Buy Back Your Time

About

• From The Only Productivity Books Entrepreneurs Need In 2026:
• PDF online - https://library.grinternationalschool.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Buy_Back_Your_Time_-_Dan_Martell-340-1.pdf
• NOT an entry level business book. You can hire only when you have stable revenue, probably when you are around $1M
• Transcendence: maybe if someone is really good, they can 'hire to free up their time' without having revenue yet. That is probably called 'partnership' or 'cofounders' etc. Very difficult for extreme outliers.

Preface

'LEARNING HOW TO buy back my own time has created an incredible life. This week I’ll spend six hours growing my eight-figure business. I’ll train for an Ironman. I’ll volunteer with inner-city youth. I’ll write my next book. I’ll look for my next investment. I’ll give my attention and resources to the atrisk entrepreneurs who give me so much energy and joy. Best of all, I’ll spend time with my kids, eat lunch with my wife, and the four of us will enjoy dinner together . . . every night. None of that has come because I simply grinded harder. All of it has come because I learned to think and act differently inside my company, so that every moment invested in it has allowed me to withdraw more energy from it.'

k1

Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results. —james clear[1]

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. Yes, someone else should be handling about 95 percent of your current work so you can get back to what matters.

• Ok, but BS. What if you ARE better than anyone else around you at multiple tasks, including ones that don't give most energy? and instead just consider how you’d feel if you were only executing what you’re better at than everyone else, what you truly love, and what adds a crazy amount of value to your business.. Key is there - better than anyone else AND truly love at the same time.
• Buyback Principle - That’s what the Buyback Principle is all about: 1. How to spend the most finite asset your business possesses: the founder’s time. 2. How to invest that time into what will bring the founder more energy and more money. Hiring is reinvestment - critical thing is to hire specifically to buy back time. In short: The Buyback Principle: Don’t hire to grow your business. Hire to buy back your time.

Intended Outcomes

• What do you do when it is difficult to hire for the specific thing you need? Such as if nobody can do it? Keep doing -> then train someone from scratch?
• Be careful about self-sabotage with growth. Pain Line - subconsciously keep from pain by sabotage.

Strategies

• Stacking Functions - Partner with someone who does something for you for free because they offer complementary services (they ride on your coattails)