Liam and Rob met in 2011 at a conference in Austin, Texas. After discussing the concept of Time Doctor, they formed a friendship that would soon turn into a partnership that would transform the way we manage time.

Time Doctor is designed to help individuals and organizations be more productive, stop people from wasting their time on distractions, and do what matters to them instead.

Organizations can rest assured that their remote workers are productive as they can track their time easily and quickly.

How did you come up with the idea for Time Doctor? It’s a unique name, how did you find it?

“My business partner is in Sydney, Australia and I am in Montreal, Canada. He is a doctor. He’s practiced as an emergency doctor for four to five years, spending time and doing a lot more, including analyzing your time. By using your time wisely, you will become more productive and healthier. That’s how the name came about – Time Doctor. “

The workplace has evolved over the past few years. In addition to reducing costs, working remotely has become a viable option for companies to hire top talent, and not just to cut costs. Additionally, more and more companies are choosing to be distributed rather than physically located, and are growing to a valuation of more than $ 1 billion without having physical offices.

“Time Doctor is a remote asynchronous organization. We are in 43 different countries around the world. Nobody has a physical office and we love to work remotely. We think this is the best business model that you have because someone like me is worth the maximum freedom in my life. I can choose whether I want to work from Istanbul, Barcelona, ​​Bali or Mumbai. It doesn’t matter because I can work remotely. “

In your opinion, what are the disadvantages of remote work?

Lack of cooperation. This is by far the biggest problem affecting remote and on-premise teams.

However, you can use an asynchronous working model that is effective, similar to what we are currently doing at Time Doctor. Netflix would be a good example of asynchronous video consumption. It is waiting for you to consume or interact with it.

Asynchronous is a slower model to start with, but in fact, it’s much more productive from a per-employee perspective. We see it overcome the lack of collaboration you typically see in remote teams.

How did Time Doctor come about?

“I ran an online tutoring company and one of the big problems I had within the company was with accurate time tracking.

There was always a discrepancy in the timing of the student and tutor. And that ruined the business. Eventually I realized that Time Doctor could enable a verifiable version of time tracking so everyone could see what the truth was and what you were doing with your time.

I realized that I wanted to devote the next five to ten years of my life to this. “

With Time Doctor software, you can:

* Improve the speed and effectiveness of communication in organizations

* Clearly organize, communicate and delegate daily tasks

* Reduce the time spent on email and other non-work-related distractions

* Make sure employees use their time effectively and maintain a healthy work-life balance.

* Reduce the time spent on everyday tasks, including frequently generated timesheet reports

Given the fierce competition in today’s business world, how would you highlight the company’s competitive advantages and what sets you apart from the competition?

“Our entire technology stack and product are focused on how we are helping the world transition to a remote working model.

We have the best tool for people who want to work remotely. If you would like to use our tool in an office too, you can. It’s just that we’re not designing for an office experience, but rather for a remote world experience.

I think that’s a major differentiator in the market. Other time & attendance tools either concentrate on the office model, i.e. the on-premise model, or work in between. We developed the product specifically for remote teams so that they can work from anywhere in the world. “

How has the pandemic affected Time Doctor’s growth?

“In 2020 we grew by over 200% compared to the previous year. That was incredibly successful for us. For SAAS products, that’s definitely a big growth, and we’ve still seen a constant surge in growth, basically after the pandemic.

With the completely new variant, we will of course see how it works. But yes, after people transition out of the pandemic, what remains is 40% of the US workforce to work remotely, compared with 4% of the US workforce before the pandemic.

This will stay constant and is likely to increase over the next few years. In a post-pandemic world, maybe 50% of the US workforce will be working remotely by the next year. “

Given the remote working culture at Time Doctor, how do you encourage creative thinking in your company?

“We use a lot of tools to fill this gap. For example, all of our designers have iPads and we use a tool called ‘Miro’ where we can all work together on a single whiteboard and thus communicate asynchronously.

We communicate through tools like Zoom and Google Meet, which have proven effective in this case. At the same time, we also pay attention to deep work. There is a fantastic book by Cal Newport called “Deep Work” that focuses solely on optimizing yourself towards productive, focused work.

We find that you can usually overcome many of the collaborative or creative drawbacks of our remote team by optimizing your entire workforce for a deep work mindset. Generally as a company, if you can increase your productivity by 200% by walking remotely. If you have reduced your creativity by 10%, I’ll be happy to do it every weekday. “

How do you see the future of Time Doctor?

We were a tool that focused on a relatively small niche, say 4% of the US workforce. Today it’s 40% of the US workforce, and we expect it to grow quite aggressively over the next few years. So it becomes more competitive.

Lots of people enter our room. Acknowledge that the real place where the work is done will no longer be a place; it will be everywhere.

We’ll face some challenges, of course, but basically we’re just sticking to our core mission statement, which supports the world’s transition to remote work. “

Get to know Liam Martin personally

What do you find most appealing about your job?

The ability to do something new and different. From the point of view of the marketing that I oversee in the company, the innovations in online marketing are not only becoming more aggressive, but also faster.

I was good at SEO when I first started, and we’re still very good at SEO as a company, but the strategies might be flipped every four to five years. Now they flip once every 18 months.

So should we be good at Tik Tok? OK. Well, we can get maybe six months of worth before the competitors come in and start eating our lunch. So it’s getting more and more exciting.

It can also mean more work, but that kind of keeps me awake. It would be helpful if you were up to date with the technology and tried to target customers on different platforms.

How do you motivate yourself to come up with new ideas?

“I am incredibly inspired by successful entrepreneurs. Look at Elon Musk. He’s doing great things like someone who builds renewable energies, electric cars, spaceships to Mars, and the internet for everyone on planet earth. “

Liam Martin is inspired by innovators and disruptors like Tobias Lutke, Jeff Bezos and Jack Dorsey and often asks himself: “Does he think big enough?”

Liam adds that the challenge in entrepreneurship, most of the time, is setting high goals and dreaming big when we have to keep climbing.

Every company is innovative or unsuccessful. It’s just a matter of degree. Needless to say, Time Doctor leads the race in the time management industry.

It was a very motivating and inspiring conversation with Liam Martin as we had the opportunity to learn from one of the leading companies in the industry.