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Why Are You Still Doing $10 Tasks? How the “Buyback Loop” Scales Your Business
Stop trading time for money. Learn Dan Martell’s “Buyback Loop” to calculate your hourly value, delegate low-impact tasks, and scale your business without burnout. Ready to stop working weekends? Scroll down to calculate your personal ‘Buyback Rate’ and learn why 80% perfection is the secret to growth.
If you have tasks that you enjoy doing and they generate a ton of money for your business, why don’t you hire someone to do the rest? Well, if you’re like me, you probably have one of the following excuses:
- “I can’t afford it.”
- “It’s too much work to delegate.”
- “I can’t trust anyone else to do it like I do.”
These are common excuses, but they’re invalid once you understand the Buyback Loop, the Camcorder Method, and the Test-First Principle, and realize that “80% done by someone else is 100% freaking awesome.”
The Buyback Loop
You start the Buyback Loop by spending a small portion of your income to hire people who can handle minor tasks for you. This frees up your time to focus on activities you love—activities that generate significantly more revenue for your business. Increasing your revenue allows you to hire people to handle even larger tasks, giving you even more time to focus on high-value work—creating a flywheel of profit, freedom, and enjoyment!
Initiate your Buyback Loop by calculating your current buyback rate and finding tasks to spend it on.
Buyback rate = [Annual income ÷ 2,000 (the average working hours per year)] ÷ 4. For example, if you earned $80,000 last year, your hourly rate is $80,000 ÷ 2,000 = $40 per hour. And your buyback rate is $10 per hour. This means you should be paying people at least $10 per hour to handle tasks for you, otherwise, you’re doing your business a disservice. When you hire people at one-fourth of your hourly rate, you get a 4x return on your investment, making it a no-brainer.
Time and Energy Audit
Log all your activities in 15-minute increments to get a comprehensive look at what tasks you can start delegating. I like to do this by filling my calendar with 15-minute blocks from the time I wake up until I go to bed. Then, I edit each event in my calendar every 15 minutes to capture what I was doing. This may seem like a lot of work, but it’s incredibly valuable.
Once you have a list of everything you typically do, start putting dollar signs next to each activity to assess their value. If a task leads to very little money or drains your energy, put one $ next to it. If it generates a lot of value, put $$$$ next to it. For tasks in between, use $$ or $$$. Next, use a red and green highlighter. Highlight tasks that drain your energy and that you dislike with the red highlighter. Highlight tasks that energize and fulfill you with the green highlighter. All of the single-dollar, red-highlighted tasks are the ones you should delegate immediately. Pick one to delegate first and use the Camcorder Method to teach someone else how to do it.
The Camcorder Method
Simply record a video of yourself doing a task using screen recording software like Camtasia or Loom, or your phone mounted on a tripod. Hit record and walk through the task without worrying about pausing or rambling—you can edit the video later. Bonus benefit: I find that recording myself often helps me refine and simplify tasks I’ve been doing for years.
Make at least two additional recordings to capture subtle differences that can help the person you’re hiring better understand the process. Then generate a procedure document by uploading the best video version to a transcription service like Rev.com and convert it into text. Next, use an AI tool like ChatGPT to turn the transcript into a well-organized procedure document with clear headers, logical steps, and detailed instructions (include screenshots from your video if needed). Lastly, create a checklist at the end of the procedure document to ensure quality control.
The video, procedure document, and checklist together form a playbook that anyone can use to complete the task without your constant input.
The Test-First Principle
Find at least three qualified candidates on freelancing sites like Upwork, Fiverr, or job boards like LinkedIn Jobs or Indeed. Give them a sample project that requires using your playbook. This project should take no more than 48 hours, and you must pay them for their time. After the candidates complete the test project, choose the one who followed your instructions, delivered on time, and completed the task at least 80% as well as you would. If more than one person meets the criteria, pick the best communicator.
No one will do a task just the way you do it. However, many people can do it 80% as well, and that’s usually enough to get the job done and keep customers happy! As Dan Martell says, “80% done by someone else is 100% freaking awesome…You not having to come in on the weekend to get caught up is 100% freaking awesome…You not having to spend half your week doing something you hate for the hundredth time is 100% freaking awesome!”
For tasks that require absolute precision, use the 10-80-10 rule: Initiate the first 10% (plan and generate ideas), delegate the next 80%, then review and finalize the final 10% yourself.