Dan Martell - I Wrote a Best-Selling Book While Buying Back my Time

00:00:00.000 I didn't want to just do like a lot of people do, just like, hey, I got a book, here it is.

00:00:03.540 I didn't really write it. I just gave it to somebody else. They wrote it and I put my name

00:00:06.160 on it. Like, that's not what I did. I wanted to really like add the stories, hired a researcher,

00:00:11.900 highly quotable, like just put the time and energy to create this piece of art.

00:00:16.620 hey there i'm dan martell serial entrepreneur investor and creator sas academy in this episode

00:00:34.060 i'm going to share with you how i use the buyback principle to write the book buy back your time i

00:00:42.540 literally I'm going to deconstruct exactly how I applied the methodology I teach in my new book

00:00:51.180 buy back your time to writing the book buy back your time it's like super meta and circular

00:00:57.520 references but I'm gonna unpack it and hopefully make it clear but I gotta tell you the story

00:01:02.300 because a lot of people don't know this five years ago I was asked to speak at an event right do a

00:01:08.560 workshop a lot of people knew that like you know I'm a guy that likes to get a lot of stuff done

00:01:12.120 and they'd heard about some of the playbooks

00:01:14.440 I'd designed for my life

00:01:15.540 and how I manage my assistants and my time

00:01:17.820 and other things, house manager, et cetera.

00:01:19.900 And they were like, hey, can you do a presentation?

00:01:21.980 And it ended up being,

00:01:23.480 I think it was called something like fire yourself

00:01:25.660 or something like that.

00:01:28.300 And there was like 50 people that came to that session.

00:01:31.760 And I just shared my philosophy at the time of like,

00:01:35.400 just how to get freedom from your business.

00:01:37.500 You know, the biggest concern I have with entrepreneurship

00:01:41.180 is great artists that hit what I call the pain line

00:01:45.800 and decide not to keep building

00:01:48.140 because growing means pain.

00:01:50.340 And they stop.

00:01:51.580 And then the world doesn't get all this art,

00:01:54.440 their creation, the business value,

00:01:57.080 because they didn't know how to scale themselves.

00:01:59.120 So I shared this strategy and the feedback overwhelmed me.

00:02:04.440 And I was like, oh, maybe there's something here.

00:02:06.540 So it was funny as I started, you know,

00:02:08.240 SaaS Academy about five years ago

00:02:10.260 and I was teaching this framework

00:02:12.380 around like how to, you know, document, delegate

00:02:15.120 and disconnect and I was teaching all this stuff

00:02:17.620 and it was a few years later

00:02:19.040 that became the buyback principle

00:02:20.440 and eventually I had a good friend of mine

00:02:24.520 reach out to me and says like,

00:02:25.940 you need to write a book.

00:02:27.640 I wanna help you write the book

00:02:29.180 and I was like, you know, my philosophy is who not how

00:02:33.040 so I know how I could get it done

00:02:34.580 but I need the who and here is this person

00:02:36.660 he wanted to support me on it.

00:02:39.040 So I thought maybe now's the time.

00:02:40.560 We didn't know what book to write,

00:02:41.700 but when he looked at all the different things

00:02:43.540 that I've been talking about, he's like this, this concept.

00:02:47.640 The idea that we don't hire people

00:02:49.600 to add capacity to our business,

00:02:51.700 we hire people to buy back time out of our calendar,

00:02:55.440 so that if that generates more capacity,

00:02:58.160 at minimum it creates more joy and ability

00:03:01.260 to keep playing what I call the infinite entrepreneurial game.

00:03:04.980 And that's how the book came to be.

00:03:07.280 but I wanna share with you the strategies, the thinking,

00:03:10.580 and then also like how I leverage my executive assistant

00:03:13.520 and my house manager to be able to find the time

00:03:16.120 to do all of this.

00:03:17.060 So let's get into it.

00:03:18.740 Number one is the buyback rate.

00:03:20.580 So in my new book, I talk about the buyback rate,

00:03:23.380 which is the monetary amount that you can afford

00:03:27.360 to pay somebody to take something off your plate, right?

00:03:29.820 Most people don't understand this.

00:03:31.000 So the simple math, okay?

00:03:32.800 The philosophy is that if you're generating profit

00:03:36.660 and you're taking an income from your business,

00:03:38.820 then you have income.

00:03:39.820 So I usually say, how much are you paying yourself?

00:03:42.420 How much profit do you make in your business?

00:03:46.260 And maybe those are separate, maybe those are the same.

00:03:47.980 And then also discretionary expenses,

00:03:50.740 like things that you put through your business

00:03:52.460 that are probably not really business expenses, but whatever.

00:03:55.020 Because that's really your economic engine.

00:03:57.200 That dollar amount could be $100,000,

00:03:59.180 could be $50,000, could be a million dollars.

00:04:01.640 It's you know the number, I don't.

00:04:04.120 divided by 2,000,

00:04:05.800 because that's the amount of hours there are in a year.

00:04:09.500 That gives you a number.

00:04:11.300 Let's call it $50, $100, $1,000, okay?

00:04:15.020 Now I want you to have a four times ROI

00:04:18.500 on hiring somebody to do stuff,

00:04:20.520 and then you taking that time

00:04:21.720 and go doing higher value leverage things.

00:04:24.140 You already know what your hours worth,

00:04:25.900 $1,000, $500, $100, based on the buyback rate.

00:04:29.880 So if you want to do a 4X ROI,

00:04:32.400 then divide that number by four,

00:04:33.940 and that's where you get the four times ROI.

00:04:35.420 And that dollar amount per hour

00:04:37.400 is what you should be looking at things

00:04:40.380 to hire people to do for you.

00:04:43.360 That's the way I look at my life.

00:04:45.080 Where did I find time to write my book?

00:04:47.160 I just looked at,

00:04:48.280 I made a list of all the stuff I spent my time on

00:04:50.420 and anything that fit below the buyback rate.

00:04:52.980 And in my world, I'm super lucky and blessed

00:04:54.940 that that's a big number.

00:04:56.980 That's where I started looking at

00:04:58.640 building out more infrastructure around my companies,

00:05:00.780 building more people around me

00:05:02.700 to help support my family, support my training,

00:05:05.820 the Ironman stuff, the,

00:05:07.500 literally all the things that I write about in the book.

00:05:09.600 If anything, writing the book increased my output,

00:05:12.320 increased my capacity to produce

00:05:14.820 because I was kind of like stress testing

00:05:17.220 some of these methodologies to the next level, right?

00:05:20.260 So that's number one is the buyback rate.

00:05:21.820 What can you spend to delegate to somebody else?

00:05:26.380 Number two is the book CEO.

00:05:28.500 This is, you know, the big one for me is

00:05:31.600 I'm a who, not how guy.

00:05:32.940 So I always ask myself,

00:05:34.040 who can I hire to solve this problem,

00:05:36.140 not how do I solve this problem?

00:05:38.020 And at the time, that individual that reached out with me,

00:05:40.660 my buddy Ron, and Ron is a very successful author,

00:05:45.260 and he wanted to work with me to produce this book, okay?

00:05:49.420 It wasn't like some of these services

00:05:52.360 that you just pay to hire a ghostwriter

00:05:54.160 and they get you a ghostwriter.

00:05:55.540 This was a collaboration with Ron,

00:05:58.500 with his agent and his team

00:06:00.860 and the people he'd worked with

00:06:01.940 and his researches and everything.

00:06:03.220 And then that way I was accountable to somebody else, okay?

00:06:06.600 And I'm a big fan of doing this.

00:06:08.140 In the book, I talk about, you know,

00:06:10.460 hacks for getting work done.

00:06:12.020 And one of my favorite strategies,

00:06:13.120 scheduling time with somebody else

00:06:14.900 to show up and do the work.

00:06:16.360 I wanna be the talent.

00:06:17.560 I don't wanna be the driver.

00:06:18.840 The moment somebody else is being paid to drive

00:06:22.060 and push forward so that you can just show up

00:06:24.500 and do your genius, beautiful, beautiful scenario, right?

00:06:28.800 So number two is a book CEO.

00:06:31.500 And that was my buddy Rod.

00:06:32.680 Number three, because that was part of the replacement

00:06:35.100 in my book, I have this thing called the replacement ladder,

00:06:37.600 but I talk about, you know, getting the who not how.

00:06:40.940 So the book CEO, number three is the drip matrix.

00:06:45.480 Okay, D-R-I-P matrix. 0.96

00:06:48.500 Okay, it's four squares, four quadrants.

00:06:51.240 And the X, Y axis is lights you up, gives you energy.

00:06:56.240 and the bottom one is makes you money, okay?

00:06:59.940 So what you wanna do is the bottom left quadrant

00:07:03.140 is delegate, okay?

00:07:04.880 You wanna get really good at delegate,

00:07:07.480 and that's the D, and the top above that, okay?

00:07:09.960 So these are things that don't make you a lot of money

00:07:11.760 and you hate to do.

00:07:12.760 The things that you like to do,

00:07:14.880 but make you a lot of money, that's the replace, okay?

00:07:17.740 That's the R, replace.

00:07:19.740 The bottom right corner is invest.

00:07:21.560 Things that you may not make a lot of money with right now,

00:07:25.960 but lights you up, that's invest, you becoming better.

00:07:29.500 Skill sets, mindset, et cetera.

00:07:31.820 And then the top right is where you wanna spend

00:07:33.860 most of your time, which is produce, that's the P, right?

00:07:37.020 So delegate, replace, invest, and produce

00:07:40.660 so that you can become more.

00:07:42.180 So the more I worked on my book, the more I could produce,

00:07:45.360 the more I could collaborate with my team.

00:07:47.560 I actually have my videographer, Sam,

00:07:49.620 again, buy back my time.

00:07:51.060 They went through all of my video catalogs

00:07:53.280 once I did the kind of the outline of the book

00:07:56.060 to then insert videos that had me talking

00:07:59.060 about the frameworks that I wanted to teach.

00:08:01.500 Then we transcribed it and I worked with my editor

00:08:04.580 to fill in the blank.

00:08:06.320 So I didn't have to sit there and write from scratch.

00:08:08.560 I could edit, not author.

00:08:10.260 I mean, just so many, again, maybe you don't have videos

00:08:13.060 but I'm just sharing you my journey.

00:08:14.240 I'm always looking for where can I get leverage?

00:08:16.540 Do I have a team member that has experience

00:08:18.080 and knowledge around something

00:08:19.300 that I can trade time for money?

00:08:22.360 That's the drip matrix.

00:08:23.760 So you always wanna work your way up

00:08:25.460 into the right corner of production, produce,

00:08:28.180 because in that spot, things that create a lot of value

00:08:31.720 and make you a lot of money,

00:08:33.120 that's where I think playing

00:08:34.660 this infinite entrepreneurial game

00:08:36.320 where you don't have to retire from it,

00:08:37.540 you don't have to stop it, it doesn't hurt.

00:08:39.460 The more you do it,

00:08:40.280 the better your life gets, can be incredible.

00:08:43.320 Number four is the fully loaded year.

00:08:46.760 It's actually a framework I learned from my coach,

00:08:48.880 this guy named Taki Moore,

00:08:50.220 I give them full credit for the fully loaded year,

00:08:52.500 but it's a one page diagram that shows every month

00:08:56.680 and every day on the month as a linear representation.

00:08:59.760 So you have January, February, March, April, May.

00:09:01.160 So you have a one page, essentially diagram

00:09:04.160 or grid of your year.

00:09:06.540 And what that allows you to do is plan strategically.

00:09:10.320 So I always put my most important things

00:09:12.700 in my fully loaded year, birthdays, vacation,

00:09:16.240 the quarterly retreats with my wife,

00:09:17.760 all the things that add to the rhythms

00:09:20.320 that make me feel like I'm winning at life.

00:09:23.500 And then we put all the other stuff, the external needs,

00:09:26.620 but the book was a big project.

00:09:28.280 So I had to look at my fully loaded year, okay?

00:09:30.880 And figure out what are the big milestones?

00:09:33.160 I got to get the first draft done here.

00:09:35.260 And there was like the marketing plan.

00:09:36.880 And then we signed the deal with our publisher,

00:09:39.880 you know, Random House Portfolio Penguin, right?

00:09:42.360 To get the deal done.

00:09:45.240 So there's a marketing book proposal

00:09:46.740 and there's all these things.

00:09:47.620 to put the time I was going to need to allocate so that I could be present for it. And because I

00:09:52.460 pre-planned it in the fully loaded year, then there wasn't friction. See, a lot of you are

00:09:58.180 dealing with making decisions to move your life forward, but you didn't talk to anybody about it.

00:10:03.360 You didn't negotiate it. I sit down every quarter to review my fully loaded year with my wife. At

00:10:08.140 the end of the year, we plan the full next year, and I'm already planning 60 months into the future

00:10:12.480 so that when I make decisions to write a book,

00:10:16.340 start a company, invest in a company,

00:10:18.400 do an Ironman, whatever it is,

00:10:20.420 that there's visibility.

00:10:22.360 It's like, well, what does that mean for your life?

00:10:23.820 What does that mean for my life?

00:10:24.840 What are the sacrifices?

00:10:26.200 What are the things I'm gonna shift?

00:10:27.540 Where else will I need to buy back some time

00:10:29.520 to unlock that time required to execute on that project?

00:10:33.920 And that would never work

00:10:35.320 without implementation of the fully loaded year.

00:10:38.140 Number five is the buyback lifestyle.

00:10:40.860 A lot of people have executive assistants, okay?

00:10:43.880 Many of them don't work with them

00:10:45.500 the way I describe in my book

00:10:46.840 where I talk about email and calendar

00:10:48.680 and having 100% accountability to your admin team.

00:10:51.840 I'll just leave that like that,

00:10:53.500 but most people don't do that.

00:10:55.240 The buyback lifestyle is asking yourself,

00:10:58.540 how do I take that leverage that I get in the business,

00:11:01.280 having executive assistant,

00:11:02.420 and bring it into my home, into my life?

00:11:05.740 You know, in the last 12 months, 16 months,

00:11:08.500 I've moved cities, I've bought real estate,

00:11:11.940 I've completed five Ironmans,

00:11:14.020 I've started a new venture firm.

00:11:17.380 Like there's so many things that I've done

00:11:19.640 that none of that would have been possible

00:11:21.600 if I didn't have certain people in my life

00:11:24.040 like my house manager or hiring contractors

00:11:26.500 to execute projects.

00:11:27.380 Because I need to be able to wake up, produce, train,

00:11:32.920 jump on, do things like this that only I can do,

00:11:35.760 shoot videos, but then when that's done,

00:11:38.080 move on and go for date night with my wife i literally today if you looked at my calendar 0.98

00:11:42.560 it was pretty much like start create i i like finished up the training delivered the training

00:11:48.560 team meetings shoot i think nine videos then go on a date night with my wife because the kids

00:11:54.560 are gone right like that's that's the buyback life and one of my buddies garrett he jokes he goes

00:12:00.720 so dan wants to teach you how to buy back your time so you can go do iron mans screw that why

00:12:05.200 Why would I wanna do that?

00:12:06.500 But look, you can do whatever you want with your time.

00:12:08.780 I'm just telling you that like,

00:12:10.220 there's no way I could have done all those things.

00:12:13.200 Oh, and by the way,

00:12:14.480 write a book that's gonna be a bestseller.

00:12:16.300 Cause I really truly believe it.

00:12:17.520 It took me three iterations, three years to write this thing.

00:12:20.620 And it's because I didn't compromise.

00:12:22.640 It took way more time than I ever thought,

00:12:24.760 but it's what, it's the output that I want.

00:12:28.040 It's the quality of it.

00:12:28.900 I didn't wanna just do like a lot of people do,

00:12:31.000 just like, hey, I got a book, here it is.

00:12:32.920 I didn't really write it.

00:12:33.760 I just gave it to somebody else.

00:12:34.820 They wrote it and I put my name on it.

00:12:36.000 No, no, no, no, no.

00:12:37.060 Like that's not what I did.

00:12:38.640 I wanted to really like add the stories,

00:12:41.460 hired a researcher, highly quotable,

00:12:44.380 like just put the time and energy

00:12:46.540 to create this piece of art.

00:12:48.860 Honestly, I'm gonna call it that

00:12:50.020 because I really put my soul into this book.

00:12:52.320 But I wanted to share with you the principles

00:12:54.960 and the math and the thinking that I use to write the book

00:12:58.720 because maybe you're inspired to do it in your own way.

00:13:01.620 But when you look at your life in your calendar,

00:13:03.200 if you just can't see where you would find the time,

00:13:05.600 the answer is you gotta buy back your time.

00:13:08.060 So if you're interested in what I shared,

00:13:10.140 I want to encourage you to click the link below

00:13:12.780 to pre-order my book.

00:13:14.600 It's called Buy Back Your Time.

00:13:16.560 It is my life's work.

00:13:18.600 I've put my soul into this and I would love your support.

00:13:21.900 So click the link to pre-order your copy today.

00:13:25.120 And as per usual, I wanna challenge you

00:13:27.260 to live a bigger life, a buyback life,

00:13:29.860 and get more out of your life

00:13:31.600 and build a bigger business.

00:13:33.500 So with that, hope this finds you incredible

00:13:35.460 and we'll see you next Monday.

00:13:36.860 Peace.

Dan Martell - September 05, 2022

I Wrote a Best-Selling Book While Buying Back my Time

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript