124: Celebrating 20 years of working remotely with Liam

Are you also working remotely and is this the ONLY way?  In this eye-opening episode, Nienke Nina has a sit down with Liam Martin, an OG in the remote work world.  He is the visionary CEO behind TimeDoctor and co-founder of Running Remote - the largest conference on remote work that attracts remote professionals, remote companies and digital nomads from all over the world.

Diving into his 20-year journey of remote work and digital nomadism, Liam takes us behind the scenes of his life and shares how working remotely has been life-changing. Get ready to be inspired and learn how to navigate your digital nomad life in 2024 with expert insights and personal stories. 

🔥 The future of work and digital nomadism
🔥 The power of remote work to transform lives
🔥 Why mastering the art of asynchronous management
🔥 Expert predictions and data-driven insights about the future of work
🔥 The biggest conference about remote work Running remote in 2024

Transcript

Nienke Nina (00:01.339)
Hello everyone, welcome to a new episode of the Digital Nomads Daily Podcast. We talk a lot about digital nomadism on this podcast and a part of that life is working remotely. Now we have so many entrepreneurs in the space. Love it, love it, love it. But there's also this massive topic around remote work, flexible work, hybrid work, distribute teams, like lots of lots of things. Last year, I talked about this with Liam on the podcast, we're running remote.

I'm Doctor and this year, he is back. Welcome.

Liam Martin (00:34.713)
I'm here. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Nienke Nina (00:38.535)
All right, so we always start this episode with a few quick questions. And I always ask this question, how long have you been nomading? Now you're more like part-time nomading. So how long have you been working remotely and then combining that with working from more inspiring, meaningful places?

Liam Martin (00:56.282)
Oof, probably about 20 years, I would say, close to 20 years, approximately. I don't know exactly. I've been doing it for a very long time and I usually take the winters off. So like I winter mad. Is there a term for that? Just like no matting in the winter? It's really fucking cold in Montreal in the winters. So after New Year's, me and my wife and my kids, we get out of there and we come back.

Nienke Nina (01:02.493)
Wow. So I always say. Ha ha.

Nienke Nina (01:07.979)
Okay.

Liam Martin (01:26.136)
just in time for running remote, which is happening this year, April 23rd.

Nienke Nina (01:31.783)
Cool, gotcha, gotcha. It's so funny because I don't really know, like maybe you're a summer mad, because they're snow mads, and those are going to Japan or places like that, to actually, or bands go to go to the snow and to know mad from there.

Liam Martin (01:47.798)
Right? I'm a reverse. I mean, I think I am a real snow mad, which is I'm getting away from the snow. I'm not trying to stay at it. So right now I'm in Thailand and spent a month or two in Bangkok and I'm in Phuket, I think, and gonna spend another kind of month or two around here.

Nienke Nina (01:56.092)
I'm sorry.

Nienke Nina (02:10.816)
Love it, love it, love it. There's a lot of nomads that also go to Thailand. Good vibes there, good vibes. All right. But we're not to talk about here to talk about Thailand. All right. So, uh, the other question I always ask is where are you talking from right now? But we just figured that out. So let me then ask the last one, which is how do you make your monies?

Liam Martin (02:31.03)
So software, mostly I run a couple software companies or co-founded a couple software companies. The biggest one that probably people would know about is Time Doctor, which is a time tracking tool for remote teams. And then what we talked about previously is running remote. Even though I spend a lot of money on running remote, it doesn't really make any money, but it's a passion project of mine. And I'd rather have that than a few Teslas per year.

Nienke Nina (02:57.175)
All right, got it, got it. Yeah. Uh, running remote. It's, uh, it's been out there for around there for a couple of years. But when was the first one and where was it?

Liam Martin (03:07.402)
It was 2018 and it was in Ubud, Bali. We have this, uh, weird story between me and Igor who runs the running remote conference, we did a company retreat. So every year remote first companies basically bring all of their employees to one particular location. And that year it was in Barakay in the Philippines, which is a fantastic party Island. If you've not been there before. A great place to go and hang out. And we started to figure out.

We tried to look for information, like how do we scale to 500 employees or a thousand employees or 2000 or 10,000? There was a whole bunch of information on how to hire a virtual assistant. There was a lot of information on how to be a digital nomad at that point, but there was no information on building billion dollar remote first companies. So then I had a ready fire aim philosophy. I basically booked a venue eight months in advance and I said, worst case scenario, I lose.

Nienke Nina (03:47.639)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Martin (04:01.666)
a couple hundred grand at booking out this venue. And I invited a few of my friends that I knew were really passionate about this subject. And the very first year we had about 250 people, which was great. We actually made money that year and it has grown since then, obviously COVID, there was a couple of bumps along the way, but the conference is now on its sixth year, which is really exciting.

Nienke Nina (04:22.939)
Wow. Cool. So exciting. And then the second year was in Bali in...

Liam Martin (04:30.282)
It was on the coast. Yeah. So we did two in Bali. Then we were going to do one in Austin, Texas, then 2020 happened and everything shut down and then we did one in Montreal and then we did one in Lisbon and we're actually going back to Lisbon again because they treated us so nicely last year and everyone loved Lisbon. It's such a cool hotspot of not only digital nomadism, but also with Web Summit, a huge ecosystem of.

Nienke Nina (04:47.855)
Yeah.

Liam Martin (04:59.746)
tech startups are there. So it's a really, I would kind of call it like the nucleus of both European tech startups and digital nomadism at the same time.

Nienke Nina (05:12.923)
Love it, love it. Yeah, I was there in Lisbon. I was also in the Bali one in 2019. That was like the first time for me that I guess I learned the word remote work. Like I was digital nomading and like I was doing that, but I didn't realize so much that there was like this whole industry. And because of that, the conference I met actually then my future employer, now ex-employer.

So it was a lot of happening. I met super cool people, Dean, Jordan Carroll, and you know, like there's so many cool people. And then last year I went to Lisbon to Running Remote and I was in Brazil and I came specifically to Running Remote, right? And it was so freaking awesome to see everyone again. I think it was one of the first like big gatherings after the what happens, you know who? No, like, so it was really, really powerful, yeah.

Liam Martin (06:03.426)
Yes.

Liam Martin (06:08.974)
Oh, that's awesome. Well, I mean, I hope that we can convince you to come back next year because I think, even though I say this every single year, the lineup that we have this year is so good. I have just been, because I've been able to talk to all of these speakers beforehand to really figure out what are you gonna talk about and the type of stuff and surprises that we have this year.

I think will blow people away. I don't know if you were there for one of the years that two of our speakers ended up actually proposing to each other live on stage. Were you there for that one? No, there's been marriage proposals. There's been screaming fights where people have like thrown glasses at each other. I love those ones. Those ones are like that. And the other thing too is

Nienke Nina (06:48.195)
I don't remember that.

Nienke Nina (07:02.352)
Yeah.

Liam Martin (07:03.954)
Running remote is a broad tent, right? So anyone can say whatever they want, as long as they're respectful to, um, to the speakers and to the attendees, to be completely honest with you. So as long, if you want to disagree about something, if you have a completely different perspective on something, we actually have one of the top guys from CBRE, which is the largest holder of corporate real estate in the world. And he's going to talk about how he's actually going to talk about how corporate real estate really is screwed.

Nienke Nina (07:20.688)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Martin (07:32.406)
And we need to be able to make some large institutional changes to, uh, to make sure that we don't get in serious trouble over the next 18 months. But again, like you'd think to yourself, Oh, corporate real estate guy. Maybe that's not the guy to be at running remote. Well, no, we want to be all any and all opinions are welcome. As long as they're respectful, which produces all real, a lot of really fun situations.

Nienke Nina (07:56.555)
Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, so let's touch a little bit on like, why, of like, who are the speakers in front of your remote? I know a few, actually, Q is going to be there, right from...

Liam Martin (08:05.806)
Mm-hmm. Who's jumping out at you? Yes, who are the top three if you have that, or top ones that are off the top of your head? Because those are probably the people that everyone would be interested in anyways.

Nienke Nina (08:19.644)
I'm very, very good question. I...

Well, I'm very interested to hear what Q has to say because I interviewed him on the podcast here just before he was launching the sort of corporate nomadism. And that was like a year ago. So I'm really curious to hear like where he's at with his journey on because I think that would yeah, I'm just like really curious about that. I mean, there is kind of like the how do you call it like the OG so you know, Brian Elliott's

Liam Martin (08:38.158)
Mm-hmm.

Nienke Nina (08:54.307)
It's going to be there. So that is always, I think, very cool. Um, but other than that, like, yeah, I don't, I don't really have like a favorite here, but I think it's, uh, I got to go through the program a bit more to get a favorite. So are all the speakers on the website right now, or are there's more folks going to be added?

Liam Martin (09:14.734)
All the speakers are on the website that are going to be on the website. We have a couple of surprises. So maybe people that are going to show up that you may not know, that you definitely know about that we decided to kind of hold back on because we think it's more fun like that. But we've got people like Andrew Henderson, who is the founder of Nomad Capitalist. We have the global head of team anywhere at Atlassian. Atlassian is one of the largest.

Nienke Nina (09:20.083)
Okay. Ooh.

Nienke Nina (09:27.044)
Yeah.

Nienke Nina (09:39.537)
Mmm.

Liam Martin (09:40.098)
software companies in the world and they are completely remote, really showing that you can do remote at scale. I think they work about $30 billion, completely remote organization. We have Nick Bloom, who really is the top academic on remote work from Stanford university, talking about all of the data sets. Cause the other thing that's really cool is in the last year, the amount of data that's come out on remote work is mind boggling because academics usually need like two to three years.

to really come up with a research project and run some experimentation and get some data back. So now there's really interesting data that's coming back, which I think a lot of, not only remote workers, but probably digital nomads are going to be very excited about in terms of the response on that. We had the head of virtual first from Dropbox. We've got Ryan Anderson. He's the VP of research at Miller Knoll. I don't know if you know Miller Knoll is a company, but they make Aeron chairs, which are probably

Nienke Nina (10:12.32)
Okay.

Nienke Nina (10:23.397)
Yeah.

Liam Martin (10:38.606)
They're incredibly expensive chairs, but it's a company that's been running for over 200 years and he has an entire research team that just looks at work environment, productivity, how far should your computer monitor be from your face, how many lumens should you have when you're working in your office? How long should you work in your office? What kind of chairs you should have? We probably think they should all be in the Renault shares, but regardless, the data is really interesting to be able to take a look at that and there's.

Nienke Nina (10:50.812)
Wow.

Liam Martin (11:07.798)
I mean, there's over 50 speakers this year, so it's a really exciting group of people. There's a little bit of something for everybody, so there's lots of academics, but then there's also like founders that are coming that have sold their companies completely remotely for hundreds of millions of dollars. And if you want to be able to figure out how to be able to do that, then this is definitely the conference for you.

Nienke Nina (11:17.561)
Mm-hmm.

Nienke Nina (11:29.239)
Love it. Love it. What I really enjoy about running remote and I would love to get your like what's happening this year is like it's a very like remote work or flexible work is it's like such a big landscape right you already touched on a few of these different things so I'm obviously like coming more from the digital nomad space.

We have like a lot of entrepreneurial spirits in there, but still like there is, I see a lot of value also as a digital nomad to be part of a company that offers like flexible work and that can, that has like also very positive influence because I don't think that entrepreneurship is the only way for digital nomads. So I really also enjoy to have like, yeah, also like people like you and people that build and find companies.

Liam Martin (11:49.174)
Mm-hmm.

Nienke Nina (12:17.183)
and to make sure that there's also jobs that are out there, remote jobs. So looking at the different learning angles for this year, what are some of the biggest takeaways that people will have? Not in terms of the knowledge that people would share, but the speakers, but more like the different topics that we can expect.

Liam Martin (12:39.286)
First thing I want to be able to address before we get into your main question is I hate that to be a digital nomad, you kind of have to be an entrepreneur because the data that I've seen has shown the polar opposite. If you actually have a job, so if you have an employer that allows you to be nomadic, your chance of staying nomadic is way, way higher. Your success rate is three times.

Nienke Nina (12:56.177)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Martin (13:06.026)
what it would be if you were entrepreneurial. So if you're sitting right now thinking to yourself, you know, I really want to become a digital nomad. The reality is, is that you should probably look for a job that allows you to be nomadic as opposed to saying, I'm going to be an Instagram influencer. We don't need another one of those. What we do need is really good accountants as an example that can work nomadically of which our own CFO as an example is a digital nomad and loves it.

Nienke Nina (13:25.447)
I'm going to go to bed.

Liam Martin (13:35.494)
So talks this year are going to be very tactical on one side and then very aspirational on the other side. So one of the people that you probably know because they went to Nomad, or not Nomad Fest, they went to Bankso Fest last year is Chris Reynolds. And Chris Reynolds is running a panel on...

Nienke Nina (13:59.63)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Martin (14:03.718)
eight and nine figure remote first entrepreneurs. So people that filter businesses from day one, half of the people on that panel are digital nomads and have run 100 million, 200 million, 300 million dollar businesses. And that's incredibly inspirational for everybody to be able to see it is possible, you can do it, and here's the framework to be able to make it happen. And then on the other side of it, we have talks like Nick Bloom as an example.

Nienke Nina (14:08.164)
Mmm.

Liam Martin (14:31.918)
the top academic mind from Stanford, that's really going to show you where remote work is going because I don't know if you've heard a lot about this, but there's a ton of negative press about how everyone's going back to the office. And all of that is not true. That's propaganda. And the data shows very clearly, we were, so pre-pandemic, January, February of 2020, we were at 4% of the US workforce working remotely.

Nienke Nina (14:39.726)
Mm-hmm.

Nienke Nina (14:51.292)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Martin (15:00.79)
By March, we were at 46% of the US workforce working remotely, with a peak at 67%. We then bottomed out at 34% in January of 2022. And we're now at 36.7%. And I look at seven data sets, so they all correlate perfectly together. Remote work is actually going back up. It's not going down. Even though you would hear a whole bunch of pieces.

Nienke Nina (15:22.395)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Martin (15:26.974)
in the media saying, oh, everyone's going back to the office. Employers are planning on bringing employees back to the office. And that's just not true. And with the rise of remote work, I really see remote work being the gateway drug towards digital nomadism. So you can't be a digital nomad if you can't work remotely, right? You need those pipes of jobs to be available for digital nomadism to proliferate. And so I'm incredibly excited to be able to see all of that data. So if you want to kind of just, if you're interested in the long-term vision.

Nienke Nina (15:41.795)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Martin (15:56.99)
of where remote work is going. There's a lot of really great data on that because a lot of the people that attend are thought leaders in that space. And then on the other side, if you want some in the trenches tactical information on how to build a 1 million, 10 million, a hundred million dollar business remotely, we have a lot of those talks as well.

Nienke Nina (16:17.863)
Cool. I love it. I love that there's like the entrepreneurial vibe because I do think that, yes, there's a lot of entrepreneurs in the nomad space, like getting like closer access to people that are really successful and have them show and share how they did it. That is, I mean, that is really epic. And also what I really loved about, about the Lisbon, like the location itself was like

amazing, like magical, but then also having the speakers and panelists and people that were there like sharing their knowledge also walking around and you could you know like spark conversation with people and it felt like yeah it well it didn't feel at this distance that sometimes you feel at conferences like okay speaker bye it wasn't like that so i really enjoyed that i was super cool and

Liam Martin (17:07.518)
And we put that together purposely, by the way, that wasn't something that we just sort of just happened automatically. All of the speakers that speak at running remote really have a commitment to be there for the two days that they're there. So they're not just going to come in, do a talk for 20 minutes and then leave. And I think that happens because of two reasons. Number one, we make sure that speakers stay there. So you have access to them. So if you're an attendee.

Nienke Nina (17:22.127)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Martin (17:35.65)
that wants to come and get access to these types of people. This is the perfect place to be able to do it. But then secondarily, most of the people that speak at running remote are really passionate about remote work. So they want to be there. They're, they're actually in the, you know, in the stands, in the seats, listening to the other talks because they are genuinely interested, which I think creates a really good ecosystem. Essentially for us, like what we want to do is, as I said before, a lot of remote companies have company retreats.

Nienke Nina (17:48.057)
Yeah

Liam Martin (18:04.93)
So they bring all their employees together in one location per year to be able to discuss the future of the business. And we really see running remote as that for remote work leaders. So we want to be able to get all of those people together. And hopefully everyone comes out of it excited and engaged about going after another year of destroying all of the naysayers that are saying that we're all going back to the office because it's complete bullshit.

Nienke Nina (18:16.46)
Mm-hmm.

Nienke Nina (18:34.607)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's also a really important message because like what we talked about earlier that not all digital nomads are entrepreneurial, like 100% agree with you, like it's complete bullshit. Like I think even looking back on my own nomadic life, like now I'm very entrepreneurial and I have my own business, but I have been a remote employee for a really long time. And I loved it. Like, you know, and I think that it was hard at the time

Unfortunately, these companies weren't so great at managing remote teams, you know, creating like a really fruitful remote experience. So there was a lot of like in office habits, behaviors, mindsets implemented into the remote office. So that was that was challenging. But also because I talked to so many digital nomads and some of them, they actually have a remote job and they work at really cool companies.

where all of this is possible, it is very possible, right? So from what you have learned from all the speakers so far and your own experience, when it comes to like managing like successful, flexible teams, remote teams, what are some of these key components that a company should consider to adopt this way of working?

Liam Martin (20:00.458)
It's actually only one, which is really easy for people to understand. And it's the reason why I wrote a book on the subject. It's what I like to call asynchronous management. So the ability to be able to interact and communicate with people without being a barrier towards information. So the two of us right now, we're communicating synchronously, but the person that's listening to this podcast right now is consuming that information asynchronously when it's most opportunistic for them.

to consume it. So an asynchronous organization would act very differently from a synchronous one. Case in point, let's say that I was going to give a presentation over Zoom. In an asynchronous organization, what you would actually do is record your presentation on a loom. You would put that into a project management system. We like to use something like Asana. Everyone would consume that presentation at 2x speed, and then they would write down.

the issues that they have about that presentation. So we would never have like a 45 minute call where I just get up and talk to everybody and no one actually pays attention. What we would do is we would spend 45 minutes discussing the outcomes of that conversation, which saves everybody a whole bunch of time and makes sure that synchronous communication is very highly valued and costs a lot towards an organization. Because when you look at the old school way of working,

Nienke Nina (21:14.759)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Martin (21:26.354)
everyone would commute into one particular location, and then it would be like a synchronous work buffet because everyone has paid that cost. They all commuted to that one location. So like meetings should happen all the time, but remote organizations don't do that. So every time they meet on a Zoom call, as an example, they pay that same cost. So you can actually completely reimagine the way that work is done. And the one single thing that...

Nienke Nina (21:49.039)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Martin (21:53.49)
Every single remote company that was successful did before the pandemic was implement some form of asynchronous management. And that's the thing that I find so frustrating when everyone switched to row in 2020 is they just thought it was exactly the same management philosophy. When in reality, it's a completely different way of managing a team. And we're starting to see those cracks form where people are realizing that, Hey, you need to be able to manage these people differently.

We're doing a little bit of that work at Running Emote. There's a whole bunch of other people that are doing it too. But it's frustrating, but it's also exciting to be able to see people's minds start to change.

Nienke Nina (22:31.695)
Love that. I mean, for me, it's like, it's so obvious, but I'm still sometimes surprised when people are like, what semi alone? What do you mean? What about? And, you know, so that is interesting. Now, looking at like, where sort of the level of asynchronousness was like, maybe last year, from what you can see in the industry to where it is now, like, do you feel like there has been a big shift? Or is like?

I'm just curious, do people still really need to learn this?

Liam Martin (23:04.91)
Oh yes, absolutely. So you know what is funny Nina, is me and you are both inside of a bubble and the bubble's very small, but the reality is that I would say 99.5% of newly remote first companies do not understand asynchronous management. If I go to a conference that isn't about remote work, that's just about like, I'm going to a conference in the next three weeks.

It's just a tech startup conference. And I ask how many people know about asynchronous management, maybe 5% of the room puts their hand up. So it's a really big shift that still has to penetrate the, the general kind of work mindset. I will tell you, however, newly remote companies. So companies that are started remote adopt asynchronous management, management significantly easier than their.

on-premise counterparts that moved to remote so much so that I still think that there is hope for in-office companies that are moving to a remote model to be able to get it to work. But the success rate is significantly lower. So there's a lot of really great data sets coming from Flex Index. I don't know if you've seen any of their data that's come out just recently. Amazing stuff that's coming out of that kind of think tank. And they put out a lot of really great white papers.

And they showed that companies that are being started today, so tech startups that are getting started today, 86% of them are remote. So it's like a complete shift. And by the way, pre COVID it was, uh, in the twenties, but the 20th percentile. So we've seen like a massive, massive shift where the new companies that are coming up are all being started remotely. So.

Nienke Nina (24:39.943)
Wow.

Liam Martin (24:58.146)
You got to wait about five to 10 years before those companies become multi-billion dollar companies. And then you're going to start to see a real, real shift occur.

Nienke Nina (25:06.635)
Interesting, interesting. Yeah, it still boggles my mind, but still, like, yeah. Do you feel like that the word itself, like even though you're a native speaker, like asynchronous, like it sounds a little bit like it sounds like a difficult word. Like, do you feel like that maybe um that it's so like not our normal day-to-day language by almost to use that word, especially for like more...

traditional sort of like companies that is also just like the way it's being communicated because like you said, we are living in a bubble. Like all of these things for me are like, yeah, of course you do it that way. There is no other way.

Liam Martin (25:48.546)
say that you might be right that we need to be able to go through a rebanding process. I didn't come up with that term. That term was already in the industry and then I just used it in my book and obviously at the conference. You're right. Maybe we need to go through a little bit of a rebrand because I can also tell you some of the other true reasons why people don't like asynchronous work is one of the most interesting facts that I found in the book.

Nienke Nina (25:59.527)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Liam Martin (26:17.582)
in researching the book was that asynchronous organizations have a 50% thinner managerial layer than their on-premise counterparts. There are half as many managers in asynchronous organizations than there are in synchronous organizations. And I think a lot of managers recognize that they are effectively redundant in this new way of working and they're terrified over that. And maybe it's just their own egos that they don't want to go back to individual contribution work, but it is something that...

Nienke Nina (26:42.767)
Mm.

Liam Martin (26:47.862)
I don't think we'll change until that mindset moves out. And I think it's probably going to take a better part of this decade before we really start to see some serious shifts. I wish it could happen faster, but as I said, I've been doing remote work for 20 years, so I have no problem waiting another 10.

Nienke Nina (27:10.22)
I have another question that is a bit more about just looking at like the, the employee landscape right now. So I feel like for Gen Zers, like some millennials, like not all of them, like working online asynchronous, like all of these things comes kind of like easier because we're, you know, like tech savvy and all of these things.

But then in like a lot of management layers, you have still, you have people from like the boomers and all these other generations, right? So at the conference, will this also be touched on like these different like, because there's diversity and inclusion, but then there's also like this, this generation gap and it keeps...

Coming up on my LinkedIn feed, I speak to also to people like Sophie Wade about this, like, and I find it so interesting. Is this something that is going to be touched on the running remote as well?

Liam Martin (28:07.562)
Oh, not as directly as you had stated. However, there are going to be a lot of talks about just the demographics of remote work and how it's really changing. So one of the most interesting data points that I've seen so far in some of the presentations is that like directors, VPs, executives and above are adopting remote work at scale, but then and the employees are very pro.

Nienke Nina (28:17.764)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Martin (28:34.462)
remote work, about 86% of them want to be able to work remotely at least some of the time. And the executive ZPs and directors went kind of like through an interesting uncanny valley of unhappiness with regards to remote work. So they didn't like remote work in 2021 and 2022. And then in 2023, they came back and I think they're sitting around the 70% mark now. Middle managers still hate remote work.

Um, they don't want everyone to be able to go back to the office. So, uh, piece of really cool data that came out just recently, uh, no, well, but six months ago was 86% of remote workers think that they're more productive when they work from home. I don't know. 76% of remote workers think that they're more productive when they work from home and 67% of managers think they.

Nienke Nina (29:30.155)
Okay.

Liam Martin (29:31.714)
So like there's a complete breakdown between those two groups of people, right? The managers are like, you're not as productive. The employees are like, yes, I am. I have the data, they are more productive. Employees are more productive when they work from home under any and all conditions that you can. And now that we're getting all these really cool academic articles in, we're talking like 95% of the articles that I'm reading show that employees are more productive when they work from home.

Nienke Nina (29:36.843)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Liam Martin (30:00.214)
But managers still don't believe this. And so there's a lot of companies now that have to go through that shift. And I would say a lot of that middle management are probably the older generation that have just, you know, their, their skillset is management. It's not necessarily anything else. And that's also not necessarily their fault. One of the other big problems with regards to the way that companies are structured today is that the only way to move up in an organization, get paid more, get more responsibility.

Nienke Nina (30:08.071)
Mm-hmm.

Nienke Nina (30:15.097)
Yeah.

Liam Martin (30:29.062)
is to become a manager. And if you're a really good computer engineer, you might be a horrific manager, but the only way for you to get more money and responsibility is to become a manager. And there's lots of companies now that are actually trying to shift away from that case. And point is Shopify, which is a remote first organization, third largest SaaS product in the world. And they've shown that they want

Nienke Nina (30:31.579)
Mm-hmm.

Nienke Nina (30:42.567)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Martin (30:55.71)
to make sure that every employee has some level of individual contribution level. So they actually manage the IC work rate throughout the entire organization. And even executives have to actually do IC work inside of their workflow. They can't just be pure managers. They have this Toby, who is the CEO of Shopify, he has this saying, which is at Shopify, management is a hobby, not a sport.

Nienke Nina (31:02.703)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Martin (31:24.694)
So we kind of do management to just get the job done, but we are all individual contributors. We don't want a computer engineer that doesn't actually know how to code because that would be horrific towards the organization. There's a lot of like glut and destruction that rot that occurs from that. And I find that incredibly inspiring. And if we got companies to switch to that type of mindset, I think very, very quickly you would see remote work proliferate.

Nienke Nina (31:25.616)
Mmm.

Nienke Nina (31:37.16)
Yeah.

Liam Martin (31:54.41)
Because then all of a sudden you don't, it doesn't have to be gate kept through management, which has really built this system that they are trying to defend aggressively from remote work because they're realizing that remote work shows value without a wrapper. There's no, um, there's no, oh, well, you know, Nina is a really fun person or Nina's really charismatic and therefore Nina gets responsibility. No, it's the quality of your ideas. And it's the.

Nienke Nina (32:00.124)
Yeah.

Liam Martin (32:24.206)
quality of your execution that should define whether or not you're good at your job or not good at your job. And everything else is bullshit. And remote work and asynchronous management just clearly shows that value because there's no place to hide. And that's what I think the majority of these companies are terrified about. I don't want to get on my soapbox any longer, but it's going to take a very long time to be able to work that out, unfortunately.

Nienke Nina (32:29.197)
Yeah.

Nienke Nina (32:42.229)
Yeah.

Nienke Nina (32:46.323)
No, but it's it.

Yeah, yeah, it is because also like what I what I hear is that it's not and this is also like is the definition or like the word asynchronous itself is that maybe to advance it's like is productivity like for managers and for employees is very different. I it's like interesting how would a manager in how you just described this is how would they define productivity whereas an employee that works from home or someone in general that works from home may define

productivity itself already very different. So it's very at the root, very at the core of like, how do we define things? And I think that is a scary thing, because it's like, identity shifts. And it's like, whoa, like, it's a lot. So I can't imagine that there's, of course, there's friction for companies to adopt something that is completely foreign, like, you know, scary. But sometimes scary is good.

Liam Martin (33:39.95)
Absolutely. And also, I mean, would you adopt something that then surrenders your autonomy and power in the organization in which you worked? Not many people would do that. Unfortunately, and this is just the reality, the vast majority of people want to do things that serve them and not the company or the group. That's just the reality is, and I've been

Nienke Nina (33:53.295)
Yeah.

Liam Martin (34:06.87)
founder of a couple of tech companies, we hire hundreds and hundreds of people. I just see that and it's super clear. And I understand that that's just human dynamics and how it works. But the reality is that at the end of the day, particularly people that are really scared about keeping their jobs are just like some of them, you should never pay attention to someone who's scared of losing their job. Um, if someone doesn't care, like if they're just really passionate about.

solving a problem. And that's why I think another big part of asynchronous management is identifying your mission, vision, values. So what's the mission of the company? What's the vision of where you want to go? What are the values that you have as an organization? And if you can't, I don't know if you've seen these like mission, vision, values in corporate America, the vast majority of them are bullshit because when I ask people, what is the mission of Salesforce?

Nienke Nina (34:47.803)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Martin (35:02.634)
maybe like 10% of the employees can actually tell you, which means that it must be completely useless information. If you are really passionate about that, so our mission is we're trying to empower the world's transition towards remote work. Every single person in the organization is aligned towards that goal. And I can tell you, because we quiz them from time to time, 86% of our employees get that right when you just ask them, what's the mission, vision, and values of the organization? And if people are excited about it,

Nienke Nina (35:06.351)
Yeah.

Nienke Nina (35:27.249)
Mm-hmm.

Liam Martin (35:32.094)
and excited about doing that particular job, then they'll say, yeah, for sure, let's get rid of me as a manager because it doesn't actually serve the long-term goals of what we're excited about doing. We have one of our internal values is missionaries, not mercenaries. So we want to be able to have missionaries inside of our organization that are spreading the word of remote work, not mercenaries that are just here to.

Nienke Nina (35:41.977)
Yeah.

Liam Martin (36:01.77)
you know, to be able to make some money, to be able to get a check. Because to be honest with you, there's much better jobs that you could get, um, where you can make a lot more money. But what we want people to do is to be here for the vision and the mission, not necessarily because they're going to make a whole bunch of money. Once you have those people in the organization, all of those things change. People are all of a sudden aligned towards, of course, I shouldn't have all of these people reporting to me. That's really stupid. I should probably just do my own work.

Nienke Nina (36:14.479)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Nienke Nina (36:21.371)
Yeah.

Liam Martin (36:30.386)
And then I can check in on these people once a month because they're all adults and they can do the work inside of the organization autonomously.

Nienke Nina (36:37.468)
Yeah. 100%. And this is why I am like so always pro hiring digital nomads because a lot of digital nomads, especially the ones that are maybe not like they not the ones that probably just sold their stuff and are like new on this big planet. But like the people that have been doing it for a while already because self discipline being excited about work if you give a lot as a company as an organization to an individual, you will also receive a lot like you know, it's two way street.

And I think that nomads, especially digital nomads that have been on the road for a while, they're super resilient. They're very excited. So if you have a not empty promise in your mission vision statements, they will spread the word. And there's just so much excitement. So if you feel like, okay, yes, my company wants to go to what Liam just described, also don't be afraid of hiring digital nomads because we're actually working.

We're maybe even working sometimes more because we don't have the commute and we use that to work, but probably with a nice smoothie bowl or from the beach.

Liam Martin (37:45.461)
Don't work at the beach by the way. I tried it a couple times and it cost me like, my laptop broke like four times. Cost me like $8,000 worth of repairs.

Nienke Nina (37:52.631)
Ooh, like, but you know what I do? So I, when I say I work from the beach, I actually don't bring my laptop, but I have like work hours, which are laptop free and it's just about like envisioning, planning, I bring my ear eater when I'm studying for work and, uh, yeah. So for me that's work too, right? Because, you know, it's all for the business. And I used to do this when I was part of the companies as well. And it was all good because I would be like super focused.

And then just highlight everything, love tech. You can just like grab that from your laptop later because it's all things. And so you can be productive without your laptop.

Liam Martin (38:29.205)
Yes.

Liam Martin (38:33.182)
One of my favorite places to work on planet earth is Playa del Carmen in Mexico, because the beach is literally like, oh man, 30 seconds from a whole bunch of really cool co-working spaces. You'd actually work and look at the beach. So I would usually just work and look at the beach and then around 5 p.m. I walk down, jump in the water, and then go have a taco.

Nienke Nina (38:49.403)
Mm.

Nienke Nina (38:55.716)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nienke Nina (39:01.515)
Man, you're hitting here. I'm literally if I look like this, I see the beach because I'm in a beachfront co-living right now and I'm recording here working and I have an hour in between recordings. I go for a walk to the beach for a run. Like it's amazing.

Liam Martin (39:08.791)
Perfect.

Liam Martin (39:15.358)
You know, that's another thing I was just at, and I don't want to kind of sidestep this conversation. And they didn't pay me to say this and I wish they had. Homa in Thailand is a co-living, co-working space. And I was thoroughly impressed by the quality of their product because they had a co-working space that maybe had 50 or 60 people at three o'clock in the morning working away. And the meeting rooms were great.

The actual rooms were fantastic. We got a three bedroom condo and I think it ended up costing us. Again, this is, I have a theory that basically digital nomadism is in its third epoch at this point, which I like to call the epoch of the rich dumb nomad. So the average salary pre COVID was $14,500 for a nomad today. It's $86,000 massive increase almost entirely from large tech.

That's now recognizing that they can be nomadic and they can dictate those types of conditions to their employer. And HOMA is $2,000 a month. There was an app. I can push a button. I can have a pizza show up in 10 minutes. I can push another button and I can have a nanny that can take care of my kids. And there's even a school integrated inside of these HOMA programs. So it's so cool to be able to see the infrastructure of not only remote work.

Nienke Nina (40:33.988)
Oh wow.

Liam Martin (40:40.802)
but also then by extension, as I said, the gateway drug, digital nomadism, take root, where you can actually work productively now because you have everything that you possibly need in order to be successful in whatever position you're pursuing.

Nienke Nina (40:55.627)
Yeah, amen to that. Exactly. We're not just all backpackers. Like we have Nomad families. We have part-time Nomads. Like this, the space is so big. So I love that. All right. Just before we leave, what are you most excited about for Running Remote 2024?

Liam Martin (41:14.622)
I hope to stop the propaganda war with regards to this mindset that remote work is ending. Remote work is doing exactly the opposite. We're going to present a very clear case with data from some of the smartest minds in the world, from Harvard and Cambridge and Oxford and Stanford and MIT that are all, some of them even begrudgingly by the way, admitting...

that remote work isn't going anywhere. And the data is showing that we're probably going to be at 50% remote work by 2040, which is gonna be a huge game changer for everything as it applies to remote work. So that's the first thing that I'm most excited about. The second or third is probably just getting back together with everyone else that is really passionate about this particular subject. I don't know if it comes through, but I'm very excited about remote work. And I think that it is...

Nienke Nina (42:10.203)
I'm sorry.

Liam Martin (42:12.238)
one of the most important things that we can give people access to make them happier on planet earth. So I'm so excited about getting back with all of those people that are thinking the same way as I am. And then I think the third thing is getting back to Lisbon. You haven't been to Lisbon before. Lisbon's a world-class city and I love that place. I'm actually thinking about buying some property there. I love it so much. So yeah, and hopefully seeing you too, if you decide to come back.

Nienke Nina (42:30.544)
Hehehe

Nienke Nina (42:42.979)
I will be there with all my Nomad friends. Awesome. So, just a few details about the conference. When is it? What's the best way to book it? I think the first early bird is already gone, but there is still a... right?

Liam Martin (42:44.686)
OK, perfect.

Liam Martin (42:58.036)
Yes.

Yes. So the it's April 22nd to 24th in Lisbon, Portugal. And I believe this there is going to be a price increase happening in the next week or two. I don't know when we're actually going to get this episode out. So if you're listening to this episode right now, best place to go and check it out is go to runningremote.com. Go you'll get all the details there if there are still tickets available. Also,

If you're kind of on the fence, go to youtube.com slash running remote. All of our talks are up there for free because we don't want to gatekeep this information. We want to give everyone access to this information as much as possible. So all of our previous talks are up there for free. It's not about the talks. It's about the networking and the mastermind and the community that you build. That really moves you forward in this particular industry. So take a look at the information. If you find it interesting, come on down.

Nienke Nina (43:57.319)
Absolutely love it. Thank you so much for joining Liam. Before we go, I always ask my guests if they have one question for me just to finish the episode. So do you have a question?

Liam Martin (44:13.094)
I have a question. When you started, when you attended Running Remote in 2019, why did you come? I'd be interested to hear. Did someone refer you? Were you just interested?

Nienke Nina (44:24.815)
I, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I was working in, uh, in dojo, uh, coworking and I was there and we went with a few people from dojo and I just started digital nomads daily. And back then it was more video content and a blog form. So yeah, I went with a few people and it was amazing. I made really amazing connections. And then funny enough, like a year later, I was working for.

Liam Martin (44:33.215)
Okay.

Nienke Nina (44:53.819)
a company and the CEO was there. I met him there running remote. So also, yeah, just so for last year when I came there, it was also not just for the talks, but like you said, also the community, meet people, and just, just be part of that because it's, it's really amazing bubbles. So for me also coming back this year is yes, the talks, but the networking it's great for my business because

With my marketing agency, we specialize in digital nomad type audiences. Um, but I mean, yeah, it's like the people as well. It's like, it's pure magic. So yeah.

Liam Martin (45:31.374)
I'm just gonna clip that and we'll run it as an ad. Thank you very much, Nina.

Nienke Nina (45:36.279)
All right, you have my permission, my full consent. All right. Thanks so much for joining today, Liam.

Liam Martin (45:38.478)
Okay.

Liam Martin (45:43.394)
Thanks for having me.