Time tracking your remote team

#12: Liam Martin (@vtamethodman)

Liam Martin went from pro-figure skater to building a business with hundreds of remote employees. Pioneering remote work,
Time Doctor and Staff.com not only serve employers looking to empower their remote teams but also digging into incredible
research around the movement.

Find out more about his companies here:

Subscribe to the podcast to get discount for a ton of tools at https://www.buildingremoteteams.com/

[00:00:00] Jevin: [00:00:00] Alright. Hello everyone. We are back building remote teams.

[00:00:03] This is our first live podcast. Interview, I’m here with Liam Martin in their beautiful Ottowa office where I also I also live not the office. I live in Ottawa

[00:00:14] Liam: [00:00:14] I thought you lived upstairs.

[00:00:15] Jevin: [00:00:15] I didn’t thankfully not know. I’m entirely remote specially from here. Liam great to have you on the show

[00:00:21] Liam: [00:00:21] Great to be here.

[00:00:21] Thanks for having me, super excited about this awesome. Very rarely. Do I get a physical podcast? Yes conversation. So I think this will be pretty fun.

[00:00:30] Jevin: [00:00:30] I’ve never done it either. So first first for both of us, so tell me a little bit about what you do and. A conference you got like the software you like all kinds of stuff.

[00:00:39] Tell me what you what you what you got going on.

[00:00:41] Liam: [00:00:41] Sure so, two tech companies staff.com and timedoctor.com both tools to be able to improve remote teams productivity, and we also have a conference called Running remote, which just happens to be the largest conference on building and scaling remote teams.

[00:00:58] We’ve done it in Bali. We’re currently moving to [00:01:00] Austin and I’m pretty stoked over that

[00:01:02] Jevin: [00:01:02] very cool. So tell me about time doctor and tell me about staff.com because I think that’ll help set the stage for what we’re going to talk about today,

[00:01:10] Liam: [00:01:10] Sure. So basically what those tools do and I can kind of, tell you how I came to using them and probably that’s a good definition of how they work.

[00:01:18]What they’ll do is, they don’t just monitor how long someone worked but they tell you how efficiently they’ve worked so we’ll be able to know what you’re spending your time on and also what things you can do to become more efficient. Basically think of it as like a Fitbit for work. That’s pretty much what time doctor and staff.com oes.

[00:01:40] Jevin: [00:01:40] Okay, I like it. Now. Do you also have you have an agency or you can hire people as well?

[00:01:46] Liam: [00:01:46] So we actually started staff.com as a platform and it absolutely and completely failed. So long story short, we went from zero to 86,000 mrr. Within a year things were looking [00:02:00] great and by next year we were at a hundred and ten thousand mrr.

[00:02:04] Which was not very good and we had a secret turn problem, which was we had eleven percent monthly term for anyone. Not a SAS founder churn is basically the amount of customers that lead you every single month quarter or year and we a good churn rate for an SMB product is about two and a half to five percent.

[00:02:23] We were at 11. So that’s not a good sign and the problem that we had was. They would not tell us why they were quitting. So what we discovered was there was basically poaching so we’d do all the work to be able to connect an employer and an employee remotely and then six months later or three months later the employee would say.

[00:02:44] Hey, I’m quitting and oh by the way, and the or the employer would say Hey, you know, I’m letting this person go but in reality actually they were just bringing them off the platform because we were charging a percentage

[00:02:54] Jevin: [00:02:54] Oh that make sense, with so that you did a great job matching them up fantastic just people didn’t [00:03:00] like you having to pay the fee on top of

[00:03:02] it.

[00:03:02] Liam: [00:03:02] So this is actually one of the biggest problems that I see in two-sided Market places, which is , when you look at the way that two-sided Market places are structured, if you do not need the individual, so if you’re looking for the product, but not the person behind the product, two-sided Market Places work as an example if I wanted Uber

[00:03:23] right now I push the Uber button some dude shows up in a car and picks me up. Yeah, I don’t care if it’s John Jim or Jambalaya. It’s just some dude that comes and picks me up tomorrow. Push the button again, it’s completely different dude or gal. Yeah with staff.com. I was hiring. Jevin and then Jevin and builds a relationship.

[00:03:42] and ends up having this long term building a working relationship. And Devin just says listen what? I work with you directly because these guys were taken ten or fifteen percent of my paycheck.

[00:03:51] Jevin: [00:03:51] Right?

[00:03:51]Liam: [00:03:51] Why don’t I just work for you directly and you know, I’ll be much happier and I’ll work an extra five hours a week as an example or something like that.

[00:03:58] Jevin: [00:03:58] Right

[00:03:59] Liam: [00:03:59] And they’ll say [00:04:00] great to that. So this is. actually a deep fundamental problem that you see not just in our version of a two-sided market place, but you also see it in upwork freelancer before that odesk an Elance, one of the models that actually is working really well, which we talked about just briefly before hand is Fiverr,

[00:04:17] Jevin: [00:04:17] sure

[00:04:17] Liam: [00:04:17] because Fiverr is a product

[00:04:20]Jevin: [00:04:20] right?

[00:04:20] Liam: [00:04:20] It’s not a person.

[00:04:21] Jevin: [00:04:21] Yep.

[00:04:22]Liam: [00:04:22] I need a website built, I go to fiver I need image edited I go to fiver

[00:04:27] Transactional it’s one off

[00:04:29] it’s the absolute definition of the gig economy, which we could also get into. I don’t really like the gig economy to be honest with you,` I respect that it’s going to open up remote work to a larger Workforce, but fundamentally, I don’t want to set up, you know websites for people for the rest of my life for 200 bucks a pop.

[00:04:47] That’s just I can’t commit to that, I’ve got to say I’m going to spend the next 5 years of my life working on this project because I’m really excited about it. That’s what really energizes people and I think that the gig economy is kind [00:05:00] of seen as this be-all-end-all when in reality, I don’t think it’s as big as it’s going to be.

[00:05:04] Jevin: [00:05:04] Yeah, I for me. It’s it’s like the Gateway into you know, dipping your toe into both hiring people remotely and trying out doing remote work yourself because maybe you know, it’s something you’ve already very comfortable with and you know how to do it maybe a but I agree.

[00:05:18] I don’t think it’s going to be the be-all Let’s talk about time doctor. I talk to a lot of people especially managers who are just not sure about how to trust their employees, especially new employees who you know they are bringing on board and they’re not bringing into the office, time doctor is a Time tracking software.

[00:05:37]There’s you know, there’s other ones out there, but sometimes I hear Hey, like I’ve got this tool and I like capture their screen to be sure that they’re working and I can look at it, and I’ve used time. Dr. Myself for for some of my for employees see if they’re working and similarly,

[00:05:53] oh desks tools, but I felt like there’s got to be a better way to trust [00:06:00] you know, my people and maybe it’s not the best. I feel sometimes a little bit icky about it. You know, how you know, what’s your take on that? I’m sure you got your trying not to be that so what’s your what’s your take on? So time tracking

[00:06:14] Liam: [00:06:14] I can speak to that probably in two separate directions, if you are in a tech startup right now and it’s a whole bunch of founding T people all sitting around and you’re all just thinking about how to really get this thing from 0 to 1 and everyone’s tied in and it’s focused.

[00:06:32] Jevin: [00:06:32] Yeah.

[00:06:33] Liam: [00:06:33] You don’t need time doctor.

[00:06:34] Jevin: [00:06:34] Hmm.

[00:06:35] Liam: [00:06:35] That pains me to say that but like you don’t need our product you should not buy it,

[00:06:39] Jevin: [00:06:39] but why not? Why is everyone is tied in everyone’s

[00:06:41] Liam: [00:06:41] so if everyone’s aligned and you’re focusing on a very small team that is not something if you you if there’s a trust issue or if there’s a productivity issue you’ll be able to detect it very very quickly and be able to overcome it

[00:06:56] Jevin: [00:06:56] sure, you know, you guys are close together you’re communicating all the time.

[00:07:00] [00:07:00] So you can see if something’s not happening right

[00:07:01] Liam: [00:07:01] You’re also dealing with, like thought workers fundamentally, right? So you’re dealing with very difficult problems. So your work is actually not going to be the same type of work, any other day right. Now I’m doing podcasts. This morning. I was doing emails this afternoon.

[00:07:18] I’m going to be doing another face-to-face meeting. It’s very difficult to be able to measure that data using time doctor as an example. I see however there are two instances in which I think the tool can increase productivity and also, Be what I call the Trojan Horse of remote work.

[00:07:35] Jevin: [00:07:35] Okay

[00:07:36] Liam: [00:07:36] Which is, someone that is like Fahim and we talked about this beforehand.

[00:07:42] We did a short for running remote, which was the story of Fahim who is a graphics designer in Dhaka Bangladesh who also happens to have Muscular Dystrophy and he went from not knowing how to be able to work online at all to be at to having a full-time very successful job. Working [00:08:00] online as a designer love it that type of a situation where he’s working on the same in essence work every single day time doctor’s a pretty good tool for that.

[00:08:10] If however you’re working on intense thought work that really requires a lot of different variables. Then I would say it’s probably not applicable the other situation that it would be applicable is once you go past your tribe size, so most sociological literature will talk about once you’re between a hundred and a hundred and fifty people.

[00:08:34] Jevin: [00:08:34] Okay.

[00:08:35] Liam: [00:08:35] You’re no longer a you’re no longer in your tribe stage people start to become numbers, fundamentally. All right, so it’s no longer Jaron. J st some guy that is doing Dev work for me. I see and at that point you really need to be able to know as the HR manager. What are my two thousand reps doing?

[00:08:55] We actually just had a client just samasource. I don’t know if [00:09:00] you’ve ever heard of these guys.

[00:09:00] Jevin: [00:09:00] No, no no

[00:09:02] Liam: [00:09:02] super interesting company, out of Africa and they take people who are making $2 a day and start paying them 10 dollars a day to be able to do data entry work.

[00:09:12] Jevin: [00:09:12] Wow

[00:09:13] Liam: [00:09:13] so they use time. Dr. As an example.

[00:09:15] Jevin: [00:09:15] Okay

[00:09:15] Liam: [00:09:15] Because they need to be able to have that type of productivity measurement architecture over what they’re currently doing to be able to figure out the productivity of each rep, because they can’t invest the time into $100,000 employee with a human being, but they can invest that time with a piece of software.

[00:09:34]

[00:09:34] So samasource is a tech company. Basically, what they do is they train datasets for AI and they’ll take people from Lagos as an example in Nigeria and they’ll take them from two dollars a day to ten dollars a day. So they use time doctor. They use our tool to be able to look at that data for not just the productivity of their [00:10:00] company but also the productivity of the individual so they’ll be able to know well, how did you spend your time?

[00:10:05] And what do the good? Spend their time on and how is their data different from the people that are not really succeeding that much in that position

[00:10:13] Jevin: [00:10:13] Nice. So they can see that these people are spending time in Excel spreadsheets or on the samasource data entry website and not spending time on Facebook.

[00:10:22] Liam: [00:10:22] Well or even more specifically maybe they are spending time on Facebook and that actually boosts their productivity.

[00:10:27] Jevin: [00:10:27] Oh, ok interesting

[00:10:28] Liam: [00:10:28] so we use a lot of machine learning to be able to figure out what makes someone productive in a particular position, and one of the biggest surprising signals that we found, is people that are accessing Facebook at least once a day, are more productive than people that don’t, and what we’ve ended up discovering because this was actually like a very.

[00:10:49] Interesting and it was very strong green signal that like this is what the AI says makes you more productive versus non productive and the situation was that [00:11:00] you would do an IP block on Facebook. So you just shut down Facebook directly from their internet access.

[00:11:07] Jevin: [00:11:07] Okay,

[00:11:08] Liam: [00:11:08] And they would go to their mobile.

[00:11:10] So, for us we actually tell people don’t lock down any websites in a large corporate company because what you’re in essence doing is, do you want that notification to happen on the desktop or do you want it to happen on the mobile in which they leave the office going to the bathroom and go on Facebook for half an hour?

[00:11:27] Yeah. So it’s like do you want to be more productive or do you want to be right.

[00:11:31]Jevin: [00:11:31] Okay

[00:11:31] Liam: [00:11:31] like that’s basically the differentiator that worst that we kind of connect to with time doctor, which is can we use machine learning to be able to really improve people’s overall productivity and look deeply into what they’re doing throughout their workday and how to optimize their workday.

[00:11:46] And a lot of that is actually pretty counterintuitive.

[00:11:48] Jevin: [00:11:48] Huh?

[00:11:49] Liam: [00:11:49] We’ve said, very clearly. We believe that the average workday should be about 4 hours and 36 minutes.

[00:11:55] Jevin: [00:11:55] I’m down for this. Okay, tell me about that

[00:11:57] Liam: [00:11:57] It makes you more productive, so at least [00:12:00] from our data, we’ve found that people that work this 9 to 5, you know kind of like industrialization, era work week or work day.

[00:12:11] Jevin: [00:12:11] Yep.

[00:12:11] Liam: [00:12:11] It doesn’t apply to not just not so number one. It doesn’t apply, to the way that we work in general but more importantly different types of jobs have completely different work times. So developers as an example have almost a perfect correlation with creative writers.

[00:12:31] Jevin: [00:12:31] Okay, and what’s their what’s their best time?

[00:12:33] Liam: [00:12:33] So they’ll work on large stints of time like they might work for 18 hours, and then they don’t sleep for they don’t come back to work for two days.

[00:12:41] Jevin: [00:12:41] Okay. Sure.

[00:12:42] Liam: [00:12:42] It’s a very interesting, and that’s how they actually end up because we’ve connected that back to like jira as an example to be able to see well, how is their code?

[00:12:52] Did it have to come back from QA that kind of stuff?

[00:12:54] Jevin: [00:12:54] Okay

[00:12:55] Liam: [00:12:55] and we’re finding, that there are certain ways that developers work that a nine to [00:13:00] fiver just should not work. A sales person as an example

[00:13:02] Jevin: [00:13:02] right

[00:13:03] Liam: [00:13:03] should be working a nine-to-five, because most people are up from that not

[00:13:07] Jevin: [00:13:07] Oh their clients are going to be on.

[00:13:09] Liam: [00:13:09] T heir clients are gonna be on for me as an example. One of the biggest insights that I had inside of my data was, Tuesday afternoons were absolutely horrible for me,

[00:13:17] Jevin: [00:13:17] huh?

[00:13:18] Liam: [00:13:18] And until I started to actually look at the data and realized. That Tuesday afternoons were horrible for me. I didn’t recognize how bad it was and basically, what had happened was and we’re both in Canada so we know about this on Tuesdays.

[00:13:34] There’s cheap movie Nights.

[00:13:36] Jevin: [00:13:36] Oh, yeah,

[00:13:36] Liam: [00:13:36] so at around 2 p.m. The calls usually start from. When my friends or from my girlfriend saying hey, we gotta go see Batman or Superman.

[00:13:45] Jevin: [00:13:45] Nice.

[00:13:45]Liam: [00:13:45] I want to see Batman. I want to see Superman. Okay. Does Suzanne want to come? I don’t know Suzanne wants, can you call her

[00:13:52] do you wanna do the four clock showing or the seven o’clock showing does Jevin wanna come? Does Jevin want to bring his wife and kids like all of this.

[00:13:59] Jevin: [00:13:59] They’re [00:14:00] spending all this time kind of coordinating.

[00:14:01] Liam: [00:14:01] It’s like an interruption attack

[00:14:03] Jevin: [00:14:03] interesting

[00:14:03] Liam: [00:14:03] so now I take Tuesday afternoons off completely. Okay, and my productivity has gone up

[00:14:08] Jevin: [00:14:08] because maybe you know in the mornings I’ve got to get stuff done

[00:14:11] Liam: [00:14:11] Im literally done by 1:00 p.m. On Tuesdays and I just, I’m finished I block everything else off and you know, my time is better spent well doing other things.

[00:14:22] So that’s what we really want to get to is how can you gain insights into work to be able to make people more productive not necessarily work longer?

[00:14:32] Jevin: [00:14:32] Yep,

[00:14:32] Liam: [00:14:32] and in reality actually from the majority of the data that we’ve seen working longer doesn’t work.

[00:14:38] Jevin: [00:14:38] Wow, so you’re actually time tracking yourself and you’re trying to use that as data to be able to optimize your you know your product

[00:14:44] Liam: [00:14:44] if everyone uses it in the company everyone knows exactly how many hours I’m currently working.

[00:14:49]So we give everyone else Clarity into everyone else’s data inside of the organization.

[00:14:54] Jevin: [00:14:54] Wow, so it sounds like it’s actually sounds like you’re using it in a really healthy way. You know, I’ve

[00:15:00] [00:15:00] Liam: [00:15:00] So it’s like dynamite.

[00:15:01] Jevin: [00:15:01] Yeah.

[00:15:02]Liam: [00:15:02] It’s it can be used in a healthy way and it can be used in an unhealthy way

[00:15:05] Jevin: [00:15:05] sounds like the internet so so yeah, okay. So because most people that I hear using the time tracking are doing it because they just don’t trust their employees and they’re like, I want to be sure that they’re sitting at their desk and they’re like

[00:15:18] and that’s a major part of the monitoring component and I won’t deny that a significant part of our business model is inside of that

[00:15:27] sure.

[00:15:27] However, once we deploy that piece of software and I’ve seen this happen a lot in large corporate, because large corporate of the ones that I’m really focused on.

[00:15:35] Yeah they have money to spend

[00:15:37] they have money to spend and more importantly, they also have a lot of employees that work on premise and do not feel comfortable about working remotely.

[00:15:47] Okay

[00:15:47] So stage one is okay, you don’t want anyone to work remotely. Listen, why don’t we deploy this tool? Everyone can stay in the office and now you can get a data layer for that

[00:15:56] nice

[00:15:56] right?

[00:15:56] You’re like a baseline

[00:15:57] like you got your Baseline. Okay. Now [00:16:00] why don’t you take a department out fora month?

[00:16:02] Sure, see, what’s up?

[00:16:04] Like have them work from home

[00:16:05] or from wherever they want.

[00:16:06] did their productivity go up? Did it go down? Did they get more things done? Did they get less things done? Did their work hours go up or down? You know, what were the changes?

[00:16:13] Yeah

[00:16:13] then we can look at those changes, you know spoiler alert 95% of the time.

[00:16:18] It’s much better.

[00:16:19] Wow

[00:16:19] which is how we end up saying you should buy time doctor. Yeah for everyone. So that’s basically what we do to be able to be the little Trojan Horse of remote work,

[00:16:30] Huh? So it’s like hey, let’s track them, you know to be sure everything’s going okay and then oh shoot after a month or like.

[00:16:36] Oh actually it’s actually they’re doing better because right

[00:16:38] once we take the remote, they’re actually doing better in a lot of large corporate are going to have an issue where like I’ll go into a large boardroom and literally everyone is like, the number one question is how do I know what they’re doing?

[00:16:52] Hmm. Yeah

[00:16:53] Liam: [00:16:53] and for us in this world of remote work. I know that we’re past that but when you look at the [00:17:00] majority of and I’m talking like 95% of the on-premise world,

[00:17:05] Jevin: [00:17:05] right?

[00:17:05] Liam: [00:17:05] That’s their number one concern,

[00:17:06] Jevin: [00:17:06] Is the trust from working at home.

[00:17:08] Liam: [00:17:08] How do you actually, I mean you could talk about, we’ll just trust them.

[00:17:12] That’s not an answer.

[00:17:13] Jevin: [00:17:13] No, it’s very wishy-washy and it’s super not tangible

[00:17:15] Liam: [00:17:15] What if I could actually provide you a piece of software that would delete that problem as a concern for you. That’s in essence. What time doctor does, and also too, we do it with the clear goal of helping the employee become more productive.

[00:17:28] So there a couple other tools on the market that you install secretly. Into someone’s computer.

[00:17:33] Jevin: [00:17:33] Okay

[00:17:34] Liam: [00:17:34] And we just fundamentally don’t believe in that because then the employee can’t actually see their own data and gain insights from their own data.

[00:17:42] Jevin: [00:17:42] I see

[00:17:43] Liam: [00:17:43] So as I said before Fitbit for work, we’re not we’re not big brother for work.

[00:17:47] We’re Fitbit for work.

[00:17:48] Jevin: [00:17:48] Hmm. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. Hmm. Okay, that’s pretty cool. Alright so what would you say to someone who then says like. I don’t trust my employee to work from home. Okay? Yeah [00:18:00] sure the tool is is a helpful means to be able to test that out as a baseline. But like what other ways do you advocate for being able to trust your employees to start working from home and start taking that first step to try this out.

[00:18:14] Liam: [00:18:14] So I generally. There’s video on this made it on youtube.com slash running remote. Okay, we’re good on that. We will link that. So basically if you’re an employee what I would suggest that you do is go to your employer say, hey, I want to work remotely here all the advantages of working remotely.

[00:18:30] I’m going to on average, it’s a 20 percent increase in productivity and a 30% increase in retention, which is the thing that no one really talks about.

[00:18:41] Jevin: [00:18:41] Yeah

[00:18:42] Liam: [00:18:42] Which for, that’s the one you wan to tell your employer because anytime you got a fire someone or someone quits it costs forty two thousand dollars on average in the United States to replace

[00:18:50] Jevin: [00:18:50] Wow

[00:18:51]Liam: [00:18:51] that’s expensive. Yeah, and that’s something that you really need to be able to be mindful of when you go into that conversation, that will be the winner. Then you [00:19:00] just say listen, why don’t we set up a remote work agreement you have templates actually that you can just go to youtube.com slash running remote and check them out. And you implement a very clear one month experiment saying I would like to be able to work from home. Here are the kpis that I have that I’m responsible for. I’m going to execute on these and if you want to deploy a tool like time doctor, you absolutely can you could say listen. I’ll give this to you, you know, there’s no risk to you.

[00:19:29] The biggest risk to you is you lose a month of payroll.

[00:19:32] Jevin: [00:19:32] Yep, which is which is a real real thing,

[00:19:35] Liam: [00:19:35] which is a real thing. But like in the grand scheme of things, I would say on average, I’m going to reduce your costs by 40%

[00:19:42] Jevin: [00:19:42] right

[00:19:42] Liam: [00:19:42] Because if you can take your entire company remote and you keep exactly the same salaries, on average you’re gonna save 40 percent versus the on-premise model, and I know we’re on a podcast about remote work and everyone kind of knows this kind of stuff but it’s worth reinforcing particularly for remote advocates and your [00:20:00] employer who maybe not will not maybe is not a remote Advocate,

[00:20:03] Jevin: [00:20:03] Right? Yeah. That makes sense. I did an O’Riley workshop last week actually on how to convince your boss to do to remote work.

[00:20:10] Liam: [00:20:10] Wow

[00:20:11] Jevin: [00:20:11] and yeah, it’s pretty well we had over a hundred people there was great, and now I’ve got I like the idea of maybe adding something like time doctor to actually make those baseline metrics because it’s not, you know with week managers kpi’s aren’t always there, you know and so sometimes it’s a bit wishy-washy to actually be able to measure, you know productivity whether you’re in the office or at home

[00:20:33] Liam: [00:20:33] and that was down to bad management.

[00:20:35] Jevin: [00:20:35] Yeah

[00:20:35] Liam: [00:20:35] fundamentally.

[00:20:36] Jevin: [00:20:36] Okay,

[00:20:36] Liam: [00:20:36] Right like there’s alot of people that are just like KP what? What metrics am I responsible for?

[00:20:41]Jevin: [00:20:41] Right

[00:20:42] Liam: [00:20:42] every employee at least at time doctor, and staff.com running remote.

[00:20:46] Jevin: [00:20:46] Yep.

[00:20:46] Liam: [00:20:46] They have a core number that they’re responsible for, that they can also change.

[00:20:51] Jevin: [00:20:51] Yeah.

[00:20:51] Liam: [00:20:51] So like I can’t tell someone who’s a Frontline salesperson your, your. mission is to keep us, get [00:21:00] up above 50% year-over-year growth,

[00:21:02] Jevin: [00:21:02] right?

[00:21:03] Liam: [00:21:03] Okay, that’s not going to work.

[00:21:04] Jevin: [00:21:04] Yeah, they can’t make they can’t control

[00:21:06] Liam: [00:21:06] they can’t control that but I could tell a salesperson your job is to do twenty-five hundred dollars in new mrr. For the month.

[00:21:12] Jevin: [00:21:12] Sure

[00:21:12] Liam: [00:21:12] Right, or a customer support rep you have to keep your NPS score above 886 as an example that type of thing. So like those are numbers that they can control and those are the ones and we also know how do they connect back to the compass metric above them?

[00:21:28] So, let’s say MPS connects back to churn and we can see a direct correlation where if we have a huge drop in NPS net promoter score, which is basically how happy you are and how much how willing you are to refer the product to someone else.

[00:21:42] Jevin: [00:21:42] Yes

[00:21:43]Liam: [00:21:43] That has a direct correlation towards churn rate and it’s about a two-month Delay so MPS goes down.

[00:21:49] Jevin: [00:21:49] Yep

[00:21:49] Liam: [00:21:49] Two months later, churn screws up.

[00:21:51] Jevin: [00:21:51] Yeah. So what’s a? Sorry, you said Compass?

[00:21:54] Liam: [00:21:54] Yeah so we have what are called Compass metrics?

[00:21:57]Jevin: [00:21:57] Okay

[00:21:57] Liam: [00:21:57] Are basically core metrics. We use a tool called clip [00:22:00] folio, which is another local Canadian company.

[00:22:02] Jevin: [00:22:02] Ottawa Company.

[00:22:03] Liam: [00:22:03] And we have all of these metrics on our dashboard, like internally we share everything. Revenue churn rate how many customers we have? Which customers we lost? Which are our top logos?

[00:22:14]You know, what’s our NPS? What are our new features that are coming in, how much time are we tracking and the biggest one that we track above all else, is how many hours are tracked inside of the platform. It’s because that feeds into absolutely everything else when we see a drop in the amount of hours tracked, we will see a drop in Revenue,

[00:22:34] Jevin: [00:22:34] Right

[00:22:34] Liam: [00:22:34] it will happen in 2 to 3 to 4 months, but it will happen and it’s something that is just such a good indicator of the health of the business.

[00:22:43] Jevin: [00:22:43] Yeah, feel that the kpi for a lot of companies who are on premise. It’s you know, how many people do I have sitting and how many bums in seats who are who I can see with my eyes as I’m walking around aren’t watching YouTube and aren’t on Facebook, you know [00:23:00] this week. I feel that this is a very common thing.

[00:23:02] Liam: [00:23:02] Yeah. I mean that’s that’s not again that’s the right versus actually productive argument.

[00:23:08] Jevin: [00:23:08] Yeah

[00:23:09] Liam: [00:23:09] I can sit at this desk for a long-ass time and do nothing.

[00:23:12] Jevin: [00:23:12] Yeah.

[00:23:13] Liam: [00:23:13] Right? Would you rather have me sit here for two hours and really knock some work out? Or would you rather have me sit here for eight hours and knock out maybe two hours and 15 minutes? Am I getting an extra 15 minutes a day? Yes. Am I much more unhappy about my life, Yes Trade the 15 minutes for 2 hours of hyper productivity.

[00:23:32] Jevin: [00:23:32] Hmm.

[00:23:32]Liam: [00:23:32] That’s my opinion. and I also back it up with the largest second-by-second work database on the planet.

[00:23:37] So yeah, you should pay attention to that type of information.

[00:23:40] Jevin: [00:23:40] That’s pretty compelling.

[00:23:41] Liam: [00:23:41] So yeah, it’s definitely. At least something that I’ve been , great advocate for, but to be honest with you when I speak to on-premise companies. It is a very difficult battle.

[00:23:53] Jevin: [00:23:53] Yeah sure it is. It’s a I mean it’s a huge cultural shift for people who are used to having people in the office they can reach they, can [00:24:00] choke, they can you know, versus when they’re at home and they’re just it’s a lot less tangible as to what they’re doing.

[00:24:05] Liam: [00:24:05] Yeah, and I think the other part of it is they just have a, I went to business school and people do 40 hour work weeks and that’s what they do.

[00:24:14] Jevin: [00:24:14] This is what you do

[00:24:15] Liam: [00:24:15] Right, but it’s just like why should there be one model of working for all the different types of working that we have?

[00:24:21] Jevin: [00:24:21] Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense Liam. Thanks alot for coming on the show. This is great.

[00:24:26] Liam: [00:24:26] Thanks for having me. I’m really appreciate it that you came all the way to Ottawa Canada to be able to meet with me.

[00:24:31] Jevin: [00:24:31] It’s true. Yeah, I like it here actually. Oh Yeah, great. All right. So, thanks. Thanks everyone for listening.

[00:24:37] So from Liam and I until next time keep building those remote teams cheers for now.