Still Running Your Business? That’s the Problem and Here’s How to Fix It with George Rivera

What if the problem in your business… is you?

In this episode of Tech Diva Biz Talks, Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins sits down with George Rivera, creator of the Father-First Owner OS™, to unpack why so many successful founders are stuck working in their business instead of leading it.

George shares how 7-, 8-, and 9-figure entrepreneurs are unknowingly bottlenecking their own growth—and what it really takes to buy back 10–20 hours a week without sacrificing profits.

From the powerful $10K/Hour Filter to the eye-opening Two-Week Vacation Test, this conversation is a masterclass in reclaiming your time, your leadership, and your life.

You’ll learn how to:
 ✔️ Delegate outcomes instead of tasks (and stop taking the work back)
 ✔️ Eliminate key-person dependency in your business
 ✔️ Install systems that create consistency and freedom
 ✔️ Use AI as a true efficiency multiplier—not a distraction
 ✔️ Build a business that runs without you at the center

This episode is more than strategy—it’s a mindset shift.

Because at the end of the day, success isn’t just about scaling revenue… it’s about not missing what matters most.

🔗 Learn More or Work with George Rivera

Ready to buy back your time and scale smarter?

🌐 Website: buybacktimeformula.com
📘 Buy Back Time Formula: buybacktimeformula.com/book
💼 Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-rivera-53b3296/

🎧 Tune in, take notes, and start buying your time back.

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Tech Diva Biz Talks, where we tune in, dive deep, and level up. I'm your host, Audrey Wiggins, aka the Tech Diva, brand strategist, marketing mind, and your guide through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. Let's talk tech. Hello, Tech Diva Nation. Welcome again to the podcast. And we are here today with George Rivera. George helps seven, eight, and nine-figure founders buy back 10 to 20 hours a week. We can just get back five, but we'll be we'd be happy. But that's that's amazing. Okay, while scaling profits, that's the key right there, without becoming the bottleneck in their own companies. He's the creator of the father first owner OS and author of the Buy Back Time formula. George's mission is deeply personal. He watched his own father miss a countless games and later regret it. Before passing, his father gave him one piece of advice don't miss Leo's games. Now you can, you know, replace that, replace Leo with the name that you need to have in there. But after years of grinding through 80-hour weeks and repeating the same cycle, George rebuilt his companies using a simple philosophy: businesses should run without requiring the founder to sacrifice their life. He now teaches the three layers that transform his world: people who own outcomes, systems that create consistency, and AI that multiplies efficiency. The foundation of his 10K per hour filtered. On today's show, George will share how to eliminate key person dependency, delegate outcomes instead of tasks, and pass the famed two-week vacation test because at the end of the day, no one ever says, I'm glad I skipped my kids' game for a client meeting. George Rivera, welcome to TechD with Biz Talks. Audrey, thank you. It's so nice to be here. Absolutely. It's great to have you here and look forward to you helping us out here because we need a break. As we go forward, what is one personal fun fact that you would like to share with us?

Fun Facts And Real Estate Lesson

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Okay, a personal fun fact. I love basketball of San Antonio Spurs, the NBA. That's my team. And you know, they they've had uh over the last 25 years or so, five championships, you know, who's counting. But the last few years have been a little rough, but we're on our way back. So yeah, kind of a diehard Spurs fan. So for my Spurs fans out there.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Okay. Yeah, there's another one that I think is pretty cool about your son and then the real estate.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Absolutely, yeah. So fun fact, too, that we do is I taught him how to negotiate real estate at eight years old. And and you know, eight years old, you don't really you know have this foundation, but I'm like, we're gonna throw him in there right now and see what happens. So we're looking at these exactly. So we're up in in northern Michigan, just like my background on the lake. We got a couple properties on the lake that we've purchased, and we were we were looking at the house, and you know, the realtor will give you a few minutes with your family to sort of just talking amongst yourselves and all kind of be in the kitchen. And and so we're outside, and and I'm thinking, oh, this is a teachable moment for my son. And and we homeschool our son, so he gets to travel with us in our crazy adventures. I told my son, all right, here's here's the price. You're gonna tell the realtor the price that we want to pay. So this is the offer we're gonna make. Tell him to leave the furniture. Cause in my head, I'm like, because that'll save us$30,000 because this is gonna be an Airbnb, and then see the doc over there, that's fifty thousand dollars. Tell him we gotta leave that there as well. So I'm like, saving 80 grand plus the discount of the offer price, probably saving around a hundred thousand dollars. Like, go go tell the realtor that. And he's like, Why? And I was like, we'll debrief later, just go tell him. And uh, yeah, we ended up getting the property. And later I told my son, that's that's how you you would you explain it. Like, you know, the when they make uh a price that publicly, it's here, really. They want here, and so we have to go here so we can figure out where that middle number is. By the time it's his turn to start buying properties, he'll take his little ones along for the adventure.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Wow, absolutely. That's fantastic. I love that because we can learn from an eight-year-old, right? Because you're you're putting in the the right information, and price, oh my goodness, is always the the pet peeve or this this you know the monster in the room for for business owners.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Yeah.

The 10K Per Hour Filter

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Oh goodness. Yeah, so we're gonna take a quick break and we're gonna come back and get some juicy questions going here so we can learn from you. Did you know? 99% of people check their email every day, up to 20 times a day. It's the first thing people do online, even before looking at social media or other news. But viewers retain only 10% of what they read, adding video to email, the retention skyrockets to 95%. Video plus email equals success. It's time. The future of email is here. Goodbye, email. Hello, video email. Ready to ride the wave? Visit all together.popfusion.com. We are back with George Rivera. George, are you ready? I'm ready. Okay, first up, the 10K per hour filter. You teach founders to operate at their highest value using your your 10k per hour filter. What is it and what's one shift a founder can make this week that immediately reclaims hours back?

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Yeah, a good question. So the 10K per hour filter is just basically a dollar amount that you put on your time. For for me, I realized it was 10K. For others, it might be it could be$500, could be a thousand, could be more, could be less. But you have to establish a dollar value for what your time is worth. And even before doing that, you do what's called a freedom audit and you you write down everything you do for like, I recommend two weeks. I think you're gonna get real clarity. That's everything from going to the bathroom, brushing your teeth, making food to doing the work that you do. You won't even need two weeks, but I think two weeks gives you a great snapshot. But in like three days, you're gonna start to see things like, oh my goodness, I'm spending a lot of time over here. And so once you identify those things, you you sort of put it through a filter of like, should I be doing this? And if the answer is no, kind of move it to the side because you, as a business owner, should be doing the highest strategic level stuff that moves the needle for your business, which is bringing in revenue, creating strategic relationships. And of course, every business is different, so you'll have specific things for your industry. But there's a number of things that every business owner, including myself, would do that we should not be doing. And so you take those things that you shouldn't be doing, and then you kind of run it against your whatever your dollar value is. Like it's just pick$500, for example, and then you're like, oh my gosh, I'm spending 40 hours a week on things that are worth less than you know, say$50 an hour. And so that's kind of the low-hanging fruit of things that you can get off your plate. And once you identify those things that you you shouldn't be doing, there's three ways to get them off your plate. And I can go into that now, or or no, go ahead, because actually that was going to be a follow-up question. So fire away. Absolutely. Yeah. So it all kind of blends together. And so there's three things you can do. It's either eliminate, which things like, for example, recurring meetings. It's like, do we really need to be on here? This meeting could have been handled in an email in like less than five minutes, and could have like and now with AI, you've got those AI note takers that'll jump in for you. So that's been a really, really big time saver. And then the other one automates. There's so many things that we're doing that we don't need to be doing anymore. For example, like you know, having like like forwarding certain emails. Like I used to have all these emails from vendors and creative partners and just different departments come to me, and then I'm manually forwarding it to the people on my team that need to have it. That creates first, I'm the bottleneck, so like it, you know, I gotta be present to do that. And if I want to have a life, you know, it's hard to be spinning plates. And then the other thing is uh there's that room for human error too. Like, oh, I'm sending the to the shipping department an invoice that should have gone to accounting, so like that happens on occasion, and of course, there's ramifications for that. And so when you can set up your filters to sort of like start going in the right direction, automation hands-free, that that obviously saves time, creates more efficiency, and things get done without falling through the cracks. And then the last thing is delegation, and and so I kind of to back up a little bit, you know, kind of the old me. So I'm up here and I had the worst org chart in human history. I had 40 people beneath me in one row, so you can imagine oh wow, everybody's like coming back up to me. I a problem would come up, I would just hire for it, and then here, solve that. And but I never really like properly explained the task, I just assumed that they sort of knew. So I would have said, Hey, I'm delegating, but it's not working and kept boomerang, boomeranging back to me. And the thing is, tasks boomerang back to you if you don't transfer proper ownership of the task. You need to delegate with true ownership, you need to show them how the task is done, what the success looked like. And there's so many tools now with AI, and and you know, you put it on a Google Doc, you'd have ChatGPT explain for you exactly like how to do it. So we can leverage AI to uh to systematize these things. What I love to do is create like a Loom video or you know, use a screen recording software to sort of explain the task, and then you take the transcript, you put it in ChatGPT, you say, make me a nice SOP standard operating procedure out of this, you know, step by step, it'll produce it so beautiful for you. You copy that, put it on a Google Doc, accompany it with the Loom video. Here you go. Take 10 minutes, watch that. Let me know what questions you have. Okay, we're good, we're good. I should never hear about that again until like technology changes or we're changing vendors or something in that instruction changes foundationally. But it's it's off my plate. I don't want to see it again. That's why I'm paying you to handle it. You just confirmed that you're good with it. So that's how you transfer ownership and you give them the ability to improve upon it as well. So if you're hiring them to do a specific task or a group of tasks, you're obviously hiring somebody you believe is capable of doing it, give them the freedom to even improve the process, and that's how you remove yourself from being the bottleneck and run more efficiently.

Father First Story And Rome Call

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Yeah, absolutely. And then for you know, for a solopreneur that may hire a VA or or you know, a contract employee, that this would be perfect. Absolutely operating um standards. Yeah, this is this is awesome. All right, so father first owner OS. Break down the father first owner OS and how does this framework actually make a company run without the founder becoming the bottom of the gun? Technically, I think you really, you know, or the the um burnout case, you really answer that. So I don't know if you want to expand on it or or not.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Yeah. I could go briefly in kind of how the whole father theme came about. Um it kind of goes back to the beginning, talking late uh 80s, early 90s. So I'm in like you know, middle school, high school in this time frame. And I played basketball in in high school, in middle school, and there were about 40 games that I played in. And you know, my dad only went to one of those games, and uh, you know, he was a good guy, busy in his career, he was a medical doctor, and you know, all about just doing well to the world, but he was kind of missing at home quite a bit. It's just one of those like you can't do both, uh, it seems, and that's how I was taught early on. And so I remember I'd score a basket or make a good path or even like step out of bounds, and and I'm looking to the stands, you know, just to see if if there's a dad there appreciating me or encouraging me, hey, I stepped out of bounds, dad. Am I still good? Yes, you are. Go get them, son. Like, sons need that, sons need approval from the dad. And so I didn't have that. And I remember one of my friends and teammates, they would score, and their dads were going wild for them, you know, adoring their son. Uh, high fives, uh, here's your Gatorade during timeouts and stuff. And and I remember looking at a dad just like loving on his kid after a good play, and I was like, I wish he was my dad. And that would have completely crushed my dad here and that. Again, he was a good guy and a great provider. Like, you know, he was top of his field. We always had nice homes and cars and trips to Europe. I had the coolest toys, so like you get to hang out with George, you get to hang out with his toys too, and that was part of my identity. That's what I brought to the table. And so all that stuff didn't matter when I needed him the most. You know, I needed him to be there to see me and essentially like approve of me. And so, fast forward 20 years, so now this is 10 years ago to 2015, and you know, my dad's entering his 40th year of his medical practice, and he's gearing up for the for the last third of his life. He's 67. My my grandparents, his parents had passed away a couple years prior in their mid 90s, really healthy and good. They just kind of like the old age kind of thing. And I'm like, hey, drive me up for that. Like, if I can go in my sleep, and then really close with my my spouse because you know, the heartbroken thing, like they went quickly after one another. And and so he's thinking, hey, good genes, I got some longevity, but then early in the year he was diagnosed with with terminal cancer, and so it's uh interesting how you can get thrown a curveball in life. And he was given six to nine months to live, and and we made you know great, you know, relationship, just healing from the past and and all that stuff. He made his peace with the Lord, and yeah, so all's good in in that sense, but yeah, towards the end of his his life in the last couple of weeks, and and we're literally like this month is is the 10-year anniversary of his passing. And um, he told me that like what you said in the intro, don't miss Leo's games, I miss too many of yours. And when he told me that, I was like, holy cow! Like those emotions of of me middle school, high school missing those games just bubbled up. I thought I suppressed that, I thought I'd never see that again. Honestly, it was just like lung lost. I didn't even know where I parked that, but it just came back, and I was like, wow, and there's a sense of sweet closure to that. Like at the time, I'm thinking, is work more important than me? Where's my dad? Confusion, and and to just know that that pained him to some degree sort of was like sweet closure I never asked for, but I'm thankful for that. And then the other thing is, oh my goodness, I am my dad all over again. And you know, at the time he's telling me this, I'm like, I'm giving my family great homes and cars and trips to Europe, and and you would have seen me a couple years prior, high five, and my dad, like, dad, you taught me how to work. This it's all about hustle, it's all about, you know, hey, if if if I'm gonna be successful, I can't be at home, but that's okay because that's how you taught me, Dad. And I could always tell that he was a little bit like, you know, son, and you know, ain't all that it's cracked up to be, you know, that that but he didn't really say it, but I could see it in his face. But when he told me that the the don't miss Leo's games, we missed too many of mine, he essentially like lovingly agitated inside of me that I can't continue this because my son Leo at the time was 10 months old, and I'm already missing a lot of first firsts, like he's starting to walk and starting to communicate, and his personality's coming through, and and I'm getting glimpses because I'm just working and putting out fires, and and so yeah, my dad lovingly agitated inside of me. I can't keep going on, but I'm working 16, 18 hour days as I'm hearing this message and I believe in it, but I'm like, who's gonna do all the important stuff that only I can do? My business needs me. And and yeah, try to reverse the lifestyle back doesn't really work that well. You know, once the family's used to something, it's kind of like it's just something. I mean, if you have to do it, you have to do it, but yeah, it's not a pleasant thing to do. And so I went another two or three years, he he'd passed away, and so two or three years later, we're talking 2018. I'd scale the business to 20 million dollars that year. And had you told me that years prior, I'd be like, I made it to the summit. I made$20 million, like I'm on top of the world. But uh, and I had a money printer spitting out money on demand, pressing a button because I was in direct response marketing, and it's just like, how much can you spend? As long as you got a profitable campaign, that's how much you can make. And it was like limitless, it felt how much money I could spend. But I was literally scaling chaos because I didn't have frameworks in place, so I was like scaling the insanity along with it, and my dependency got bigger and bigger, and and I was being the hero to my business solving fires and problems. But my family is the one that needed the hero at home, and I was completely missing an action in that sense, and this all kind of like boiled up to this one summer in in 2018, August. I call it the Rome call. So I email my my coach and my mentor, and I'm like, man, there's some days that I just hate this business, and I don't say the word hate that much. If I say it, it's like visceral feeling of hate and disgust and anger. And so and I fired off, and and you know, I just had to vent. And the reason I sent that email is because he was in Rome with his family for for like a week. And I'm like, hit me back when you're back in the States, but I just need to get this off my chest. And and I felt a sense of relief to vent, and I'm like, all right, back to the grind until I pass out, you know, but with a little bit of a renewed sense because I you know no longer as stressed until later tonight, of course. But then he calls me 20 minutes later. I'm like, oh man, I thought you're in Rome. Yeah, I'm in Rome, but I got your email, and this is like an SOS call. Like, you need you we need an intervention right now. And I'm like, oh, okay. And and so it was a two-hour conversation. It's like almost midnight in Rome and it's afternoon here in the States, and so grateful for my, you know, now he's my dear friend who who kind of came in and and it almost like saved me from this madness. And long story short, from a two-hour conversation was you need to quit doing the things you don't like to do and only do the things you like to do. And I'm just like, 23 years in business, and and this finally clicked. I was like, I guess, I guess better late than never. And so that phone call set the foundation for for what I call now the buyback time formula. Didn't have the name then, but that's when I started to value my time, audit my time, and see what I could take off of my plate. And then the true transformation occurred three years later. So I took the business from$20 million to just shy of$50 million, more than double. But I went from working like 80-hour weeks sometimes to never working more than 30 hours a week. And I was actually living a lifestyle of of like semi-retirement. I'd be off the grid for like weeks at a time. Like you mentioned, the two-week absence test earlier. So like I passed that, I passed like a two-month absence test. And you know, fires still come up, but other people put them out. It doesn't have to be me anymore. The frameworks take take the heavy lifting off of my shoulders, and so that was the pinnacle of the transformation. That's when I was buying real estate with my son and and just really pouring in at my son. I never missed any of his games, like my dad, you know, advised me not to. And yeah, and so that's it. And so over the last say three, four years, I've had a number of friends and peers in different groups and different networks. It's not like they talk to each other or conspire. Let's call George and tell him this idea. But I just keep hearing, like, you gotta teach this stuff, you gotta teach people how you're able to do this. I'm like, teach them what? And and like you're traveling, you're you're you're investing in other businesses, you got passive income, you're making money from your main thing, and and you're just like living this great life, you're not missing family moments. And I'm like, okay, that's cool. So what do I do? Teach how to travel, teach how to be with your family. And and I just I couldn't piece it together until the last six, seven months. This whole idea, this concept of buying back time from your business, remove yourself from the business, and then you can do whatever you want with that time. But I'm a family first, father first guy. So I'm gonna resonate with the me of 10 years ago, which is cash rich time poor. Cash rich means you're making lots of money, time poor means your family gets none of your time, business gets all the time. And so I know there's men out there that need to hear this message, and and hey, you couldn't have your cake and eat it too. Because the biggest fear is that if I if I, you know, pull off, you know, step off the gas from my business, it's gonna collapse. And that's like the biggest lie in the whole world. It'll collapse if you do nothing, but if you implement proper frameworks that have been proven and stand the test of time and delegate properly, not the way that I used to, but the way that I do now, and you can be confident that that those frameworks will hold up your business instead of you propping it up on your back, the frameworks will hold it up. And then my my you know, my passion, my desire is to help men realize that your kids need you, they need the presence of a man in the child's life is so important. And so this is about bringing the dad back home, saving the family. My dad lost his family, you know, kind of like working and living this lifestyle. I was on pace to lose my family. I've seen where the movie ends. I didn't like the ending, and so I made the decision that hey, um, this has to change. And that call, that Rome call in 2018 was sort of like the the beginning of that change. And uh I survived to tell about it. Now I just want to tell other people that there's another way.

The Two Week Vacation Test

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Absolutely. That is that is awesome, and we we all need to hear that. And and you know, for me, I don't have a spouse or kids, but at the same time, you know, I need to to rest and need to go run. Well, I'm not gonna run, you know, walk around the block and you know, go go get a manicure panic. Absolutely. Or like you're talking about, you know, doing this travel thing. So, you know, beginning to to add that to, you know, not just a bucket list, but into the the activities because it's just crazy that that, you know, what we do. And like you said, we think we we have to be there. And I like how you you talk about, like I was reading, you know, through some of your stuff there about delegating the outcomes and not just a task. So people get you know real ownership of what it, you know, of what it is that they're expected to do, and that really takes you out of the loop. And because if it's just a task and then they're just coming back to you, and you're still too, you know, we could still be too hands on. Sponsored by All Together Domains, bringing your business online, whether you are launching a new venture or leveling up your brand, all together domains.com helps you secure your digital real estate the smart way. Visit all togetherdomains.com. So can you explain a little bit more about the two-week vacation test? Like you had meant just mentioned that a moment ago. I don't think that's important too.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Absolutely. So like like at the highest level, and this is what I do, and and it's in my book and when I work with clients directly too, like on our onboarding call, you know, we talk about the two-week vacation test. And sometimes I can just feel it. And you know, we're on a Zoom call and I can kind of like see it, like, oh my gosh, this two-week test. Like, I can't even take an hour off. How are we gonna take two weeks off? And if that is how you feel when you hear it, great, you need this. You need this even more if it's like making you a little nervous and anxious. So, my goal is like within six months, we're gonna book a two-week vacation test. And if they freak out too much, I'm like, hey, make it a week, but it's gotta be significant to where it really counts for something. And we're gonna invest in it. We're gonna buy the tickets, we're gonna see like, and we're gonna see like if if you've got a family, where do they want to go that you haven't taken them because work has been like keeping you like a ball and chain over there instead of over here with your family? Just say Disney World, for example. All right, buy your flights, but get your tickets, hotels, whatever you gotta do to financially commit to that. And the clock starts now. We need to work you from out from being the bottleneck, and the goal is to achieve transformation in the first 90 days so that you know you've got another, you know, 90 days or or quick math here, another couple hundred days, whatever it is to get to six months to uh actually it'd be another 90 days to to to to really like be confident in the plan itself that we set forth. And so in that that next kind of like 90 days run up to the six months-ish, that can be give or take. We're gonna take like a day off, a couple days off to sort of stress test the systems first so that you don't freak out, so that you're fully confident that we set up the frameworks to truly handle things while you're away. And so, and there is like an exception to to I guess pierce the the sanctity of the two-week test would be something like any legal threats or or or safety issues or compliance, you know, things that the business owner needs to know. So it's like the the red line phone or something, like an emergency system. But but that would be it. Anything else, the the the uh the frameworks handle that. And again, we take a little, I guess you call it a rehearsal, an absence rehearsal to the stress test the system. It's like, oh, I took the afternoon off and accounting didn't get the message, and this and that. So, okay, that's where we got to focus on. Let's button that up, maybe do another kind of a night or a day away, and and let's stress test it again. Okay, it worked well. Now let's let's go on our on our vacation. And you tell whoever is your your number two or whoever's kind of like holding the fort down, you're like, this is the only reason you ever pierce the the sanctity of my my two or one week test is you know, yeah, legal issues, any like major emergencies that require immediate action from only the founder, but otherwise, handle it, handle the fires. You know, you've been trained, you've got the you you've been empowered and give them the ability to spend some money up to a certain amount. You know, like with my people, I'll tell them anything under a thousand dollars, just go do it. And when we meet, when when we have like a meeting, we'll discuss do we need to keep that? What was the outcome of that? But if it's under a thousand, just go do it. I trust your judgment if if it's gonna be you know best for our company. And if it's over that, you know, then yeah, let's talk about it because it's kind of a big expense.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

AI as a force multiplier. You talk about AI as an ultimate efficiency multiplier. What practical AI plays can founders implement right now to save hours without adding you know head count or or breaking the brain?

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Yeah, I tell you, I've used this a lot for various different things, like for my land investing business, for example, and it's a it's a business I started using my frameworks, I only work at like an hour or two a week. But what I will do is if I'm making an offer to on you know on a property or on an investment, I'll I'll sort of run it through AI first, give me the high level, have it do comps and tell me like what does it think a good offer would be. And usually it's like right on the money. I mean, it's whether the person, the seller will accept it or not, that's you know, it's up to them, obviously. But it gives you like a starting point on on negotiating. And then you can also like take any kind of dialogue and put it in there and it'll it'll help you like craft your next email. Um, that's just one example. Another one is like any kind of legal stuff that you get into or contracts, just upload it there before you hire some super duper expensive attorney. It'll it'll do a first pass for you. Now, if you have an attorney, I say don't fire them yet. Get comfortable with with chat GPT or any of these AIs that can give you some advice. But yeah, I I you know no longer I have to pay attorneys on a retainer or hundreds of dollars an hour to get their opinion on something when I can upload it to ChatGPT and just say, hey, this is it's already gonna know who you are, but I'm assuming if this is your first time using ChatGPT. Right, right, right. You upload it and then you tell it this is who I am in the contract, these are my interests. Tell me what what where's the where are the pitfalls I might not be looking at? And and it might say, oh no, it's pretty clean, uh clean cut, but there is this clause that if you don't make a payment in X number of days, you could default, you know, like whatever it is, it'll give you clarity on what to look out for. So that's just another example, but it is completely decimated my my legal bills just from you know just legal opinions and and accelerated my ability to communicate to to make offers. And that's just an example, but so much more like comparison, like you know, you can like renegotiate vendor contracts, for example. If you've had uh contracts for years, um that's one thing, people just don't know you can renegotiate things, and so take your old contracts and and start asking for discounts and you know, upload them in Chat GPT and say, hey, what where can you find leverage for me to renegotiate this contract? And you know, doing that over the last few months for my supplement company, I was able to slash up almost a hundred thousand dollars a month in expenses. Now it's a high volume supplement company, but people listening here, hey, maybe it helps you save three or four hundred bucks a month. That's that's what three, four grand a year, and you can put that to something else. So anybody at any level can utilize this to renegotiate contracts, reduce expenses that maybe are a little bit wasteful that we're not mindful of. Upload your credit card statements to that and say, hey, challenge me like you're an auditor, ask me what all these things are for, identify the overlap. Maybe I'm paying for something twice. Like, hey, I got Zoom and I'm paying for Google Meet. They both do similar things, you know what I mean? So, like, find out where I'm spending too much money and chilling, just that right there, I'll say thousands of dollars. Uh could be per month, but definitely per year.

Rapid Fire On Time And Delegation

SPEAKER_00 28:17

Yep, absolutely. Wow, that that's that's fantastic. You know, one of the last guests I talked about, we talked about you know, trimming the fat, you know, subscriptions was his main pet peeve. Yeah, what you see? Oh, yeah, yeah, and just because you might be a six-figure business, that's still money that's going down the drain, regardless. You do not want to, you know, that can go into the I don't know, an employee of the month pool or something. Absolutely. Yep. Oh my goodness. All right, George. So we're gonna take a quick break, then we're gonna come back and we're gonna do the rapid fire round. I'm about to put you on the hot seat. Do it. Get your brim on. Since 1972, American Hat Makers has been dedicated to the art of fine hat making. They're diverse selection, caters to outdoor adventurers, style-conscious individuals, and hat enthusiasts just like me. With a focus on meticulous detail and quality materials. I love wearing their hats. Embrace your own spirit of adventure and individuality. Visit bit.ly slash hats now. Bit dot lee hats now. Or use our affiliate link in the show notes to view their vast selection of men's and women's styles. All right, George, we're back. You ready? Ready. All right, rapid fire. Okay. What's one thing a founder should stop doing tomorrow? You might say today.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

I I would say just learn how to leverage AI for as much as you can. I mean, don't let it replace your thinking and your brain, but like some of the stuff we just discussed, I'd say like start analyzing the kind of like your expenses in an intelligent way. So, but you said to stop doing. So I I would say stop relying on your I you might contradict what I just said, but like stop relying on your your brain power to reply to every single email. I would take any kind of complicated conversations that you have and run it through ChatGPT, almost always, and I hesitate to say almost, I want to say almost like like it's always provided me the best response and it's achieved the outcome I've always wanted, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So for any kind of tough conversation or negotiation, stop using your brain power because that's draining, and put it in chat GPT and say, hey, act as the best negotiator or act as someone who wants to find a peaceful solution to this or whatever the outcome that you want. You're you're you're always gonna get, at least in my experience, gonna get something that you can use that helps get to the outcome that that you desire. So it's gonna save a lot of brain power.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

All right. What's the first hire that buys back the most time?

SPEAKER_01 30:47

I feel like an operations person is the one is the one that buys back time. Um, and it really just depends what your main objective is. If you're more in marketing, it could be marketing support, but that a lot of that could also fall under operations. So I would I would say operations is probably the first hire I would recommend.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

All right. Delegation red flag. What's the number one sign you have taken the monkey back?

SPEAKER_01 31:11

The number one sign that I would say that if people keep asking you questions as far as like, hey, how do you do this? How do you do that? And and you just like do it for them instead of like fixing the the reason that you got it off your plates to begin with, that's the biggest sign. And to me, that's like my new definition of insanity. You know, the the old definition is you know, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. For me, it's when you're doing something that you hired somebody else to do that's kind of insane, and I was insane for many years.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Understood. Two bake vacation tests, pass it with people, systems, or mindset first.

Where To Find George And Closing

SPEAKER_01 31:46

But I feel like the the most the most powerful way to to go into it is with the systems because you might go in with a bit of a of a nervous and hesitant mindset, but it it should hopefully put you at ease as the more you go into it that the hey, everything's okay, world's not falling apart. You know, my number two can call me if there's like a legit emergency that only I can handle. Bone hasn't rang yet. I think we're good. Finish the sentence. A founder's time is worth more when they when they focus on the things that only they can do, which only really they know that. But in my opinion, every founder should be focusing on like revenue generating activities, like strategic relationships. If you're if you like have you know, like a storefront or an e-com store, it's maybe it's new offers or identifying new markets you can go into. High-level strategic thinking, not nitty-gritty stuff that yes, it's important, but it doesn't move the needle. That's stuff other people should be doing.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Well, George Rivera, it's been an awesome time being with you today, learning so much and and sharing your personal story, which really fuse the, you know, which is the fuel behind the success of your your professional story. So really appreciate that. Where can we find you and and what is it that you want us to do?

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Absolutely, Audrey. Well, yeah, it's been great joining you here today. And yeah, you can go to buybacktimeformula.com and there you'll see links to my socials. You can communicate with me there, you know, add me on Facebook. I post every day some some content, and um, I have a link to my book. It's free, just pay for shipping. It's uh it's a heavy book, like it's not some flouchy, flimsy little thing. Um, it's 128 pages, and yeah, it'll it'll share with you all the frameworks. And you know, my intention in creating this book was to pour out everything I know about these time-saving frameworks that'll free you up from being the bottleneck to the present founder to to pour in your family or to build other businesses or to travel or whatever it is that you find passionate in life that that your business isn't allowing you to do. It has everything in there. You know, there's other people that'll sell books and they'll give you a nice couple tips, and then it's like, but you want the big one, you gotta pay money when you click that link. You know, I have ways to contact me there. If you need more help, I offer more help. But honestly, it's I know it's contrary to my sales goals, but I I hope people buy it and they're like, oh my gosh, this book, I don't need to contact George, it's all in here. But I also know some people are gonna be so busy, like the me of 10 years ago, that I would have paid a mini fortune to collapse the time for the transformation. So that option's there too. But my hope is people get it and it and it changes lives and and yeah, bring families together at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Absolutely. But George, thanks again. I really appreciate you and Tech Divination. You already know what to do, and definitely um go to what's the the link again, George?

SPEAKER_01 34:28

Buybacktimeformula.com and they'll see all that they want to see right there. All right, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 34:34

We'll see you next time. That's it for today's Tech Diva Biz Talks. Hope you caught a gem or two. If you did, share it, review it, and most of all, put it into action. Until next time, tune in, level up, and talk tech.