Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire

by Dan Martell

their own responsibilities. Many leaders manage their organization by telling staff what to do, checking their work, then explaining what to do next. That’s transactional management. If you do this, eventually the entire organization will come to you for answers on what to do next, and you’ll hit the tell-check-next ceiling. Instead, you can embrace transformational leadership, in which you give an outcome, offer a metric to measure progress, then coach to success. In this way, you’re joining the employee along a journey in which they

ultimately grow and learn to make decisions without much involvement from you. Use the CO-A-CH framework to coach your staff to succe...

In general, most companies have a buffet of work available—so why not get everyone their favorite dish?

Here’s how you get your best players to stay: create a real environment where they can gain professional and personal feedback from their peers.

Create a warm environment. Lead them to offering critical feedback. Empathize. Ask if there’s more. Reject or accept the feedback.

Schedule time to meet with two to three of your direct reports in the next month, if you don’t have meetings set up with them already. At these meetings, ask them to offer you feedback. It may be awkward at first, but use the CLEAR steps. You’ll get the hang of it. Tip: Just listen. If nothing else, try to see their perspective and think about it. You don’t have to implement any changes right away. (But if you keep hearing the same thing from every single person, you might want to!)

If you’re an entrepreneur, you wouldn’t last long sitting on a beach. You’d sit your butt in the sand

for a whole few days before getting antsy. After staring at that umbrella for too long, you’d probably invent a better one, start a new company, and hire the pool boy as your first employee.

As you start to buy back your

time, you need to deposit it into the Production Quadrant. And for that you need something big, bold, and meaningful.

The bigger the necessity, the bigger the invention.

Passionate people ignite passion in others. When you’re energized by passion, the way you talk about your goals and the future has a different energy, and there’s nothing more contagious than energetic people: Customers buy more Employees work harder Vendors go above and beyond

Big Dreams Crush Distractions Here’s what I love about people with insanely huge goals: they know what to put in their calendar, how to spend their days, and what to fill their life up with. They aren’t getting haunted by despair or stuck in the mediocre. Every decision in their life relates back to making their insane dream a reality. While other people are wondering what TV show they’re going to binge on Tuesday night, dreamers don’t even have time for that.

Business author and coach Dan Sullivan says this: “10X is easier than 2X.”[5] Here’s what he means: The key that unlocks success is zooming out of our everyday problems and looking at them more holistically. It’s the first lesson you learn in defensive baseball. When a pop fly is coming your way, take a step back. Always. When you remove yourself from the agonizing, smaller details and look at your overall goals,

connected to a worthy, difficult challenge, your motivation increases, and the necessary steps are really easy to see.

“When you can describe your future with the same level of detail as your present, you’ll have a compelling vision.”

A 10X Vision is simply a wild dream that you’ve turned into a clear picture.

I like to use ICE to give each tactic a score of up to thirty points: Impact (1 to 10) Confidence (1 to 10) Ease (1 to 10)

By preloading your calendar with what’s most important (big rocks) first, you’ll fit in not only those big rocks, but also what’s moderately important, and even the fun little parts of life. Counterintuitively, the more planned and scheduled you are, the more spontaneity you can enjoy. Think once. Once you’ve made your year, don’t keep making exceptions. You can use the Preloaded Year to help execute on your 10X Vision. Break down your 10X Vision into five-, three-, and one-year goals. If an ad hoc opportunity does

arise, and you’re considering changing your plans, ask yourself this question: Is this a “Hell-yeah!” opportunity? If it is, it may be worth changing your plans. If it’s not, stay on course.

My goal is to build a life I don’t need a vacation from. —Rob Hill

I can do this, and I have the time. Why shouldn’t I? I get that. But what we don’t realize is that when we don’t pay someone else to do something we could afford to pay them to do, we’re robbing them of a paycheck. Why be so selfish? Don’t get me wrong, I understand how chores build personal responsibility. That’s why my house manager, Betty, isn’t allowed to clean up after my two sons. She doesn’t work for them. She works for me. My children need to learn about personal responsibility. I’ve learned that lesson by now, and my guess is that you have, too.

I’m not a genius, but I’ve started copying Oprah, Buffett, and Branson. I’ve learned to apply the Buyback Principle, and I’m still learning new ways to let it challenge me to upgrade my thinking, my time, and my business. Because the Buyback Principle allows me to live the life I want today, I have no plans to retire. Ever. I plan on continually buying back my time, applying the Buyback Principle, and enjoying my life. I have no desire to sell my company and retire so I can hang out in Italy for three months doing nothing. Today, I can go to Italy for three months and invite my favorite people (who all work with and for me) to collaborate in ways that

employ all of our own individual “art classes.” My business allows me—in fact, encourages me—to use my own skills to solve real problems with people I love. For instance, to finish this book, I rented a cabin up in the Canadian Rockies with one of my copywriters, Chris. A few weeks ago, my videographer, Sam, dropped in and, after a video project, crashed at my place for a few days. This week, I’ll spend Thursday night dating the world’s most beautiful woman (my wife), just like I do every Thursday night. I’ll go mountain biking with my friends, just like I do every week. I’ll spend ample time with my two boys, just like I do every week. I also

like going hot-tubbing, so I’ll spend an hour a day in the hot tub relaxing, reading books, and feeding my mind with new and cool ideas. Why retire from any of that? I invite you to stop...

As Colonel Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, once said, “Work is the basis of living. I’ll never retire. A person will rust out quicker than they’ll wear out.”

When you have finished this process—it should take less than ten minutes—you can open your eyes and go on with your day. If you make this part of your daily routine, you will be amazed at how much improvement you will see in your life.

What if I reach the top of the success ladder and my family no longer wants me around? What if they become so accustomed to my absence that my presence feels like an intrusion? Is that the lifestyle I want in ten or twenty years?