HOW TO HIRE A TEAM AS A CONTENT CREATOR (EVEN IF YOU CAN’T AFFORD IT) | #THINKPODCAST #198
Speaker 2 :
We don't hire people to grow our business, we hire people to buy back our time.
Speaker 1 :
I don't have time though, to actually sit down and figure this out.
Speaker 2 :
That's my favorite one. Where do I spend my time on things? And of those activities, what actually generates the most income and what lights me up 80 % done by somebody else is 100 % freaking awesome. But the moment you have somebody actually do work that's better than you would have done, it's an unlock for people. It takes that ceiling of complexity and just blows it wide open.
Speaker 1 :
I fired up for this episode of the Think Media Podcast because you're going to be breaking down some tips for hiring help as a content creator, even if you can't afford it yet. And research shows that small business owners are wasting, on average, 22 hours per week. And so imagine what you could get done with 22 extra hours in this episode. Dan Martel, who's got almost a hundred thousand subscribers on youtube not even your thing. I mean, you're a 5X founder of businesses. You've had three exits. You're a husband, father. An athlete coming from Canada and here we are in Las Vegas recording the podcast. You recently wrote a brand new book called Buy Back Your Time, Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire. I'm so fired up to dig into your tips for how we can actually build teams, even if we think we can't afford it. Higher help boost our productivity. But before we get into all of that, I need to know more about this story. Your mom found drugs. Money, stolen guns at your house, and she called.
Speaker 2 :
The cops. I write that in the book.
Speaker 1 :
What's even happening? Tell me about this story.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah, it was i grew up in a, you know, I kind of explained to people they're like, so were you in gangs or like what happened? And I just, I think I was just like super hyperactive. I got diagnosed with a DHD when I was a young kid and we grew, we grew up in a kind of a neighborhood out in the country and I just had a lot of. Just energy. And it got to a place where, you know, I had an anger issue growing up. My dad was in sale, so he was always gone. My mom was an alcoholic. And I found this out later in my kind of midteen years. I didn't understand kind of how she acted or why she acted certain ways. And my life just spiralled out of control when I was 13, when I discovered, you know, drugs and became an addict and ended up in prison when I was 15, the first time got out. I promised I would change my ways, find a new group of friends. I think I lasted 20 hours, like literally that night right back at it. And then just things got crazy and I was just spending time with people twice my age. You know motorcycle gangs type Sons of Anarchy style right in eastern Canada. Yeah everything came to a head when I remember my brother called me to tell me not to come home because my mom had called the police because she had found some guns in my room and some drugs and some money and I decided to steal a car and go on the run and I the whole time like this lasted over 2 day period where I was just like high and drunk driving around you know I was heading to Montreal Canada and I took a exit off the highway. And there was a routine roadblock checking insurance and driver's license, and I decided to make a run for it. And before I stole the car, I had a handgun sitting next to me. And I said to myself that if the cops stop me, I'm just going to pull the gun and let them take my life. And that's what happened. I smashed into the side of the house, went for the gun, and for whatever reason, it got stuck.
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Speaker 1 :
That is a powerful story, and it's powerful because, I mean, I think it's kind of an extreme example of how. Anybody can turn their life around though, because to go from that, this most extreme situation and really being a criminal to crushing it as an entrepreneur. And I'm inspired by a lot of things that you know the your athleticism and different things you're into there. And so now you've built all these businesses, you're really renowned for software as a service, you got a lot of SAS content and you help those founders, but you got this expertise of helping people get out of the overwhelm helping people. Start buying their time back and 1st question is who should you hire first? Like which as a founder and so to define founder too. A lot of people listening to this might be accidental entrepreneurs or they didn't really found anything. There might be a network marketing or they're in real estate or a loan officer and they want to use YouTube to get leads client sales, but they're nevertheless the principal right there. They could be the CEO they might not define themselves that way. But now they need help and they need help with this content thing. Who do you recommend hiring first?
Speaker 2 :
It all comes down to like what you're spending your time on, right? It and it doesn't. It's actually interesting because the I wrote the book for very specific, you know, 1 2 million in revenue, 12 to 13 employees, agency owner. Like I had a very specific archetype, but I wrote it in a way hopefully that was going to resonate with creators, freelancers. Sea level people at companies, directors like at what happens at the end of the day is like people create value per hour of unit of time right. And I start the book by talking about the different levels of trading your time and time for money and then money for money eventually. So every person can just look at their calendar and say where do I spend my time on things and of those activities what actually generates the most wealth or income and what lights me up. So to me the best person to hire first is all the things that you don't like to do that you. To pay people the least amount of money to support you. So if somebody's, you know an employee at a company, but you're making good money, maybe it's having somebody support you in your home, right? And taking care of the house cleaning and the meal prep, and, you know, supporting you in that way. If it's if you're an entrepreneur, for most of the founders that I work with, it's usually your inbox in your calendar because your inbox is full of. You always say your inbox is a public todo list for strangers to demand of your time. Like, it's kind of nutty to think about it, but if we are back, you know, 100 years in business and you're on Main Street, USA you wouldn't allow a stranger to just walk in your office and demand something from you. But yet in today's world, that's how we do it. So it really depends on the individual's calendar of where they're spending their time and it's really that filter of like, what's the least expensive thing you hate to do? Because when you take things that suck your energy out of your life and you start stacking what I call green activities, the ROY on that is not even just like buying the time back. It's actually an amplifier to the work you get to do. Because you go from thing to thing or project to project with a new sense of excitement and passion and that energy is compounding.
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Speaker 1 :
It's not just more money, but it's also quality of life, Peace of Mind, happiness so in the book you do recommend that for most founders, it's probably an admin assistant.
Speaker 2 :
This is what happens is we're taught a bunch of beliefs that are just not true, OK And I have a whole chapter called the five Time Assassins where I try to break down these beliefs around like, you know, when I start in business, my dad would say stuff to me like, you know, the CEO They're the chief sandwich maker and office cleaner, and they've got to be willing to do the stuff to show the rest of the team that the. And I don't disagree. But at a certain point, if that's 10 to 15 hours, if I own a CrossFit gym and I'm spending 10 to 15 hours of my week managing the cleanliness of my classes in the space and putting equipment away, and instead of coaching, where that coaching hour could be worth 100 to 500$ an. Hour why would you do that trade like where what is what are you trying to prove to anybody. What I would much rather and i talked about this bike owner in the book he owned the bike shop that I go to frequently and he had this belief that he had to be the guy that you know welcomed me at the front door and shook my hand and was like how you doing Dan and knew about my family but at the same time everything I ordered, every time I brought my bike in for maintenance, every time I do anything in his business. There was always a mistake there was always an issue. And I remember thinking to myself, it's like, I appreciate you want to do that, but what I actually want you to do more is just run your business better and to have any other person that you could just say, hey, when people walk through that door, can you please put on a smile and shake their hand and just get your staff to do that so that you can be in your office and run the company. That's actually what your customers want. So there's just a lot of beliefs around it and. When I look at most people's calendar, they're just spending a lot of time on 10$ task. And what I've learned is you can't build 1000000$ company running around doing 10$ tasks. It's just it's mathematically impossible.
Speaker 1 :
So you share the buyback rate calculation, what is the buyback principle first?
Speaker 2 :
Yeah, the buyback principle states this and this is the controversial things. We don't hire people to grow our business, we hire people to buy back our time. Because if you do the first you don't get the second, but if you do the second, you get the 1st. And it's a I call it a capacity over calendar. Problem is a lot of first time entrepreneurs are just like I'm busy, I need to hire people, I need to hire a person in the office, I need to hire a person in the warehouse. I got to hire a support person, I need to hire a programmer. Got to hire somebody, create logos. But it's like, no, you can do those activities because those are like hiring a designer to do logos for you might have to pay them 3550 bucks an hour, but what you're going to still do eight dollar 10$ you're going to run one of my friends in construction. And I remember he was overwhelmed and I was just like, tell me about your overwhelm.
And in his explanation of his week, I identified that he spent two days a week running around site to site to site. And I'm like, dude, that's called a runner. That's a person you can hire part time, a kid, because all you're doing is literally taking equipment from one place to another place. And while they're doing that, you could be on calls with potential new customers, hiring better team members, training your team. But these are not things that you do. But it's just. I think sometimes we just get addicted to the activity. It's like email it's like. Is that really the best use of your time? No but at least I know that when I wake up, if I just like, follow it, I'll feel productive. But it's a false sense of productivity because it actually doesn't move your goals and dreams forward. So the buyback principle is we start by hiring people to buy back time out of our calendar. And by doing that, then we fill it with stuff that makes us more money, that lights us up, and that'll support us having more resources to actually build the business.
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Speaker 1 :
So then you have what's called the buyback rate calculation. So people could be thinking, well, I don't. I can't afford to have somebody help me. For a lot of content creators, they should hire a video editor is maybe one of those first things. That was what did it for me. I was spending when I had a video, it took me 4 to 8 hours to edit it. When I stopped doing that, I recovered a ton of time. And if it was multiple videos, I could recover 30 to 40 hours a week by no longer editing video. But what is the buyback rate calculation to maybe determine if you should hire and what you can afford?
Speaker 2 :
So last night dinner I had an awesome meal with the creators, got about 2000000 Subs and this was the conversation we had and because they brought it up like I'm a lighthouse not a tugboat and unless you asked me about it I'm not going to. But I see it all around me. And here's the math. And I don't want to lose people because I'm going to make them do some math, right? It's essentially your income, so whatever you make personally. So I always say it's your if your salary, it's the profit in your business, and then discretionary expenses because nobody wants to pay taxes. So they put a lot of personal stuff there, which is fine, but that's still value that you create on an annualized basis, no doubt. So you take that amount of money and let's just use a simple number like a hundred thousand, dollars seventy thousand salary twenty thousand profit ten thousand discretionary expenses as a general rule of thumb then we divide that by two thousand because there's two thousand hours in a normal working year when you take weekends away and holidays and stuff most people work two thousand hours now that'll give you what i sometimes call the value creation score like what is your hour actually producing per year but you can't use that as the number to go hire people because then you're literally just trading you for somebody else which means you'll build a business but then you won't make any money so a lot of entrepreneurs create businesses that they grow to hate because they hire above them my whole philosophy is higher below and that raises you that raises your ability to produce so is it a video editor maybe unless they're spending a lot of time in other areas and there's ten hours they could buy back at a lower cost out tasking right
so it's kind of like you stack so it is it a video editor maybe but it may be somebody else first then the video editor or somebody else and that's what i was explaining to this person last night because like when i asked him how much he was making in his youtube channel like the and he was like well how much would i have to pay a good editor i'm like there's no amount of money that it wouldn't make sense when you're telling me you're spending thirty hours a week editing like you're making a lot of money and when you look at it has nothing to do with that trade so that the formula is two thousand you divide that that's your value per hour then you divide it by four because i want you to get a four times r o y on the buyback so if you hire somebody to clean your house and you pay them you know five hundred bucks a week because they come a couple times then you've bought back eight hours now what do you do with those new eight hours to go invest in your business or invest in your health or invest in your relationships it doesn't have to be always a monetary thing because the last chapter in the books actually the buyback life style but i know for a lot of people we need to keep it into dollars and cents initially yeah and that's how it works so if it's a hundred grand and you divide it by two thousand then you divide it by four it works out to about twelve dollars and fifty cents some people be like well i can't pay anybody do anything meaningful for twelve dollars and fifty cents truth is as you can totally there is so many services today you know back in my day sean when we both started like you know there was there's craigslist there's like these sites but now there's literally you can do task rabbit you can do upwork you can do you know even just paying somebody to deliver stuff to your house versus you driving to go pick it up these are like little mental things that people don't consider when they actually analyze their calendar and do a time and energy audit that they could be buying back their time but if you're making a lot of the clients i coach i mean they're making half a million a year plus their buyback rates sixty two dollars and fifty cents yes there's a lot of stuff they're doing in their calendar they should just not be doing anymore.
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Speaker 1 :
But even if you're maybe working, let's say, a day job, you got some money coming in on your side hustle a lot of people listening to this, they're trying to transition to being a content preneur. Yeah, you know, and so if we were to pick out something, let's say they're making seventy five thousand dollars a year, you got to use your net number, right? You're talking about your net. So let's say you can net 75,000 thousand what you're going to do just to break the sound. I got my calculator out. You're going to mulch, you're going to 35,000 thousand divide by two thousand and so then that would mean how?
Speaker 2 :
Much you make per hour and then divided by 4 to get the four times RO y yeah, so then you make 37$ and fifty cents per hour if you net 75,000 thousand when you.
Speaker 2 :
Work right now you're making 3750 that's how much you keep, that's money. Then of course you got to deploy that and if you're in the startup phase, you have to deploy that on. Rent or your mortgage or your car payment or whatever, but lean and mean because you should be reinvesting in your business. So then you divide that by 4 and that's 9 bucks. Could be right around 10 bucks an hour. You do have online you can have a full time dedicated Virtual assistant 40 hours a week for about 700 bucks a month.
Speaker 1 :
That's wild. And there's services we recommend things like VID chops or video Huskies which allow you to drop box your footage and I think they'll edit for videos for you a month for a couple hundred. Bucks so this can become incredibly practical. So the excuse of I can't afford it is a mindset people have to break it's a mindset. It's a belief busting moment. It's a complexity ceiling that they're just happening against you.
Speaker 1 :
There's some other excuses. What about the one? Well, I don't have time though to actually sit down and figure this out.
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Speaker 2 :
That's my favorite one. And the reason why is like, I grew up. You know, I read the E myth when I was 23 I went all in. You know, i hired an E myth certified coach, this guy named Bob. And then like as a software guy because that's really what saved my life was learning how to write code. You know, I just, I just fell in love with the ideas of like, repeatable systems and like. I read the book work the system by Sam Carpenter, Checklist, manifesto. Those are like my, you know, those are my books. Here's what I discovered. The problem with a lot of, like how to get somebody to do something, giving them a checklist, is it takes time because a lot of people like, I don't have time to create these systems. I don't know how to create these systems. So that's where I came up with this thing called the camcorder method and the camcorder method. A lot of your content creators can appreciate this is I just record myself doing the work, and the only thing that's different is I talk out loud about the thinking behind what I'm doing. So if I'm processing my inbox, I'm like, and it's not entertaining, right? It's me sitting there, open up an email and, go oh, that's by from Bob. I know Bob. If I search my emails, here's my history with Bob. So he's asking me for 15 minutes. I'm going to go and I look at my calendar and it's like I only do meetings in the afternoon. So I'm going to give him this 15 minutes spot or I'm going to send him my calendar link or whatever it is. And you just, you just talk yourself through doing this. I mean a lot of the camcorder method stuff I do today, like still this is a process I do on a daily basis. Is either on my iPad using the recorded with the audio, so I like draw stuff and I'll record that to the cloud and then just share my iCloud link. Or I'll jump on zoom, share my screen and it's just me. But I'm recording it on zoom because it's just so easy and then my assistant can pick it up and put it in a folder. And so essentially what I do is I record everything knowing that I'm going to eventually buy back that time. And then when I hire the person their first week and it's not glamorous is watching 40 hours worth of content. But then they create the SOP they create the playbook, SOP standard operating procedure. And what's cool about that is they get to watch me do the work.
So it's training. They get to try to play this game of like what is the pattern that I should be seeing in the work and then they document what they saw. And through that then I get a feedback loop at the end of the week when I hired it. So Monday you start. Here's a document that's got links, all the recordings on Dropbox go through that, create the SOP On Friday I get to see how well they understood it. So like last night I was talking to this guy and he was like nobody could edit like me. And I go, I understand you believe that I would actually run an experiment with you where I'll pay for the editor. And all I'm going to do is have him go watch your top five videos. And I know a good editor is not an idiot. They're going to look at the videos and they're going to go, I see how he does this Panch. I don't even know this terminology. But you know what I mean. He's going to, they're going to see it, and I'm going to have them write out an SOP For how you open, how you transition the music things, the volume levels like and they're just going to write it out. And I bet they would do something that if you showed a friend and said, which of these two edits do you think is a better one, they might pick the other person. That moment I remember like when you have somebody else produce work. And you weren't involved. And I say this in the book, 80 % done by somebody else is 100 % freaking awesome, right? But the moment you have somebody actually do work that's better than you would have done why? Because that's their only thing they're doing, because they can take the time to do it really well. It's an unlock for people. It takes that ceiling of complexity and just blows it wide open so this is an ego. This is offensive to our egos because one of the other excuses is no one can do as good at the work as I can and as a video editor I struggled with this. I actually thought that as soon as I started working with another editor. His name was Jay at the time. When we finally got one of his videos ready to release, I thought that was going to be the day that my YouTube comments flooded with people saying you betrayed us. How dare you not edit your own videos? You sold out. We are unsubscribing. And Dan, can you guess how many comments I got when a video edited by somebody else came out on think media?
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Speaker 2 :
As many as you have before and nobody said anything. No comments. And I just remember I've been editing video since 2003 So I had, you know, it was one of my biggest skill sets. The truth is, 2 things right, no one is as good at the work as I am. That's either a myth or if they can at least do it, 80 %, that's 100 % freaking awesome. Because 80 % is going to be sufficient in creativity. And in content, it's also kind of subjective yeah what do you even mean? What is a good edit? Well, it's is it going to entertain people? Do people like in and enjoy it? A lot of creativity could be really subjective.
Speaker 2 :
Well, and there's a framework I teach in the book because i did write it for that when I wrote down the 25 people in my life that I love that I knew were struggling with buying back their time. I pretty much like use them as like okay, what's their objection? This what's this for okay. And one of them was this concept like I'm a creative what I do is very nuanced. Nobody could do it as good as me. So I teach a few concepts like chunking, but the one that people really resonated with was the 1080 ten rule. And I watched Steve Jobs do this, I watched Gary Vee do this. I watch a lot of people that we admire build these massive companies that you would argue the product is innovation, is creativity, it's sold musicians. And the 1080 ten rule is this is I'm going to spend the 1st 10 % of a project with the team. To really talk about what are we trying to do, what is the story arc, what is the narrative structure, what is the resources we have access to, what do we think it should look like? And it's Steve Jobs leaving his office and going with Johnny Ives in the design studio and just saying to Johnny, like, I think we can get a hard drive that's small enough to fit in the back of our pockets. And Johnny going, I don't think those exist. And he's like, go see right or, hey, what if we did a translucent background on these iMacs or like Lollipop colors and he's like, they don't make that kind of plastic. Go see, right?
It's that first 10 %. And then, you know, Johnny would take these crazy requests or ideas and then work with his team to prototype and to pull out the CNC machine and do foam models and all this stuff. And then they would eventually get to a place where they had these finished products. But Steve would still come in at the end, that last 10 % and Polish it right so that nothing ever left the factory floor without his stamp on it. So that's what I'm saying to people. I'm not saying you delegate and advocate and just be like, I hope it works out. It's just take that 80 % of the heavy lift in, give it to somebody else. And then at the end, you can come in and look at the edit and go like, oh, let's do this here, let's do this. Jump, cut, boom, boom. And then the final product still has your essence and soul. And I think that frameworks has helped a lot of creators go like, oh. I can see how now I have these different like work streams where I can still be creative using the 1080 ten rule and not feel like I'm going to lose that.
Speaker 1 :
That's super powerful. So the 1st 10 % you kind of or maybe giving the Genesis idea the direction you're giving some wrong ingredients. Then 80 % of the time somebody else is doing the rest of the middle 80 % and then in the final 10 % you're tweaking it, but you just bought back 80 % of your time and so you have massive leverage created there. We're really on to something, I think, speaking to creatives because there is a unique resistance to this when it comes to creativity. And I think for some, like the Creator you were speaking to last night, many I speak to who they just hold it so close, their creativity. But there's an incredible story about Andy Warhol, the famous artist, right? Who produced something like 85,000 thousand pieces of unique art in his career. And that story really inspired me in the book because it actually made me think about, you know, what is my art and when I think about these videos. It is. It is video. It is. I think I've uploaded over 2000 videos now. We're not doing vertical video and we're doing around 328 pieces of content a week. This is all insane. There's no way this is happening if there wasn't 18 people working at Think Media and 10 contractors and systems. But clearly it is not my hand on 80 % or even it might be less than that of the work. And Andy Warhol was similar. This is an actual artist, an actual who's doing painting or silk screening. Break down that story of what he did that may be creative, that have a resistance to like letting go of their creativity might have.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah, I mean, this is the fun part and it's why I use those examples in the book. I didn't use Elon Musk. I didn't use Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't use all these tech entrepreneurs. I said no, let's go to the most creative art forms art. Tom Clancy, Oprah, right. These people that you're like, oh, they're just so Chris, Steve Jobs, right. But how do you do that scale. So here's Andy Warhol. And he figured out something. When he looked at how he produced his art and what was valuable to the art, he realized a few things one me being out with potential buyers, telling them the stories of my art and my life, that's actually what makes art valuable. It's a great book called Austin Show your work by Austin Cleon. I love it. I'm not even an artist per say. You know, I do business stuff, but I love the idea of like understanding what we do that creates value because that's in the book, i make this strong argument of like, replace your time, fill it once you buy it back with things that light you up, that actually move your business forward, that you would do like, the whole part of a building empire is creating a life that you never have to retire from with unlimited creativity. So Andy Warhol saw that, hey, my time should be better spent talking to customers and coming up with creative ideas to play with. So he created this thing called the Factory, and he had like a dozen interns.
That he would walk in and he would do essentially the 1080 ten rule where he would be like, I've got this crazy idea, let's do this treatment on these photography, this photography or whatever, and like do a bunch of variations right and I think that's the, if anybody's stuck on this about their creativity, creative output, I would actually argue that you will do more creativity. I think you'll have more to it's like almost like more taste making. You'll be able to have more to look at. You have a team and they're showing you stuff and they're like, hey, I found this really cool site that lets us get these kind of audio clips and you're like, oh, and then you as the creative can be the person that does the remixes, right, that goes.
I wonder if we took that audio output and paired it with this visual treatment, how would that look? And instead of you having to do it, they literally can do it while you go to your next meeting, you know, you might go close a new sponsor. You know, do the thing only you can do be on this show right but like the way i think about it and what Andy inspired me, Tom Clancy, I mean he just what people know. Tom Clancy's Dead and he still writes best selling books wow think about that idea. He still writes bestselling books. He is no longer here on Earth why? Because they built a system around his creative output. And a lot of people, like, I remember I only found this out because I watched the pilot. I was at the lounge in Toronto, at the airport, and he was reading this book, and it was, like, thick. And I was like, wow, that's Tom Clancy. Like, he goes, yeah, it's crazy because he's not even alive. I go, he's not alive. He's like, no, he died, like, 10 years ago. And I was like, and you still read the book? He goes, I really like the book. I like the format. I like the structure. I like that type of writing and they found people that could essentially replicate his voice and his structure and I think that's the part that it attacks the ego right. But I would argue that what I would love for every creative and I've and all the podcasters I've talked to is like I want you to be on air. That's your unique genius.
The way you show up and you ask questions and you engage with the but as soon as the cameras are done move on and build a team that can take all this stuff and then just have it show up on social media. Show up you know and support the sponsors do all the stuff and I think that's. And then do more of that, right like buy back your time to go produce other shows like you're doing like you know and just look at, look at this stuff because I think it's, I don't know I just can't see a world where somebody's truly about their art in creating that a future where they don't create more isn't what they want. The only bottleneck is they're doing stuff that isn't actually part of the creative process they can't get support on yeah and that story inspired me. I actually thought I might think media, our goal is to make it like the factory. Like, how do we scale creativity? How do we also enroll other creatives, you know, increase our outputs? And what's fascinating is that Andy Warhol, it wasn't just the art that he figured out. He really developed the scale of business. And he developed the scale of systems. And so sometimes as YouTube content creators or as business owners trying to pump out more content, we don't think about that as much. But that's really where the game is, and that's a lot of the value you add in this book. I want to go back to just giving us some practical handles for getting control of our time, of our week and maybe looking at maybe just some selfawareness where we're wasting time, but also what we should hire 1st. And you recommend people do a time and energy audit. A lot of people recommend time audits. You add on energy what's the difference and how much of A window of a time should we do and what do you think we will discover in that? How do we do that as listeners?
Speaker 2 :
Well I kind of alluded to it earlier like the energy part is actually the missing piece and especially creatives like if I'm if I'm super creative for two hours and then I got to jump on an hour call with my like accountant man try to get you back into the creatives like it's just so you know I think what was interesting when you talk to like you watch a. Doctor Dre, talk about being in the studio. Or like they just lose track of time. You know, i used to call it art class. Like when I'd go to art class, the bell would ring and 45 seconds, what felt like 45 seconds later, which was an hour, the bell would ring again. I just lost track of time. I would love for everybody to look at their calendar through that lens. What would change? How would you show up for your family, for your team, if you were giving yourself permission? Because that's what it is. It's i'm really trying to convince. That's why I wrote the five time assassin. Since it's like I want to give people permission to edit their calendar through this lens. And the way it works is, and this is the first thing I do with all my private coaching clients, is 2 week audit every 15 minutes. You can get by these little timers if you want or use your phone but essentially every 15 minute goes off and you got to write down what you just worked on and you do that for two weeks and it sounds like super tedious and it is, but it's by design because.
By the second day people are like, wow, I'm wasting a lot of time, but keep doing it. Get that two week audit because it gives you enough of a visual into your calendar to see. And then you go back and you highlight green if it gave you energy that you enjoyed doing it, or red if it took energy from you. And then you scored at a 1$ sign over four dollar sign. It's kind of like the cost of a restaurant 1$ sign is essentially your buyback rate. And four dollar signs is kind of like what you normally would have, like what you make per hour that you'd have to pay somebody else. It's like 62$ and fifty cents or a hundred an that. Might be a four dollar sign, a rating, and it's either one or four. So it could be two, it could be 3 or whatever. And when you step back and you look at this audit this time and energy audit and you grab all the red stuff. And all the 1$ stuff that's red and you put it into a bucket, you get excited because you're like, holy moly, what if I hired somebody to do that and it might be one person, it could be three-part time. I call it outtasking. It doesn't matter how you solve it, but you should not. This is my argument. You should not spend a dollar on paying another person to support you other than that. And that is literally that rhythm. I talked about the buyback loop in the book. I run through that rhythm for me probably three times a year. Where i'm adding so much to my plate that it does get to a point where I blow things up and then I have to sit down with my assistant and say like okay, let's redesign my calendar through this lens. Just recently last week, i'm involved in a company and I was joined their senior leadership team meeting, which is all the directors talking about like strategy and focus, you know.
And after a few years like it started to become yellow and then eventually became red. And I just talked to the CEO and I said I'm probably not going to come to that meeting anymore. And you know what he's like, that's cool. And it was just like all of a sudden now I've got this 90 minute window back in my calendar to fill up with things that are going to light me up in green and like do more talking about the book or supporting entrepreneurs or whatever it is. And it's just like for me to go from a meeting that's even yellow. It just affects my headspace. And I just think there's so much more output that could be had if people, I would argue this is the number like people like well how valuable is this? I think it's a 3X increase in your output, a 3X your. Creativity goes up. Your ability to just think about somebody and then just like text them and then all of a sudden there's a cloud happening, right? Like, I really think that if you go from anything that's red or yellow like in your calendar to just green, just doing the things that light you up, you will actually amplify because it creates momentum and energy that is a 3X amplifier.
Speaker 1 :
And I think I saw a piece of content from you. I've heard a lot from our community. A myth in hiring and that you could tell me if you believe it's a myth they want to kind of do this mindless hiring. I just want to hire somebody to even think about everything for me, do everything for me. And they might think I need an operations manager. I need to hire a CEO and then they have no, there's not a lot of momentum yet. There's maybe money coming in. But what you're saying to actually flip it. Like if you just did that time and energy audit and got rid of just the 1$ signs A lot more affordable to go admin assistant obviously than a six figure.
Speaker 2 :
Player by a fourth or a fifth.
Speaker 1 :
And a lot of people think that they just kind of want to dump the whole thing and they probably can't afford it or would you also, they're not even to a place of sophistication where that's what's necessary.
Speaker 2 :
They don't have enough in place. I mean, I call it the, you know, in the book I talk about this pain line, right? Most entrepreneurs. When they get to the pain line, and it's different stages for different people, it could be at 50 grand in revenue, it could be at a hundred three hundred, whatever. And at that point they decide to do one of three things. They call them the three s, ‘s right? They either decide to sell, hey Dan, I don't want to do this. I'm going to sell. I'm going to go into something else, right? I'm in. I mean, in real estate, it's like I'm wholesaling, I want to go into Airbnb's right? Or they decide to stall. I made more money last year, right? So like they grew this year, they grew their agency. And all of a sudden they're like hating their calendar, their life, their time, and they're making less money. So they're like, I'm going to go backwards. Problem is your customers aren't going backwards. Your best players on your team, they ain't cool, it's Stalin. They have a vision for their life they're hoping you're going to support. And if they feel like you're not growing, they're going to go find some other companies. Your best people leave. But the third one is sabotage, and sabotage is a fascinating one, right where sometimes when they hit the pain line. You know, instead of actually digging in and doing a time and energy audit, they do these crazy things like i'm going to shut down all my products, I'm going to hire ACOO I'm going to like and I actually step back and I go. It's not a logical decision, it's an emotional decision and it's a sabotage.
That's going to give you ground cover to downsize like it's actually, they don't know it, but I've just been doing this for so long. I've got like 10.000 thousand hours of watching entrepreneurs make really funny decisions. They're hand grenades. They literally throw a hand grenade like hire ACOO when they can't afford it and or they'll hire like. I had a friend of mine, Nate, the other day. He's like, you know, I read your book, awesome. Hiring a salesperson. And I'm like, oh, because I have this whole replacement ladder. I talk about the sequencing. Sales is fourth out of level 1-2-3-4 I go, how many sales calls you doing a week? He's like 4. You don't have enough. Like, but I'm not saying anything like, I'm the lighthouse. I'm just like, okay, you might want to reread the book because here's what's going to happen. You hire a salesperson and in three or four months, one or two things are going to happen. Either you fire him because he's not making any money, because you don't have enough leads anyway. He's not going to be able to sell at the same win rate you're doing today because you're showing up with so much enthusiasm. The person's buying because of you. They will be going from call to call, not making any sales because there's not enough volume to create momentum, right? Great sales people literally need to do five six calls a day because they need that rhythm. The first calls, nobody sells the first call of the day. They need to go through it to get to get the ramped up. It's almost like an engine turning over. And so, like, people make these sabotaging decisions. Like, you know, they read a book and they're like, I got to hire ACOO It's like you don't even have an assistant. Like, let's start there. This complexity is really high, but I always look at it as like they're throwing a hand grenade in their business to sabotage themselves from. Not having to do the thing to push through that pain line.
Speaker 1 :
So that's also one of my favorite chapters, the replacement ladder. And of course the book will be linked up in the show notes. It's pretty wild, and it's only been out six weeks at the time of recording this over one fifty five star reviews. I understand why I got the whole book marked up.
Speaker 2 :
I can't believe that blew my brain and it's just absolute gold. I also want to encourage, you know, like you said, you wrote this for those that are very far along on business and there's a lot that listen to this that are at six, multiple 6 and some 7 figure earners, but a lot of people are also at that beginning stage. And I always encourage people to be learning above your weight class, you know, and to be learning to delegate, learning to build a team, learning to hire before you're ready, you know, and thinking about those things. So highly recommend that. But what is your advice for those that are in the side hustle or the startup season, if you're listening to this, people have jumped on this very real opportunity of building a business in the crater economy. I think tube filter said 200 million people have earned money. In the crater economy influencer marketing hub said I think 2000000 are earning 6 figures and they didn't develop software, they don't have a product or maybe eventually they have merch or something but it's this I this new very real signal fire said. This is the fastest growing type of small business the being a content creator and so for those that are in that side hustle startup season you know they're not they probably didn't get funding they're bootstrapping. So they have a day job and they're trying to get from there to, you know, being able to do this full time. From that perspective, what would you say to them, Dan?
Speaker 2 :
One thing, pick a budget and just buy back some time. Like i really think it's that simple. I had a client and they just couldn't get their heads wrapped around. Having a house cleaner sounds crazy to any of us that do, but it's just like for whatever reason. Like having a stranger in their home was a tough thing. Their wife wasn't on board. And I just like, look, just grab 200 bucks, hire somebody, do it for two months. If you don't like it, stop. But at least you know my friend Brad, his dad had this great song saying that said the person with experience is never at the mercy of the person with an opinion. If you don't try, it's an opinion, it's not facts. So I would just recommend doesn't matter what stage you're at. Just force yourself to go learn the skill of delegating. Go learn the scale of a camcorder method. Go learn the skill of having somebody support some element of your creative output, right? And just realize that muscle today, even though it will be super small and weak, the more you practice it, the more you invest in it, the more it grows. As you grow your art, your creative, your output is going to be on the on the recipient side of that and it's going to benefit from doing that. And there's just no. Erson that any creator admires from the Logan Paul's to you name it. That hasn't figured this out. It's part of the equation. Don't wait too long to figure it out. Where you grow a business or a side hustle that you eventually hate doing because you haven't figured that part out.
Speaker 1 :
Have built this YouTube channel. You're going to be getting your silver play button soon, right on the verge of a hundred thousand subscribers a. Lot of entrepreneur friends of mine that are like, you really want to crack the code on YouTube and they haven't. What do you think? And my diagnosis, and I'm sure you have your own, but a lot of times they're also not being very consistent there or they are not investing a ton of effort. From your perspective, what has been your mindset towards YouTube and what systems have you built around your YouTube channel that is led you as much more primarily a business owner growing such a big YouTube influence?
Speaker 2 :
Yeah, so the thing that's unique about my YouTube channel is I started it for my 2 boys like I would I moved to San Francisco or San Diego for the winter months. This would have been 9-8-8-9 years ago and then I met a bunch of creators like because it's kind of the Mecca for like online seminar people. My buddy Travis was like, you should do video because I had this company called Clarity dot FM and I did a bunch of speaking and he's like, I would love to watch your take on this stuff. But that wasn't enough motivation for me. It was really the idea when a friend of mine, Todd, you know, called me up one day and essentially got diagnosed with the terminal illness and I said, well dude, how do you deal with that? Because he had three little girls same age as my boys. And he goes, I already shot the videos and I was like, whoa. And in that moment I was like, well, I don't want to find out or it be too late. I'm just going to start shooting videos. If you go back to the early days of my YouTube channel, it was like how to discover your passion, how to, you know, just in time learning. Like it was literally like inspired by Max and no, my two boys. And then over time, I just ran out of stuff that I was recording for them. And then just kept evolving in the business advice and honestly today I take every question I get asked on social media in my inbox and that drives my content really from everything from like how do you raise venture capital to how do you exit your company to how do you hire an executive assistant.
So the benefit for me of producing that Channel wasn't a business focus more of a I just want to. Answer all these questions and then have a link I can send people to. And if I were to audit, like if I wanted let's say 1000000 subscribers. The two things that I would have done sooner, we started doing this recently is up leveling the edits right and really adding the dynamicism. Like they're just like the stuff that all creators are doing today, right. Watching mister. Beast like just doing what the best people do like mister. Beast I believe he said like within every. Second and a half or three seconds, there's a, there's an edit, there's a changes of this. So we started doing that. The other thing is collaborations, right? Like I used to coach Leila and Alex Hermosi and the other residents of Vegas and watching Alex literally just come on the scene because we used to talk about this before he ever had a meaningful YouTube channel. He had his podcast, the game, and he did publish stuff, but just deciding to go all in. And then I watch what he did, which was the collabs. Like, I don't know if you know this Sean, but like I've never done this before isn't this nuts? I've never been on another Youtubers YouTube channel. I've been on podcasts but they weren't Youtubers. And what's interesting is I watch Alex do this. He came out of nowhere and he was on like twenty five different youtube is the thing, is platforms or platforms. So somebody that watches YouTube. If they see you and you have a YouTube channel, they'll go right and a podcaster will go listen like a Joe Rogan listener will go listen to like the diary of a CEO right?
That's more podcast base and it's interesting watching even just like content output. And media channels like you see these some podcasts that have huge audiences and then their YouTube channel has like 80.000 thousand subs and it's like, but you have millions of listeners. It's fascinating and Oprah talked about this one. She goes when she left her TV daytime TV show, then she started her own network. She said I underestimated the power of the medium and a time slot, right. She owned I think it was a four thirty p m Eastern Time slot, right like. Mom's making dinner or whatever, maybe it's 3:00 in the afternoon, but that's what I would do different is, and I'm doing it now, is the collabs and the edits and also content that might be a little bit more entertainment than just educational. Like even Layla Hermosa. She's actually one of the blurbs on the back because her and I've always jammed on the operation side of things and my content was very like very businessy. And now I'm trying to add a little bit more entertainment to it. I'm trying to make it a lot more fun. I'm trying to make it broader appeal to people starting off and not just folks that are running 8 figure companies, which is what I did predominately cuz that's that was with my customers. Those are my audiences.
Speaker 1 :
And how much content do you create in your system for it? Like when are you shooting and how many people are working?
Speaker 2 :
I we do batch video we today and I'll unpack as much as I can know cuz I have a team that manages it, but essentially we shoot probably 4 to 5 times a year. We batch so multiple shirts changes, I jump on, they're on zoom. I'm in my office. I have two cameras recording me all day long. So there's the YouTube content, which we actually shoot, and there's an outline for each video. And then there's literally, I think i asked my videographer this morning how much backlog content we have to work. There's 150 hours because I record all my board meetings, I record all my team meetings, I record all my coaching calls, I record all my podcast interviews. And then the team goes through that, identify clips and put them out so. On the back end. So my creative director, Sam, my videographers, my video editors, I think there's a team of five people parttime, some of them just producing content, and we're going to be ramping that up quite a bit.
Speaker 1 :
Killer amazing and so much Nuggets there, especially with the batching and recording when you're on podcasts. Are you ready for the Lightning round as we land the plane?
Speaker 2 :
Ready probably not. But excited, yes.
Speaker 1 :
This is actually just getting your take on some different topics. Especially I'm fascinated to hear what you think everyone is. Talking about a I and many people are afraid they think it's going to be a massive disrupter. What's your opinion on chat GPTAI my contacts is this. I've been coding an A I neural Nets for a while. So I'm deep in the technology in the learning models and there's no, there's very few people. I would put you know, Pierre Diamandis and a handful of people that are at the forefront because I literally my call after this. I'm on the board of a company that's building essentially coaching a I. So essentially in the future generative video. You know, generative audio of a coach with their content catalog plugged into GPTI Probably lost some people, but whatever. Here's my thought. Every company, every role in the world will have a copilot, a I for the role. A video editor will have a copilot. We're already seeing this stuff. It's happening at such a pace. Like literally on a daily basis somebody's sending me a link to another a I tool like rewind dot a I which records everything you say on your screen and in your office recorded locally so nobody sees it encrypted.
But then you can literally have perfect recall that's today that's available the video stuff of like the plugins that allow me to be looking off screen and it resets my eyes like the amount of. So that's what I call the copilot of the work. So a lawyer copilot, a I there's already programming copilot. It's literally allowing software developers to be three times more productive while they write code because as they're writing, you know, like type ahead in your email, it literally predicts what you think you're going to write and it asks you and you just hit go and it writes all the code for you. So the future of a I for me is incredibly unknown and it's going to be what it's going to be. Like, it's going to be disruptive to a lot of people that are deciding to not lean into it a little bit, but the ones that jump on it, like GPT and 3 5, which came out in November versus four O 4 is a hundred times better than 3 5. So if we're impressed with chad g p t today.
Speaker 1 :
Wait, do you agree with Elon Musk that thinks that a I is super dangerous?
Speaker 2 :
Super dangerous. You think it's dangerous? Yeah, I think it's dangerous. And what gives me hope? Open AI was actually a nonprofit that Elon kind of founded with Sam Altman from Y Combinator. And I knew the whole Genesis story, and they've been working on it for six years. Seeing Microsoft come in and write those kind of checks to like, own part of it or whatever the weird financing deal was concerning. But then there's other projects, luckily, that are competing against. Chat g p t that are open source. So I'm feeling better about that and if I if I didn't see that I would be super concerned. So now that doesn't mean there shouldn't be some level of governance at the federal government level to make sure that the apples the Facebook the Amazons who really have the best opportunity to create you know like general A I and like some really dangerous potential things. To not create what they need is somebody to kind of think about like driving cars. Like there's rules about how roads work. We need that for a I or cars will smash into each other. A I has that potential of going from like super cool to absolutely chaotic. If it's not properly managed.
Speaker 1 :
If you had only one social media platform, where would you invest your time? Tick tock. Instagram, Facebook, Youtube Somewhere else?
Speaker 2 :
Starting today, the only reason I wouldn't say Tick Tock is because I'm uncertain about how the government's going to respond to it. I do think tick Tock. I hope I don't get shadow banned somehow from whatever. Who cares? There is some government back end stuff that I'm concerned about as a software technical person. I think tick. I always like to go to the one that's got the most traction, but it's still underdeveloped and tik tok is definitely one of those. It's just no matter what platform you're building, collect the email, addresses build an audio like the amount of people that have a YouTube channel like Tim Ferriss used to be this guy. He used to have a blog. I remember meeting Tim and I was like, Tim, you need an email? Address it wasn't till Ramit Setti finally sat him down and said Tim you have to collect an email on your blog traffic and eventually he did it. Now he has a 2000000 person email address when you have a 2000000 person email address and. If you own that, then tik tok decides government shuts tik tok, down no worries. I'm going to go launch the next thing and I'm going to, I have the access to the audience. So I think like yeah, I think tik tok would be the one if I if I wasn't going to turn about the government. I'm a big fan of Instagram. I still love Instagram stories. I think there's a lot of opportunity. Youtube shorts are really fascinating. So yeah, I'd be a toss up between tik tok and YouTube, but regardless. Lead like collect an email and build a relationship with your audience.
Speaker 1 :
Business Insider just dropped an article that said why it's always a good time to start a business despite inflation, layoffs, and a possible recession. Americans created 10 5 million businesses in the past two years according to Census Bureau data, and that momentum is expected to continue in 2023 despite inflation, layoffs, and recession fears. What is your take on the current state of the economy? Entrepreneur actually called this the year of fear and uncertainty yet. The ambitious and risk takers are still stepping out. What it what is your thought of the current economic state with inflation shrinking back going on offense? What's your take?
Speaker 2 :
Two things all business economy value creation in the world has nothing to do with the economy and has everything to do with mindset. Like it's just that simple. There I think I looked the other day five point one trillion dollars. Of the economy exchange hands. Today 5 1 trillion. Go get a piece of that. Yeah, go figure out how to do it. That has nothing to do with the economy. That has to do with your psychology, your mindset, your habits, your beliefs, your character traits. The second thing is this guy, Keith Raboy, very well known in Silicon Valley, was early at PayPal and Square. He was a CEO of square. He's one of the top investors. He said this to me. I met him in 2008 and I said, you know, Keith, when I look at like the Google's, the Paypal's and all these other companies, Facebook, they were all started in a downward economy. Why do you think that is? And he said it's very simple.
He goes during those downturns you have an increase in IQ per square foot and as what do you mean he goes if we would have started PayPal today in 2007 2008 all the smartest people, the Sam, the Sam Levchkins and the Max this and all these people they mentioned Reed Hoffman, Elon Musk, they would have been doing. Their own thing, they would have been Y cominated. They would have been this accelerated. They've been doing stuff because the economy was compressed. We had the ability to attract worldclass talent. So the IQ per square foot went up and that's why you see literally their stats around the best companies are started in a downward economy. It also allows you to because people are like that are willing to join this like crazy idea when the economy's not good, you're tracking a certain type of person that when the market comes back, it's a slingshot effect. So I tell everybody like. Over the next two years, giddy up. If you're looking to start, I would start right now where maybe Labor's cheaper. I mean, I went for the last five years hiring people. I felt like I was on the receiving end of what have you done for me lately? I want it three times more, you know, per year. And now it's like, oh, now it's fair. And I think like, this is a great time to start and build a foundation and a platform to take advantage of this upswing. And that's just the reality and that's the stats.
Speaker 1 :
Dan Martel, shout out your stuff. Thank you so much for adding so much value today. Of course, everyone's got to pick up a copy of buy back your time. It'll be a great investment. You mentioned in the book you had an unlock that you could get 20 years of somebody's experience and wisdom and the mistakes they've made for 20$ That's why we love reading lifelong leaders or lifelong learners. And so of course we're going to link up the book in the show notes. But if people want to follow you, anything else you're working on, shout it out.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah, so Instagram stories is where I actually showed the behind the scenes of my life that I try to be an example of everything I teach in this book. So if you guys are curious about that, Youtube is where I teach everything that how to content. And then I'm on Twitter. Tik tok no crop top dances on tik, tok more business content. And if you have any feedback for me, like your audience are great creators. Like I'm always looking for talent, I'm always looking for feedback, I'm always looking for strategies. I'm a learner and I'm a big fan of people, so reach out grateful thank you so much for coming on the Think Media podcast.
Speaker 1 :
My honor, man. It's awesome.
