When you're building a business, you shouldn't hire people to add capacity but to buy time out of your calendar. If you don't, you'll end up building a business that you grow to hate and want to shut down because it's taking over your life. Dan Martell teaches entrepreneurs the sequence of how to replace themselves in their business as fast as possible to get the most value at the least amount of risk. He takes listeners on a journey through time as he shares his story and the lessons he’s learned along the way - lessons he also shares in his book.

Dan Martell is founder and CEO of SaaS Academy, a coaching company for software entrepreneurs, and managing partner at High Speed Ventures. A serial entrepreneur, he has started and sold multiple successful businesses over the course of his career, starting his first company at age 24 and selling it at age 27, becoming a young millionaire. Dan is also an author whose book, Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire, compiles expert advice to fellow entrepreneurs.


Dan shares how he discovered his passion for programming and entrepreneurship. While cleaning out cabins at a church camp, he found an old 486 computer with a book on Java programming and quickly became addicted to writing code. He taught himself how to code and started building tools and apps using different programming languages. He started his own tech organization, Spheric Technologies, which became the fastest growing company in Canada. He eventually sold the company and became a millionaire at 27. 

After selling Spheric Technologies, Dan moved to Silicon Valley to explore more opportunities in business and entrepreneurship. A successful business was one of his goals, and he didn’t want to regret not following his dreams of building one.

Silicon Valley is “Disneyland for software entrepreneurs,” according to Dan. The environment is intense and rife with billion dollar ideas, and being there among other ambitious people enabled him to think bigger and achieve more. He went on to build more tech companies, raise venture capital and became an angel investor in multiple software companies, including Intercom, Bootsuite and Unbounced.

Dan’s book, Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire, aims to arm entrepreneurs with the knowledge and techniques they need to conquer their worthiest adversary: time. He believes that our job is to develop ourselves and share what we learn on that journey with others, which he seeks to do with Buy Back Your Time. 

Entrepreneurs and creators should create more, Dan remarks, as is their God-given purpose. He wants to help entrepreneurs break through the pain line of building the business in the wrong order so that the world will have more solutions, more abundance, more problems solved and more creators creating. 

When applying the buyback principle, rather than freeing up time to do nothing, trade your time to do valuable things you can get paid for. Start by identifying what you don't like doing and what skills you need to develop to get your desired outcome. Dan encourages people to trade their time, become more valuable, and create economies by creating opportunity for others in the value chain.


KEY QUOTE
“The human experience is to face adversity, learn how to overcome it, and if you're not a complete ding dong, teach somebody else how to get through that faster. Our responsibility to people around us is to become better so that we can be an example of possibility.” - Dan Martell

Resources
Dan Martell on the Web | LinkedIn | Twitter
SaaS Academy
Email Dan: dan@danmartell.com 
Get your copy of Buy Back Your Time here!

The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss