How I Scaled My Business By Buying Back My Time

Very excited to bring you all this Buy Back Your Time course. This book is actually the reason that I went and got an executive assistant, which changed everything for me. Everything. So this book has had a profound impact on me. I use some other things from the book and there's still things that I don't use, I need to use more of. So I'm excited to go back through everything. And the funny part is my executive assistant, Shryne, shout out Shryne, actually made this presentation. So that just goes to show you the value of an executive assistant, which is only one of the chapters in this book. And she also does all the other presentations and stuff, school, and my email inbox, my calendar, everything, make my life easier so I can focus on the things that I love doing. What he says, the things that make you a lot of money and light you up, that is the goal. So buy back your time, get unstuck, reclaim your freedom, and build empire. So Dan Martell, if you don't follow him on Instagram or social media, I definitely would. He's got some great stuff. So here's the overview of Buy Back Your Time. And one quick note too, I have a mic right here. We switched to the lapel mic here because I like to walk around and the other one was, it wasn't as clear when I would step away. So we have done this. So overview, Buy Back Your Time is a game-changing book that teaches entrepreneurs how to scale scale their businesses without burning out, which is the goal for sure, because burnout is very real. Dan Martell introduces the buyback principle, which flips traditional productivity advice on its head. Instead of hustle culture, working harder or longer hours, business owners should strategically buy back their time by outsourcing low-value tasks and only focusing on the highest impact activities. So we're gonna go through all the chapters. This is definitely a longer book, 15 chapters. We're gonna start with Chapter 1, Buyback Principle. There's some good tactical advice in this section. So the buyback principle. Our most limited resource is our time. Everyone has the same amount of time. And especially when you're scaling a business, you start out wearing all the hats. And then slowly you are replacing people and focusing on higher dollar per hour tasks. That's basically how you scale a business. Like when we scaled our wholesale business, I started out cold calling and being a lead manager and being an acquisition manager and being a sales manager. And then slowly I would hire a cold caller. Okay, now I'm not doing that because I can hire for $6 an hour. I've bought my time back. I don't have to spend 8 hours a day calling. Now I can simply spend spend, you know, 3 hours a day following up and then the other 5 hours trying to close deals. And then, you know, then you hire a lead manager, then you're not doing those things. You're always trying to buy back your time, um, as you scale up and focus on higher dollar-per-hour things and also things that you like doing more. Reinvest your time into, like I said, high-energy, high-return tasks. So you want to be spending your time in the areas that light you up and make your business a lot of money. For me, that is coaching people, developing people, sales training, you know, mindset training, all those things. So I like leading and doing those things, not doing the nitty-gritty admin stuff. Use every resource possible in the beginning. I know a lot of limiting beliefs are, well, I don't have the money, this or that. Figure it out, right? I don't have the money to get an executive assistant. Hire someone overseas. You can pay them $3, $4 an hour, whatever it may be, to buy back that time. If you really want to do it, you can find a way. And we're not just hiring, hiring with a purpose, and that is to buy back your time. I once, when we first put a lead gen supervisor in charge of our cold calling team, I put her in charge of the lead gen team, and then I was still doing everything. I was checking on her, doing this and doing that. It's like, what was even the purpose of hiring this person? It was to buy back my time so I didn't have to go do that, so I could go focus on the sales team. And I didn't realize that at first. I'm like, what am I doing still doing this one-on-ones with the cold calling team? I already have 6 people to deal with. I don't need another 6 people. So that was a key realization for me when I was hiring someone. It was like, hey, I need to hire to buy back my time. I'm hiring you as a lead gen supervisor so that I do not need to spend a lick of time in lead generation. That's the point. So that I can go focus on higher value things, right? Things that more suit my skillset. Don't hire to grow the business, hire to buy back your time, right? You're not just looking to grow, you're not just looking to build the business for the sake of having more numbers and having more people, having a better team and ego and all that stuff. It's to literally buy back your time in a given area, whether it's admin or it's lead generation or lead follow-up or sales or operations, something that you don't wanna do that frees up your time so you have time to do other things. That's the goal. So focus only on a few, few key tasks every day that energize you. Track your time to calculate your buyback rate, which we'll get into. Then you want to maximize your energy and emotion, not just productivity. And I talk about that a lot in my personal stuff, but we 1,000% need to be maximizing our energy and our emotion throughout the day. Because if we're not, you know, if we're doing stuff that's just draining us, we're going to be beat by 1, 2 PM versus we're doing something that lights us up and gives us energy. We want to be doing it. It doesn't even feel like work, we're doing it all day long. And we're more productive because we like it. So he talks about this thing called the pain line, which I think is interesting. When you're stretched too thin, you have too many people under management. And I honestly hitting the pain line right now because we had a lead gen supervisor, I had to kind of get her out of that role 'cause she wasn't necessarily ready for it. 'Cause it's a lot, you know, you gotta be a leader, know how to lead and coach and train and do sales and manage people and do all the things. But the pain line is, he says, when you're doing about $1 million revenue or around 12 direct reports. So this year we're on track to do, you know, $1.5 million, I think we'll get to $2 million. And I hit that pain line because I had to take back on the cold call team. So I have 3 acquisition reps, 2 lead managers, that's 5 people. And then I have an 8-person cold calling team, so that's 13. So it's just too many people and my Slack dinging me, ba ba ba ba ba. Really the sweet spot's around like 6 to 8 people that you wanna manage. So that was my pain line, like even a couple weeks ago, I was like, yeah, I can't do this. 'Cause I took out that lead gen supervisor for the cold calling team. I was like, I'll just handle it. No, I can't handle it. It's too much, right? So that was my pain line and I was like, okay, I need to go get someone else to fill this position that can actually do it because there's no way if I go to hire a sales manager for this business, I can expect them to manage 5 reps, 2 lead managers, which is 7 people, plus an 8-person cold calling team. It would just be ineffective. So understanding where that pain line is. And a lot of times we hit this as entrepreneurs and we're just hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. And that's the culture everyone teaches. And I have a whole opinion on that. I don't think it's a hustle culture. I think we need to, it needs to be a focus culture. 'Cause it's not about hustle, it's about are you spending your time on the right things? We need to focus, we need to not get distracted. You can work at a peaceful rate all day long if you just remain focused on what you need to do and you're not checking different tabs, you're doing this and you're doing that and you're getting up and you're changing the laundry and you're doing that and you're checking your phone, you're going on social media and you're blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just stay focused for the day and 6 hours is gonna do a lot more than 14 hours of scattered work. We need to be focused and make sure that we are managing our workload as we scale, especially as we scale. We're talking about scaling here. So as you bring on a team, you gotta make sure each single person that you bring on, that they're buying back your time, meaning that you are effectively delegating them responsibilities and you trust them to get those responsibilities done. Now that's a whole nother leadership conversation where, you know, you have to be kind of, micromanaging and not micromanaging, a little bit more micromanaging when they start, because you wanna make sure that they're doing everything properly, then you can give them some more leash. But you have to be strategic about your hires. Every time you hire, that person should have a set of responsibilities. They own those responsibilities, you no longer have to do it, and that's how you do it. But if you're just hiring people and you have a 6-person team, but you're still doing everything for everyone, you're just gonna hit this pain line. You're gonna burn out and you're gonna quit, right? Right? So really important to understand that. So yeah, when they hit this pain line, he says they typically sell, sabotage, or stall. So the entrepreneur— sell, the entrepreneur is experiencing so much pain, they want out at all costs. They decide to sell the business or just quit. Sabotage, the entrepreneur unconsciously makes decisions that sabotage the growth to avoid more pain. So this is interesting. So maybe they make decisions not to hire someone because they just subconsciously can't bear the thought of having another person on the team, because that means they're gonna have to freaking do, like, add more to their plate. When in reality, it should remove things from your plate when you bring someone on. So they might subconsciously sabotage or they might stall. They just, ah, I'm just, you know, we're just gonna stay here, this is a good spot. They'll make up excuses. Well, it's exactly where I want the business to be, XYZ, you know, because subconsciously they're like, oh, I cannot stand, I can't bear the thought of bringing on another person. I think all this comes down to hiring the right people, right? And that's a whole thing is having a hiring process, hiring the right people and trusting in them that they can own the responsibilities that you're giving them. And you can trust them. That's what delegation is, trust to own responsibility. So if I'm bringing on operations person to enter the KPIs, that should buy back my time. That should buy back the hour and a half a day that I have to go through and check the KPIs and make sure they're all accurate. If I don't trust that person enough to go effectively do that, then it's not gonna be buying back my time 'cause I'm still gonna be checking over, like, you know, still doing everything with that person. Now that doesn't mean you don't, there's no oversight. There is oversight, but you have to think that, you know, you're checking in on them very, very infrequently. And at the end of the day, if you're not growing, you're dying. That's the fact. Burnout occurs when the workload outweighs the passion. That's what it is. Too much work, you don't even like it anymore. And team members also want to grow. They crave growth, vision, momentum. So if we're just stagnant sitting here because you're so overwhelmed by everything because you failed to delegate effectively, right? And buy back your time with these hires, no one else really wants to be a part of the company either. So systems over goals. This is one of my favorite quotes. I say it all the time. You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. So you need really good systems in place. So here's the buyback loop, okay? This is what you can tactically use in your day-to-day. Anytime that you hit a pain point, I've hit so many pain points, but one, it was like, okay, pain point, I have, I'm managing 14 people, 15 people. It's way too many people. Okay, pain point, let's audit what's going on here. Okay, well, I initially put someone in the lead gen supervisor position because I was like, it's too much for me. My life was great, everything was manageable. That person didn't really perform, so I had to take them out, and now there's more pain. So that tells me, okay, I do need someone in that lead gen supervisor position. It just wasn't necessarily the right person. So I'm gonna audit that, and then I'm gonna transfer. So my audit there would be, okay, well, I need to go hire someone. As a lead gen supervisor who's capable. So go do that, and then I transfer that workload of doing the call calibration with the lead gen team, daily meetings, hiring, coaching, training, answering their Slack messages— all of that gets transferred to the person and they fill that spot. And then whoop, and then I'm up a level, and now I'm focusing on higher dollar-per-hour tasks. I'm not spending 2 hours a day trying to teach someone how to get a lead on a mo— of a motivated seller. I'm helping salespeople close deals, making the company $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $60,000, $70,000, $100,000. So that's a perfect example of that. Another example was operations. I was doing the data and I was putting into the cold caller. That was a pain point for me too. I was managing all the data and trying to put it into the dialer and the list stacking and the this and the that. And we upgraded our admin assistant who is now literally our operations manager. She's an incredible asset to our team, but she handles all the operations. My pain was I can't, I'm doing all this operation stuff, I can't focus on the sales. That was my audit. And then what do we do? We transfer it. So we had to go hire someone to transfer. She filled that. I no longer had to do that. Doesn't mean I didn't oversee it. I do oversee it and check in, but I'm not spending 2 hours a day. I'm spending 2 minutes a day checking to make sure everything is right. So that is that. So audit and remove low-value draining tasks, typically admin things right off the bat. Calendar, your email inbox, things like that. Just basic data entry if you're in real estate, doing lists, uploading lists, managing data, anything to do with data or admin, or like fixing the dialer, it's broken, like get someone for that. Get an admin assistant. We go over the scale ladder later. Delegate to those who enjoy and excel at them. People enjoy that. Someone overseas will love that, would love the opportunity to work from home. And people who maybe don't like to talk to people as much, they just want to do data, sit behind their computer and get paid, Love it. Get them in there. You focus on high-value, energizing work, whatever that is for you. Offload admin first, then sales, and then you focus on strategy, right? So create upward loop. So more money, you wanna take that money and buy back more of your time. Use money to gain time and love your business more. So you're gonna love it more when you, 'cause every time you start out doing everything, then as you make money, you start to buy back your time in areas that you don't like. And then you slowly scale the business and you're making more money, but you, every single time that you get up a level, you're working on stuff that you like more and more. So super important. So audit, identify low-value tasks. What do you hate doing? What's easy and inexpensive to delegate? Ask you those things. Admin stuff is very easy and inexpensive to delegate. You can do it for $3 to $5 an hour. Even on a part-time basis, there's no excuse not to get help. Transfer out. So you can outsource to the team or hire help. So you could, yeah, you could outsource or you could hire people who can take this off your plate. And then you want to fill. So you want to replace that with high leverage tasks. So that's the key point actually that I kind of failed to mention earlier. So you're auditing what's going on, you're transferring it, they take it off your plate, and then you make sure you fill that time with something else that is of higher value. That's the point, because you're working on higher and higher scale. So if I was cold calling all day for 8 hours a day, okay, I get that 8 hours back. Maybe now I'm only— it's only 2 hours a day of managing that person. Okay, great. What am I doing with the other 6 hours? Make sure it's high-value tasks. If I'm just going and cold calling with that person, that doesn't do me any good. I want to be doing like only talking to leads now. So instead of calling a cold list of random people, now I'm actually talking to people interested in selling. Right, and then maybe I'm doing all the lead follow-up and the closing. And I have so many leads I can't keep up, I hire a lead manager. So that buys back 6 hours of my time. So 2 hours managing the cold calling team, 6 hours is lead follow-up and sales. I buy back, you know, maybe 3 hours of my time from lead follow-up for the lead manager. Now let's fill that 3 hours with more closing, more sales stuff, more high-value stuff. So you think about 8 hours in the day, you're still working the 8 hours, But when you're delegating, you're offloading those lower leverage tasks, you're replacing it with higher income earning things. And not only income earning, but energy producing things that light you up and make you more money. That's what you want to do. So every time you're filling it, you're getting one step up. And that's basically how you scale. All right, so the 95/5 rule. It's a good little exercise to do. So listing everything in the left column that needs to get done in a month period, everything needs to get done. And then in the right column, copy over only the things that drive the business forward that only you can do. And that'll help you start to distinguish, hey, what are really the high leverage tasks here? And then you can start to outsource everything else. So you wanna be focusing on that top 5 to 10% that only you could do. That's really where you wanna be. So 95/5 rule. So 5 buyback rules. Don't hire to grow. It's not just about growing, it's about buying back your time every single time. You can't outwork your way to a better business. You just can't. You can't. You're gonna burn out every single time. It's not about hustle, it's about focus. Focusing on what you're good at. Time is finite, something will eventually break. Grinding leads to the pain line. Don't hustle, don't grind. Work smart. Results of burnout, stalling, or sabotage. The pain line is feedback. If you have pain in your business, it's feedback. You need to switch something. You need to make a strategic hire. You need to get something off your plate. Shift your mindset or you're just gonna continue to burn out. And then use that buyback loop. Audit, transfer, fill, right? Audit your time, transfer low-value tasks, fill your time with high-return work. So here's some action items too. He calls it step into the arena, but visualize your ideal day if you weren't stuck in work. What does that look like? What would you do if you had more time? If you weren't just stuck in work for 14 hours a day, what would you do if you had that 5 to 8 PM in the evening back and you weren't just scrambling? What would you do? Would you golf? Would you hang out with your family, your wife, your husband, your kids? Would you— Recharge? Would you work out? Would you go on a hike? Think about it. Think about it. What would you do if you had more time? Start designing your life by buying back your time. Live a life of design. This is empowering stuff.