📖 Buy Back Your Time By Dan Martell

Topic: Productivity | Medium: Audible | Rating: 5

Thoughts:

I love the "Buy Back Your Time" principle because it feels expansionary in what I can achieve with in my time.

Ways I've bought back my time which have provided the highest ROI:

• Moving within the CBD - short walk to everything.
• Buying all my meals - I haven't cooked in so long.
• Robot vacuum/mop - love a clean floor.
• Automating/systemising repetitive tasks - which is forced as an output worker (versus time worker). Andrew/FTC is probably the king of this.

Something like food - if I can trade 1 hour per week to fund my meals or 10 hours of planning, shopping, cooking, and cleaning seems non-sensical. So the hardest part is always psychological - challenging the scarcity mindset.

3 Note Summary:

• Buy Back Your Time: You can make more money, but you can’t make more time. So spend it on the highest-impact activities that make you money and bring you joy. Focus on hiring not to grow your business, but to buy back your time.
• The Replacement Ladder: Delegate tasks starting from the lowest value (admin) to higher-value activities (marketing, sales, leadership), freeing up your time for strategic work. When your company makes more money, buy back more time.
• Transformational Leadership: Empower your team by passing on responsibilities and creating an environment that encourages feedback. Use these 4 Time Hacks to manage your time effectively:$50 Magic Pill: Set a limit on what decisions people can make without involving you, and get updates later in meetings.Sync Meetings: Use a repeating agenda to keep meetings efficient and focused.Definition of Done: Ensure tasks are completed by defining what success looks like in terms of facts, feelings, and functionality.The 1-3-1 Rule: For any problem, identify the issue, propose 3 possible solutions, and recommend the best one.

Detailed Notes:

• You can make more money, but you can’t make more time. So spend it on the highest-impact activities.
• Hire not to grow your business, but to buy back your time.
• Focus on what makes you money and lights you up.
• When your company makes more money, buy back more time.
• Get shit done.

5 Buy Back Rules:

1. Buyback Principle: Don’t hire to grow your company. Hire to buy back your time.
2. You can’t work your way to a better business by doing everything yourself—one of your relationships will break down.
3. If you keep grinding, you will hit the pain line. Then you’ll want to sell, stall, or sabotage.
4. When you hit the pain line, take it as feedback to:
   • Buyback Loop: Audit, transfer (to someone else), and fill your time with things that will make you more money and light you up.
5. Ask yourself: What would I spend all my time on if I didn’t have to work?
   • Read, help people get rich, spend time with loved ones.
   • Get paid for your genius.
   • People become rich by doing what they love.

Chaos Addiction:

5 Assassins:

1. Staller
2. Speed Demon
3. Supervisor - train for growth, not just now. Remove dependency.
4. Saver
5. Self-medicator - applicable for both success and failure.

The Only 3 Trades That Matter:

1. Employee: Time for money.
2. Entrepreneur: Money for time (leverage).
3. Empire: Money for money.

Time vs Energy:

• Buyback rate: $550.
• Audits: Determine the cost of each task and whether it energises you or not.
• Attack low-hanging fruit.
• Million-dollar businesses aren’t built on $10-per-hour tasks.
• Create more, which the market rewards.

The Replacement Ladder:

1. Admin
2. Delivery
3. Marketing
4. Sales
5. Leadership - flow - collaboration

10/80/10 Rule: Start ideation (10%), production team (80%), integration/finalisation (10%).

• If your replacement can be 80% as good as you—that’s awesome.

Clone Yourself:

• Admin assistant:
  • Protects the time of the founder.
  • Protects from the demands of the world, e.g., email, calendar, updating reports, travel, purchasing.
  • “I don’t have anything for them to do?”—They have no emotional baggage. They just execute.
  • What do you procrastinate on?
  • They follow rules more than you do.
  • Founders make excuses.
  • They ensure the ball doesn’t drop and doesn’t stop if you go on holidays.

All Calendar and Email:

• Home vs office
• Available for meetings
• Deep work
• Inbox:
  • Never touch an email without your assistant looking at it.
  • Email GPS: Folders for labels:
    1. Your emails - only you can respond - high ticket emails.
    2. To respond - everything your EA will manage but hasn’t gotten around to yet.
    3. Review - unsure about it.
    4. Responded - gives access to review.
    5. Waiting on - waiting for action before.
    6. Receipts/financials.
    7. Newsletter/content you want to consume in your time.
• Ensure all email is routed to one inbox.
• “This is Lauren, Dan’s assistant.”
• They are associates and lifelines.
• Execute predictably.

Playbooks:

• For every process. Show your team how to make their own.
• All tasks - small to large.
• The 4 Cs: Camcorder, course, cadence, checklist (non-negotiable).
• Buyback Your Time Resources: For playbook template.
• Accountability: You own this and step back.
• Password management system.
• Document management - Google Docs.
• Automation tools.

Perfect Week:

• Batching - similar tasks on the same day. Why not make blog posts for a month on one day?
• Plan tasks when you are most effective.
• No buffer time.
• Saved time is nothing compared to energy saved.
• Design the perfect week.
• Batch time.
• Proactive.

4 Time Hacks:

1. $50 Magic Pill: Set an amount people can resolve without getting you involved. Update me later in the meeting.
2. Sync Meetings with Repeating Agenda: With assistant every week:
   1. Offload tasks.
   2. Set calendar.
   3. Past meetings.
   4. Action items.
   5. Feedback loop on projects.
   6. Emails.
   7. Questions.
3. Definition of Done: Facts, feelings, and functionality.
4. The 1-3-1 Rule:
   1. Define the problem.
   2. Provide 3 different paths.
   3. Recommend.

Let Go of Ego:

• The Test-First Hiring Method:
  • I can’t work with you unless I’ve worked with you.
  • Loss of time, money, other workers, and clients.
  • Be clear.
  • A team wants to work with other A players.
  • Use employee networks.
  • Admirable companies.
  • 3-minute video answering 5 questions.
  • Personality test - see if they fit, their strengths are your flaws. Give to the whole team.
  • Offer test project. Don’t give many instructions.
  • Sell the future.

Transformational Leadership:

• Transfer responsibility to your leaders.
• This isn’t your job—it’s theirs.
• Transactional Management:
  1. Tell.
  2. No.
  3. Outcome.
• Transformational Leadership:
  1. Create a feedback environment.
  2. Dream big, achieve bigger.
  3. Dream big > Create clarity > 10x Vision - Define your current situation and 10x it.
  4. Add dates, numbers, facts.

Who is Around Me?

• Me:
  • Penthouse in Sydney.
  • $1m in the bank.
  • In 5 years' time.

Who is Around Me?

• Stories.
• Awards? Revenues?
• Future stories.
• Entrepreneur dream:
  • Team.
  • One business.
  • Empire - core competency.
  • Lifestyle.

5 Rules:

• High inspirational image.
• Phase 1: Dream big.
• Phase 2: Clarify.
• Clear Vision: Dream big.

Faith and Fear:

• Both are about the future—the only difference is what we focus on. Choose faith!
• What and Why: Because the how will constantly change.

The Preloaded Year:

• Plan for the big rocks/tasks that will make the most impact, personal events.
• Create more space for the smaller spontaneous opportunities.

The Buyback Life:

• Apply it to personal life - house manager.

7 Pillars of Life:

• Assess weekly to determine what to focus on.