#212: The Impact of Remote Working on Business Valuations, CRE, Company Culture and the Economy

Liam is a serial entrepreneur who runs Time Doctor and Staff.com (one of the most popular time tracking and productivity software platforms in use by top brands today). He shares his insights from hundreds of thousands of users, and what trends are accelerating at lighting speed.

What You Will Learn in Today’s Podcast Interview:

• What the future of work and business will look like post COVID vaccine
• The crucial difference between “remote working” and “work from home”
• Why managing remote working is like “printing money”
• Why 22% of Liam’s clients have already cancelled their commercial leases
• What 50% of Liam’s clients are thinking about as it relates to the future of their office
• How to free up one of the largest expenses on the P&L
• Ways to build a company culture “on purpose” vs by accident
• Why high performers are using the remote flexibility to get 2 more hours of sleep a day
• How one entrepreneur is buying traditional business and taking them remote to grow a portfolio of extremely valuable companies
• How their data shows that efficiency, instead of more time, leads to greater success
• How Time Doctor allows companies to evaluate performance both within the organization and among other similar companies
• What the hierarchy of communication is, and why less communication can facilitate your work flow
• Why the days of the $500k Google developer are gone
• How to analyze and optimize productivity for each position in a company
• Why Liam sees this time as a restructuring of our economy

Podcast Interview Summary:

Today’s guest is Liam Martin, the co-founder of Time Doctor (time tracking tool) and an advocate of remote work. With hundreds of thousands of users and clients like Verizon and Keller Willams, Liam has insights into how big and small companies are planning on managing remote working in a post COVID vaccine world.

Since entrepreneurs now have to accommodate working from home for the foreseeable future (in one way or another), Liam is the perfect guest to talk about the impacts it has on business valuations, business models, culture, employee productivity and more.

Liam discusses how the large work-from-home shift accelerated trends that were inevitable. He shares his opinions on why there won't be a snap back to the old "normal", what trends owners need to be aware of, and how to capitalize on opportunities that are already right in front of us. 

Liam shares how companies who give employees more flexibility and control of their time can lead to a more valuable business, more productive and efficient work, while also reducing (or eliminating) the large cost of commercial office space.

About the Guest:

Liam is the co-founder and CMO of TimeDoctor.com 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.

Podcast Interview Quotes:

12:35 – “Remote work, when you look at it, your office costs are the second largest line item for any company...It’s payroll, and then it’s your office.” – Liam Martin

14:59 – “If you simply apply an extra 2 hours of sleep to everyone’s workday, right? So if you just take those two extra hours that you would commute and you turn them into sleep,  you’re going to have a more productive employee. That employee is going to be more productive during the day.” – Liam Martin

15:46 – “A developer, as an example, generally has the exact same footprint as a creative writer. So they might actually get into a flow state, they might work for 18 hours and then they might not work for 2 days. But that’s a more productive person than someone who works in the average 9-5 in which they’re just not inspired because they’re not in that flow.” – Liam Martin

29:03 – “When you consistently remote work, it has the single biggest thing that millennials ask for, to be able to improve their personal well-being in work” – Liam Martin

54:30 - “I think you’re probably going to see the cost or see the square footage of homes expand. I know for us, we’re looking to do a move right now, into a new place in Montreal and specifically, I’m looking for a separate wing that I can lock down and just say, ‘I’m at work.’ As opposed to just having an office.” – Liam Martin

55:25 - “The writing is on the wall that there is going to be a massive shift in the way that we accomplish work… My theory is that I think this has been the biggest shift in work since the industrial revolution (at least, in terms of speed).” – Liam Martin

Links and Resources:

YouTube: Running Remote

Official website: Time Doctor

Mastering Your Cash Flow Digital Course

ARKONA Boot Camp

Reach out to me if you have questions about the boot camp!

You can also reach out to me via email at [email protected], on my LinkedIn.