Book Review: Buy Back Your Time (Dan Martell)

The core messages that I took away that I want to highlight are:

• Why are you doing things that don’t make money?
• The Replacement Ladder.

Part of the self-reflection was a look in the mirror (another audience gift was a folding mirror from The 20 group based in Dallas for doing exactly that.}

So time to shift gears and please listen to the podcast about this book I recently recorded with Chris Wiser HERE. 

Here are more dets.

Harry Brelsford and Chris Weiser discuss the impact of Dan Martell's book "Buy Back Your Time" on their work and personal lives. Chris shares how he secured Dan for a keynote and applied the book's principles to his own work habits, including a "day of threes" routine to stay productive. Harry reflects on hiring a COO to free up his time and transitioning to a new venture in the oil industry. Both emphasize the importance of delegation and efficiency. Chris also announces his upcoming book, "No Bullshit: Execute Your Way to a Business You Don't Want to Quit," set for a Q1 2025 release, and discusses his rapid content creation process using AI tools.

Action Items

• [ ] Discuss Chris Wiser's new book in more detail.
• [ ] Arrange a coffee or beer meeting to discuss the use of AI in content creation.

Outline

Dan Martell's Influence and Event Planning

• Harry Brelsford and Chris Wiser discuss the impact of Dan Martell's keynote at a three-day event in San Antonio.
• Chris Wiser explains how he secured Dan Martell by reaching out to a mutual friend, Garrett Gunderson.
• Chris Wiser shares an anecdote about finding a book on AI in an airport bookstore and inviting its author to speak at an upcoming event.
• Harry Brelsford reflects on Dan Martell's message about not wasting time and the importance of delegating tasks.

Personal Experiences with Delegation and Efficiency

• Harry Brelsford talks about hiring Jenny, who served as a COO-type role, allowing him to focus on strategic tasks.
• Harry mentions the decline of his product in 2014 and the need to adapt SMB Nation to new challenges.
• Harry discusses the importance of attending events but not letting them consume all his time, emphasizing the need to run his business effectively.
• Harry shares his experience of joining an oil field services company to try something new and the positive impact it had on his work-life balance.

Chris Weiser's Approach to Efficiency and Procrastination

• Chris Wiser shares his struggle with procrastination and how Dan Martell's book helped him manage his time more efficiently.
• Chris Wiser describes his "day of threes" routine, working in different environments to keep his brain fresh.
• Chris Wiser emphasizes the importance of offloading tasks and not feeling the need to control every aspect of the business.
• Chris Wiser recommends the audiobook version of "Buy Back Your Time" for its additional commentary from Dan Martell.

Future Plans and New Book Announcement

• Chris Wiser announces the upcoming release of his new book, "No Bullshit: Execute Your Way to a Business You Don't Want to Quit."
• Harry Brelsford applauds Chris Wiser's decision to write a more general book and shares his own experience with writing during the pandemic.
• Chris Wiser explains his rapid content creation process, including using AI to assist with writing and editing.
• Harry and Chris Wiser discuss the potential for a future conversation to delve deeper into their content creation strategies.

Harry Brelsford  00:04

Hey, nation, nation, we are back. It's already February of 25 Where did January go? And so they're going to speed up with Chris Weiser, uh, loose in the Austin area, such as myself, and we, uh, occasionally have the chance to catch up and Chris, well, first of all, welcome. How. How's 25 going for you and your community? Man,

Chris Wiser  00:27

Hey, buddy, yes, it's pretty good. It's crazy. I think January was the longest month of my life, but it's been, it's been good. Everything's growing and we're doing. Well,

Harry Brelsford  00:36

good, good. Yeah, and I'll put the URL down in the comments so people can hop over and get to know you. But what I want to talk about is you had a three day in October in San Antonio, which was great. That's just about an hour drive for me, and so I was able to easily pop down and you had a keynote speaker, I believe is day two, Dan Martell, buy back your time, and we're going to talk about that book, really impactful. Uh, how did Dan get to San Antonio? What's, what's the the story on that?

Chris Wiser  01:10

Uh, I It's kind of funny. I was talking to a friend of mine. His name is Garret Gunderson, Garrett's, uh, was, it was one of our speakers, and I kind of told him that I wanted Dan, and he happened to know him, so he did a personal, basically text message intro. I asked Dan, like, just over text message, if he'd be interested. We just made sure it worked, and it just all worked out. And it's actually, it's kind of funny, because that's, I'll just give you another example. We have our q2 2025, event coming up here in April, and I was walking through the airport and saw a book, and the title of our q2 event is MSP, AI revolution. So it's all AI focused and all this other stuff. I'm walking through the airport coming back from San Diego, our q1 event saw a book about AI and adding it to sales. And I'm like, Oh, this looks like a good book. And literally, went on the the author's website, found his stuff, sent an email, he's going to be on our stage in q2 so it's just sometimes it just takes that yeah, the

Harry Brelsford  02:15

good old Yeah, the good old airport bookstore. That is exactly what it takes. Every author wants to be at the airport bookstore, right? Because they they still have traffic, right? You know, the barnes and noble thing is, well, when we talk about that, but any of it, so, yeah, let me tell you my take on what Dan Martell said and how it impacted me. So there were maybe a couple things. One was, stop wasting your time. And I recall starting SMB Nation, where I was kind of in that trap, you know, where I was the guy running the Kinkos to make photocopies, not, not a great use of my time. That all changed when I hired Jenny. She stayed 16 years, and certainly a little bit higher than what we'd normally call an admin. She was really more of a COO type, you know, strategic and but she did all that, and including, you know, the events. There were times I just felt like, well, I just have to show up at the event after, you know, after some initial planning. So I kind of got that right. Stop wasting your time. Number two was, why are you doing things that don't make money? And I've been pretty transparent. You know, my product went away. Can you believe it? 2014

03:44

man, it's crazy that it's that long ago,

Harry Brelsford  03:47

10 years. And, you know, we tried this, we tried that, and, you know, the lights are still on at SMB Nation, but I think it was both me and the duration that. And Chris, you know, I try to do three or four things, right? I'm kind of the, you know, I like little side hustles. Do some of this and do some of that, yeah, again, I always want to say, you know, SMB nations here today and here tomorrow. It's changed, as we all have. So, you know, I looking at, kind of the last couple years performance. And for me, my community is relatively mature. And, you know, I think a few of us were, were just seeing that, you know, maybe we need to kind of go back to content and digital and the events. You know, Chris, there's a hell of a lot of events out there, you know, you're, you're one of them, and you've dialed it in and and then the other thing is, is my audience, they, they could go to an event a week, right? Every single week, they could go to an event, and then you're not running your business. And I've seen that trap too. So. You know, right after your work conference in San Antonio, you know, it's just some one fine afternoon, I'm just kind of literally looking in the mirror that the 20 gave away. A mirror is chopped ski, and I still have it. And folks, that'll be part of the photo that you're seeing up on the screen, the book cover and so on. But finally, Well, Chris, so bottom line is, I started an oil growing up in Alaska. So I made a Buddy call to a guy that stayed in oil, and his name's Curtis, and I said, you know, Curtis, I think I need to do something new for a while. You know, I'm just Doggone it 27 years in the Microsoft ecosystem. I just need to do something new. So I joined his oil oil field services company, and it's nearly a full time commitment, but we plug orphan and abandon wells, so we're on the right side of the equation, right? We're going out. So

Chris Wiser  06:01

are you? Are you telling me that you're that show land man, is about you? Yeah, I think that's, I think that's the deal. It is about Harry.

Harry Brelsford  06:08

I'm gonna change my byline in LinkedIn. Someone told me, just get rid of risk forward. Right? Risk forward is a VC term. He said, Change your middle name to land man. I said a

Chris Wiser  06:18

land man, yep, you're now the new land man, yeah, you and Billy Bob,

Harry Brelsford  06:22

yeah. That's just, it's, it's kind of hilarious. And that's a whole nother blog about full circle. Started in oil, worked my way through college, went out to Tech in Seattle, and then now I'm back at oil. So that's what it did for me, and I'm okay with it. And Chris, when I talk to people in the industry, I was a little worried, you know, influencers and thought leaders would feel like, I'm in a band. I'm abandoning the sector, forgive me. And that's that's not the case. I'd prefer to say I'm expanding my horizons. And so now, no over to you if you if you want to grab what I'm throwing, or you want to, you know, what did the book do for you? And, like, yeah, like, there's, there's a lot of that book, man.

Chris Wiser  07:05

Well, yeah, there really is. And, you know, one of the things, one of the reasons I wanted to have Dan, is I had read that book early on, you know, and the book came out. I believe, I'm trying to think what it was, it was sometime in 2023, I believe that it came out. And I, I, I have always, you know, personally, I struggled with procrastination my whole life. I struggle with procrastination. So it's like, for me, it was like, I have to find ways to do things more efficiently, and I have to, and I'll give you a great example of this. And this is some of the stuff that the book does all the time. For me, it's not necessary. And side note on this, it's more the concepts of the book versus following verbatim. And that's kind of what Chris Weiser does in his life. So here's what I do in my daily, daily life. I struggle with procrastination. I struggle with burnout. So and not necessarily saying I have burnout, but I've been able to eliminate it by doing certain things. Because early stages, one of the reasons I sold my MSP is because I was burning out. So now what I do every single day, I think a lot of MSP owners can totally relate to that, right? So now what I do every single day is I do three I do kind of the day of threes. I do three hours at home, I do three hours at the office, and then I do three hours at working at a restaurant or a maybe a bar or something a sports bar or something like that. But and usually the first six hours of the day, I work on stuff, and I kind of segment my day into different things, so I'm keeping my brain fresh all the time, like, for example, right now I'm I was at home office this morning, and now I'm at work office, doing the podcast recording with you. And then I'll be here for about another hour, probably, you know, I'm kind of moving into my day of threes thing, maybe another hour or two hours here today, and then I'm going to move to, I think I'm going to go to the country club South Austin. I'm a member of Onion Creek if you want to come golf ever Harry. But I think I'm going to go over there and just hang out and have lunch, you know, late lunch, and do work. So that's one thing. But then the other thing that buy back your time has really enabled me to do was be okay with offloading a lot of things versus thinking I have to be the one that controls all of it. And I think that's the other big factor that many MSP owners with the personality type that we are as entrepreneurs and tech people, we want to control so many variables, and we want to run all this stuff. So that's two things that the book has really taught me, and I would employ implore anybody that's listening audio book is, to me, the audio book is actually better than the physical book. I'm not sure if you I read the physical book, and then I came back and did the

Harry Brelsford  09:43

what. I got it free. I got it signed and free. Yeah, so

Chris Wiser  09:47

the physical book is really good, and I like it. But then they, they've added a bunch of stuff on the audio book where Dan's coming in and giving extra commentary, other than just the book. So I highly recommend the audiobook. Okay, now to go back as well for you, Harry. And then anyone else doing that, read the physical book first, if you can, some people struggle with the reading, but then go back and do the audio book afterwards. And I think it's something that's really going to help. And Harry, I didn't even tell you this. I got a new book coming out too, so I'm excited about that. We can talk about that at the end here. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well,

Harry Brelsford  10:17

yeah, we'll have you back. Um, well, and let's, let's talk about that in a moment, as we, you know, maybe kind of turn the corner on respect in our viewers time. But, you know, the other thing was, I don't think I mentioned it. Did I the the chapter on the replacement ladder. I used to call it firing yourself, right? And that's kind of what I did. I fired myself at SMB Nation, and life got significantly better, right? I was able to go bike ride in the afternoon, and the replacement ladder the first rung as an admin. And again, I'm not going to call Jenny an admin. She's really more strategic, but that you get the point. And he's kind of saying the same thing. I mean, if you're going to scale, right, yeah, yeah, if you just want to, you know, be a lifestyle consultant and, you know, run to Home Depot or whatever, you know, buy stuff, fine. But yeah, back to you. Let's talk about your book, and we'll call it good,

Chris Wiser  11:23

yeah, so, um, last, last thing on that, before we go into my book thing, I think making a decision of how you want to run your business is really key. And like you said, if you if you want to be a lifestyle business owner, hey, who cares? Then do whatever you want to freaking do, right? It doesn't matter. But if you really want to have a true employee business. And I almost think once you get into having employees, you kind of can't do the lifestyle thing as much. I don't know what your thoughts on that are, but, you know, the second you have 234, employees with a help desk and all this other stuff going on, it gets pretty hard to do that, because you got to manage and and buying back your time is is really, ultimately what we go to. So I think that's a really important concept, and that's that's why I'm a big fan of the book. But my book's coming out, n to q1 here in 2025 and it's called No bullshit. Execute your way to a business you don't want to quit. So really excited about that. It's all about and it's more mainstream than it's going to be just for MSPs, but it'll apply to every single MSP business owner that's out there as well. Yeah,

Harry Brelsford  12:24

no, I applaud that. I did that with one of the last books I wrote myself, because then I went on to write a couple. I ghost wrote some books for executives. And, okay, yeah, you put their name on it, but I really did the typing, you know, but they gave me money, so it's okay, but that's what I did during the pandemic. I took an old book on how to be an SBS consultant, stripped out all the dated stuff of oh three, and changed it to the pocket MBA, so it's much more generic, and it was for our audience, you know, I have this talk a lot with MSPs, that man, you know, don't, don't go to an Ivy League MBA program. You know, $200,000 in debt. It's gonna take upwards of a couple years, you know, unless you go to Wall Street or, well, you know, the big six firms. You know, you're far better off to do what you do best, right? So, yep, hi everyone. Yeah, I applaud your writing. More general, took me a long time to get there. And Chris, I know I asked you, do you have a timeline on the book mid year?

Chris Wiser  13:39

No, that'll be authentic. It should be out mid March. Oh, wow, 2025 Yeah. So it's Yeah, so it's rolling. I mean, the cool thing about today's world is you can build, produce, execute, and deliver content faster than you've ever been able to do. Um, I wrote, you know, just to give you an idea, this past Sunday, it was a nice day in Austin. I went out, kind of, went to a couple different went to a brunch spot, went did some stuff, and literally spent eight hours, and I pumped out 25 lead magnets from the company. And in, you know, literally five hours of messing around, you know. So it's, it's unbelievable how fast you can turn out content. So yeah, and a q1 2025, yeah,

Harry Brelsford  14:23

yeah, I concur. And I really look forward to talking to you about that and your methodology, because, you know, I'm not a huge generative AI guy. I still, I'm old school dude. I type, you know, I gotta find my voice and tie. And, quite frankly, I enjoy writing. Now, that's not to say I won't use the tools. Good Lord, there's a bunch of them out there, but for now, the you know, when you read my blog, I wrote it right, and that's why you're gonna see typos. And trust me, I take some heat, but I'm a writer. I'm not an editor. Yeah.

Chris Wiser  15:01

Well, and the other thing to think about in today's time, right? You know, we have the ability, one of the ways that I can turn out content so fast is I'm definitely utilizing AI, okay? And I'm utilizing AI not to do all the work for me, but to do all the heavy lifting for me. And if you think about just writing, it's not the creative process that's hard about writing. It's the I got to take all my creative parts and put it on paper and expand those ideas, right? So that's the challenge. Big challenge with doing that, and what AI really enables you to do is, and I will tell when we sit down and you know, you and I aren't too far from each other, and also have to grab a coffee or a beer or something, but, yeah, but now it's this deal where you can use AI to build out a system, and then I and basically what I do is I dictate all my ideas into my voice memos on my iPhone, and then I take the transcription from that and I dump it into AI, And we expand on it and build it, and AI becomes my ghost writer, and then I go back to a real paid editor. In fact, my book right now is that a real paid editor getting built out and basically properly formatted from Chris brain dump land, which is dangerous world, but it's, you know? So I started writing the book. I'll tell you this. I started writing the book December 30. I finished the book just january 23

Harry Brelsford  16:31

Yeah, Jesus, dude. 

Chris Wiser  16:33

So, so, literally, in less than 30 days, I'm, I'm able to pump out a 300 page

Harry Brelsford  16:38

book. Oh, man, alright, yeah, I'll buy coffee. All right, coffee on me. But no, we will have you back that that's exciting and near men after my own heart. Hey, Chris, stay on the line for a second. I'm going to let these fine people get back to work. Folks, you know how to reach me. Appreciate you listening. Buy the book.