B. Buy Back Your Time

Buy Back Your Time

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Highlights

You don’t learn without doing, and once you’ve really learned something valuable, you should pass it on. — location: 143

the only way to grow your business past a certain point is to buy back your time and redeposit it where it matters most. — location: 145

Stephen Covey once said, “The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.” — location: 174

over time, a hard-work ethic can lead entrepreneurs to believe one thing: more input, more output. — location: 261

efficient busyness on the wrong tasks simply creates a faster streamline to Stuart’s situation. — location: 267

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. Likely, two to three tasks fit that description. Every other task you’re handling is slowing your growth and sucking the life from you, and you should clear it from your calendar. — location: 274

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 — location: 303

The Buyback Principle: Don’t hire to grow your business. Hire to buy back your time. — location: 310

The Pain Line is the point at which growth becomes impossible. — location: 361

a decision to not grow is a decision to slowly die. — location: 403

Growth isn’t just necessary for expansion. Growth is necessary for survival. — location: 407

James Clear talks about the importance of systems versus goals. “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.” — location: 437

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. — location: 446

Moments of pain are often the perfect opportunities to upgrade our thinking and begin a Buyback Loop that changes our life. — location: 454

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? — location: 478

when entrepreneurs are executing tasks in their individual zones of genius, they’re able to apply their unique, innate talents, and it’s the “entry gate to the garden of miracles.”[6] — location: 560

passion combined with perseverance predicts higher educational scores. — location: 582

“perseverance without passion isn’t grit, but merely a grind.” — location: 584

you have unique gifts that create real value. Clear out your calendar so you can practice those gifts. — location: 614

if most of your activity today is creating little value and also sucking the life out of you, then inwardly you probably feel chaotic and a bit in despair. — location: 634

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. — location: 662

You can only get to Oprah’s level by starting to act like Oprah today. — location: 667

The DRIP Matrix — location: 679

Delegation MAKES YOU LITTLE MONEY, DRAINS YOUR ENERGY — location: 685

Replacement MAKES YOU MONEY, DRAINS YOUR ENERGY — location: 704

Investment MAKES YOU LITTLE MONEY, LIGHTS YOU UP — location: 732

Unlike in the despair or the Replacement Quadrants, the goal is to always have some activities in the Investment Quadrant that nourish your soul, your relationships, and flex your creativity. — location: 764

Production MAKES YOU LOTS OF MONEY, LIGHTS YOU UP — location: 768

The way to grow is to START with your calendar (time). — location: 797

You don’t aim for 100 percent perfection. Instead, shoot for 80 percent. Yes, lower your expectations, because here’s the deal: 80% done by someone else is 100% freaking awesome. — location: 814

My rule of thumb is that no one—not a founder, not an administrative assistant, not a baseball player, not a barista—should be performing a work task that they could outsource for one-fourth (i.e., 25 percent) of their current effective hourly rate. — location: 854

what your company pays / eight thousand = Buyback Rate. — location: 866

From now on, there’s no task you should be performing (that you don’t enjoy) whose cost is less than your Buyback Rate. — location: 914

While the chairlift was pulling his body up, his mind was checked out, ticking off imaginary checklists. — location: 932

Chaos can feel so normal that calm can actually feel strange. Entrepreneurs have been so trained in dealing with stress, like making difficult decisions based on incomplete information and last-minute changes, that they’re always looking for the next problem, even if it doesn’t exist. Without a fire to put out, they can grow inwardly anxious. — location: 996

If I had stepped in, then I would have reinforced to myself that this was a fire that needed a hero, and that I was that hero, and no one else could ever handle the job as well as I could. That’s classic chaos addiction. — location: 1008

The Staller: You sabotage your own success by hesitating on big decisions. The Speed Demon: You make rapid decisions, such as hiring the quickest/easiest/cheapest option. Then you find yourself in the same position again. The Supervisor: You fail to properly train, micromanaging others, failing to empower them to grow and learn. The Saver: You have money in your bank account but don’t understand the value in spending it on growth opportunities. You let it grow like a nest egg instead of investing it in your business. The Self-Medicator: You turn to food, alcohol, or other vices to reward yourself when you have success. Then you rush to the same destructive activities to escape failure or pain. — location: 1031

John Dewey once said, “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” — location: 1084

The problem with being excellent at fixing problems is that you’ll want to fix them . . . even when they don’t exist. — location: 1128

Your Name: Here, you’ll find the few emails that only you can respond to: huge clients with big requests, one-off situations, and high-dollar decisions. 1. To Respond: Your assistant applies this label to everything they’re going to manage but haven’t gotten to yet. 2. Review: This label is for all those scenarios your assistant isn’t sure about. My administrative assistant saves those items here, and every morning, we tackle these in about fifteen minutes: “Dan, I got an email from Emily. She wants you to speak at her conference. I think you should do it.” I give the final thumbs-up (or thumbs-down). 3. Responded: When your assistant responds to an email, they put this label on it, giving you access to review it. 4. Waiting On: These are items that require action from others before they can move forward. 5. Receipts/Financials: This is for anything financial related. 6. Newsletters: Any content you want to consume goes here. Then you consume that content on your time, when you decide. Hint: Use an auto-sort feature for this. To get the most out of the Email GPS, ensure that all your email is routed to one inbox. Once your assistant checks an email, they put it in the correct folder (or apply the right label) or archive the email. Consequently, your inbox should get processed so that there’s nothing left in it. (In most email applications, you can archive something so that it no longer shows in the inbox, but it’s still stored in case you need to look it up later.) Email GPS System — location: 1823

Playbooks offer a way to transport knowledge based on what’s already been tested and verified. — location: 1926

When applied to the company as a whole, Playbooks unlock scale. — location: 1931

Unlimited predictability is more valuable than intermittent quality. — location: 1935

Starting with the area that’s causing you the most pain is a great place to start with your first Playbook. — location: 1957

Here’s my Playbook on Playbooks. First, there are four essential pieces: The Camcorder Method (the training videos) The Course (the steps involved in the process) The Cadence (how often these tasks should be completed: monthly, weekly, daily, etc.) The Checklist (the high-level items that must be completed every time) The Playbook Framework — location: 1974

Talking is key. Let’s say you’re logging into the back end of your website to upload a blog, and you want the headers, fonts, et cetera to all look a certain way. Just hit Record and get going. But make sure you talk while you’re doing everything. If you explain what you’re doing while you’re doing it, it unlocks all the nuance you want captured. Make three recordings. Of course, every time you’re performing a task, it changes just a little. Maybe you want to transfer the task of setting up social media campaigns on Facebook to someone else on your team. Well, every time you do it, it’s probably just slightly different. I’ve found that three is the magic number. If you record yourself three times doing the same task, you’ll have captured nearly every possible iteration. — location: 2003

none of these steps are too detailed. They simply capture the high-level steps involved. Each task in your Playbook should have about this level of detail for each of the steps — location: 2031

One reason entrepreneurs fear making Playbooks is because they think it will take enormous time and energy. In the past, they may have tried to create an SOP with screen grabs, explicit instructions with detailed URLs, and directions on which software to use and when. After putting in all that effort, their business changed, the role changed, or the tools they prescribed changed, rendering the entire Playbook useless. — location: 2033

After you have all the training videos and the high-level steps for every task listed out, the next thing you need to do is create a section called “Cadence.” (In a simple Playbook, this section may not be necessary.) — location: 2039

Inside each Playbook, I have nonnegotiable checklists. “Did you pull in all reports and ensure they were easily readable for recipients?” “Did you schedule a follow-up call with all missed contacts?” “Did you update the software?” — location: 2052

80% done is 100% awesome—a — location: 2058