How To Buy Back Your Time with Dan Martell

I'm too busy right now to train somebody to have some help to get. I can't afford to get the wrong help. I don't have extra time. What would you want? What do you want them to know?

Well, first off, I want. I want to share the perspective or invite them to consider that the way they're operating today is not going to get the outcomes that they want to achieve. Because if it was, it would have showed up already.

Today on midlife Conversations, I've got a guest that just sort of challenged me. He said, maybe I'm not midlife, but he is. I got Dan Martell. Dan, thanks for being here today. Dan is the author of buy back your time. And if you have been following me on social media, you know I've been geeking out over his book. I was recommended it on Audible. I listened to it six times. I took tons of notes, and then I bought the book so I could highlight. And I told everyone in my life that they needed to go get this book stat. So I had more questions. So, Dan, thank you so much for being here today.

Oh, it's an honor, Natalie. I'm super excited. I. I am. I'm a. Fascinated by what you do. I think the, the. The health and the hormones and, and the wellness side of, of your brand is just, like, so important, specifically as it pertains to buying back our time. Because, yeah, like, health is the number one. If you don't have that, then you can have all the wealth in the world. You can't buy more time. And we all want to be healthy. So this is going to be a fun conversation.

So which brings me to why I thought this was such an important topic for this podcast. Because you. I know your book was meant mostly for business about buying back your time, but as I was listening to it, I was sort of patting myself on the back, like, I do some of this in business, but am I doing it in my personal life? And the reason I wanted to have you on is so many people, especially in midlife, they're like, okay, I get it. I need to take my health up a notch. I need to make this a priority. I need to make my being present in life a priority. I've got to take those vacations. And they say I don't have time. I just don't have time. For whatever reason, they don't have it. So I want to dive into that, like, first and foremost. What made you write this book? Like, where did the concept even come from?

Yeah, I mean, the reality of it is in my life, I have a philosophy that I want to be the lighthouse, not the tugboat. Meaning that when I see things going on around me, my friends, family, community, where, you know, people are struggling with the balance, with their habits, with whatever, I just keep looking at myself and I look in the mirror and I go, okay, that spoke to me for whatever reason, that person, that situation, and I'm just going to work on me. And what happened was, is I had all these incredible entrepreneurs and business people in my life that I cared a lot about. And I just saw them struggling with, growing their business, you know, false starts. Like, I grew a lot, made no money, downsize, put on 20, 30, 40 pounds, you know, in a year, you just, you just see people over time and you're just like, again, if they don't ask me, I don't say anything. And what happened was, is I, I'm really well known in the software space. That's kind of my thing. Software as a service is what it's called. And what people were not aware of until one of my friends, Ron, called me up was how I look at my time to scale companies. But as it applies to my life, as you know, in the last chapter of the book's called the Buyback Lifestyle, and to me, personal, professional, they're the same thing. So I wrote this book for 25 specific people. I wrote their names down. Some of them were podcasters to nine figure CEOs that I just saw the way they looked at their time and the belief systems that they have created that was working against them. It was like they were swimming against the river, right? In regards to, like, well, I say I want this, but I, I don't have time. I don't make time. I don't believe I have, you know, and, and I just deconstructed the concepts into what I call first principles, which is a physics process of. Let's just, let's just talk about time. Let's talk about the value of time. Let's talk about what your time is worth and what's important to you and how can we get more of it so that we can live. A more integrated or even better term than integrated, I think is a harmony in our lives, right? Because I don't think we always have balance, but we can at least manage expectations with our loved ones and people around us. But I wrote it for these 25 people, my family, my friends, to be a reference manual for how to do it. Because like, I run to eight figure companies and the CEO of them, I train For Ironman, I have two young boys, Max and Noah. I have a beautiful wife. We do date nights. Like, I live this people outside of, like, how do you do it all? And there's a lot of. It's not one thing. It's a whole bunch of stuff. And that's what I put in the book.

Well, I want to dive into that a little more because it's so. First of all, so many stories stood out in that book. Like, you gave an example of getting invited last minute to do something with Richard Branson. He was going to be there. And you observed on that trip how everybody else who was in entrepreneur hustle mode was so busy, like, they couldn't put down their phone. Everything was urgent. And he was the one that was sitting there super present, like, really asking questions and really enjoying the trip.

And.

And, you know, when you said that, my. My thought was, I bet people when they hear that goes, oh, well, that's because he's got billions. He's got time to do that. But I actually could see what you were saying in the book, that, no, he actually created billions because of that way of being. So I want to. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Because I'm summarizing a story here that really stood out to me, and I think that's what people think. They think when I arrive, I'll have the time and what you're under. The whole underlying part of the book is you've got to become that person now to create that.

Yeah. I share so many stories like Richard's, you know, even Oprah, where I say to people, it's like, we don't become rich and then get to live a life where we do things we love to do. That creates a lot of value. It's because we honor that first that we then create the outcomes. And that's what, like, Richard's the billionaire that other billionaires want to be like. And when I got that email to go spend a week with them in Switzerland, I pinch my. I mean, Natalie, I grew up in a small town in eastern Canada. Like, I was living in San Francisco at the time. It was until I was sitting in the living room and watched him walk out of the back room that I was like, oh, my gosh, that's Richard Branson. Like, why am I here? Imposter syndrome at an 11. Like, I was, like, way outside of it. And. But before I went, you know, kind of like, I go to events, I always send intention. Usually it's to me, one or two people that I think I could be friends with the rest of my life. And I keep it simple. The tension I set for meeting Richard was very, very clear, is I want to understand how he looks at his time because he's the billionaire everybody else admires.

Yes.

And what is, what is his frame? How does he communicate with staff? How does he. How is he one on one? And when I saw just like how disconnected he was from any chaos in his business, and I think at the time, Virgin Galactic had just crashed like, you know, like a major space shuttle test, like, and he was here being with us. Oh, like 100 million dollar problem, right?

Yeah.

And. And what I discovered was his relationship with his assistant. Her name is Helen. And every morning for breakfast, they sit down and she acts as, like, the time protector. And he's empowered her to be this person. Essentially. Nobody gets to Richard without going through Helen. Not because it's a power thing. It's more of a respect for them saying, Richard probably doesn't know who the best person is for this, but Helen will. So what happens is she deals with 99% of the requests on Richard's time, his schedule. She knows better than Richard his resources, the right people. She writes a lot, and only that 1% does she bring to his attention. And they have breakfast every morning for 90 minutes. And it's in that conversation that they resolve things. And then she learns. Because I get to spend a lot of time with Helen.

Yeah.

And she's an incredible soul. She travels with them around the world. She literally maintains all communication with all of his 400 companies in the Virgin group of businesses. And even while we were there, the CEO of Virgin Atlantic flew in, flew into Geneva, helicopter to the place in Berbier to have a 45 minute conversation with Richard on the patio.

Wow.

Like, if you want to talk about somebody that understands his time and his structure, because I remember asking the guy, because Richard brought him in, introduce us to the group, and I was like, I'm just curious, like, what, what did you fly here to talk to Richard about, if you don't mind me asking? He's like, well, we just bought these new Dreamliner planes and Richard doesn't want to sit on board. So I wanted him to find out before I told the board how we were doing on the training, the test runs. And I'm like, he even has a rule. Like, I don't. He. I asked him, I said, why don't you sit on boards? He goes, because they're boring. I was like, that's such a simple concept.

But it's true and it does hold so many people back. Like if you think about, I mean that's not unique ability of a COO or the person that's list leading the company.

And he just set the criteria for the things that light him up. And that's why I talk about the book in the time and energy audit is what are the activities and they can change over time, right? Things that light you up today might feel like soul sucking in the future. But what are things that when I do that activity gives me energy and what are things that take my energy and how do I over time? This is not an overnight. You just wake up one day, it's like poof. It's just systematically using the buyback loop that I teach you, curate and cultivate and design your life and especially in your home life. And like, if we just sit down and say like, what would a 10 out of 10 day look like? When would I wake up? What would my routine be? What kind of conversations would I have? What kind of creation would I want to work on? Like output? And then you just tried to create that day over, you know, the week and over a month. Like that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to optimize through hormone work or you know, fitness and health. Like, we're, we're trying to figure out what's optimal for us. And it's different, it's very unique. And what I an example I want everybody to take away from that story, Richard is he honored his preferences. He knew I don't like to sit on boards. One of the reason we were there is because he personally enjoys going on vacation with other people that he can have like inspiring conversations with. At the time, I was building the software company called Clarity and that's how I got invited. He wanted to talk about entrepreneurship in a global level and he thought I might have some perspectives. And I just think that's an interesting lens on life is saying like, can I give myself permission to express my preferences to cultivate my life?

I find that people like, I'll speak for myself here. Like, I think I do a pretty good job in business of that. Like, I think I've managed my business where I focus on my unique ability. And I. I'm very clear, like what I should be delegating what I not. I got better reading your book. You gave me so many good ide. But I see, I saw the gap in my personal life, which would surprise me because Dan asked you to do this exercise in the book that when I, when I listened to it, I was like, I want to poke my eyes out. Really? He said that you have to write down what you're doing every 15 minutes. So like literally, like for two weeks. He says, and he says in the book that if you start doing it, most people will start self correcting. Like, because when you write it down, just like if you're writing down your food, you're going to start self correcting because you're like, I'm writing it down. I don't want to write a bite of Reese's pieces when you have to write everything down. So I started doing it and it wasn't my work stuff that it was the all the wasted, ridiculous personal time that I'm like, wow, I could have just gone and killed an amazing workout or done this or something else. So it was so powerful, like where I wasted my most time down. And you probably won't be surprised. This is probably a lot of people. I couldn't, I'm embarrassed to say that I had spent like three and a half hours like scrolling random social media throughout a day. Like what? Three and a half hours? That's a lot of time.

It's a lot. And most people are just not aware because we don't measure it. And for me and what I talk about in the book specifically, it's, it's when we say yes to something, we're inadvertently saying no. So when you unconsciously say yes to three and a half hours of TikTok, you're saying no to building a deeper relationship with your best friend or your family. Your family. And then like, that's the, the thing that when I coach people one on one, it's the intentionality that I want to bring to the life creation. You know, one of the best exercises I've ever done was being asked, well, if you only had five years to live, what would you do with your time? Because it's enough time to do something meaningful, but not too little time to be irresponsible. Right. And then there's one year. Okay, so five years, one year to live. What would you do differently? Okay, well now I can be a little irresponsible. I have 12 months. You know, we're going to go travel the world. What about two weeks? If I only had two weeks left? Well, that's a little different. I might get a big house on a ski hill or on a beach and invite all my loved ones and try to share memories and things I want to teach my kids. Like if you only have A week left. It's not a lot or two weeks. And why time matters so much to me is, you know, I share. I started the beginning of the story of the book. It's like I almost took my life when I was 17. And I was given the gift of perspective at that age that how fleeting our lives are. And these moments are not guaranteed. So when we start looking at our days and our weeks through that lens of, well, tomorrow's not guaranteed. Do I really want to do this? And if you audit it, that's where I think that perspective can really support people to give themselves permission to just make a different decision or invest in themselves or buy back their time so that they can go do something that's going to support their future based on that. That knowingness.

What was so amazing to me during that, it wasn't like all in a row either. It was like these little bits of, like, where I thought, oh, just it's something to do. It's how I'm just distracting myself in between things or whatever. But whoa, when I wrote it all down, I'm like, I could learn a whole nother language in like a week if I just took that time and did that. So it's really, really eye opening. I have some questions because I know a lot of people have not read the book yet, and I'm going to encourage everyone, go get this book, because it's not just a business book. Like, this is seriously Lifebook. This is so well done. Everything he lays out, it makes it so simple and so many aha moments throughout it. But for people that have not dove in yet, I want to just. I want to ask some questions that I know I had before I picked it up that are going to come up. Like, what if you are? And this is for those of them in the hustle with work. So they're in. They're either in a high role, they have their own business, whatever it is, they're in that hustle, and they don't see how they get out. They're in that conversation of, I'm too busy right now to train somebody to have some help to get. I can't afford to get the wrong help. I don't have extra time. What would you want? What do you want them to know?

Well, first off, I want. I want to share the perspective or invite them to consider that the way they're operating today is not going to get the outcomes that they want to achieve, because if it was, it would have showed up already. So that's going to land for people that who you are today is not the person you need to become to achieve the outcomes, dreams and goals you have for your life. Because if, if you were, they would be there. And what I mean by that doesn't mean Natalie, like in a year a different Natalie is going to show up. Right. Or a different Dan. It's the internal work, right. So oftentimes people are so busy, busy, busy doing the work, they don't have time to step back and actually look at the forest from the trees. Right. They don't have time to go like strategically there's a sequencing for success and if I do step one, two and three, that'll get me to my outcome. So when, when you're in it and you're, you're just. And some people are addicted to the chaos. Like I talk about that in the book because, you know, it feels like forward motion.

Oh, you explained it so well about how from childhood, like even if you grew up in that. That was wild, that connection.

Anybody is a high performer typically went through some chaotic experience as a young person or early teenager. And the reason why we're high performers is because we're able to deal higher level of uncertainty than other people. And that's a great skill and a superpower to become that person. But it's also an Achilles heel if your goal is to do more. Because when things start to work, you will throw hand grenades into your life to create chaos to then have to deal with problems. What I'm saying is use the mirror on yourself, on who you need to become. Different beliefs, skill sets and character traits as the chaos problem to solve. Don't use the chaos in your life from a routine of rituals or business structure. The chaos should be you fighting against you to become the next version of yourself to deal with higher level problems. So, you know, the truth is, is there will always be problems. Like you will hire somebody and they will fall short of your expectations. You will, you know, make an investment and it doesn't return the way you thought. You will make a decision to go left and you should have went right. The only difference that will change is, you know, are you becoming the person who can deal with a higher level of problems? Right, that makes sense unemotionally. Yeah. It's literally the world does not get easier when people see an Oprah, Buffett, a Branson. Like their lives aren't easier than yours. If anything, when I was there, he had $100 million crash in his. In a space company.

Yeah.

His response though was as if it was a $50 overage on your cell phone.

Emotionally intelligent, like, has really learned clearly how to, how to navigate that stuff. And I noticed that difference in just amongst my entrepreneurial friends, like the ones that are one level. Like I see the same personality and almost like a million to almost 10 million as I do. And then a totally different personality. And the ones 100 million like that. It's like a different person you have to become to achieve that. And same thing with somebody getting to six figures versus someone that's getting to a million. It's like you have to become a different version of yourself to be able to handle those things. So one thing, I wish I had read your book. I wish this book was out 10 years ago and I had read it then because you would have saved me a lot of time and money. Because I used to think, because I came from corporate, I didn't know anything about running a business when I started. I used to hear hire and I just would hire for things like. And I would hire for things that I shouldn't have hired for, like things that are my actual unique ability. And then I would get mad that they weren't doing it my way. Right. And. Or I would hire someone and give them 100 tasks and then they couldn't keep up and I would get mad. What you teach in the book is just so logical. Like you take the, the biggest, the first thing that's sucking up your time basically. Like the. What's the one thing? If you just remove that and you teach somebody to do that one thing well and. Well, he didn't say perfect. Well, because he's. I think you said 80.

Is what did you say 80% done by somebody else? 100.

Yes.

Yes.

And I wish I had known that advice from your book versus the hard way because it's so smack dab. Right. Because if you can free up those little pieces of your time and hire someone for that, that frees you up to work on your unique ability. Mark. And he gave an example of even if you're, you're not, you don't have a business you're in just home. What's taking your time? Is it doing laundry? Like, what if you hired somebody to do laundry for you and before you say you can't afford it, you had a formula. Can you share that? Because that was wild.

Yeah.

Your buyback rate.

Well, this was the whole like writing down these 25 people's names and trying to systematically attack their beliefs, their false beliefs. And one of them was, I can't afford it. Right, yeah. So the buyback rate, and this is kind of my decision for who I can afford to hire at what stage is a very simple formula. You take your income, if you're a business owner, you take your distributions, your profit and what you pay yourself. If you're just a normal executive, you just take your income, divide it by 2000 because that's a matter of hours that you work, average in a year. And that's that, that's one data point. I call that your effective hourly rate. So that's how much you make per hour. But then the buyback rate is, you divide that by four. And the reason why is I want you to get a 4 times ROI on your investment so you don't buy back to go do a one to one. Now you buy back to get a four to one so that you can trade up. I call them time traders. Right. And so for example, if you're making 100 grand a year, you divided by 2000, that's 50 an hour, divide that by four, that's $12.50. So some people are like, well you can't get a lot for $12 and 50 cents. You actually can, you can get quite a bit. You can find you know, part time people outside.

My teen will help.

Yeah, teens, interns, you can use the, the, the geography we live in where you can hire an assistant for four or five dollars an hour and Philippines. Yeah, overseas. But what I want to encourage people to consider, especially as it pertains to the home, right. Because this is where there's a lot of anxiety and stress for a lot of folks is I. Because businesses create structure for us. When I'm an executive at a company, the company that's performing gives you performance reviews and corporate okrs and, and values and mission and alignment. And so like they give you a lot of stuff to protect you from you when you come home. That's you, right. So you're making the decisions. So you gotta be a little bit more diligent. But the ideas of like, you know, looking at your time through that lens, it's like driving 25 minutes each way to go pick something up at a store. When you can do delivery, consider it right. You know, meal prep, you know, I'm a big fan, I do all, I'm a big, I track all my macros, you know, cleaning, you know, and there's, there's like low level stuff like having somebody, I remember what my buddy recently, he was saying like because we have a full time house manager, we can dive into that if you're curious. But he goes like, you know, I've gotta, I want, I want somebody to clean. Because he heard that somebody cleans my car, puts gas in it every Wednesday. And he's like that, that sounds like a dream. I go, it's, it's kind of beautiful, not gonna lie. I mean I never, I never run to my kids soccer practice and have to miss the first 50 minutes because I forgot to put gas in my car. Like that's been a thing of the past. And I go, well, don't you have a cleaning lady? And he's like, yeah. And I said, well, the person drives a car and cleans their own car and you trust them to clean your house, why don't you just ask them to clean it? And he's like, never thought of it. So sometimes it's not even the beliefs, it's just the creativity, the resourcefulness of how to get it done. When I was a young kid, my dad paid me four bucks an hour to transfer a bunch of stuff from one of his, like PDAs. He had these personal whatever things. He's like, contact list to a new one. He didn't want to do it. I got paid four bucks an hour. So it's like there's things around our world, especially things that are reoccurring that if you can find somebody, hire them and just let them take care of it and empower them. So a lot of folks just have never learned how to work great with other people. That's a skill set. And I, I consider myself world class that it's like talent, high level talent, creating environment. So if you've never done that, and that's hard for you, I would encourage you to lean into it. Like I think people should lean into having people around them and creating structure and expectations and management and you'll have some false starts. I was talking to my friend the other day. She hired a cleaning lady and you know, she didn't know any better. She treated them like a friend and you know, would walk out of her office and they'd have conversations for 45 minutes and da, da, da, da. And all of a sudden the cleaning wasn't getting done. And I'm like, well, stop talking to them while they're at work. Like you're mad because they're, they're only there for the two hours. They got other clients, they're like, yeah, I got to stop doing that. See, that's a thing that they. Again, the mirror, hold the mirror up to yourself and yeah, and Just. But be okay with it. Understand that it's okay to leave your office, go to the bathroom and come back if you work from home. And you do not have to have a 45 minute conversation with people. I have a beautiful wife, Renee. I don't know if you know Renee well, but she does this fascinating thing that if people come over to her house, she will spend 25 minutes at the door on their way out. It's not like the conversation that happened in the kitchen or in the living room wasn't enough on the way out. There's a whole nother debrief and I let it happen and I smile again. Lighthouse, not tugboat. And I go my office and I just. But it's just, you know, at some point maybe she'll realize, like, it could I be okay just letting the people leave my house and not having to do this extra 25 minutes. I don't know. But yeah, there's, there's opportunities all around us.

Your book also gives freedom for a lot of things that I think people put pressure on themselves. So, for example, like, I personally do my own social media, my, not all of my profiles, but my main stuff because I'm good at it and I enjoy it. So that I actually put that in my unique ability. But like, one of those mistakes I would have made early on and I did is, oh, I must outsource that because everybody else outsources that. And then you wonder why something's not going well. And what you speak about in the book is the things that you actually enjoy and do well, keep. And that comes to your house too, or whatever. Like if you actually enjoy cooking dinner, like, that's like something really fun for you to do. And you are, that's your stress reduction. You love doing it. That's like not the thing to delegate because that's. You're not going to enjoy that. You delegate and you hire for the thing that is not your unique ability and that is taking up your time.

Yes. From you and for me, makes you money. Okay, so, for example, my dad on the, on the personal stuff, my dad owned a few properties growing up, like rental properties. And every Sunday he would go and he'd spend five, six hours Saturday morning or on the weekend cutting the lots. And you know, unfortunately, because he was doing that, he wasn't really there for us, you know, And I remember like later on in my life, he was still doing this every weekend. Where's dad? Always mowing his properties. Okay. And I, you know, I got to be successful in business And. And then I remember one time I was like, dad, why do you do that? Like, this is. You're kind of like. He was, you don't have to do this. He goes, I enjoy doing it. And I said, well, if you enjoy doing it, why don't you do your neighbors? He's like, well, I don't like to do it that much. And I go, well, dad, your definition of enjoy doing is not the same as me.

Yeah, because, like, that's a good point.

And so for me, the filter, especially as it pertains to our work, we want to do things that not only light us up, but then make us money.

Yeah.

So that's the other filter. So social media is your business. Yes, do that. And when in the replacement ladder I teach, in the book, there's kind of like the lower value stuff, and you work your way up. But at a certain point, Natalie, social media could become your bottleneck. And then it's. Again, it's a complexity ceiling. Now I got to learn how do I have somebody else do it? But.

And I did for a lot of the parts, by the way. I only. There's only two parts that I do myself. Everything else is everyone else. Yeah, yeah.

And those are skill sets. And so to me, the cooking, you know, like, my friend restores cars. And, you know, he's like, well, how do I apply this to restore cars? This is my thing. It's what I do. And this is exactly how he talks. He's like, yo, this is, you know, I. I got a bag, you know, And I'm just like, well, just map it out and just tell me, what do you not like doing? Oh, I don't like running around picking up parts. Cool. Pay somebody to be a runner. Like, if your jam is to sit in your garage and do the body work or the engine work, whatever it is, just don't do the other stuff to get the time back. Because, yeah, it's like. It's almost like, if I'm gonna cook for my family, great. Do I need to do the groceries?

No, you do the other bottleneck part. That makes sense. There's a. The girl that I go to for my hair, she's like, in her 20s, she's super successful, she owns her own salon, and she is crushing it, like, at. She's like, 24, 25. But I. She's really good at what she's good at with that. And I love learning from her because when I go sit in her chair, she's got three assistants. Three. Three assistants. And I Watch her. And it allows her to see a lot of people and she's not doing anything other than like, this is what we should do. And then the final touches. And it's so brilliant. It's such a lesson for life about. She's living basically what you teach. Like she's in her unique ability and she's got the bottleneck covered to a T, which allows her to make a lot more money all the time because it's so covered there.

That's why in the book I talk a lot about artists, right? Andy Warhol specifically. Because I think a lot of creatives, even, even your, your hairdresser, they just believe like, no, there's this thing and only I can do it. And I'm not saying there isn't a component where it all comes together. And yes, that part, the cut, right, the maybe some aspects of the color, that is your unique ability. And it is the thing you do that gives you that signature, fingerprint, that thing. But there's so much other stuff, administrative stuff, bookkeeping or whatever, that it's kind of like it's, it's not value added, right? So to me, I'm always trying to ask myself, like, what is the end do I love to do it? Because at some point, you know, it's kind of like if I owned a restaurant and my chef quit on me. Well, I'm not a chef. Like, I'm not a cook. So I'm not going to think too much about, I'm going to find another chef. He's going to now work in the restaurant, he's going to run the restaurant. I think a lot of lawyers, doctors, etc, they have an opportunity to expand their practice by saying, like, I remember after we had our second child, my wife and I decide no more, right? So I scheduled the appointment to go see the doctor and I go in and it blew my mind. He literally had. Because I remember sitting there with the nurse, there's two nurses with me. The doctor walks in, I'm still awake and he's talking to me and he does the operation and then he leaves six minutes and I go and I tell the nurse, I was like, how do you do that? He goes, he has four other rooms. He literally has gotten it to a point where when he works an eight hour shift, he'll do dozens of these operations. Anybody has two nurses per room. So he has eight nurses going through clean prep, next person, boom, he comes through the door, out the next door. And I just think like that orchestration is something worth considering for people that just want to get more out of their time. Because that's. That's how all great artists function at scale.

So how the person that's listening right now, because I know that they're out there, because I was this mindset too, where they're. They're still stuck in just that I can't afford. Because first of all, I want to say, no matter how much money you make, you always think you don't have extra money for whatever. So that's. That's already a limiting belief right now that we all carry for real. But how do they. Where do you want people to start? Because it's so easy to look at that end game and say, well, of course, when I have this, I'll do that. Which is not true. Where do people start? You mentioned, like, you figure out your buyback rate and you. You hire for one thing. But, like, what. Where should they even start to figure that out? Like, what is step number one there?

Well, the reality of it is, if they can't afford somebody to clean their house, whatever that costs, that might be an opportunity for them to upgrade their skills. Like, that's like, people do this in business when they run the formula, like, my buyback rate's $3. I'm like, fix your business problem.

Right.

Like, I don't. Yeah. But do not go out and hire a coo, Right? Because like, I read a book, somebody right now.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. And so, like, there's an element of. Increase your. Your income production. So I would say, but be resourceful. As you know, Natalie, like, you know, it's not about dollars and cents. It's about being creative and resourceful that gets results. So if I had nothing and I needed, let's say I wanted to have somebody support me in my home, I might find somebody that could trade with, I could barter with. I would say, well, I'm really good at these things. You're. You have this, like, what if I said to a cleaning lady and say, like, how much capacity you have? And they're like, well, I have quite a bit. I just started. Perfect. What if I went and found you 10 clients? Would you do my house at a discount? If I get. And they'd be like, of course. Well, then I just pick up the phone and call my neighbors and say, do you have a great clean lady? No, I have one. Here's how it works. Blah, blah, blah. So, like, there's always a resourceful way to create an opportunity to buy back your time, you know, to trade up, because that's all you're doing, you're just, you're, you're creating higher value skills and you're trading up. I mean, now I'm at the point where I buy companies and I hire CEOs to run those companies. That's a skill set. But you don't start there. You start very simple in your home. You know, trading time, looking at. I mean, you might even look at like, you know, IKEA for. It's just some people have these money mindset beliefs that just stop them. Right. People that have the means that are like, well, I'm not paying $26 for somebody to put my furniture together. Well, that's going to take you three hours.

Right. And so what's your time worth? Right?

Yeah. Do you realize you get paid $50 an hour or $40 an hour and you're not willing to trade 26 for three? Right. The other day is great. My writing partner Paul, who wrote the book with me, he called me up and he's like, dude, it was so cool. I was talking to my brother and I'm like, awesome. Why is it so cool? He goes, well, oh yeah? Well, I saw my brother because he buys cars. He buys old cars, he fixes them up and then he sells them. And that's his business. And, you know, his brother was like, he bought a car and there was some work he needed done, but it was going to take him like 10 hours to do it himself. And he called a mechanic, and the mechanic could do it in three hours, but it would cost like twice as much than what it would cost him to do it. So he was like trying to call up Paul to say, like, I'm in this pickle. And he's like, well, what's the issue? And he tells the scenario. He goes, but just run the math. Like 10 hours of your time. He's like, well, how much you make last year? He's like, I made a couple hundred grand. He's like, perfect. Instead of doing that 10 hours of fixing the thing, you could go and do another car and make way more money, pay the mechanic. And his response to that? His brother goes, that's cool, because I don't even like doing the mechanic stuff anyway. It's like, oh, bonus. Something you don't love to do that you could trade to go do something that's gonna make you more money that you love to do. And that's the game, right? And I just think that, like, I care more about spending time with my kids than maintaining my home.

Get it? Yeah.

But when we start like we got. And that's why I talk about the five Time Assassins. Because I think a lot of it, like you said with social media, they're self imposed right where we're, we're, we're losing a lot of time on ourselves that if we had a better lens to look at these decisions, we might make a different set.

So good. And I think that exercise of the two weeks that's like everyone needs to do that because that was, that was so crazy eye opening. I didn't even get through the two weeks because I made so many changes.

You just see it. This is like it's.

What the heck.

Yeah. The two week time and energy audit for me it's. Anytime I work with a private coaching client, it's the first step. It's like, yeah, I need you to go do this, present it to me. Because with that two week seat, two weeks gives you also perspective over different like areas of your life. And, and then, then, then it's orchestration. With that we can grab the red stuff, the low cost stuff, put it into a bucket. That's the new job spec. So that's the philosophy is if we're always trying to take the low, low value kind of time sucking stuff out of our lives, our calendar to trade up to create the space to invest in higher level skills, belief systems and character traits, then that's how we make forward movement progress. Because you said it best said it's a business book. But it's more than that because I designed it for my kids, I designed it for friends of mine, I designed it for my co workers. I want my co workers to read the book and go like, oh, this is how I progress in my career. It's like, yeah, this is how this is a value works.

Bust through your limiting belief book. This is like, this is crazy because you basically lay out exactly why that is just a complete racket. When people say I don't have time like you, you completely bust that whole story there. Because you. He tells you literally step by step how to create. He even goes through how to hire. Like how, like the step by step, like how you actually hire like what the thing you need to ask them to do. I can't, I can't say enough good things about this book. It was so good. I think everyone needs to listen to it on audible and buy it because I don't know, I don't. That's how I learn. I have to do both things. I don't know about you.

Yeah. And I actually had A lot of fun reading the Audible and adding the bonus chapter stuff, so.

Oh, yeah, that was the best part. He, you. He commentate. You do commentary at the end of it all, which was even better. Yeah. You made me realize that. Wow. I really. I didn't do my own recordings for my books. The publisher wanted to hire people and I didn't fight for that. But listening to you, I was like, I would never do that again. I would make sure I'm reading it because it makes a big difference, I think.

So I'd love to hear you read your own book. For sure.

You did a great job there. Well, Dan, this was phenomenal. Everyone needs to go. Where do you want them to go to buy the book? Is there.

BuyBackYourTime.com's the best place. And I'll tell you why. Two things. One, I'm gonna tag you so I can give you more content. Because, like, the book is, like, level one. I want to show you behind the scenes. I want to introduce you to, like, SOPs or standard operating Procedures. And I also have a whole workbook reference that's at the site that complements. Because the thing about me is, as you probably guess, Natalie, like, I'm a systems thinker, right? Like, that's just how my brain is. So there's a whole lot of workbook. There's a workbook that comes with it that is not in the physical book that you can download from the website, but you can go there and then click through to Amazon or chat wherever you want to go to buy the book. And all I'd ask people is if they got anything from it. I would love, love, love, and really appreciate a review on Amazon. That is the number one thing.

I gave you a review right away.

I saw it. Natalie J. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

You didn't hide yourself too soon.

I owe it. Go give her reviews. And I'm tell everyone, don't buy one book. Buy like five and give them to everybody you care about. Because this book, I mean, I told every one of my clients, all my business sales clients all have this book. I told everyone in my life, they're like, if you. If you know me, you got this book because it's. It's. So don't buy one, buy five, because you're going to want people to change around you. Dan, thank you so much. This was excellent. And thank you for writing this book and for the work that you do.

It's an honor. Appreciate it. Natalie.