You can’t buy more time. But you can stop selling it cheaply. Most small business owners say yes to every meeting, handle every customer issue, and spend hours on work someone else could do for $10/hour. Then they wonder why three years in, they’re working harder than ever, and revenue growth has plateaued.
Every hour you spend on low-value work is an hour you can’t spend on decisions that multiply. Every task you refuse to delegate is a bet that your time is worth less than the cost of replacing yourself. Dan Martell: Time is the only asset you can’t manufacture more of. Chris Voss would say you’re negotiating against yourself every time you choose busy over strategic.
Your time isn’t priceless because it’s worth infinite money. It’s priceless because once it’s gone, you never get it back!
The Real Value
Calculate what your time is worth: Target annual income ÷ 2,000 hours.
Want $200K? Your time is worth $100/hour.
Want $500K? Your time is worth $250/hour.
Want $1M? Your time is worth $500/hour.
Now audit last week. How many hours did you spend on work that someone could do for $10–$25/hour? If the answer is more than 10 hours, you just found out where your growth is dying.
You’re not working 60-hour weeks because the business demands it. You’re doing $25/hour work at $100+/hour capacity. The math doesn’t scale. Neither does your business.
The Time Tax
Every hour on the wrong work compounds against you:
Opportunity cost: That hour could have closed a deal, built a partnership, or designed systems. You traded leverage for execution.
Energy drain: Low-value work depletes you. By the time you get to strategic work, you’re too tired.
Signal to your team: Every time you handle work someone else should own, you’re teaching them they don’t solve problems.
20 hours per week at $25/hour = $40K–$80K in opportunity cost per year. The real cost is what didn’t get built.
The Three Categories
- High-Value: Strategic decisions. Building systems. Closing key deals, creating leverage. This is where you multiply the business.
- Medium-Value: Managing projects. Coaching team. Solving complex problems. Important but delegatable.
- Low-Value: Emails. Scheduling. Data entry. Admin. Anyone can do this.
Elite founders spend 70–80% of their time on high-value work. Average founders spend 70–80% of their time on low-value work.
The shift: ruthlessly protect high-value time and systematically eliminate low-value work.
The Buyback Formula
- Calculate your hourly rate
- Audit your time for one week
- Identify work below your rate that drains energy
- Calculate ROI: VA at $7/hour freeing 20 hours of your $100/hour time = 14x return
- Buy it back. Hire, delegate, automate, or eliminate
Most people stop at step 4. They understand but don’t execute them. That’s the difference between knowing you should scale and actually scaling.
The Permission Problem
You’re waiting for permission to value your time correctly.
Waiting until the business is “big enough.” Waiting until you “can afford it.” Waiting for “the perfect person.”
Stop. You’re not saving money by doing everything yourself. You’re capping growth at your personal capacity.
A VA at $5–$7/hour for 20 hours per week costs $400–$560/month. If you won’t spend that to buy back 20 hours, you’re saying your time is worth less than $7/hour.
If your time is worth less than $7/hour, you don’t have a business. You have an expensive hobby.
Voss: Walk away from bad deals. Every hour on low-value work is a bad deal.
The Delegation Math
Most founders resist because no one else can do it as well.
They’re right. It doesn’t matter.
Someone else at 80% quality while you focus on strategic work beats you at 100% while neglecting strategy.
The math: 80% done by someone at $7/hour + you close a $50K deal = growth. 100% done by you + no time for strategy = stagnation.
Delegation isn’t lowering standards. It’s raising the bar on what you spend time on.
The Compound Effect
Months 1–3: Training. Building systems. Documenting. Feels slower. Most quit here.
Months 4–6: Tasks done without you. Less firefighting. More strategy.
Months 7–12: Leverage kicks in. Fewer hours on execution. More on what compounds. Growth accelerates.
Year 2+: Business runs without you day-to-day. Your time is strategic decisions and building leverage.
Most founders never make it past Month 3 because being inefficient temporarily feels worse than being busy permanently.
Warning Signs
- Can’t take two weeks off without everything falling apart
- The calendar is complete, but revenue hasn’t moved
- Working more hours than last year, making the same money
- Strategic projects keep getting pushed
- Constantly firefighting
- Team checks with you before making any decision
- You pride yourself on hours worked, not what you accomplished
These are signs you’re trapped in low-value work and calling it productivity.
The Shift
From “How many hours can I work?” to “What’s the highest-value use of each hour?”
From “I should do this because I can do it well” to “I should delegate because someone else can do it well enough.”
From “I’m too busy to train someone” to “I’m too valuable not to train someone.”
Elite founders optimize leverage, not activity.
Start Today
Calculate your hourly rate.
Audit last week. What could someone else have handled?
Pick one recurring task that drains you.
Document it. Record yourself. Build the checklist.
Delegate it. VA, team members, or automate.
Use recovered time for something only you can do. Close a deal. Build a partnership. Design a system.
Repeat monthly. After a year, your calendar and your business look completely different.
The Truth
Your time is the only resource you can’t get more of. Every hour on the job that someone else could do for $10/hour is an hour you’ll never get back. An hour you can’t spend with family. An hour you can’t devote to building leverage. Five years from now: either a business that values your time correctly, or still grinding, wondering why success feels hard.
The difference is the decisions you make today about how you spend your time. Stop selling your time cheaply. Start treating it like the finite, irreplaceable asset it is.
That’s not laziness. That’s leverage!