How To Buy Back Your Time & Increase Profit

About this video

Dan Martell explains how to buy back your time to increase profit, using four strategies he teaches coaching clients. First, the buyback principle: entrepreneurs will not grow into pain, so growth stalls when selling means more painful delivery work. Most founders hire only to add capacity — developers, support, frontline staff — and, he says, typically get overwhelmed around 12 employees because none of that hiring frees their own time. Instead, hire for capability: buy back low-value activities so you can spend time on higher-value, revenue-generating, energising work. He warns never to hire an operations person before you have a personal or executive assistant. Second, calculate your Effective Hourly Rate: revenue divided by 2,000 working hours — $1,000,000 of revenue equals $500 per hour — and out-task work you can hire out at a quarter of that rate, using sites like Upwork rather than assuming a full-time hire. Third, hire multiple hats: group related buckets of work and hand one person several hats, with clear outcomes and weekly check-ins. Fourth, build throughput: teach leaders to buy back their own time too, for example by giving executive assistants to senior leadership, so they gain management bandwidth for strategic thinking instead of burning out.

Key takeaways

• Apply the buyback principle: hire to free your time for higher-value work, not merely to add capacity, or growth becomes painful and stalls.
• Calculate your Effective Hourly Rate as revenue divided by 2,000 hours, and out-task anything you can hire at roughly a quarter of that rate.
• Hire an executive or personal assistant before hiring an operations person to run the business.
• Hire multiple hats: bundle related groups of tasks into one role, set the outcomes, coach weekly, and let the hire figure out the how.
• Build throughput by teaching your leadership team to buy back their time too — Martell says he gives executive assistants to all his senior leaders.

Episode details: published June 28, 2021 · 11:10 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dan Martell’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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