How to Buy Back Your Time with Dan Martell
If you follow me on social media, you know I am OBSESSED with Dan’s book “Buy Back Your Time”. I listened to it about 6 times and have since told everyone in my life to go buy it! If I would have found this book about 10 years ago he would have saves me A LOT of time and money! As I was listening to it, I felt proud of myself for doing it in BUSINESS…but I asked myself…”Am I doing this for my PERSONAL life?!” So many people, especially in Midlife, know that we need to kick it up a notch in terms of taking care of ourselves, but we run into the barrier of “I don’t have time!” In the midst of all the BUSY-ness in life, we need to stop to think that, after all, our time is not guaranteed. This is a powerful perspective to consider as you plan out your days and weeks. This is the heart of Dan Martell’s message in his book, Buy Back Your Time, where he shares valuable insights to help us improve our lives, permit ourselves to make different decisions and invest in something that supports our future.
What Comes First? The Hustle or the Time?
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 then creates the outcomes. Take for example, Richard Brunson. In the middle of a 100+ million problem, he was present on a trip. This is possible because of his assistant, Helen, who serves as his “time protector”. Nobody gets to Richard without going through Helen. She deals with 99% of the requests regarding Richard’s time. She knows his schedule better, she knows the resources, etc. He has set rules to protect his time and energy for the activities that light him up and honors his preferences.
Ask yourself, what are the things that give and take your energy as you do them? In time, how can you design your life to do MORE of those things that give you energy? How can you design your perfect day? What would it look like?
When We Say YES to Something, We Are Inadvertently Saying NO
When we say yes (whether conscious or unconscious) to certain behaviors, we are saying no to what we could be doing instead. If you say yes to scrolling social media for 3.5 hours, you are saying no to using those 3.5 hours to build a deeper relationship with your family/best friend, etc. The thing is…most people aren’t aware they are doing this because they don’t measure it. Dan recommends setting INTENTION behind the ways you spend your time. Some of his favorite questions to ask are: If you only had 5 years to live, what would you do with your life? If you only had 1 year to live, what would you do? If you only had 2 weeks left to live, what would you do?
How to Get Out of the IM TOO BUSY Status
Consider the way you are operating is NOT going to get your the outcomes you want to achieve — if it were, it would have happened already. Who you are today is not the person you need to become to achieve the dreams and goals you have for your life. If you were — they would be there. Often times we are so busy doing work that we don’t step back and look at the forest from the trees. Chaos can be addicting because it feels like movement forward and anyone who is a high performer likely went through a chaotic event at some point and enables us to operate in higher level of uncertainty. This is great, but also can hold you back when your goal is to “do more”. Use the mirror on yourself to ask who you need to become, as the chaos problem to solve. There will always be problems, the only thing that will change, is if you’re becoming the person who can deal with a higher level of problems, unemotionally.
“I Can’t Afford It”
There is a formula for this…a buy back rate. Dan’s recommendation for making a decision on who he can hire at what point relies on one formula: (Your Net Income / 2000) / 4. This is what you make on average per hour divided by 4, so you can get a 4x ROI on your investment. This means, if you made 100k/year, you average about $50/hr. Divide that by 4, and you should hire someone for $12.50/hour. The key is you buy back to get a 4:1 — so you can trade up and do four times more with your personal time! Sometimes (often times) it’s more about the resourcefulness and the creativity on how to get things done.
I will leave you here with one of my FAVORITE quotes by Dan: “80% done by someone else is 100% effin awesome!”
This and SO much more on this episode!
About Dan Martell
DAN MARTELL is an award-winning entrepreneur, angel investor, thought leader, and highly sought-after coach in the software as a service industry. He founded, scaled, and successfully exited three technology companies within a ten year period. In 2012 he was named Canada’s top angel investor, having invested in more than fifty start-ups, such as Intercom, Udemy, and Unbounce.
In this episode, you will learn:
- Buy back your time in business and life
- Richard Branson’s concept of time
- Assess activities that give you energy and those that drain you
- Dan’s recommended exercise
- Handling uncertainty, challenges, and pain
- The false belief of “I can’t afford it”
- Calculate the “buyback rate”
- Focus on activities that bring joy and satisfaction
