Audit the drag
Statement assembly, production summaries, meeting follow up, file hunts, and status chasing.
Find the repeated handwork.The Buyback Principle, applied to your practice
Buy back the hours.
Keep the judgment.
The systems are in place. The hours are still manual. Power Automate prepares the work inside your Microsoft 365 so your people can spend more time on clients, cases, and relationships.
01 Same team. Bigger book.02 Drafts only. A person sends.03 Inside your Microsoft 365.
What you are actually buying
Time back, with somewhere valuable to put it.
Dan Martell's Buyback Loop is simple: audit the work, transfer what does not need your unique ability, then deliberately fill the recovered time. Here is that loop for this round table.
Transfer the assembly
A flow reads your own sources, prepares the draft, and stops for a person inside your tenant.
Move the task, not the judgment.Fill with your best work
More households ready for review, faster case progress, stronger follow through, and more client conversations.
Reinvest the hour where it compounds.10%Your team sets the intent and rules.
80%The workflow assembles, checks, and prepares.
10%A person reviews, decides, and sends.
The book's 10–80–10 delegation pattern, adapted as an operating model, not a promised automation percentage.
The DRIP Matrix
Protect the work that creates energy and client value.
Every task has two costs: the time it consumes and the energy it takes. The first workflows should target repeatable work that drains both.
More energy →Invest Produce Delegate Replace More client value →
Energizing · lower immediate value
Mentoring, learning, and improving the client experience.
Schedule and protectEnergizing · highest client value
Advice, plan design, trust, referrals, and relationships.
Keep this humanDraining · repeatable
File hunts, tracker updates, reminders, and data assembly.
Automate firstDraining · still important
Recurring analysis packaging and complex prep assembly.
Standardize and assistFor advisors
More of the moments only you can own.
Less
Hunting context · packaging data · chasing status
More
Planning judgment · client trust · referrals · leadership
For the support bench
More work ready for clients, less assembly.
Less
Copying fields · building summaries · manual reminders
More
Review readiness · case progress · proactive client service
Run it on your numbers
What is an hour worth back?
The book's rule of thumb starts with your Effective Hourly Rate: annual economic value divided by 2,000. One quarter of that is the Buyback Rate.
Your assumptions
Uses 133 working days, a $45 loaded support rate, and assumes the workflows prepare 80% of the modeled assembly time. Change the sliders; nothing leaves this page.
Effective Hourly Rate
$300/hr$600.0K ÷ 2,000 hoursYour Buyback Rate
$75/hrEffective Hourly Rate ÷ 4What staying manual costs at these inputs$67.3K/yr1,496 hours × $45 loaded support rate
$5.6Keach month
$7.5Kper staff seat
$202.0Kover three years
1,197 hours prepared by the flow
299 hours retained for review
At these inputs, the selected stack’s highest modeled first year cost per hour is below your Buyback Rate. It clears the book’s first financial screen.
Capacity model, not a revenue or savings forecast. The working assumptions are confirmed against your own volume during the pilot.
The build
Start with the clearest buyback. Add only what earns its place.
Phase 1 creates the governed pattern inside your tenant. Each later module switches on independently when its own access or approval is ready.
Phase 1 · Four working workflows
A live, governed automation foundation.
A working pilot, not a strategy deck. We map your approved sources, field names, and review rules; build and test the flows; then install and document them in your Microsoft environment. Typically live in 2–3 weeks after provisioning.
Included in the fixed build
- Daily priorities digest delivered from approved sheets, files, and calendars
- Production summary draft generated from the workflow proven in discovery
- Review due list and outreach drafts prepared for human approval
- Searchable index built across approved files and notes
Fixed build$16k+ $2k / month
Phase 2 · Pick your stack
Turn modules on one at a time.
Meeting summary follow upDrafts a client follow up and updates your own Excel tracker, never the CRM.Two items to confirmScopedpriced after connector, consent, and retention review
Typical rollout after each gate clears
Start now. Add in parallel.
These are build estimates, not fixed dates. Each module starts when its own requirement is ready, so the longest approval does not hold up the rest.
Deployment, licensing, and portability
How Phase 1 gets built and installed.
The workflows are built with sample data, installed in your approved Microsoft environment, and connected to client controlled accounts only after your team authorizes access.
Build with sample data
Live client records are not used unless you separately approve it.
Package and version
Use a Power Platform solution where the client environment supports it.
Connect approved accounts
Your team authorizes client controlled connections inside the tenant.
Test with your team
Draft output, access limits, and failure handling are checked.
Approve and launch
Your team approves the release and receives a restore path.
Architecture map, connection matrix, configuration list, test record, release notes, and handoff guide.
A solution package is used when Dataverse and solution aware flows are available. Otherwise, the same approved logic is built directly in the client environment.
Production runs in your approved Microsoft environment using access your team can grant, limit, audit, and revoke.
What we need from you
Five items provision the pilot.
- A named vendor or guest account with maker access
- A client controlled automation identity approved by IT
- CRM and Dynamics read scope, with no write access
- YCharts API credentials for its custom connector
- Compliance approval for DocuSign and meeting recordings
Stated plainly
What the pilot will not do.
- No desktop automation or process mining. Both may require separate licensing.
- No claim that paper notes are searchable until they are digitized. The starter index is keyword retrieval.
- No admin level work. Licensing and privileged settings stay with your own team.
Built for this building
The guardrails are the design.
Buying back time never means buying away supervision. The flow prepares; your people retain the decision.
In your tenant
Microsoft 365 only. Your identity, data, and audit trail.
Drafts only
Nothing sends until a person reviews and sends it.
Read access only
No writes into the CRM or any Northwestern Mutual system.
No trades. Ever.
The pilot never places or executes a trade.
Gated by your team
IT and compliance clear each later module before it starts.
You control the environment
Your service account, data, credentials, and revocable access.
Work uses a named vendor account with the minimum access your team approves. Actions remain in your audit trail, and sample data is used before a live client record is introduced.
Access is limited to the engagement and revocable by you.Drafts stay in your mailbox. Any index or tracker stays in your SharePoint or Excel, inside the retention and archiving your firm already applies to Microsoft 365.
No separate recordkeeping system is introduced.Your data, tenant, credentials, drafts, and documentation remain yours. Stanford Systems retains its reusable automation framework and licenses it to the practice during the active subscription.
A separately quoted perpetual conversion can make the use license permanent.The decision
Build it once, or keep renting the manual work every year.
The pilot does not promise fewer people. It gives the same people more room to carry the work that grows and protects the practice.
Greenlight Phase 1 2–3 weeks after provisioning
Then $3.5k/month for the license and managed care.
vs
At the assumptions currently selected in the model.
The right to use the Stanford Systems automation framework for one practice, plus monitoring, fixes, minor iterations, updates, and a monthly view of the capacity prepared in your tenant. Each additional practice is $5,000 to activate and $1,250 per month.
The build is typically half at the start and half on delivery. The subscription begins at launch with a 12 month initial term. Microsoft, DocuSign, YCharts, and other platform licenses are separate.
Support and updates stop, vendor access is removed, and the use license expires at the end of the term. The practice keeps its data, records, drafts, and documentation, but must stop running the licensed automation unless it renews or purchases a separately quoted perpetual conversion.
The next step is simple
Give your team the hours back.
Keep every decision human.
A contained pilot removes the assembly work while your people keep every decision, approval, and send. We sign a short engagement, your team provisions a named vendor account, and the first buyback loop begins.
1 Green light→2 Provision→3 Build & prove