If everybody at your organization is understanding this principle in hiring not to add capacity, but to free their time up so they can work in more of their genius, their unique ability. It's a game changer.
Table of Contents
Before You Scale Up, Buy Back Your Time
Scaling is supposed to give you freedom. But without the right strategy, it only adds more to your plate. More tasks. More stress. More late nights wondering where your time went.
You don’t need to do more. You need to buy back your time so you can focus on high-value work that actually moves the business forward. That’s how you scale without burning out.
1. Understand the Buyback Principle
The reason most founders burn out isn’t because they’re not growing. It’s because they’re growing the wrong way. They hire people to increase capacity, not to free up their own time.
Here’s the shift:
Instead of asking “Who can do this task?”, ask “What can I remove from my calendar so I can spend more time in my zone of genius?”
You grow faster when you grow with intention. That means delegating tasks that drain your energy and give you no return, so you can focus on revenue-generating, strategic, energizing work.
Here’s what to do:
Audit your last two weeks. Highlight the red (draining tasks) and green (energizing work).
Focus on buying back all the red.
Only then do you hire for growth.
This is how you stop building a business you hate and start building a machine that prints profit.
The buyback principle is 100% focused on shifting the hiring from just hiring for capacity to instead hire for capability.
2. Calculate Your E.H.R. (Effective Hourly Rate)
Every founder has a number. If you don’t know yours, you’re flying blind.
Here’s the formula:
Take your target annual revenue and divide it by 2,000 (approx. hours worked per year).
For example: $1M ÷ 2,000 = $500/hour
Now ask yourself:
Are you doing $20/hour tasks?
Could someone else handle those for $12.50/hour?
If yes, you’re burning profit every time you check your email or manually send an invoice. Use your E.H.R. as a benchmark to eliminate, automate, or delegate anything below that threshold.
Categories of tasks to eliminate first:
| Task Type | Value Level | Buyback Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Admin/Data Entry | Low | Outsource via Upwork/Freelancer |
| Calendar Management | Low | Hire an Executive Assistant |
| Invoicing/Receivables | Medium | Delegate to Ops or VA |
| Sales & Partnerships | High | Keep or elevate |
Start small. Even out-tasking a single recurring job creates margin for your genius.
If you can hire somebody for a quarter of that value, you can pretty much hire anybody.
3. Hire for Multiple Hats
Too many founders hire specialists too early. You don’t need a full-time Facebook Ads expert. You need someone scrappy who can wear a few hats.
When you’re starting out (or staying lean) you need hybrid hires.
Here’s how to find them:
-
Group related tasks (e.g. client onboarding, invoicing, collections).
-
Look for someone capable and adaptable, not just experienced.
-
Set clear outcomes, not micromanaged steps.
Roles to combine early on:
-
Marketing coordinator who also manages content uploads.
-
Executive assistant who handles operations tasks.
-
Customer success rep who owns invoicing and activation.
You used to wear 14 hats. Now start handing off 2–3 hats at a time, not just one.
Hire and hand over three hats. You now do this. I trust you. Figure it out.
4. Build Throughput Across Your Team
It’s not just about buying back your time. It’s about multiplying capacity across your leadership team.
Here’s what that looks like:
Every leader in your org should buy back their own time.
Equip them with Executive Assistants to increase their strategic headspace.
Don’t let your top talent burn out doing $20/hour tasks.
If you don’t build management bandwidth, your business stalls.
Key leverage point:
Instead of adding more people to a team, ask: “Is this hire freeing up my manager to think and operate at a higher level?”
Train your team to think the same way you do about time value.
We need to increase the capability. We need to increase the throughput, what I call management bandwidth, so that you can scale your company even faster.
Use the Next Hire Focuser and Make It Count
Buying back your time is not about spending money, it’s about reclaiming your calendar to grow faster and smarter.
Don’t just make your next hire. Make it the right hire. Map your energy zones, delegate effectively, and scale without burning out.
You’re not just building a business. You’re designing a lifestyle of freedom and impact.
And that starts with buying back your time.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the buyback principle in business?
The buyback principle in business means hiring people not just to add capacity but to buy back your time so you can focus on high value work. Applying the buyback principle is critical for profitability because it ensures entrepreneurs avoid burnout and spend more hours on sales, partnerships, and growth activities that produce profit.
How can I buy back my time to increase profit in my business?
To buy back your time to increase profit in your business, you need to stop hiring only for capacity and instead hire for capability. The buyback principle focuses on removing low value tasks from your calendar so you can spend more time on strategic, revenue generating activities that directly increase profit.
How do I calculate my effective hourly rate to decide what tasks to delegate?
To calculate your effective hourly rate to buy back your time, divide your annual revenue by 2000 working hours. For example, if you generate $1,000,000 per year, your effective hourly rate is $500. Any task worth far less than your rate should be delegated so you increase profit by focusing only on higher value activities.
Why is hiring for multiple hats important when trying to buy back time?
Hiring for multiple hats is important when trying to buy back time because one employee can take over grouped responsibilities instead of just a single task. By combining functions like invoicing, client activation, and receivables into one role, you maximize efficiency, reduce costs, and free up your time for profit focused leadership work.
What are the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when trying to buy back time?
The biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when trying to buy back time are hiring only for capacity, avoiding support roles like executive assistants, and not calculating their effective hourly rate. Without aligning hiring decisions to the buyback principle, they waste time on low value work and limit profitability.
More Resources
Tools Mentioned
-
Upwork – Freelance marketplace where entrepreneurs can hire contractors at affordable hourly rates to delegate low value tasks.
-
Next Hire Focuser – Dan Martell’s downloadable worksheet designed to help entrepreneurs identify tasks to delegate and plan their next hire strategically.
Full Transcript
How To Buy Back Your Time & Increase Profit – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n77p5b-Wu4
Transcript:
(00:00) – If everybody at your organisation is understanding this principle in hiring not to add capacity, but to free their time up so they can work in more of their genius, their unique ability. It’s a game changer. (upbeat music) Hey there, Dan Martell here, serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.
(00:30) In this episode, I’m gonna share with you how to buyback your time to increase your profit. It’s literally, if you feel like you’re frustrated, you’ve got way too many direct reports, you’ve finish your day and you’re wondering what did I actually get done, and literally growing will cause more pain to you, then you need to absolutely listen to this piece.
(00:51) So I’m gonna share with you how I teach my clients to strategically buyback their time in a way that’s more profitable and it creates a business they don’t grow to hate, and be sure to stay at the end we’re gonna tell you how to get access to my exclusive, download the Next Higher Focuser, it’s the worksheet that I use with my clients to help them walk through exactly where they should be focusing their hiring plan to buyback their time in the most profitable way.
(01:15) So I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said this is probably the most important topic that I talk to my coaching clients about. And the reason why is I’ve learned that if we don’t learn how to hire people in the right sequence, that we’ll eventually grow a business that is painful. That the more we grow we’ll literally like be driving with the handbrake on.
(01:39) We won’t wanna push on the gas ’cause it hurts. Okay? It sacrifices our time, it zaps our energy, you know, and the other day I was talking to one of my coaching clients, Owen, and he ran into the same issue. Literally growth in 2020, but started to stagnate and slow because he didn’t have the right people infrastructure.
(01:58) He didn’t make the right hiring because for him a lot of times when we’re hurting it’s ’cause we think the next hire is an expensive hire. Okay? It’s a VP. It’s an Operations person. Here’s right off the bat. If you’re thinking of hiring an Operations person and you don’t have a Personal Assistant, start there.
(02:18) Like you never hire somebody to operate your business if you don’t have an Executive Assistant taking care of that type of stuff to free up your time. So I’m just gonna give you that quick one but I’m gonna jump into the four key strategies that you need to consider to really understand the mindset, the beliefs, and the tactics to buyback your time.
(02:33) Number one, the buyback principle. So the first off, when people ask me, “What is what does that mean the buyback principle?” Here’s what it means. It means when entrepreneurs, okay, will not grow into pain. So if there’s this threshold of pain, you growing if it means more pain, you won’t do it. How does that show up in your business? Well, it means that you’re slow to reply to emails, you don’t follow up an introduction to potential partnerships, you don’t aggressively, you know, go for the close when you have a sales call,
(03:03) you don’t, you know, build certain features because it’s gonna take a lot of time to map out the product roadmap, or whatever it is. But essentially it’s painful for you to grow. If you sell, you gotta deliver, you gotta activate, you gotta onboard, there’s all these things. And what I’ve discovered is most people when they do hire, they hire people to just add capacity.
(03:23) They hire a developer, they hire a support person. They hire a frontline worker, whatever, which isn’t bad. But the problem is is that if you do that a lot, eventually usually around 12 employees, you’re gonna get overwhelmed. You’re gonna hire a bunch of people to add capacity but it actually doesn’t free up your time.
(03:41) So what you wanna do instead is the buyback principle is 100% focused on shifting the hiring from just hiring for capacity to instead hire for capability. Capability means you freeing up your time to be more capable to invest higher value time of yours into revenue generating activities. Okay? So it’s to buyback the lower value activities so that you can focus on higher value activities from your calendar.
(04:07) Why is that important? Because just think about this. If you had a calendar and you looked at your calendar, you said, “Here are all the things I’ve done the last two weeks.” And you just highlighted, you know groups of things, either red, they zap my energy and I hate doing this or green, I love doing this.
(04:22) And you looked at it. It could be maybe today, 60% red, maybe it’s only 40%, but imagine this, what if your calendar was all green? What if you woke up and all the work you worked on, you did, was stuff that energise you, added value to your business, generated revenue and high gross margin, profit to your business.
(04:42) You would transform the way you attack the day, you would jump out of bed ready to hit your work. You would be motivated to talk to customers, talk to partners, talk to anybody that could help you scale up, because it would mean more of that. And that’s the opportunity. That is the buyback principle. And that’s the number one thing you need to understand is that we’re buying to get time out of your calendar.
(05:03) Number two, calculate your E.H.R. So your E.H.R stands for Effective Hourly Rate. Here’s a simple equation. If you take your revenue, okay, and you just call it $1,000,000, okay? Or even your ambition this year, if you wanna get to $1,000,000 revenue and you divide it by 2000 which is about the amount of hours that a person’s gonna work in a year, that means your hour is worth $500.
(05:24) Okay? $500. Well, if you look at like the list of tasks that you’re working on throughout a two week period, there’s 80% that are low value. Okay? The 80-20 rule. And there’s 20% that are high value, maybe between two to $500 worth of value. These are things like selling, marketing, partnerships, product development potentially, right? But these are things that only you can do or the things that bring you energy, that creates a lot of value for your business.
(05:53) Everything else, this long tail of activities needs to get off your plate. So what I say is this, if you can hire somebody for a quarter of that value, meaning that if it’s $500 an hour, that’s 125 you could pretty much hire anybody. Just even think if you’re $1,000 or 100,000 a year, that’s $50 an hour. Is there anything you can hire people for $12.
(06:14) 50 to do that’s on this line of long tail activities? The answer is yes. You can hire people through sites like Upwork to buy people, to out task certain functions. Most people think, “I need to hire a full-time person.” No you don’t. Out task that work using your effective hourly rate as a gauge. Okay? So a quarter of your E.H.
(06:35) R is where you should be looking for opportunities to invest to buyback time. Number three, hire multiple hats. Most people when they hire, they hire one person to do a thing. I need a designer. All they do is design. I need a Facebook person. All they’re gonna do is Facebook. I need a whatever, and all they’re gonna do is this. Here’s my thing.
(06:50) If you look at your calendar and you see these chunks of work, okay? Maybe what you’ll discover is there’s two buckets of type of work. One’s more office and operational, the other one’s more marketing type tasks. Social media posting, Facebook. What you wanna do then is say, “How can I hire for a role that they’ll do those three buckets of things?” Because there’s value in that.
(07:11) So, I think that people forget when we started as entrepreneurs, we wore seven hats, 14 hats, a tonne of hats. We wore all the hats. And then what we do is we hire people and we hand a hat over. What I’m saying is hire and hand over three hats, you know? Hire somebody who’s gonna lead your marketing and say, “Here’s all the things I do in marketing.
(07:27) One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. You now do this. I know you may not have experience, but I trust you. And there’s free courses online, and there’s YouTube videos, go check out this guy, Dan Martell. He’s pretty smart. He’s got a bunch of videos on certain things.” And just hand it to people. I think people underestimate how capable folks are if you actually empower them and you coach them as a success and you just say, “These are the outcomes that I’m gonna hold you accountable for.
(07:52) Figure it out, let me know if you’re stuck and every week we’re gonna meet and you’re gonna show me where you’re at and are you making progress?” So that to me is one of the big ideas, the aha moments, between the buyback principle is you buyback multiple hats. You give groups of activities to one person and say, “Hey, you’re in charge of invoicing, client activation and receivables.
(08:12) Okay?” It might sound crazy, but why? Well because they’re working with the customer and activate them. So they should make sure that the invoice get done, and if somebody hasn’t paid, ask them about it since they have a relationship with the customer. That’s what I’m talking about when I say hire for multiple hats.
(08:23) And number four, build throughput. So my whole thing when I look at scaling companies is I’m trying to drive revenue. I’m trying to create throughput amongst my management team. So for me, it’s not even that I buyback my time. If you have leadership, you need to teach them how to buyback their time. If everybody at your organisation is understanding this principle in hiring not to add capacity, but to free their time up so that they can work in more of their genius, their unique ability, it’s a game changer.
(09:00) If you just ask people to hire folks to add capacity and it doesn’t free up their time, you’re gonna burn them out, they’re not gonna stick around with you, especially your A-players. So I have, like I hire Executive Assistants for all my senior leadership team. Why? ‘Cause it’s the cheapest amount of labour capital I can deploy to have them free up their time to think strategically, to look like..
(09:21) Essentially they’re in the forest they gotta look up and look over across the forest and say, “Where are we going?” That’s strategic thinking. If they’re leading a marketing, a sales team, customer success, they need the space in their calendar to do that and that doesn’t happen if we just keep adding people to fill capacity.
(09:37) We need to increase the capability. We need to increase the throughput, what I call management bandwidth, so that you can scale your company even faster. So quick recap. Four strategies to buyback your time to increase your profits. Number one, the buyback principle in essence. Okay? Number two, the calculate your E.H.R and use that to hire.
(09:55) Number three, hire for multiple hats. Number four, build throughputs. As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I wanna share with you an exclusive resource it’s called the Next Hire Focuser. It’s is literally the worksheet that I use when I’m coaching clients through this process for them to understand.
(10:12) Where are you spending your time? What brings you energy? What’s valuable to the business? What are the lists of things that you’re doing that you could group together and hire that person and make sure that you have a very clear task list of things when you bring that person in? Here’s what you’re now owning, hand it over to them. Give them guidance, coach ’em to success, click the link below to download your copy of my Next Hire Focuser to make your next hire a success.
(10:36) It will free up your time and add tremendous amounts of profit to your business. I’m really excited for you to deploy that. Let me know in the comments how that works out. If you liked this video, be sure to subscribe to my channel, smash that like button, and share this with any other entrepreneurs you know are struggling and need to consider redeploying their capital into more effective people time.
(10:56) So, share that link with somebody you love. As per usual I wanted challenge you to live a bigger life, and a bigger business, and I’ll see you next Monday. (upbeat music crescendos)