretty easy to be able to knock off, and the ones that are a lot more difficult, you need to have context, and you need to be able to float above everyone else, because think of... I'm that person. In my inbox today, there were probably about... I think I saw about a dozen of these types of cold outreach emails, and none of them really work because they're asking for something, and they're not giving me anything in exchange. Kathleen: Yeah, I'm that person, too. I get a lot of those emails, which is part of the reason I was excited to talk to you, because I'm like, I want to talk to somebody for whom this is actually working, because I know most of the ones I get, it doesn't work. But to back up for a second, you get the list from Ahrefs of domains that are linking to, in this case, We Work Remotely, and you're putting... Am I correct that you're putting those referring domains into BuzzStream? Liam: So, what we'll do is we'll find out who is the author that actually linked to that particular article. Kathleen: Oh, okay. Liam: So, did it come from a blog post, or did it come from a base domain? Wherever the link came from, we try to hunt down who the author was, because we want to talk to a human being, and then we redirect that back over. So, that takes a while. That's why you need researchers to be able to do that. I would probably say a good researcher can knock out something... Let's say we're just going to take all that data and crunch it into BuzzStream. Out of those thousand people, BuzzStream will probably only figure out about half, and then the other 50% will go through them and will throw out people that are DR 10, as an example, because it's just fundamentally not worth our time. We'll pay very special attention to everyone that's a DR 50 and above, and we'll do two to five minutes of research per person, and we'll just identify who they are, what we think their email address is, and then we'll do that outreach. Kathleen: So, talk to me a little bit more about how you find these researchers, and what kind of experience or background or profile are you looking for? Liam: Sure. So, we generally find these guys all over Planet Earth. Our researchers don't necessarily need to be good in the English language. They need to be good at doing research, so a lot of attention to detail, data entry people, data work, those are the people that we really look for. Fundamentally, we're looking for people that are excited about the grind, because it's a grind. I'm not going to tell you anything different. If you go to any sales floor, you'll have closers and you'll have SDRs. Right? SDRs are the people that are basically developing the lead for the closer, for the actual salesperson, and they're doing the research on that. Those people grind out every single day. Usually, they'll do that for a year or two, and then they get upgraded to being a closer. So, we do the same thing inside of the company. Everyone has a passion for SEO, and that's actually another big just basic requirement, is a lot of people will come in and kind of say, "Well, I know how to do SEO, and I ranked this local," I don't know, "this local coffee shop for coffee in Timbuktu," or something like that, and they come in a little bit cocky, but then within a week or two, we just realize very quickly that they're somebody that should be a researcher, and not necessarily a linker as of yet. So, they'll spend about three to six months... Generally, some people, if we're trying to develop them as a linker, we'll usually have them be a researcher for the first three months, just so that we can see that they can do the grind, because if they can't, they're generally not going to stick around that long even as a linker. Then some people love to stay there for... We've had people that have worked with us for years as linkers. They love the job. Kathleen: If somebody's listening, and they're like, "I want to do this," how much should they expect to pay for a researcher? Is this an hourly job or... Liam: So, it really depends. We pay a base, and then we add a commission structure to the amount of researched individuals that end up actually converting, not converting, but that are actually legitimate. So, we'll do this research, and then someone will say, "Hey, it's definitely Kathleen, and this is Kathleen's email address," and it will end up bouncing, so that counts against their rate. So, generally for us, our researchers are all above 95%. I believe no one starts to get into commissions until they're above 97%, but that's generally the way that we run it. Those people would be anywhere from, I would say, 500 to 1,000 US per month per linker, and those guys are generally going to be found in the Philippines. You're going to be able to find some in Indonesia, maybe some in Bangladesh. However, in my opinion, you're going to pay a little bit more for people in the Philippines, but they are way more effective than people in those other countries in Southeast Asia. Kathleen: So interesting. Thank you for sharing all that detail. That's really helpful. Okay. So, we've talked about the researchers and what they do. So, they identify the opportunities, they find the email addresses, and then they turn that over to the linker. Correct? Liam: The linker, yeah. Kathleen: Got it. Liam: So, the linker the is very different from a researcher. They must have a very solid grasp of the English language because they can't just send a template. They have to be able to edit those things and communicate in the way that our target market, our target demographic, would actually communicate, which are generally people in Western countries. So, they would not say something like, "Hello, ma'am, Kathleen." They would say, "Hey, Kathleen. What's up? This is Liam from Time Doctor. Saw this article, thought it was really cool. Listen. You made a huge mistake. You didn't link to my article. No problem. I can totally solve that for you. Here's a paragraph of exactly how to link to me, and by the way, we saw inside of your site that you really want to link to Starbucks cups, and we know that we can totally figure that out for you. We already set up that link to be able to send out. Hope you're having a great day. Would love to be able to chat with you about the link," as an example. That would be the way that you would communicate, and that's going to get a much higher response rate than the over-formalized communication that generally you'll find with individuals from Southeast Asia in particular, and to a degree, sometimes in Eastern Europe. So, that team is actually a lot more distributed. We have some people in Southeast Asia. We have some people in Eastern Europe. We have some people in California. We actually have just implemented a much more serious team in Lagos, in Nigeria, for any of you that maybe have gotten this email a couple years ago or 10 years ago. You know, the Nigerian prince emails? Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah. Liam: So, that doesn't work anymore, but these guys are email ninjas. They're absolutely amazing operators at figuring out how to be able to get a response from someone and communicating clearly. So, they're amazing, and a lot of them kind of want to go legit. So, they will work for a company like ours instead. Kathleen: Interesting. Yeah. I mean, a lot of those guys did get people to respond to those Nigerian prince emails, so- Liam: Generally, it would be a .004% response rate, but that response rate would end up being something- Kathleen: Paying for the whole thing. Liam: Exactly. So, that's something that... Even with these direct emails outreach programs, they still do work, but they only have a conversion rate of about 2%. You want a convert rate of 15% to 20%. We found that we're a lot more cost-effective. I've spoken to some agencies, and they probably work out a link to about a hundred dollars per person, and it's because they just don't take the time to be able to build context. The other added advantage to building context is you don't just get one link from that person. You may get five or six over two years, because you have that personal context, and I've got all that context in BuzzStream, so I can bring it up whenever I want, and Kathleen remembers this interaction that we had seven months ago, as an example. How to conduct backlink research Kathleen: So, you talked about when you do this outreach to... Let's say I'm your recipient, and you do this outreach to me, and you say, "I know that you're trying to get found for terms like Starbucks cups." Who is doing that research, how are they doing it, and how are they identifying that that's the goal of the recipient? Liam: So, I would slot your domain directly into Ahrefs, and I would identify what are the top links that you're trying to work for, and there's two categories. There's kind of like a top three. So, usually people that rank first to third, you're not really going to be able to change their lives in any significant way in terms of that particular keyword. It's usually quite competitive, or it's a branded term. The ones that we really like to go after are the seven-to-10 space. So, those are the keywords that they're probably working on, and maybe they actually only launched that article three months ago or six months ago, and they're trying to work on it, and we can see they're trying to work on it, because let's say there's five or six referring domains into it, and we'll say, "Yeah. We'll just put a link in there. We'll just link from our site to your site." They understand the value of a DR 80 link, which is actually quite funny because a lot of the times we get outreach from, let's say, a DR 65-plus website, and my first response is, "I'm interested, but I'd love a link back." The smart ones say, "Of course," and the stupid ones say, "Well, I don't have the authority to be able to do that." Well, just for anyone that's listening, do that, because that's going to convince me... You're talking to an SEO person, and I'm not going to link to a DR 60 if I'm a DR 80, if I'm not getting anything back. Right? So, that's really something that I just don't understand that's not happening in the industry, because for us, we're very happy to be able to give out those links. We see that as kind of just... We do it before we ask for anything back. In that introductory email, "By the way, here's a DR 80 link. Really happy to see if we could work in a deeper way," and if they don't want to work with us, that link stands. Asking for backlinks Kathleen: Yeah, yeah. So, there's that element of reciprocity. Okay. So, they have this data, they know what they're trying to link for. You've talked about how these emails are crafted. I'm curious. You talked about sometimes it's seven emails back-and-forth. What's happening in those seven emails? Because it seems like the way you're putting these emails together, it's fairly straightforward. You've laid out all the context. You've given them the paragraph of text. I mean, at that point, it would seem to me, as somebody who gets these emails all the time, that they either say, "Okay. Yeah, I'm going to drop it in. Here it is," or, "No." So, what happens in that back-and-forth? Liam: So, there's a couple main kind of categories of things that happen. One of the things that happen, particular on really powerful sites, is, "Hey, Kathleen. Not a problem. Links are $500 a pop, and here's the context." Then we have to go back saying, "Listen. We don't pay for links. We're just looking to be able to have you link to our website, and we've already linked to your website. Here's our stats." So, we literally pull in, "Here's our Ahrefs data. We'd love to be able to see if we could work on a deeper partnership together." That's one major category. Kathleen: Got it. Liam: Another one is no one really has the authority to be able to make that decision. So, sometimes we actually contact someone who is, let's say, a blogger that's maybe done piecework for that blog, and they say, "I don't care because I wrote that article six months ago, and thanks for reaching out, but I don't really care." Well, then we have to say, "Well, do you know who's in charge right now? Could you let me know?" Then we're going to get access to that person. Then we, in essence, send the same email. Then the other ones end up actually just turning into larger partnerships. So, we'll actually say, "Well, maybe we shouldn't just work on this link exchange. Maybe we should also do a webinar together, or maybe we should do something else together." So, all of the linkers have full authority to be able to build at least the framework for those partnerships, and then it gets approved by me. Keeping the team on-brand Kathleen: Okay. So, this is super interesting. You have all these people distributed all over the world, and you're giving them, really, a lot of leeway in terms of the way they communicate with these other domain owners or authors or bloggers, et cetera. My first question is, do you ever worry that the way that they communicate or the things they say are going to kind of go outside of your typical brand voice or have some kind of negative ramification on your company or your brand? Liam: Absolutely. So, we do spot-check auditing on all of the emails that are going out, and we're really fast and responsive to... We have a lot of linkers on the team. I think we have dozens on the team altogether at this point. So, a friend of mine said, "Well, do you know who this person is?" I said, "No, I don't know who that person... It doesn't ring a bell to me." "Oh. Well, they just emailed me from Time Doctor saying they want a link." So, we need to be mindful about that, and he actually said, "This is probably one of the best cold email outreaches I've ever gotten," which was great for us, but I need to be able to be mindful of that context to make sure that there aren't negative implications on the brand. So, the way that we do that is audit the process. So, I'll even do randomized auditing of just... I'll look at every quarter maybe 10 emails from each linker, and that doesn't take me more than a minute or two to kind of float through, and then our SEO manager also makes sure that all of this stuff is being monitored properly. We're also really looking at... So, we're always trying new things, new titles, new copy templates, and we share that information amongst ourselves. So, in that process, a lot of this... We had an article just recently, or an ad just recently that went out that got really good attention. It got a really fantastic click-through rate, but it also got a lot of hate. So, we have to understand what's the difference between trying to get someone's attention and trying to get someone's attention and then hating it. We need to be able to draw that line. Tracking backlink performance Kathleen: Interesting. Yeah. I mean, that was going to be my next question, was how do you keep track of it all, but it sounds like you've got processes in place, you have a team in place. Liam: Yeah. We do the quarterly audit. We make sure that our SEO manager is managing all those linkers very quickly and efficiently, and then we're always exchanging information. We literally do a weekly meeting about what's all the new split tests that we've tried. So, every linker is also responsible for implementing a test every week, I believe, inside of their copy. So, they're basically always optimizing their outreach, and then we come back, and we do some more learnings. We also make sure that everyone's reading all the industry news for SEO and all that kind of stuff, so that if there are some interesting new insights, we can implement those as well. The impact of backlinks on SEO and traffic Kathleen: Interesting. So, I'm fascinated by this whole process, but I want to shift gears for a second and talk about results. You've touched on this a little bit in terms of response rates and things, but let's just go back and recap now. So, this is a process you've been doing for how long? Liam: We've been doing it for about two years. I think if anyone actually wants to jump into Moz or Ahrefs, you'll pretty much see the exact point in which we started doing it because we were going from getting, I don't know, maybe a couple hundred links a month to getting, or sorry, getting a couple dozens links a month to getting a couple hundred links a month. So, we literally just- Kathleen: Can you send me a screenshot of that? Because I would love to put that in my show notes. Liam: Yeah, sure. No problem. Kathleen: That would be awesome. So, you've been doing that for that amount of time. Talk me through, again, your response rates, what this has done to traffic, how the links have grown. Liam: Yeah. So, the bigger thing that we've really seen is general increase in domain authority. That's been the thing that's allowed us to... So, as an example, if we talk about remote work on Time Doctor, Google's generally going to give us the benefit of the doubt. So, they're automatically going to say, "These guys blog about this stuff all the time. They really are a trusted source in that particular niche, so we're going to give it more traffic than we would a DR 10 site that's never written about remote work or outsourcing ever before," and that's really the huge advantage, is a lot of this stuff is quite disingenuous when I discuss it because we're currently at the point in which the snowball effect has really taken hold, so Google already really trusts us. If you're a brand new person with absolutely no links whatsoever, I'm going to tell you, this is going to take about six months before you really start to see dividends, but however, I would say, and this is a bold claim, but I would say over a 10-year period, so if you plan on owning a business for more than 10 years, SEO is the absolute best cost-per-dollar advertising method known to mankind. It is better than, in my opinion, viral traffic, because those are spikes, whereas this is continuous long-term traffic that is going to be so cost-effective, it is probably 60% of our overall funnel, and we spend as much money as we possibly can on Facebook ads and everything else, and we just constantly come back to SEO because it's just such a return on investment. Kathleen: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense, and I would agree with that. That's one of the things at IMPACT that we're really fortunate... We have a tremendous amount of organic traffic, and it has saved us a lot of money in not needing to advertise. Liam: I almost see it as it's an investment that produces dividends, whereas a Facebook ad, as an example, is you're going to get conversions now, and those are going to be great. You're going to get a conversion this month. Those numbers will probably work, right? You put in a hundred bucks, and maybe you make 110 bucks. But with SEO, you're going to put in a hundred bucks this month, and maybe you're going to get a dollar back this month, but then next month you're going to get two, and then four, and then eight, and then 16, and if you continuously put in that hundred dollars every single month, you're going to start to create fantastic dividends. Kathleen: Yeah. I always talk about it as the difference between renting a house and buying a house. When you rent your house, you stop paying rent, you get evicted, and you got no value. Liam: Yeah. Well, you're renting the traffic. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Yeah, exactly. So, fascinating. All right. Well, so interesting. I could talk to you about this forever, and I love the amount of detail we've been able to go into, but we're going to run out of time. So, two questions that I always ask all of my guests, the first is... We talk a ton about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really doing inbound well right now? Liam: Yeah. I thought about that quite a bit, and my original response was HubSpot, just because their SEO game is so strong, and they blog about everything. If you throw them into a tool like Ahrefs or Moz, which is generally how I see websites today, they will blog about kitchen utensils, as an example. They just want traffic with a big capital T. So, I've recognized that has been really interesting. The other website that I would talk about, which is relatively new, and it's not really a website, but it's more like an app, is Wish.com. So, I don't know if you've ever encountered that e-commerce site before, but they've, in essence, built an app that's gamified e-commerce. So, think of it almost like an Amazon, but it's a video game. So, it's Amazon, but it's a video game, and what they're doing is they're doing a lot of SEO traffic to be able to bring in a free lead, and then they are doing a lot of retargeting into the game again. So, they'll say, "Hey, webcams are 95% off today only," and it's a Facebook ad, and when you click on it, you're brought into the Wish app. So, it's a very interesting process, and they've, in essence, taken the architecture and the mechanics of the video game world for mobile games, and they've moved that into an e-commerce platform. When I look at their numbers and how much money they're spending, it boggles the mind. I think that they are doing the same thing that Amazon did back in the early 2000s where Amazon bought... I mean, they were the number one customer for Google, I believe, Google Search, for eight or nine years. They did that because they knew there was such a massive arbitrage opportunity to be able to shift all of that traffic off of Google, which honestly should've built their own e-commerce platform, and they're moving it into Amazon, and now they've built one of the largest companies on Planet Earth. So, I would check out Wish.com, even just install the app, and then just see how they interact with you, because I think it's genius. Kathleen: So interesting. I can't wait to check that one out. Second question, the thing I hear from most marketers is that the world of digital marketing is just changing so quickly, it's really hard to keep up. There's so much information coming at you. How do you personally stay up-to-date and make sure that you're still kind of on the cutting edge? Liam: I hire experts in every domain who think about this stuff morning, noon and night, and I pay them a ridiculous amount of money to talk to me for about an hour or two a month. Kathleen: I like it. Liam: So, I have one client, I have an SEO consultant, and I pay this person $2,000 a month, and we have a one-hour conversation a month. Kathleen: Oh, my god. Can I get a job doing that for you for one hour? Liam: This guy is the guy that does- Kathleen: That's a great deal. Liam: ... industrial-level SEO. He's built sites that you would definitely know of. He's managed teams of hundreds of SEOs in single shops, and he's someone who's very passionate about this particular subject. So, for me, I can then take the context, and I usually have myself, my SEO manager, and my content editor on that call, and then he looks at what we've done over the last month, what the goals are for the next month and in the next quarter and in the next year. He's also able to make course corrections that we are not mindful of. So, as an example, let's say our yearly goal is we want to get 10,000 referring domains. Let's throw that out into the air. I think we've got about 5,000 active referring domains, and we have 11,000 historical referring domains right now. So, we want to do 10,000 active referring domains within the next year. Well, what do you need to actually get to that target? Then we identify what we need to do to get to that target. Okay. Then at the end of the day, he'll boil it down to, "Well, you're currently doing 10 blog posts a month. You need to ratchet up to 68 blog posts a month if you want to hit that particular target." So, what's the architecture that we need to be able to implement to be able to hit that target? That's the kind of stuff that I am somewhat not very mindful of, and I should actually be a lot more. As the CMO, I should really be directing the ship in that type of direction, but these consultants that have done it before, they're the ones that I really go to for that type of expertise. Kathleen: Yeah, makes sense. Liam: Yeah. How to connect with Liam Kathleen: Well, this has been fascinating. I have learned so much. If somebody is listening, and they have a question, they want to learn more about you, the work you're doing, or they want to check out some of the companies that you're involved with, what's the best way for them to do that? Liam: You want to check out Time Doctor, go to timedoctor.com. If you want to talk with me, this is another kind of side idea that I have, which is I think that YouTube is actually probably going to be the next place for SEO, so I'm doing some experimentation on YouTube. So, if you go to youtube.com/runningremote, you'll be able to find me, and you'll be able to find a whole bunch of videos. All of our stuff from our Running Remote Conference is free, and we just post everything up there, so you can consume as much as you want from it. But if you put in a comment, I will interact with you within the hour. So, that's the source that I really want to kind of put all of my eggs into because I believe that YouTube is Google 10 years ago, and there's a massive opportunity right now. It's the second-largest search engine in the world, and people actually, instead of just getting a blog post and someone looking at it for 35 seconds, even if they're looking at my stupid face for 35 seconds, it gives you more context, and it allows you to know, hey, this is who I am. You might want to buy some stuff from me in the future. Kathleen: I feel like next year I'm going to have to reach out to you again, and we'll do another interview on the results of your YouTube experiment. Liam: For sure. Kathleen: Awesome. Well, thank you for all of that. I will put all those links in the show notes, so if you're interested in reaching out to Liam, check out the show notes, and you should be able to get in touch with him there, or check out Time Doctor. You know what to do next... Kathleen: If you're listening, and you've learned something new, you liked what you heard, please leave the podcast a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. That is how we get found by new listeners, and if you know somebody who's doing kick-ass inbound marketing work, please tweet me @WorkMommyWork, because I would love to interview them. Thanks so much. That's it for this week. Thank you, Liam. Liam: Thanks for having me.
Ho Yin Cheung started a social media growth company Riotly, and after attending the Running Remote Conference, was inspired to create Remo.co. Through having a distributed team, Ho Yin talks about the importance of empathy and connection with his remote workers so that company culture remains strong.
Learn the different tools that can help you improve and scale your remote business Know the importance of communication and process design in a remote business Find out all the details you need to know about Running Remote:the largest conference for remote teams Resources/Links: Register for the upcoming Running Remote Conference: Meet the Experts, Grow your Team, Explore Bali. Learn from a great lineup of remote company leaders and innovators! Summary Liam McIvor Martin is the co-founder of two SaaS company, Time Doctor, and Staff.com. He is also the co-organizer of Running Remote - a carefully curated to teach you next-level, actionable strategies and tactics you can utilize the very next day to build & scale your distributed team. They are also conducting the world’s first remote-friendly VC panel. In this episode, Liam highlights how building his two businesses and co-organizing a conference stemmed from his passion for remote working. He will reveal the latest tools and tips to help optimize and scale your remote business. Check out these episode highlights: 00:56 – Liam talks about his two SaaS business: Timedoctor and Staff.com 02:18 – Details about the upcoming Running Remote conference 05:25 – Liam's target attendees for the Running Remote Conference: high caliber international attendees from a variety of industries 06:49 – Liam’s passion to educate and help business scale remotely 08:17 – His key learning in managing his companies Time Doctor and Staff.com, why communication among remote staff is so important 12:33 – Protocol for engaging contractors/remote staff to improve the documentation system process– change the process inside the process document, compensate them through a bonus system, use Gitlab to build your process 16:38 – Liam talks about 'co-worker coffee' feature inside their Slack group, where remote and random co-workers/team members can have 15-minute chats with each other about work and life 17:47 – The pool of speakers, top remote work leaders and topics to be discussed in the upcoming Running Remote conference 22:12 – Important tips from Liam when going to Indonesia for the event. Heads up on what to expect. Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode: “Having reliable communication is absolutely important.” -@vtamethodmanClick To Tweet “If you believe a process should be improved, then you have to change the process inside of that process document.” -@vtamethodmanClick To Tweet Transcript (Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast) Tom Poland: Hello everyone. A very warm welcome to another edition, a special edition in fact of Marketing the Invisible. My name is Tom Poland beaming out to as always from on the sand next to waves, a Little Castaways Beach in Queensland, Australia. Joined today by Liam Martin. Liam, a very... what is it? Good evening or just about good evening in New York is that right? Liam Martin : Good afternoon slash Good evening. Tom Poland: Yes. All right. Drifting into Twilight. The Twilight Zone and this is the twilight zone because Liam is not as you see on the screen Rob Rawson, he is Liam Martin. Liam Martin : It is our podcast account, that's our explanation,. Tom Poland: I can confirm its authenticity. Yes. So folks the reason it's a special edition is we're not doing our seven minute countdown timer because I want to have much more of an in-depth conversation with Liam on this. So Liam, why don't we kick off by just me asking you to introduce yourself. Because you're really wearing two hats I think for this, right? Liam Martin : Sure. Yeah I know. You're absolutely right. So Liam Martin on planet Earth. More specifically Canada right now. So I do travel quite a bit and I'm the co-founder,
Note: Before we go to the main course, here’s a tasty treat for your appetizer: I’m giving away ONE ticket to the “Running Remote Conference” where I’ll be speaking in this June in Bali, Indonesia. If you’re interested in remote working, this is one conference you can’t miss. Make sure to join here as this giveaway ends in a couple of days! Everyone wants to have a slice of the remote working pie. After all, being a “digital nomad” who can “work from anywhere” so they can live the “laptop lifestyle” gives them the freedom to earn money and still enjoy their time with their loved ones, right? You don’t even need to log on to Instagram to check out the remote working trend. Stripe, the payment processor, recently announced that they would have an office exclusively for remote workers, even though they have offices worldwide. Additionally, a Citrix study shows that 50% of the workforce will be office-free by 2020. Can you imagine a world where half of the working population will be working from the comforts of their own home? It’s also possible, considering that the remote workforce has increased by 140% since 2005. While the idea of remote working sounds great to the remote workers, the entrepreneurs involved in the hiring and team-building process find it a bit daunting. After all, how can you trust someone to actually hire them and work with them, even though you haven’t met them before? How do you build a remote team if you don’t have any experience with the process? Before you paralyse yourself with all these questions, take a deep breath and get your favorite drink as I help you start building your own remote team by discussing the 3-step process in today’s podcast. You can start building a remote team by hiring: Freelancer or Consultant Hiring a freelancer or a consultant is a great start since you’ll be exposed to the wonders of remote working without feeling overwhelmed. To start the hiring process, you can work with them by assigning a project to them first and consider future collaborations if you’re satisfied with their work and the results they bring in. There’s no full-time commitment yet and you can test your work compatibility with them by communicating with them via email or video/voice check-ins. Your freelancer or consultant needs to be professional and reliable enough since they’ll be managing themselves. There’s no need to micro-manage them since you’ll be working with them on a per-project basis and they’ll invoice you accordingly. Virtual Assistant Now that you have a little bit of hiring experience for a remote team, the next step is to hire a virtual assistant who can help you with customer support or administrative tasks. Normally, you’d be advised to hire someone working at the same time zone as you -- but isn’t it actually better to hire an assistant who won’t be working at the same hours as you do? This will give you the necessary experience to deal with your remote team in the future. After all, your team will be all over the world, right? In hiring a virtual assistant, you’ll ultimately be responsible for them, so the best way you can handle this is by working on a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) you can use to train them effectively and efficiently. You can also apply here the communication channels and processes that you’ve learned by working with a freelancer/consultant first. Nurture your relationship with your virtual assistant: it’s a win-win situation that gives you more experience to work on building your remote team and allows you to win back some of your resources, too. Full-Time Hire You can get your full-time employee by evolving their relationship from a freelancer/consultant to an official member of your remote team. This way, you already know that you have professional compatibility and you’re guaranteed that their work output will be satisfactory. Another pathway you can get full-time employees is by posting on job boards that are focused on remote working opportunities. In a world where freelancers and remote workers are forecasted to be the majority of the US workforce by 2027, hiring someone full-time means you’ll treat team exactly the way you would treat someone who’s an official part of your team, regardless of the physical boundaries. After all, you’re all working towards the same goal -- to boost your company’s growth, aren’t you? If I had to do it over again, I’d still build a remote team for Conversio. And you’ll get to hear more about my personal experience in building a remote team by listening to my talk over at the Running Remote Conference in Bali. Join our giveaway and win your free ticket here! See you next week. Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy: conversio.com/academy Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at @birocratic.
LIAM MARTIN is the co-founder and CMO of TimeDoctor.com and Staff.com, which are tools that help manage remote employees productivity. Liam is also the co-organizer of Running Remote Conference which is the largest conference on remote work that’s held each year in June. In this interview, we discuss how to manage, communicate, and hire on remote teams - and why you should join the Running Remote conference. For more stories, visit https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com
Ever wonder what it takes to plan and promote a big business event or conference? Liam Martin, Co-founder and CMO of Time Doctor and Co-Organizer of the Running Remote Conference, knows what it's all about, and he's sharing what he's learned about event marketing with us. During our interview, Liam touches on some interesting facts about remote work, and he shares five tactics that he and his team used to pull off this amazing event, which was the large remote work conference in 2018. A quick note to listeners . . . we did discover during production that there are parts of the audio with a few crackly bits here and there. Annoying? Yes. Rampant? No. We hope you'll overlook these few moments to hear what Liam has to share. He's an interesting guy with real-world insights and data about what worked in his promotional efforts. This episode is longer than our usual, but we think you'll find the details interesting. In this episode, we learn: The power of podcasts as part of the Running Remote Conference promotion strategy How community partnerships and sponsorships helped spread awareness The role of cold outreach for connecting with influencers and performing direct sales The importance of speaker selection How video played a role in promotion of the 2018 event and how the team uses 2018 event video from the conference itself to generate awareness for 2019 If you'd like to read Liam's post chronicling everything his team did to plan and promote The Running Remote Conference in 2018, check out this post on the Time Doctor website. It's very detailed and incredibly informative. ___ The B2B Mix Show with Alanna and Stacy is brought to you by Jackson Marketing. Need help with your B2B online presence? Let's talk!
Liam Martin, co-founder and CMO of TimeDoctor.com and Staff.com, joined our guest speaker series to talk about content marketing and digital marketing strategies that did and do work for him, when organizing the Running Remote Conference. In this episode, Liam shares insights on the strategies he uses and gives useful tips about content marketing in general (especially on podcasting), and how he sees the future with AI evolving. Host: Pınar Ünsal Guest: Liam Martin Shownotes: Running Remote conference: https://runningremote.com/ Time Doctor: https://www.timedoctor.com/ Staff: https://staff.com/ YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpOiPAD4gNK0PifmtTOv6sQ Twitter: https://twitter.com/vtamethodman Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liammcivormartin/ - - - - - - - - - - Please subscribe to our channel and rate our podcasts! To learn more about Kubix Digital, visit our website: https://kubix.digital, or follow us on: Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC-7aE_7oQ26lEly06cIH1BQ Twitter: twitter.com/Kubix_Digital Linkedin: linkedin.com/company/kubixdigital/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/digitalkubix/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/kubixdigital/ Pinterest: tr.pinterest.com/kubixdigital/
Listen on: iTunes / Podbean / Stitcher / Spotify / YouTube / Sign up for our newsletter - delivered every Friday with the latest Podcast episode and more tips on helping you run amazing events. Liam is the founder of TimeDoctor and staff.com and also runs the ‘Running Remote' conference in Bali. In this interview we discuss: How Liam started off with a plan to be a Sociology professor but it didn't work out as he wasn't good at teaching How he started the conference by finding a niche that no existing conference was serving (a great tip for listeners Why Liam wears his ‘Running Remote Conference' t shirt every time he speaks at another conference We discuss how not many people talk about the economics of running a conference (apart from The Events Podcast) How Liam focused heavily on the financials to make sure he didn't lose money How you can get hotels to pay you 10-20% of all room booking fees How to negotiate with hotels How he is dealing with local governments who want to pay to bring his conference to them as they want to attract remote workers How it's way easier to get sponsors for your second conference (Liam 10x'd his prices!) How he gets to break even just from sponsors Pro Tip: Get speakers to record a promo video to show they are speaking at your event - great social proof They sold 9% of tickets in first month, 19% in second, 30% in third, 15% in fourth, 28% in fifth, 10% in sixth Pro Tip: If you can get 50% of conference attendees to come again next year you are doing great How they made a mistake only having vegetarian food in year one If you have a VIP party….then charge for it How he got all his speakers Diplomatic Immunity! This podcast is sponsored by www.eventsframe.com - Effortless ticketing and attendee management with NO ticket fees and plans from just $20.month! Email dan@eventsframe.com with the subject line ‘PODCAST' for a special secret discount code. I hope you enjoyed the podcast and if you did please leave us a review anywhere on the web it really means a lot to us ! Finally please join our Facebook Community of #eventprofs to keep the learning going…. and get in touch with me via dantaylor.me Sign up to our newsletter, delivered every Friday to get notified when the podcast is live, plus the latest events news of the week! More information on Liam can be found on https://runningremote.com
Liam is the co-founder and CMO of TimeDoctor.com, Running Remote Conference and Staff.com. After graduating with a masters in Sociology from McGill University, Liam opened a small tutoring company which grew to over 100 employees and looked to solve a problem with remote employees not reporting accurate work data which turned into Staff.com. He consults on outsourcing and process design and is passionate about how to gain insights into the inner workings of how people work. This show is sponsored by Experiment 27. Get the sales and service agreement (free client contract template) Experiment 27 uses to close business HERE (http://bit.ly/x27contract). [$1,000 value] In this episode you'll learn: [2:24] What is Liam's strategy as a person [3:52] How do you decide who to track & who not to track [8:27] General rule of ROI on Conferences [9:47] ‘I don't know if I would want to be tracked every second' [11:45] How do you measure passive-productivity (building processes) [14:45] Why are some employees more successful to other employees [15:36] How to figure out what your people should be working on [17:19] How did Liam pick up the initial marketing channels to begin with [21:57] Why not double down on the #1 channel [24:19] Cold email outreach for free vs paid events [28:50] Productivity in an office environment vs being remote Links mentioned: Runningremote.com/Liam TimeDoctor.com Subscribe to Running Remote on YouTube Brought to you by Experiment 27. Find us on Youtube (B2Bsalestraining.org). If you've enjoyed the episode, please subscribe to The Alex Berman Podcast on iTunes and leave us a 5-star review. Get access to our FREE Sales Courses.(http://experiment27.teachable.com/)
Liam is the co-founder and CMO of TimeDoctor.com, Running Remote Conference and Staff.com. After graduating with a masters in Sociology from McGill University, Liam opened a small tutoring company which grew to over 100 employees, and looked to solve a problem with remote employees not reporting accurate work data which turned into Staff.com. He consults on outsourcing and process design and is passionate about how to gain insights into the inner workings of how people work. On today's episode we discuss running remote teams, including hiring, performance, management, culture and mental health. Liam's Social Profiles: https://twitter.com/vtamethodman https://www.linkedin.com/in/liammcivormartin/ https://www.facebook.com/liam.martin About Time Doctor: Time Doctor is a time tracking and productivity monitoring software for remote teams. The goal with the software is to help individuals and organizations to be more productive when working remotely Time Doctor Social Profiles: https://twitter.com/manageyourtime https://www.linkedin.com/company/2184443/ https://www.facebook.com/timedoctorsoftware https://plus.google.com/+Timedoctor-Manage-Your-Time Show Notes: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ Flexjobs Dribble Fellow Feedback App Radical Candor Running Remote YouTube Channel
Have you heard what Steve Munroe is doing? Do you think the remote work trend is exploding? Today you're going to hear about the impact of the digital nomad movement on local communities, as well as the challenges and benefits of this new global workplace (and how we can keep our impact positive). My guest today co-founded and runs Hubud. It is one of the world's top coworking spaces located in Ubud, Bali and aims to “inspire a million people to change the way they live, work, and learn.” He also founded the Coworking Alliance for Asia Pacific (CAAP) and their annual conference which is a meeting place for coworking spaces from over 30 countries to connect and explore the future of remote work. Please welcome Steve Munroe to the show! Tune In To Learn: What can give you motivation for a career choice. How to launch a remote work movement. Why it is so important to start with community. Expert advice around choosing a coworking space. The biggest challenge facing the digital nomad movement. The #1 requested feature in every work survey. How you can be an ethical traveler. Best way to get a close up view of the Balinese culture. And so much more! Resources: Tortuga Backpacks. Hubud. Location Indie. Cogiving. Running Remote Conference. 99 designs. Looking for more Zero To Travel Podcasts? Check out the archives now!
The Business Method Podcast: High-Performance & Entrepreneurship
Liam Martin, founder of Staff.com and TimeDoctor.com ~ Current Series ~ 100 Interviews with 100 Location-Independent Entrepreneurs that have over $1,000,000 in Annual Revenue Welcome to the show ladies and gentlemen we are glad you are here with us today because we have another exciting guest we want to introduce. Liam Martin is joining us today! Liam is the founder of two 7-figure location independent businesses, staff.com, timedoctor.com. He is also the founder of the Running Remote conference that is held in Bali. Liam hopped on the show with us and gave so much valuable content that we divided the interview into two podcast episodes, the second episode will be published next! On the show today, Liam discusses what it was like building two 7-figure businesses simultaneously with remote teams. We then start chatting about Liam's goal of getting on 120 podcasts in 120 days. Being that created 100 podcasts in 100 days we got into a great discussion about tactics we both used to make this happen. Later in the show, we discuss how Liam used these podcasts to build his conference. Make sure to check out this episode! “You lose money on your first conference, you break even on the second one and you make money on the third.” Liam Martin 02:20: Building a Conference 10:18: Failure Rate of Creating a Conference 15:18: Why Liam Doesn't Attend Conference Talks, But Still Attends Conferences 16:40: Liam's Strategy to Connect with People He Wants to Connect with at Conferences 22:04: Running Remote Conference “I don't attend conference sessions, because I realize out there in the lounge business is being done, and that is where you want to be.” Liam Martin Honorable Mentions: Christopher Gimmer, founder of Snappa Liam's 7-Figure Location Independent Businesses https://staff.com/ https://www.timedoctor.com/ Joel from Buffer https://buffer.com/ Amir from Dooist https://doist.com/ Sarah from FlexJobs https://www.flexjobs.com/ GitHub https://github.com/ GitLab https://about.gitlab.com/ eLance https://www.upwork.com/ ODesk https://www.upwork.com/ Freelancer https://www.freelancer.com/ BuzzStream http://www.buzzstream.com/ FiresideConf https://www.firesideconf.com/ TomboyX Underwear https://tomboyx.com/pages/about-us-1 Ryan Dyse, founder of Traffic and Conversions Summit https://www.trafficandconversionsummit.com/ SXSW https://www.sxsw.com/ Mastermind Talks http://mmt.community/ Dan Andrews https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BN2KD1J/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=chrisreynolds-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B07BN2KD1J&linkId=c498a7635bd7ccf3161c004a8abb9231 Brad Hart https://www.thebusinessmethod.com/brad-hart Contact Info: https://runningremote.com
Intro Today we look at working on the move - we have some great perspectives on this, from professional networks to remote conferences to Gig Teams. Look out for our new fortnightly schedule, as we continue to bring you information-packed magazine-style episodes. And there’s lots going on at Virtual Not Distant, so do come and visit us – virtualnotdistant.com, check out our range of specialist services and activities. And if you’re curious about or involved in the world of virtual and remote collaboration, why not join us for a free online event: Virtual Team Talk’s “Internal Affair” on 18th-19th June – find out more and register at virtualteamtealk.com. 03.54 Interview: Mike Jones – TAP International Mike is the co-founder and CEO of Tap International, who help professionals broaden their networks by spending time in remote locations on ‘talent development experiences’ of 1-3 months, where they enjoy professional development and networking in amazing places, whilst learning from cultural differences in a fully immersive way. Liberated by technology (and participants usually already have everything they need to maintain normal work patterns and flow), the Tap International vision is to fulfill the millennial dream of travel and experiential learning, by combining this with career development and networking. And the founders walk the talk, travelling with the groups and being truly location-independent, drawing on their professional networks to curate opportunities. Employers get to attract and retain the best talent, with enhanced social and professional skills – and their programme can be used as a hiring perk or performance reward. The whole team benefits from the experience gained by the lucky participant. Discover more, and start rummaging for your passport, at https://www.tapinternational.co/ https://www.instagram.com/tapinternational/ 27.20 Running Remote: Conference in Ubud, Bali Check out the podcast segment for a generous booking discount code, and don’t forget to send us a virtual postcard from the beach: https://runningremote.com/ 29.19 Tools: Pocket A neat little clipping/read later service, which lets you capture anything you want to read, from any device – to read at any time. With offline access and stripping out of ads, it’s a very handy app, especially when you’re travelling and want to catch up on all your interesting reading. It’s also ideal for flexible freelancers or anyone who works on a range different projects and tends to come across important nuggets of information and learning when you’re in the middle of working on something else. You can follow people, tag and categorise, and share with other people – or use it as a very simple bookmarking service. But you do need to make time to read the things you have put in your Pocket! https://getpocket.com/ 39.55 What do you mean by that? John Elston, author of ‘The Remote Revolution’, introduces us to the concept of gig teams Comprising a multifaceted group of individuals, a “gig team” is greater than the sum of its parts – a collective who recognise their synergy and complementary skills, and approach projects and freelance gigs together to offer a range of services to fulfill the diverse needs of their clients. They market themselves and apply their skills as a team, to tackle complex projects in a range of settings. A truly 21st Century work evolution, top gig teams can pick and choose assignments that motivate and inspire them. Colonising coffee-shops in a city near you, gig teams are travelling the world and setting it to rights, one gig at a time. 38.30 Oh No – My team’s gone remote! How can we continue learning together? Learning and growth as a team need not be compromised by working in a remote or flexible setting. Learning is about mindset, not location. With the right mindset, it’s a continual process, of acquiring new information and putting it into practice by changing what we do. So it’s important that we capture experiential learning points, and make time for the essential reflection stage in the learning cycle, where we integrate the learning points into our own behaviour. In the online space, that means allocating resources – time and attention – to ensure learning points are captured, and successfully cascaded through the organisation. Pilar suggests a range of options for structuring this, both on the practical level, and also in creating safety within the team to be vulnerable and accept input. Change can bring many benefits, but you need to make space to accommodate it. In our fast-moving world of work it can be hard to carve out time to learn and reflect – but these are the moments of greatest growth, wherever your team is located. Whew, this has been one of our most packed podcasts ever – see you in two weeks time!
[00.59] Liam's Background [01.50] Recommended TimeDoctor Feature - Tracking CRM [03.34] Working Remotely [04.53] Running Remote Conference [06.38] Hiring Process Inside TimeDoctor [10.50] Wrong Decision When Hiring [13.40] Scaling Strategy [16.47] Bot as Customer Support Replacement [19.48] Collaborating While Working Remotely [21.40] TimeDoctor Vision in Five or 10 Years
[00.59] Liam's Background [01.50] Recommended TimeDoctor Feature - Tracking CRM [03.34] Working Remotely [04.53] Running Remote Conference [06.38] Hiring Process Inside TimeDoctor [10.50] Wrong Decision When Hiring [13.40] Scaling Strategy [16.47] Bot as Customer Support Replacement [19.48] Collaborating While Working Remotely [21.40] TimeDoctor Vision in Five or 10 Years
Remote work is here to stay, are you ready for the remote first era? In this episode, the CEO and co-founder of Time Doctor and Staff.com Liam Martin, shares why it's so important to always align your mission with the objectives of live events, the value of being a connector of people through live events and how companies can leverage the best work force from around the world by going remote. Also, Liams explains what Asynchronous Management is and how it helps remote first companies become successful and sustainable in a remote setting. Liam Martin is also the brain behind the Running Remote Conference, a live event that offers remote-first founders & hybrid-team leaders access to the knowledge, connections and solutions to help build, manage and lead remote teams to excellence. Liam is passionate about how to gain insights into the inner workings of how people work and he also believes in empowering workers to work wherever they want, whenever they want. Finally he is the co- author of the upcoming book: Running Remote, grab your copy and uncover the mindset and strategies to build and grow a truly successful remote team. Key Highlights: [00:01 - 16:48] Live Events After the Pandemic The “Ready, Fire” mentality when producing live eventsAlign your mission and the purpose of the live eventThe real ROI of live events: connecting with high value people [16:49 - 26:45] Remote Work FoundationsLiam's first online business: tutoring students worldwideThe big switch in the work force since the pandemicWhat remote workers actually care aboutRemote work is not for everybody, the importance of culture fit [26:47 -36:23] The Real Remote Culture Getting rid of the manager position, the platform is the manager!Focusing on leadership and intimate connectionsHow many Zoom calls are too many Zoom calls?The Asynchronous Management Strategy [36:23 - 48:21] Closing SegmentGet your copy of Running Remote and sign up for the bonus contentConnect with Liam on LinkedInDid you love the value that we are putting out in the show? LEAVE A REVIEW and tell us what you think about the episode so we can continue putting out great content just for you! Share this episode and help someone who wants to connect with world-class people. Jump on over to travischappell.com/makemypodcast and let my team make you your very own show!If you want to learn how to build YOUR network, check out my website travischappell.com. You can connect with me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.Tweetable Quotes: “ No one has recognized that you should actually manage people differently when they work remotely.” - Liam Martin“ We are looking at culture like it's the people, and it's not the people, it's the work!” - Liam MartinAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy