How Successful CEOs Buy Back Their Time

Welcome to the Growth Stacking podcast. This is Dan Martell. Here's three strategies that are not found in my bestselling book Buy Back youk Time, on how you can get even more leverage. And I talk about calendar outcomes and leadership of your direct reports that most people struggle with. You know, recently I was doing a coaching call with one of my clients in my elite coaching program which is for non software founders. So people that are not in tech building, H vac companies and coaching companies and agencies, and they had read my book, they installed the perfect week, they did the time and energy audit, they understood audit transfer, fill, but they were still running into people problems. Or how do I connect my big vision that I talk about in chapter 13, dream bigger, achieve bigger, into the calendar? And then what about the people? Like, okay, I've bought back my time, but I still feel like people are coming to me to ask questions for me to give them the answer. And I want to be able to start working through people because that is usually the complexity ceiling that stops people because they don't understand to work through people. So I want to unpack the three things I share with that client that help them see the future. The vision, get the blueprint for the next level. That's not covered in the book. Let's get into it. So this is an advanced strategy for leading your direct reports. Okay, so anybody that's in leadership has people that they manage, they're accountable to their performance reviews, their compensation, their training, their coaching, their. And as the CEO, most people don't realize that you should force yourself to only have 7 max. Like I'm talking max. One time I remember asking one of my mentors, this guy Travis, he had built a company to 5,000 employees in four years. And I said, travis, I can't even comprehend, how did you do that? And he said, well, I only ever have five to seven direct reports. And I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, my job every day is to wake up and create what's called management bandwidth. And I'm like, okay, I like the sound of this. What does that mean? He goes, well, at the end of the day, whatever we're trying to execute or any crazy ideas I come up with for each division in my business, I can move things forward based on the ability of my team to move that forward. So I have to look at each leader that reports directly to me and say, do they have the skills, the capacity, et cetera, to move this forward? And if I don't, then I've got to either upgrade them or I got to coach them or they might have to transition down. Whatever it is, I want you to consider this idea, okay? When you have direct reports, cap yourself to five, maximum seven. If you have to go to seven and really squeeze it out, all right, go to seven. But I'm telling you, if you force yourself to only have five direct reports or seven direct reports, and those are the people that no matter what you want to get done in your life, okay, those are the ones you work through and it'll be a game changer. And the key is always have them come to you with a 1, 3 1. And I talk about this in the book, but it is so important I want to repeat it. Anytime they come to you with a problem, I want you to immediately ask them back. What's your thoughts? Always. What's your thoughts? I literally was doing a one on one this morning with one of my direct reports and they brought up three things and they forgot to bring a one three one. So I can just keep it simple and short. What are your thoughts? They said, here's a problem. I'd love to get your perspective perfect. What are your thoughts? I want to hear from them. I want to hear what they've evaluated, I want to hear what they've considered, I want to hear what context that they've gathered, research conversations, have with other people. And through that feedback I'm going to listen and then together we're going to collaborate to come up with an outcome. Why this is powerful and this is where most people mess things up and they create a ceiling of complexity is that you are teaching that person how to self solve. You're teaching the person how to fish. They don't need to come to you in the future because over time they know you're going to ask them that same question. What do you recommend? And oftentimes when we actually stop and reflect, we know what we need to do. We just, I don't know, sometimes we just think that maybe it's easier to have somebody else tell us or if I get somebody else to tell me what to do, then it's not my fault if it doesn't work. And as a CEO, you may be doing that to your team where you always tell them what to do. So I want to encourage you. This is the thing I gave my client cap your direct reports to five at most seven. Number two is how to fill your calendar with the right things. You know, it's cool to buy back your time, but I often have people and I talk about this in my book, where they buy back all this time and then in a year they wake up and they go, all right, I'm not really working too much and I don't have a lot of stuff going on. So I bought back all of this time. But I don't feel productive, I don't feel fulfilled. And if you look at the drip matrix in my book, drip is delegate, replace, invest and, and then produce. Most people don't realize, but it is literally on the left side. This is how we transfer things off of our plate, right? Delegate and replace. And then on the right side, it's all about investing. Okay? And then producing. What do we do with the newfound time? So this is my recommendation to you. I always look at my calendar through a rhythm, okay? It's energy management, it's not time management. I would much rather get into a flow of batching, a certain type of call and in a certain day of the week, maybe in a two hour sprint where I'm like back to back to back 15 minute calls, doing something that needs to get done, then managing those calls over the five days of the week. So I really want you to think about the energy flow of your week. And most people don't put in. These are the big ideas, the skill development they need to develop to get to the next level. The belief systems about how the world works that they don't even realize are there. It's oftentimes the things that you believe that are simply not true or that is an issue. Sometimes we got to give some stuff up to make space for the things we need to add, right? Oftentimes you got to ask yourself, what am I willing to give up if I want this crazy goal? What am I willing to give up? Where's the space going to come from? And that's what you do with your calendar. So that it is in there, that it is part of the flow, so that you never feel like all you're doing is nothing. Where you bought back all this time, right? I had a client yesterday tell me I hired an executive assistant six weeks ago and I now have 35 hours a week. What am I supposed to do with that? I'm like, you forgot the other part. You forgot the invest, you forgot to produce. And the part is about becoming more so you have more to give, right? So that for me is skills, beliefs, and more important, your character traits, the confidence, the communication skills, the belief, the self worth. You know you're never going to achieve a penny more than you feel you deserve. Then you feel that belongs to you, that you feel you're valuable at. Most people undercharge for what they do because they don't feel like they're worth more. And that is where you get to go deep. So you buy back your time to then go and actually schedule the investments in the books, in the mentorship, in the training, in the community, in whatever it is to help you level up so you can become more. So you've got more to give. Number three is outcomes to calendar. See, when I coach clients, I don't know, I just see the world a lot differently. I look at my calendar, I look at my vision, I look at my goals for the year, and I just, I'm always mapping it, like, are the things I'm doing this week align with the things I want to get done this year, to the month, to the quarter, et cetera. And oftentimes when I ask people, they don't understand what's the number one thing holding them back, right? So they might have this crazy goal. But when I say, well, what's the leading domino? What's the one thing if you actually executed, it would make everything else easier. And once you know that, then show me your calendar. Because one of my non negotiables is every morning I wake up and I focus the first 90 minutes of my day on the project that is going to move things forward. And I stay on it and I execute and I'm obsessive about it and I put in the time and I create the activity so that it becomes inevitable. See, most people don't put their outcomes in their calendar. They just allow themselves to be distracted by the squeaky wheel. Whatever clients, the noisiest team members, noisiest, biggest fire they got to put out, they don't give themselves the gift of blocking out the time to move their most important project forward so that everything else takes care of it. And this is why I work with my executive assistant. This is an advanced buyback strategy, is she knows my goals, she. She knows what my projects are. And we lock them into the calendar. When we meet up, it's like, hey, tomorrow morning, you're working on this. You also have this project. You have this thing coming up. Do you want me to put 30 minutes there? Yep. Do you want me to put 60 minutes there? Yep. Do you want me to schedule a meeting with this person? Yep. Put it in the calendar. See, some of you guys buy back all this time and then you have this calendar space and it's blank. That's not supposed to be how it works if you follow the perfect week formula that I teach in the book, you would know you want to allocate it. But most of you guys forget to allocate the outcomes, the projects, the tasks, the meetings, the conversations, the creativity that are really going to allow you to co create with people at a higher level. And that's another thing most of you guys are building by yourselves. And I want to invite you to consider build with other people because you will do way more for somebody else that you made a commitment to. You won't cancel a meeting on somebody else, but you'll cancel working out with yourself. You'll cancel doing the hard work with yourself. You'll cancel doing the sales calls, the sales chats, the the sales outreach with yourself, schedule it with somebody else. Make yourself accountable to them. That co creation will be like a 3X. It is one of my secrets, right? I love to build companies with other people because it just makes the whole process more fun. That is my invitation to you. I want you to think about it. How efficient are you really with your time? And that's why I wrote a whole chapter called the Time Assassins. Because sure, you can buy back your time, but why don't we start with this? Why don't we eliminate the waste? Why don't we remove the things that are vices, that are bad, patterns that are habits that are robbing us of those precious seconds every freaking day. Why don't we start there? Because sure, you can go spend a bunch of time and money and hire people and manage all these people to buy back your time only to waste it. Or you can get honest with yourself, look in the mirror and say, what do I need to do to become even more productive with my time? How do I force myself and create these forcing functions? It's like the day before you go on a big trip. For most people, it's the most productive day of their month. Why? Because you know there's this forcing function to go on vacation, set the scenario up for you to win. That's my invitation for you is how do you level up your time so you produce even more with the time you got. If you like this week's episode, be sure to visit itunes, leave a review that'll help us get in front of other founders just like you. And if you're looking for more resources and video trainings, be sure to check out dan martell2lsmartell.com to subscribe. Keep up the hustle, keep stacking your growth and I'll see you in next Monday's. Episode. Peace, Grove. Peace. Bye Bye.