You’re Running a Company.
So Why Are You Still Booking Your Own Flights?
A note for founders, CEOs, and decision-makers who are too busy being busy.
It’s 10:47 PM.
Your family went to bed two hours ago. The rest of the world has, too.
But you’re still here — toggling between browser tabs, trying to find a flight that gets you into Chicago before 8 AM for a meeting that could change the trajectory of your company. Not the strategy for the meeting. Not the pitch. Not the vision.
The flight.
“The most expensive thing you own is your attention. And right now, it’s being spent on a task worth $12 an hour.”
Sound familiar?
If you’re a founder or executive, there’s a version of this story playing out in your life every single day. Maybe it’s not flights. Maybe it’s sorting through 300 unread emails to find the one that actually matters. Or chasing down a supplier to confirm a delivery. Or trying to remember to send a birthday gift to a client before it’s too late.
Small tasks. Constant friction. And quietly, invisibly, they are stealing the most finite resource you have.
Your best thinking.
The Trap No One Warns You About
When you started building your business, you did everything yourself. You had to. There was no one else, and the scrappiness was part of the identity. You were proud of it.
But at some point — and this is the trap — the business grew, and you didn’t let go.
You kept answering every email. Kept managing every calendar conflict. Kept arranging every business trip, every team dinner, every vendor call. And because you’re capable, because you’re efficient, because no one else does it “exactly right,” you convinced yourself it wasn’t a big deal.
But here’s what it’s actually costing you.
Dan Martell, in his transformative book Buy Back Your Time, introduces a concept that will reframe the way you think about your calendar forever. He calls it your “Buyback Rate” — a simple calculation that asks: what is your true hourly value to this business?
For most founders and executives, that number is somewhere between $500 and $10,000 per hour when you are operating at your highest level: making decisions, building relationships, thinking strategically, and driving vision.
“The question is never “Can I do this task?” The question is “Should I be the one doing this task?””
When you spend an hour booking travel, you’re not saving $15 in agency fees. You’re trading $1,000 of irreplaceable executive capacity for a task that, by definition, does not require you.
The Inventory You’ve Never Done
Here’s an exercise that will stop you mid-scroll: write down every task you personally handled in the last 72 hours. Not just work. Everything.
Most founders, when they do this honestly, are shocked by the list. It tends to look something like this:
PROFESSIONAL TASKS
- Inbox management — triaging hundreds of emails, unsubscribing, chasing replies
- Calendar wrangling — scheduling, rescheduling, sending reminders, resolving conflicts
- Travel coordination — flights, hotels, transfers, itinerary changes at midnight
- Vendor follow-ups — confirming deliveries, approving invoices, chasing responses
- Research — pulling competitor data, summarising articles, prepping meeting notes
- Reporting admin — formatting slide decks, updating trackers, compiling summaries
PERSONAL TASKS
- Order placement & tracking — online shopping, monitoring deliveries, handling returns
- Gifting — birthdays, client appreciation, team recognition — sourcing, ordering, sending
- Appointments & bookings — restaurants, travel insurance, personal scheduling
- Household coordination — subscriptions, service calls, managing logistics
Now ask yourself honestly: how many of these tasks require your unique knowledge, judgment, or authority?
Maybe three. On a generous day.
The rest? They require competence, attention, and a good brief. They do not require you.
“Stop doing $10 tasks with $10,000 thinking. — Dan Martell”
What Delegation Really Means
There’s a reason most executives resist true delegation, and it isn’t laziness or arrogance. It’s fear. Fear that things will fall through the cracks. Fear that their standard won’t be met. Fear that briefing someone will take longer than just doing it themselves.
Dan Martell addresses this directly. The solution isn’t just hiring help. It’s finding someone who can learn your world deeply enough to act as an extension of you — not a task-doer, but a stage-setter.
Think of it this way: the greatest performers in history didn’t carry their own equipment. They focused entirely on the performance.
That’s what the right support looks like at the executive level. It’s not about outsourcing random tasks to a stranger. It’s about building a trusted, trained partner who knows your preferences, your priorities, your communication style, and your standards — and who uses that knowledge to clear your path every single day.
When your inbox is pre-sorted and the urgent items are flagged before you open your laptop, you don’t just save time. You show up to your day differently.
When your travel is handled end-to-end — flights researched against your preferences, hotels booked, itinerary confirmed, contingencies noted — your mental bandwidth is entirely free for the conversation that happens at the destination.
When a thoughtful gift arrives for a client’s milestone because someone who knows your relationships took care of it, you build connection without cognitive load.
The stage is set. You walk out and perform.
The DRIP Matrix: Knowing What to Let Go
In Buy Back Your Time, Martell offers another powerful tool: the DRIP Matrix, a framework for categorising your tasks by the energy they demand and the revenue or impact they generate.
The four quadrants are:
- Delete — Tasks that create no value and drain your energy. Just stop.
- Replace — Tasks you’re doing but that could be handled by someone else to the same standard.
- Invest — Tasks where your involvement multiplies the outcome. Spend more time here.
- Produce — Your highest-leverage work — vision, relationships, decisions, growth.
Most founders discover they are spending 60 to 80 percent of their week in the Replace quadrant: doing tasks that matter, but don’t require them. Tasks that, with a properly briefed partner, would run without them.
“You don’t need to work harder. You need to work in the right quadrant.”
The moment you start systematically buying back the hours lost to Replace tasks — and redirecting that energy to Produce work — the trajectory of your business changes. So does your life.
An Extension of You, Not Just Extra Help
This is the distinction that separates a true executive support model from a generic virtual assistant service.
The right remote partner isn’t someone you hand tasks to. They’re someone who understands your world well enough to anticipate it. Who manages your inbox not just by responding, but by understanding what matters and what doesn’t. Who arranges your calendar knowing that you need buffer time before big calls, and don’t do back-to-back afternoons. Who handles the personal and the professional with equal attentiveness because, at the executive level, both directly affect your performance.
Companies like My Global Talent are built around exactly this premise — placing dedicated remote partners who are trained to support executives not just operationally, but holistically. The goal is not to give a founder a task-list reducer. It’s to give them back the mental space and daily flow to lead at the level their business demands.
Because the best executives aren’t the ones who do the most. They’re the ones who protect their energy for the decisions only they can make.
The Question Worth Sitting With
If you’re honest with yourself, how many hours last week did you spend below your Buyback Rate?
How many decisions didn’t get made because your day was full of tasks that didn’t need you?
How many conversations didn’t happen because your calendar was a mess? How many relationships went untended because the gifts didn’t go out, the emails didn’t get answered, the follow-ups got lost?
The most successful executives aren’t the ones working the longest hours. They’re the ones who have mastered the discipline of doing only what they can do.
Dan Martell puts it plainly: “Don’t hire to grow your business. Hire to buy back your time.” Because when you do, the business grows anyway — faster and more sustainably — because the person at the helm is finally operating at full capacity.
The flights will still get booked. The inbox will still be managed. The gifts will still arrive on time.
But it won’t be you doing it.
And that’s exactly how it should be.
About My Global Talent
My Global Talent specialises in placing dedicated remote partners who support founders and executives across both their professional and personal lives. From inbox and calendar management to travel coordination, personal errands, gifting, and beyond — every placement is built around one goal: giving leaders the time and mental clarity to lead at their best.
Explore how a dedicated remote partner could support you at myglobaltalent.com.