How CEO and Founder Rob Rawson Started His TimeDoctor Startup

How CEO and Founder Rob Rawson Started His TimeDoctor Startup

Sean: With your 130 employees. You’ve got leaders there, some senior, some associates. I wonder, how do you try to make sure that they’re growing, that they’re learning new things, or for your leaders at least, how are you encouraging them to grow in their leadership? Read some leadership books, listen to these podcasts, or get some mentors to help them out.

Rob: Yeah, that’s a really good point. There is a book that I’ve been sending to some of the leaders, which is called How to Be a Great Manager. Very simple title, and it’s part of a system called EOS, which is ‘entrepreneurs operating system.’ And so we’re using that in our business, and that’s like a system or a structure for your business. It’s like an operating manual because what happens is you just run your business anyway or anyhow, there’s no set way of doing things. Then that lack of structure is not very effective. So this EOS provides that structure and it provides like a meeting structure, like how should you run meetings? It provides a structure for how you’re setting goals, how you sitting these when they call them rock tasks, but they’re basically goals that you’re setting for the year, for the quarter. You’re doing this in a specific way and then you’re training your team on how to do that as well. So you implement that same structure throughout the company and that becomes a very powerful way to run your business. So that works for any kind of business as well, not just tech businesses.

Sean: Got it. And is this a resource that people could get online?

Rob: Yeah, you can actually research EOS. It’s something you don’t necessarily need to pay for. You can just get one of the books and do it. They also have facilitators who help you out to implement it for yourself, but it’s something you can just read about and do yourself. It’s not that complicated, but it’s having a way of doing things that’s important, right? And then training your team in and what is the way that we do things and then having a certain structure around your company, like meeting rhythm is really important, having certain types of meetings that you do regularly and how are those meetings run? How do you make them efficient? That’s really powerful. And then how do you delegate the responsibility in your company? Who’s accountable for each area? That’s part of this structure is having not just an org chart where you see like a traditional chart, but it actually shows you each person as they’re accountable for what are they doing and making sure that each area of the company is handled by someone.

Sean: How well were you influenced by this book? How much of it did you adopt Time Doctor, and how you’re leading and managing the company?

Rob: I’d say we’re probably at about 70%, 60%, 70% adopting what they’re doing, or I’d like to do it a bit more. I’d like to get it more deeply implemented in the company.