How Machine Learning and AI is changing business with Liam Martin

Academic Ninja, Process Designer, Study hacker, Time Doctorer… – Liam Martin

The future is already here. My guest today can predict when someone is going to quit their job, before they give their notice. How Machines are already smarter than us in so many ways.

Liam Martin is the Co-Founder of Staff.com and Time Doctor.

We talk about building a Saas company and what the future of tech will impact for your business. It’s not going to bypass small business! You need to know what’s coming up.

Things to learn from Liam Martin:

– How Staff.com can predict when someone will quit – what parameters do they look at?
– What roles in your company will be robots soon (even I was surprised!)
– How AI will change businesses in the coming years
– How much to invest in research and development with technology changing so quickly

P.S. I’m doing a webinar on Thursday! For six figure business owners and their team.

I’ll be going through the step-by-step checklist of core business systems you need to have to scale. Plus I’ll have you rate them – so you and your team will walk away with a customized plan!

Liam’s Websites:

TimeDoctor.com
Staff.com

WIN A FREE TICKET to my good friend Liam’s amazing conference Running Remote in Bali in June! You can find more details by clicking the banner below.

Transcript: Download

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services.

Jaime Masters:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I?m Jaime Masters, and today on the show, we have my good friend Liam Martin here on Staff.com, TimeDoctor.com. He also is having a really amazing conference coming up in Bali, which I highly recommend people attend because Bali?s fantastic.

	Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Liam Martin:	Thanks for having me.

Jaime Masters:	So, you have a theme, a running theme, and we?ve had one of your cofounders on also for TimeDoctor.com, which is amazing. Tell us a little spiel of what they actually do so we get it.

Liam Martin:	Sure. So, what we do is basically accounting software for your time. So, you wouldn?t not use QuickBooks to be able to manage, or Xero, to manage what you do inside of your business. We basically manage your time. 

	So, right now, I have ?Interview with Jaime.? That?s the current task that I?ve been running right now. It?s been running for six minutes and 22 seconds, and at the end of this podcast, I?ll be able to measure all of the websites, applications, mouse movements, keyboard movements, all the metadata that connects to this particular podcast, and compare it to the other 50, 100 podcasts that I?ve done, and start to figure out whether a signal is occurring inside of that data so that I can maximize my own personal productivity.

	And then, we also use it to maximize remote teams? productivities. So, we have 80-plus people in 27 different countries all over the world, and we use our tool to be able to measure not just how long you worked but how efficiently you worked, which is really the most important part of working, in my opinion.

Jaime Masters:	Heck, yeah! We need to actually be effective on the things that we?re doing, and we can?t know that. You?re a super geek on data, too, and AI, and crazy stuff. I know you?ve sort of gotten into that, which was really exciting because most people don?t even care or know where it?s going. So, tell me a little bit about what you actually do with this data. 

	So, go you for actually using your own product ? yay! ? because not a lot of people do that, by the way. So, thank you. But what sort of things can you glean from it? So, if someone were to install it right now ? I?ve used RescueTime. I?ve used a whole bunch of other things, and we try to pull out the data, but it?s hard to tell, especially if you?re not really good at hashing out data, what to do with it. So, what can we do with it?

Liam Martin:	So, to a degree, whether you?re manually analyzing it or whether you?re analyzing it with some of our machine learning tools ? so, as an example, we can predict when someone is gonna quit their job about six months before they do with about a 90-percent accuracy rate.

Jaime Masters:	Which is insane!

Liam Martin:	Yeah, that?s something that?s kind of spooky when you think about artificial intelligence, and it?s only starting. We have such a massive data set. We have hundreds of thousands of people all over the planet that use our software and measure their entire workdays. So, what we do is we analyze that data, and then we?re able to build signals or we?re able to analyze signals inside of that data and then produce a result.

	So, theoretically, I could predict when you?re gonna scratch your nose. It?s very easy for me, if I have enough data points, to be able to collect that outcome. So, if I can collect, let?s say, 1,000 of your nose scratches, Jaime, I can predict when you?re gonna scratch your nose next, dependent upon the input variables.

Jaime Masters:	And how do you figure that out? Is this your sweet spot of figuring that stuff out? Do I have to like blink my eye before I scratch my ? or what are the things that you find out in order to find out if somebody quits their job or not? Because I want it to be helpful for even if people ? I mean, of course, they should get your software for sure, and if they don?t ? because it?s meant for teams that are a little bit bigger than one or two or three, right? Or you tell me.

Liam Martin:	Sure, we have people that just use it for themselves, and we have people that use it for thousands of employees inside of their business.

Jaime Masters:	Now, I wanna scratch my nose, just so you know. I can?t stop thinking about scratching my nose. Continue, though.

Liam Martin:	Fundamentally, just to give you a crash course in what artificial intelligence is, and I?m gonna give you the layman?s version because that actually is the only version that I truly know and is able to communicate easily to people. My Master?s was in econometrics and statistics. And for the last 200, 300 years, there?s been something called regression statistics, a regression algorithm, which is I think that because you wear a gray sweater today, you are going to scratch your nose. So, I?ll come up with that input variable, which is, ?Oh, Jaime?s wearing a gray sweater today. She?s gonna scratch her nose.?

	However, with machine learning, we?re getting into what?s called Bayesian algorithms and a bunch of other type of neural net algorithms that don?t necessarily have the human define what is important. Instead, the computer looks at hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, in our case, or millions of variables like: How long was your lunch break? What did you decide to paint your house with or your office with? It looks like it?s a grayish. You?ve got a gray top on. Maybe there?s a correlation there, a little bit of mermaid hair. Is that something that connects to scratching your nose today? 

	And all of these different variables may bring up your chance of scratching your nose or bring down your chance of scratching your nose by an infinitesimally small amount, but all of those cumulative additions actually result in a really fantastic model. So, just to give you an example, one of the first-ever AI companies, Palantir, when 9/11 happened, the chance that 9/11 happened was absolutely remote for anyone that was using a regression algorithm, but for Palantir, if I remember correctly, it was 1 in 7.

	So, artificial intelligence is completely changing the way that we live our lives, and if you are not understanding how artificial intelligence works, if you?re an Uber driver, in the next ten years, you?re gonna be out of work because those cars are gonna be driving themselves. It?s all using the same base technology that we?re currently using inside of our particular business, and it?s gonna be implemented in every single aspect of human society. 

	So, I believe that for anyone that really is in any way interested in this subject, I highly suggest you go check it out. There are a couple great things that you can check out on YouTube, literally, ?How does AI work?? on YouTube. There are five or six really great explainer videos that you can go check out at the very top of the search results for that. That?s usually what I give to a new salesperson, as an example, in the team that?s really trying to understand how AI works. 

	But, in essence, what it does is it analyzes so many different variables that a human could never do it, and instead, a computer can do it perfectly, and they can add in and divide in all of these different variables. So, that?s what we use. So, if I were to go through all of those different variables for you, it would take probably a couple hours for us to discuss it just because there?s just so many things that the AI collects.

Jaime Masters:	Saying it would know when my dog is barking so I can mute, so that way I don?t have to cut it out later. So, the funny thing is that most people don?t understand any of this. We?re so entrenched in our own business and looking at our own little road that we aren?t looking at the broad spectrum. Like I had Dan Faggella come in and start talking about some of this, and he?s like, ?A lot of these small businesses, they?re gonna get their butt kicked, and they don?t realize it coming up.? 

	So, tell me what they should be ? yes, they should definitely go on YouTube and look it up, but what should they be doing inside their business? How soon are we talking about actually having to pay attention to having huge competitors with tons of data being able to predict and scoop up all the customers because of it?

Liam Martin:	So, No. 1, any repetitive task that a human currently does will no longer be done inside the decade.

Jaime Masters:	Crazy. Which is amazing because finding admins is a pain in the butt also, so I love it and hate it at the same time.

Liam Martin:	So, that actually is a huge danger for our business model, by the way, because our business model is measuring a lot of people that work remotely, and a lot of those people do customer support. They do chat. Chat support is gone. Probably chat support?s gonna be gone within the next two-to-three years. Ticket support is probably gonna be gone within the next two-to-three years. I would say phone support will be gone within the decade. We?re getting very close to the point where a computer can have a phone conversation with a human being and it?s indistinguishable. This is happening kind of in the beta-alpha stage, but it?s going to be happening and happening very quickly. 

	Everyone thought that their smartphones, that you wouldn?t be able to, on a synchronistic level ? whatever ? on a very fast level, translate languages. They thought that that was impossible, but Google just recently, their new translation app, they?re using AI, and they?ve been able to shrink, for every 500 lines of code, they?re now at one line of code because they?re using AI.

	I was just recently in Mainland China where they don?t allow Google anywhere, but Google worked offline right inside my phone. It didn?t have to connect to the cloud at any point because the code is so much more efficient because it?s using just a completely different understanding of how software?s built and works.

	So, all of those businesses will be done, and they?ll be replaced with something that will cost you nothing. So, actually, after we get through this process, it?s gonna be great. You?ll be able to push a button, and within 30 seconds, an Uber or a Lyft or something else will show up in front of your house, and you will get in that car, and it?ll be able to take you wherever you want, and that?ll be great. But you?ll no longer buy a car. You?ll no longer be driven by a driver. All of these things will disappear. Driving is 12 percent of the US workforce at this point, so what happens to those people? Who knows? 

	But I know, for me, the average cost of a vehicle is $9,000.00 a year. That is something that you?re able to just pull off your P&L instantly.

	So, the future is very exciting, but also a little scary, and we?re just a small part of that, and we recognized that you should be investing. Probably about 20 percent of our budget right now was, about a year and a half ago, invested directly into artificial intelligence, which was our big bet. So, for us, we believe that this is going to be the future and that if you?re not taking advantage of this now, you?re going to be left behind. And the problem with most technologies like this, you won?t feel like you?re being left behind until you?re completely left behind.

Jaime Masters:	Yes, let?s talk about that for a second because I chat with people about this stuff a lot, and everybody makes it sound like it?s so far away. And I come from being a computer geek since I was little, building computers at like 15, and to see how fast things go, and you realize it later, like, ?Oh, now everyone?s using them. Oh, great.? 

	So, the hard thing is, though, is that it?s not fully adopted right now, and it?s really a lot more expensive when you?re trying to deal with the beginning stages of beta and alpha, and it takes longer, and, yes, you wanna be on the forefront, but, no, you don?t wanna have to deal with the pain in the butt of the cost and expense to ? I mean, 20 percent is a lot. It is a big bet, especially for a lot of businesses that don?t have enough profit or enough resources in order to do this.

Liam Martin:	We could have built a project management system, we could have built a payroll system, we could have built a completely other separate company, but we decided to focus on artificial intelligence. And I?ll give you an example as to how things move so quickly.

	I have an iPad in front of me. I don?t have my smartphone around, but the smartphone was invented in 2007, the iPhone.

Jaime Masters:	Which is insane!

Liam Martin:	Now, everyone thinks that these smartphones are just a part of our lives. They?ve actually replaced computers. There?s more mobile traffic than there is actual desktop traffic. That?s a decade. And to be honest with you, probably smartphones completely overtook desktop within five years, I would say, at least in my own personal circle, and I?m not just thinking about tech people. I?m thinking about, in general, like my mother had a smartphone before she had a computer. So, when you think about that, that?s a five-to-ten year swath, and these things cost $1,000.00 a pop. They?re expensive. 

	Once Elon comes up with a self-driving car that you don?t have to buy, that can just, in essence, be leased per ride, looking at the Uber model, why would I ever want to own a car? That?s an asset that?s really a bad decision for your own personal P&L. So, that would just be ?

Jaime Masters:	Doesn?t it add up though? So, I have a question on that. Doesn?t it add up? Even my friend who?s like, ?I live in San Francisco. I?m not gonna have a car,? she ended up spending like 12 grand that year on Uber. She?s like, ?I could have bought a car there.? So, is it gonna be so ? because they don?t have to pay drivers, blah, blah, blah, the costs are gonna be driven down also?

Liam Martin:	I think you?re gonna take 80 percent of the cost off that 12 grand.

Jaime Masters:	Yeah, so it?s a no-brainer then.

Liam Martin:	Here?s the thing. Since we live in a capitalistic society, there?s gonna be competition, and you?re gonna have Lyft that?s gonna show up saying, ?Well, we can afford to deploy these cars for $1.00 an hour,? as an example, and literally, the numbers are gonna be that low because I actually think these companies are going to build partnerships with one or two car companies, and I actually think car companies will cease to be a consumer product.

Jaime Masters:	Wow! So, no more Lamborghinis showing off car rides, huh?

Liam Martin:	So, when you think about it, when?s the last time you ? have you ever seen a bus magazine? We see car magazines, but you don?t see like, ?Oh, man, I?m really looking forward to the 2019 Greyhound Model 238,? or something like that. No one thinks about that because they?re utilitarian tools. They get you from Point A to Point B. 

	And I think that that?s what?s gonna happen with consumer transportation. So, that will just cease to exist, and I?ll be much happier because I actually got rid of my car a couple years ago, and I switched to Uber completely, and it is much cheaper for me than owning a vehicle. So, I think that that?s only gonna continue. That?s the consumer example that everyone understands because everyone has to get around, but this is going to impact every part of our lives, which I think is just very, as I said before, very exciting.

Jaime Masters:	Well, I think it is, too, and what?s crazy, though, is I?m a business coach, and I give advice to people on business, and I?m like, ?You know what though? With machine learning and all the data, we?re gonna have all the data points on what people should be doing in business, when they do a startup, when they do a whatever.? You can actually correlate all that and understand what would most likely work, right?

Liam Martin:	Right.

Jaime Masters:	So, information is going to change. Instead of reading 1,000 articles on, ?I think this is gonna work for you. This is the newest, greatest, latest thing,? then we don?t necessarily have to anymore. I mean, we?ll have to pay a huge price point, most likely, for something like that because that data?s gonna be expensive at first, I?m assuming. You tell me.

Liam Martin:	Oh, yeah, for sure, but once you have competition in place, it?s gonna be a race to the bottom, and then everyone?s gonna figure out, ?Okay, that?s now the new bottom. We?ve figured out the most efficient way to be able to produce this product,? much like the way that capitalism works. It?s a great system for getting cheap shit through the door. So, if you can keep ?

Jaime Masters:	So, what if you?re the crappy compet ? not crappy. What if you?re in the crappy position of being the small business where all of the bigger businesses with tons of money are really investing in machine learning? They?re gonna have all the data, and everything else is expensive.

Liam Martin:	So, the sexy part of that is whenever you see a new technological revolution happen, it?s a reshuffling of the deck. There?s an opportunity point here. So, Google and Facebook and Apple are some of the largest corporations in the United States at this point. 20 years ago, they weren?t. 20 years ago, they didn?t exist. So, there?s a reshuffling of the deck. So, just because these companies, you think that they?ve existed for all time, just because we?ve always thought smartphones have always been around, they haven?t. Just go back a couple years and understand that it?s a reshuffling of the deck.

	But it also is really important to understand that once you have a positive ROI on something, make hay while the sun is shining because the process right now also of technological advantages is shortening. I?d say every decade, you?re probably seeing that technological advantage drop by about 50 percent, drop by about 50 percent, 50 percent.

Jaime Masters:	Or remember when even just getting a website was huge? I remember I used to build websites when I was 15 for companies, and they?d be so expensive, and it was insane, and now anybody can have anything for like 10 bucks, literally. It?s really ridiculous.

Liam Martin:	I?m across the street from Shopify, their corporate headquarters here, and those guys know how to build websites really easily. You can get one up and running in five minutes, and it?s seamless. It?s perfect. So, yes, that was a huge advantage at the beginning, but now, Shopify ? and there?s a bunch of other competitors in the space as well, obviously, but these companies now have a bunch of competition, and web firms are out of business.

Jaime Masters:	So, that?s my point. Where do we throw our chips on the table then? So, that?s going away, so I see that you guys are doing it into AI, which is great, but the non-geeky people with crazy Master?s degrees in this stuff probably aren?t gonna go too nutso into this, most likely, so where do we throw our chips on the table? Are we like go all in on tech and cross your fingers, even if they don?t know, or what?s gonna still be around so that way they can look towards the future and see some not only opportunity in the tech, but, in general, what?s still gonna be around, that you think? Be a futurist predictor for me.

Liam Martin:	So, I could give you one example, which is I have a girlfriend who runs a bunch of mermaid schools. So, she?s a professional mermaid.

Jaime Masters:	That?s a thing? Oh, can I do that?

Liam Martin:	Yes, you can. There?s a location in Austin that?s opening up, actually.

Jaime Masters:	No way! Are you kidding? That?s a thing?

Liam Martin:	Yes. Oh, yeah, for sure.

Jaime Masters:	Well, I already have mermaid hair, so this is gonna be great.

Liam Martin:	I know. I saw that, so that?s why I decided to pull it out. It?s even the same color too.

	So, understanding where service-based jobs will continue on. So, if you?re dealing with human beings constantly, you?re not going to be in trouble. So, I?ll give you an example. Anyone that?s doing customer support or customer success or an accounting firm or sales will continue to exist because, unfortunately, you will still need to sell to other humans. AIs will not sell to AIs. They?ll try to get an AI to sell to a human, but it just won?t work. It?ll work on a base level. It?ll work on chat support, it?ll work on ticket support, that kind of stuff, but if someone has to jump into a pool or someone has to sell a mermaid class and then actually give a mermaid class, that business will continue to exist.

	I also think something like coaching will probably continue to exist far into the future because it?s a human-to-human relationship. It will probably be augmented by AI, so you?ll know the perfect way to do things instantaneously, but there might be three equally high chances of completing a task going three different ways, and then you and the coach will have to figure out how to get to that particular point.

	So, yeah, human-related businesses will continue to exist. Like I?m not just going to toss my taxes into an AI and get a result back, even though that actually would be fantastic.

Jaime Masters:	I know. I was saying that would be what I want.

Liam Martin:	Yeah, but there will still be a human basically garnering, protecting those particular industries, but the inside of that business will be done. 

	So, legal discovery is actually one of those things that a lot of people don?t really know that about half that industry has been replaced by AI, and people don?t even know that. So, the most labor-intensive part of a law firm is called discovery, which is you have a whole stack of documents, and you?ve got to go through those documents and try to figure out, ?Well, when did Paul Manafort get mentioned by Trump in all of these emails?? and maybe there?s 50,000 emails, and AI has just replaced that completely. It used to be a lawyer. Now, it?s an AI because they can do it in a second, and they can do it better than a human being.

	All of those types of things will disappear, but you still meet with your lawyer, saying, ?Yeah, yeah, we?re gonna take care of you because I know how to run this AI thing.? So, that?s where we?re gonna be at.

Jaime Masters:	So, but it?s low-level stuff in that we have a little bit of time so we don?t feel like robots are taking over the world anytime soon.

Liam Martin:	It may not even be low-level stuff. Statistics are incredibly complicated. Being a lawyer is incredibly complicated. Doing discovery is incredibly complicated. You need lots of degrees, you need about $100,000.00 in education to be able to get to that point, and those jobs will cease to exist. I actually think a lot of the high white-collar positions ? engineers, computer programmers ? will probably cease to exist. AI will pretty much replace everything connected to programming within the next decade or two. You may have someone that just kind of architects the application, so a product manager would still exist, but then AI will fill in all the gaps.

	When you look at Canva, as an example, Canva is really replacing a lot of Photoshop?s business because you have to have a lot of toolsets to be able to do something on Photoshop. You have to understand there?s a learning curve involved, but Canva, there?s a lot less. So, think of AI as that, 10, 100X.

Jaime Masters:	Oh, this is awesome. And that?s the crazy thing. I have an Amazon Echo, and it doesn?t seem like it does all that much. I have it as ?if this, then that.? I have as much little things as I can to try and make it really, really awesome, and it?s still not that great yet. And so, I think a lot of people are like, ?Oh, it helps me add things to my calendar and my to-do list. Awesome.? But longer term, that stuff?s gonna be more and more and more and more and more, and now that it?s all in your home, people are investing a lot more into it. The curve is great. Let?s talk about that, Moore?s law. The curve is very great. Actually, can you explain Moore?s law for everybody else because I don?t think most people pay attention to this stuff.

Liam Martin:	So, a perfect example is if you look at the cable industry.

Jaime Masters:	I used to work in the cable industry, by the way.

Liam Martin:	So, if you just literally <p data-wpview-marker="%5Baudio%20breakup%5D">.</p> [00:23:59 ? 00:24:04]. There?s a beautiful graph that I saw a little while ago, which was the cable industry?s still going up, up, up, up, up in business, and I think about two years ago, they just had a complete collapse where they lost 20 percent one year and then they lost like 50 percent of their business the next year. So, it?s this curve that?s like, ?Oh, yeah, everything?s going great. Everything?s going great,? and then all of a sudden, it?s literally like a complete drop-off.

	And that?s what?s going to happen for a lot of these industries. So, a lot of them already know that there is something that?s going to be happening connected to Moore?s law, connected to basically exponential growth inside of technology, which I can go back again to. So, basically, Moore?s law is that, I think, processors double in capacity and halve in price every 18 months. I think that?s what it was.

Jaime Masters:	I think that?s right.

Liam Martin:	And that was coined in 1940s, and it?s been on track the entire time. So, this iPad, which I probably bought a couple years ago, was ? I don?t know -- $1,000.00 at this point, but now, realistically, the value of this iPad is $100.00, in part due to Moore?s law because we can have a much more efficient processor built in. And now that we?re building qubits, and we?re building a lot of other technology connected to processors, we?re really gonna blow through that even more.

	And so, people don?t understand the importance of AI. I think the big one is gonna be when it becomes smarter than us, but that?s not ?

Jaime Masters:	When do you think that is? Because the singularity and all that craziness, yeah.

Liam Martin:	That?s a really interesting and difficult question to answer, but I think the reason why people don?t understand why ? they think to themselves, ?Well, there?s a human that?s smart, and there are computers that are not as smart as us.? The human has been this smart throughout the last 100,000 years. The computer, however, is going at this speed. So, there?s gonna be a moment in which a computer is less smart than a human. Then, that computer is going to be as smart as a human. That?s gonna last for about a week, and then it?s gonna be infinitesimally more intelligent than a human in a month. During that two-month period, I have no idea what the hell is gonna happen.

Jaime Masters:	That?s what everybody keeps talking about, like, ?Oh, no!? But you think it?s like Y2K bug way back when? Like, ?Oh, my gosh, the calendar?s gonna change!?

Liam Martin:	The reason why they call it a singularity is because we don?t know what?s gonna happen on the other side. When you?re in a black hole, you?re at that singularity moment where, basically, light disappears, and you can?t observe anything past that point. So, I?m hopeful that our AIs will just be really nice to us, and treat us with respect, and take care of us the same way that a parent would take care of a child. Or they could treat us like ants.

Jaime Masters:	Cross your fingers.

Liam Martin:	And I don?t crush every ant that I see, but if an ant comes into my apartment, I crush it. I get rid of those things. I get some Raid to get rid of them. So, who knows? It?s a very interesting ?

Jaime Masters:	We get to scare everyone at the end. But Ray Kurzweil, from The Singularity, talks about 2043ish, right? But everybody thinks it?s a little optimistic, so we got time, people. Enjoy your life while we can. No, I?m kidding.

Liam Martin:	Let me give you a little factoid that?ll scare you, which is little us, and we?re not AI geniuses at all. We understand the technology, but we?re not Palantir. We?re not some of these huge companies. One thing that one of our product managers brought up that kind of terrified me is the AI is now able to tell us what type of data it needs to become smarter.

Jaime Masters:	Crap!

Liam Martin:	And it can do it better than we would know. So, it?s saying, ?I need to know whether Jaime drinks Fanta or Jaime drinks La Croix because there?s a correlation data there that I need, and I need to know what kind of drinks she drinks because this will improve the algorithm by X and X amount.? Can I swear on this? That?s fucking crazy! And we?re at like the, hey, this computer is a 33 megahertz 486 computer level. We?re just so, so far behind where we?re currently at right now or where we will be in the future. So, it?s terrifying.

Jaime Masters:	And you?re doing it. Great. But that?s the thing. Somebody?s gonna do it, so good, at least we like you, and you?re doing it too. So, let us know how it goes.

Liam Martin:	And that?s the negative part to capitalism as well is that will happen. It?s going to get built. You can?t stop it from getting built. If you have a laptop, and you have any background in computer software engineering, you will be able to build it. It will happen. Elon Musk is talking a lot about how do you control this. How do you implement government controls now to try to slow down and protect ourselves against this type of issue, because I think it is probably the biggest challenge our human society will have in the next 100 years?

Jaime Masters:	And it?s a world problem, not a our-government problem. It?s who has what. It?s the aliens coming into the world.

Liam Martin:	Yeah, so the US government has a policy, and then the Swedes say, ?Well, we?re gonna do it.?

Jaime Masters:	Yeah, exactly. And then, we?re like, ?We don?t trust you, so therefore we?re gonna?? So, good. So, everybody, make hay while the sun shines right now. But there will be also lots and lots and lots and lots of opportunities along the way that, if you?re paying attention to it as a small-business owner, will help you, will help your family and your children, and the growth that we see in general. That?s the other piece, like we love seeing opportunity in lots of places. The problem that I see with a lot of entrepreneurs right now is we?re so focused in our own little bubble that when we don?t become the captain of the ship and look for the iceberg up ahead just in case, it?s harder to avoid.

	I know we have to start wrapping up. I?ll ask the last question in a second, but what would you give for advice on what a small-business owner with either a handful of employees or 80 employees should do in order to find out what the next steps for their company should be? Broad question.

Jaime Masters:	Well, it?s focus. It?s focus. It?s stay focused on what you?re doing. So, if you have something that?s making you money right now, don?t stop doing that. So, a lot of entrepreneurs, they have ADHD on overdrive, and they want to do all these different things, and the reason why they want to do all these different things is because the moment that they actually discover something that works, they want to try to diversify. And when you look at the history of most businesses and their successes, it was primarily due to one huge move that they made that then they were able to 10X, 100X, 1,000X.

	So, what I would suggest to people is if you have a couple employees, you?re making some money. You can?t afford employees if you don?t have any money. So, you?re probably profitable, or maybe you?ve taken a round of financing, but let?s just presume that you?re profitable. Analyze what you?re currently doing inside of the business, and understand what your biggest leverage towards revenue is, and then 10X that, and don?t pay attention to anything else other than that, and focus on it, let?s say, for a quarter, 90 days. Try to 10X that.

	Try to see how much further you can get. Let?s say maybe that?s Facebook ads. Maybe that?s SEO. Maybe that?s doing partnerships with people. Maybe that?s doing podcasts, whatever it is. Try to do as much of it as humanly possible, and then measure that result and see where you?re at. And, usually, 10Xing something that already works is a lot easier than trying to find something new that you don?t yet know if it works. 

	And I?m all about diversifying your portfolio in terms of revenue sources, but that does divide your energy, so usually, focusing on one thing ? and I actually had the opposite approach a couple years ago. I thought to myself, ?Oh, this is stupid. Yeah, we?re making a couple million dollars a year on this strategy, but if we just implement this strategy, we?ll make another $30 million a year off of this strategy,? and I realized that if I had just taken the energy looking at the other people?s backyards ? ?the grass is always greener on the other side? type of thing ? if I had just focused on my own business and the drivers inside of it, that I?d be a lot more successful.

Jaime Masters:	I love that you have a tattoo of that. Seriously, that is the most common advice, ?No matter if you?re making a couple hundred thousand or millions, what?s already working? Oh, do more of that.? Everyone?s like, ?That?s so simple.? But it really, really, really, really, really works. It?s ridiculous. If you have a little bit of data, use that. Don?t just throw it by the wayside and go, ?Eh, we?re okay. We?re good. Let?s go here,? because it?s an energy- and resource-management kind of thing, which I really, really appreciate.

Liam Martin:	My focus tattoo is connected to my phone.

Jaime Masters:	Focus on the phone.

Liam Martin:	No, focus on not paying attention to something like this. Actually, completely separate issue, but the distraction economy is massive ? 

Jaime Masters:	Yes, it?s huge.

Liam Martin:	? and now, basically, the most successful businesses in society are the ones that can distract you the most. So, if you can understand that ?

Jaime Masters:	That?s not good for humans. Anyway, go ahead.

Liam Martin:	It?s not. It?s actually really bad, which is why you want to put a tattoo saying ?focus? and understand, ?Is this something that you really want to do? Are you leveraging your time properly?? Even inside of Time Doctor, when I go to Facebook, I?ll get a popup saying, ?Are you still doing interview with Jaime?? instantly because it pulls me back into focus from distraction. So, we?re trying to also build tools to countermand the distraction economy, which I think is a separate issue but really important for people to understand, particularly entrepreneurs, who I think are the tip of the spear when it goes to being distracted.

Jaime Masters:	Little bit, right? And it becomes habitual. I remember I was going to ? my parents own a camp, and there?s no Wi-Fi. I have no data or Internet, like nothing, in the middle of nowhere. I kept opening my phone. I?d set timers and stuff, and automatically go and open my email, and I?m like, ?It doesn?t work.? Automatically. And I challenge anyone to try and turn everything off and see how often you pick it up, how often you do stuff. It makes you feel a little crazy, like you?re controlled by your habits, which you are. It?s way harder, especially for someone with ADD, to turn those pieces off.

	So, having software that can slap you around or deleting Facebook off your phone, which I highly recommend to people? Anyway, we could go on a whole tangent on that, and I know we have to start wrapping up, which sucks, and we want to talk about your conference that?s coming up, too, so I?m gonna ask the last question, and then tell me all about the conference, okay? So, what?s one action, after all of the doom and gloom we just talked about, what?s action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Liam Martin:	I would probably just say I?m gonna reinforce focus. Take whatever you?re doing right now that made you money last week. Do 10X more of that this week. Just do that. Now, if you don?t know where your money is coming from, that?s the next thing. So, if you don?t know where it?s coming from, figure out where it?s coming from. If that means you?re doing more sales meetings, do ten times more sales meetings this week. It?ll suck, but you?ll be able to measure. 

	So, I?m about quantitative measurement for everything. Do 10X more of it, and then see what the result is. And if you know that it works, I can guarantee you, maybe you?re not gonna get ten times more money, but maybe you?re gonna get twice as much, three times as much, and that?s gonna be further along than you were last week.

Jaime Masters:	I love it. It?s the best advice ever, so make sure you guys actually do that, and just go back through the last customers that you had, and find out where they came from. This is not rocket science here. We don?t need an AI in order to actually figure out this data. It?s really simplistic, typically.

	So, tell us a little bit more about ? well, you and Time Doctor and Staff.com, I think that?s awesome, too, but you have this whole conference coming up with friends of mine are speaking, and it?s in Bali and sounds awesome. So, tell everybody about that and who it?s for.

Liam Martin:	So, we?re running a conference called Running Remote, and you can just go to RunningRemote.com to check it out. Basically, what it is is we?ve assembled a fantastic group of people. We?ve been really excited having these people come to the conference because they?re really the top thinkers on remote teams and how to build remote teams. And so, the conference is specifically on how to build a billion-dollar remote business. So, we?ve got people who are making $1 million. You?re more than willing to come, but we?re really focused on ? we basically realized we?re at 80ish people right now, and how do we get to 800 remotely? Who knows? There is no playbook. It doesn?t exist because remote is so new.

	So, what we decided to do was get everybody that has those same thoughts as well in one place, and it?s a think tank on how to get best practices, get the playbook that is really gonna take us to the next level. Whether you?re at three or four remote employees, or whether you?re at 30 or 40, or whether you?re at 3 to 400, you?re all invited to come. 

	The only people that we don?t want coming, and this is something that we talked about before, which is quite difficult, is if you?re not managing remote employees, or if you?re not managing people at all and thinking about building a remote team, you?re pretty much not invited. We don?t want you to come. The reason being is we?re really focusing on building remote teams. That?s the real focus, and if you?re not passionate about that, too, you?re gonna hate this conference. It?s gonna be super nerdy. It?s gonna basically be guys like me, 500 of us, in Ubud, Bali, in a fantastic venue. It?s in a place called Green School, which is a network ?

Jaime Masters:	I saw the pictures.

Liam Martin:	It?s a network of tree houses made out of bamboo, and you can hold 500 people in this huge receiving hall, so that?s where we?re gonna be doing the conference. I think it?s gonna be something absolutely unique. No one?s ever seen something like this before. This is the biggest event that?s been run in Ubud for this space because we haven?t been able to get 500 people into a single space in Ubud. If you wanna do yoga, eat vegan, and just feel really good, go to Ubud. That?s kind of the place. So, if you wanna do that, too, and also learn about remote teams, Running Remote?s the place to be.

Jaime Masters:	I went to Bali last year, and I wanna go again. I was telling you earlier, I kinda wanna go. I have other things during that time, but I really wanna go, especially because the people that you?re bringing in is like Buffer. It?s not like some piddly little thing. I love that you?re scratching your own itch and going, ?I want everybody to help solve this problem together,? and getting them all together is the best way to do it.

Liam Martin:	Yeah, we got Buffer. We got Todoist, who?s actually gonna be talking about synchronous versus asynchronous communication and how, basically, synchronous communication almost destroyed his business. We?ve got FlexJobs. We?ve got Atlassian. We?ve got Github, Gitlab. We?ve got a bunch of fantastic people that are coming, so I?m really excited about it. I think it?s something that we?ve been ? no one?s done the conference yet, and so we just decided it was a ?ready, fire, aim? kind of philosophy where we just said, ?Okay, let?s do it and see what happens.?

Jaime Masters:	That?s insane. And it?s in an amazing place. Well, I can?t go. Make sure, anybody that ends up going, make sure you let me know so you can give me all the insights for my [inaudible] [00:41:01] because I?m gonna need it too. Maybe we can chat afterwards because I think you?re on the forefront, and it?s really interesting to not know what?s next, and this remote-team thing, people are still figuring out. Everybody?s asking me and asking a bunch of other people, and there?s not a lot of data, so I really, really appreciate you leading the charge on this.

	Thank you so much for coming on. Everybody, take a look at, of course, TimeDoctor.com and Staff.com. Yes, now that we?ve scared the crap out of you for AI stuff. But I so appreciate it, Liam. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Liam Martin:	Thanks for having me.

Tags: ai in business applications, Business Owner, entrepreneur podcast, eventual millionaire, implementing ai in business, jaime masters, liam martin, machine learning business applications, millionaire entrepreneurs, podcast, reshaping business with artificial intelligence, start-ups / startups, startup entrepreneur, top entrepreneurs

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Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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