And nobody shared this with me my whole life until one day I realized it's like, Oh yeah, we start off everybody. We start off trading time for money. And then if we get smart and more valuable, then we trade money for time. And then if that works out really well, and we get good at that, then we have an excess or like overcapacity of capital to then invest, to have our money work for us and that's freedom.

And that's what people are after. They're like, Hey, I want to, I want to show up every day and I want to create an outcome so that one day I don't have to work. I can decide if I want to work. You, the, the, I get to is actually a real, it's not a mindset thing.

It's actually like a reality. And that's where I think life gets really interesting when you wake up and you get to decide what you want to create on. Um, but it starts by just becoming more valuable so that you have the resources to be able to buy back more time to then become more valuable again to the market.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. If you're new here, I'm Chris Hutchins. I'm a diehard optimizer who loves doing all the research to help you get the best experience in life. And one of those things is managing time.

And time management guru, Laura Vanderkam, who I've had on the show before, has a new book called Tranquility by Tuesday. I thought it was a good book that offered nine rules to help people spend more time on what matters. But there was one expression in the book that really stuck out with me.

"We should all be time millionaires." And that sounds great, even better than being a money millionaire, maybe. But how does it happen? People can't just create more time in their day, unlike money. So what's the secret? And that's where today's guest can help. His name's Dan Martell. He's a good longtime friend of mine, and he has a new book about just this.

It's called Buy Back Your Time, Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire. In his years as a successful entrepreneur, after a rough childhood and a few run-ins with the law, he built five companies, sold three of them, and currently runs SaaS Academy, the world's largest coaching program for founders of software as a service businesses.

But you don't have to have founded a business to apply these principles. You can make every aspect of your life better by buying back your time, and Dan's going to talk to us about how. We're going to talk about why buying back time has become his superpower, why mindset is such a key part of buying back time, how anyone can learn from super successful people like Oprah or Richard Branson about how they've increased their productivity, and more importantly, their fulfillment in life.

I want to talk also about how you can create a playbook at work or home to codify how you do something, and also to help someone else do it for you. We'll also touch on why almost everyone should consider hiring some type of administrative assistant, and how Dan uses a house manager to take care of nearly every aspect of his family's life, and ways that you can start to implement pieces of that in your own.

There'll probably be a lot more. So let's get started right after this. Dan, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. Chris, it's an honor. I'm super excited. This is the podcast I've been wanting to do for a long time, just because I know your audience is nerdy as much as I am on this topic.

I want to start letting people know who's coming on to get questions, because I'm sure people listening now would have great things. So that's something I might kick off in 2023. But I want to jump right in. Saving time, freeing it up, buying it back with help from others is your superpower.

We've talked about this before, both in work and life. I want to hear how you got so good at it, because it's something that so many people struggle with, and also why you think it's so important that people start doing it, no matter where they are in their stage of life.

I learned this the hard way. I've been a business builder, tried to be an entrepreneur growing up. Failed for 7 years. Just tried. And when I was 24, I found a different gear. Sounds crazy, but I read my first business book. Turned out to be a good move. And then I actually hired a business coach, this guy named Bob.

He was an E-Myth certified coach. And Bob taught me a lot about business. And when I was 24, I started this company called Spheric. But what happened for me is over a 4-year period, even though we grew a lot, we became a multi-million dollar company within a couple of years and grew to about 40 employees and won a bunch of awards, I just got really good at being productive, I didn't understand how to think of time and energy and just how I was showing up as a brother and a son and a partner in life and as a friend.

And what happened was, I was working at the office on a Sunday morning and I was supposed to be back around 11 o'clock. I was engaged to a woman at the time and we had just bought a house. And before I knew it, it was 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

And I was like, ran home and walked into the house and I found my fiance in tears. And she just was beside herself. And she just looks at me and decides that that was that. And she just goes, "I can't do this anymore." And takes the ring off and drops it on the counter.

And that was that. She walked out and 7 weeks before our wedding, and my life just shattered. Because I think anybody that's done anything from working hard at their job to taking risks in a business, they don't do it really for themselves. I was doing it for her. I was doing it for our future, our lives that we were going to build together.

And that was when I had to look in the mirror and ask myself, "There's got to be a different way to approach time." Because there was a 6-month period, Chris, that I actually thought that maybe because I'm so driven in life and I was so horrible, I would go to birthday parties and bring my laptop.

And that was normal. And I would think to myself, "I'm the best friend ever because I'm so busy that I showed up and I'd sit in the living room on a laptop while everybody else is enjoying music and partying." And it was just crazy. And that was the moment where I started reading books around leadership and personal development, really diving into that component of it.

And I just realized that it's not just about being super productive, even though I think I've gotten world-class at that. I've read all the productivity books. It's really about understanding how your energy flows throughout your calendar and your week and your month and your quarter and all these things so that you can show up to the work or the people in a completely different way.

And that's why I wrote this book. It's just become such a foundational part of my life that if we fast forward to today, I have 2 incredible kids. I have dinner with them every night. I do quarterly retreats with my wife. We go to seminars, personal development programs together.

I think I did 12 weeks of vacation this year, and I'm the CEO of two 8-figure companies where I wake up and push things forward. And there was no way that I could have done that if I didn't go through that painful moment to force me to learn the lessons that I share with people today.

Well, it sucks that you went through it, but I know that you're now in a good place, and I'm fortunate that you learned those lessons so you can share them with us. Where do you think people start with this? Because I think when I just heard you describe all of the stuff that you're doing now, my head kind of doesn't know how to compute it.

Right. I'm like, well, I just have this one small little thing. That's a podcast. It's not an 8-figure company. It's just one of them. And, you know, I don't have that much vacation. My wife and I don't go on these retreats. So it just seems impossible. It kind of is, and I forgot to mention, I also did three Ironmans this year.

So like, it's kind of nuts, but Chris, we don't start there. Like, it's not where I started. I think the big thing for people to understand is that their calendar is telling them a story of what's important to them. And I tell this to people all the time. It's like, if you show me your calendar, I will tell you what is important to you, not what you tell me is important to you.

So every time that I, you know, I work with a lot of at-risk youth and I just even do the same process with them is we do a calendar audit, right? We look at what I call a time and energy audit of where are you actually spending your time and allocating that and try to create a life that's by design, not by default.

And I think that's like a first principle. Like there's no way I can teach you all the ways to get more time. But if you don't at least, you know, admit to yourself that, "Hey, you have to be a little bit more proactive. You got to be a planner.

You need to look at your time and assess and have a period of reflection to ask yourself, like, was this a good use of my time? Did it deliver not only the success impact that I would like it to have in my career or with my friends, but did it also bring the joy, right?

Like one thing I do every year at the end is I look at my previous 12-month period and I look at all the things I said yes to and I did and then I go like, "Okay, what were the best experiences?" And then I go, "Okay, what's true about those ones?" And one example in my life is I don't go on vacation unless there's a physical component to what I'm doing.

Even if it's like, you know, I've had people like, "Hey, come to Europe and let's go drive supercars." I'm like, "Eh, what else? Like, are we going to go hike a mountain? Are we going to do a 3-day bike trip?" Like, it literally, I just like had this feedback loop.

And that's for me. For other people, they're like, "I have no interest in doing that. But, you know, riding around in supercars in Europe sounds fun. Let me do that." Like, I'm just saying, if we don't have a process of reflection, then there's no way you can be proactive and that's where it starts.

It's with the calendar and it's not just a productivity thing. It's an energy thing. Because this is the cool part, Chris. I learned that the energy that I bring to the work can have a 3 to 4 times increase in output. What do I mean by this? Well, if I have...

If before I start doing a creative project, I'm full of self-doubt and frustration and anxiety and all these negative beliefs and I'm in low energy, the thing I'm creating literally has an impact. And it's so funny because I see that where it's like, "Okay, if you're organizing an event and one of the tasks for you to do is to go and recruit sponsors, if you just got in a fight with your better half because you forgot to do something, that energy shows up in the emails.

It shows up in your language. It shows up in your body. And it's just so fascinating that people don't consider that. So for me, I'm always looking at the work I do. And I just use a green highlighter and a red highlighter. It's like this gives me energy and this takes my energy.

And as much as I can, I try to remove the things that take my energy so that I'm stacking this positive energy flow to the work because it literally will have a 2, 3, 4 times amplifier to the outcome I'm after. And I'm sure there are things, especially for anyone listening who has a job and they're not the boss, that just take the energy out.

Are there certain places or times a day where you put those things? Yeah, I think everybody's different. I think, Chris, maybe you can relate to this with the new family. Before I had kids versus after I had kids. I used to be somebody that was more of a night owl.

And then I would start my day later. And that was okay. So maybe I would get to work and I would jump into meetings and then do some more creative work in the afternoon. And then what happened is once I had these human alarm clocks, my 2 sons, and they're 11 months apart.

So imagine having kids, it was bananas, which was another forcing function to get really good at the stuff I talk about. What I do now is I do all of my creative work in the morning. And I mean, maybe if your boss tells you what to do with your time, but I know my team, we focus on outcomes.

We don't tell people what they should do. Sure, there's meetings they have to be at, but they're responsible for their own calendar. So if you can design it, the energy flows, what works good for me is all my creative work I do in the mornings. I try to push out any in-person conversations till later on.

I personally like to work out at lunch because it creates a reset. And then I bring that reset energy into the afternoon conversations. And then I batch. I mean, there's so much stuff we can talk about around just getting more out of the time we have. But understanding and just asking people...

So it's so funny because a lot of times, I'm managing my leaders and they're talking to me, "I'm overwhelmed. I don't have this and this." And then we do a time and energy audit with their calendar. And it's really just about negotiating constraints in an interface. A lot of people have the ability to call somebody up and say, "Hey, I know we have this meeting every Tuesday at 9.

Is there any way we can move it to 11am?" Because it's the only thing that's breaking up my morning. And if I had an extra hour and a half and uninterrupted, not broken up time to work on some creative projects, I really think I'd be more effective. Most people would be like, "Yeah, it actually doesn't change my life." And if that's going to support you, game on.

So I just think trying to understand how you like to work. And then the key is to honor the calendar. It's like, I know what my week looks like. And I review my calendar the night before and try to tweak anything that needs to be there. And then when it shows up, I put my work in the calendar, even if there's nobody else involved.

I literally... My to-do list is in my calendar. And I just honor what I put in there. I think too often, people drag their feet, spend a little too much time on TikTok or Instagram, whatever. And then that thing that they had an hour blocked out of, it's really 35 minutes and they're rushing through it.

So there's that. But if you have the discipline and you're proactive, then I think that energy management flow is actually more productive than just saying, "I'm managing my time and I'm being productive in my time." And that's what shifted for me after my fiancé left me and I had to rebuild my life, was now I structure things so that when I transition in between meetings, I can be 100% present.

Because before, I was just dealing with arguments and friction and what I call emotional shrapnel that often I was creating myself. And if you're not a planner, I have one of my best friends, an amazing human being, but gosh darn it, this guy is so forgetful and not a planner.

The amount of times that I've seen him lose 2 or 3 hours, I've seen him drive 8 hours to go pick something up because he forgot and he needed the next day for something. And I just think to myself, "Man, if he just spent a little bit more time measuring twice, cutting once, he would get back 2 months of his year.

He would pull forward 2 months of productivity into his calendar year for a fraction of the time invested." So again, it's emotional shrapnel. It's self-inflicted. You're literally throwing hand grenades off in your life. And then you're dealing with the fallout of it just because you just haven't built that skill set and that discipline of being a little bit more disciplined.

So 2 things. One, I encourage anytime I have a meeting that gets invited to me, especially if it's a recurring meeting at work. And I guess technically, I'm not at a company anymore. But when I was, if they didn't select the "Let guests modify events" button in Google Calendar or I'm sure on whatever calendaring system, I immediately fall out.

But I say, "Hey, I know this meeting is not for a couple of weeks. Can you enable this feature?" And I had it enabled by default. So I'd encourage everyone to make calendaring easier to just ask everyone to enable that feature on any recurring meeting so that you have the ability to move it without having to say, "Hey, can we move it?

Now we got to go back and forth spending on Slack or email." Just enable that. So that's one. Two, you talk a lot about discipline, but let's talk about what happens when I sit down and I've got 30 minutes blocked off to go plan the next episode I'm going to do.

And there's a million other little tiny things on a to-do list that I could go try to knock off that seem easier to make progress on. How does that discipline work for you? What makes that possible? I think what's unique if you watch the way I work is I actually take all those projects or things that are in my calendar and I break down the tasks of the work I'm going to do in the calendar description.

So everything that is creative output that I need to do, and I'm literally looking at like 17 projects I'm working on, they already have the mini tasks inside of it broken down because most people procrastinate because they don't have clarity as to what the next action item. So it's like if the thing says 60 minutes to go recruit sponsors for an event or some play or whatever it is, right?

And in it, it's like, "Send 5 emails." You're literally that descriptive. You're like, "Send 5 emails to this person. Call John. Ask him about this." I write it all down and go probably a little bit like, I would say, 120% of what would need to happen for the goal to achieve.

So I always try to give myself a little bit more tasks to do. That way, if I don't get to it, or if I do get to it, it's just like it increases the probability of the thing happening. But I'll tell you, because I coach so many CEOs, when we do these calendar audits, and I'm like, "Why didn't you do that?" They're like, "I mean, the truth was, I didn't actually know what I needed to do." And it's like, "Cool.

Here's what we're going to change." Not when you got to do the work, but as you plan your week. So for me, I do them on Sunday nights. And I know a lot of people are like, "Look, you're asking me to work Sunday." It's like, "You can do it Monday morning if you want." But Sunday night, I grab all of my...

I look at my projects and I grab the big rocks and I put them in... For me, my mornings. And I put them into typically 90-minute blocks. That's about as long as I want to work on one project for until I get bored with it. And I outline in that 90-minute blocks, all the stuff I'm going to do.

And I just keep a note file and I just copy and paste it. And I work through that list. So Monday, I might attack it. Tuesday, I'll attack it. Wednesday, I'll attack it. And I'm just working through that list. And literally, as I get done that 90-minute block, I'll just edit it for the next day because it's shorter because I got a bunch of stuff done.

And then that way, when I sit down, there's no procrastination. Because like you said, Chris, it's like, "I know I have this other to-do list that I can go get some wins on." But technically, your big project is a to-do list. And if you just break it down, then you just attack that one and you can get some wins.

So you can build momentum because I always got frustrated in software development land that I grew up in. "Dude, it would take like months to write code to get a product built." Whereas this other guy who works in construction, he literally sees every day when he's done the progress he made.

And it feels so good. I know that when I was helping my dad growing up, build a deck or redo a roof or whatever. It was like it felt so good to make these small wins. That's how I've set up my life. I just want to take the bigger outcome, break it down into projects, break those down into tasks, put it in my calendar.

And then I just follow and I honor it. And look, if I get the wrong list and I get some feedback, it's like, "Oh, I thought I would do this and that didn't work. Next time, I'll just change it." But it just allows you to build momentum with your day.

And I think that's what a lot of people are missing out of. And it is the lack of clarity. People procrastinate because they don't have clear... "Boom. This is what I got to go do. One. It's 15 minutes. Let's go get it done. Let's go get a small win.

Let's build some momentum." And then that momentum becomes almost addictive. I just get excited about how much can I get done in a period of time and how can I look for leverage? Yeah. Leverage is going to be a bulk of this discussion. But before, I want to know, do you keep a separate to-do list or is the calendar the to-do list?

I keep a to-do list. So I have a high-level Google Doc. Okay, it's called to-dos. And what's unique about it... And this is how I'm able to unplug at the end of the day. So now I'm blessed to have an executive assistant that manages 99% of my inbox. But things that do end up in my world, what I do at the end of the day is I take anything...

That's why I like the world we live in where it's all linkable. Anything that I need to process the next day, I put it in the to-do list and I link to the email. So it's literally... It'll say "Reply to Chris" or whatever it is. And I link to the email in my Gmail.

And then I grab that. So I put it in the Google Doc. And then I grab, let's say, the 5 or 6 that are there. And I put it in my calendar the next morning for a 60-minute block. And it'll just say "Process to-dos." And that way, again, this is how I want it defined and easy.

So I open the calendar and I just open up all my tabs. I just open up just those emails. See, that's where a lot of people get stuck. They open up their inbox and then it's like "Burp, burp, burp." All these things they got to do. I just open up the tabs to the thing.

So it's like, it could be like "Review a copy for a blog post." Or it could be like whatever it is. But it's like a sauna. It's like a link just to the thing. And when I'm done, I close the tab. So I create this almost like momentum I'm building because I start on the left side and I work through them.

They're prioritized. And it's either emails or projects or creative stuff or some mirror document I got to prove or look at. And then because I put it in that Google Doc at the end of my day, at the very end of my day, that's the last thing I do is I look at my inbox.

I look at my projects list. I move them into the to-do, copy, paste, and put in my calendar. Dude, I sleep like a champ. I don't want to brag, but I use Oura Ring. I'm literally going to pull up my Oura score right now. I got last night... Because people see me wake up so early and they're like, "When did you sleep?" I got an 88 yesterday, which is a pretty beefy score.

But I've been rocking 88s, 90... I got a 91. So I've got the... Yeah. So I don't toss and turn. My brain doesn't worry about forgetting stuff because I've locked and loaded it into my life and my calendar. Now then... So that's the to-do list, the Google Doc that I...

And what's unique is at the top of it, I have all my 25-year vision stuff in 5 years in 1 year. I'm a little crazy like that. I don't worry about the how, but I do know what I'm trying to accomplish. Like I wrote down that I wrote this book 6 years ago.

I wrote down "best-selling book, business category." And I stared at it for this long until 2.5 years ago, we started working on the project. But that way, I'm looking at the big vision stuff 25 years from now, 10 years, 5 years, 1 year. And then my to-do and my calendar has to map.

I've got to be able to see what I'm doing this week and how it drives to those outcomes. Specifically, you label them to it? Or just because it's at the top of the doc, it's a constant reminder? Because it's at the top and I scan it every morning as part of my process.

So before I work on any of the to-dos, I just read through them. It's almost like it ramps up into my mind. It's like, "Oh yeah, don't forget. This is why we're doing it." And I use... Again, I have very unique, I think, approaches that work for me. I call it RPM.

I always focus on results, then purpose, then the activity. So a lot of people focus on the "how." I focus on the "what" and the "why" first. Because I've learned a long time ago, the purpose of why I'm doing something actually matters more than the actual outcome that I'm trying to achieve.

So my vision for my life is help a million at-risk youth. So mentor them. So that's a big one. Build a 3 billion multi-generational wealth. These are big things, but that's where I'm at. And so I can go through those and build 30 million coaching company, which we're well on our way by 2025.

So that's the vision stuff. And then RPM is my different things. So I have my high-speed ventures, $100 million fund. I've got my book. It literally says right there, "Buy back books at New York Times bestseller." Back end, I have specific outcomes of those things, my coaching company. Then it breaks down into quarterly projects that I've committed to, to achieve these things.

So like big vision this year, quarterly projects. And then I have my to-do list. Oh, and I also have a waiting on. This is another little secret tip that I like, which is... I don't worry if people get back to me because I take... If I send something to you, and it's really important...

I only put stuff in my waiting on list if it's things that are going to affect my goals. But let's say I email you. I'll literally grab that sent email and put it in my waiting on list. And I'll do the same thing where I'll open up all the waiting on, maybe 5 or 6 people, and then follow up.

So some people use software for that, follow up whatever tools. But I just do it that way. And that way, I can visually see it. For me, it's just superhuman. Remind me. So if it's a thing I don't care about, I'll archive it. And if it's a thing that I'm like, "No, this is really important.

I want to..." in 2 weeks, remind me. In 1 week, remind me. I do think that I haven't found a good way to merge the to-do list in the email. Because 50% of my to-do list is email. Or it lives in my inbox, maybe, is a better way to frame it.

That's why I take it out. I don't want it in the inbox. And that's where... I think there's tools like Motion is a new one that I've seen. Facebook ads about taking your to-dos and put them in your calendar. But I just either manually do it or I have my assistant do it.

Because we talk often about like, "Here are my top projects." And I use color coding in my calendar to know if I'm allocating the right amount of time for different projects. So that's another little hack I use. So if it's like this, it's like 1, 2, and 3 are the most important to me.

I can visually look at the color coding we're using in my week to know if I'm allocating the right amount of time to move certain projects forward. My book is orange right now. And the calendar is pretty orange because it is a top priority for me. Yeah. Well, I'm excited.

I got a chance to read it. I want to jump into the theme because it's one thing to be productive. I've talked about it a little bit. I love hearing the way you think about your time management. But time is a limited resource. And one of the only ways to get it back is to try to find ways to outsource what you're doing so that you have more time to do what you want.

So let's talk about it. I know one of the things that I want to start with is around mindset. You bring up mindset a lot, especially when it comes to buying back your time. So maybe let's just talk about a few of the objections I think some people hear or think of when they think about this concept, which is like, "Well, I don't have the time to go find someone to help me with all these things.

I don't have the money to spend on this. And no one can really do it like I can." So are there other big ones? Or how do you think about all the objections people have before we jump into the tactic? So those are the top 3. And we can overcome those beliefs.

The other one that comes up often that is unexpressed but is underneath the surface is "I don't feel worthy." And that one, I coach not a lot, but I've coached especially women CEOs. And they seem to struggle with it a bit more around... And the language that I hear is like, "I just feel guilty that I can't run my company and take care of my household." Or like, "I'm worried what my mom is going to say or my mother-in-law or my neighbor." It's really fascinating to hear that.

But the truth is, everybody's got their own limiting beliefs about the world that's going to stop them from achieving more. It doesn't matter if it's like getting more time back or being successful in your career. You have to understand that your beliefs about how the world works and how we respond is what's stopping us.

So the one of like, "I don't have time." Well, you decide what you do with your time. So it's changed the language to "I choose not to make time for this." As soon as you change the language from "I don't have time" to "I choose not to make time." That's an honest conversation that you can then address.

But most people will blame an external factor and say, "I just don't have time for that." It's like, "No, you do." Because if we looked at your calendar and I asked you, "Tell me what you did yesterday." There'll be things that you chose to do instead of working on this problem.

So let's talk about why you're choosing not to do it. So that's the first thing. And by the way, you can apply that to so many different aspects. I was talking to someone the other day who's like, "I would love to lose 10 pounds." I was like, "Would you really?" Because losing 10 pounds is not some mythical thing that is really hard to figure out.

A combination of diet and exercise... It's a caloric deficit over time. Yeah, yeah. So you can do it. So don't say that you would love to do it. Because say, "I wish I had the time to do it." Well, not even that. How about, "I don't want to prioritize it right now." It's not important.

Because if it was important, you could just do it. So I think when I hear, "I still catch myself up in this. It's hard to get over it." I feel like just as humans, we're trained this way. But yeah, you do have time. Just how do you want to prioritize your time?

What's important to you right now? If it's not, that's okay. But just be honest. Yeah, I was... I know. I mean, it's on that line. I was coaching a client, Carrie. And she was complaining about, "I don't have time to go to the gym." It's like she knew what she needed to do.

And then it's like... Then we talked about it. It's like, "Well, why?" Like you said, it's like you're choosing not to do it. You know the benefit of it. There's some friction there. There's some blockers we need to work through. And once we work through it, then it was like, "Okay." And it's this language of even "I get to" versus "I have to." I really think that a rich life...

It's not about money, but let's just call it a rich life versus a poor life. A rich life is somebody that wakes up saying, "I get to do this." Whereas a poor life is somebody wakes up and says, "I have to do this." And it's such a subtle thing, but it will literally transform your life.

If you say like, "I get to work out. I get to go to work. I get to drop my kids off at whatever. I get to work on this project." And these are things that you think are tough or hard, or "I don't want to do it." But it's like, "Yeah, let's reframe the stuff." So on the belief, "I can't afford it's another one." Here's the way I think about it is every person has the ability to create value with their time.

It's why we have jobs, right? It's like when we start off in life, we trade time for money. Some people create more value in that amount of time, so they get compensated by the market. And Jim Rohn, he's one of the OG personal development guys back in the day used to talk about this.

He goes, "A lot of people don't realize is that the market is a value-rewarding system. Whether we like it or not, we live in a capitalist society. And to the degree that you create value, you will be rewarded for that. And it doesn't matter if you're a business owner or a team member or CEO." Because he even says like, "The highest paid CEO in the world makes $100 million a year." And that's Tim Cook at Apple.

Well, the reason why the board pays him that and he gets that and nobody blinks that is because he created a trillion dollars worth of value. So my question to people when they say, "Well, I can't afford it." I want to ask them, "Well, how can you become more valuable?" Because if we can talk about how you become more valuable to your employer, to your team, to your community, then you start to ask yourself, "Well, now that I know what I can do to become more valuable, I need to find the time to do it." And that's where the time trading comes into play.

And that's what the best people in the world at is. They're just good traders of time. So you start off as time for money. And you'll do that for a while until hopefully you're getting paid a lot more because you're becoming more valuable. But then at some point, and this is...

I think it doesn't matter if you're a business owner or not, you got to get good at trading money for time. That's level 2. And I talk about this in the book. Level 3 is where I want everybody to eventually get is where you start trading money for money.

This is the investing side. These are skill sets. These are beliefs. These are strategies. You have to develop them. But that is the path of life. And nobody shared this with me my whole life until one day I realized it's like, "Oh yeah, we start off... Everybody. We start off trading time for money.

And then if we get smart and more valuable, then we trade money for time. And then if that works out really well, we get good at that, then we have an excess or overcapacity of capital to then invest to have our money work for us. And that's freedom. And that's what people are after.

They're like, "Hey, I want to show up every day and I want to create an outcome so that one day, I don't have to work. I can decide if I want to work." I get to is actually a real... It's not a mindset thing. It's actually like a reality.

And that's where I think life gets really interesting when you wake up and you get to decide what you want to create on. But it starts by just becoming more valuable so that you have the resources to be able to buy back more time to then become more valuable again to the market.

And then there's the "Nobody can do it better than me," Chris. My rule is 80% done by somebody else is 100% freaking awesome. And I just think we got to reduce our expectations. I don't... My wife... We were talking about this yesterday because she's like, "You're so good at not worrying if the person gets it right the first time." And I go, "Well, I can tell you where that comes from.

Thousands of hours of being let down." And realizing that if I expect every person that I bring into my life to help me to know everything I know and do everything the way I think I'm going to do, I'm just going to live a life of being disappointed. And instead, the way I look is I reframe it and I just say, "80% done by somebody else is 100% freaking awesome." If I have somebody else go to the grocery store for me and bring me my food to my house, and yes, every once in a while, they got the wrong bananas or whatever, I didn't have to do it.

And I'm really grateful that I got to take that time to go work on something creative or spend time with people I love or whatever. And it just changes the expectation. And I think that's where when we start working on these beliefs, then it frees us up to actually invite other people to support us and use these tools to get more productive, to get more done.

But if you hold on to these beliefs, then you'll always hit a ceiling and you'll never actually free up your time. I want to go briefly back to the money one because I know that it's the one that I struggled with the most. And I'm guessing maybe there are some people out here that are feeling the same way, which is it's not that you necessarily don't have the money.

It's that it just feels you're responsible, maybe. Or if I were to watch a movie, and then I'm like, "Well, I should pay someone to go do this thing. But I had the time. I just watched this movie." So how do you help people value their time? I always have them start simple.

And the truth is, they need to understand what their time is worth. And the math equation is pretty straightforward. It's whatever you get paid annually to do a job. So you make, let's say, $100,000 a year. It's simple math. And then you divide it by $2,000. That's the amount of value of your hour.

That works out to about $50. My rule, and I call it the buyback rate, is if you can pay somebody else to do whatever you're doing for a quarter, like one fourth of that amount, $12.50 in that circumstance... Or sorry, if you're... Yeah, $50 is $12.50, then you should.

Right? And when you start using that filter in your personal life, from having people laundry service, to house cleaning, to Uber Eats, to a lot of stuff, you can start buying back that time. Now, I also don't think you should buy back your time to hang out on a beach or watch Netflix.

I think you should ask yourself... Again, it's that time trade. It's how do we become more valuable to the market? And I also agree, you should relax and enjoy yourself and recharge. So I'm not saying you become a workaholic. But it's if you constrain yourself to say, "Look, I'm only going to invest 40 hours a week in my career." So you block it and you create this constraint.

Then you go, "Okay, well, right now, if I do a time and energy audit on my calendar, I'm spending time on things that are taking my energy and very low cost to pay somebody else to do." And then you attack that list of those items. And you just start trying to bring support.

And then the key is go do things that make you more money. So it only fits into one of 2 things. You're either doing more of the thing you know you're going to get paid more to do right now. Right? So it's a lot easier, obviously, if you're in a role like sales or there's some performance component of the thing you do.

But you can negotiate that with your employer. Like I have half my team on some level of performance compensation. So they have a clear target that if they hit, they get financially rewarded for it because that means everybody wins. And then do more of that. Learn what that is or negotiate it with your employer.

And then free up your time. And I'll give you a real example. Like this guy, Wendell, who worked for me in sales. I mean, he was making a half million... Like not half a million. He was making about a quarter million a year, which is a lot. And I get it.

But what he decided to do on his own time, because he started to see like, "Hey, I'm on calls for 30 hours a week on calls and then follow up and all that stuff." He was listening to me coach my clients because a lot of stuff we do is public inside of our company.

Not what our client shares, but me. I record everything I do and just give it away to the team and put it on social media. And he hired his own assistant to literally do all of his follow-up, do his prospecting, manage his calendar, manage his inbox, so that he could just do more calls because that's how he made more money.

So all of a sudden, he doubles his output. Then he has a surplus. He calls me out one day. He's like, "I don't know what to do with all this money." I'm like, "Well, congratulations. This is a very good problem to have. Well done, sir." And I tell him to go into real estate.

He's like, "Well, how do I do that?" I go, "That's you to figure out." This is the thing is you free up your time to then fill it with learning new skills that are valuable. So he went into real estate. He hired a mentor. This is what I teach people.

Go find somebody that's done it before. Bring that person into your life. And now what's crazy is he negotiated. He only does sales Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, because on Friday, his assistant is queuing up all of the showings for him to go look at new real estate deals. He's already bought...

I think he's on his fifth building. He owns like 20 some doors or whatever it's called. And he's doing really well because he's thought through this math, right? And I know a lot of people are like, "Well, that's easy. He's making $250,000 a year." It doesn't matter if you're making $50,000 a year or $100,000.

You got to learn how to free up your time to then invest it in things that your employer is going to value, or at least the market's going to value. And then if you want to go chill out and watch Netflix, that's fine. It's just... If you're during the day and during the day, you could do something to progress your career, or you take an hour to drive to go get your food.

And instead, you could just have the food delivered to you. So you could not have to take an hour to go do that. That sounds like a great trade. You just need to know ahead of time, when I'm buying back that time, I'm going to invest it. I'm going to fill it with things that will compound and create more value in the future.

So there has to be trust. You have to have sat down and thought about this and have a plan. And you just keep working through it. So I just tell people to allocate a budget, right? Chris, it could be very simple. $500 a month. Just take $500 and do the time and energy audit on your calendar and say, "I'm just going to give myself permission to buy back maybe less.

Let's call it $100 a month. I don't know what it is. And then if I buy back that time, I'm going to do this with that time that I think over a period of time will be more valuable." It could be going to the gym. Because I know for me, man, I show up way different if I worked out today than if I don't.

And that has a huge positive impact on the outcomes that I get to achieve. Right? So that's just the way I think about it. So let's talk about some of those things that you think people can get started buying back. I think you gave some examples that I think are well known, like ordering your groceries online, or getting food delivered.

Great uses of trading dollars for time, I think, personally. I do have some frustration with the grocery delivery thing, because I felt like early on, there were so many misses and poor replacements that if you were like me and you were trying to plan a dinner out, you'd get the wrong thing.

Now, I find that Amazon's inventory management for Amazon Fresh, at least in the States, is so good that I don't have that fear anymore. So that's a few. What are some of your favorites? There's so many. I mean, when I look at the early days of starting to do this...

Laundry service. I was crazy busy. My fiance is pissed off at me. I'm trying to get all my work done. And this is what happens. I literally had to get a laundry service so that I could work on Sundays in the morning. Normally, I was done by 11am. That was my rule.

And I got in trouble that day. But obviously, just having somebody else take care of your laundry, like wash and fold, game changer. I mean, just low-hanging fruit. Having somebody come in, maybe once every 2 weeks, maybe once a week. My world is a little different today. But to come in to clean your house, to take care of the deep cleaning, that kind of stuff, that's a huge opportunity.

I mean, but even... Because some people are like, "I'm not going to pay somebody else 25 bucks an hour to do something I can do myself." All right. Well, how about we just get better at getting our time back? How about you start using a calendar? That would be a big idea for people.

I know if we fail to plan, we plan to fail. I don't know who said it. But I remember my wife's friend, she said that because she was just so frustrated with herself about the amount of wasted time running around her kids. And I forgot this happened and that.

And it's like, people don't realize how much time is wasted in just the commute. Right? So even just asking yourself like, "Are you driving to Costco?" "Yes." "Why don't you just order online?" "Well, I like to go to Costco." "I know you like to go to Costco. But if you tell me you like to go there and you don't have enough time to go to the gym, then you're making a decision to go to Costco because you like it versus go to the gym, which you know will have a compounding effect." Especially with the health.

I just want to say this. When you're healthy, you have 1000 goals and dreams. And when you're not, you have one. And I bring that one up because if that's not front and center for a lot of people, it should be the driving force behind everything we're talking about today.

Because it will have the biggest impact on your life, your mental health, your physical health, worry your family will have for you. So it's like if you don't want your family to worry, that's all parents want. They want to know you're happy and healthy. So it's like, that's a big one.

Other things is... Again, when it comes to scheduling, it's everything from cutting down on meetings, saying no, inviting people to you. That's a big one. Right? So for example, I don't do the "Got a second" meetings, coffee meetings, etc. Chris, and I'm sure you don't either. Because I can buy myself coffee.

What I do instead is every Tuesday morning, I hike this mountain near my house. And it's an open invite for anybody that wants to pick my brain or hang out with me to come and do the hike with me. And I've been doing it now since I moved to this new city.

We live in Kelowna, BC for 2 years. So every Tuesday morning, 6.30am, if you want to come hang out with me, anybody... And this is an open invite for your audience. If they want to fly to Kelowna and pick my brain, I will be there. And what's great is that now...

I call it net time. No extra time. I compress all these other meetings into one experience. And usually, it's a 45-minute or it's a half-hour hike up and then 15 down. It allows me to have great conversations. It allows me to get my workout in. So that's a big time-saving one.

Even considering using carpooling or public transit. I'll tell you why. Is a lot of people can do stuff if they're not driving. So a lot of people don't understand that taking the public transit, the train... I know in San Francisco, I used to use a car service. I mean, Uber, actually, funny enough.

So Travis, who started Uber, was an investor in my company, Flowtown. And when it came out, I was using it for next level stuff. I remember Travis saying to me, he's like, "You're the only person..." I would send Ubers to go pick up my girlfriend at the time to bring her to the date to save me time.

Right? So I would use it as almost like a delivery system of people to bring them to me to save me time. Now, that's an advanced thing. People aren't going to be doing this. But that's one for sure. When you say that... Now they've built in the delivery function.

But I remember one time, little things like... I recorded an interview in person and the SD card didn't work. And there's a data recovery company in San Francisco. And I was like, "Well, I'll just send the SD card to the company on an Uber instead of drive to the city and drive back." And using that for delivery, you used to have to convince the driver to do it.

You had to talk to him. Now it's just part of the service. "I left my laptop at this meeting." And you're like, "Hey, do you think you could pick this up? I'll have someone bring it out." So yeah, I love that one. Yeah, I mean... I know you got a big list.

Let's... Yeah. I use... My whole rule, if you had to put it into a list, it's "Go mobile." So I do not use services that don't have a mobile experience. So... And this is for everything. Home automation, security systems, lighting systems... Anything that my wife wants to buy that's like an electronic, I ask if they have a mobile app because I want to be integrated into my workflow and just be able to access it wherever I'm at.

So that's a big one. The other one is automation. Anywhere that I'm doing the same thing over and over, I look for tools for automation. I mean, we do that for lawn care. We do it for locks, lights, obviously. Cleaning cycles for things. I mean, the amount of automation and just services.

Having somebody come to your house to clean your car, that's a real thing. Or like my buddy, Brad, his wife was spending every Wednesday afternoon cleaning their cars. And I was like, "Hey, dude. Why don't you guys have a cleaning lady?" She's like... He's like, "Yeah." I go, "Why don't you just ask the cleaning lady to clean the cars?" "Oh, geez.

I don't know if we could do that." "Yeah." The woman who's cleaning your house obviously knows how to clean. She drives a car. Pretty sure she cleans her own car. She probably wants more hours. It's so funny when we just start thinking of things through that lens of like, "How do we put things together?

How do we..." And then the no touch side is the third principle. The no touch is what we talked about. Using online like Costco. I don't go to grocery stores. I don't buy stuff. My whole rule is to the degree that I am not touching stuff, that's how I want the world to work.

So like my brother, there was a point in his career. He's in the construction industry. He's a home builder and whatnot. He would probably spend 2 days a week, like 16 hours in his calendar, just bringing stuff around to people. Okay. And this is not complicated stuff. It's just driving.

And eventually, I said, "You should hire a runner." So some people can't afford to do that. I just want them to think about that. It's like even if you... And it's a little work, Chris. I could get somebody to do wash and fold, but I got to bring it to there.

Okay. But that's that company. There's actually another company that will come to your house and pick it up and do wash and fold. Oh, I didn't even know that. Yeah. And it's an extra $6. So is the $6 worth you saving 40 minutes there and back? Again, you do the buyback rate.

Yes. Perfect. Use a different service. Some people are just not willing to ask. I'm really... I'll even go as far as sometimes... Last year, I'll give you a real example. Last year, Christmas time, I had my executive team in my hometown. We went, we did an offsite. And I wanted to give them a gift.

So I called the store that I wanted to buy all the stuff from. And I said, "Look, I need 6 gift bags put together. But I need you to deliver it." And they're like, "Well, we don't do that." And I go, "I know you don't do that. And I totally understand why.

But look, we're going to be at this restaurant. The only way this is going to work is if you guys can put it together, bring it to the restaurant, have them put it behind the counter, and just put it on my name. And then when I show up, it's there." And I share that, Chris, because some people just would not even ask to do that.

And I said, "Look, if you need to charge me an extra 10% or whatever, please do it. But I knew the store they were... Their office, their location wasn't where the restaurant was, was walking distance. I mean, it takes 6 minutes to just take the bag, bring it over.

They get a multi-hundred dollar order. And I look like I'm super thoughtful and kind because I got them this cool bag that had their names on them. It's just like... I just think a lot of people just don't even ask. They don't value their time enough to then ask people that have companies and would love more revenue to say like, "Hey, if you could do this and this, I'll pay you more.

You know what your buyback rate is." And a lot of them will just say, "Yes." It's like, "I actually drive by that neighborhood every day when I come to home. So yeah, if you want me to drop it off..." We did this with meal prep. I remember, probably 8 years ago, my wife was freaking out because we have 2 young kids and I'm working.

I had a venture-backed company. And I was just like, "You don't need to make dinner. I love you. And I know you want to make me food. It's not going to change my life if you're not the one cooking." And the way we did it is I was at the farmer's market.

And there's this guy that we'd buy these frozen meals from. And I was just like, "Hey, would you sell me during the week? Would you make these during the week and just drop them off at my house?" And he's like, "Well, we don't really do that." I go, "I know you don't really do that.

But maybe you could start and I could be your first customer. Here's where I live." I've even done it... There was a meat guy I did the exact same thing with that I wanted him to deliver his meat. Like you were saying, you're at a meat store earlier. But he was like, "I don't really do that." And I said, "Well, what if you had 6 or 7 people that you were delivering on at the same time?" And he goes, "Yeah." And I go, "Cool." I just called my neighbors up and said, "Hey, are you guys willing to commit to this level of purchasing from this meat guy?

You guys all know this store and you like it. And if we do it, then he'll deliver it." And they were like, "Wow, you can get him to deliver?" I'm like, "Yeah, no problem." So, I'm just a very resourceful. I ask. I'm creative about how I find ways to get my time back.

It's funny you bring up the meat store. There's this amazing meat store in Millbrae, California near SFO called Pape Meat. I learned this morning on the plaque on the wall. It's the oldest business in Millbrae, I guess. And we needed a particular type of meat, guanciale, which is the meat you use for carbonara, which is what we're going to make for Christmas Eve dinner.

And if you go to their website, they do not discuss delivery on the website. There's not an easy way to get the meat. However, there's a website that I found. This is all I had to do. I searched "Deliver Pape Meat." And this other website, Towne.io, definitely some kind of startup, delivers for them.

Unfortunately, because it's Friday and I need it tomorrow, and it's the weekend and the holidays, that wasn't an option this day with my poor advanced planning. But in general, I could have had it delivered. Not because they did it. And I'm sure if I called, they would have said, "Oh, no.

But this other website does it for us." So, even just this year, "Oh, I need to order this thing. Let's just search to see if there is a service out there that delivers." So, I would just say, I now learned- It's a search. Yeah. Yeah. Most people don't search.

Because their website doesn't say they deliver, doesn't mean they don't. And obviously, for restaurants, there's plenty of apps that we all know about. But there are alternatives like that. We started using ButcherBox, which delivers actual meat and all kinds of stuff to your house. So, we get fresh meat and talking about two different services.

"Sorry, Pape. We can't buy all my meat from you." No. And you're allowed to do that, right? You can use Instacart for certain things. And you can use other services for the weekly reoccurring. It's really just being open to spending the time to figure it out. I remember my buddy Nick was frustrated because he just bought this thing off some online site.

This furniture showed up. And then he's frustrated because he got it put together. And he literally was like... I showed up just to say hi. And I was like, "What are you doing?" Because this guy runs a successful business. I'm putting together this furniture. I'm like, "Why are you doing it?" He's like, "Oh man.

I don't want to sit down and try to find the time to do the thing, to find the person, to hire them. I might as well just do it myself." And I go, "Totally get it. In this circumstance, it makes sense. But you need to consider the next time, the next time, the next time." So yes, the first time you do it, it's work to find a solution.

But it's not that time you're actually trying to buy back. It's the dozens of times this year that if you find a handyman, or you use TaskRabbit, or use whatever service, you find a trusted resource that you can pay to come and do those types of work, that yeah, it's a little bit more work today.

But down the road, then all of a sudden, you have this list of resources where it becomes easier and you can even get it scheduled and part of your lifestyle. And even the meal prep, I remember telling... Again, I have a house manager, so I know I live a privileged life.

But if it was me, I would have done the same thing. I went and found a nutritionist that partnered with a meal prep company, so that they could take care of all of the food prep, so that I would hit 99% of my time. I'm hitting my macros, I'm hitting my nutrients, I'm hitting what I need for my health.

So it's like some people look at that and they go like, "I can't believe you're paying $16 a meal." And I'm like, "You don't realize how much time I'm saving and the compliance." Right? This is the other thing is know thyself. I don't want decision fatigue by deciding what I have to eat.

I want that taken care of for me so that I know I'm going to be healthy. I know that the meal is made and it's going to hit all the macros that my trainer gave me and all these things. And then that way, I can take that decision power or energy and give it to something that's actually required.

It's why you see people like Zuckerberg wear the same clothes, or Steve Jobs, or all these people. The more you can take the decisions out of your life, then the more energy and time you're going to have to actually create and produce more. And that's another big part that people don't consider when you use these services.

It's just you're freeing up your mental bandwidth. Yeah. You talk about your house manager. I'd love to understand just because it's a concept I don't think everyone knows. First, what that person does. And obviously, I know it's probably a luxury and a privilege to have that. But I also want to talk about ways that some of what they do might be things that people could start to put into place with a virtual assistant or something like that.

And for context, I've thought for years about whether I ever was going to hire a virtual assistant. I've been collecting tasks over the last few months that would have been great opportunities to outsource that any individual one was not big enough for me to say, "Oh, let's go hire a person so that..." For example, one was we were thinking of doing a gingerbread baking party, where we'd make a bunch of gingerbread cookies, have people over.

It's like, "Oh, it'd be really great if someone wants to find a recipe, figure out how to batch it for 30 people, go on Amazon Fresh, order all the ingredients and have them delivered." It would probably not take that long, maybe half an hour. I would probably take me even longer because I'm sure I would try to get caught up on what is the absolute best gingerbread recipe.

And the average person would probably not spend as much time as I would. So it'd probably save me even more time. But I wasn't going to go hire a virtual assistant for that one task. But yeah, so maybe talk to me about the house manager and whether you think a virtual assistant could take on a lot of that and whether that's something regular people at the low cost you can get them now should be considering.

I'll start with the administrative assistant type of task because that's super approachable. We live in a world where there are services out there. If you search virtual assistant, task management, etc., where you can pay per task or by the hour, the $15 to $20 type range, or hire somebody in another part of the world for $4, $5, $6 an hour, I mean, it is absolutely approachable for every person out there in the world we live in because there's these companies that have built this technology.

The key though is to actually do the calendar audit to find out what are you doing with your time that is more administrative in nature, that is repeatable. Because what I want to encourage people to consider is find the cadence of repeatable tasks that you can insert a person into your life, then they're available to do the things you just talked about, Chris.

Because if I have to think of finding another person to do a one-off thing, that feels heavy. If I already have somebody in my life that's working 5 hours a week for me, managing research projects, or buying stuff online, or scheduling my travel, or taking information from this system and putting it in this system.

Every person that has a job probably does some type of work that isn't really rocket science, and you could just give to somebody else. Sometimes it's just collecting data, it's putting stuff in a graph, it's post-production of social media stuff, or whatever it is. Then you start with the reoccurring things or the person's part of your life, and then you can give them the one-off stuff.

The way I've always looked at it, and what I teach in my book is, I always start with the calendar first, because that's where I'm going to start buying back time. And in the early days, it's usually task-based. A lot of the stuff we talked about from lawn service to cleaning, wash and fold, meal prep, project management, it's all task-based.

And that's okay. You just start there. And you might have 5 or 6 different people doing different types of tasks. And then eventually you say, "You know what? I don't want somebody separate cleaning my car and cleaning my house. I'm just going to have one person do that." And you consolidate.

So if you think at the lowest level, every person listening to this, start with a budget, challenge yourself to buy back some time, and just know that you can have 2 or 3 people supporting you in different services or whatever. And then what happens over time is you realize that there's a communication overhead, a management overhead of managing these things.

And that's what happened for us. We had the house cleaner, we had the chef, we had the lawn care people, we had all these different people supporting our home. And then when I looked at my calendar, because my wife and I both run companies, I realized there's a lot of work I was doing of just managing stuff.

I'm talking about going to the DMV and registering cars and calling my insurance company and maintenance on our homes and just transferring vehicles or literally everything. Putting boats in storage. It sounds... Again, I understand how privileged of a life that I have, but these are things that were still on my plate to do.

So on Saturday morning, instead of going mountain biking with my friends or watching my... Deciding to say yes to putting our kids into soccer so that... I'm doing all this other stuff. And sometimes I just want to recharge. I want to sit down. I want to read. I want to work on supporting our community.

My wife and I are very involved in the unhomed community in our city. So it's like, I'd rather go do that than manage a spreadsheet of making sure that we have the right insurance on all of our assets. So we got to a place where we just decided to hire somebody that was the CEO of all of our personal stuff.

Now, again, this was after... I've had an executive assistant for a long time, for almost 10 years. But even at a certain point, because that person doesn't live in our home and is not in our home and not doing personal stuff, they're managing the business side of my life.

Pass, purchasing, travels, all that stuff. Inbox, calendar. Then we essentially rolled up all of the other stuff to one person. And now we have one person. She's incredible. And we set up a rhythm where every Monday, I have lunch with her. We talk about the week. We talk about the tasks.

We're eating together. So it takes no time for me. Every Wednesday, my wife and I, my executive assistant and her, get on a Zoom call. We call it the house meeting. And we review. We have an agenda. We review the projects. We review what they're working on. The playbooks.

I mean, Chris, it's crazy. But I have an SOP. I have a playbook, handbook for the family, the Martell family. What does that mean? Yeah. Walk me through what that looks like. Who are our babysitters? It's all the names of the people that's like the kids, school principal, contact info, the vet contact.

Think about all the contacts. So that's all in there. All of our preferences, all in there. My size of my shoes, my favorite colors for a T-shirt. It's crazy. Even just the preference file, where I like to sit on a plane, all these things. Then I never have to make the decision again.

So it's like, you ever register for an event and they ask you the same questions every time? It's like, I don't do that anymore. I just... My assistant or my house manager asks us once and then she writes it down. So everything is in a Google document. I think we're moving everything to Notion right now.

But everything... Even the... So we have a pretty cool sauna that does infrared and salt therapy and all these things. And it's got a procedure for how to schedule it to turn it on. How to reconnect the red light system. And it's all in the playbook. So that if I need to do it because it's a Sunday morning, I literally Google sauna and I find the playbook and I go to the section where it says "Reset the red light system" and I follow 7 different steps to reset.

It's all in there. All of our logins are all in one password. And it's all under the house vault. So it's like, I'm in my backyard and I need to get into a door that's got a lock. And we change all of our locks to pins. It's dynamic. Like an Airbnb.

That way... Why? Mobile. Remember I said that. It's got to go mobile. So all the locks are all mobile-enabled. And all the pass... Or the numbers and the codes are all in one password. And it's literally... We've created this procedure for our life. Again, Chris, I'm sharing this because I want to inspire people.

I also know I may infuriate people. When you show people some of the super cars and a lifestyle and flying... All this stuff, they can either be inspired by it or they're going to be like "This guy's a douche." And I totally get it. I'm sharing this to hopefully inspire people that there are ways for you to incorporate this into your personal life that allow you to increase the quality of life you have.

And most importantly, create jobs. A lot of my clients that struggle with this, that don't feel worthy of having somebody to that level of support, I just tell them it's like "Look, you can go buy..." Because this is what they're doing, Chris. They're going and buying the new Mercedes or the new BMW.

I watch them do it all the time. My neighbors, I watch them do it. The new car comes out, they went and bought it. Okay? Or you could stop complaining about not having enough time. And instead of buying the new version, just keep the current one for a couple years, hire somebody to manage your life, so that you have the time to recharge or go increase the value in the market to pay 3 times over the new car.

It's so fascinating for me to watch, even in my world, friends of mine that struggle with their time and yet they don't understand where they're allocating their resources, their money. So yeah, pretty much, if it would show up on my wife or my to-do list, it is owned by our house manager, Betty.

And we tell her all the time, "You're the CEO of our lives. We do not manage our things. You manage them. You create the playbooks. You take care of schedules and cadences and assets and relationships and all that stuff." And then we just create a reporting structure where we get the information we need on a weekly basis to keep us informed so we feel like nothing's getting dropped.

So it's no different than you would for an executive assistant in your business life. You just do the same thing for your personal life. And it all evolved from having a bunch of individual things. So... You start small. Yes. Yeah. I think that... It's funny. Two things came up.

One, I've been pushing... There's a company called Trustworthy that I invested in, which is building the family operating system. And it started as the central repository of all the information about your life. So like, "Here's our house. Here's our bank accounts." And if I were ever to pass away, I have my sister and another person set to be able to access it.

They know. But now they've started adding things like, "For our house, here's our landscaping company." Or "Here's our internet service provider." So they're building a software alternative to Notion or Google Doc for this. And... I love it. Because most people don't know what information they should be collecting. Right.

Yeah. So their coolest thing is when you're on board, they're like, "All right. Go put in your old tax returns. Go link your bank account. Here's your insurance policies." So Amy and I... Ann, for your benefit, they have a mobile app. So Amy and I know that if we're at the doctor's office and they're like, "Where's your kid's insurance card?" We know.

"Open the Trustworthy app. Here's the insurance card." We get pulled over. "Show me your proof of insurance. Open the app. Here's our Geico card." We know where all of the things are. Exactly. Think about how much time you're saved. Even the other day, we had our meeting on Wednesday this week.

And one of the projects was get my wife's passport renewed. Do you know how many of my friends end up at the airport and their passport's expired and they can't go on a trip or miss a speaking gig? It's bananas. And why? Because they feel like, "I'm supposed to manage this.

It's my life. I can even manage my life." It's like, when you actually give it to somebody else, and you say, "Please treat me like a child. I am okay with that." Because that's literally what I tell her. I'm like, "I want you to just assume that I'm not that intelligent.

And I want you to track the stuff, everything. And you tell me when it's due or just do it. And we'll build a rhythm for communication reporting so that I know..." And then that way, it's all there, right? And all that stuff you said, the insurance, your wills, it's essentially like creating...

In a high net worth individual, they'll usually have a family office. You're creating the infrastructure for your own personal family office for your life that just... It just makes... Just even having a shared one password vault for your family's Wi-Fi logins and other online services is just a good idea.

Yeah. I feel like you would absolutely love this product. I'm looking at it right now. And it says, "Renew driver's license." Because I already gave them my driver's license info. It says, "Trustworthy will alert you 120 days before your driver's license expires. Renew passport. Trustworthy will alert you 9 months before your passport expires." So by putting the information in, you get this reward of like, "Hey, passport's expiring in 9 months." I don't have to think about it anymore.

I know that for all of our kids, I'm going to get an alert 9 months before any of those passports expire. And so I don't... It relieves the mental burden of me having to think about all these things. But this is an example of... Because you're on the journey to try to find ways to buy back your time and you look at where you've had friction in the past and you found a service like this...

So some people might hear about the house manager and go like, "That's crazy. I could never afford that." Think about there's tools out there. This company is literally built... Probably takes... It would be 30% of what she does. The software automates it. And I talked about that. It's like automation, automation, automation.

I just feel like people need to really challenge themselves to value their time, to go on the journey to build it. It's like, "Yeah, it takes work." I'll actually give a real tactical thing for people if they're still on the edge and they haven't done it. This guy Jack Canfield, he wrote a ton of bestselling books, bestselling author.

Good dude. He talked about creating this thing called the frustration list because it's a muscle. And his argument was most people don't even see frustrations in their world to see opportunities. So it's a muscle you have to develop. And his argument was as you go through your day in your home, think about things that frustrate you.

And just make the list. I'm not asking you to solve the problem. Just make a list. So it might be, "I'm downstairs working out and I don't have a cable to charge my phone." Literally, just write it down. "I don't have a cable to charge my phone." Or you get in your car and you realize you ran out of gum.

And you like this certain type of gum and it's not there. Okay, write it down. Or it's like, you go to take... You get out of the shower and you don't have a hook for your towel after you dry off. It sounds crazy, Chris. But I want people to do that for 2 or 3 days because 2 things.

One, honor those frustrations and build a muscle and a routine of solving those problems. Make the list and actually wake up on Saturday morning and say, "Hey, I'm going to work through this list and just see if I can be creative about how I solve this stuff." Some of it could be simple like buy another truck.

And even that, it sounds so nuts, dude. People won't even give themselves permission to own 2 cable chargers for their iPhone. So there's one next to their bed and one in their office. Isn't it weird, Chris? They're like, "Yeah, no. I don't deserve that." If anyone listening feels they don't deserve it, I think I have like 20 extra iPhone chargers in my house.

I will go ahead and send you one. Of course. Because you're like, "Hey, I want to have the things that I need and I'm willing to pay for extra stuff so that it doesn't become a point of contention." Because what's worse is if you're in... I do some backcountry skiing.

If I'm in trouble and my phone is dead because I didn't charge it when I should have charged it, that's a bad circumstance. So I just really want to encourage people to realize that if it doesn't feel natural to you right now to identify things in your life that you should be trying to buy back your time on, it's a muscle that can be developed by just writing down the things that are frustrating or not optimal.

Some of you guys are like, "I love life. That's not a frustration." Look, just in a perfect world, wave a magic wand. If you could live a perfect life and you go through life and everything's awesome, how would it look? Make that list and try to create that. Okay.

I think next year will be the year that I get started with trying to actually hire someone to help outsource a lot of these tasks. Now, I'm going to probably... I need to hire a virtual assistant to help me go research the best virtual assistant services. So I'm not ready for someone full-time yet.

But there are a few things that as I've listened to you talk, and as I've done my homework and just known you, that you've done that I think maybe don't fall exactly perfectly into buying back your time and the conversation we just had, but I think are worth running through because I think people find a lot of value out of them.

One is on designing your perfect week. One is on thinking about the 7 Pillars of Life. And let's start there and then I'll get to the rest. Cool. The 7... The perfect week. And I actually have a diagram in my book that I put in there because I wanted people to actually see what that looks like for me.

So there's... I think it's on page 141. It's literally the diagram. What's important is to design all the big rocks into your life so that you actually understand that you do have the capacity. A lot of people go like, "I don't have the time." That's cool. Let's talk about that.

But let's just start by saying, "Okay, here's a 7-day template I give people." They buy the book, they go to the website and I give them the template. And then they make a list of all the important things in their life. Like spending time with their kids, going to the gym, their work, their creative stuff, their hobbies, or whatever.

And then you take that and you put it into the calendar and you block them in. The big stuff. It's like, "Go to the gym every day. What time do you want to go? It's an hour or 90 minutes. Put it in there." And what I think people realize if they go through the exercise is there is actually enough time in a week to do everything you want to do.

You just have to now then honor the calendar. And the reason why I encourage all of my coaching clients to do this is because when... If you have the rhythm of your week designed, then when you hire somebody like a virtual assistant to support you, they know where certain things go so they don't have to bug you.

It actually is not efficient, Chris, if you have somebody that's managing your inbox and your calendar and helping you with scheduling meetings and stuff, to have to ask you every time, "Hey, are you okay doing a meeting at 3 o'clock on Wednesday afternoon?" Versus, "Hey, these are the 2-hour windows each day that I do meetings.

So if a meeting comes in, just put it there." Now I take that another... I'll just give you an advanced tip on that for a virtual assistant. We do 3 levels of priority. So I'll sometimes do a P1, P2, P3 in the email reply. A P1 means cancel something to make it happen, a priority level.

P2 is make it fit as soon as possible, but don't cancel anything. P3 is within the next 2 weeks. And P4 is don't rush if it happens cool, if it doesn't, no harm, no foul. And then... So even just trying to create these systems and language around how you work with somebody to manage your calendar is important, but it all starts with designing the perfect week.

Does that make sense? Yeah. I was just actually thinking about some way that you could secretly encode that into your email. So you reply to someone and there's some... Here's how I do it. I leave an email draft and I write it in the draft so she sees it because she's in my inbox.

Ah, yeah. If someone's in your inbox. But I was just... All my head could think about was like, "Oh, what if I had this secret code where I had a signature? And if I end it with an exclamation point?" Looking forward to hanging out... You could just do signature, enter, enter, enter, and put it right at the bottom and nobody even sees it or different.

I think you're onto the same pattern of the language. So it's like, "Can't wait to meet" means this. "Looking forward to talking soon" means... You know what I mean? You can add that as a language signature. It was superhuman. They have these snippets. So that snippet could be called P1.

I know that I just write P1 and then it posts this line that means... Boom. So the 7 Pillars of Life. 7 Pillars of Life is a way that I create a feedback loop for myself on how I'm showing up in my life and at least creating a point of reflection to improve it.

And the reason why I designed this is a long time ago, a lot of my friends... I went through a challenging time with my fiance and that didn't work out. But then I got married. And I don't know about you, but it seems like people get divorced. And it's crazy.

And you're just like, "Why do they get divorced? Why are they having challenges in their lives?" And typically, it's because there's a fracture. And then the fracture lasts for weeks and then months and then eventually a year. And the fracture ends up creating such a wide divide that they can't repair it.

So what I've done is across these 7 core pillars... It's actually a bonus chapter. I wasn't even going to include it in the book. And my editor was like, "Hey, I really think the 7 Pillars would be a great tool for everybody to just wrap it all up." And every Friday morning, I sit down for 30 minutes.

And it doesn't even take me 30 minutes. It takes me like 5 or 6. But I rate myself out of 10 on these 7 Pillars. This is a spreadsheet. I've been doing it for years. And the 7 categories are Health, Hobbies, Spirituality, Friends, Love, Finance, and Mission. And I do those ones because they encompass how I want to show up in the world.

Spirituality is important. It doesn't matter if you believe in God or whatever God or the universal consciousness or spirit or energy, whatever it is. Just asking yourself, "Do you have a relationship? Are you spiritual? Are you meditating?" Whatever it is. And just giving yourself a rating on those things.

Finances, right? A lot of people, they don't want to talk about money. They don't pay attention to their money. And then they wonder why they have none. Right? Or hobbies. People are like, "Oh, hobbies must be nice." It's like, "Look, all I know is that after I go snowboarding with my buddies, I'm a better dad.

I'm a better husband. I recharge. I connect. I want to do those things." So what happens is I score myself on those 7 pillars. And then this... I'll actually give you this like today's. That's always better real time. So today, I scored myself pretty high. I'm having a good time right now.

My 2 lowest scores. One was Friends and the other one was Hobby. So here's the bonus one of this. I got an 8 and a 7. I always write in the spreadsheet a note on how to fix it. So the Hobby one is book snowbiking. So I do this crazy thing called snowbiking.

And then the Friends one is low, but the good news is I go snowbiking with my friends. So I'm going to get a double whammy. And all I did the action... That's why I give myself 30 minutes to do this. I just made a list of all the dates that I'm free to go snowbiking.

And then I sent a text message to my 5 friends that I go snowbiking with and says, "Hey guys, can we just schedule one of these days to go snowbiking?" And then I've accomplished it. Literally, it's that simple. It's just every week, I assess myself on those 7 dimensions.

I take my 2 lowest scores. If it's love, because I haven't been there for my wife, it might be... Then I set a commitment to take action in the next 7 days. And that one might be like schedule a date night, give my wife night off on Monday, let her take a bath, whatever it is.

And because I do that, Chris, I just feel like I get to live a higher quality of life because I'm not trying to fix things because there's a fracture that's been going on way too long around not seeing my friends or not taking care of my health or not focusing on my mission or whatever it is.

And it's been a big part of my life. I love it. And on the topic of relationships, the last thing I wanted to chat about, you hired a coach to live with you and help the family and build deeper relationships. For those of us who aren't going to do that right away or it's not in the budget, what lessons did you take away that maybe we could steal from you?

So many. Her name is Brooke. She is an angel. We've been working with her for 3 years. I'm just a big fan of hiring people to increase the caliber of our life in different areas from fitness to business to our family. And we got to the point where Brooke and I...

It's fun because she'll have private calls with my wife and she'll have private calls with me and then we'll do a group call. But it got to a place where I was like, "I think there's another level of opportunity, but I think you'd have to see us instead of hear us." Because you think about it, Chris, explaining to somebody what happened is you recounting the situation.

It was always their version, your version, and then the truth. Versus them being in the room, seeing it, and then they get to get their interpretation. So I literally offered to fly her up. She lived in California and she came and lived with us for 3 days. She slept in our house, lived in our home, woke up in the morning, watched the morning routine.

So it was really fun to have her get a new level of insight into what all the conversations we were having meant in a real-world scenario. The things that I learned personally was she did some incredible work with my wife around reconnecting with her feminine. And you'd have to ask my wife about the impact it had on her, but I got to see it.

She did some dancing. She invited me. She's like, "Do you want to do it with us?" And I'm like, "I'm here to play Fallout." So 7am, instead of going to the gym, I sat down and I danced with my wife and Brooke. And it was pretty crazy, man. Just understanding how women's physiology and their feminine side of their connection is just part of it.

It's crazy. It's not what men do. Men scream and charge off into war. And again, it's masculine versus feminine. It's not even a gender thing. But that was a big takeaway. She worked with our kids. So she did some exercises with our kids to understand the way they were building their worldview and what was important to them.

So she made them draw a picture of their family. You see this in therapy sometimes. But then we had some issues, dude. It was really cool. My oldest son had a meltdown. So she got to see how we responded to it and then gave us some cues. She explained to my wife that these things are 100% normal.

So it allowed her to feel less guilty about those things happening. I think if you don't have an external perspective, you sometimes think like, "This is the end of the world. And I'm such a bad parent because this is happening." It's like having an expert come in and say, "Oh, actually, it's super normal.

You handled that really well. Here's why. And in the future, if you want a little bit of coaching, do this." For me personally, it sounds crazy. I learned that my wife likes to tell me about her day, not because I'm going to have a test at the end of it so I have to remember everything, but just because it's her way of decompressing at the end of the day.

So this was a huge win for me because I now prompt it. Where before I was scared of it because I was like, "Oh my gosh, she's going to sit there and talk for 20 minutes and I don't know. Am I supposed to help? Am I not supposed to help?

Why is she telling me all this stuff?" And now I go, "Hey, babes, tell me about your day." This is literally the last thing we do every night because Brooke explained to me what was happening and that I'm not going to be tested and I'm not supposed to do anything other than listen.

So I will tell you, it might sound simple for some of you men out there, you will be the best husband in the world if you say, "Hey, babes, tell me about your day." "Wow, that sounds tough. Tell me more." Literally that language. "Tell me more." Game changer. So that was big.

And then just really like how to show up for your partner. Some physical things. A lot of women, they want to feel safe. They want to feel seen. They want to feel appreciated. So that was a big thing. Men don't want to... This one that I think my wife really took away is men hate to be criticized.

I don't know if you've ever had your wife criticize you, or do it in front of another person. There's certain things that are just like, for whatever reason, is really challenging. So once she saw it and got some cues on it, it just changed the way we show up in public.

We worked on this. There's a book. I can't remember the name of it. This is another big one. And I'll leave on this one is "Launchings and Landings." So she taught us the value of a launching and land. I'm so driven by time, as you guys can all hopefully pick up, that I'll just run out the door.

It's like I'm leaving, going to the gym. I just ran out the door. She said the 2 most important things you have to get better at as a couple is launchings and landings. Meaning that when you leave, it is a deliberate go find the partner. "Hey, I'm leaving now.

I'm going to do this. I will see when I get back." And then when you land, it's "I'm back. Here's what I did. Do you need me for anything?" And it might sound crazy, but that... We actually taught it to our kids. So even before I come into my office in the morning, because I have a home office, I go and I do a launch with my kids where I give them little kisses and I tell them about them and say, "I'm going to my office now." And we call it a launch.

And then when I get back or at the end of the day, if I'm done early, I go find them and I'm like... I land with them. I'm like, "Hey, I'm done." And they're like... And they actually say, "I'm launching too." And they'll tell us about them going to do stuff.

So I just think it's those little tweaks. In life, it's never about these big moves. It's these one degree, these two degree changes. And then when you follow that trend line over 5, 10, 25 years, they have these huge pieces of impact on your life. Yeah. So two things I took away.

No Irish exits in the house. It's for parties only. But also, I've just learned to get better about communicating. I think sometimes there's a person in a relationship that takes the mental burden of everything that has to happen. And if you don't communicate that you're doing something, they feel like it's their responsibility to do it.

So for me, if I don't say, "Hey, I am still planning on doing X," my wife might assume, "Oh, maybe you're not going to do it." So... Emotional shrapnel saved. We went through a lot. We're way over time. I got an advance copy of the book. So I've already read it, even though by the time anyone listening is listening, it will be out.

I highly recommend... I feel like you've got three on your bookshelf. I was like, "I'm going to maybe have a bookshelf in this new studio. Now I need to go get a physical copy." I only read the digital copy. But definitely tell everyone where they can find it, who it's for and everything, and where they can find you.

Yeah. The book is designed for people that obviously want to become a better time trader. It's called Buy Back Your Time. Buybackyourtime.com. It's available on Amazon. If anything I shared today serves you and you end up getting the book or whatnot, I would love, love, love a review on Amazon.

I'm working with my team to create a movement around business and executive level performance and just really help people understand how to build a life they don't grow to hate. That's my biggest thing, Chris. I just don't want people to go after this achievement lifestyle or this success ladder to just find it leaning against the wrong wall because they just don't know how to think about the energy and the time and just getting more of their life.

So that's why I created it. It's been two and a half years of love and sweat and frustrations and just putting everything into it. And yeah, I'm really proud of the book. And the hardcover is cool. And I'll tell you why, Chris. If you get a copy, you should get the physical copy.

I actually got my signature. That's my signature inside. So take the jacket cover off. I designed the whole... People never see this stuff, but I cared about it. And I'm really proud of it. But yeah, buybackyourtime.com. Awesome. And what about you? Where can people find you on the internet?

I am on all social media channels, Dan Martell, 2LzMartell.com, my website, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, you name it. I'm there. I put out content every day. Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. Dude, so fun reconnecting, man. Seeing you again. I appreciate the opportunity.