I've seen people walk over dollars to pick up nickels.
They want to grow their business.
Instead, they just keep doing more work
and hey there.
I'm Dan Martell, serial entrepreneur, investor and creator of SaaS Academy
and in this episode.
I want to share with you the five time assassins
that are stopping you from being more successful.
Because if you've been following me for a while, you know that
one of my philosophy is for scaling your business.
Your life is to buy back your time.
The challenge is, is for many of you, even though you understand the buyback
principle and you start building and delegating and replacing
and investing in yourself, you have these assassins, these habits
that are going to absolutely continue to eat away at your ability to do more.
And if I don't show you what they are and spotlight them
on, I guarantee in a decade you're going to wake up and go, Holy cow,
I can't believe that I've been driving with the handbrake on that.
I've been dragging this boulder of time sucking habits with me
that's killing your ability to produce more time
so you can be there for your family, for your team, for your customers.
That's what I want to share with you.
You know, recently
I was talking to a friend and they were like, okay, I hired executive assistant.
I'm following your drip matrix.
Like, it's all coming together.
I was like, cool.
Like, what's been the biggest impact, you know, this, this and this?
And I'm like, well, what's been great in your life?
Well, you know, like, you know, I'm really having a hard time justifying,
you know, investing in this new software.
They're considering moving over to HubSpot because it's really expensive.
And I'm like, Well, what's your revenue size?
And they're like this. And I go, Really?
And then they start telling me about how they just got back from this this event.
And I was like, How is that? And they said, Well,
it was fun, but the last night I kind of let loose too much.
And then I was a write off for Saturday
and I flew back and I didn't feel good on the plane, etc.
And I'm listening to these stories and I'm going, Wow,
here's somebody that's doing incredible on the business side.
But in their daily decisions, in their habits,
they're they're slowing their ability to produce time.
Right.
And I call these the five assassins, and I want to break them down for you so
you can potentially see yourself in them because it's not just one.
Usually I have two or three assassins that are literally killing your time arm
and causing you more pain that needs to be there as you grow your business.
Let's get into it.
The first assassin is called the Staller.
The Staller is somebody, not you.
Somebody you know that drags their feet to make a decision
that literally the decision stresses the mouth.
And instead of making a decision, they just make no decision.
And a lot of time this shows up as opportunity in their inbox, right?
Where, you know, a partner reaches out and says, hey,
I have the opportunity to triple your business next month.
And instead of engaging in that email, responding right away
and being super excited, they're like, Ooh, I don't know.
Let me just put that in my follow up folder. Right?
Or they have a friend that reaches out and say,
Hey, I've got this opportunity, we need to talk.
And they're like, Oh, you know, like, I'd love to,
but you know, let's, let's schedule a call in a week.
And what they realize is that it's costing you momentum.
It's costing you velocity.
Being a stall or putting off critical decisions
that could move your business forward.
If you take a 12 month timeline
and you have, let's say, a dozen of these opportunities
that show up in your life and it takes you on average a month to respond.
Those things add up and it stretches your ability to grow.
But if you can pull those back, be a decision maker scheduled to call,
move it forward, not be fearful, know that there is a difference
between a decision that can't be undone versus a decision that can be undone
and don't treat the ones that can be undone like the ones that can't.
Right.
By hiring somebody can be undone.
You fire them, buying another company.
Really hard to undo it once you've acquired them,
you can't treat those the same.
Installers are the worst at buying time because they're missing opportunity
and they're not able to compress their business growth because they stall.
Number two is called the speed demon
and this person is almost the opposite of the stall.
Or they move too quick.
They look for the cheapest, the fastest, the the options.
They're they're too trustworthy,
you know, they're like, oh, you've got a heartbeat.
And can fog a mirror.
Perfect. We're going to hire you. Right.
And guess what happens?
They have to deal with the downside of putting somebody on the team
that wasn't qualified, wasn't scheduled.
They didn't have enough time to to train them in.
The hire blows up in their face and it eats up all their time
because they have to, like,
make up for all the customers that are upset and like deal with the downside
and it creates chaos and people like, but I'm doing it in the name of speed.
It's like, What are you talking about?
Slow down a little bit, you know, create some guide rails for yourself,
some some rules for like if these things are true, then I can hire that.
And if you keep making the same mistake over and over again,
then you're not actually buying back your time.
You're, you're, you're using the the moving as a speed
as a reason to be irresponsible in your decision making.
Number three is the supervisor.
This is the micromanager.
This is the person that.
And you know who I'm talking about.
Not you, though, those people out there.
This is the person that you hire somebody
and you are like on top of them, you're like, show me your to do list.
What did you do today?
Let's talk about the way you're going to do this thing
and you're micromanaging them.
Instead of leading with outcomes,
you're leading you're creating a to do list for them.
My rule is when I hire somebody, I don't tell them what to do.
I have them tell me what to do.
And if I'm not hiring people that can tell me how to do their job,
then I'm hiring the wrong person and my in the supervisor.
This is what they do.
They micromanage because it feels control.
It feels it feels safe.
I mean, control. I don't want to lose control.
What if they say the wrong thing to a customer, blah, blah, blah?
It's like hiring an executive assistant and saying Draft all the email replies
and at night I'll review them all and then I'll hit send.
Some people do that.
You want to talk about eating your time.
You hire somebody, you're not getting the benefit of them
buying back your time because you're not leading with tattoos.
You want to hire people and allow them to create the to do list
and then you can edit it with them.
You don't have to be the creator of the to do list.
Do not be the supervisor.
The fourth time assassin is the saver.
Kay, this is the penny pincher.
This is the person that won't invest in their business.
I literally had a friend that ran a $3 million coaching business
and he was having an issue and I introduced him to my friend
that could solve his issue.
Scaling where he was at and it would have cost him $10,000
to solve his problem and his customers were paying him $20,000.
All he had to do was get one new customer easily and it would have paid
to hire this person to solve this problem, to keep scale his business, instead,
his response was like, What book do you recommend?
I'd rather buy a $17 book, or is there a training instead?
Do I have to hire this person?
Is this person?
And I'm like, What are you talking about?
I've seen people walk over dollars to pick up nickels.
They want to grow their business, but instead
they just keep doing more work instead of looking for the who, not how.
They they, they become like almost like I call it self-help junkies.
They're just like consuming content, consuming content learning
and learning and learning certain things.
You do need to acquire skills, but a lot of the stuff,
you don't need to learn it
and you just need to hire the person to solve the problem.
From that new solved problem, you continue to grow your business
that is sucking time out of your
your your day and your business to be able to actually grow it.
It is an assassin that you don't even know is sitting there
because you are the saver.
Number five is the self-medicate or this is the one that
probably a lot of the people, again, out there can resonate with.
Not in here because we're all like super,
you know, structured and very balanced people.
But most entrepreneurs are crazy.
Okay, I'll put my hand up.
I am nutty, I'm intense, I am full on.
Let's get it done.
And it's a big reason why I do not drink alcohol,
because, you
know, my story is I do not know how to handle myself.
And I created more pain and wasted more time being hung over
than any amount of time I could ever buy back through a little thing.
Like a little thing, but like an executive assistant, you know?
So if you have this pattern or, you know, somebody that works really hard
and then they reward themselves by drinking and eating it, then they feel
really bad and then they eat more because they don't feel good.
And then they wake up and they don't have any energy
because they're not feeling healthy and strong in their own skin.
And then, you know, then they decide to like
cancel meetings on Monday and push everything back.
And you want to talk about a time assassin, the self-medicate,
or is creating pain in their life that they get to deal with, you know,
and that continues the collateral damage of that of a divorce.
Frustrated business partners, team members, customers.
Right.
Because you said the wrong thing at an event
because you're self-medicating, because you don't even know how to feel success.
It feels awkward.
You don't feel worthy of it.
You want to reward yourself for doing what you should be doing.
Like as a CEO, that's your job.
And you're like, Oh, I just had a big week.
I'm going to go reward myself.
I'm telling you, the self-medicate is probably the number one time assassin
that most high performing CEOs run into, because it's the
the byproduct of being someone who can deal with chaos and be driven
is that you also have this tendency to self-medicate.
So the five time assassins that are sucking your ability to produce,
okay, the stall or the speed demon, the supervisor,
the saver in the self-medicate, or
if you like, these five time assassins, one go even deeper.
Be sure to check out my new book on preorder.
It's called How to Buy Back Your Time.
Click the link to check it out.
It would mean the world to have your support.
Something I've been working on for the last three years.
It is my life's work put in there and it's guaranteed
to teach you how to scale a business that you don't grow to hate.
So click the link below to get your copy today.
And as per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger life, the buy back
lifestyle and build a bigger business using the buyback principle.
And I'll see you next Monday.