Conquer Success: The Power of Buying Back Your Time with Dan Martell

Your number one strength becomes your Achilles heel as your business because it's the thing you're most critical of and it's the thing you're going to say, yes, I can do this if it fails. Like if I owned a restaurant and the chef quit, I'm not running in the kitchen to start cooking. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but a lot of entrepreneurs do that. And instead what the problem is that you got to solve is figure out how to hire, train and retain a chef. That's the owner versus operator mentality that a lot of people suffer suffer with.

Hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and Flow Chart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic hustle mode kind of guy and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger. So that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy.

You know it, I know it. 2023 is almost done. It's crazy. 2024 is almost here, but we still have Q4 to rock and roll and make the most out of this time. That's why the new HubSpot sales hub is here to sync up everything inside of your operations, your team, and allow for collaboration to happen along the full customer journey. So you're not missing a beat. And I'm talking about workspace, you know, your analytics, everything's reporting across the board. So everybody's clued in and delivering as you should, bringing in more revenue. So with this whole thing, there's an AI platform, they just rolled out a conversational platform called Chat Spot. This thing's going to help you write copy using AI, generating emails, posts, so much more. All the stuff that you'd have to manually do, well, that's different now. So tons of integrations, 1400 plus tons of ways to integrate features into your workflow. So this is something you want to definitely look into right now for Q4. So now's the time to go make a switch to HubSpot Sales Hub over at HubSpot.com sales. Dan, appreciate you for coming back for round two. And I think I'm even more excited this time.

It's an honor, man. I'm excited to be here. You've. The work you do. Like, I've listened to so many of your episodes. Like, the depth of questions and the way you extract the insights from people is really impressive. It's no doubt that's why you've had so much success with the podcast. So I appreciate you having me.

Yeah, dude. And that's an honor saying you saying that about me. I know you're big on the media side of things. I've been doing that for years, working with the best of the best in the SaaS community, and I know there's always great things happening. And obviously your new book now, Buy Back youk Time, which is literally a user manual to buy back your time. I mean, it says it all. It's pretty damn obvious.

I explained that because I wrote it to buy back my time, which, you know, people always like, why'd you buy it? Or why'd you write it? I'm like, for that reason. So, yeah.

Do you read the title? That's all you gotta read. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's literally an SOP or a playbook, like you say, on doing that. And like, I was alluding to or telling you right before hitting record. I've had a nice revamp in my business. This podcast, it's been rebranded. I lost a co host, but I gained so much more. Yeah, but it's been all about systems, man. It's the only way this thing stays consistent. But then that's. That's just like a motto for life. I feel like that's business, and it's pretty easy to get drained our time and energy and money if we don't have these things set in place. So kudos to you for releasing that and being open to, like, literally giving away your best of best shit.

Thank you.

It's out there. Yeah, man, but walk us back, man. So, SaaS Academy, you've been doing that for years. That's probably what a lot of people know you of. And I know we talked a lot about that last time. I'm sure the SaaS game has changed a lot since we last chatted to AI, no code, all this stuff.

Totally. Yeah.

Yeah. Any, I guess, like, quick thoughts on that for the people that came for Dan Martell and they know you, you know, for.

For.

For those days, I. I'll talk about.

Kind of like, where I think the future goes, and then, you know, if you want to jump into, like, how I got here. But the truth, the, the fundamentals, kind of like Jeff Bezos says, you know, customers will always want a water selection, you know, product faster at the cheapest price. Like there's these fundamentals, right? And in business growth, cause that's what I'm, you know, people reach out to me for. I've, I've, you know, I currently run two eight figure companies. The CEO, I've built and exited multiple companies and I coach the best of the best. I mean all the top coaches on the Internet, I've had calls with them, I help them scale their programs, I help them scale their companies. And what I've discovered is there's four master skills, right? The four master skills are content, you know, SOPs, media.

Capital, takes money to make money. So how do you, how do you produce a capital efficient company? The third is code, right, you just alluded to that like automation and AI is a big area. And then the fourth is collaboration, people and leadership and hiring, right? So those are the four master skills. And to the degree that an individual, an entrepreneur, starting off, any person, right, decides to master those skills is literally the unlock code for growth. And AI is just one of the most critical ones when it comes to the code side. But, but within that bucket of code, so is, you know, data and information systems reporting. You know, like I coach a lot of clients and I always, I always like to mess around with the executive team. When I ask them, like, you know, everybody write in the chat, how many customers do you have? And I'll get three different people giving three different answers and sometimes the answers are wildly different. I mean just answering that simple question of how many customers we have active paying us is a tough thing for some people to figure out. So the AI stuff is just one of the most powerful, disruptive and still needs to be integrated properly into the business. Both as a tool to create value for the customer and also a tool to enhance the current output of a team member. Right. And you know, in all of my Companies it is 100% mandatory that AI needs to be a daily habit. There's no if and or buts. We train against it, we show people the tools to use it. It's, it's essentially, I think in the future is going to be two types of companies. They're going to be companies that are AI companies and then companies that are out of business.

Damn right. I mean that's the thing. It's not AI that's going to take over, it's the people who are using AI to, to do Things like you said, way more scale. There's still collaboration is a big piece. Yeah, it's part of those Cs is I know some people just go deep into like AI is going to do it all. It's like there's still the people component, there's still this, you know, your referrals. That's a massive part of anything you do to get extra scale. But yeah, the AI skills, I guess like if you were to just sum everything up into like the tools, call it top three and we don't need to go deep on this, but what are the tools like your team that you would require them or I guess prompt them to use?

This is going to be a funny one because true to the nature of my book, I don't do a lot good. And yeah, so I actually don't know nor is it my job to tell people. And because the truth is within AI, it changes every three months. Like I'm an investor in about 17 AI companies, right. And I talked to the CTO. I, I was on a call today. One of the companies I'm involved in is called wisdom AI.com and essentially like creates a GPT or an AI for your either an individual or a company. Right. So I don't, I don't. There's no specific tool that I can recommend other than if you don't have, I mean my quick filter for most of my clients that I coach is if you don't have a pro account or an API key for at least GPT or Bart or Claude, whatever AI, you know, model you want to use, then you're probably not thinking about this to the degree I'm talking about. Right? Like you literally have to have it ingrained into your business. And then I always empower the team leads to figure out like in my media team, you know, what AI plugins are they going to use or play with. I mean again, it changes so fricking like literally almost every week now. You know, the team's trying something new to see if it is got a better result than the previous tool. Right? Everything from audio to video to clips identification to transcription to classification to sorting to storage. I mean, you name it, AI is showing up in all the software. But at minimum you should be using one of the AI models on a daily basis as part of your work. Because I can't see a scenario where anything you do can't be enhanced by it.

That's right, yeah. That's 80 if not 90 plus percent of everything are those core things. And at least Knowing how to integrate leverage that technology into your current workflow. I feel like that's the missing gap. That's the gap between most of this is the workflow. What are the playbooks, the systems that are happening between using tools like these, especially now with so many happening. I know that's the people can fall flat and just like ruin all momentum if they're testing new things, integrating new things, telling their team, use this tool totally.

And I mean the other day, like I was working on a deal, I was looking at an investment, there were some tax implication and I had like my finance team and my legal team looking at this investment and then they sent this what's called an opinion letter. Right. Essentially it's like we can't tell you what to do, but here's our opinion. And I mean, I don't know if I come off this way, but I don't, I don't like a lot of words. Like, I don't. I'm a simple guy, I like working with people. And you know, there's a new person on the account and he sends this fraking essay on all these different bylaws and structure and all that. And I just copied and pasted it put into AI and said summarize this as a three year old in five bullet points. And then I asked it to tell me what question should I be asking as an investor interested investing in this deal. And then I organized a 15 minute phone call and I got the decision made within seven minutes. Like, and they were like, how did you know to ask those questions? I was like, AI. And they're like, that's crazy. I go, no, it's crazy that you don't know this, right? Because I'm using the tool now to circumvent you in the future. You will not even be part of the conversation because we won't need and, or want to have these kind of conversations that are just time sucks. Like your email from your team was ridiculous. Don't do that again.

Same with a. Yeah, long distilled video. A lot of this stuff has AI, you know, like, like long love loom videos. But I know those can get drawn out not. And luckily they have that stuff integrated in now. But you're right, man, that's, that's usually my SOP is to go straight to bar, you know, usually Claude for something long. Give me what I got to know, you know, quickly, 80, 20 of everything. So good advice, great advice. We'll leave it there for now and I'm sure it'll pop up later on. But I want to talk about now. You've reached this point. You've. You've created this incredible playbook of business. But I feel like it's life as well, because I've been, I've been already, you know, before Travis. Got to give you a shout out. Travis Houston, for reconnecting us, as always, got to give that shout. And I was already on the system, like, hey, we got to figure some stuff out. New team, a lot happening, a lot of scale potential. And then your book showed up, and I feel like it's, it's always good timing. So dove in and it's exactly what I wanted to see. And it's something that everyone, every entrepreneur listening, no matter what size company you're in, can implement and buy back their time, whatever it looks like, whatever level. So I'm curious, like, what brought you to the point to finally put this slam it all into a book? And I know you went like, you're going big with it too. So it's reaching more people, and I appreciate that. I love that more entrepreneurs will see it. Walk me back a little bit. Little bit of the story. You know, SAS Academy is in there. I know a bunch of other companies. Why the book? Why now? And what kind of led us or led you to this point of writing it?

Yeah, I mean, and, and I started off the book with kind of the high level, my personal story. But, you know, unless your audience, you know, is, you know, went to prison, got a high speed chase and almost took their life, they're probably starting at a higher, you know, level than I did. Right. So, like, a lot of the stuff that I talk about really became the foundation for just saving my own life. You know, like going through rehab and learning to code was the substitution to my addiction. Right. And then becoming an addict of writing code, which is a positive behavior. I always joke with people that, you know, the homeless person on the street that's suffering, they're, they're not. They're about one degree different than individuals, you know, driving by, and they're McLarens, because the person who's created wealth, they just have a positive response to stress in their life, whereas people that suffer, it's just a negative response right through that addiction. So I just got lucky that I swapped out my addiction to drugs and alcohol for, you know, building tools on the Internet. Right. And this is 1997, 98. So I pretty much have built all of my companies off the principles of software. And I think that's what's unique about my approach, you know, when people are like, you know, what's different about this? It's. I think of things in systems because I'm a. I'm a software engineer at heart. And the way you build code that's repeatable and scalable is through creating these components and modules and functions and whatnot. And the. The thing that saved my life was this predictability in the business model of SaaS, what we call it today. So software as a service. But before then it was like, you know, it was cloud, and before that was asp, application service provider. And, you know, it's just this concept of, you know, people used to buy software by spending millions of dollars for CDs and installing it on, you know, know, servers in a. In a cold data center. Now we just pay 15 bucks a month per employee, and we get access to it in real time. So that predictable aspect of reoccurring revenue, it kind of filled this void inside of me that was just born with a lot of chaos. Like, I grew up with so much uncertainty that there was something about that business model that really spoke to me. And, And. And I'll give full credit to that as the. The driving force forward. Right.

Yeah.

So what happened is after I, you know, I sold my first company when I was 28, became a multimillionaire, moved to Silicon Valley, did it again, built a company, exited that within, I think it was like 30 months, you know, then did it again, did another company, Clarity, exited that company. And I think I did it in like, 24 months. That. That was like. And then I started sharing and actually Travis, giving him a shout out. He's the one that actually to this day said, why don't you do a YouTube channel?

Wow.

And that's when everything changed. I was down in San Diego, essentially retired at 30, I think I was. Yeah, I was 32 and had two young kids and my wife there. We were living down on the beach, and I ran into Travis in this random office at my buddy Chuck's place. He had this. This agency. And I just. I went in one. One day a week to kind of get some emails done. And. And that started the media journey, right? Like the creating the YouTube videos. And what I like, literally my first few videos was all around productivity and email and time, because that's what I learned in Silicon Valley from my mentors. That was completely different. The four master skills I got from Naval Ravikant, you know, naval is now famous, but back then, you know, less so. And he's the one that talked about leverage you know, and, and if I didn't figure that out, I don't think I would have had much more success because I was, I was my own worst enemy. You know, I think, and I think that's what entrepreneurs do. You know, it's like if there's a problem and they can solve it, they try to solve it. Which means that their number one strength becomes their Achilles heel as they grow their business. Like, people need to write that down. Your number one strength becomes your Achilles heel as your business. Because if the thing you're most critical of and it's the thing you're going to say, yes, I can do this if it fails, like if I owned a restaurant and the chef quit, I'm not running in the kitchen to start cooking. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but a lot of entrepreneurs do that. And instead, what the problem is that you got to solve is figure out how to hire, train, and retain a chef. That's the, the, the owner versus operator mentality that a lot of people suffer with. So, honestly, I wrote the book, you know, I jokingly say to buy back my time, but it's, it's not far from the truth. I had been teaching the principles, the buyback loop and the replacement ladder and the drip matrix, these core concepts in the book for almost 15 years. And when it came down to, you know, I, I got approached by my agent and, and a few publishers to, to work on a book. That was the only thing that was on my heart that I felt really needed to exist in the world that I felt like I had a unique perspective on. And it's been a wild ride to watch it just take over. I mean, literally entrepreneurial community after entrepreneur community, just pulling it into the H vac community and the lawn care community. And, you know, yes, I'm a software guy, but it has nothing to do with software. It's based on the principles I've extracted from being around and growing fast companies. Like companies that grow 5,000%. I mean, right now, months, my technology investments, I think we have 17 companies on the Inc. 500 list. I mean, these are literally the fastest growing companies in the world. And they all follow the same principle that I wrote about in the book.

There you go, man. And what I heard, I mean, you said this, but then I hear it even more with the startups that you did and now the ones that you're invested in. 17. And I'm sure more to come that you're.

Oh, I've got over 100 investments. Yeah, but there's a lot of them that are just crazy growth right now.

Yeah. And what I hear this common word is chaos. Like, and with entrepreneurship, restaurant owner, that's chaos. Sounds like, you know, chef quits. What do you do now? You know, you got people knocking at the door. I feel like a part of us as entrepreneurs, we're so used to it. Like, for one, we're problem solvers. We can't stop ourselves. I think you even said it. It's like if we systemized ourselves out of the business, we're not going to just go sit on the beach with the laptop and, you know, sip martinis forever or whatever. Gonna get fat. We're gonna burnt. We're gonna, you know, just. We're gonna get back to the thing. Like, we'll do it for a week or two. And. And yeah, like, same with this podcast. I'm like, I can't give this up. You know, it's like there's an expression that we do, but there's this chaos. I feel like that we. Maybe it's. I don't know if we thrive in it, but we're just so damn used to it.

It's.

We're.

We're comfortable in it. Right? So, like, in the beginning of the book, I talk about this because I just noticed this pattern. You know, when I speak to entrepreneurial groups, you know, I'd ask everybody close their eyes and put their hand up if they've ever dealt with, you know, chaos between the ages of, like, 7 and 13, and, like, 80% of the room's hands go up. And I don't think that that's uncommon. And the reason why is my. My hypothesis, and there's been research since then that's come out, is that when you're somebody that goes through, you know, chaos as a child and you learn to manage that, right? You become, you know, independent at a very young age, then that independence, that opinion that take care of yourselfness is an asset as an entrepreneur. It's a liability as a. As an employee.

Yeah, Right.

And, like, that's where a lot of entrepreneurs, it's almost like they can't be an employee because they have an opinion and they're willing to show up and they do the best work, and they get frustrated with people around them that aren't willing to do that. And it definitely comes from, you know, learning to deal with uncertainty. I mean, that's the definition of entrepreneurship, right? Is the person that can deal with uncertainty. I mean, nothing is. You're creating the future with no guarantee. It's going to happen. That being said, what needs to shift as an entrepreneur matures, the business is an understanding that they can inadvertently create chaos from predictability. Because that feels more normal than the predictability. Yet the business needs the predictability. Right. The business needs, people need to know they go to work and every day they're not going to have whiplash from you coming in and throwing away all their work from the day before, the week before, the month before to go pursue this new, you know, vision. Not to say that for the entrepreneur they can't do that, but it has to be done within a structure. And oftentimes, you know, entrepreneurs will throw hand grenades in their own business, you know, where they'll decide to revamp the website and all of a sudden it causes 50% of their sales to drop off because somebody forgot to update certain, you know what I mean? Like there's just all this, these hand grenades that or they add a new product line that makes no sense. It's like we just found the rhythm and the momentum and we've got revenue growing and now you want to like launch a new product line or, you know, you decide, I've literally seen this where, oh, things are going good. I'm going to take seven weeks off and let the team figure it out.

Like, figure it out?

Yeah. There's no company in the world that has a CEO that just leaves for seven weeks and says figure it out. I mean, that's just not how companies grow and thrive. So yeah, it's interesting, the whole chaos stuff, because I think a lot of it is, is it's emotional shrapnel. It's self inflicted. Right. The entrepreneur is creating that environment that's hard, that they need to go look in a mirror and say, how do I stop doing this?

Yeah. And it's a loop. It's definitely, we get accustomed to it. We just keep stacking stuff on. And I know you mentioned it in the way that you lead your team and how you suggest others to do the same is you're not solving their problems for them or you become that source of all of the solutions and even talked about it earlier. And yeah, without that perspective, taking a step back and understanding what am I actually doing day to day with my energy, with my time with these team members I brought on, you know, am I leading them or am I just directing them and loving the chaos, loving the need to be in the middle of it all and have my hands in it? You know, I see that as a vicious cycle and I know you talk about that here as well.

I used to be that guy. I mean like everything in my book comes from personal experience, right? And even though I back it up with research and you know, other stories and whatnot, I always try to share like how I learned these unfortunate, you know, lessons. But like I used to be the guy. I remember when I built my company Spheric and it was wild success financially, right? But it also took my engagement. Like my fiance left me. I was a horrible brother, I was a horrible son, I wasn't a very good friend. And I would remember like my calendar was full of like these meetings and structure to have everybody come to me with their problems. And, and then I would like, okay, what's your problem? And I would like route through all the like do this, do this, do this, right? And it was literally like the morning to the most part was like me doing biz dev and sales and trying to move the business forward and hiring. And then the afternoons, like just team meetings back to back to back, telling people what to do. And that was a lot of work. It felt heavy, it felt like I was burning dark energy. And everything shifted when I moved to Silicon Valley and I watched these 20 year old kids raise hundreds of millions of dollars, build these billion dollar companies within five years. And it didn't look hard, right? It wasn't easy, but the energy they brought to it was completely different. The reason why was there's these incredible coaches, you know, in the Valley, Bill Campbell being one of the most notable. Tony Robbins with Mark Benioff and many others that were teaching these entrepreneurs naval, I would say would definitely be in that camp. As an investor. He would advise a lot of these, these entrepreneurs how they should show up for their teams. And it was this approach of I'm here to support you, but I'm not here to do your work, right. The concept of an editor, not an author, right. And you know, even if it's deeply technical work or deeply creative work, like you know, shooting content or media writing code, like all these things, I understand that people have these beliefs like, but what I do is so unique and different. I get that. But if you actually step back and you ask people to step up to the occasion and present you solutions, right? And I talk about this in the book, the one three one rule. Like when somebody comes to you with a problem, don't give them the answer. Ask them what options they've evaluated and try to come up with at least three, right? And then ask them what one recommendation out of the three they think is the best answer, they'll give you that 90% of the time. That is the right path forward.

Yeah.

So all of a sudden, now I've created this leadership structure that is a collaborative approach, not a transactional one way, tell them what to do. And it turns out if people help build the plan, they don't fight the plan. Right. And all of a sudden now it's. And this is where the chaos can easily rear its head. It feels too easy.

Yeah.

And it feels wrong. People are like, where's my grenade? Nobody's calling me and they're doing all this work and I don't feel like I'm working hard enough. Like, is that right? I know I'm not, but I mean it literally. I got to work with clients and just be like, no fires is okay. Now let's go talk about filling up your time. That's why I talk about my book, the Buyback Loop. With the right things to grow the business, not throw hand grenades and let people do the work because you ask them. You hired people to do a job. Right. And Steve Jobs says this. He said, you know, it's easy to hire people and tell them what to do. It's hard to hire people and have them tell you what to do.

Yeah.

I hired. Like you asked me about the AI. I hire people that are going to tell me what AI tools are going to use.

I love the answer too. Yeah.

It's a different approach.

Big announcement here. The Hustle and Flowchart podcast is now the newest podcast on the HubSpot Podcast Network. They're the audio destination for business professionals. It's exactly, exactly why I joined the network, to expand what we've been doing here. Making business the fuel for your life, not the stressor or the burnout. We want to build fun and make business a big part of who we are and our expression out to others. So you're going to expect a lot more. More curated guests that sync up with this mission. Also, more topics and episodes from me. And I want you to keep listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. Go check out other shows on the Hub HubSpot podcast network@HubSpot.com podcastnetwork. Are you looking to earn more online? It's time to meet Kartra. It's your ultimate, all in one business platform that makes it even easier to boost your income online. So with Kartra, creators, coaches and experts can turn their knowledge and services into profits. You can create pages, funnels and attract customers, build membership sites and share your knowledge, automate your business so you can free up your time and build, do a whole bunch of other fun stuff. So Kartra has every tool you need to grow your business in one place. And the best part is that it's super affordable and easy to use. So now's the time to streamline and scale your biz. Head over to hustleandflowchart.com Kartra and snag a free 30 day trial. Again, that's hustleandflowchart.com K A R T R A. And that's, you know, this buyback loop. I definitely want to dive into that. And what. Because you mentioned that a handful of times now and I guess now's a great time because I was going to also mention one other principle and like I just have already been putting this into coaching calls, putting it into, you know, my own team, you know, clients and internal team is this 108010 concept and I freaking love it. I don't know which one is in the best order to introduce first. I guess I'll leave it to you on that regard because we still get our hands involved. But it's in the right ways and it's pre planned.

Yeah, I mean I'll start with the 108010 rule because it's closest to what we were just talking about. I mean at the end of the day, and I noticed this with all the highest performer CEOs, right? And you can literally see the pattern in the Steve Jobs to the Gary Vaynerchuk to whoever, right? Especially around deeply creative and technical endeavors. Usually the 10% is this is essentially the ideation, right? It's hey, I want to revamp our website. Here's everything. And I always, I always try to explain it this way is you want to paint the mountaintop, right? If I'm ideating somebody with a new website, I'm coming to that meeting prepared to say like, here's what success looks like, right? And what are the three to six criteria of success? I think it's really important that everybody get really clear of like when this thing is done, these things are true and this is the vision, right? You know, you can call it what you want, but it's that first 10%. Then from there, just like Steve Jobs would go into the design studio with Johnny Ives and say, you know, like, I've got this crazy idea of putting a thousand songs in my pocket. I don't know, like, you know, and then we could integrate this and that and you know, I don't know how it would work, but Johnny, I want you to, I want you to kind of explore it some more, right? And then Johnny would do the other 80%, which is actually doing the work, right? And that 80% is, you know, it could be, you know, designing like doing the whole website, getting it, hiring the contractors, putting together with the clear understanding of what it needs to look like at the end, and then the last 10%. That's why it's the 108010 rule. That's the integration work, that's the Steve Jobs taking it and working on the slides for the, the keynote, right? Or, you know, Gary Vee, you know, seeing all the videos that people have edited, grabbing one and writing the caption and posting it on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, right? Like it's, it's the final part, you know, or it's like me working with my writing partner and going away for five days and doing a final rewrite, edit, copy approved version of my book. Because it's, this is my words and my stamp and my fingerprint, right? Like, but it's not the whole thing, right? It's, it's the 108010 allows highly creative people. I mean, it's just like you with your podcast, right? And I don't know what the process is, but if I had a podcast like this, it essentially as soon as I hang up, everything else would be done, right? It's like even the booking of the guest to, you know, the queue, the scheduling, everything. It's literally I wake up, I show up, I've got my notes here, I, I, I do five minutes of prep, I get on the call, I do my conversation, I hang up, I go to another one. Maybe you batch them, but that's, that's the concept a lot of people need to understand. The 108010 rule allows you to scale yourself in ways that are creative. That doesn't allow you to become the bottleneck. Because in that structure, if you're Johnny Ives and Steve Jobs or you're Gary Vee, like we're talking major scale like these companies, you know, billions of dollars of value in the world. So anybody that's trying to, to crack 100k, I really have no excuse of that not working because it does work.

It does work and it still keeps, it retains this personable or the vision of the founder, you know, Steve Jobs and then Gary Vee, I mean, you get this sense that they're always, I mean, who knows? I can't speak for Gary Vee. I mean, they're all working their asses off, obviously, but they're on the right things and they still have that approach that it's still their thing. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs feel like they lose touch of their business if they're somehow not involved. Maybe that's why the grenades are thrown.

Well, and they might be forgetting the last 10%. I mean, this is the thing is you could do the first 10, the 80, but you forget the last 10, and that's where you feel that way.

Bingo. Yeah, that's, that's what stood out to me, was that last 10%. It's like you still almost get that gratification, but at the end, end of the day, it's a fingerprint. And that starts vision, middle fingerprint, out into the world expression. I think it's just a cool concept and I haven't heard it before you mention it. So buyback loop. I want to talk about how that integrates and how it is this continual process on a lot of what you've been talking about here.

What I've learned a long time ago is entrepreneurs won't grow into pain. If right now I said, okay, you know, you triple the size of your business tomorrow, your, your leads, you know what breaks people are like, well, fulfillment would break and sales would break and billing would break and like the whole thing would break. So guess what? They won't grow. Okay? So like opportunities show up every day in our lives. It could be a conversation next to a person on a plane, to an email to, to a partner that could triple our volume or whatever. And entrepreneurs will literally drag their feet and self sabotage their way to success because they will not grow into pain. Okay? So my rule is, is that as soon as I feel like my calendar is starting to feel work and painful, as long as my business is growing and I have the capital, then my whole philosophy, and this is what's called the buyback principle, is I don't hire people to grow my business. I hire people to buy back my time. And say it again, we don't hire people to add capacity. We hire people to buy back our time. Because if I do the second, I get the first, but if I do the first, I don't get the second. Most businesses that feel pain, it's because they've hired honestly, more expensive people that are specialists, but they don't have enough infrastructure to support that. And then they're running around, you know, emptying the garbage and taking, you know, doing onboarding calls and making sure the billing gets done, like just a bunch of banana stuff. They shouldn't be Doing, right? So what the buyback loop states is once you feel the pain line, right, this pain of growth, you have to do three things. Number one is you have to do a time and energy audit. You literally look at the last two weeks of your calendar, and you circle in red things that suck your energy and in green, that give you energy. And then you put a dollar amount next to the cost of paying somebody else to do it. Is it $1 very cheap or $4 very expensive? Right? And it's. It's arbitrary, based on the size of your business. But that'll at least give you an idea of all the things that are red, that are one or two dollar signs. That's your spec list for your next hire. That's literally what do I need to hire for next? That, and Ideally, that buys 20, 30 hours out of your calendar. That's why I teach the concept of replacement ladder in the sequence of hiring. But once I do the time and energy audit, then I'm going to the transfer side, okay? So I do the audit. Second one's transfer, then fill transfer is taking that stuff that I'm doing and giving it to somebody else. And most people are scared about that because, like, hiring a lot of people or hiring even one person takes a lot of time to train them, right? And they're always worried, what if I train them and they leave? And I always say, well, what if you don't and they stay? You know, like, you got to train them, right? So training really comes down to a simple process that I still do to this day. Literally every day, I do this. It's called the camcorder method, where I'm recording myself doing the work. So let me just give everybody a sense of how cool this could get. 1. I don't pack my clothes when I go on trips. I just got back from a big mountain bike, heli biking, downhill, Mahali biking. I didn't pack my bag, okay? I don't create slides for my keynotes. I don't create trainings. I don't. I don't do anything that isn't a creative process for myself. I literally look at my calendar and say, I only want to spend time with people I care about, and I want to create stuff that only I can create. Other than that, it. It needs to get out of my calendar right now. We don't start there. I've earned the right to get there by being disciplined in my, you know, buyback loop. But the transfer process for all of those steps is videos. And then I have the Person receiving the video create the sop. And then I use that to train new people so that there's always a quick way to go from zero to hero for every new hire. So that's the transfer side and then the fill. This is where most people fill. See, if you think of it like a loop, that last part of the fill. If you don't fill, you actually don't get the forward momentum. And that's where everybody messes it up. They do the audit, love it, they transfer, cool, hired somebody, but then they don't replenish their calendar with. With. One of two things is either doing more of the thing you do that makes you money. So if you're a logo designer, create more logos. If you're a coach, fill up your time that you just bought back with more coaching calls until you're at capacity, and then you buy back your time. And then over time you'll have free space. What do you do with that? To me, my argument is you want to invest in yourself, right? Because if you want more in your business, you gotta become more. You know, John Maxwell calls it the law of the lid. Like a business will never grow further than the investment of the owner into their own personal growth. Like, period, full stop. It's, you know, Jim Rohn said, you know, don't wish the world was easier, wish that you were better. That philosophy holds true in the fill. So what are the three areas that you should invest in? Okay, if you're going to fill your calendar with new things, these are the three areas. Number one, it's your skills, right? Every person should know what are the three skills you have to develop this year, this quarter, to become more for your company and or projects you're involved in. So skills is number one, right? And for most people, it's going to be lead gen and sales, right? Or it's going to be lead gen and systems, or it's going to be lead gen. Like, you know what I mean? Like, most people don't have enough customers, but even if they had more, they don't know how to deal with them. So those are skills, though. You can learn those. Go invest in those things. Buy the books, go to, buy the courses, find the coaches, go to the sessions, go to the seminars, whatever it is. The other area is beliefs, right? The truth is, is there's no lack of how to on the Internet, how to do anything. You can literally search how to. My dad just recently cemented his own driveway and he found several videos on YouTube that walked him through it. Step by step, so that he did it for 2,000 bucks instead of $10,000 hiring somebody to do it for him. Right? So the how to is there. What is lacking is the beliefs around doing the work, right? So some people, for example, like, they could go on the Internet to figure out how do I create a YouTube ad for my business. But their belief is, well, I don't want to look like Tai Lopez, right. I don't want to look like Russell Brunson. I don't want to look like whoever they think is, you know, running video ads on the YouTube that they have judgment around, like, y. But that's a belief, right? Because nobody said that you had to look like that or say those things or even come across that way. Like, you can decide how you show up on camera. So that belief is stopping you from the how to. So I always tell people, like, really go deep on your beliefs. And typically, it's around abundance and money mindset and scarcity and fears, right?

Oh, yeah.

Then the third area is character traits. And the way I think about it is the skills is like the left side of the success ladder. The beliefs is the right side of the success ladder. And then the character traits are the steps that lock everything in. So what are. What are character traits that help you climb the ladder of success? Consistency, determination, you know, fearlessness, directness. Like, there's all these character traits about successful people, right? Successful people make decisions. Most people sit on their hands, right? Like, they're gonna eventually have to make a decision. And you could either make it today or in three weeks, but you're gonna have to make a decision again. Decisiveness is a character trait. So I always say, if you. If you're trying to build that ladder of success, you know. Yes. Get the skills to figure out how to move the business forward, then figure out what beliefs you have that are not serving you. So, like, that's the biggest fear is, what do I believe? That is simply not true. Because if I didn't believe that, it would change the way I prioritize my life, which would get me the results I'm after. And then what character traits? Who do I need to become to be able to attract and or support that new level of wealth? Because this is the reality. If we took all the money, we kind of did this global experiment recently, but if we took all the money in the world and distributed evenly to everybody in the world, within months, it would be back in the hands of the people it had originally.

That's right. That's like the lotto Right, Yeah. Like, not. That's like.

Because the people that get the money, like Jim Rohn used to say, said, you know, you should wish that if you got a million dollars, that you became a millionaire really quick. Because those are two different things. Right. I think you were just alluding to that with the lottery.

Like, that's right.

If you don't know how to manage the success and you accidentally get the success, you will lose the success. And most people aren't ready. And that's why I always tell you, I really want to just end on this. On the buyback loop is when we're going through challenges, we should actually remind ourselves that this is preparing us to receive the thing we've been asking ourselves for. Think about that. No matter what you're dealing with, a tax audit, a business partner screwed you over, the government, this, the bank said this, the team member, the customer, whatever, whatever the person listening right now believes, I'm telling you, it's getting you ready to receive the thing you've been asking for. And if you don't look for that learning, then when you receive that thing, you will quickly lose it.

Man.

And I know that goes back even into the North Star. Like, where are you headed? You know, what's. What's the game plan to even get there? And yeah, it's. Oh, man, this is. This actually reminds me of kind of like the main idea. I know you said a sentence kind of like this, but if, like, you. You buy back your time to unlock another level of your growth, and I think I added this part, is not to just sit on your ass and let life happen to you.

Well, and that's the whole thing about people, you know, people that don't have money go, I. I would love to be rich so I don't have to work. And, you know, unfortunately, people that have that mentality never get rich. Because that's not how you get rich.

No.

Right. So, like, my whole subtitle, my book is get unstuck, reclaim your freedom, and build your empire. But build your empire for me is creating a life of unlimited creation you never have to retire from.

Yeah, there you go.

So that's like, if you strive to wake up every day, and I always frame it this way, is like, don't try to do the least amount of work to get paid the most. Try to wake up to be able to create the most value for other people in the world. The second one will actually get you wealthy. The first one will keep you poor.

Yeah, that's true. And that's it's. You need one, but it's gotta, you gotta get there. Yeah, it's all connected. And yeah, it's very interesting because I was doing more of a self reflection process and I was like, okay, a character trait of mine, very curious, very creative. It really doesn't matter. It could be arts, working out, music, business, writing, podcasting, but if I don't create space for that creativity, and I know that's my superpower, at least something I know I can harness and go deeper on when I have, when I create that space for that, why aren't I not building the systems to foster that, to put that on my calendar, but also not just place fun stuff or whatever that time on my calendar, but also know I have people and systems behind me to do things way better than I ever could. This goes back a little bit, but it's an energy thing. I feel like, like you said, pushing dark energy.

Speak to element. Because I think that's. I think we feel it more that way. Time, we all have the same 24 hours. We always talk about that, but at the same time, like I have been auditing, you know, my time. 15 minute increments, like another rehash of it. And it's pretty damn eye opening to see where time goes. Setting a stopwatch, having to remind something you could. Everything had 15 minute timers. And then just seeing like, wow, that's where time is going for me right now. And of course do the whole highlighter thing, you know, dollar signs and. But at the same time, it was like this. I think the aha moment really was to see, oh shit, I'm putting off these creative acts. The things that light me up, that make me. And I'm just letting the time slip away. And I'm putting probably dark energy towards things that I don't enjoy. My energy is not going up because of those tasks.

The way I think about life is I think every human is here to create from a place of flow state. So if you think of what flow state is, if you've been fortunate enough to experience it, essentially it's getting to a place where time actually is distorted, you know, and in the book I talked about math class and art class. Like when I would go to math class, you know, and it was an hour long class, it felt like every second just was so like, I remember it's like I'm hearing the clock count down. Right.

Been there. Yeah.

Yes. And then you go. For me, I go into art class and all, you know, you hear the bell ring and what Felt like three minutes, the, The. The bell rings, that art's over, and I'm, like, still into it because I lost all track of space and time. Right. And for me, that's the, you know, that is a lighter energy. Right? You can. Yes. Sometimes we have to put our heads down and get the work done. I'm not opposed to doing hard work. I do Ironmans, I do ultras. I. I'm cool, you know, I, I grind when I have to, but I also understand there's a space and time. But what I like to focus on, and this is why I have to do the buyback loop three, four times a year.

Is figure out because some things used to be green that turned yellow and eventually red. Like, you know, not too long ago, I was, I was on a. I was part of a board, and the board meeting went from green to yellow, and as soon as it got a little close to red, I just reached out to the, you know, the executive chairman and asked to resign from the board. That's just because that's the stage I'm at in my life where I literally, if I don't feel like it's using my creative juices in the right way and, and lighting me up in my soul to keep me in flow state, I'm just not going to do it. And giving yourself permission to say no is a very powerful thing. And I talk about this in the book. Right. Most people don't realize a yes is a no and a no is a yes. Let me unpack that. A yes is saying indirectly no to something else. That's a priority. Okay. And a no is saying yes to creating the space for you to become more. So most people just don't realize when they're saying yes and no, they're not creating that space. So that's why it's important to do an inventory of our time and go, where am I? You know, really in flow state and feel like this is a good use of my time that produces a bunch of revenue or potential revenue for my business versus what's taking my energy that really shouldn't be done by me. Because, you know, I get asked as an example all the time, should I hire a coo? And my first question is, do you have an executive assistant? And they usually say no. And I go, then, no, you don't need a coo. You need an executive assistant. Okay? Because here's what I know. If you don't have an executive assistant, you are the assistant. And the truth is, is you probably suck at it. And you're overpaid.

That's right.

So you don't need to hire a COO to manage the business. You need to have somebody manage you so that you have the time to manage the business. Get to a place where a CEO makes sense, but learn how to have that interaction and process and conversations with your executive assistant before you go and spend three, four, five times as much money on a COO to run your business where you don't have the skill set yet to do that.

Yeah, man. And let's, let's end it on that note, because it's perfect. And I've been kind of waiting for this. And I know you have a whole process here. We can, we can provide, folks, because I have a badass operations manager. I've seen her, but I never put her in the EA position. And to do all that, and I'm like, why the. Like, it was just like this, huh? Duh. So literally, she's getting started right now and has gone through some of the resources from the book. She's starting to read the book and she's like, this is it. This is it. Like, why haven't we done like. Yes, I know. So tell me about. Because I really feel like the EA process is something that. Or just knowing that you need an ea. You figure out what your time is worth. You have a whole equation on that becomes abundantly clear that I think it's like 4x, you know, it's like divide what your, Your, your revenue, your earnings by 4, and you basically figure out, like, what your buyback rate is. Yeah, yeah, the buyback rate.

If you do anything for more than that amount, you're essentially working against yourself.

There you go. So it's like, it's black and white. So we don't need to. It's not like a conditional. They like, just do the dang thing and we're ready for it. You're ready for it. Listening. Now hit us up with, obviously, buy back your time is the book. Go get that. But give us this EA process or where you feel like maybe some thoughts and then that link.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so chapter six of the book is really where I unpack how I work with my executive assistant that is based off the highest performers in Silicon Valley and just me doing this for decades and honestly learning from, you know, even Richard Branson. So I, I like talk about that story where I get to watch him execute for a week. I was staying in his house in Switzerland and it was just fascinating. Right? Most people then, you know, I'm the same way. I. I just want to, you know, I call myself a frustrated builder. Like, just show me, give me the checkbox, the list, the process. So if anybody wants my internal executive assistant playbook, like my sop, all I ask is follow me on Instagram, right? It's a little give and take. And then just message me on Instagram ea, okay, executive assistant. And I will send you the direct Google. You know, sanitize, of course, with all my personal information out of it. But I'll give you my internal playbook for how my assistant executes all the stuff I teach in my book, and a ton of stuff that never made the book, obviously, because my editor said, you know, this is not a university textbook. This is a bestseller. So let's, let's take all this out. But it's got everything. It's got our North Star principles, it's got how we manage travel and our preference sheets and all these other things that I think will really give people a 360 view of. Oh, there's a difference between a virtual assistant and an executive assistant. And the answer is yes. And, you know, if you follow my stuff and you, you hear my arguments, to me, that's the first hire. I don't care what business you're in, what stage of business you're in. If I started over from scratch tomorrow, I would borrow money from my brother and I would hire an executive assistant, and we'd start day one that way. Because it's just the most efficient trade that you can make.

Leverage. It's instant leverage. Instance. So many ways, man. So, yeah, go get that. Go find Dan on Instagram. Go, go hit him up in the.

Dan Martell 2 Elder Martell on Instagram. But yeah, Dan Martell, you'll find me.

Yeah, and send EA and go buy. Buy back your time. Obviously, we know why you should be doing that, so go grab that book. Dan, appreciate you so much, man, for being open and providing these resources. And, yeah, it's, it's unique.

Joe. Joe, it's an honor, man. And I just want to share this with your audience because, you know, I love your specific community. I say that, and I don't say this often, but because I've been on before, I really believe two things. Every human is here to do one or two things. One is become the best version of themselves.

Right?

What I call the 10.0 version of ourselves. And the only way to do that, you know, and I, and I did it by design to buy back your time, to create the space, to become that person. Another way to think about is become the person you needed most in your darkest days. Right. Like, I know who I would have listened to as a teenager going through all those challenges, and it required me to step up and become who I am today to be and this big part of my life. So I'm most proud of. I still spend a lot of time talking and working with at risk youth. So that's step one, become the best version of yourself. And step two is, you know, share that process and path with the world. Right? And if your world is your kids or your family or your community, then cool, I would encourage you to share with the world. World, right. The people that follow you, your friends on Facebook, you know, call it social media, call it being that guy on the Internet. I don't honestly care what you call it, but I just can't see where you giving of yourself isn't a thing that will be a net positive for everybody involved. And I would just hope everybody can get to a place where that feels like a calling for them just like it is for you. Joe.

Appreciate it, man. And you called it outright. That is what fuels me. So go get it, y'.

All.

Dan, appreciate you, man. We'll talk again soon.

Cheers.

All right. All right. That's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living to work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But, you know, work can be fun and it should be fueling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now, please go to tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list, writing a review or whatever it might be, everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast and I will see you next time.

Sam.