Podcast

 

 

Summary

 

 

On today’s podcast, we sat down with high energy and highly focused Dan Martell. Through conversations of deep intellect and the introduction of incredibly new principles, Dan and David discover the whos, whats, whens, wheres, and whys of buying back your time. 

 

 

Resources

 

 

     

     

     

    Dan Martell

     

     

    Dan has quite the story and journey unlike any other. After finding himself in prison twice during his teenage years, he found a second chance in life. He was able to get sober and began starting companies beginning at the age of 18. By the time he reached 24, he began to see some true success. However, because of the demand from his newly started company, Sphere Technologies, Dan still experienced issues in his personal life. 

     

     

    Dan invested his time and energies into his future family, working around the clock. Unfortunately, seven weeks before he was to be wed, the wedding was called off. Just three months after that, his company was acquired, making him a multimillionaire—exactly as he had planned.

     

     

    Instead of enjoy the moment,, he was now left alone, hurt, and broken. Today, he shares with us what that journey has meant to him and what he’s learned over the years from big names like Naval Ravikant and  friend Alex Hormozi. 

     

     

    The podcast begins with Dan describing an art piece he had created for himself while in Mexico. An obese person, chiseling away at a sculpted body, and this Dan says, is a metaphor for his life. 

     

     

    The 4 C’s of Leverage 

     

     

    Dan discusses conversations and ideas learned from Naval Ravikant. 

     

     

    Naval is an entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder and former CEO of AngelList. For more about Naval, read here

     

     

    Dan states that Naval taught him something extremely valuable about life. He says, “time is a fixed resource…if you want to increase your output, there are only four ways to get leverage.”

     

     

    Now, Dan’s friend Alex Hormozi calls these the 4 C’s. 

     

     

       

        • Content – Content is an exceptional way to produce information at a relatively low cost. 

        • Code – Software and internet features run our world today. Understanding this space is crucial to automation. 

        • Capital – Capital is probably the most common way we think of obtaining leverage. A simple  example would be trading money for time. 

        • Collaboration – Teamwork is essential to achieve goals. The famous quote says: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”

       

       

      Not only is it important to understand the 4 C’s, but also to master them for unlimited output. 

       

       

      The goal is to continue building and not lose time, to have a life of creation and goal setting, and still be available for Tuesday night dinners or serving at church on the weekends. 

       

       

      Buyback Principle 

       

       

      In short, Dan tells us the buyback principle is NOT hiring people to grow the business, but hiring people to buy back time out of your personal calendar. 

       

       

      Dan gives us an inside look at what he calls the replacement ladder.This can be found in his book Buy Back Your Time.  

       

       

      Dan uses the terms below as the sequencing of hiring for efficiencies. 

       

       

         

          • Level 1: Executive Assistant 

          • Level 2: Delivery/Fulfillment

          • Level 3: Marketing

          • Level 4: Sales

          • Level 5: Leadership 

         

         

        Dan created this to give his readers direction. Ultimately, the entire process revolves around what he calls a buyback loop. This loop usually begins with a pain line and a pain line is simply the point at which growth = calendar chaos. 

         

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        Audit/Transfer/Fill 

        Dan also introduces an extremely intelligent idea called, Audit, Transfer, Fill (ATF). 

        We’ll give you a preview. 

        Audit 

        Start with a time and energy audit on your calendar. Every 15 minutes log what you have done throughout your day. Then, go back and highlight the things that give you energy in green and the things that exhausted your energy in red. 

        Next, go back through each activity once more and label them similar to how you’d label expensive food restaurants, $ for cheap and $$$$ for expensive. Essentially, he is asking the question: “would hiring someone to do this activity be cheap or expensive?”

        Finally, collect all of the red highlights and cheap dollar signs. This is the next person you should hire for delegating those activities. . 

        Transfer

        Transfer is a simpler concept of completing the audit in a way that doesn’t consume an abundance of time. 

        Dan expands on this idea, when it comes to hiring in an accounting firm. He provides the example of hiring a new accountant because of an increased workload. Most companies and people do what Dan talks about, however in the wrong order. 

        For example, hiring a new accountant due to an increased workload seems to be the logical sequence.  Until of course, you consider the fact that hiring an executive assistant to free up more accounting time is much cheaper than hiring a brand new accountant. The executive assistant creates more time for the accounting work to be completed (which is where the money is), instead of a new accountant assuming the workload that already exists. 

        The method makes sense once the appropriate sequence is considered. 

        Dan and David finish out with more buyback time principles. It’s important to lower expectations when it comes to a new hire doing something as well as you once did.

        It’s nearly impossible for someone to compete with how you like things done, but every minute that somebody is doing something for you, even at a reduced productivity rate, is still an hour back in your pocket. 

        FIll

        Fill is the final method of ATF. This is relatively simple as well. Fill your newly found time with activities that provide resources so you can buy back more time. 

        Basically, invest in skills that will produce higher resources and income so you can continue to feed the loop what it desires. 

        That’s All the Time We Can Buy Back for Now 

        Dan concludes with another powerful thought: the difference between happiness and fulfillment. 

        He stresses that in this life, he wants to be fulfilled, and how exercise is an important and analogous piece to this. 1 Corinthians 6:19 says, ‘Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?’ 

        Dan and David leave us with important mindsets about the fact that the body is so crucial to our everyday success, simply because we live in them! 

        We will leave you with a quote from Dan. “You exhaust your body to control your mind,” shared  Dan. Dan and David understand the importance of good habits, and how exercise (being one of those habits) contributes to our overall production and capacities as human beings. 

        We know there was a lot of deep intellect in our conversation from today, and we hope you enjoyed it. 

        For more information, templates found in Dan’s book, and an authentic look at his everyday life, check out the resources below: 

         

          • Social media: @DanMartell

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