Escaping Founder Prison: George Rivera on Buying Back Time, Building Wealth, and Protecting Family

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Welcome back to the CJ Moneyway Show, powered by CJ Moneyway Entertainment and the Believe Network, where purpose is the blueprint and legacy is the mission. Today's conversation is about something many successful entrepreneurs don't talk about enough. Success can look incredible on paper. Revenue grows. The business scales, opportunities expand. Sometimes behind that success is something else. Exhaustion, constant availability, and the quiet realization that the very company you built is now controlling your life. My guest today is George Rivera, an entrepreneur who helped scale brands to over 200 million in sales and generated hundreds of millions in online revenue. George, welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show. What's up, my good people? Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show, powered by CJ Moneyway Entertainment and the Believe Network, where purpose is the blueprint and legacy is the myth. My guest today is George Riviere, an entrepreneur who's helped scale Besto over $200 million in sales and generated hundreds of millions in online revenue. But despite that success, George realized something important. He had built a powerful business, but his time, energy, and presence with his family was slowly disappearing. Hey, welcome to the show today, my man George. Hey, what's up, G?

Thank you, CJ. Excited to be here, man.

Glad you're here today, man. So let me ask you, George, man, a lot of entrepreneurs chase success for years only to realize they build a business that control their lives. Why does that often happen?

Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's that we start something, you know, we're excited, we get it going, we grow it to a certain level, and it comes to a certain point that we're either going to be scaling freedom or scaling chaos because of the systems that we have in place. And I think a lot of founders and entrepreneurs just continue to push through those initial phases and try to sort of like, you know, the same type of work that took to go from zero to say, you know, a couple million dollars, it's going It's gonna be different from go to 2 to 10, 10 to 20 and beyond. And so I think you need to like switch to another gear when you're gonna go to the next level. And there's not a whole lot of, you know, there's not a book on here's exactly how to do it once you reach this level. It's like most founders have to sort of figure it out for themselves. And when they look up, they realize that too much depends on them in order to stay functioning. And again, that might get you by at those lower levels, but as you're scaling the business, you're gonna notice that your time is being robbed from you. And then you got consequences on the other side, which is you have a family and people that depend on you. They're the ones paying the price as well. So not only does your growth of your company stall out or potentially not even grow, but then your family's like, hey, where the heck's dad? Where the heck's mom? And so you're kind of paying for it on both sides.

Mm-hmm. And let me ask you this, George. I've interviewed a few people that, you know, start like serial entrepreneurs, you know, they start. And what a few of them have told me is, is that they get the kick out of starting the business, you know, like you say, going from ground zero. Zero to business side. Then once they get to that point, they don't have the interest to actually run the business, you know what I'm saying? They just love the fact, yeah, and just putting it together. But once everything get in place, they want to deviate everything because that's not their interest to run the day-to-day operations. What you feel about that?

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm, you know, guilty of that as charged. I'm a serial entrepreneur as well. And I love the ideation, the new ideas, the creatives, getting it off the ground. And I think there's a part of the entrepreneur identity that we get like a dopamine hit off of it. It's like excitement, but then it just sort of gets boring once you get to a certain level. And that's where I personally love that point because I realize, okay, what's the boring stuff that I don't like to do? How can I get other people to do it in a way that doesn't take my time and I can go back to staying where I'm best at, which is, you know, starting another business or bringing in revenue for the existing business, which to me is just as exciting. So I think all of us as entrepreneurs have a level of dopamine and excitement that gets tapped into as we're doing the things we love to do.. But once we get to that point where things are starting to be boring, instead of sabotaging ourselves, like I'm guilty of doing over the years, let's find a way to get other people to properly pick up the ball and run with it so you can stay in your zone of genius and get started on the companies or bring revenue for the primary business.

Let me ask you something, G-Man, because you said something that was interesting, because earlier you said that, you know, you scale a business and you do that, and then the fam is the one that's paying the price. Because you're so focused on what you're doing, you know, trying to build this thing up. And like you say, the excitement, and when the excitement gone, you realize that, you know, I left a lot of things on the table. I wasn't able to go to basketball games, football games, cheerleading practice, or things of that nature, you know, depending on if you got a girl or a daughter or a son. But when you scale, you know what I'm saying, when you doing that, you know, as what you say, a serial entrepreneur, and then you go to the next one, What type of effect, you know what I'm saying, does that really have on your family? You know, because I'm going ahead and I'm jumping to another idea that is fresh off the presses. What type of effect does that really have on your family when you jump from idea to idea, scaling to scaling?

Yeah, it could have multiple effects. You know, some business owners and founders will sort of like tell everything to their family and they're kind of along for the ride. And then they'll sort of see like a lot of inconsistency, the inability to follow through and completely finish something out. You know, if you get it to a point and then you abandon it. The other side is if you're kind of like one of those that kind of keeps everything to yourself, but you're never like really achieving a level of where you've made it or you've properly like delegated all the things that you're constantly doing and push it up to that level. Whether it's mom or dad, they might see the parent or the spouse as somebody who's just constantly busy, constantly overwhelmed, trying to maintain and keep up these things. And switching between different business ideas and different contexts is really draining on the mind, on stress levels and energy. And that affects the presence at home. So it has that domino effect on the family. And so I love the goal being let's reduce and minimize that. I mean, you know, world's not perfect where we can completely eliminate all that, but if we can minimize the effects of the impact at home, that's essentially what's robbing our presence from our family. Then I think we'll be in a better position to just have that leadership that our home craves, as well as have a solid business that has the opportunity to grow and scale without you know, taking us out with it.

That's a good point. And we're gonna leave a bookmark right there because I believe we're gonna come back to that because it is, it's a deeper level, you know what I'm saying? Like, you can see from the outside, but man, you ain't got no revenues coming in the house and you, you know, because we know starting a business off, you're gonna pay money out your pocket, you get no money coming in. And I got a wife too, and we know how that look get with you just dishing out ain't spending time dishing out and ain't no money coming in, hey Houston, we have a problem. Oh yeah, that is so true. So, uh, let me ask you this, George, man. You talk about something called founder prison. What are the warning signs that someone is stuck in?

Yeah, it's basically when everything depends on you. Like, you step away for a moment and momentum in the business halts. Your team is waiting for you for approvals. They're depending on you for the next move. And so if you find yourself where all of that happens and you can't even take a few hours off of the business without something fall apart, that's a major sign that you're stuck in what I call the founder prison.

So let me ask you this, man, because I've heard this before too, that a lot of owners, CEOs, and founders get stuck in this situation because you want your company to actually run like clockwork, a well-oiled machine that you could take vacations, that you can be gone for a significant amount of period of time and that the business still flow. And that means that you have to train people under you, you know, like train the people up, up under you so that when you're away, that it's still running smoothly. So what do you think that most thing that owners or founders do that they don't— that they're not able to take the time away from the business they will look to.

Yeah, I, I think one of the biggest problems and misconceptions I see most founders do is that they think that hiring their way out of it is the solution, when in fact it's really just going to further expose the bottleneck that they are in the business. It just means if you're not properly transferring ownership of the task through proper delegation, then you're essentially creating more dependence on you, who need your every approval, who need your every decision, need you to okay and checkmark everything. And that compounds the problem that when you step away from it, it gets even bigger because now you've got more people lacking direction. And that's not, that's not leadership. That's a sign of something deeper that needs to be fixed. And, and that's overcome by delegating with ownership.

So let me ask you this, George. Many founders believe stepping away will hurt the business. What usually happens when they redefine their roles, redesign their roles, rather?

Yeah, absolutely. So you're right. Most founders do believe I step away, it's gonna hurt the business. And that's because the business is set up essentially to fail the second that you step away. There's like no leadership and no proper delegation. So the way to be able to step away with the confidence is to delegate with ownership. And you do that by showing them what does the outcome look like versus just giving them the task. And doing so will eliminate a lot of the pings in the middle of the day. It'll eliminate a lot of the bringing the owner and the founder back in the business to micromanage these certain projects. And that'll allow the founder, the owner to step away with peace or continue to focus on their zone of genius, which should be bringing revenue for the business, not doing all these other things. Super important, but it shouldn't be done by the founder. And so that's the first step is delegation with ownership.

Mm, yeah, gotta leave it to somebody else. Can't do everything, as they say, the old saying, can't be everywhere at all times. I found out in life you can only be in one place at one time. Your mind can be in other places, but The physical can only be in one place at one time. So if you try to run something big, this and that, you got to be able to delegate, communicate. And as you say, that shows effective leadership. And so let me ask you this, George, man. If a founder is making great money but rarely sees their family, what would you consider that? Success or failure?

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, honestly, if the family is paying the price as a result of the founder kind of just being stuck in the business, then I would call that a failure, but I wouldn't label their life as a complete failure. I would say we could fix this relatively quickly. It's not as long as you think that it takes. And we need to identify what is the things or what are the things that are keeping the owner stuck in the business. And then we remove the responsibility layer by layer and slowly the founder gets their time back in a proper way, not in a reckless way that'll hurt the business, but in a way that they can confidently step away. Reconnect with the family, restore the bond that's been broken over years of broken promises. Not intentionally, but the business has a way of like pulling us in to where it's like, oh, I'm sorry, I got an emergency, I can't attend the thing I said I was going to go to. You know, been there, done that a number of times. And so by properly removing the owner, the founder, from all the roles that they're responsible for in a structured and layered way, that's how you get your freedom back. And then your family gets to experience the benefits of of dad, of mom back in the home where they should be.

So let me ask you this, man. Maybe about it as you were saying that, you know, one thing came to my mind is that a fool and his money shall soon depart, and wherever your treasures are, that's where your heart is, you know. So as founders, owners, and things of that nature, you know, we got that for money, you know, saying that we chasing the money. And then so that's what my treasure's like, but they say that a fool and his money shall soon depart. So let me ask you this, uh, George, man, on a personal note, not you necessarily Have you ever known anyone or talked to anyone that's been in the place where they were making a lot of money and they felt like the home life was good, everything was straight, had the white picket fence, had the dog, had the kids, had everything that they wanted, but they neglected, as we're talking about, the family? And so when they did get to the point where, you know, they realized that the family was the most important thing, but then once they went, they lost it, you know, the wife gone because of all the years of the teardown. And then once you're trying to build it back together, that's all the foundation and already cracked. And you were the last one to see it because you were so focused on something else. Have you ever came across any of them type of experiences?

No, I mean, speaking for myself, you just described my childhood home. You know, I had a very successful father, great provider, but in exchange for his presence, he was just always working, you know, providing a great check for the home, nice homes, cars, trips to Europe, But when I needed him the most, when our family needed him the most, he wasn't there. And I can go back to one memory when I played basketball in high school and he only went to one of those games. And, you know, as a teenager, I'm thinking, am I not important for my dad? Like, where do I park this emotionally? And I'm trying to cope with this. But my teammates, like, their dads would be in the stands cheering them on, and I had no dad in the stands. And so for me, my point as a child But I can recall the painful moment was when I looked at another dad and I was like, I wish that was my dad. And I don't know what that other dad did. I don't know if he took his family to Europe and got them nice stuff. I'm just like, my dad's not here. And so a couple of weeks before my dad passes away, this is now 2015, he tells me these words that are like the foundation of my life today. He said, don't miss Leo's games. I missed too many of yours. And at the time that he said that, my son Leo's like 10, 11 months. And I'm already missing a lot of key moments with my son. And so when he told me that, I said, this stops here. This generational pattern is going to end here, but it's got to start tomorrow because today I'm working 16 hours. And like most founders do, tomorrow turns into 3 years when I really reach my breaking point. But to go back to your— the kind of the original intention of the question is, yeah, I was there in the deathbed moment when somebody very successful I know he would have traded all of the money he ever made to just go back to the point where he took for granted so many times, you know, that I've got my family, I've got it all together, but I'm working for them. He would have traded all of that just to have another moment with his family intact where he could be present and just pour into us. And so I want to make people aware of, while they're in the moment now, let's not wait till those last days and regret it. Let's capture that moment now. And so I'm here. I first had to adopt my dad's message for myself, and I'm thankful and glad that I did. Now I'm sharing my dad's message with the world.

I like that. I like that. Let me ask you, man, because this is personal, I guess, for both of us. You said 2015, what month?

November 10th, 2015.

November 22nd, 2015, the day my father passed. So, oh wow, you know, said in that same boat. And as you just said something that Man, there's tricks to something because I'm writing and things of that nature. And one thing that I'm writing about is sections of my dad and things that you may have had ignored back in the day, as we say, going one ear and out the other. But now it resonates with you, you know what I'm saying? The wisdom and the things that they give you, it resonates because now not only am I hearing it, but then I find myself, my oldest boy, he'll be 30 and shit, and I remember just riding with him and just taking a trip from here to Detroit. And I talked to him and I said, yeah, man, I know it's going in one ear and out the other, but when you have your own kids, when you have your son, you'll find yourself telling your son the same things I'm telling you, the same thing my father telling me. And we call that passing down generational wisdom, man. That's what our fathers gave us, you know what I'm saying? We may not have appreciated, or as you saying, Mr. Town, oh, he wasn't at my baseball game, he didn't see me hit that home run, or at shortstop and get that nice little catch or that flip back, you know what I'm saying, to second base for the double play. He didn't see that. But, you know, as you say, man, as we get older, they wanted to be there. But in that mentality, in that time, main focus and their main process was provide for the families, you know what I'm saying? That's what a man did was provide for the family, and then they figured that, you know, everything would be taken care of. But we're living in a different generation where our kids not built like us, how we were. Put back. They need a little more attention. They need a little more, you know what I'm saying, encouragement. And thank God for fathers like you. And I'm trying to be like that with my youngest boy because God knows I failed along the line, you know what I'm saying, in that concept. But I thank God for putting us in this moment right now, man. Now we got something to share. November 10th, November 22nd, man, we in that same morning, that same morning period. 10 years going on 11 this year.

Yeah, yeah, no, and you know, time helps, but yeah, you never forget and you always cherish those moments. And yeah, so I'm sure our dads are talking right now saying, look at our sons chatting.

Yeah, like, who would ever thought that, all the way from Austin, Texas, my man George and his boy CJ, from the late great Michael Jackson, Gary, Indiana. We've already discussed that. So George, man, let's get to you, man. Let's ask you a couple questions. Yeah. George, you've helped scale companies to over $200 million in revenue. That's quite fascinating in itself, brother. What was the moment you realized that success was coming out at a personal cost?

Yeah, I kind of alluded to it a little bit earlier, but the time was 2018 and summer of 2018, and my dad's now 3 years gone. So my big wake-up moment, you know, was still kind of fresh in my mind. But all those tomorrows led to 3 years. And I'd scaled my business to $20 million that year. And had you told me prior, like, one day you're going to have a $20 million a year business, and I'd be like, I made it, I'm good, life is going to be good. But I found myself hating life because the cost that it was having on my family. And that was, you know, broken commitments. It was interruptions at the dinner table. It was late night, you know, servers down, somebody's got to fix it. And the crazy thing is that I had a great team of people that I could properly delegate to, but I just wasn't delegating the proper way. And so how I like to frame it is that the way that I was delegating was just delayed involvement. You know, I'd be involved later, eventually, once the problem boomeranged back up to me and I'd rob from the future and I'd just say it's quicker if I do it myself. And it is quicker in the moment, but I'm training my team to depend on me. And so I was the bottleneck in the whole thing and I just was not enjoying life at that time. So I wanted to burn the business down. I literally wanted to like shut the thing down, pull the site offline and just be done with it. Not a smart thing to do, but very emotional at the time, forgetting all the money that I was making. And I had a coach at the time that sort of lovingly walked me off the ledge. And he just said the phrase that sort of like started me on this whole new path. He said, stop doing what you don't like doing and keep doing what you're good at. And I was like, okay, 23 years in business. I guess it finally clicks. I'm a late bloomer. Okay. So. I started with that, and that's when the concept of Buy Back Time Formula was born. The name didn't exist then. I didn't know what a framework or bottleneck was. I was just doing the work. And the pinnacle of that was 2 years later implementing the frameworks and stuff that I teach and talk about now. I scaled to just shy of $50 million. I was working no more than 30 hours a week, basically living a semi-retired lifestyle. But the most impressive thing, more than making more money and even working less, is that, like my dad said, don't miss Leo's games. I never missed any of his games. I poured into him. He's homeschooled and we do real estate as a byproduct of the cash flow from the business. And I taught him how to negotiate real estate. And even to current day, he's got a podcast. He's 11 years old interviewing millionaires and successful people. And I kind of divert there for a second on my son because that's just evidence of a present dad in the house, the type of impact you can have. But his trajectory was he was just going to be another zombie on a phone, not knowing how to shake people's hands, not Mother's Day is a time to appreciate the people who hold us to a high standard.

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Knowing how to look them in the eye and say, nice to meet you. And now he's talking to, you know, millionaires and people that are doing things in this world pouring into him. And yeah, so I'm very thankful that his trajectory has changed dramatically because I made the decision and really because my dad inspired me to make the decision in my business. And so it goes back to my dad and then ultimately, you know, God's will. And so I'm real thankful for that. But that's when everything changed for me.

Me. This episode is brought to you by CJ Moneyway Media, where podcast ideas become platforms. Through the Moneyway Lab Masterclass, CJ shares real lessons from the lab for creators building their voices brick by brick. From powerful guest conversations, storytelling that inspires growth, CJ Moneyway Media is about one thing, building legacy through stories. Learn more at CJMoneyway.com. Music style, music style. I like that, man. Great success to you, young man. Doing that, you know, when my son probably about 8, 9 years, I had him actually doing a podcast too, sports podcast, and one of the first people that he interviewed was our cousin Glenn Robinson III. Might play Michigan.

Big Dog, right?

That was Little Dog. That was the son. Big Dog played for Purdue.

Yeah, number 43 was Big Dog, right?

Big Dog was 13.

Oh, 13. Okay.

Uh, yeah, Trey was 43 at Michigan. That's the team that they were playing with Tim Hardaway and a couple other players from— they players played at Michigan. Yeah, so my little son interviewed him and his other brother, Jalen Robinson, that played football at Purdue. So I had him on that trajectory too, but I didn't force it, you know what I'm saying? Like, you gotta want to do something, man, you know. You gotta— you can't force them do things or live through dreams that, you know, saying that you had. They have to find a niche for themselves. You can guide them, you know, as the old saying goes, you can lead the horse to water but you can't make them drink, you know. Because if you try to force things out of They tend to like it, man. Let me ask you this, George, man, because you said something that was interesting in that question. You said that you were making this money at scale to $20 million, then $50 million, but you wasn't happy. You know, you wasn't happy. Life wasn't— y'all had the money to do the things that you wanted to do, take your family to European trips and things of that nature. Consciously, was it a feeling of Although you had all this success and was doing the things that you want and were able to provide like your father was able to provide for your family, was it a struggle because you kind of saw your father in you and you found yourself doing the same thing that you hated about what your father did and you subconsciously doing the same things to your family? Did that have a point to play when you mentor your coach Danny, you and told you of what you need to change.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I saw myself in my father, especially when he made that statement. It just totally hit home, and I made the commitment that that's going to change. This generational thing ends here. And I kept delaying, delaying, delaying until I just reached a pressure point where I'm like, this is it. This thing either has to burn down or we need to make a dramatic change. So thankful my mentor steered me towards the dramatic change direction. And yeah, once I started removing myself layer by layer from the responsibilities that I like worked myself into, like, what I call the founder prison, I started to slowly taste a little bit of freedom step by step. It's like at first you almost take this leap of faith, like, okay, does this thing really work? And then you see that it works, and then you just become addicted to doing this with about just about everything that you can, so that the time that you do work in the business, you're working with, you know, less stress, more mental clarity, none of this context switching where, you know, people are pinging you like, hey, do you have a quick question for this, or quick 5 minutes for this? And it's never 5 minutes. And you know, you're off track and then you come back. And so yeah, that's when everything changed is when I decided like this has to stop here. And really it was life circumstances that pushed me into making that decision.

Life will always do it to you. Let me ask you this, George, you touched on it earlier, man, but I want to get deep part of this, you know, saying as far from the entrepreneur side, you talked about founder prison. What actually does that mean? How entrepreneurs end up there?

Yeah, I believe it's an accidental thing. I don't think anybody ever says, hey, I'm going to build myself into this business and I'm going to be miserable because everything depends on me. But we, you know, I have this saying, we're either scaling freedom or we're scaling chaos. And so as you're starting the business, you need to be aware that you need to work in like systems that are scalable so that by the time you're ready for that big growth, you know, you're able to sort of like plug the pieces in and not be the main bottleneck in all of the decisions. Of course, there's a season at first where you're, you know, you're working hard and you're probably putting in more effort than you will at another point once the business is really ready to scale. But being too dependent into the business and training your team to depend on you for everything is really how you build yourself into the founder prison. And it doesn't happen overnight. It's like it's one of these slow things. Then you look up and you're like, I can't even step away without something falling apart. And that's how you know you're in the founder's prison.

I don't want to be in the founder's prison, although, you know, somebody that's starting a podcast, it's whatever. Plus I work with 9 to 5, it's a lot of stuff that you have to do, man, you know what I'm saying? I know probably what your son or yourself with podcasting, this and that, that in itself is a process, you know what I'm saying? The things that you have to do, you know, there's family neglect there and times you not really spending with this. I do this even when you with them. I'm on my phone doing certain things and whatnot. So I mean, it's a balance, man. And if you wife that's really not feeling what you doing, as we said earlier, when you do get yourself together and realize that they are the missing pieces, hopefully it's not too late. Because those things happen. You want to come back home, your wife don't know you The kids know, the dog don't know you, don't nobody know everybody gone and you by yourself in this founder's prison. So let me ask you this, man, because you touched on this, your buyback time formula helps founders reclaim 10 to 20 hours a week. What are the first steps entrepreneurs should take to make that shift?

Yeah, that's a great question. So you need to take a look at everything that you're doing. And once you have a comprehensive list of the things that you're doing, you got to run it by what I call the 10K per hour filter. And then And from that, you're going to identify the things that you should get off of your plate and the things that you should keep on your plate. And my suggestion for founders is to keep things that move revenue for the business on your plate. Like, that's your job, is to bring revenue for the business. Get everything off of your plate that does not initially bring in revenue for the business. It supports the revenue. It's important stuff, but it shouldn't be done by the founder. And usually the founder's best time is spent on those revenue-generating activities. And so that's where we focus.

Focus on the revenues. That's what keeps everything else in place. I know it was a song back in the day, ain't nothing going on but the rent. You can't pay the rent without a J-O-B. Hey, so let me ask you this, George, man. You created something called the 2-week vacation test. What does that reveal about a business and its leadership?

Absolutely. That is the best and easiest way to see what will fall apart first when the owner steps away for a couple of weeks. Now, we do that in an intelligent way. So for example, when I work with a client and we're doing an onboarding call, one of the first things I do is look in your calendar 6 months, give or take a month, and find me 2 weeks that you can take off because we're going on vacation. They're going on vacation. And so usually they'll like stop and take a deep breath and say, what are you talking about? I can't even step away for an hour today without something falling apart. How the heck am I going to take 2 weeks off? When they say that, I love it. I'm like, You need this more than you know if that's your reaction. So good, you're in the right place. And that's because the clock starts right now. We're going to, in the first 90 days, we're going to get back 10 to 20 hours per week. In the first 2 weeks, we're going to identify the low-hanging fruit that's going to get you back those immediate hours. But the first 90 days is like version 1 of our whole like system overhaul here. And then we're going to practice taking absence rehearsals. And so we're not going to go cold turkey, 2 weeks vacation a few months from now. That, that would probably be borderline irresponsible. So what we're going to do, since you were freaking out about an afternoon off, we're going to take an afternoon off once these systems are in place. What's going to happen? You're training your brain that an afternoon is not going to catapult or disrupt the business. Maybe the invoicing department doesn't get an invoice. Maybe, uh, shipping didn't get a fulfillment notice, whatever. It's, it's coming a few hours late. It's not catastrophic to the business. We fix that. Then a few weeks later, we'll take a couple of days off in the middle of the week. Not 2 weeks, just a couple of days. And we'll see what little issues pop up by us being gone for a couple of days. We fix those things, and then we intelligently go into the 2-week vacation knowing that we fixed any little leaky buckets that come up in our rehearsals. And that means that the owner is completely off the grid for the couple of weeks. The only heads up that they get is, is a scorecard that tells them the 5 to 8 metrics— every business is different— but the 5 to 8 metrics that are most important in a business. Things like revenue, bottom line profit, could be conversions, traffic, whatever those key metrics are so that the owner at a glance says, business is doing well, business is growing. I'm back to enjoying my vacation because there's a part of the business owner that if you've never done this, then, you know, you want to settle your nervous system down so that you're not freaking out about what's going on in my business. And then we have a true number 2 in place where everything stops to them. So nothing penetrates that number 2 to the owner, to the founder when they're gone. The only thing that qualifies, I've never seen it before, but the curious mind's always like, well, what would qualify? And I just have to like make something up, but something of a legal risk or a life or death risk or some banking risk never happened, but it would be something critical to the business that the owner would have to step back in. But you've given the decision rights to your number 2 to handle everything else. You've already done your rehearsal test to sort of like warm into it. So that's what the 2-week vacation test is.

I like that. Hey, I gotta listen to George. George just don't be talking, man. George got some biblical principles in his speech, because when you were saying that, I was thinking about Moses when his father-in-law broke it to him and say, you know, hey man, he said, you trying to judge all these people? He said, you gotta delegate, you know, you gotta get these problems, these situations, these people, these— you gotta appoint people and then let the big stuff come to you, man. You can't handle Everything. So as I say, George talks spiritual wisdom to y'all without talking spiritual wisdom to you, but I give it to you like it is, man. And so let me ask you this, George, man. Many entrepreneurs believe they must always be available, as you were just saying. How does time acceptability actually weaken leadership?

Yeah, most people think that I'm always available for my team, I'm a great leader, and I get it. I did that for a number of years. But the result of being available 24/7, or what feels like 24/7, is that your team never takes action without you. So what I've done to change that is no longer are you just going to ping me randomly. When you come to me, you're going to have to tell me, like, what did you do? Do you have a suggestion? What are 3 other things that you've tried so that you come to me with context? And you do that enough times. That's what true leadership is. You're training them to find the solution on their own. And I've noticed 9 out of 10 times they already have the right solution when they give me like 2 or 3 things that they thought of or discussed. And over time, they stop coming to you because you are instilling confidence in them that you trust their ability to figure it out. And so that's how you eliminate the random pings and the constant availability that you think is leadership, but it's really the opposite.

Yeah, really micromanaging. Hey, man, get off my back. Anytime you give me something, you don't get— you got to give a person room to grow, to be able to come into their own type of leadership, you know what I'm saying? Everybody's not the same, and a lot of times I think leaders tend to want to micromanage more because that person don't have the same leadership skills as they have. But here's the problem, here's some of the things that a lot— I think, uh, George, a lot of leaders might miss is that no, you may not have the same communication— I mean, uh, leadership skill, because this person actually had communication views, and they know how to relate to other people. Something that you have missed along the lines, because we can get people up there and I don't feel like I really need to talk to you, you know what I'm saying? Because I'm the boss, do as I say, you know what I'm saying? I won't know going around the table asking people are they opinions, you people that you didn't put around you, the trusted people. But you say that you trust them, but you really don't. So, you know, I think that's an issue too. That's it. That's it. Hey, so let me ask you this, George, man. You run the 18 Summers Roundtable and Founders Are Dead. Why is community so important for founders navigating through these challenges?

I think it's important that we know that we're not alone. I think sometimes in our deepest, darkest moments, we're sitting there like, woe is me, nobody understands me, I must be the only one going through this. And the crazy thing is, You're not alone. You're actually part of a group of people in a very unique position. You've got unique responsibilities. You're trying to balance running and growing a company with a family that you love dearly. And like, how can those two things exist in a way that's harmonious? And that's like the ultimate challenge in life is figuring out that perfect life balance, which I think there's always like this little tension. Like we're never going to get to a point where like, I got it totally figured out 100%. There's always just a little bit of tension. And I think that's what keeps life interesting.. And I think when we're doing it on our own, we feel like we're in this isolated island. Nobody gets us. And the truth is we feel alone because we're not telling other people. And I didn't realize this until I started hosting these events that, oh, there's a lot of people that feel the same struggles and tension and just trying to balance everything else that I do. So when I get with people on the 18 Summers Roundtable or at my home at the FounderDad dinners, uh, we just open up. I mean, we're not trying to like sell each other on anything. We're just like, hey man, this is what I'm going through. And They're like, yeah, it's the same thing. And honestly, we're not even trying to solve each other's problems. We're just like airing it out. And just the fact that we're not alone in this world just gives us this confidence and it creates like this brotherhood that I've never been able to find anywhere else.

Man, ain't nothing, brother. I wish you great success with that, man, having an annual thing. Let's set it up in Indiana, man. You know what I'm saying? On your way through, what is it, Traverse City?

You know what I'm saying?

Traverse City, yeah.

Traverse City. Hey, on your way, man, setting something up, man, a dad's founder dinner right here in Indiana, man, or on the border, man, in Michigan. Let's get together and do something like that, man.

I'd love to do it.

And we're, you know, just talking down the line, but let's get back to that at some point, man. Y'all heard it right here on the CJ Moneyway Show. CJ Moneyway, we're gonna have a founder's dad event right here in Northwest Indiana.

Let's do it.

Hey, so, uh, ask you this, man. If a founder listening today feels trapped by their own calendar, what's the first step they should take towards freedom?

Yeah, I think the founder, the best thing to do is install guardrails. And what I love to do, if this was like me talking to a client on an onboarding call, I would say we're going to structure your workweek to be 30 hours, no more than that. And so automatically, instantly, that's going to take what might be an open calendar and it's going to compress it. And all of a sudden you're going to see that what used to take 2, 3, 4 hours all of a sudden now can fit in a 30-minute block or a 1-hour block because that forces the brain, forces the founder to think in ways to do it most effectively. And what I recommend is with the additional time outside of that 30 hours, that's where you have the time to give back to the family. And so if it doesn't fit in those 30 hours, then I just don't make it happen. And those are key things that I need to either eliminate, automate, or delegate, which is part of the time liberation trifecta. So that's where I put all that. But I would start with tightening the calendar, and that will automatically compress and prioritize the things that you need to be doing.

So, George, before we get out of here, man, do me one favor. Let us know where we can find you at. Let us know where we can find your programs at. And give us something that's on your heart, man, that you would like to share with the audience before we head out.

Absolutely. So you can find me at buybacktimeformula.com. There's a link to my book, my socials, my events. You can book a call with me. We can kind of get to the bottom of what it is keeping you as the bottleneck so that you can restore that presence at home. At the end of the day, that's the goal. And so like what's on my heart, and I might have alluded to this earlier, but nobody at the end of their days says, I'm so glad that I blew your game for that client meeting, because at the end of those days, you're not going to remember the name of that client or, you know, insert business excuse. But you will remember if you made an effort to go to the games and the events that were important for your children and your family. So let's realize that now. Let's not wait to the end days. And if you can do that, then that'll have helped me get my dad's message across.

I like it, man. His dad, my dad, we're going to put something together. CJ Moneyway and George Riviere Founders' Dinner coming to a city near you. Hey, we gonna put that on paper, man. Hey, so thank you for listening to the CJ Moneyway Show. Thank you for my man George coming through, giving us these nuggets, man. Really appreciate his time. Hey, check him out, as he said, on his website buybacktimeformula.com, and check out his program Buy Back Time Formula 18 Summers Roundtable. And until the next time, you're listening to the CJ Moneyway Show with your boy CJ Moneyway. Way. We out of here. Peace. You been listening to the CJ Moneyway Show, where real stories, real lessons, yeah, and real perspective come together. Remember, move with patience, move with purpose. That is the mindset of a Panther. Until next time, keep building your legacy brick by brick by brick by brick.

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