I did a time audit on myself last week. The results were… humbling.

30-40% of my week? Document review. 15-20%? Follow-ups. Another 15-20%? Scheduling.

As an M&A Advisor, I help founders sell businesses. Which means I don't get paid an hourly wage. Just like the recruitment pitch of an MLM, "we eat what we kill" in my profession. So the more time spent on admin = less money I earn (subscribe for more tax-saving strategies).

Ironically, I spend my days telling owners to build systems, delegate, and make themselves replaceable. But when I looked at my time audit I felt like a politician. Telling the masses one thing, yet doing the opposite myself.

Reviewing every document draft, chasing every email, overwhelming my calendar with every call. In the age of AI, there is really no excuse.

The irony hit me like a truck: I help founders build sellable businesses while running mine in a way that would tank its valuation.

If a buyer looked at my business the way I look at my clients' businesses, the feedback would be brutal: "Too founder-dependent. Pass."

Sound familiar?

Here's what most founders miss. Burnout doesn't just hurt your health. It destroys your business value. 52% of workers now cite work-life balance as a major issue. But for business owners, the stakes are way higher than just feeling tired.

Buyers can smell a founder-dependent business from a mile away. When you're the bottleneck for every decision, every client relationship, every deliverable - you don't own a business, you own the world's worst job. Because, as Michael Gerber put it, you're working for a lunatic (yourself).

Spend long enough in the asylum and you'll end up with burnout-itis. It shows up in three ways:

  1. Lower multiples: founder-dependent = risky = lower valuation. If you ARE the business, the business isn't worth much without you. Simple as that.

  2. Longer time to close: buyers need proof the business runs without you. If you can't demonstrate that during diligence, expect months of delays. Or a dead deal.

  3. Failed deals: you're too exhausted to manage a 90-day diligence process while running the day-to-day. Something breaks. Usually the deal.

Here's the thing most "grind harder" founders don't want to hear: staying fit and delegating isn't soft. It's the difference between a 3x and a 5x exit. The founders who get the best outcomes? They built businesses that don't need them. They have energy left in the tank when a buyer's diligence gets tough. They're not running on fumes trying to hold everything together.

So here's a remedy you can take this week.

Step 1: Draw a T chart.

  • Left column: Energy Drainers. The tasks you dread. The ones that suck the life out of you (personal example: shopping at Walmart).

  • Right column: Energy Gainers. The work that fills you up. The stuff you'd do for free.

Fill in both sides with your current work tasks. Be brutally honest.

Now pick ONE energy drainer from the left column and kill it this week. Three options:

  • Delegate it: hand it to a team member or AI. Yes, they won't do it perfectly at first. That's fine.

  • Hire for it: create a role. Even part-time or contract. Just get it off your plate.

  • Eliminate it: start with a hard question. Is this task actually critical? Or are you doing it out of habit? Stop doing it.

You don't need to clear the left column overnight. The goal is to build the muscle of letting go. Every drainer you eliminate makes your business less dependent on you. And more valuable to a buyer.

I started with scheduling. Took me 20 minutes to set up a system that saved me 5+ hours a week. That's 5 hours I now spend on client strategy and business development. The stuff that actually moves the needle.

idea of the week 💡

credit: ideabrowser.com

  • Problem: nobody checked the water heater. It goes. Floods the basement, soaks through the ceiling below. The owner stares at the invoice: $1,200 for the replacement, $4,000 for the water damage, mold remediation starting next week. Three months of rent, gone. One unit offline while repairs finish and a tenant threatening to break their lease. The problem was visible a year ago. Nobody looked. Now everybody's paying for it.

  • Idea: a home maintenance dashboard for rental property owners. Upload inspection reports, photos, and maintenance logs — the system maps every major system in the building against expected lifespans and flags what's approaching failure. HVAC unit running past its rated life? Flagged before it dies in August with tenants home. Discoloration around a bathroom vent? That's early water damage — $500 to fix now or $8,000 next season. Integrate with Thumbtack or Angi so the fix is one click from the flag. Target landlords managing 10-50 units who are tired of surprises eating their margins.

  • How it makes money: $35-100/month per property based on unit count and compliance features. Contractor referral fees add revenue every time a user books through the platform. Insurance partnerships come later when the data proves that buildings on the platform file fewer claims. The landlord who just lost three months of rent to a water heater replacement is the first customer. The one who avoided it is the referral.

  • Why it might fail: you need landlords to actually upload their documents and photos — and most of these people have maintenance records scattered across filing cabinets, email threads, and sticky notes. Onboarding friction is the killer. You'd need near-zero effort ingestion (snap a photo of the receipt, forward the email, done) to get adoption past the early adopters.

friday fitness

give one of these workouts a try this weekend

at-home workout:

Complete 4 rounds:

  • 15 burpees

  • 20 air squats

  • 10 push-up to shoulder taps

  • 1-minute plank hold

  • 30-second rest between rounds

gym workout

5 sets of:

  • Deadlift: 5 reps

  • Incline dumbbell press: 8 reps

  • Weighted pull-ups: 6 reps

  • Dumbbell lunges: 10 reps per leg

  • Hanging knee raises: 15 reps

outdoor workout

For time:

  • 800m run

  • 30 jump squats

  • 20 push-ups

  • 400m run

  • 20 jump squats

  • 15 push-ups

  • 200m run

  • 10 jump squats

  • 10 push-ups

tweet of the week

This tweet is a great reminder to do this more, because I’m terrible at doing it myself.

my plugs

every second counts

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