Book Rec: Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell

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I wanted to share some of the ideas that I found especially useful from my friend Dan Martell’s excellent book, Buy Back Your Time.?

The premise of Dan’s book is that entrepreneurs need to be optimizing for their time. It’s NOT about hiring people to grow the business, but instead, hiring people to buy back time on your own personal calendar.

This was a key distinction for me, as I like the flexible structure of my business, and I like keeping my teams small and nimble, so I’ve always struggled with hiring for “growth.” Hiring for time was such a good reframe, and it’s been transforming how I think about my professional and personal time.

1. The Buy Back Rate: Your Budget to Hiring Help

Dan introduces the concept of the BUYBACK RATE, which is the rate that you can afford to purchase back your time. You take your annual salary and divided by 2000 working hours. If you take home $1,000,000 a year, your hourly rate is $500/hr.

Dan says that nobody should perform any task that can be outsourced for 25% of your hourly fee. If my hourly fee is $500/hr, then I can afford to pay up to $125/hr on task delegation. And, here’s the key part: if you don’t hire this out, you’re actually costing your business $375/hr by doing low value tasks instead of investing in revenue making activities.

I made a list of all the revenue generating activities for my business. Then, I made a list of all the activities that I do in an average week that could be done by someone else. There were a lot. It was clear that I was not effectively buying back my time.

2. Outsource Your Inbox and Calendar & Get a House Manager?

My executive assistant already manages my calendar, but she’s now handling my inbox too (as per Dan’s recommendation). She’ll flag anything I need to handle and can manage the bulk of it by herself. No more pressure to check emails and respond quickly.?

Dan made the excellent point that you can hire people to do a custom bunch of tasks even if they don’t fit in a traditional job description. This was so helpful as I often tried to figure out if I needed a marketing person or a content person, and ended up making a list of the tasks that I needed done and having people apply for those positions. It’s ok to just need an extra pair of hands (or two) to do various tasks for the business.?

I’m currently interviewing for a “House Manager”, another suggestion from Dan, to expand on regular housekeeping that we have done and to start including more tasks like grocery shopping, house admin, dry cleaning, logistics and coordination, and other random tasks. For example, every year, we have to bring someone to inspect the boiler and someone else to inspect the fireplaces in our house (both for insurance purposes). A house manager would make sure that those appointments are scheduled, they’d be here, they’d manage the whole process and I wouldn’t have to think about other than seeing it complete on our house project board.

3. The DRIP Matrix: Where to Spend Your Time?

The other helpful idea was the DRIP matrix which looks at the financial and energetic cost of a task.

Delegation — Low Earning, Low Energy (Admin/Calendar)

Replacement — High Earning, Low Energy (Marketing)

Investment — Low Earning, High Energy (Relationships, Hobbies)

Production — High Earning, High Energy (The Money Makers)

The production quadrant is where you find the sweet spot: the activities that make you money and that light you up. This lines up with Quadrant II work.

For me, Production is writing, speaking, and consulting. You know what doesn’t light me up? Sales. Social Media. Accounting. This was very clarifying, especially when paired with the buyback rate because I could see that I COULD afford to hire out more of those tasks.

I appreciated the practical advice and frameworks and took a lot away from this read. It has made me rethink how I run my own business and where I spend my time.?

This month, I also read: How Not to Die by Dr. Greger, Radically Content by Jamie Varon, and Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad. You can read my reviews of these books in my monthly book round-up here.?

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