# Buy Back Your Time: Audit, Transfer, Fill, and Lead With AI Leverage **Speaker:** Dan Martell, introduced by Patrick Bet-David **When:** 2026-09-02 · 5:29 PM–6:32 PM ET (2:29 PM Las Vegas) **Theme:** Buy back time & systems **Sources:** Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt **Notes page:** https://vault.chels.ai/sessions/d2-dan-martell/ > **Hire, delegate, and deploy AI to buy back your time rather than to grow, then refill that time with higher-value skills, habits, and beliefs so the growth follows.** Dan Martell, author of Buy Back Your Time, software founder with three exits and a portfolio of more than 100 companies, gave a 60-minute talk on the value of a founder's time, how to lead without adding hours, and how to use AI to do both. He walked through the Buyback Principle (audit, transfer, fill), the buyback rate formula, the Replacement Ladder (admin, delivery, marketing, sales, leadership), Naval Ravikant's four forms of leverage, and a transformational leadership method built on outcome, measure, and coach. Along the way he showed nine AI prompts from his own companies, covering calendar audits, SOP creation, inbox drafting, content ideas, objection handling, and analysing your own one-on-ones. He closed with generative images, voice cloning, AI agents, robots, a family safety rule for voice deepfakes, and a message about fulfilment over happiness. This matters for the year ahead because every part of it can be started this week with tools attendees already have. **Best for:** founders stuck at the 'pain line' who keep saying yes to opportunities that wreck their calendar; owners of service businesses with 5 to 50 staff who are still the bottleneck for delivery, sales, or approvals; leaders whose team has plateaued around 12 to 14 people because everything runs through them; coaches, consultants, and agency owners who sell their time instead of a methodology; creators and content teams who want to use AI for ideation, voice, and licensing; anyone who wants a practical first set of AI prompts for delegation and leadership; families who need a simple defence against AI voice-clone scams ## Claude skills from this session - `buyback-calendar-audit` — Run Dan Martell's Buy Back Your Time audit with the user. Calculate their buyback rate ((annual income + seller discretionary earnings) / 2,000 / 4), walk the last two weeks of their calendar block by block tagging hours, energy and one of the 4Ds (delete, defer, delegate, DO), name the person who shows up in every draining meeting, then build a fill plan of skills, habits and beliefs for the hours freed. Use whenever the user mentions delegation, an overflowing calendar, hiring an assistant, being the bottleneck, wanting hours back, what their time is worth, a stop-doing list, or says they have no time — even if they never ask for a "calendar audit". https://vault.chels.ai/skills/buyback-calendar-audit/SKILL.md - `camcorder-sop-replacement-ladder` — Move work off the owner's plate for good using Dan Martell's Replacement Ladder and camcorder method. Score the five rungs (admin, delivery, marketing, sales, leadership) to find the lowest one the user still owns, pick the first task on it, have them record themselves doing it three times, turn the transcripts into an SOP, a definition of done and a one-page checklist, and name an owner who is not them. When the rung is admin, run the full inbox handoff (direct access, daily review, draft-only AI replies). Use whenever the user wants to delegate a task, write an SOP or playbook, hand off their inbox or calendar, hire an assistant or first salesperson, asks what to hire for next, says they are still the bottleneck, or says nobody else can do something — even if they never say "SOP". https://vault.chels.ai/skills/camcorder-sop-replacement-ladder/SKILL.md - `leadership-xray-objection-handler` — Run Dan Martell's two AI mirror prompts from Buy Back Your Time on the user's own transcripts. The leadership X-ray scores a one-on-one or team-meeting transcript (or 30 days of team chat) against outcome, measure, coach and shows where the user was telling instead of training, ending with one change for the next call. The seventeen-answers objection handler pulls every objection from sales-call or DM transcripts, groups them, writes 17 responses to the hardest one, and turns the user's pick into a script for whoever handles calls and DMs. Use whenever the user pastes a meeting transcript, asks how they did as a leader, wants feedback on a one-on-one, shares sales calls or DM threads, names a recurring objection, says deals stall or prospects go quiet, or wants a sales script — even if they never say "X-ray" or "objection handling". https://vault.chels.ai/skills/leadership-xray-objection-handler/SKILL.md - `outcome-measure-coach` — Design a role the transformational way using Dan Martell's outcome, measure, coach method, and script the three-step coaching conversation for when results fall short. Produces an outcome sentence a 13-year-old would understand, a checklist of the five to seven parts of a great result with what a 10 and a 1 look like for self-assessment, and a coaching script that names the principle, tells a personal story, and gets a next-time agreement. Use whenever the user is about to correct or give feedback to an employee, prepares a one-on-one, writes a job description or scorecard, says their team needs constant direction, feels capped around 12 to 14 staff, complains of micromanaging, firefighting or starting their own work at night, or asks how to delegate without checking everything — even if they never say "coaching". https://vault.chels.ai/skills/outcome-measure-coach/SKILL.md ## Skills to build - **Auditing your calendar for time and energy** — Reading your own calendar as a data set: where hours go, which blocks drain you, and where the calendar has drifted away from your stated goals. Martell's chief of staff runs this every Friday. _How to practise:_ Every Friday, export or open the last two weeks of your calendar. Tag each block by time and by energy (gave or drained). Look for the one person who shows up in every draining meeting. Then apply the 4Ds to each block: delete, defer, delegate, or DO. Feed the calendar plus your goals to an AI 'ruthless mentor' prompt that asks you four or five clarifying questions first. It is working when your next two weeks visibly contain fewer $10 tasks and more of the work only you can do. - **Transferring work with recorded SOPs (the camcorder method)** — The skill of taking what is in your head and handing it to another person or an AI so it gets done without you. Martell calls this 'systems design' and says most people do not know how to do it. _How to practise:_ Pick one task you hate. Open a screen-recording meeting alone, share your screen, and do the task while narrating. Do this three times. Give the transcripts to an AI (Martell recommends Claude) and ask for a standard operating procedure, a definition of done, and a one-page checklist. Hand it to a person and ask them to follow it. Repeat for the next task every week. It is working when you have not touched that task in 30 days. - **Delegating the inbox completely, not just the filtering** — Letting an assistant (human or AI) be the buffer between you and everyone who wants your time, the way Richard Branson's assistant Helen handles everything and brings only what she cannot handle to a daily breakfast. _How to practise:_ Give your assistant the login, not the forwards. Set a daily 30 to 90 minute review where they bring only what they cannot resolve. Have an AI draft replies in your voice from your last 30 days of email, with placeholders where facts are missing, and never auto-send. Check yourself monthly with the question Martell asked his brother: 'Did you delegate your inbox, or do you still filter and then send stuff to her?' - **Finding your number-one constraint** — Asking 'if you 10x your business, what breaks?' and treating the answer as the single bottleneck that stops you from making more money. For Martell the answer was building talent, which forced him to remove himself from onboarding and support. _How to practise:_ Once a quarter, write down what would break at ten times your current volume: people, delivery, cash, sales capacity, your own hours. Pick the first thing that breaks. Spend the quarter moving yourself out of it using the transfer method. It is working when a big deal arrives and you can reply immediately, ready to close, because delivery no longer depends on you. - **Transformational leadership: outcome, measure, coach** — Leading by defining the outcome so clearly a 13-year-old understands it, giving people a checklist and a 1-to-10 rating to self-assess, and coaching when the result falls short, instead of the transactional loop of tell, check, tell again. _How to practise:_ For each role you lead, write one sentence for the outcome (for a lawn company: 'the best lawn in the neighbourhood'). Then write the measure: the seven or so parts of a great result and what a 10 versus a 1 looks like. In your next one-on-one, ask the person to self-assess against it before you comment. Practice weekly. It is working when people bring you their score and their fix, not their problem. - **Running a three-step coaching conversation** — When someone misses the mark, coach rather than command: name the principle they violated, tell a personal story of how you learned it, and get a specific agreement about what they will do differently next time. _How to practise:_ Before each corrective conversation, write down the principle in one line and the story you will tell. End every conversation with 'Next time this comes up, what will you do differently?' and get a commitment out loud. Track the commitments. Martell says this feels slow at first but compounds because your people go on to coach their teams the same way. - **Using AI as a mirror on your own leadership (the leadership X-ray)** — Feeding transcripts of your one-on-ones, team meetings, or chat channels to an AI and asking it to score you against the outcome-measure-coach method, so you can see where you thought you were leading and were actually telling. _How to practise:_ Record every one-on-one with consent. After each one, paste the transcript into an AI with a prompt asking how you did as a leader against outcome, measure, and coach and what to change next call. Once a month, run the same analysis across 30 days of team messages to find where communication is breaking down. It is working when the AI's notes stop repeating the same fault. - **Rendering the vision before anyone builds it** — Using image-generation tools to produce a photorealistic picture of what you want, then putting that picture in front of everyone who will touch the work. Martell's example is a fireplace remodel: 'make it nicer' fails, a rendering pinned to the wall succeeds. _How to practise:_ Before you brief any physical, design, or creative job this year, spend 20 minutes with an image model (Gemini or ChatGPT; Martell notes Claude does not generate images) iterating until the picture matches your head. Share the image with every contributor. Martell also uses this for personal vision: generate images of the future you are designing and keep them visible. - **Pricing on standards, not on your presence** — Understanding that customers buy your standards and methodology, not your time or personality, and therefore pricing every service as if someone else were going to deliver it. _How to practise:_ Write down your methodology for each service as if a new hire had to deliver it tomorrow. Re-price each offer based on that person delivering it at your standard, not on your hourly comfort. Review annually or whenever you add a service. It is working when you can sell and deliver a job you never personally touch. ## What matters - **You will not grow into pain, so the pain line decides your future:** Every entrepreneur hits a point where a new opportunity equals chaos in the calendar, and the body says no. At that point people do one of three things: stall, sabotage, or sell. Naming the pain line lets you recognise the moment and choose the fourth option, which is to buy back time so the opportunity fits. _(Evidence: 17:37:40-17:38:16 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Stalling is not neutral because your best people will leave for a bigger vision:** When his electrician friend asked whether it was okay not to grow, Martell asked three questions: is the world expanding, do customers want more next year, and do the one or two irreplaceable people on your team want a bigger future? If you stall, within two years someone else will offer a vision big enough for those people's dreams to fit inside. _(Evidence: 17:38:16-17:39:33 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Self-doubt is self-sabotage:** The story of Lisa marking a speaking invitation unread for days, then replying beautifully on Monday to find the slot filled, shows sabotage as dragging your feet on opportunities. Any time you do not act from a place of 'I cannot fail', you are sabotaging, because hesitation means chaos later. This is also why Martell says you need a coach: someone to tell you the real deal. _(Evidence: 17:39:33-17:40:50 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Selling to escape problems only moves the complexity ceiling:** Ask yourself: if those problems were solved, would you still sell? If the answer is no, you are running from lessons, not toward a better business. Whatever you start next will hit the same complexity ceiling and you will either learn the lessons now or later. _(Evidence: 17:40:50-17:42:12 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Hire to buy back time, not to grow:** If you hire to grow you often end up babysitting people and getting neither growth nor time. If you hire to buy back your time and then fill it with high-value work, growth follows. Martell's claim: 15 to 20 hours a week back is achievable with the methods he taught. _(Evidence: 17:42:14-17:42:45 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **One person usually appears in every meeting that drains you:** When you audit your calendar for energy rather than just time, a pattern shows up: the same person is present in most of the draining blocks. That is a relationship or role to redesign, not just a meeting to shorten. _(Evidence: 17:44:45 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Your buyback rate makes $10 tasks visible:** Take your annual income plus seller discretionary earnings, divide by 2,000 working hours, then divide by four to target a 4x return. At $100,000 a year that is $12.50 an hour. Anything personal or professional you could pay someone less than that to do, especially with global hiring and AI, is you working against yourself. 'You cannot build million dollar companies off $10 tasks.' You can tell anyone's priorities from two things, their bank account and their calendar, and most calendars do not reflect the owner's goals. _(Evidence: 17:45:12-17:46:25, 17:52:00 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Transfer is a skill, and recording beats writing:** Most owners never document because writing an SOP is painful. Recording yourself doing the task three times and letting AI write the SOP and checklist removes the friction. Martell's speaker friend Mark did this for his finances, hired a bookkeeper, and never touched them again; Martell did the same for road-bike maintenance. If you have never done the task yourself, give the AI a link to a good YouTube tutorial and ask for the SOP instead. _(Evidence: 17:47:01-17:49:30 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Fill is the step most people skip, and it is why they never get momentum:** Buying back time is not for the beach. Fill it with three things in order: skills that make you more valuable (a tax strategist beats a bookkeeper; a creator who codes beats one who cannot), habits aligned with your goals, and beliefs that allow you to get rich. Martell has seen hard-working smart people with upside-down worldviews never get there. _(Evidence: 17:50:09-17:51:34 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **The Branson model: everything flows through the assistant, and the boss does the fun stuff:** Richard Branson does not do email. Helen, his assistant of 18 years, handles every demand from 400 companies and brings only what she cannot handle to a 60 to 90 minute breakfast. Even the CEO of Virgin Atlantic went through her. Martell realised he was playing a different game and built the Replacement Ladder to close the gap. _(Evidence: 17:53:54-17:57:03 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Admin is rung one, and the failure mode is filtering instead of delegating:** Martell's brother hired an assistant using a 42-page playbook and concluded 'I don't see what the big deal is'. The reason: he still read every email himself and forwarded what he thought she should do. The inbox is a public to-do list written by strangers; someone else must be the buffer. _(Evidence: 17:55:24-17:57:18 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Get out of delivery before you try to scale sales:** If onboarding and support depend on you, every new deal makes your life worse and you hesitate on big opportunities. A customer-success lead in one of Martell's companies went from copy-pasting emails into a chatbot to a proper inbox agent; two days later her inbox was clear by 10 a.m. Once delivery is off you, you can reply to a big deal immediately, ready to close. _(Evidence: 17:57:42-17:59:43 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Stop-start marketing is why businesses plateau for years:** Rachel's business sat at $450,000 for five years because she marketed when empty, got busy, stopped, and repeated. Someone other than the owner must wake up every day to push distribution and monitor it. Martell has seen a checkout button turned the same colour as the background and a broken email link go 17 days without a sale because nobody was watching. _(Evidence: 17:59:43-18:00:57 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Someone else sells you better than you sell yourself:** When Martell finally hired a salesperson for his coaching, the first deal closed at $25,000 on the call. The salesperson's explanation: it is easier for him to sell Dan than for Dan to sell Dan, because a founder who delegates sales is demonstrating the thing he teaches. _(Evidence: 18:02:06-18:04:13 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Founders are world-class closers and terrible at follow-up, which is exactly what AI should own:** You love the close and hate the data entry, so opportunities die after the first conversation. Hire a salesperson so you are no longer the rainmaker, and use AI for follow-up and objection handling so you do not even have to spend money to get the time back. _(Evidence: 18:04:15-18:05:22 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Leadership means talking only about strategy and outcomes:** The top rung of the ladder is where every founder says they want to be: come up with ideas, have the team execute, do what you love. Getting there requires that your conversations with the people who work for you are about strategy and outcomes, not tasks. Most founders do not know how they actually communicate, which is why Martell X-rays it with AI. _(Evidence: 18:05:26-18:06:46 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **There are only four kinds of leverage, and most founders are missing collaboration:** Naval Ravikant's four C's: code (software, automation, AI), content (media that reaches millions at zero cost), capital (there is no shortage for the right opportunity), and collaboration (partnerships and key hires). Martell had the first three and admits he could not 'play nice with others', which is what led him to study leadership. On capital: if you are constrained, you are either not yet the right opportunity or not talking to anyone who funds them. _(Evidence: 18:08:29-18:10:15 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Transactional leadership caps a company at about 12 to 14 employees:** Tell people what to do, check they did it, tell them the next thing: there are only so many people you can run that loop with before you spend all day fighting fires and start your own work at 8 p.m. If you teach that style, your managers copy it and the cap replicates down the organisation. _(Evidence: 18:10:20-18:11:31, 18:13:57-18:14:11 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Train, don't tell:** Telling solves one problem once. Training levels up many people for many problems. Every fix you do yourself is a lost training opportunity, so Martell's companies default to teaching. Martell calls it an epidemic that business coaches with excellent businesses tell rather than coach their own staff. _(Evidence: 18:14:32-18:14:38 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **People buy your standards, not your presence, so price as if someone else delivers:** When you buy something you pay with the time it took to earn the money. Customers of a service business are buying the methodology and the standard, not you. Price every service as if another person will deliver it; if you price as if you will do it, you cap the business at your hours. _(Evidence: 18:14:48-18:15:51 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Hyper-personalisation now costs nothing, so every client deliverable should be personalised:** AI lets you create a million different products with no incremental cost of goods. Every proposal should include the client's team, their office, their branding. It is a differentiation lever that costs nothing and almost no one uses. _(Evidence: 18:17:25-18:18:07 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Render the outcome before the work starts:** Everything around us existed first in someone's mind. A rendering that used to cost $50,000 is now free, and it dramatically raises the odds that tradespeople, designers, or your team build what you meant. Martell spent roughly $15,000 in AI tokens speccing a custom Porsche build before the design team ever met him. _(Evidence: 18:16:21-18:17:25, 18:18:26-18:20:08 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Voice cloning cuts both ways: fix your pickups, but protect your family:** Martell's team uses ElevenLabs to fix mispronounced words in his videos so he never re-records. The same technology means anyone with 12 seconds of your audio can call your kids sounding like you. Every family needs a secret safe word to verify a call. _(Evidence: 18:20:11-18:21:39 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **AI video means your intellectual property can be licensed in any language and any face:** If you own training content you can translate your voice, regenerate the video with a partner's face and voice, and license it into Spanish or Chinese-speaking markets or another creator's customer portal. If you were about to reshoot old videos, wait and check what AI can do first. _(Evidence: 18:21:40-18:23:35 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Agents are here but not well distributed:** Martell runs 47 agents coordinated by a lead agent named Kai that has processed 70 terabytes of internal data, emails the team, calls people, and even negotiated a real-estate deal in his hometown. The point for attendees: the power exists today; the gap is deciding to learn it and create leverage. _(Evidence: 18:23:35-18:26:18 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Your biggest expense is not doing the thing that makes the most money:** Every hour on a low-value task is an hour not spent on the highest-leverage work, and that opportunity cost dwarfs any payroll line. Martell's prediction that robots will be as common as dogs within three years is a nudge to lean in rather than fear job loss. _(Evidence: 18:26:24-18:28:52 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ - **Aim for fulfilment, not happiness:** Happiness is a fleeting moment. Fulfilment needs two things: wake up every day striving to be the 10.0 version of yourself, 1% better, becoming the person you needed most in your darkest days; and share what you learn with your world, whether that is your family, your gym, or millions online. _(Evidence: 18:29:07-18:31:24 / Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt)_ ## Frameworks, lists & numbers - **The Pain Line and the three S's** — Every entrepreneur hits a pain line where the calendar is full and new opportunities equal chaos. You will not grow into pain. At that point founders do one of three things: Stall (decide not to grow), Sabotage (drag their feet on opportunities from self-doubt), or Sell (exit to escape problems that could be solved). The escape route is the Buyback Principle. - **Three questions before you stall (the electrician's questions)** — 1) Is the world expanding or contracting? (GDP says expanding.) 2) Do your customers want more or less from you next year? 3) Who are the one or two people on your team whose loss would make your life chaotic, and do they want a smaller or bigger future? If you stall, in two years someone else will offer a vision big enough for their dreams and they will leave. - **The selling test and the complexity ceiling** — If you want to sell, ask: 'If those problems were solved, would you sell?' If no, you are running from lessons. The grass looks greener because it is fake. Every business hits the same complexity ceiling; sell now and you will meet it again in the next venture. Learn the lessons now or later, you will not skip them. - **The Buyback Principle (audit, transfer, fill)** — We don't hire to grow our business; we hire to buy back more time. If you do the second you get the first. When you feel the pain line: 1) Audit your calendar for time and energy. 2) Transfer what you know to someone else using recordings and AI-written SOPs. 3) Fill the recovered time with next-level skills, habits, and beliefs. Most people do the first two and skip fill, and never get momentum. Claimed result: 15 to 20 hours a week back. - **The buyback rate formula** — (Annual pay to yourself + seller discretionary earnings, i.e. personal expenses run through the business) divided by 2,000 hours, divided by 4 (for a 4x return on your time). Example: $100,000 a year gives $50 an hour, then a $12.50 buyback rate. Rule: anything, personal or professional, that you could pay someone less than your buyback rate to do is you working against yourself. - **The 4Ds (from Stephen Covey)** — Every calendar block gets one label: Delete, Defer, Delegate, or DO (in all caps, because it is the work only you should do). Used inside the calendar audit. - **The camcorder method for transfer** — Record yourself doing the task three times on a solo screen-share meeting while narrating. Give the recordings or transcripts to an AI (Martell recommends Claude) and ask for a standard operating procedure, a definition of done, and a one-page checklist. Hand it off. Pro tip: if you do not have a recording, give the AI a link to a good YouTube video on the topic and ask for the SOP. - **Fill: skills, habits, beliefs** — Fill freed time in this order. Skills that make you more valuable (a tax strategist over a bookkeeper; a content creator who codes). Habits that align with your goals. Beliefs and worldviews that allow you to get rich. The loop: develop the skill, become more valuable, make more money, reinvest, buy back more time, build the habits, build the beliefs. - **The Replacement Ladder** — Five rungs, replaced in order no matter where you start: 1) Admin: someone who owns your inbox and calendar completely. 2) Delivery: onboarding and support without you. 3) Marketing: someone who wakes up every day focused on traffic and campaigns and monitors the funnel. 4) Sales: someone who converts conversations into transactions so you are no longer the rainmaker. 5) Leadership: you talk only about strategy and outcomes. 'If you don't have one, you are one.' - **The Branson-Helen breakfast model** — Richard Branson does not do email. His executive assistant Helen (18 years) receives every demand from all 400 companies, handles what she knows, and brings only what she does not know how to handle to a daily breakfast of 60 to 90 minutes. Branson then does what he does (train for charity races, ski, paraglide) while she processes everything forward. - **Naval Ravikant's four C's of leverage** — 1) Code: software, automation, AI. Stop saying 'I'm not a techie'. 2) Content: media that reaches 100 million people at no cost; a checklist you write once serves a million people. 3) Capital: there is no lack of capital for the right opportunities; if you are constrained, you are not yet the right opportunity or you are not talking to anyone. 4) Collaboration: partnerships and key hires, which depend on how you lead. - **Transactional vs transformational leadership** — Transactional: tell them what to do, check they did it, tell them what to do next. Caps out around 12 to 14 employees and turns your day into firefighting with your own work starting at 8 p.m. Transformational: 1) Outcome, stated so a 13-year-old understands it ('the best lawn in the neighbourhood'). 2) Measure, a checklist of the seven parts of a great result with a 1-to-10 rating people use to self-assess. 3) Coach when it falls short. Slow at first, then compounds as your people lead their teams the same way. - **The three-step coaching conversation** — 1) Start with the principle they violated. 2) Tell a personal story of how you learned that principle and why it matters, so they relate to you. 3) Get an agreement: 'Next time this scenario comes up, what will you do differently?' Shake on the commitment. Anything else makes you a manager, not a leader. - **Nine AI prompts shown on the slides (purposes as described on stage)** — 1) Calendar audit: a 'ruthless mentor' that asks four or five goal questions one at a time, then finds waste and 4D opportunities in your calendar. 2) Camcorder / SOP: turn a transcript of you doing a task into an SOP, definition of done, and one-page checklist. 3) Fill / skill builder: given your 12-month goal, pick the two highest-leverage skills and schedule daily learning. 4) Inbox assistant: draft replies in your voice from your last 30 days of email, never send, placeholders for unknowns. 5) Delivery / client support: find repeat support questions, write an FAQ, and propose the process that would prevent each. 6) Content topic finder: viral topics built on real problems in your niche, then scripts (his account went from 70,000 to 3.1 million Instagram followers in 3.5 years). 7) Objection handler: pull objections from call transcripts, group them, and write the handling script; generate 17 examples and pick one. 8) Leadership X-ray: analyse 30 days of team messages for overwhelm and breakdowns. 9) One-on-one feedback coach: score your last one-on-one against outcome, measure, coach. Exact wording was on slides, not in the transcript; see the vault's Dan Martell deep dive for transcriptions. - **Fulfilment formula** — Happiness is a fleeting moment; aim for fulfilment, which requires two things. 1) Every day, strive to be the 10.0 version of yourself, 1% better, becoming the person you needed most in your darkest days. 2) Share yourself with the world, whether your world is your family, your church, your gym, a nonprofit, or millions online. - **Numbers from the talk** — Three exits; over 100 portfolio companies (about 20 he is actively involved with); 250 million content views a month; 15 to 20 hours a week recoverable; 12 to 14 employee cap for transactional leadership; 42-page admin recruiting playbook; $25,000 first deal closed by his first salesperson; 47 AI agents coordinated by a lead agent that has processed 70 terabytes of internal data; 12 seconds of audio to clone a voice; roughly $15,000 in AI tokens to spec a custom car; renderings that once cost $50,000 are now free; prediction of robots as common as dogs within three years. ## Exercises & frameworks to run - **Two-week calendar audit with the 4Ds** _(45 minutes)_ _[speaker]_ 1. Open the last two weeks of your calendar. Print it or export it so you can mark it up. 2. Write your top three goals for the next 12 months at the top of the page. 3. For every block, note two things: hours spent, and whether it gave you energy or drained it. 4. Circle the draining blocks. Write down who was in each one. Look for the person who appears in most of them. 5. Label every block with one of the 4Ds: Delete (stop doing it), Defer (schedule it later), Delegate (give it to a person or AI), or DO (only you can do this, keep it). 6. Optional: paste the calendar and goals into an AI and ask it to act as a ruthless mentor, ask you four or five clarifying questions one at a time, then find waste and delegation opportunities. 7. Move at least three blocks out of your calendar for the coming two weeks. - **Finish with:** A marked-up calendar with a 4D decision on every block, the name of your energy-drain pattern, and three blocks removed from next fortnight. - **Calculate your buyback rate** _(20 minutes)_ _[speaker]_ 1. Write down what you pay yourself per year, including salary, draws, and distributions. 2. Add seller discretionary earnings: personal expenses the business pays that a buyer would add back (car, phone, travel, meals). 3. Divide the total by 2,000, the hours most people work in a year. This is your effective hourly rate. 4. Divide that by 4. Martell wants a 4x return on every hour you buy back. This is your buyback rate. 5. Example: $100,000 a year becomes $50 an hour, then $12.50 buyback rate. 6. List ten tasks you did last week, personal and professional. Next to each, write what you could pay someone else (a virtual assistant, a local service, an AI tool) to do it. 7. Mark every task where that price is below your buyback rate. Those are the ones to delegate first. - **Finish with:** A single dollar number for your time, and a ranked list of tasks you are currently doing below that number. - **The camcorder method: record three times, let AI write the SOP** _(Three recordings of the task, plus 30 minutes to generate and review)_ _[speaker]_ 1. Choose one recurring task you hate (Martell's examples: bookkeeping, invoicing, bike maintenance). 2. Open a video meeting with only yourself, share your screen, and record while you do the task. Narrate what you are doing and why. 3. Do this for three separate occurrences of the task so edge cases show up. 4. Get transcripts of the three recordings. Remove passwords and private client data. 5. Paste the transcripts into an AI (Martell recommends Claude) and ask for a standard operating procedure, a clear definition of done, and a one-page checklist. 6. If you have never done the task yourself, skip the recording: give the AI a link to a good YouTube tutorial and ask for the SOP instead. 7. Hand the checklist to a team member, contractor, or house manager. Ask them to do it once while you watch, then never touch it again. - **Finish with:** A one-page checklist and SOP for one task, and a named owner who is not you. - **Fill plan: skills, habits, beliefs** _(30 minutes)_ _[speaker]_ 1. Write your biggest goal for the next 12 months in one sentence. 2. Skills: list the two highest-leverage skills that would make you more valuable toward that goal. Ask 'what is the next-level version of my role?' (bookkeeper to tax strategist; creator who learns to code). 3. Habits: list the two or three daily or weekly habits that align with the goal. 4. Beliefs: write down one belief about money, people, or the world that might be holding you back, and the belief a person who has already reached the goal would hold instead. 5. Optional: give the goal to an AI and ask for a learning plan for the two skills, with daily calendar blocks and links to resources. 6. Book the first learning block in the time you freed up in the calendar audit. - **Finish with:** A one-page fill plan with two skills, three habits, one belief to change, and a first learning block on the calendar. - **Replacement Ladder self-assessment** _(25 minutes)_ _[editorial]_ 1. Draw five rungs: Admin (inbox and calendar), Delivery (onboarding, support, fulfilment), Marketing (daily traffic and campaigns), Sales (conversations to transactions), Leadership (strategy and outcomes only). 2. For each rung, answer honestly: who owns this today? If the answer is you, or 'me plus someone I supervise closely', the rung is not yet replaced. 3. Find the lowest rung that is still yours. That is your next hire or next AI workflow. Do not skip ahead; Martell says admin first no matter where you start. 4. For that rung, write the outcome you need, the measure of done, and the first candidate (a person, a contractor, or an AI agent). 5. Set a 90-day date to have that rung off your plate. - **Finish with:** A ladder diagram showing which rungs you still own, and a 90-day plan for the lowest one. - **The inbox handoff test** _(1 hour to set up, 30 to 90 minutes daily review)_ _[editorial]_ 1. Ask yourself Martell's question: did you delegate your inbox, or do you still read everything and forward what you think your assistant should handle? 2. If you still filter, write the three categories of email you are afraid to let go of and why. 3. For each category, write the rule your assistant or AI should follow (reply, schedule, decline, escalate) and what 'escalate to me' looks like. 4. Give the assistant direct inbox access. Set a daily review meeting of 30 to 90 minutes where they bring only what they could not handle, as Helen does with Richard Branson. 5. If using AI: ask it to study your last 30 days of sent mail, draft replies in your voice, never send, and leave placeholders for facts it does not have. 6. After two weeks, count how many emails you personally opened. Aim for the number to fall each week. - **Finish with:** Written inbox rules, a daily review slot, and a weekly count of emails you touched. - **The 10x question: find your constraint** _(15 minutes)_ _[editorial]_ 1. Ask: if I 10x'd my business tomorrow, what breaks first? 2. Write every answer that comes to mind: people, delivery capacity, cash, your own hours, systems. 3. Pick the one that breaks first. Martell's mentor told him his was building talent, which meant delivery had to stop depending on him. 4. Write what it would take for someone other than you to own that thing within 90 days. 5. Schedule the first step (a recording for an SOP, a job post, an AI workflow) this week. - **Finish with:** One named constraint and a first step on the calendar. - **Seventeen answers to your hardest objection** _(30 minutes)_ _[speaker]_ 1. Write down the single objection that most often stalls your sales conversations or DMs. 2. Gather three to five real transcripts or message threads where it came up (only ones you are allowed to use). 3. Paste them into an AI and ask it to identify every objection raised, group the common ones, and propose the best way to handle each. 4. For your top objection, ask for 17 different response examples. Pick the one that sounds most like you. 5. Turn that response into a script your salesperson or your DM team can use. Test it for two weeks and track the close rate. - **Finish with:** An objection-handling script for your top objection, and a grouped list of the rest. - **Design one role with outcome, measure, coach** _(40 minutes per role)_ _[speaker]_ 1. Pick one role on your team. 2. Outcome: write one sentence a 13-year-old would understand. Martell's example for a lawn company: 'the best lawn in the neighbourhood'. 3. Measure: list the five to seven parts that make up a great result. For each, describe what a 10 out of 10 looks like and what a 1 looks like. 4. Give the checklist to the person and ask them to self-assess after each job or week. 5. Coach: when a score is low, do not tell them what to do next. Run the three-step coaching conversation: state the principle they violated, tell a personal story about how you learned it, and get an agreement on what they will do differently next time. 6. Repeat for one more role each month. - **Finish with:** A one-page outcome and measurement sheet for one role, and a coaching script for when results fall short. - **Leadership X-ray on your last one-on-one** _(15 minutes after each meeting)_ _[speaker]_ 1. Record your next one-on-one or team meeting with the other person's consent, and get the transcript. 2. Paste it into an AI and ask: how did I do as a leader against outcome, measure, and coach? Where was I telling instead of training? How should I show up on the next call? 3. Read the moments it flags in the transcript yourself. Do not treat the AI score as truth. 4. Write one change to make in the next meeting. 5. Monthly: run the same analysis across 30 days of team chat to find where communication is breaking down and end with the one question to ask the team this week. - **Finish with:** A short written assessment of your leadership in one meeting and one concrete change for the next. - **The stop-doing list** _(15 minutes)_ _[editorial]_ 1. Instead of asking what to add, list everything you did last week that you should not be doing. 2. Include personal tasks. Martell counts anything you could pay someone less than your buyback rate to do. 3. Cross off the three cheapest to remove (a tool, a $10 gig, a family member, an AI workflow) and remove them this week. 4. Keep the list running. Add to it every time you notice yourself doing a $10 task. - **Finish with:** A living stop-doing list with three items removed this week. - **Render the vision (the fireplace method)** _(20 to 40 minutes)_ _[editorial]_ 1. Choose one thing you are about to have built, designed, or produced: a renovation, a landing page, a product, a stage set, a piece of marketing. 2. Open an image model (Gemini or ChatGPT image generation; Claude does not generate images). 3. Describe what you want in detail and iterate until the picture matches your head. Expect ten or more rounds. 4. Print or share the final image with every person who will touch the work, so the bricklayer, the insert supplier, and the finisher all see the same target. 5. Also do this for your own future: generate images of the life and business you are designing and keep them where you will see them. - **Finish with:** A photorealistic reference image that everyone on the job is building toward. - **Set a family safe word** _(10 minutes)_ _[speaker]_ 1. Gather everyone in your household, including kids and elderly parents. 2. Explain that 12 seconds of audio is enough to clone a voice, and that a scam call can come from an unknown number 'because I borrowed a friend's phone'. 3. Agree on one secret word or phrase that any family member must give when asking another to do something unusual by phone: move money, leave the house, meet somewhere, share information. 4. Agree the rule: no word, no action, hang up and call back on a known number. 5. Practice it once so it feels normal, and never write it in a shared chat. - **Finish with:** A verified safe word every family member knows and a call-back rule. - **Re-price on standards** _(1 hour)_ _[editorial]_ 1. List each service you sell and its current price. 2. For each, write the methodology in enough detail that a competent new hire could deliver it to your standard. 3. Re-cost each service as if that person, not you, delivered it: their wage, your margin, and the value of the outcome to the client. 4. Where the new price is higher than today's, you have been pricing your presence instead of your standards. Raise it. 5. Where you cannot write the methodology, that service is not yet a product. Fix that before scaling it. - **Finish with:** A price list built on the cost of someone else delivering your standard, plus a list of services that still need a written methodology. - **Three questions before you stall or sell** _(15 minutes)_ _[speaker]_ 1. If you are tempted to stop growing, answer: Is the world expanding or contracting? Do my customers want more or less from me next year? Who are the one or two people I could not lose, and do they want a smaller or bigger future? 2. If you are tempted to sell, answer: If the problems driving this decision were solved, would I still sell? 3. If the answers point to 'keep going', write down the specific lessons the current complexity is trying to teach you, and pick one to learn this quarter. 4. If you still want to sell, you are at least selling for the right reasons. - **Finish with:** A clear yes or no on stalling or selling, and the lesson to learn if you stay. ## What to do — and how often - [ ] **Calculate your buyback rate (income plus SDE, divided by 2,000, divided by 4) and write it where you plan your week** — Once, this week; recalculate when your income changes _[once; editorial recommendation]_ - [ ] **Run the calendar audit prompt on the coming two weeks and apply the 4Ds, or have your chief of staff or assistant run it** — 'My chief of staff runs this every Friday' _[weekly; speaker-stated]_ - [ ] **Record yourself doing one hated task three times, generate the SOP and one-page checklist with AI, and hand it to a named owner** — 'Do that three times' per task; one new task transferred every two weeks _[monthly; editorial recommendation]_ - [ ] **Hire or assign an admin who fully owns your inbox and calendar, and give them direct access rather than forwarding** — Once, within 90 days _[once; editorial recommendation]_ - [ ] **Set up an AI inbox assistant that drafts replies in your voice from your last 30 days of email, leaves placeholders for unknown facts, and never auto-sends** — Once, this month, then use daily _[once; editorial recommendation]_ - [ ] **Hold a short daily review with your assistant where they bring only what they cannot handle** — Every morning, 'sixty, sometimes ninety minutes if it's a whole lot of stuff' _[daily; speaker-stated]_ - [ ] **Answer 'if I 10x'd my business, what breaks?' and pick the one constraint to remove yourself from this quarter** — Every quarter _[quarterly; editorial recommendation]_ - [ ] **Assign one person (not you) to wake up every day focused on traffic and campaigns, and to check that checkout buttons, links, and email campaigns still work** — 'Somebody else that wakes up every day and pushes distribution' _[daily; speaker-stated]_ - [ ] **Feed your most common sales objection to an AI, generate 17 responses, pick the best, and give it to whoever handles your DMs and calls** — Once, this week; repeat when a new objection appears _[once; editorial recommendation]_ - [ ] **Run your one-on-one or team-meeting transcript through the leadership X-ray prompt and note one thing to change next time** — 'Next time you do a one-on-one or any team meeting' _[weekly; speaker-stated]_ - [ ] **Write the outcome sentence and the 1-to-10 measurement checklist for one role on your team** — One role per month until every role has one _[monthly; editorial recommendation]_ - [ ] **Set a family safe word to verify any unusual phone request** — Once, this week _[once; editorial recommendation]_ - [ ] **Before briefing any physical, design, or creative job, generate a photorealistic rendering and share it with everyone involved** — Every time you commission work _[monthly; editorial recommendation]_ - [ ] **Make every client proposal hyper-personalised with their team, office, and branding using AI** — Every proposal _[weekly; editorial recommendation]_ - [ ] **Re-price one service as if someone else were delivering it to your standard, and write down the methodology it is based on** — Once, this quarter, then review annually _[quarterly; editorial recommendation]_ - [ ] **Wake up and commit to being 1% better toward the 10.0 version of yourself** — 'Every day, wake up to strive to be your 10.0 version of yourself' _[daily; speaker-stated]_ ## Questions to ask yourself - Is the world expanding or contracting, and do my customers want more or less from me next year? - Who are the one or two people I could not lose tomorrow, and do they want a smaller future or a bigger one? - If the problems making me want to quit or sell were solved, would I still want to sell? - What is my buyback rate, and which tasks did I do this week that someone could have done for less? - Who is the one person who shows up in every meeting that drains my energy? - Does my calendar reflect my goals, or does it reflect other people's requests? - If I 10x'd my business tomorrow, what breaks first? - Did I delegate my inbox, or do I still read everything and forward what I think my assistant should handle? - Which rung of the Replacement Ladder am I still standing on: admin, delivery, marketing, sales, or leadership? - In my last one-on-one, was I leading or was I telling? - Am I pricing this as if I deliver it, or as if someone else delivers it to my standard? - Who did I need most in my darkest days, and what would it take to become that person for someone else? ## Quotes > “How about just making a list of stop doing? That is the cheapest way to buy back your time.” — Dan Martell (intro video) (17:31:57 · Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt) > > From the sizzle reel played before he walked on stage: the fastest lever is subtraction, not addition. > “Here's what I learned a long time ago, you will not grow into pain.” — Dan Martell (17:37:46 · Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt) > > Introducing the pain line: why founders stall, sabotage, or sell when the calendar is already full. > “And we wanna say yes, but if that opportunity equals chaos in our calendar, we say no.” — Dan Martell (17:38:03 · Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt) > > How a full calendar quietly turns down growth. > “We hire people thinking we're gonna grow our business, have more time back, but then we end up babysitting people.” — Dan Martell (17:42:31 · Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt) > > Why hiring to grow fails, and why you should hire to buy back time instead. > “An empire is a life that you do not have to retire for.” — Dan Martell (17:50:09 · Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt) > > The Fill step: he is not a four-hour-work-week guy; buy back time to build, not to sit on a beach. > “You cannot build million dollar companies off $10 tasks.” — Dan Martell (17:52:00 · Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt) > > The uncomfortable math behind the buyback rate. > “Your inbox is a public to do list of strangers on your time.” — Dan Martell (17:57:11 · Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt) > > Why the admin rung means delegating the inbox, not filtering it. > “Here's what's crazy. Most of you are world-class sales people, but you suck at follow up.” — Dan Martell (18:04:15 · Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt) > > The sales rung: founders love the close and neglect the data entry and follow-up that AI can own. > “If you don't have one, you are one.” — Dan Martell (18:07:00 · Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt) > > Closing the Replacement Ladder: if you have no assistant, you are the assistant, and an overpaid one. > “That is what a leader does. If you do anything other than that, you're a manager.” — Dan Martell (18:13:16 · Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt) > > On coaching with a principle and a personal story rather than issuing instructions. > “Tell gets problems solved one off, training gets a whole bunch of people leveled up for a lot of problems.” — Dan Martell (18:14:38 · Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt) > > His company philosophy: we train and we don't tell. > “You're not selling you, you're not selling your time, you're not selling your presence, you're selling your standards.” — Dan Martell (18:15:41 · Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt) > > Why service businesses should price on methodology as if someone else delivers. > “Your biggest expense is not doing the thing that makes you the most money.” — Dan Martell (18:28:44 · Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt) > > Summing up the AI and robotics section: opportunity cost is the real line item. > “What I would love to feel in life is fulfillment.” — Dan Martell (18:29:29 · Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt) > > Closing: happiness is fleeting; fulfilment comes from striving for your 10.0 self and sharing what you learn. > “A better way to think about it, become the person you needed most in your darkest days.” — Dan Martell (18:30:11 · Ew2y3QNf5Q3QW6RmmDTt) > > His definition of the 10.0 version of yourself, drawn from his own years in juvenile detention and rehab. ## Watch-outs - Hiring to grow and then babysitting the hires, so you get neither growth nor time back. - Sitting on a big opportunity in your inbox for days out of self-doubt; the slot goes to someone else. - Selling the business to escape problems that could be solved; the next venture hits the same complexity ceiling. - Keeping an assistant but still filtering every email yourself and forwarding tasks, then concluding an assistant is 'no big deal'. - Treating $10 tasks as a badge of honour once your time is worth far more. - Buying back time and then failing to fill it with skills, habits, and beliefs, so the momentum never comes. - Stop-start marketing with nobody watching the funnel: promoting when empty, stopping when busy, and missing a checkout button turned the same colour as the background or a broken email link that costs 17 days of sales. - Loving the close and neglecting follow-up and data entry, so deals die after the first call. - Running transactional leadership (tell, check, tell) and teaching it to your managers, which replicates the 12 to 14 person cap through the company. - Pricing services based on you doing the work rather than on your standards delivered by someone else. - Having no family safe word when 12 seconds of audio is enough to clone your voice. --- Cole's Notes Vault 2026 — https://vault.chels.ai — built by chels.ai (https://chels.ai). Only stage content is published; quotes are verbatim from automatic transcripts with light punctuation. Speaker-stated cadence and editorial recommendations are labelled separately. Times are Eastern; Las Vegas was three hours earlier.