Keys to Building an 8-Figure SaaS Company with Robert Rawson

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like I Digress. Today, we'll be breaking down the keys to building an eight-figure SaaS company. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Robert Rawson into EO Fire Studios. Rob is a medical doctor turned entrepreneur, founded timedoctor.com in 2011, transforming it into an eight-figure SaaS giant with a team in 31 countries. He co-founded Running Remote, the largest remote work conference and co-authored a seminal book on the remote workspace.

0:38In today's information, we'll talk about breaking down the keys to success in building an eight-figure SaaS company. We'll talk about running remote and fighting global poverty and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Robert and our sponsors. Nudge, hosted by Phil Agnew, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Ever notice how the smallest change that's going to have the biggest impact on Nudge. You learn simple evidence-backed tips to help you kick bad habits, get a raise, and grow a business. Oh, and it's the UK's Fast-Growing Business Podcast.

1:10A recent episode on how to win any argument shares decade-long research into persuasion from a world-leading neuroscientist. Listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts. Robert, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. It is a little brutal in business. Specifically, I've heard business owners that are friends of mine say, look, I let go of 10 % of my staff and it made no difference to my bottom line. In other words, it made no difference to my sales or profits. So in other words, they had too many people in their business.

1:51So I know a lot of people would disagree with that because they think the consistency of their team is really important. But it's also important to make sure that everyone is completely engaged, completely contributing towards your business. Otherwise, you're really just effectively wasting money or you're not going in the right direction. so that's probably something that people would disagree with. Fire Nation, we're talking about keys to building an eight-figure SaaS company and being a law school dropout myself. I know a lot of people go the doctor route or the lawyer route and then they find they're either miserable, unhappy, or just plain unfulfilled.

2:37Some people of it. But you transitioned from medicine to tech entrepreneurship. Tell us that story. I was actually always really entrepreneurial, even during medicine. So I was starting things. I started a business where I had marketing consulting, even during med school. So I took a year off and tried to consult in marketing, which is crazy, right? Like how would a medical doctor think like what am I going to contribute in marketing but I read all of these books about I don't know if you're familiar with Jay Abraham and other marketing gurus and I thought yeah I'm a marketing guru now so now I'm going to actually just teach other people how to do it and so that was my start and then I just evolved from there I did I wasn't successful at that like I actually it was a complete failure so I continued my medicine studies and finished and qualified as a doctor, but I was always entrepreneurial, trying different things.

3:36And then I did find something that was successful. And then it just sort of evolved from that point where my business became more successful. And it's hard to be half a doctor, right? You have to dedicate your life to it. And so I really wanted to travel the world and be able to just work from anywhere and have a successful business. And that's what I did. And I didn't go back to medicine because of that. We are all standing upon the shoulders of giants. Even Jay Abrahams learned from people who came before him that helped him write that book. So when you do consume the right content, when you do surround yourself with the right people and you learn from them, now you're not quote unquote, they're equal per se or a guru per se, but guess what?

4:20You now know more than 99 % of people in the room that didn't consume that content, that didn't take the time to study that. So to your peers, you were a marketing expert for sure. And I'm sure you had a lot to share as a result. And Fire Nation, we're talking about the keys to building an eight-figure SaaS company. So let's start by breaking down those keys to success that you found in building your eight-figure SaaS. Okay. So the first thing is that the product is something that I was using personally. And that was a real key in the beginning, because if I'm using it personally, I'm evolving it.

4:59I know what it is. I'm constantly improving it. And even before I was having customers that were charging for it, it was actually just in use and improving. So that's the first key is constantly improving with feedback from customers but also feedback from myself in using myself. I mean, there's so many things you need to do. SaaS is an incredible business. It's like a really incredible business, but it's also really hard to start. It's probably harder than other businesses like a service business. So it did take many years before I was profitable, and that's probably another key for SaaS in particular is that dedication, that consistency and the continual improvement and reinvestment in the product.

5:48So the product as a technical product had a lot of people that I was involved that I had to hire to make it better. And I was constantly working on the product for many years before it became successful from a profit point of view. Looking back in the earlier days, what was one of the biggest mistakes that you made? What was one of those failures that you maybe looked in the mirror and said, man, I might have sabotaged this. I might have submarine and torpedoed this entire project. I mean, did you have one of those moments, one of those days where something really bad happened that you didn't think was going to allow you to go on?

6:24There was many times when the software went down and that I was not a developer. I didn't train myself as a developer, so I'm scared. What can I do? Because my team actually was around the world, not in the same office, so I didn't even know whether they're going to answer my call when I'm calling them. It was really, really difficult and scary. and it was just that faith and also having that consistency and hiring really great people that were able to fix the problem and also were dedicated to me and to my business. I mean, it's very simple stuff, but that's really what it was that solved it in the end.

7:12Super scary in the beginning. What are some things that you wished you knew back in the day when you are starting the SaaS company that you can pass along to Fire Nation? The level of scaling when you find something that works, I think that's something that's really important. So you find a technique like doing some search engine optimization, some blog articles. And I think the typical thing is, oh, I'll do two or three blog articles. Well, what if you did 20? What if I did 200? So I could have been way more successful by understanding exactly what works and then just scaling it much bigger and much faster.

7:55And that's something that I didn't do as much as I could have. I mean, there's lots of mistakes and lots of things that I could improve on, of course. Timedoctor.com was something that you founded in 2011. What was the aha moment of that company, of that product, of that solution that you created. Walk us through that. I was actually in the Philippines and I had an office and I had like 40 people in the office and I thought, well, this is actually really expensive. And I had another business at that time, which was in SEO and affiliate marketing. And the business wasn't doing quite as well. And I had all this office costs.

8:39And I thought the aha moment is like, I've got to get rid of this office cost. I've got to get people working from home. This is way before COVID, right? And I'm basically thinking, well, if I'm getting them working from home, then I need to have consistency and reliability about working hours and effectiveness while they're working. So that was why I created the software is actually for myself. And then I thought about that need for myself. Other people have a similar need. So I'm going to actually sell this to other people. I'd heard about the concept of SaaS as a really good business model.

9:14So actually, that was part of the aha moment as well as me thinking, this is a great business, a type of business. And I honestly think that's a huge impact in my success is just the fact that I chose a good business to get into. Because I know business owners that have been working for 10 years that are not that successful. And part of it is that they're not in a great business model. Like the business model is just really hard. It's like probably 10 times harder from a effort point of view to be successful at the same level. Kind of reminds me of the Slack story where, you know, these individuals just said, hey, we don't love this way of communicating inter-office.

9:57Let's just create a better thing. And then of course that thing became, you know, wow, like now we have Slack and that's just everywhere. And it sounds like there's a similar process with you with Time Doctor where you're like, hey, like I want this to be a solution that's available. It's not. So I'm going to create the solution. And because I know other people have a problem similar to mine, I can now offer them solution in the form of a SaaS. So Fire Nation, some really interesting things to maybe look inwards into yourself, into your company, into your problems and struggles and obstacles and challenges that you are facing on a day-to-day basis and say, is there something here?

10:32And we have more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Welcome to the world of entrepreneurship. More things added to your to-do list every day and less time to accomplish the things that matter most. Add to all that the number of tools it takes to run your coaching programs, online courses, growing team, and your physical product sales, and you've really got your hands full. Doing business has never felt harder. But what if there was a way to simplify everything, a way to manage your entire business with a single platform? Sounds like you'll need a miracle to make it happen, doesn't it?

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12:23Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. Summer is here and that That means hanging out by the pool and traveling to different parts of the country on vacation. And that also means seasonal businesses are hiring everything from lifeguards to activity coordinators. So people with these specific skills are in high demand and not easy to find. Whether you're hiring for one of these roles or any other role, how do you find top talent before the competition gets to them? ZipRecruiter. And right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com slash fire. With ZipRecruiter, all you have to do is post your job.

13:00And once you see a candidate who really shines, you can send them a pre-written invite to apply message so they can act fast. Gear up for summer with ZipRecruiter's high-speed hiring tools. See why four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Just go to this exclusive web address right now to try ZipRecruiter for free. ZipRecruiter.com slash fire. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash fire. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Robert, we're back and I want to dive into a little book that you wrote called Running Remote. Why did you write this book?

13:38It was a great opportunity because of the fact that we're a fully remote business and we have a conference about remote work as well. And so that conference actually helps to teach people how they can work remotely around the world. And we discovered these great businesses like GitLab. I'm not sure if you've heard of them. They're a multi-billion dollar business where everyone is remote. And now this has become more of the norm, but still a lot of people default to things like doing meetings all of the time versus these companies that have been doing it for many years and are really great at remote.

14:19They are more focused on asynchronous work, for example, which means that they're not always doing the meetings which are distracting each other which are taking time which are you have to coordinate and instead they might send a video message where the other person can watch that at any point so these kinds of tips and this kind of culture of remote work which was embedded for these companies that are doing for many years really large organizations we were trying to teach that not just from our own uh thoughts and and experiences but from these other successful businesses that had done it. What are a couple of the most interesting themes of this book that you want to get into right now?

15:00I mean, obviously start with one that you think is really interesting and meaningful for our listener base, Fire Nation. Two things that really come to the front when you're doing remote teams and you're building remote teams. And the first is, as I said, asynchronous so it's not actually just working face-to-face on a on a zoom which is what most people do immediately when they go remote is just let's just do the same thing face-to-face and instead it's communicating by written uh means it's communicating via some some audio recorded audio recorded video where people can watch it and at their own leisure and they have access to the information and they can proactively take that on in their own time.

15:49The second thing is building culture. This culture is obviously harder or it feels a lot harder when you're remote because you don't have that feeling of connection. You don't have that room where you have as a leader, you stand up in front of the room and you're able to talk to the whole business. And so you've got to really be intentional about working on that. That culture piece means things like all hands meetings where you're going out and you're sharing the culture. You're telling people what are the values. You're reinforcing that over and over again about your company values. You're praising people like in our company where we have regular praise like this person did great work.

16:38Thank you so much. And it's simple stuff, but if you don't do it, it just becomes this abstract organization of people that you just don't even know or you don't feel like you're connected to at all, which is a real problem. Fire Nation, I hope you're thinking and resonating with what exactly would it look like to run a remote team based off some of the things that Robert is sharing. And before we move on, Robert, what's one more thing you really think is valuable to share with Fire Nation around this topic that you really get into and get deep into within your book? Having the right people that are able to work independently, that's absolutely critical.

17:19So they've got to be self-starters, people that are able to get their work done without having this constant kind of reinforcement or constant telling them what to do. You've got to have somebody that's able to generate their own work. And we have in our company, we have a value called self-guided missile. So that's the concept that they're just going and they're creating things and they're making things happen. And so that value that we have is really critical for us to work remotely in an effective manner. It's a little bit of a segue here, but you currently have a big focus on donating to fight global poverty.

18:04I mean, it's a massive topic. It's a massive, massive problem in this world. So tell us more about this. Why did you choose this to focus on and what kind of impact are you making? It's because just in my heart to do it, and I've seen people in the most poor situations in the world, and I just want to do something to help them. And it also just gives extra meaning. Like I'm a selfish person, right? Like I do lots of things for myself. I went heli-skiing actually this year, which is an extremely expensive sport. But I also have an excess. Like I'm really successful and I have enough money that I don't need all of that money.

18:49So I just like the concept that I give away 10%. I pledge that on an organization called Giving What We Can, which is a great way to do that. They have a pledge and a lot of really successful tech entrepreneurs have pledged there. And it just gives an extra meaning other than what I'm doing. I have meaning through my work. I like my work. I love supporting my employees. I like actually earning money for myself and going heli skiing and doing other really expensive stuff, going on expensive holidays. So I'm not doing this as a self-sacrifice to say, but I'm doing it because I can contribute and I like to help other people in my own local neighborhood as well as globally as well.

19:36Robert, I want to end with it being here. We talked a lot about eight-figure SaaS companies, your struggles, your obstacles, your challenges, your aha moments, why you wrote the book Running Remotes, which of course goes into much greater detail. What is your call to action for Fire Nation today? How do they connect with you? How do they learn more from you? How do they get their hands on Running Remotes? So we do have the book Running Remote. We have a conference Running Remote as well. and you can also, if you want to get in contact with me, just ask timedoctor.com. Rob at timedoctor.com is my email so you can just email me directly there.

20:15Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with RR and JLD today so keep up the heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com, type Robert in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up and Robert, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Great to chat. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Robert for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation's successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals.

20:48That is why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in a hundred days. And we're talking step by step. Visit thefreedomjournal.com and I will catch you there or on the flip side. Nudge, hosted by Phil Agnew, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Ever notice how the smallest changes can have the biggest impact? On Nudge, you learn simple evidence-backed tips to help you kick bad habits, get a raise, and grow a business. Oh, and it's the UK's fast-growing business podcast. A recent episode on how to win any argument shares decade-long research into persuasion from a world-leading neuroscientist.

21:25Listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.