Buy Back Your Time

1. The Buyback Principle: Hire to reclaim your time, not just grow your business

Don't hire to grow your business. Hire to buy back your time.

Time is your most valuable asset. As an entrepreneur, you may find yourself trapped in a cycle of working longer hours as your business grows. The Buyback Principle challenges this approach by encouraging you to hire strategically to reclaim your time, not just to handle increased workload. This shift in mindset allows you to focus on high-value activities that truly drive your business forward.

Implement the Buyback Loop. To put the Buyback Principle into action, follow these steps:

• Audit: Identify low-value tasks that consume your time and energy
• Transfer: Delegate these tasks to capable team members or outsourced help
• Fill: Reinvest your newly freed time into high-value activities that energize you and generate more revenue

By consistently applying this loop, you create a virtuous cycle of growth and time reclamation, allowing you to scale your business without sacrificing your quality of life.

2. Identify your Buyback Rate to strategically outsource tasks

Your time is worth how much your business pays you divided by two thousand hours.

Calculate your effective hourly rate. To determine which tasks are worth your time, first calculate your effective hourly rate by dividing your annual income from the business by 2,000 (a standard work year in hours). This gives you a baseline for the value of your time.

Determine your Buyback Rate. Your Buyback Rate is one-fourth of your effective hourly rate. This is the maximum amount you should pay someone else to handle tasks for you. By using this rate as a guideline, you ensure a 4x return on investment when outsourcing. For example:

• Annual income: $200,000
• Effective hourly rate: $100/hour ($200,000 / 2,000 hours)
• Buyback Rate: $25/hour ($100/hour / 4)

Use your Buyback Rate to make informed decisions about which tasks to delegate or outsource. If a task can be completed by someone else for less than your Buyback Rate, it's generally worth offloading to free up your time for higher-value activities.

3. Use the DRIP Matrix to optimize time and energy allocation

$100 million companies were not built on $10 tasks.

Understand the four quadrants. The DRIP Matrix helps you categorize tasks based on their financial impact and energy effect:

• Delegation: Low money, low energy
• Replacement: High money, low energy
• Investment: Low money, high energy
• Production: High money, high energy

Maximize time in the Production Quadrant. Your goal should be to spend as much time as possible in the Production Quadrant, where tasks both energize you and generate significant revenue. To achieve this:

• Quickly eliminate or delegate tasks in the Delegation Quadrant
• Gradually replace tasks in the Replacement Quadrant
• Maintain a healthy balance of Investment Quadrant activities for personal growth and rejuvenation
• Continuously seek ways to expand your Production Quadrant activities

By consciously managing your time according to the DRIP Matrix, you can focus on high-impact work that aligns with your strengths and business goals.

4. Overcome the 5 Time Assassins sabotaging your success

Entrepreneurs can also become so accustomed to stressful and unknown environments that they become downright addicted to chaos.

Recognize the Time Assassins. Many entrepreneurs unknowingly sabotage their success due to a subconscious addiction to chaos. The 5 Time Assassins are:

1. The Staller: Procrastinating on important decisions
2. The Speed Demon: Making hasty decisions without proper consideration
3. The Supervisor: Micromanaging instead of empowering team members
4. The Saver: Hoarding resources instead of investing in growth opportunities
5. The Self-Medicator: Using destructive habits to cope with stress or celebrate success

Develop strategies to combat each assassin. To overcome these productivity killers:

• Practice mindfulness to recognize when you're falling into these patterns
• Implement systems and processes to guide decision-making
• Delegate effectively and trust your team members
• Invest strategically in your business and personal growth
• Develop healthy coping mechanisms and celebrate success responsibly

By addressing these Time Assassins, you can create a more stable and productive work environment that supports sustainable growth.

5. Implement the Replacement Ladder to systematically delegate responsibilities

If your business depends on you, you don't own a business—you have a job. And it's the worst job in the world because you're working for a lunatic!

Understand the Replacement Ladder. This framework provides a systematic approach to delegating responsibilities as your business grows:

1. Administration: Inbox and calendar management
2. Delivery: Onboarding and support
3. Marketing: Campaigns and traffic
4. Sales: Calls and follow-up
5. Leadership: Strategy and collaboration

Climb the ladder strategically. For each rung:

• Identify the key hire needed for that level
• Assess your current feeling (e.g., stuck, stalled, friction)
• Transfer ownership of specific responsibilities to the new hire

As you progress up the ladder, you'll free up more of your time to focus on high-level strategy and leadership. This systematic approach ensures that you're not stuck in day-to-day operations and can truly scale your business.

6. Create Playbooks to replicate your expertise and processes

Unlimited predictability is more valuable than intermittent quality.

Develop comprehensive Playbooks. Playbooks are detailed guides that document your business processes, allowing you to replicate your expertise and maintain consistency as you scale. The 4 Cs of an effective Playbook are:

1. Camcorder Method: Record yourself performing tasks to create training videos
2. Course: Document high-level steps for each process
3. Cadence: Specify how often tasks should be completed
4. Checklist: Create a list of nonnegotiable items to be completed every time

Leverage Playbooks for growth. By creating Playbooks for various aspects of your business:

• New hires can quickly get up to speed
• Quality and consistency are maintained across the organization
• You can more easily delegate tasks and responsibilities
• Your business becomes less dependent on any single individual

Start with creating Playbooks for the areas causing you the most pain or taking up the most time. As you develop more Playbooks, you'll find it easier to scale your business while maintaining your standards of quality.

7. Design your Perfect Week for maximum productivity and work-life balance

When you plan, you have time for more spice, more fun, and far more creativity.

Create a templatized weekly schedule. Designing your Perfect Week allows you to proactively manage your time and energy, rather than reactively responding to demands. Key elements of a Perfect Week include:

• Batching similar tasks together to minimize context switching
• Scheduling high-value work during your peak energy times
• Allocating time for personal priorities and self-care
• Building in buffer time for unexpected issues

Optimize for energy management. Consider these strategies when creating your Perfect Week:

• Identify your natural energy patterns throughout the day
• Schedule creative or high-concentration tasks during your peak energy periods
• Use lower energy periods for administrative or less demanding work
• Include regular breaks and time for rejuvenation

By consistently following a well-designed Perfect Week, you'll find yourself more productive, less stressed, and better able to balance work and personal life.

8. Embrace transformational leadership to empower your team

Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

Shift from transactional to transformational leadership. Instead of micromanaging tasks, focus on:

1. Tell Outcome: Clearly communicate desired results
2. Check Measure: Establish key metrics to track progress
3. Next Coach: Provide guidance and support to help team members grow

Implement the CO-A-CH framework. Use this approach in one-on-one meetings:

• COre issue: Identify the underlying principle or problem
• Actual story: Share a relevant personal experience
• CHange: Ask the team member what they need to improve

By adopting transformational leadership, you empower your team to take ownership of their work, fostering creativity and innovation while freeing up your time for higher-level strategic thinking.

9. Foster a feedback-driven culture for continuous improvement

When a company builds a culture of feedback, everyone wins.

Create psychological safety. Establish an environment where team members feel comfortable giving and receiving honest feedback. This requires:

• Leading by example and actively seeking feedback yourself
• Responding positively to feedback, even when it's critical
• Encouraging open communication at all levels of the organization

Implement the CLEAR feedback framework:

1. Create a warm environment
2. Lead them to offering critical feedback
3. Emphasize and listen actively
4. Ask if there's more
5. Reject or accept the feedback

By fostering a feedback-driven culture, you'll:

• Identify and address issues before they become major problems
• Improve team communication and collaboration
• Accelerate personal and professional growth across the organization
• Increase employee engagement and retention

10. Develop a clear 10X Vision to guide your long-term goals

When you can describe your future with the same level of detail as your present, you'll have a compelling vision.

Create a vivid, ambitious vision. Your 10X Vision should be a clear, detailed picture of your desired future that's ten times bigger than your current reality. Include specifics about:

• Your team and key players
• Your primary business focus
• Your broader business empire
• Your ideal lifestyle

Use your vision to drive decision-making. A well-defined 10X Vision helps you:

• Stay motivated during challenging times
• Make strategic decisions aligned with your long-term goals
• Inspire and unite your team around a common purpose
• Attract opportunities and resources that support your vision

Regularly revisit and refine your 10X Vision to ensure it remains ambitious, inspiring, and aligned with your evolving values and goals.

11. Preload your year to ensure big priorities don't get overlooked

By preloading your calendar with what's most important (big rocks) first, you'll fit in not only those big rocks, but also what's moderately important, and even the fun little parts of life.

Plan your year proactively. The Preloaded Year approach ensures that your most important priorities are scheduled first:

1. Place the big rocks: Schedule non-negotiable personal and professional commitments
2. Batch pebbles into big rocks: Group smaller, recurring tasks into larger time blocks
3. Add maintenance: Schedule regular breaks and recovery periods
4. Insert pebbles: Fill in remaining time with less critical but still important activities

Balance structure with flexibility. While preloading your year provides a solid framework:

• Leave some room for spontaneity and unexpected opportunities
• Regularly review and adjust your plan as needed
• Use the "Hell yeah!" test for new opportunities that arise

By preloading your year, you ensure that your most important goals and priorities are given the time and attention they deserve, while still maintaining the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances.

Last updated: January 22, 2025