Dan Martell - December 26, 2022


3 Steps to Overcome Overwhelm and Thrive in Your Business


Episode Stats

Length

8 minutes

Words per Minute

201.09485

Word Count

1,800

Sentence Count

100


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 I wanna teach you a three-step strategy
00:00:01.860 that's gonna take you from overwhelm and feeling stuck
00:00:04.400 to free and thriving in your business.
00:00:07.480 I call it the buyback loop.
00:00:08.900 It is one of the most powerful strategies
00:00:10.820 that I teach entrepreneurs
00:00:11.940 to not only find time in their calendar,
00:00:14.940 but to focus on things that light them up
00:00:17.280 and make them money.
00:00:18.660 While ago, I was working with one of my clients, Jonathan,
00:00:21.000 who runs a local services software company,
00:00:23.920 and they had exploded in growth in the previous year.
00:00:26.960 They were doing about $11 million a year
00:00:29.640 and his calendar was nutty.
00:00:31.860 He was feeling overwhelmed.
00:00:33.200 He didn't know what to prioritize, what to strategize.
00:00:36.360 He was saying yes to everything
00:00:37.740 because he thought that's what I should do as a CEO.
00:00:40.100 And when I taught him the buyback loop process
00:00:42.160 within a two week period, that's all it took.
00:00:44.820 He was literally able to buy back almost a full week
00:00:48.160 so that he could go work on things
00:00:49.700 only he could do as the CEO.
00:00:52.320 That's what I wanna show you how to do
00:00:53.720 the specific three-step process
00:00:55.620 that is part of the buyback loop.
00:00:57.040 Let's get into it.
00:00:59.640 So the buyback loop includes three specific steps.
00:01:03.000 It's audit, transfer, fill.
00:01:05.240 As soon as we hit the pain line,
00:01:06.860 as soon as we feel like we've hit the cap on our capacity,
00:01:10.340 we wanna do those three steps
00:01:11.920 so that we can unblock ourselves
00:01:13.920 to take our business to a new height.
00:01:16.120 Step one is audit.
00:01:17.820 We want to look at our calendar.
00:01:20.040 We wanna currently understand and review
00:01:22.120 where are we spending our time.
00:01:23.640 Doing a time and energy audit.
00:01:25.640 And a time and energy audit is literally
00:01:27.680 logging every 15 minutes. What do you do with your time? Are you checking emails? Are you looking at
00:01:34.100 TikTok? Are you on phone calls? Are you writing proposals? Are you managing Slack, project
00:01:39.600 management, whatever you're doing every 15 minutes, you should set a timer goes off, you log it in a
00:01:44.000 book, you log it in your journal. And then what you do is after you have two weeks worth of logs,
00:01:49.420 you go back through at the beginning and you highlight in green everything that gives you
00:01:53.740 energy and you highlight in red anything that sucks your energy so that you start to get a
00:01:59.240 sense of the activities that light you up that make you feel excited about the future and all
00:02:04.680 the stuff that you're just like despair about you're just like oh not looking forward to it
00:02:09.000 then you take that list and you put one dollar sign if it's a cheap thing to give somebody else
00:02:13.240 to do and four dollar signs you can put two or three or four four if it's an expensive thing
00:02:18.300 something that would require a specialist,
00:02:20.560 an expensive consultant,
00:02:22.020 something that you'd have to hire
00:02:24.000 to do what you're doing today.
00:02:25.500 Maybe if it's like operate your business or be the CEO,
00:02:27.860 those are very expensive things to pay other people to do.
00:02:30.400 Once you do this time and energy audit
00:02:32.580 and you understand the cost of those activities,
00:02:34.800 then you take all the red stuff
00:02:36.520 with one dollar sign next to it
00:02:38.720 and you put it in a bucket.
00:02:40.200 And that now becomes your hit list
00:02:42.120 of getting those items out of your life.
00:02:44.780 It's very obvious once you start looking at your time
00:02:48.140 and you review it, you audit it to get very clear
00:02:51.220 where there's a lot of waste,
00:02:52.640 where there's opportunities to delete, to defer,
00:02:55.960 to delegate stuff off of your plate
00:02:58.060 just by doing that energy and time on it.
00:03:00.380 But we're not done.
00:03:01.120 Now we gotta focus on transfer.
00:03:02.980 The second step is to transfer, okay?
00:03:05.180 We need to learn how to delegate the things we're doing
00:03:08.260 and teach other people to do it.
00:03:09.960 I use this methodology called the camcorder method.
00:03:12.720 And the way that works is I record myself doing the work
00:03:17.540 and talking out loud as I'm doing it.
00:03:20.060 Today, I just use Zoom and I do a meeting by myself.
00:03:23.360 I share my screen and I hit record
00:03:25.620 and then I record myself on my Zoom session,
00:03:28.880 sharing my screen so that I just talk over what I'm doing.
00:03:32.480 And the reason I do this is because
00:03:34.360 even before I hire somebody to give them the work to do
00:03:38.060 to take off my plate, I want those recordings.
00:03:40.800 And then those recordings,
00:03:42.400 if I have three, four, five of these recordings,
00:03:45.100 managing my inbox, publishing social media videos,
00:03:48.700 managing accounts receivable,
00:03:49.900 whatever it is for you, it doesn't matter.
00:03:52.860 Think about like taking all those items
00:03:55.100 that you highlighted in red, that's $1 sign,
00:03:57.800 and then just recording yourself doing that work.
00:04:00.400 That now becomes the training for the new person.
00:04:02.860 Here's the kicker.
00:04:04.240 When you hire the person, you give them the videos
00:04:06.880 and then they create what's called the SOPs
00:04:09.360 or I call playbooks, right?
00:04:10.580 The standard operating procedures.
00:04:12.940 That takes away from you doing it
00:04:15.560 and you do it all using what I call net time.
00:04:17.840 No extra time required.
00:04:19.540 You literally get the work done,
00:04:21.900 record yourself doing it,
00:04:23.500 then hire somebody.
00:04:24.920 They create the SOPs.
00:04:26.800 And then once you get it back,
00:04:28.340 you'll know based on what they put
00:04:30.000 in the standard operating procedure
00:04:31.160 if they understood what you said in the video.
00:04:34.040 So there's a comprehension feedback loop.
00:04:36.500 And then if for whatever reason
00:04:37.520 that person doesn't work out,
00:04:39.220 no problem.
00:04:40.000 You hire somebody new,
00:04:41.120 you got the training videos,
00:04:42.360 you've got the SOP, the playbook, and then the new person hits the ground running even harder.
00:04:47.480 That process changed the game for me on everything. I mean, I take it to a level today where
00:04:54.120 like I use my iPad, a lot of people don't realize this, but you can screen record and audio record
00:04:59.160 on your iPad on your phone. And as your pro you can literally on a flight, you could do this,
00:05:03.960 you could record yourself processing your inbox or managing your calendar, record the screen,
00:05:09.080 talk out loud into your AirPods or whatever, and then take that recording, upload it through iCloud
00:05:14.460 and share it with a new team member and say, you're now taking this over. There's so many ways
00:05:19.660 to use the camcorder method to make the transfer step in the buyback loop so much more easier for
00:05:25.880 you without adding extra time to your calendar to transfer items off your plate. The third step is
00:05:31.760 fill. And fill is all about filling your calendar that you've just bought back all this time with
00:05:36.820 new activities that are either going to make you more money, that's the kicker, and hopefully light
00:05:43.260 you up. They're things that give you energy. Now, most people get this wrong because they just
00:05:47.820 respond to the world's demand on their time. There's no strategy behind it. Here's my filter.
00:05:52.180 This is my strategy. And I learned this analogy from a guy named Alex Hermozzi. Definitely check
00:05:56.360 him out. But it's the idea of the ladder of success, okay? The ladder is built with these
00:06:01.760 three parts. And these are the things that you want to consider when you're filling up your time.
00:06:05.380 The first one is skills.
00:06:06.660 That's the left side of the ladder.
00:06:08.420 What are the skills that you need to develop
00:06:10.660 as an entrepreneur to overcome
00:06:12.500 the biggest challenge in your business?
00:06:13.900 Maybe it's a marketing skill.
00:06:15.160 Maybe it's a confidence skill.
00:06:16.440 Maybe it's a communication skill.
00:06:18.360 Maybe it's a leadership skill.
00:06:19.960 Strategic planning, financials, whatever it is for you,
00:06:23.400 you need to identify the gaps in where you're currently at,
00:06:27.020 what you wanna achieve and invest in those skills
00:06:29.380 from going to seminars, reading books, buying courses,
00:06:32.980 hiring a mentor, hiring consultants,
00:06:35.380 to teach you these skills so that you can move up that left side of the ladder. That's the
00:06:40.380 beginning. The right side of the ladder is made up of beliefs. And beliefs are so important as
00:06:45.020 you grow your business because it's the blocker that's stopping you from even being able to take
00:06:49.240 action often. You know, Jim Rohn, who is one of the most important motivational speakers from
00:06:54.940 the past century, he had this great example of this sales guy that looks outside and there's a
00:07:01.120 storm. And he looks outside of the storm and he goes, holy cow, look at that storm. There's no
00:07:05.820 way I can go out today and sell. He's a door-to-door sales guy. This other sales guy looks outside,
00:07:11.000 he sees the same storm and he goes, yay, a storm. It's going to be great. Everybody's going to be
00:07:16.020 home and none of the sales guys are going to be out. Think about that. Two different people,
00:07:21.400 two different beliefs. One had the proper belief that's going to make him take action to actually
00:07:26.180 grow his business. That's the right side of the ladder. The center of the ladder is character
00:07:30.880 traits. This is how you show up. It's who you've become. It's your identity. And the investments
00:07:36.080 you want to make there are things like relationships, right? Your associations to
00:07:41.160 other people are going to affect your development of character traits and your environment. You know,
00:07:46.740 paying to be part of groups where other people inspire you. They motivate you. They force you
00:07:52.880 through positive peer pressure to play a bigger game. These are the things that are going to
00:07:56.940 develop your character. So when I'm thinking of filling my time in my calendar, I'm always asking
00:08:01.300 myself, what's the future skills I got to develop to get to the next level? What beliefs do I got
00:08:06.360 to challenge and overcome to make this process easier? And then who do I need to become? What
00:08:11.600 identity do I need to adopt to make that journey easier? That is the ladder of success that you want
00:08:17.840 to build and design as you fill back up your calendar with all the time that you bought back
00:08:23.520 using the buyback loop.
00:08:25.140 So if you're feeling at capacity and you're overwhelmed,
00:08:27.940 consider the buyback loop, those three steps.
00:08:30.340 Audit your calendar, do a time and energy audit,
00:08:33.360 then transfer all the red stuff that's low value
00:08:36.100 off of your plate, and then fill it up with things
00:08:39.160 that are gonna create your success ladder
00:08:41.260 so you can take your life to the next level.
00:08:43.520 Be sure to check out my new book, buybackyourtime.com.
00:08:47.620 Go check it out, it's on all platforms.
00:08:49.840 I dive into the buyback loop and all these other principles
00:08:52.600 to allow you to elevate your business and your life.
00:08:56.180 And I'll see you next week.