ladies and gentlemen welcome back to contract Revolution I very excited because my guest on the show today is Dan Martell award-winning entrepreneur investor and author Dan has founded five separate tech companies and successfully exited from three he's also the guy behind SAS Academy a program that teaches Tech Founders how to scale their businesses and stage and exit you've probably seen some of their Clips some of their content on LinkedIn or or YouTube they they do a great job with their brand and you might be wondering what is a tech guy doing on contractor Evolution I'll tell you since his new book buyback your time was released last year I've had at least 10 separate breakthrough Academy members asked me to have them on and when I read it I understood why because buyback your time is an antidote to the time sucking and stress inducing nature of Entrepreneurship through beautiful diagrams personal stories and Sage wisdom it offers a pragmatic and deeply intuitive path to avoid building a business you grow to hate and that's a scenario many entrepreneurs sadly find themselves in Dan's personal life story is a wild one and we start the conversation there so I don't want to spoil it but the meat of the interview is focused on the core framework from his book called The buyback principle if you're watching on YouTube you'll notice we're out of our typical studio for this one Dan was gracious enough to let me interview him in his studio in Colona where we both live this was an absolute Banger episode guys I really hope you enjoy it oh and bu the book it's linked in the description you're watching contractor Evolution where we unpack the systems tactics and skills you need to take your fast growing contracting business to the next level you're here to learn what it takes to scale up work less and increase profitability you've come to the right place stay tuned to learn what separates the new breed of contractor from the old school and welcome to your ultimate guide on the business of Contracting Dan thanks so much much for doing this man I really appreciate you it's an honor Benji I appreciate you uh coming to Colona and you know give me the chance to share about my favorite Topic in the world I live here we get to do a podcast together in our hometown it's awesome yeah um the opening chapter of the book is quite graphic there's uh there's there's a car chase there's a gun it's it's it's pretty gripping um do you want to maybe just tell for our listeners who aren't familiar with your story uh you know you're less than linear less not so traditional path to success yeah I mean it's a it's a great question Benji I mean what's interesting about that story specifically when I open it up in the book is um I didn't share that with anybody for about 15 years there was a lot of Shame uh concern obviously my family still alive and I didn't really want to kind of make you know air their dirty laundry but I grew up in a really challenging environment where you know I'm the second oldest of four my mom was an alcoholic my dad was in sales so he traveled a lot so I had a lot of time on my hands you know we grew up in kind of in the woods and um I got diagnosed with ADHD when I was 11 and pretty much from that point on I always believed that there was something wrong with me that my brain was broken I got put on riddlin I hated the way it made me feel I didn't want to take it and know not long after that I ended up you know acting out had anger issues you know not listening in class ended up I think at 12 years old taken out of my home put in a foster care so like my my life was you know chaotic to say the least and just got to a place where eventually I ended up getting introduced to drugs and then my whole life kind of spiraled out of control I uh I ended up um you know ended up in prison the first time when I was 15 got out said I was going to change my life I lasted less than 24 hours I mean literally back with the same group of friends and then eventually um things just got crazier and crazier until eventually one point my brother calls me and tells me don't come home the cops are waiting for you so I decide to essentially go on the run I ended up stealing a car I was drunk and I was high and decided I'm going to head to Montreal and um I was on the highway and I took a uh you know an exit to get some gas and there was a routine roadblock and the police were just checking driver's license and insurance and I ended up gunning it like just took off yeah and ended up in a high-speed chase and next me I had a handgun in a backpack cuz I said to myself if the cops stopped me I was going to was going to pull the gun and I ended up you know racing through a neighborhood and saw an open garage door and pulled into the driveway with way too much speed end up crashing in theide the house and in that moment I went for the gun and it's crazy recounting that because I just remembered like this I just remembered this this like this is it I'm done pull the gun point at the cops and this is a scene straight out of cops yeah but I mean it it I I I don't think it happens every day but like there's a lot of crazy stuff that goes on in our world that most people don't see and what's narly and the reason I share this story today is for 15 years I never told a soul really that's what's crazy that's what this was Private until quite recently it was Private till about a decade ago I was ashamed of it I didn't talk about it I got so long story short I got out ended up getting sentenced to prison adult prison spent 6 months in the worst freaking situation ever where uh it's called St John Regional Correctional Center so um they had two juvenile cell blocks that they set up but it was an adult prison structure you know jail cells that whole thing ended up you know having an intervention with a guard this guy named Brian who sat me down and essentially said you don't belong here he saw something in you he saw something in me that I didn't even believe existed I mean I felt like there was there's like feeling not good about yourself and then there's feeling like you don't deserve to take space in society yeah that's that's kind of where I was at and uh luckily he pulled me aside and he shared those words and it cracked me wide open it kind of planted a seed of of just potential of anything like I I just is like if Brian believes this and there's got to be a bigger um reason and ended up getting out doing 11 months in a rehab center and that was a place that like kind of rebuilt who I was my my values my energy my relationship that I I'd obviously fractured with my family my brothers my sisters and uh it was hard it was there was moments where I remember one time I almost well I ran away for sure but there was this like very like crazy situation where one of the other residents and I was the older member I'd been there for probably seven eight nine months at the time and they pushed a button and I almost threw the whole thing away like called the sheriff's pick me up going back I don't want to deal with this and luckily um some great people kind of walk me off the ledge but yeah it was it it wasn't a guaranteed outcome did you more or less find your Find Your Way get traction however you want to frame it after that after that 11mon uh rehab didn't like was it was it was it a was it a straighten up into the right graph after that no I mean this is this I'm an open book right I understand there's like there's a narrative that makes sense for great story yeah totally yeah they're like moment when did it happen it's like look at the end of that I did discover programming okay which was crazy so I'm helping Rick the maintenance guy clean out one of the cabins been there for 11 months never touch a computer in my life walk into one of the rooms and there was this old 486 computer and a yellow book on Java programming like that makes no sense to me yeah it's a little uh to call it a Fantastical like it's just like you don't think it's a coincidence I think God been looking out for me my whole life so I believe in that it was like it was like back lit and like was like he just like went and read it and even like it was as if Davis I still remember I like read this book and followed you know chapter one and it just the computer said hello world yeah and that something spoke to me about that um and I just leaned into it there was no big reason to it you know some people just forget the first time they ever did the thing that became the thing but I don't cuz it was like you know I came out I told my dad and he's like what and I'm like like yeah I really want to do computer programming he's like okay like obviously your son's into that I was into plants as you can imagine why so it's like botany or computers he's like well you can have a garden as a hobby I think you should really lean into this computer thing this is 1997 so I get out and discovered this small little thing called the internet and really the the rest of history I mean I've built and exited three software companies I've invested in over 100 plus today I buy software companies like think about the the the the botany that the world is missing that could have we could have had think well you've been around the office the plant game isn't strong as it will be but trust me when my my my studio office we're building out here is the house plant Market apparently is booming that might be something it should we're going to be my rule for my DC Ecom for for house plants I want to be obnoxious with the amount of plants we have in here uh okay so so like we can chalk this up to maybe like a rough round the edges childhood and teenage years and whatever and um have you thought about like some of the things from that part of the story that you're really like what are facets of it that you're really grateful for where you're like hey I'm really good at business or life because of this thing that I learned from this maybe atypical upbringing and then maybe what are some other patterns that you sort of have to you've had to unlearn so this is a this is a great question my drive intensity Obsession um self-awareness of knowing that I can handle anything um the the don't give a crap about what other people think of me and a bunch of other characteristics is exactly why I'm successful in business now with with with all the uh character aspects that are positive in regards to a business context in the wrong context they turn into a real challenge okay so being driven is great learning how to turn it off is required did not have that gear did not so like all the success I had in business it still took me a while it took me seven years I had two failed companies before I ever had any before I ever made a money like like people don't get it I just started young I'm 17 I get out I'm sober boom I get into business fail company try again failed again kept at it my dad was like maybe you should get a normal job I'm like no way zero I'm unemployable I refuse to do it I would rather be homeless like this is how crazy again I had nothing to lose it was the biggest gift I ever got was the fact that nobody expected Dan Martell to do anything with his life do you know how freaking freeing that is totally dude I meet kids every I was I can with a kid this morning he's 17 he's like I'm going to build a 100 million a year Company by time I'm 30 like dude do you know how much pressure that is like do you know what I was doing at 17 I wasn't hiking with a bunch of entrepreneurs like dude chill out a little bit relax anyways it was it was all that stuff but then I had to unlearn I had to work on it so I believe that every person as they go through life they pick up trauma they pick up chaos they pick up challenges and to the degree that you work through those things called personal development you will unlock new levels of opportunity and growth so I finally had business success at 24 but that did not mean I had life success at 27 I was engaged my fiance left me okay and that was really a big wakeup call for for the book um but I but I had every other character defect when people meet me today I I wish I could have recorded my whole life so they could literally see how insecure I was how angry I was yeah maybe I was sober but a lot of people get sober and they're called called dry drunk you know this okay and I was that I didn't know any other way like I just had a way of being so I had over the years to work through that so all the positives came from it that's why I have no regrets but I definitely see oh I even even Benji this year Dan Martell sitting here is not the same Dan Martell from a year ago MH I'm just not I literally wake up with intention every day to try to be better so I can see my thoughts and my ideas and when people say that they're like but you're the same person think of it this way take the best parts of you and amplify them and take the worst parts of you and remove them right so the bad habits the little mindset things all those things over the years what happens is as you get older if you've do done this long enough like I've been doing it like they're not as dramatic but trust me like when I finally found business success and that afforded me the resources to hire coaches and go to to seminars and read books I I went in I'm all in but yeah there was a lot of things that it gave me and a lot of things that it required me to overcome what there's a there be a lot of our listeners who also maybe have a a checkered past let's say and they're dealing like what you just said I'm dealing with anger I'm dealing with some diagnosed or undiagnosed ADHD I'm dealing with some shame I'm sober now but I've got this this whole thing like what did you find useful in the journey to um I don't how do you process through that put it into a healthy place so that you can get back to being the person that you're destined to be because I think a lot of our listeners have either done that or they're in in the midst of it yeah I mean there's so many different parts to it I will tell you the simplest thing that I do today that anybody no matter where they're at can Implement into their life is the idea of reflecting on their previous day like if you just wake up today Benji and you go what aspect of yesterday if I think through the day that I wasn't happy I did you know maybe you go like oh I knew I should have had that dessert and I had that dessert cool today don't eat dessert yeah right or you know what I screamed at one of our suppliers you know what today don't scream at a supplier or I dragged my feet on making a decision I should have made that decision today make the decision it sounds so simple but you get 365 shots on goal to be better every year every year and it compounds so over time if you go from somebody who's passive about life and now they're more active about life somebody that avoids conflict and now you're more direct like you just keep figuring out who do you need to become to achieve that next level and that at the end of the day what I've learned about personal development is the world doesn't get easier Benji this is this is the biggest like I hope everybody can just hear this who you are today if you have more success is because you have grown into this person to deal with challenges the challenges are still there they just don't put you on tilt MH like some I used to get put on tilt for the dumbest reasons dude somebody didn't reply to an email fast enough that bothered you holy moly I would I couldn't sleep at night why didn't they reply are they mad at me like the amount of of of you know I always say worry is a wasted use of your imagination the amount of creative things that I made up in my mind that I worried about that now I like when I I wish I could like allow people in my brain I don't worry about anything Benji I just assume it's happening exactly the way it's supposed to happen this exact same pace and I can wake up and I love that thought and I get to choose it so I choose to focus on so many different things about life about opportunity about gratitude I mean here's another one you didn't ask but I think it's one of the most powerful ideas in the world okay I believe that if we're not grateful for the things we have we will not be given more things to be grateful for simple concept so I always tell people if you meet my kids you can test them you can ask them ask them about the gratitude list everybody should make a list of things they're grateful for and I'm talking about the simplest thing there might have been my life there was a point where I was in prison I am free today I'm going to write that down almost every time I'm going to write down the time you know I have food today I know where I'm going to be able to eat that is a simple yet profound thing for me I'm grateful for those things I have a list of everything I'm grateful for then I always tell people make a list of the things that they want want their want lless their desires here's what I've learned about life if you're grateful for what you have life will give you more things to be grateful for and these two lists over time merge and that's what people don't get okay they complain about their car but they want the new car right you won't get the new car they complain about their spouse they don't have a better spouse they don't have a better partner they don't have a better marriage they complain about whatever you know I don't have enough money guess what I I know what's going to happen you're not going to get more money mhm until you can handle what life's given you you won't get anything more MH so there's all these things that I've learned over the years it's why I coach some of the highest performing people in the world today like literally in the world if out there in business and in coaching I coach them because over the years I had to work through all this stuff myself find the tools find the strategies that just cut through the noise and it actually works like immediately fast let's let's talk about some of the um that's a really good way I think into some of the stuff from the book that I wanted to ask you about there's a in one of the early chapters maybe it's the first you talk about this idea of chaos addiction so what's chaos addiction how does it fit into the overall entrepreneurial Journey yeah so I think entrepreneurs are uniquely most entrepreneurs grew up with some level of chaos right they went through something in their life that created challenges and what happens is the person who can deal with a level of uncertainty a high level of uncertainty C they're they're perfect for entrepreneurship because if you think about it that's the definition of entrepreneurs somebody who can deal with a high level of uncertainty every day they wake up and they don't know how they're going to make money they don't know if they're going to get paid most people can't go paycheck to paycheck without freaking the Freak Out do you understand that like 99% of the population maybe 95% have to know where's my next paycheck coming from and then there's this weird population of people we call entrepreneurs or business owners who just don't care they just are comfortable not knowing yeah and what they do is they've built this trust in themselves but what happens is that chaos becomes normal okay and when you're building the business especially when you're starting there's a lot of chaos there's a lot of things that are challenging and for a lot of entrepreneurs they love that I get it it's the the unknown it's exciting it's it's it's very Dynamic it's it's there's a lot of different things it's diverse the challenges is that as you start to grow as you get to your first million in Revenue especially when you get to your second million in Revenue all of that has to flip because the business owner who thrives in chaos creates chaos and I've seen this happen so many times when things are going good in the business okay maybe the quarter was awesome everything's you know what I mean like the projects are going and the team is Happy close a bunch of deals finish some stuff on time some reviews are piling in you're feeling you're feeling pretty good you know what the entrepreneur does they SC something they grab a hand grenade hand grenade a project hand grenade they pull the pin and they lob it and they drop it into their team they come in and they say we're expanding to a new city we're changing our our vendors we're building a new website we're doing all these things because things are right now easy and it's not normal I'm not saying don't change things don't look to improve stuff have a process for doing that within the construct of your rhythms your process your strategic planning for sure it's the folks that get addicted to the chaos not only that some people it could be the chaos could be you know um drinking too much it could be self-medicating it could be arguing with people it could be the the emotional shrapnel you create by the way you talk to folks like it doesn't have to be just a business change but it's self-inflicted like most entrepreneurs don't stop to go what's chaotic in my life make a list and go how much of that that I create do you think it's operating through entrepreneurs on a subconscious level like you use the word chaos addiction is it the same as drug addiction or like depending on your philosophy towards it where it's like this is actually like this thing this addiction for chaos almost has its own agency and sort of operates through me I'm not even aware that I'm dropping these hand grenades but I clearly am yeah I don't know if it's an addiction I think it's a a default state that feels normal right mhm and right that's that's their resting State yes they're what I call an emotional home okay so every person has this emotional home they they come back to and unfortunately entrepreneurs that have that have experienced chaos that are okay with dealing with uncertainty they create an emotional home that is chaotic like do you have any these friends that just always seem to get in fights yeah totally it's fascinating for me to watch they're like oh yeah got in a fight last I'm like what um just so you know that's not normal okay I'm a grown man and I haven't been in a fight in a decades you know what I mean like there's abnormal and normal and they don't realize that it's the way they're showing up in this world and the places they put themselves that are creating these outcomes I think the same thing happens for entrepreneurs they're like magnetized to it I know that's really funny you say that Mo like most people in the modern you know in Canada here like most I think most people are not in fights all the time but everyone has a couple of friends who are in one a month yeah or it's a verbal fight they're always in a bad relationship they're always drinking too much like they do a thing that feels super normal for them but they don't realize it's an abnormal behavior that's stunting their growth forward so this um buyback your time book is a really really solid highly visual highly practical quick to implement kind of um thought piece on let's say time and priority management and really getting the most out of yourself and the 168 hours you have every week now you mentioned at the beginning your brother's a a home builder and so you know this audience pretty well like what's very well yeah anyone would say time and priority management is a fundamental to success but when you think about this sort of bluecollar entrepreneur archetype this type of business owner is there any additional context You' you'd give to this conversation like why is it so incredibly important for them yeah well first off people that are required to do the work to get like some Industries where you have a business you actually the owner doesn't do the work right like most restaurant tours don't necessarily cook the food what's unique about a home builder from my understanding and I have several friends in Colona their home builders my brother's home builder I know a lot of them I've known some of the biggest ones in Canada is that when they start off they're the ones that are on site they're the ones for the I mean maybe my brother framed the houses when he first started right pretty typical yeah he was framing the houses he was doing a lot of the you know the the you know the drywall stuff and he was helping out and so he's very handson he's doing the work the challenge is if you actually look at what grows the business it's not doing the work what grows the business is talking to a customer it's making sure you've got a great supplier lined up for products you have your your chain your your trades uh lined up you you you you're focusing on procuring land or working with real estate agents to make sure that there's land available for new customer projects you're figuring out how do you help a customer get rid of a home so that they could buy your new home and and make a decision like there's all these other things that have nothing to do with actually like building of the home and that's unique and I think what happens is people in the trades industry and this is really for like local Home Services even you know Lawn Care Etc the they've grown up with mental uh beliefs around money around time you think so oh oh dude all of them um if you want it done right do it yourself um you know there's just so many it's like even the belief of like if you're the owner you should do this right um last one to leave all these things like they like I would just ask people to audit themselves like what are some money beliefs that you were taught as a child that even you've caught yourself doing right or even just investing in their time most business owners and definitely people that are in trades don't value their time because the last time they were paid to swing a hammer they were paid $26 or $42 as a plumber or whatever it is so they think that's what their time's worth so they would never pay somebody else $28 to do something because that's a lot of money when they could just do it themselves and save $28 they don't look at their time through that lens of like no no there's the Enterprise value of what you creating this business engine is worth not the individual cost right and I just think that's that's just a unique thing to the the trade in the home building industry specifically the other thing that I think is uh really important to remember is how incredibly like Tethered to reality they are compared to when you work in the tech space and I'm not saying fires don't erupt in your line of business of course they do but when you're working on a building and you have a pipe burst or you have something a concrete pore that goes sideways or you have there's there's stuff in reality that you can reach out and right right that you can Reach Out And Touch that are major major screw-ups that actually often pull you from the game that you should be playing phone calls strategic planning building out Marketing System to like this lower level thing that you have to go and deal with because if this you got six people waiting drywall up in the frame your hands are tied like you have to go and do this so it's like I think there's that means for these business owners compared to others is actually an even more pronounced need for rigorous like systematic approach to time management defending those calendar blocks so you can do the really important stuff being able to run out and put out a fire when you need to but then knowing hey this is the thing that I need to reschedule because I've been veered off course and I got to do it so I all I'm this is a long-winded way of saying I think for for Builders you know plumbers for someone that owns a landscaping business someone that owns a roofing business it's like especially important yeah so um and I think that's why a lot of people ask me to to track you down and do this interview cuz like you got to get this Dan Martell guy on we love we love buyback your time so so tell us about um tell us about the buyback principle and tell us about the buyback Loop yeah so the buyback principle states syst and this is where people are going to get a little once they hear it I'm like you know suspend disbelief for a second okay you don't hire people to grow your business you hire people to buy back your time it's a calendar over capacity problem because if you do the first hire people to grow your business you don't get the second and if you do the second you get the first how's so and how are those two things different there's completely different if I'm if I run a logo design company I'm going to hire another logo designer what you should do is look at your calendar and say what am I doing that is not logo design right and have people support you on everything else that's not logo design because that is your core business right so when I think of a home builder and trust me I loved work my brother he was my business part I didn't tell him many people but actually like I was his business partner so we would meet daily about this stuff so we had to create all these systems to make sure he was focused on the business of building homes not getting pulled into being a fighter firefighter okay so what does that mean it means first off Pierre you need an executive assistant do you realize how hard he pushed dude he pushed on me so hard I don't need an EXA assistant I need an I need somebody that's a site supervisor I said no you don't you're the site supervisor ding-dong you know how to do this you manage it have somebody else go run around pick up stuff for you why you sp in two three days a week literally two or three days a week running errands buying stuff purchasing things like just the weirdest things they would do when you actually audit your calendar okay for time and energy you'd find the weirdest thing that people accept themselves to do taking photos on sites it's like dude you don't need to do any of that you need to go make sure the trades are lined up the work's being done right and then all the Social Media stuff all the purchasing stuff all the invoices we created this crazy cool system where was like a color coding timestamp process where we knew based on what the average phases of a home build is right then we broke it down to seven how much money should we been should we have been invoiced by our trades to have a red green yellow if the construction draws and you know all this like dude I had to learn about constr I didn't want to learn it but I'm just a systems guy so so that that part is where people don't get it is they shouldn't hire folks to do more of the work first they should buy back their time because they're the experts right and only once you filled up that capacity in regards to administrative R even hiring a runner I mean literally some of these people should just hire somebody that goes out around the sites all day ask people what they need go make the purchases so that the people that need to be on site doing the work stay on site and do the work um and then you work your way backwards but it's always through the lens of your calendar so that's the buyback principle so but this is a really important distinction because a lot of people would sort of listen to podcast read books go to conferences and they'd be they'd get all this messaging about who they ought to hire next you want to grow you need to hire a marketing person you need to hire a salesp person you need to hire an estimator you need to hire a project manager and it's not to say that all that is wrong necessarily but they're thinking about it in terms of nodes on the system that is their org chart I got to go plus plus plus not wrong but what you're saying is forget about that just literally look at the calendar and see where the lowest leverage crap is and then just pay someone to do that and sort of like like rinse and repeat until it's literally the buyback Loop right the buyback Loop States we do a time and energy audit so Step One is audit what is that so so the buyback Loop is essentially what you do when you feel pain so most entrepreneurs get to a point where they're actually successful but they feel the the pain and what I learned a long time ago is entrepreneurs will not grow into pain so the mission I'm on is to help entrepreneurs build businesses they don't grow to hate okay so the people that shut down it's not cuz the market wasn't there there is they built their business in a way they didn't know any better and they decide I'm going to shut it down this hurts I don't want to do this anymore so what the buyback Loop is is essentially the antidote to that and once you feel the pain line then you go through this three-step process and that's how you spin forward okay so the first step is audit we have to look at our calendar and audit it for the last two weeks on time and energy the second step is transfer take everything that's low cost to pay somebody to do that you hate doing and you give that to somebody else you transfer it to them okay so most people that are starting businesses don't know how to delegate Benji they literally don't know how to teach somebody how to do something so let's start with some low stake stuff do I want to do I want to delegate somebody managing a home build for me as my first hire or do I want to hire somebody that can manage running inbox purchasing stuff on the internet for me let's start low stakes and then the the third part of the buyback Loop is Phil is once I get this time back what do I then reinvest it in because some people waste it they buy back the time and then they just they just drag their oh my gosh it's wasteful I I honestly have I mean I yeah it's it it gets to me because I'm like look your job is to create an empire and an Empire is a life of unlimited creation you never have to retire from that's why we start businesses is to have the financial freedom for our families so if you get an hour back two hours back three hours back a day you should know exactly what you're going to do with those three hours is become a better version of you so that you can grow the business this method has baked into it the idea that you the entrepreneur fundamentally will know what's best to do next you're giving yourself time under the assumption that you'll know how to deploy that time in the way that facilitates growth and so that's that's where it's like hey you know what at at this and I'm sure you think about this in terms of rungs or tears at entry level I'm hiring an executive assistant what maybe a few years in the future I'm hiring an estimator maybe a few years in the future I'm hiring ing someone else but is it safe to assume that pretty much like do you still do this in your business three times a year I just did it two weeks ago right so it doesn't CH like this this works at scale it's a principle these are first principles I'm a software physics Guy this is this is a methodology that you can follow it's how I've scaled all my companies that's why I wrote this book I wrote the book to buy back my time because people would come to me and asking you they go how do you how do you do all this like literally and I get it because if you never seen it it looks crazy dude I did 13 podcasts ran an Iron Man went to an NBA game ran a two-day event I mean the the stuff I've done and that was in a 4-day period who is the NBA game Phoenix against whoever I'm not even a basketball guy but Trailblazers what's the drip Matrix yeah the drip Matrix is essentially a process for you to think about how to fill your time right so the the drip Matrix is essentially time like life you up and makes you money those are the quadrants so those are the axes yeah so so essentially you're in the bottom left quadrant for most people right I'm doing stuff I don't love to do it doesn't make me a lot of money we all want to end up in the top right corner which is produce okay that's the p in the drip the bottom left is delegate okay we have to just stop doing things that somebody else can do that we can pay them very little and that that you know we don't enjoy doing so for most people bookkeeping is one of those things they don't probably don't light them up it don't cost a lot to pay somebody else to do cleaning your own house would be in that same bucket I don't know many people that absolutely get oh we're cleaning my house today really excited about that and it makes some money it doesn't right so that's the bottom left quadrant and that's the easy stuff but then we move up to the on top of that which is the the uh R part which is replace okay and that's the replacement ladder so when you say well you know this is assuming people know what to do with the time they bought back I give them the methodology in chapter 5 which which is start with the admin right look at the calendar where is the time and energy being sucked in then we go to delivery right then we go to marketing then we go to sales then we go to leadership so there is a methodology for which core components of your business you should do there is actually a higher archical approach to it because because like it's what is the least amount of investment dollars to get the next biggest swath of time back out of our calendar that's why we start with admin because it's the lowest cost to get the most time then we go to delivery which is okay we got to work with our clients the account management side whatever it is that that's a low cost to have a lot more time back then we focus on marketing then we focus on sales and we focus on leadership so that's the replace side so that's the D and the drip right so that stuff will uh make you more money but may not light you up as much there's still things in there you're doing that you'd rather not do but you got to earn the right to wake up every day doing things you love doing it makes you a lot of money okay that's what my life looks like today I didn't start there I had to earn my strip I had to put in the time the right side is invest that's the eye and drip invest is what you invest your time to grow see most people wish the world was easier I'm saying you need to be better it doesn't get easier you need to invest in becoming the person who can deal with a bigger team who can understand marketing who could lead an agency to do marketing for you who can um who can do strategic planning who can do all the stuff that right now you can't do you need to go invest and build these skills up and as you do that you get to work your way up that kind of the ladder and to the right of the quadrant until you'll wake up and it's not far away Benji I have clients to start with me and within three months they get there because it's only four or five hires yeah okay they just going to give themselves permission to hire in that sequence but you will wake up wear everything in your calendar it's not 10 hour days it's 7 hour days 6 hour days but a good six hours like a really thoughtful 6 hours and everything on there are things that you love doing that actually move the business forward and when you get to that place that is what an Empire is a life of unlimited creation you never have to retire from there's no retiring from being me I'm doing exactly what I want to do who I want to do it with and I've just given myself permission to continuously audit my calendar for that this idea of what lights you up is stitched in throughout the book and I wonder why that's so such a big part of your your thinking on this because there' be another there' be a competing school of thought say you know sometimes bu is hard you got to do St you don't and you got and I don't think there's necessarily wrong with this more traditional approach of working on your weaknesses or sucking it up and get you know doing stuff that you hate to C can you put a finer point on this like why why is moving towards things that quote unquote light you up so fundamental to your framework for Success because if you I'm all for doing hard things okay I did a 50k Ultra this year nobody made me do it nobody asked me to do it I chose to do it every day I do things that I know are hard and they're short term got to get it done to earn the right to get to the next level the challenge is if you keep doing things that are hard if you have a belief that business has to be hard or it's not working some people literally think I H it has to be hard and I'm telling you that's not normal okay it can be hard in the short term but if you get better it gets easier and the reason why I'm so adamant for people to honor the fact that whatever they find easy they should do more of or whatever they enjoy doing they should do more of is because I don't want them to wake up in five six seven years and shut it down right and that is what happens okay so businesses don't fail it's not like they wake up and they go bankrupt sure that happens if I look at like the 10 businesses decided to not exist anymore eight of them it's cuz the owner decided I don't want to do this anymore I heard flipping houses is easier I heard uh crypto is easier like literally they'll just decide to do something else and and and that to me is it's almost like hey let's build this thing in a way that doesn't have to be hard now I will say this too I think that every person on Earth has a gift and I think their gift is found in the thing that they find easy that other people find hard and I think if you honor that and say I'm allowed to not do things that are hard because I earn the money like this is what's funny B you made the money and you get to redeploy that money in hiring somebody else you're actually allowed to say I don't want to clean my house anymore right and that is okay where I'm no longer ever stepping inside of a Home Depot and that's okay you're allowed to give yourself that gift and most business owners are so um broken in their a mindset thing it is man they're just like no this is how it has to be done I could never feel good well what if I what if I never did that and somebody bought the wrong thing perfect There's an opportunity you should lean into that why does that give you so much anxiety so this is about really like pain aversion more than anything because the thing the case you're making is that people the thing that kills businesses is they quit because they've basically created a personalized torture device for themselves that they live inside of and want to get out of and it's comfortable for them and they're not actually doing the thing that's uncomfortable that's my thing a lot of people will keep doing things that they hate doing but it's not scary interesting yes My Philosophy is tell me what makes you anxious lean into that there's a whole chapter in the book devoted to Executive assistance and hiring assistance and you're like super bullish on this point and I I can't remember what the line was but you basically say a business owner of any size just about like even a teeny weeny little business you could you can hire an executive assistant and still get an Roi on that spend do you want to just explain why yeah if I started a business today the first person I'm hiring is executive assistant day one I'd borrow the money i' go to the bank get a really 100% day one if you have the skill to sell so I have the skill to sell and deliver whatever I'm going to sell like a business consulting or a sell houses my my day should be spent 247 Dialing for Dollars talking to home buyers selling homes and then delivering those homes anything that's in my calendar that does look like that I should not do right and every hour I dedicate myself to doing something that doesn't look like that talking to home buyers managing the project is stopping me from being able to do those things and when I look at the ROI of that time invested that see most most home builders they just stop they sell a couple houses I know the stats man most people don't make a lot of money selling homes because they only do a couple homes a year right because they get busy doing stuff that don't make the money okay so why can't you get in an executive assistant because you're actually scared if you got your time back you have to lean into the things that make you uncomfortable interesting do more sales learn how to manage more projects have more more business what do you what do you think is the have you thought about the profile of a good assistant is there advice you could give someone around what you're looking for in terms of core competencies skill sets what kind of weaknesses might they have too like I don't know if you use disc or you use widget or you use whatever what just in I have a whole chapter called the test first hiring method I think it's chapter S in my book and I talk about profile assessments for an assistant specifically I like the Colby assessment okay and it's got four dimensions you know quick start follow through FactFinder Etc um what I would recommend people is hire somebody's the opposite to you so there isn't a one- siiz fits-all it depends on your higher the I'm like this find somebody it's it's got to be okay my assistant temperamental is is not she always says that she goes I I mean she literally said this last week she goes I don't think I'm that different than you I know you're not different than me but your your um follow-through game is a lot you know what I mean like there's just the the the the they compliment you right the biggest mistake you do is hire somebody just like you cuz I like them and they'd be fun to hang around with okay yeah they're fun to hang around with but nobody's getting any work done so you're looking for uh you're looking for another piece of your puzzle and opposite if you're young hire somebody old so I really yes interesting dude I will tell you I love I've had several assistants over the years um if I can find somebody that's nurturing and takes care of me yeah that person is a beautiful assistant somebody that literally wants to Benji wants to see you thrive Benji how you feeling today do you need time to to do this this and this you know did you get this done I'll take care of it like somebody that is proactively looking out for you and and because you're just a go go go kind of person that's detailed Orient you may not be detailed Orient that opposite if that's you is one of the most beautiful relationships and and honestly at scale if you look at all the top CEOs in the world they all have worldclass executive assistant they they do 100% they do but but in this more entrepreneurial sort of blueall or space I think I think they have a hard time getting I think it's an ego thing they don't want to come off as arrogant or overly important they're quite humble I mean I know our listeners give a different name call them something different yeah call him an intern call them an office manager call them whatever just have them do that stuff give them a different name I get that right so okay we got five minutes left quick a really quick hit question then I got a longer question that I want to wrap on um uh the four time hacks uh $50 magic pill sync your meetings with repeat agenda the definition of done and the 131 rule just quick fire on those so the 50 to fix it is that what I called it in the book 50 uh $50 magic pill the $50 magic pill a lot of people have renamed it the 50 to fix it because it sounds cooler but the $50 magic pill is is literally empowering your team that if they can solve a problem for less than $50 they're they've got permission to do that okay what a crazy idea push the decision-making the critical here's the part that's going to give people you know hives that they need to understand they can make the decision but they got to tell you that they spent the money that's my only rule fine okay and and I'll give you a Next Level version of this 50 individual contributor 500 leaders 5,000 managers and then 50,000 the number is totally arbitrary it depends on the scale of problem but I just as general rule th I go 50 500 5,000 50,000 for my C Level executive you have the right to make this problem go away for up to $50 or up to $1,000 $5,000 as long as you tell me a week later but I don't want to hear about I don't need I don't want to distract me with make a decision to improve a problem $50 magic pill sync meetings with repeat agenda yeah so I think that what we're trying to create in our business is rhythms right so for examp ristic yes ritualistic so strategic planning weekly meetings Etc so I have a daily standup with my assistant it follows the same five bullet points every me I just had it about an hour ago it never deviates zero it's not like I get on and be like hey what do you want to talk about never ever ever it starts with my list it goes to my calendar it goes to my inbox it goes to the Past meetings and it goes to project updates always rhythms and I think that philosophy of a repeat agenda process is missed for most small business owners and that's the where they actually get the freedom from what's the definition of done so this is a great one I always I think when we communicate as Leaders that's the biggest problem is we need to communicate what we think the definition of done is so instead of telling you what to do okay so I was just talking to my my other videographer loen and he's working on a a new Vlog series I could sit there and tell him like here's what the Vlog has to do here's what the Vlog has to do does that make sense like you know you got to do all these things or I just say your goal is to create a banger video once a week that people love and engage with that's the definition of done the definition of done is describing the outcome when it's done staying there don't get involved in the details coach the person at that spot ask them if they need help or resources but do not get in the habit of telling people people what to do CU you're taking away their ability to actually support you you're delegating the outcomes not the steps outcomes not the tasks yeah uh the 131 rule it's a huge one this one will change for any business owner it it'll change the game for any business owner the 131 rule states that anytime somebody comes to you with a problem you ask them what's the one specific problem they have an issue with that sometimes they'll have 14 so what's the one thing we're talking about today what's the three options you've considered and what's your one recommendation right so Benji if the cameras blew up in your podcast and you're like you came to me and said man our cameras keep blowing up I go cool what's your 131 right I'd be like I'd you know have a backup camera here i' know the phone number for this person BL this person I go cool what of those three which one do you want to do I want to do option X sounds great Benji let's do that but you're Outsourcing the critical thinking to someone else and honestly 90% of the time I just go sounds awesome let's do that okay and over time guess what you stop coming to me with problems so are you a sports guy yeah you watch you watch football oh I love I'm not a sports guy sorry it doesn't matter you're going to get the analogy I'm a sports guy yeah NFL particular I love watching quarterbacks especially in their first year right after the draft right so they've come out they're a first round draft pick maybe they were first overall whatever what you'll see is this massive amount of variance between who the scouts pick and who's actually successful so every single season you see you know first round picks who were out of the league a couple years later because they just couldn't hack it you see people in the seventh round who are now winning playoff games like Brock pie like we it's there's a huge amount there's a huge variance between where people get picked and how they do long term when you listen to Scouts you listen to journalists you listen to people that know Sports one thing they talk about with quarterbacks in particular is this idea of information processing can they read defenses can they can they create a play out of structure when it breaks down can they anticipate when the wide receiver is going to be open before they get open the parallels to entrepreneurship here should be pretty obvious right so when it comes to information processing here's the question is that something that people can get better at or is it something that we just have or don't have and if it is something that we can get better at what have you found effective in your career at getting better at handling that complexity making quick decisions and just overall information processing yeah so a yes people can get better at it our our minds are not fixed the growth mindset and milein regeneration like this is science Neuroscience um the way you get better at it is making decisions okay so action creates awareness and and knowledge right so that being said one of my favorite books that talks about strategic thinking especially around like multiple systems and Designs is called the goal it's one of three books that Jeff Bezos recommends that everybody on his team reads okay Jeff basos is from Amazon okay elu gold Rat is his name that wrote the book it's a blue book called the goal and it's a parable about a manufacturer but what I love about it I make all my Executives read it is it teaches them how to think about the play see some people have never understood what is the goal well the goal is not to always make the best decision it's about making the right decision now for a long-term strategy so I think some people that have always been stuck in this individual contributor level where they just do the thing they tell somebody tells them what to do and they do it they never never practice that muscle but understanding how plays like as you explain it for somebody to explain like here's what happens when a play happens and these are your option sets and you can run through these simulation scenarios I think that's a muscle people can for sure build we can get better at it over time yeah I think we're at time uh let's wrap with this this quick one uh what do you know now however many years later that you wish you knew back then when you're a kid struggling uh going through what you are going through what has become abundantly clear to you at this present day that you wish you knew back then yeah the big thing I wish I could you know if I had to go back and talk to my younger self would be that the goal of you know living life well- lived is becoming the best version of yourself right I like to think of it as become the person you needed most in your darkest days I think it's a good frame for people to understand what does that look like just become that person the person you would have listened to ex ET and then share that person with the world and if your world are your kids or your community or your team or the internet through social media I really think that the moment that I understood this that my job was to wake up every day to become the best version of me and share that person with the world that all of a sudden everything else became fun because it was supporting that but it that was the purpose not the other stuff I gave too much importance to the other stuff not realizing that this is the whole point amazing wisdom thank you for your time Dan it's an honor Benji thanks for having me thanks so much for watching this episode of contractor Evolution if you've already subscribed to our Channel consider sharing this episode with another contractor who you think needs to hear it