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the only way to grow your business past a certain point is to buy back your time and redeposit it where it matters most.
Simple busyness can’t be the secret ingredient to business success. A hamster on a wheel is awfully busy. So is a dog digging a hole. I can think of more than one entrepreneur who spends hours a day running errands, being interrupted by team members, processing emails—they’re certainly busy all day, but there’s not a lot getting done.
The little-known secret to reaching the next stage of your business is spending your time on only the tasks that: (a) you excel at, (b) you truly enjoy, and (c) add the highest value (usually in the form of revenue) to your business.
Yes, someone else should be handling about 95 percent of your current work so you can get back to what matters.
That’s what the Buyback Principle is all about: How to spend the most finite asset your business possesses: the founder’s time
How to invest that time into what will bring the founder more energy and more money
The Buyback Principle: Don’t hire to grow your business. Hire to buy back your time.
The Buyback Principle means that when you’re choosing what to do today, you should be selecting the highest-value tasks.
Don’t hire to grow your business. Hire to buy back your time.
If she recognizes there’s no opportunity for her to grow at your company, she’ll eventually walk away. When you stall, even though you may not realize it, you’re agreeing to shrink.
“Winners and losers have the same goals,” he writes. “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
A Buyback Loop occurs as you continually audit your time to determine the low-value tasks that are sucking your energy. Then you transfer those tasks, optimally, to someone who’s better at them and enjoys them. Lastly, you fill your time with higher-value tasks that light you up and make you more money. Then you start the process over again.
Audit: What tasks do I hate doing that are easy and inexpensive to offer someone else? Transfer: Who do I have on my team—or who can I hire, even part-time—to take these over? Fill: What tasks should I focus on that I love doing that can immediately bring more money to my company?
5 Buyback Rules The Buyback Principle: Don’t hire to grow your business. Hire to buy back your time. You can’t personally outwork yourself to a better business. The problem is you only have twenty-four hours a day. Eventually, if you’re doing everything, you (or one of your relationships) will break down. If you keep grinding, you’ll eventually hit the Pain Line, where you’re experiencing so much pain when you try to grow that you’ll do one of three things: stall it, sabotage it, or sell it. When you hit the Pain Line, it should act as a feedback loop—this is your opportunity to embrace a new
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Miguel can now refocus his time and energy on what his customers need most and what makes more money. “I’m actively working to identify areas where we can grow, because I want to operate at the ten-thousand-dollar-an-hour level, not the ten-dollar-an-hour level.” We
What’s worse (as the Columbia and Harvard study showed) is when you don’t enjoy something, you’re also not as good at it. In other words, while you think you’re sacrificing for a worthy cause by working hard at things that challenge you, you’re actually costing your company. It’s a lose-lose move. I know, because I’ve been there (see Introduction!).
Successful people aren’t doing what they love because they’re rich. They’re rich because they’ve learned to do what they love, and only what they love.
Tasks in the Delegation Quadrant should be found and quickly moved on to someone else when possible. Think about it this way: If you paid a marketer $100,000 a year, would you want them spending six hours a day cleaning the office windows?
80% done by someone else is 100% freaking awesome.
While some entrepreneurs think, One day, I can stop this madness if I work hard enough, smart entrepreneurs think, Today, I’ll build a game I want to play forever.
What are you spending all your time on that’s likely in your Delegation Quadrant?
Determine your Buyback Rate. You’ve probably already done this. Remember, your Buyback Rate is how much your company pays you, divided by two thousand, then divided by four. Audit every fifteen minutes of your workday for two weeks. Using a piece of paper or an online template,[*] document every quarter hour of your time. It will look something like this:
8:00–8:30 Emailed clients. 8:30–9:30 Conducted a podcast interview. 9:30–11:00 Met with Board of Directors. 11:00–11:15 Had a one-on-one with Kelsey. 11:15–11:30 Had a one-on-one with Zack.
After you’ve completed the Time and Energy Audit, every item on your list should have two components—one to four dollar signs, and either red or green highlighting.[*]
“The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.” Getting
if you want to see your business explode, if you want to truly apply the Buyback Principle, hiring an assistant is nonnegotiable. It’s the first hire every entrepreneur should make. Every hour you spend on admin tasks, answering emails, managing your calendar, calling the gardener, paying bills, et cetera is an hour robbed from your business, family, and dream life.
If you want to make it even easier than all this, you can go check out Trainual.com, a company I’ve invested in that helps your whole
Every Playbook, once completed, should have 4 Cs: the Camcorder Method, the Course, the Cadence, the Checklist.
That’s why Dale believes in batching tasks—he’s optimizing for flow. Simply put, when you batch similar tasks, you’re able to capitalize on the fact that you’re already in the right state of mind for that type of task. On a practical level, you’re also in the right place, with the right set of programs and tools you’ll need.
You can be either reactive to the world around you or proactive. A reactive person is always available for anything. A proactive person has designated time slots to route demands on their time.
But every time you solve a problem on your own, you’re eliminating the chance for someone else to learn.
If you want to live in production, you’ve got to hand over the reins of your ego. There’s no hack to that.
Coaching your teammates isn’t an option—it’s a requirement. Managers check off tasks, bark orders, and create reports. Leaders know how to pull the best out of someone. They can see potential and make it a reality. Without the coaches, many of the greatest names in sports wouldn’t have achieved what they did.
IF YOU WANT to build a lasting organization, you’ve got to learn to transform your team instead of just managing tasks. Think about how a coach would help you.
No Feedback = No Productivity Do you want your whole company to get back to producing high-energy results? Then ensure that feedback is flowing freely. A lack of two-way communication and feedback can become a culture cancer and spread throughout the entire organization, causing major issues.
If you do not know where you are going, you will end up exactly there (where?). If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. If you have no specific goals, you will get no specific results.
I want you to have a huge dream—one like Lane’s. In this chapter, I’m going to help you get there. Importantly, your dream needs to be insanely huge, but it also must be incredibly clear. In the end, you’ll need what I call a 10X Vision—something so big, so crazy, so huge, that it inspires you like crazy. Think landing on Mars, winning an Olympic gold medal, selling your company for $1 billion, turning all trash into compost, et cetera.
Entrepreneurism simply isn’t worth the effort unless you’re going for the gold.
For one, anything short of a near-impossible dream is simply unmotivating.
Entrepreneurs are dreamers. If they don’t have a dream big enough to work toward, they’ll get bored.
“When you can describe your future with the same level of detail as your present, you’ll have a compelling vision.”
The problem with many of our dreams is that we wouldn’t even know if we achieved them.
Schooling had no Olympic medals, no worldwide fame, and no world records. But he had one thing going for him—a crazy, clear vision of one day defeating the greatest Olympian of all time.
When you use the Buyback Principle correctly, you aren’t ultimately just searching for more money, you’re upgrading constantly to purpose. You’re transferring tasks you don’t enjoy to someone else who might so you can invest back in your life.
“Work is the basis of living. I’ll never retire. A person will rust out quicker than they’ll wear out.”
“Playing small” doesn’t serve you, your loved ones, or any of your relationships. It teaches others to play small. By playing small, you become something less than you might otherwise be. By playing small, you deprive the world of your genius. Instead, be who you can be.
Friendships are like muscles: if you don’t invest in them, they fade away.
