1: Miguel is an entrepreneur who started a real estate software company.
He was drowning in customer support tickets.
“I’d been obsessed with getting back to people and solving their problems as quickly as possible,” he shares in Dan Martell ‘s book Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire.
Dan writes: “Like most entrepreneurs, Miguel had built a business that was revolving solely around him and his expertise. Instead of staying focused on the area where he could drive the most value, he got caught up in low-value tasks that ate up his day.”
Then, Miguel had a bit of good fortune. He hired someone to lead his support team who was “way more empathetic than me.” The new hire “genuinely loved dealing with customers. Not only did their customer service ratings stay up, they went through the roof.”
The best part? He can now concentrate his time, energy, and attention on what his customers need most and what makes his company more money.
“I’m actively working to identify areas where we can grow,” he says, “because I want to operate at the ten-thousand-dollar-an -hour, not the ten dollar-an-hour level.”
2: Yesterday, we explored Dan’s “Audit-Transfer-Fill” concept. Â
Audit: We pay attention to how we spend our time: “What tasks do I hate doing that are easy and inexpensive to offer someone else?” Dan’s prediction? “Likely, we’ll find dozens of tasks someone else could do.”
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?”
Miguel is like most entrepreneurs. He had founded a successful business and was highly competent in coding, sales, and accounting.
“Wearing all these hats may be inevitable at an early stage of our companies,” Dan observes. We “can ride out the early days of a startup with all those hats on. But sooner or later, we’ll reach a point of growth where we hit a wall and our individual efforts will no longer create the growth our business needs, and we’ll either stop the growth by selling, sabotaging, or stalling, or we’ll learn to overcome that pain by shifting your strategy.”
Is it smart for a world-class wedding photographer to spend hours sending bills to clients?
Is it smart for a talented financial analyst to spend hours each week planning their travel?
These entrepreneurs would make lots more money and be much happier if they found someone else to take care of these activities.
Yesterday, we also explored Gay Hendricks‘s ideas around “Genius Zones.”
The big insight: We all have different genius zones. What you love to do, I may loathe doing. And vice versa.
“Remember that class we hated as a kid?” Dan asks. “For some, it was biology. For me, it was math. I hated math. Every second there sucked the life out of me.”
But there was also likely a subject that revved us up. “In that class, time flew by,” he observes. “Mine was art class. Every moment spent at the drawing table boosted my motivation and energy to create. One minute, I was taking out my pencil, and the next, the bell was ringing, forcing me to stop. One could barely call it schoolwork for me. It was playtime. . .
“Which class do you think I did better in, math or art?” Dan asks.
Art. Of course.
Scientific findings validate this insight. “A study by Columbia and Harvard showed passion combined with perseverance predicts higher educational scores,” Dan notes.
“Researchers studied thousands of GPAs and what work students were most excited to perform. Their findings were simple: the more students enjoyed something, the better they performed. While perseverance was key in their findings, they noted that “perseverance without passion isn’t grit, but merely a grind.”
3: It’s the same with entrepreneurship. “It’s obvious, but we too often forget it: our passion is where our marketplace value lies,” Dan writes. “The more we give ourselves permission to clear our calendar to invest in projects that light us up, the more our business will grow.”
So, how do we get “unstuck from the day-to-day work without having the wheels fly off?”
That’s what Dan’s “Buyback Principle” is all about. We choose what we will do today. We focus our time and attention on the highest-value activities. Like Miguel, we embrace the idea that we are exceptional at a few tasks. And we’re just okay at others.
Dan writes: “Not only do I personally use everything taught here, but so have thousands of other founders and entrepreneurs who’ve learned how to buy back their time and energy and redeploy them correctly. As a result, they have more energy, feel excited about the future, and they love their businesses again.
“At work, their employees are happier. At home, they’re better friends, parents, and spouses,” he explains.
“Oh, and their companies have grown exponentially.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: Am I spending too much time on tasks that drain my energy instead of focusing on the work that excites me and creates the most value?
Action: Identify one low-value task I can delegate this week so I can invest more time in my own “genius zone.”
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