Discover the transformative buy back your time formula that led to true freedom for one successful entrepreneur. After building a multi-million dollar business that became a personal “prison,” author and entrepreneur George Rivera shares the candid, emotional story of how his father’s dying words inspired him to change his entire mindset and system. He reveals how he scaled revenue from $20 million to nearly $50 million while slashing his work week from 90 hours to under 30. George also shares his toughest challenges, including giving up control over six-figure invoicing. Discover how he finally disconnected his self-worth from the grind and prioritized his family.
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The Transformative Buy Back Your Time Formula With George Rivera
How George Rivera Escaped The Prison Of His Own Success
I have a guest here that I had the opportunity to meet. Maybe it’s been about a month now, or maybe two months, but it was enlightening. I’m here with George Rivera, who built a business from nothing, but that success became a trap. In his own words, in his book that he wrote, Buy Back Time Formula, it became his prison. The achievement of that dream resulted in losing what most mattered to him. We’re going to go through that as our conversation unfolds. Let’s start at the beginning, George. Welcome.
Thank you. It’s nice to be here.
The Origin Story: From Pre-Med To Infomercial Entrepreneur
Let me ask you this. What was your vision?
I started my business back when I was in high school. We’re already 30 years, going on 31 years, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I was going to go the traditional path. I will graduate from high school, go to college, and follow in my dad’s footsteps. He was a medical doctor. I would go down that path. As a child, that’s the path I thought was laid in front of me.
There was one night. I want to say I was sixteen years old when I saw this late-night infomercial on TV about making money from newspapers and classified ads. The guy was standing in a Hawaiian shirt in front of the beach, living this amazing lifestyle. I remember looking at it, saying, “That looks cool. I’d like to do that. I know I’m going to college here in a couple of years, but maybe I could buy that and then put it under my bed. When I’m done with college, I can pull it out and get to work on it.” That shows you how naive I was at sixteen.
I kept seeing his commercials for a year. One day, I got brave, got my mom’s credit card, and bought the product. It was $79 or something like that. It came, and I ripped the thing apart. I was reading it. My intention was to put it away for the future, but I was like, “There’s no reason you can’t do this now.” At this time, I’m seventeen. I started buying some ads in newspapers, and it didn’t succeed at all. It was a complete failure. The one thing that it did was it planted inside of me that I wanted to follow a more entrepreneurial path than this traditional path to go to college, become a doctor, and follow my dad’s footsteps.
I felt it at the time, but I continued on the path of the education route. I did go to college. I did go to study pre-med. In the middle of college, the beginning of my junior year, the business that I had started had evolved. It started making sales, and it started to generate a decent income. I remember thinking, “I’m going to go to medical school, and I have this business. This is two different lives.” I was still young, and I had this pressure of having to make a decision. I felt like the decision was, “Let’s steer more towards marketing because that’s the business that I have that’s making money right now.”
I made the pivot to get a marketing degree, and I graduated from college. I can’t say that any of that is relevant to anything that I was doing because, at the time, the internet was so new in its infancy. It was constantly evolving. It was very different. The marketing education that you’d learned from college was very old-school. It was more like the old-school pre-internet tactics, so it wasn’t relevant at all there.
That’s the very beginning of my business career. I graduated with a degree in marketing, and I kept on going with the online business. I was pretty much a one-man shop until about 2006. We’re coming up on 10 or 11 years in business at this point. When I finally learned about the concept of hiring other people to help me, I was like, “I can grow my business now.” I was doing everything myself. I probably held myself back 3 or 4 years by not expanding my mind, thinking I could hire other people. I was still single with no family, so I was in this mode of, “I can work myself until I pass out. It’s not like it’s not going to hurt anybody.” Later down the line, I meet my wife eventually, and then the whole family dynamic comes into play. I want to give you a snapshot there of the beginnings of it.
Scaling Chaos: How To Go From One-Man Shop To Global Talent
Let me go back to that one comment that you made, though. For about ten years, you said you were a one-man shop. A lot of people are like that now. What made you able to scale up? A lot of times, we think we don’t have the resources to scale up. Living in the times that we’re in, what can you say to that process that could help them on that scale-up?
It probably takes fewer resources now than back then. We’ve got platforms like Upwork and a number of other platforms like Fiverr and others, which we could outsource for some small, simple things on a very low commitment basis and at even low cost. There are other people in other countries, like the Philippines, for example. $4 or $5 an hour goes a long way over there. Here in the States, that’s impossible, but that’s a decent lifestyle for them over there.
Keep an open mind about getting some help overseas on a small, part-time basis. Share on XIf you don’t have a lot of resources, you could hire somebody on a part-time basis for a couple of hundred bucks a week and make some good progress in your business to unload some of the things. Maybe you’re bootstrapping, so you’re doing a little bit more than you feel like. Eventually, you will have to, but you can unload some of that to some good, qualified talent overseas.
The difference between then and now is that there was no Upwork back then, so I would have had to hire people in the States. There’s a higher cost of living, so hiring them to help you is more expensive. A lot of people don’t like part-time work. It’s either full-time or nothing. The commitment was a lot more than it is now. That’s what I’d encourage people to do. Keep an open mind about getting some help overseas on a small part-time basis.
The Power Of Belief: Breaking Generational Patterns
I like that. Let’s move forward a little bit here. One of the things that I speak a lot about is the three Bs. You Believe, Become, and Belong. I have to ask you this. What made you believe? You said your track was following in the footsteps of your dad, going into the medical field, but you believed that you could become an entrepreneur. What made you believe you could build what you built?
It’s interesting. My dad plays several parallel lines in my journey here, as I’m sure most parents do. I remember with my dad, he lovingly was like, “Son, are you sure you want to do this?” Even verbally, but I imagine he’s thinking in his head, because I’m a dad now, so I know how dads think, like, “I paved the way for you. I’ve shown you an example. We’ve talked about this for years. This is the path for you.”
He’s saying it in a loving way, like, “I’ve opened the door for you. This other path you’re talking about of some guy on TV pitching this stuff, you don’t know if he’s telling the truth.” He’s trying to protect me from the unknown that he doesn’t know about, and I get that, but there was something stubborn in me. The message of that guy on the infomercial was like, “Be your own boss. Don’t let other people tell you what to do. Don’t be living for a paycheck.” All that resonated for me.
He was a medical doctor. He was very successful in his career and made a good living. It’s all relative, but I remember as a kid, we’d go out to eat with some of my friends and their parents as a family and friends. One of my friends’ dads was venting to my dad, saying we’re at this restaurant, and they can only go there once every other month. It’s a rare treat for their family to eat out. It’s a medium-type restaurant. I was not this five-star, but not fast food. It was in the middle, a decent place.
My dad, when we got home, like a teachable moment or something, was saying, “We have it pretty good. The lifestyle we live every single day, there are others that can only do that once in a while, so be thankful and be humble. If you want to maintain this lifestyle, you have to work hard.” He’s the image of working hard, the poster child, at least for me growing up. That’s what working hard means. My dad devoted his whole career to his medical practice. He was one of the best in the area, but it did cost him his family.
Another early story is that in middle school and high school, I played in about 40 games of basketball. He only made it to 1 of those 40 games. I remember thinking, “Am I not important enough?” I’m young, and I don’t know how to process this, so I’m asking myself these questions. I’d score a basket, and I’d look to the stands. Cue the sad music and the crickets in the movies. My friends or my teammates would score a basket, and then their dads would be there cheering them on, like, “That’s my son. You go.” I remember looking at another dad loving on his kid. I was like, “I wish that was my dad.”
For my dad to ever hear that would have crushed him because he was a great provider. We had nice homes, nice cars, and trips to Europe every summer, but when I needed him that moment, he was not there. I didn’t care about this other dad and what he did. I was like, “I want you to be my dad because I need that love right now.”
The Founder’s Trap: How My Dad’s Last Words Became My Wake-Up Call
You talk about that a lot. We can go to that part because that’s the pivotal moment. Your business is successful. We’re going to talk about what success means to you. Define it later on as we go through this process. Your dad is dying. You write about this in the book. That was your pivotal moment because he says to you in one of his last words, “Don’t miss Leo’s games the same way that I missed your games.”
Leo is your son, for everybody here. That’s when you realized that what you had built had become your trap. You were your dad in actuality. You had become him. You realized at that moment that you had built the life that he had built. What did you believe about success at that time that you had to let go because your father threw cold water in your face and made you realize that you had crossed that line that you said you weren’t going to cross?
What did I believe at that time? I believed what I’d seen growing up. It was that if you’re going to be successful, you need to be absent from your family. It was never said that way, but that’s what I saw. It’s like, “My dad’s hardworking and provides us a good lifestyle, relatively speaking, but he’s never home. That’s what success must look like. You’re out there sacrificing for the family.” I can’t imagine the family asking, “This is what we want. We don’t want you to be here.” They’re not asking that, but we, as entrepreneurs, business owners, and in my dad’s case, it’s like, “I’m doing it for the family, but they never asked for it.” It’s this lie that we tell ourselves. It’s part of what keeps us trapped.
After you came to that realization, what was the first step that you had to take?
When my dad said, “Don’t miss Leo’s games,” that hit me in a couple of ways. First, it was this beautiful gift enclosure in this open loop that my pain didn’t go to waste as a kid. That was cool. I didn’t know where to park it, but I was like, “Thank you for that.” The other side was, “I’m my dad all over again. I’m doing the nice homes, cars, and trips to Europe, as he showed me.” When he made that statement, that was the first time that it was lovingly instilled inside of me that I can’t keep doing this. I remember being the kid who had a dad who wouldn’t go to games. That didn’t feel good at all.
I’m already blowing it for my son. He’s ten months old at this time, but he was one of those kids who learned to walk earlier in life and started to communicate. There are a lot of those firsts that I’m missing out on. I’m depending on my wife to send me these pictures and videos of him doing this stuff because I’m not there present. I was like, “This needs to change. I’m on board now. I believe it.” I was like, “I’m working sixteen-hour days. I’m going to start tomorrow.” My dad already passed away, so the next day comes and I’m like, “I’ll start tomorrow.” Tomorrow turns into three years. We’re talking 2018, three years after my dad’s passing.
My business scales to $20 million in revenue. I have this money printer. You press a button, and it spits out money, more money than I can ever spend. I should be feeling happy and accomplished, but for some reason, I don’t. I have more money than I can ever spend. As long as I’m not buying a helicopter every day, I should be okay. I didn’t buy any helicopters. I was hating life. I don’t say hate commonly. It’s not a common phrase for me. If I say it, I mean it. It’s a visceral feeling of disgust.
He’s a dear friend now, but at the time, he was my coach and my mentor. He was in Europe for the week. This was in August of 2018. I remember him messaging me, saying, “I’m going to be gone for a week with the family. Need anything? Send me an email, and we’ll connect when I’m back in the States.” I’m like, “Okay, cool.” The week he was gone was the same day in that week that I’d reached the pinnacle of my burnout. I was like, “I’m done with this. I don’t want any more of it.”
I remember writing him an email because I couldn’t call him. I’m like, “When you get back, we need to talk because I hate this business. I’m trapped. I feel like a prisoner. I’m doing things I shouldn’t be doing. I want to close it down, burn it down, walk away, and sell it. I want out. Hit me when you get back next week.” I vented and was like, “I feel a little better.”
The $20M Question: Live For Your Business, Or Have It Live For You?
One of the things you say in your book was that he asked you a question. What was that question he asked you?
I know we had a good conversation. It’s something along the lines of, “Quit doing what you don’t like doing, and keep doing what you’re good at.” I believe it had something to do with, “What are you doing?”
Quit doing what you don't like doing and keep doing what you're good at. Share on XI’m going to find it because I thought it was beautiful. He said, “Do you want to live your business or do you want your business to live for you?” That is what he grasped. That was your turning point. The way he wrote it in the book is that when he asked you that question, because you had never thought about it that way, you were like, “I’m living for my business, and my business is not living for me.”
That’s where everything started. I was thinking of more practical steps at a high level. That’s what he asked me, and it reframed my thinking on it. Instead of wanting to burn the whole thing down, I said, “How do we make this work?” It was a mindset shift. It was a two-hour phone conversation, but to boil it down in a sentence or two, it was like, “Stop doing what you don’t like doing. Keep doing what you like doing, which is what you’re good at.”
I’m good with sales, copy, marketing, and revenue-generating activities, but not admin stuff, merchant accounts, customer support, invoicing, banking, or vendor.
All the other mission support stuff that nobody ever wants to talk about. I get that. This process begins your journey into the Buy Back Time Formula. For all of you, his book is Buy Back Time Formula. Where can you get this book?
It’s like the name, BuyBackTimeFormula.com. There’s a link to buy the book. It’s free. Pay shipping. As you’re holding it, it’s not a light book. It’s not a flimsy book. It’s 128 pages, and it’s workbook style. It’s a durable book that you could put beside your computer, tear up, and highlight. It’ll take the beating.
The Buy Back Time Formula: Doubling Revenue While Semi-Retiring
You began this journey. What I want you to talk about is that it goes against everything you were taught about what success is. What was something that you developed while transforming your life? From 2015 to 2018, you were still doing the status quo, but then, you started this journey and the Buy Back Time Formula. What did that mean to you, and how did that equate to you putting this into a formula?
The basis of that conversation was the foundation of the Buy Back Time Formula. It didn’t have the name back then. I had to apply that for myself first. I had to prove the transformation was real for me, and then years later, I said, “I’ve got something here I can share with the world. That’s exciting.” To share a little bit of the transformation, in 2018, I made $20 million dollars in revenue and was sometimes working 80 or 90 hours a week. It’s insane when I think about it now.
Fast forward 2 and a half to 3 years, we’re at nearly $50 million, so it more than doubles, but I’m living a semi-retired lifestyle. I’m never working more than 30 hours a week. Sometimes, I am off the grid for multiple weeks. It doesn’t mean that fires don’t happen or that issues don’t pop up, but somebody else handles them. It’s not by magic or wishful thinking. It’s by frameworks. I put in all the frameworks that I know into that book so that other people could use them, too.
I know that I talk a lot about these $20 million, $50 million, and all that, but I wish I had read this book on day one when I didn’t have any business. At any point along my journey, it could have been very useful. At the beginning, you’re going to have to grind a little bit. That’s the truth. If you’ve got limited funds and it’s just you, but you have time, you’re going to have to put in some of that time.
Once you start generating a little bit of revenue, you’re going to want to have a roadmap or a blueprint of, “Where do I go as this thing grows, so that I’m not scaling chaos?” That’s what I did. I was treating my $20 million business like it was a $3 million business. At $3 million, my systems could have worked. There was probably a lot of room for improvement, but there was no major breakage there.
When it hits that higher volume, the threat levels and the breakage escalate at that higher level. I was scaling chaos. I had these frameworks in place from day one, or anywhere in the early part of the journey. It boggles my mind to think how much more efficient and less bumpy that road would have been. I also know we go through that for a purpose and all that, so I’m thankful for the experience. Now, I’m able to share it with other people.
One of the things you mentioned in your book, which was very pivotal to me, was that as you delegate and allow others to have ownership of tasks, it’s the way you phrase the questions. It’s not, “I want you to make sure that you respond to customer service issues today in twenty seconds.” I’m just putting that out there. Twenty seconds is not realistic. I don’t want anybody to think, “Is she crazy? Twenty seconds?” You rephrased it to say, “Today, I want you to look at customer responses. Make it 98%.” You gave them a number to shoot for. Tell me about how you learned it’s the questions that you’ve asked in terms of how you delegate to help people have ownership of that task.
The old way I did it was that I would task it out. I might explain what I want done, but it almost leaves it up to their imagination, which also potentially leaves a lot of room for error if you leave it to where it’s not fully explained. The new way, the new me, and how I alluded to in the book, is that you’re transferring ownership and showing them what the outcome looks like. You’re like, “Here’s what finished looks like. Here’s an example of completion.”That could be, “We need our response time to be at a certain number,” versus trying to shoot for, like “Make sure you hit 1,000 responses. You can take as long as you want,” for example.
Show them what the outcome looks like, so long as they’re a good hire. That’s also discussed in the book. It’s a lot to go into in this conversation, but assuming that you have a good hire, you give them the liberty to seek an even more efficient solution to reach that outcome. You’re not limiting them. You’re not stifling them with your potentially flawed process. I was a king of the flawed process. I thought I was good at it, so I was like, “Here’s what I do.”
Once I gave it up and showed them what the outcome looks like, the smart, capable people I had would refine it and make it even better. I’m like, “It’s more efficient. It’s better. It’s more solid. This is good. This is way better than what I could have done.” I don’t know why I kept holding on to that for so long, thinking I’m the best in the world, but I’m glad that was released.
What Does “Buying Back Time” Actually Mean To A Founder?
Something else that you said earlier, as we were talking, is that you were working 90 hours a week. I want to ask you this. You came up with the Buy Back Time Formula. What does buying back time mean to you?
It can mean anything to anybody. I’m a family-first, father-first kind of person, so to me, it means giving that time that I buy back to my family so that I can be present for them. My dad lost his family. He lost us. He couldn’t sustain that lifestyle and maintain a family at the same time. The average time that a woman thinks about leaving their husband before they actually do is two years.
I call my avatar cash-rich, time-poor. Anybody can use it, but speaking about my situation specifically, all my time went to my business. At home, they get the burned-out, stressed-out version of me. They get the frustrated, upset, thinking-about-work-all-the-time, phone-in-my-face-while-my-family-is-trying-to-talk-to-me version of me. I’m trying to pretend like I’m listening, but it’s hard to juggle that.
I know that didn’t work out well. I know the wife was mad.
She sees through all that nonsense. I admit. Sometimes, it can creep up. If she’s talking, I have to be like, “Phone, I got to keep you at arm’s distance because otherwise, I seep back into that.”
Let’s go back to that Buy Back Time Formula. What was the hardest part of that formula for you to implement? I know there are so many steps, and we can’t go through them all in our segment. I think the best thing is to get the book. I don’t have nearly the amount of sales that you have, but I truly could relate to what you were saying, especially about doing that time audit. It’s serious.
When people say to me all the time, “I don’t have time for this,” I cringe because I want to say, “You do if you were to audit your time. It can be painful for you to see how much time you might be spending on social media or even allowing the noise in your head to eat up an hour. It’s like somebody told you something bad, and you sat there for a whole hour replaying those words when you could have been doing something else. That’s why you need to do this audit,” which you mentioned in the book. We won’t go through that. What was the hardest part for you to implement in your Buy Back Time Formula?
Specifically, as far as the task to let go was probably paying the bills or paying vendors, especially certain vendors. This can apply to any level, but for me specifically, an invoicing mistake could be a six-figure mistake that you cannot reverse. I’d been through a couple of experiences where I had an accounting person send a payment to the wrong person. It was like, “This is not a good thing.”
Especially when we’re paying people that send us sales and send us traffic, at the volume we’re doing, some of these invoices are six-figure weekly payments. Some of these names are similar. Two different companies start with an M, and they look the same. Was that person not wearing their glasses, didn’t see it correctly, and stuck the wrong one?
That kind of mistake, for me, haunted me for a few years. It had me hang on to that more than I had to. At some point, you have to take that leap of faith and be like, “We’ve got systems. We’ve got frameworks.” For a while, I implemented a framework, like, “For any invoice over $50,000, set it up. Before you hit the button, shoot me a little message for approval for that.” After a while, it’s like, “I think we’re good. We’ve got a good system down.” I was able to trust.
That was the one that took me a while. I would have reached transformation in less than a year had I given up, but as a stubborn entrepreneur who’s addicted to feeling important, feeling the hero, and feeling the grind. If I’m not grinding, I’m not being productive, and I’m a loser. It is a lot of mindset shifts that need to happen to experience pure freedom from the founder prison that we build ourselves.
Worth And Work: Detaching Your Identity From Business Performance
We use the word believe so much because it plays a big part in our actions, our words, and what we create. I want to go forward a little bit. You are implementing this formula, and you have your time back. I want to ask you this. What old belief about work and worth did you shatter by reducing your schedule?
Finding self-worth in the grind and finding self-worth in the amount of money coming in. My old me was like, “Business is doing great that day. I’m on top of the world.” If it’s not doing great, I feel like an idiot, a loser, and worthless. I disconnect my value from the performance of my business because otherwise, I feel like I should be in an insane institution with my emotions going like this. Sometimes, it’d be an hourly thing. I’d be like, “We had a great spike of sales. Sales have been down for the last 30 minutes.”
Finding self-worth in the grind, or in the amount of money coming in, is a belief you need to break. Share on XI had to break myself from checking my CRM many times an hour. That was insane. I went from checking it once daily to not even checking it at all. I have my accounting team that produces a daily P&L. I wait for that to come out, and I’m like, “Good day, bad day, whatever.” I detached my value from what that number says. That was a huge mind shift for me. That allows me to remain present with my family, to not be grumpy, and to release that stress and not carry that burden.
I don’t think we were designed to carry a lot of these burdens and stresses on our own. It was something I had to let go of. Some of that’s outside of the book, getting rid of some of that self-pressure that we put on ourselves. I touch upon some of that, but that’s a deep topic in and of itself. It is that identity shift and knowing who you are as opposed to the labels that you put yourself on or that you think others have of you that you need to maintain.
I want to expand upon that a little bit. You speak a little bit about identity in your book. It’s more about the different hats that we wear. I keep using the word pivotal, but it’s monumental. We get so stuck into who the world says we are to be versus who we have to turn around and define ourselves to say who we are to be. That takes being connected with you and uncovering. It is getting that noise out of the way on what the world says, right?
That’s it. That’s a tough process. Also, you realize, “Maybe some people think this way of me. Why do I care so much about what they think of me? The second that they think of something else, they forget all about me anyway. It’s not like they’re thinking about me 24/7 and I have to maintain this.” It’s almost these self-inflicted wounds. We needlessly carry a lot of that identity, thinking that we need to maintain it in reality. Honestly, most people couldn’t care less. They’re like, “You’re having a bad day. I feel sorry for you.” If I think, “Maybe people will sympathize with me that I’m not feeling so great right now,” maybe I’ll release that pressure.
That’s what has to happen. You said the word we have to release. We have to release what we feel is a priority. The priority is not what others think. The priority is about what you feel and what your connection with your source is. I use the word source because we’re all on different levels in terms of our spiritual faith. Everybody has their own. My point is that you had to realize you had to release that and instead focus on the truths that you wanted to live your life by, right?
That’s it. I had to release it. Speaking of spiritual, I released it to God. I’m like, “God, I know You didn’t design us to carry this on. You want us to depend on You and seek You for strength. Take it. I gladly give it to You.” It says in the Bible, “Cast your cares upon Him.” Cast isn’t like, “Here. Take my cares.” If you see it, chunk it. You’re casting a reel, like fishing. Throw it as if you’re trying to throw a rock into the ocean or something. Sometimes, I visualize myself picking up whatever I’m stressing on, throwing it in God’s direction, and then God catching it, like, “I got you.” I’m like, “I’m not going to stress about it anymore.” Sometimes, I have to do that often. It’s not just one-and-done. It’s a process.
Let me ask you about transformation. Transformation is a process. You already alluded to the fact that took you from when your father told you in 2015 to start enacting that transformation in 2018. You talked about it in your book. How long did it take for that transformation to occur, where you are down to 20 to 30 hours a week?
It probably took a year-ish longer than it should have because I was hanging on to certain things. Speaking in general, once people start to feel the benefits of buying back time, they get addicted to it. We’re like, “What else can I do? What else can I unload?” There are certain things you want to keep doing because you sincerely enjoy them. That’s what you’re good at, and that’s what you should be doing.
When I did my own time audit, I discovered that out of the sometimes 60, sometimes 90, but at least a 40-hour block of that insane work I was doing, they were $50 an hour or less tasks. I’m not a mathematician, but 40 hours times $50 an hour is $2,000. I have my little money printer here. That was an easy investment to buy back more than half of my work days, but I wasn’t aware of that at the time, or I wasn’t ready to receive it. I don’t know the excuse, but I wasn’t prepared to do that until my friend lovingly smacked me over the head and gave me the wisdom that you reminded me earlier of about the business and life connection.
The thing about it is that transformation is not easy. You’ve pointed that out. You struggle with giving up something that you felt you had to keep your hands around. When we talk about transformation, people think, “Here, I got the formula. In 30 days, I’m going to be a whole different person.” We need to understand that it’s a journey, and we have to be willing. I know there were times when you were discouraged. Can you speak to the times when you were discouraged? When the transformation wasn’t going as you wanted it to be, how did you keep going? We have those times in our lives where it’s hard and difficult.
There will always be setbacks along any journey. You can either look at that, pout at it, and let that get you stuck. I look at it, pout for a second, and then I’m like, “We’re done. Let’s go.” I got it out. I know some people try to avoid that emotion. Sometimes, I’ll welcome it. It’s a controlled fire. It’s like, “We’re going to kick and pout for one minute. When that clock is up, we’re done, and we’re going to find a solution.” Sometimes, I leave room for my little pouts.
Certain tasks fall through the cracks. You have to turn over people sometimes. They’re not the right person for the role, and you invest in them. You feel like, “I finally got it.” You’re off doing something, and you’re pulled back in because there’s an issue there with somebody who was supposed to be doing the task for you. Those could be potential setbacks. The goal is that, as you’re creating the process for them to learn from that, you’re only having to do that once. It’s not impossible to replace that person with somebody else capable.
You have the framework in place that maybe somebody else on the team could absorb for a little bit. That was a challenge sometimes when some of the team members got overworked because somebody else was dropping the ball. That can always create a little friction that comes back up to you. Generally speaking, it was a journey worth going on. That’s the best way to put it. It’s a journey. Sometimes, there are little bumps. You have to adapt, adjust, and keep going.
It's a journey. There will be bumps, and you just have to adapt and keep moving forward. Share on XYou said it right. You have to keep your eye on what it is you’re seeking to achieve. We’re taught that we only can believe in what we think, feel, and taste. You kept your vision on what could become a reality. That’s what we have to learn how to do, is see beyond the natural to see what you see as your final outcome. That’s how you were able to make your final transformation, and you were able to create this book.
Let’s move forward. You are showing up for your business differently than you were before. You alluded to it where you’re no longer looking at your CRMs every hour, and you’re spending more time with your family. What that equates to is that Leo, your son, and your wife are seeing a difference. How are they experiencing it? What was the change from when you were in that 90 to 80-hour week to where you’re only in that 20 to 30-hour week for you and your lifestyle?
Rebuilding Trust At Home: Why Commitment To Family Is Everything
It’s interesting. At first, as you’re getting into it, you almost have to rebuild the trust at home. Part of the things that I do also in my coaching is for people who need more help than what the book offers. The book has everything, but some people are like, “I’m so busy. I need you to walk me through it,” so I’m there for them. We do all the business stuff, too, but I also help on the personal side. I’m like, “If you’re coming to me for help, we’re going to help you on the personal side.” That’s where my passion is, and I’m assuming that’s why they’re talking to me.
When we schedule something from the business side, like a Zoom meeting for something, unless we get hit by a bus, we’re making that meeting because we’re committed business people. We’re like, “This is what we do, so we’re not going to miss it.” Speaking for myself, in the old days, if I’d planned something on the calendar for family stuff, let’s say a game or an event important for the family, I’d put it in my calendar, but it was almost tentative. If there’s a business emergency or a call that pops up, that’s the first thing that goes out.
It’s a mindset shift because you could easily keep blowing it off like that. It’s like, “When I put that in the calendar, it’s set in stone. Anything that comes up has to move around it. If there’s an emergency, unless it’s life-threatening, but a business emergency, that’s happening. We need to find an alternative solution that’s not going to prevent me from attending this.”
That’s how you regain your family’s trust. The old me was breaking it all the time. Once I was like, “I’m ready to come around and commit to this,” they were like, “We’ll see.” There wasn’t this excitement of, “He’s going to come back.” It’s almost like, “We’ve heard some of that before.” It is the element of rebuilding trust at home. That is something to be mindful of as you are on your journey.
A New Definition Of Success: Why Your Presence Is Your Family’s Greatest Gift
I love that. You speak to the fact that you had to rebuild your trust with your family. They had to know that your word became your bond because in the past, you were so quick to throw those things off your calendar. You were like, “They can wait.” You had a total mind shift. Let’s move to the end of this journey, but I don’t want to say the end of the journey because that’s not the right word. That’s the chapter that’s been closed. You’re on a new chapter. I want to ask you. You redefined what success means to you. What has surprised you the most in your new definition?
A lot of founders will encounter this as they’re going through their own transformation. They don’t realize how vital their presence is to their family. I feel like I’ve had this hard career change. Even though I still own a portion of my company, I’m extremely passive about that. The majority of my career has been selling supplements online, like vitamins and things like that, on a mass scale. They were good products, but I never had anybody telling me, “This bottle of pills changed my life.” Maybe it gave them less joint pain and mental clarity. That’s fine because that’s what it’s supposed to do, but it wasn’t transformational.
Now, I’m getting text messages and calls from men who are like, “My kids light up like a Christmas tree when I’m around. I didn’t know how important it was.” That speaks to the fact that we run life on autopilot. We’re building this business for the family. We’re trying to provide them with a great lifestyle. We build ourselves into this founder prison. We lie to ourselves, thinking, “I’m the only one who can do this.” We stay trapped while we neglect the family that we’re supposedly doing it for.
My hope is that this can help, at the end of the day, save families. Mine was in jeopardy. My family wasn’t standing at the door about to leave, but I’ve seen where that movie ends personally with my dad. I’m like, “We’re not doing that. It stops here.” My goal is not only to keep families together and bring dad back home. This works for women, too, but my story resonates with being the dad years ago, being stuck in that position.
For the little boy or little girl, it is bringing dad back into the picture. Instead of being raised by iPads and iPhones, they get their awesome dad, who was put on this earth to lead the family. They’re picking up the mantle. My hope, my dream, and my vision is that they see that as a challenge and take it. I’m here to help them if they have any questions.
The Final Lesson: How Environment And Mindset Shape Your Destiny
There are a couple of things that you said that resonated with me. One, you emulated your father, but then you had a wake-up call with that last conversation that you had with him. A lot of times, our environment is a big influencer on the person that we become, but then it takes something to shake us out of that. It is that mindset that we had solidified in us to help us know that, “You’re not going the right way.”
Your dad was not a bad dad because he was a provider. It’s the fact that’s what you saw. We emulate what we see. You had to get the understanding. You were very hurt by the fact that he missed your games and things, but then you found that it hurt him as well. That helped you heal from the pain that you had deep within yourself all those years. I’m glad that you were able to lay that to rest because then, you would be carrying that around still.
I love what you said. You don’t have to stay where you began. That’s, in essence, what you have shown us here. You had a good life, and your father was great, but you could be better. That’s the difference between your best and your better. You saw that you could be better. What I want to ask you is if there’s someone who’s reading and they say, “This is good. You were able to do all those changes because you had all that money. I don’t have that money, so what can I do?”
Practical Steps: How To Buy Back Time With Limited Resources (The $100/Week Hack)
Everybody is going to be at a different level of what their resources and finances might be. I hinted at it earlier. Back when I first started to seek other help, I wasn’t very cash flush. It was tight because it was American help, they wanted full-time, and they were local. When you can choose from all over the country or all over the world, you can find people who are willing to compete for their pricing and bring their best. This was ‘06-ish timeframe. It was very slim pickings out there. You’re stuck with whoever you get. Now, it is very different.
If somebody is reading and they’re like, “I have very limited resources,” obviously, it costs something to do this, but for $100 a week, you could have some good help from the Philippines or Pakistan. Platforms like Upwork validate these people, so you’re not hiring somebody, hoping that they work out. There’s a feedback system. You can go in there and see if they’ve been hired by other people. I highly recommend it. If you’ve never been on Upwork, scrutinize their feedback and find somebody who has good feedback.
There are plenty of people. Some of these countries, we don’t think about very often. There are these low hourly rates for Pakistanis. I’ve seen $2 or $3 for quality work. We might think, “How would anybody work for so little?” but in those countries, that’s an unacceptable wage. We have it good in this country in terms of our expectations. Overseas, there’s a lot of good talent. They’re very well-trained. They’ve had other clients that they’ve worked for that have put in a lot of the training to get them up to speed to where they could service you with little training. They need to learn how you operate, but the fundamental skills are there.
I have all my frameworks in the book. If you’re reading and you’re like, “I can’t even spend $100 a week,” and you’re in that position, I’d still encourage you to read the book. Anybody who’s going to go into business, our expectation is that it’s going to be fruitful. It’s going to need people eventually. We’re going to provide a service. Every business owner is going to become humbled eventually to the point where they can’t do it all. Don’t ask me how I know. They’re going to need help in hiring resources.
At the end of all of our days, we will probably have moments that we regret. The goal is to minimize those regrets. Share on XIt’d be a good book to have in your library for when that opportunity comes up. Even before, I would get used to the concepts. I would still do the time audit, even if I’m a one-person show with limited resources. As you get going and start generating revenue, you’ll be able to quickly know, “Once some cashflow comes in, these are the first things I’m getting off my plate. Doing that will allow me to accelerate the revenue by doing these other things that I should be doing.” That would be my best advice for that.
One of the other things that you mentioned, which I think is key, too, is that doing the audit will also help you see tasks that you can eliminate. Sometimes, we take on things that we don’t need to be doing. I’m one of those people who is quick to know when to say no. I’m going to be honest. When somebody says something, I say, “No.” If they try to put something on my plate that I know I’m not able to put on my plate, and I know they probably mean it in all wellness for me, I’ll be like, “No. Maybe in the future, but right now, I’ve already developed my 2026 plan. That’s not part of my plan right now.”
That’s how you accomplish your goals. It is by sticking to it.
There could be some flexibility in there, but I’ll be like, “I’m not taking that on.”
I love that. That’s a gift. I wish I had adopted that a lot sooner in life.
The Architect Mindset: Final Advice On Minimizing Regret
I enjoyed our conversation. This has been very enlightening for me. I have used Upwork before. I’ve used it for my not-for-profit when I had to create my proposal for my sponsorship book. It was professionally done. Upwork is a good place to go if you need to get a task done. Why would I waste 80 hours of my time with someone who could do it in 20 hours or less? That’s their value-add. It goes back to how much your time is worth to you.
I’m a firm believer that whatever you can farm out in terms of some consulting work or someone part-time, do it. It will free you up immensely to focus on being the architect, which is what you say in your book. You do need to be the architect of your business. If you’re working in the business, you cannot be working on your business. That’s what the architect is responsible for. Are there any final thoughts you want to leave with any reader?
This has been amazing. Thank you for having me on. The final parting thought is, because I’ve been there towards the end of one’s life, nobody has ever said, “I’m so glad that I blew your game off for that client meeting,” or insert business excuse. Nobody has ever said that. At that point, you wouldn’t even remember the name of that client who was so important that you had to blow that family thing for.
I know that at the end of all of our days, we’ll probably have moments that we regret. We’re like, “We could have done this better. We could have done that better.” We’re human. That’s part of life. The goal is to minimize those regrets and to be like, “There are things I wish I could change, but when I became aware that there was another solution, I gave it my all. I can hang my hat up on that. We’re good.”
Thank you for your time. I cannot wait to see what happens in the next phase and chapter of your life because I know it’s going to be amazing. You already chased this one rabbit and caught it. Now, you’re chasing your next rabbit. I know that it’s going to be very rewarding for you.
Thank you. It means a lot. I look forward to keeping in touch and seeing where everything goes.
Thank you. That’s it for now. We’ll see you next time in the next episode.
Important Links
- George Rivera on LinkedIn
- Buy Back Time Formula
- Buy Back Time Formula – The Father-First Transformation
About George Rivera
George Rivera is a 30-year entrepreneur who built his dream business from the ground up—then almost lost everything that actually mattered in the process.
As his business grew, George found himself trapped in a prison of his own success: 80-hour workweeks, chronic exhaustion, and missing his son Leo’s childhood one “urgent” meeting at a time.
The turning point came when his dying father, grabbed his hand, saying “Don’t miss Leo’s games. I missed too many of yours.”
George realized he was repeating his father’s biggest regret—building success while losing his family.
So he made a radical decision: rebuild the business around his life, not his life around the business.
The result defied conventional wisdom: his hours dropped from 80 to 30 weekly while his business grew stronger than ever.Now George is on a mission to help other entrepreneurs and business owners escape the same trap through his Buy Back Time Formula—a proven framework that helps time-starved professionals reclaim 10-20 hours weekly without sacrificing results.
George lives in Texas with his wife and son Leo, and structures his entire calendar around one non-negotiable principle: “Don’t miss the moments that actually matter.”
His Buy Back Time Formula has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs reclaim thousands of hours while building more sustainable, valuable businesses.
