Most entrepreneurs believe scaling a business requires longer hours, more pressure, and constant involvement in every decision. But entrepreneur George Rivera discovered a different path. After building a company to $20 million in revenue, he found himself trapped in the classic founder bottleneck—where the business depends on the owner for nearly everything. Instead of working harder, Rivera restructured how the company operated by focusing on eliminating low-value tasks, building systems, and empowering his team to own outcomes.
The result was counterintuitive but powerful: the company scaled from $20M to $50M while Rivera worked significantly less. His approach, known as the Buy Back Time Formula, shows that real growth happens when founders shift from being operators to architects—focusing only on their highest-value activities while systems and teams drive the rest of the business forward.
Episode Highlights Here:
Brett
Before we jump into this episode, I want to invite you to join our community to help you become a better steward scale to billions and ultimately give more or all of it away. All I want
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Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me. Welcome to the build to billions podcast where we guide successful entrepreneurs and investors on their journey from millions to billions. We believe the key to scaling and compounding your wealth and life starts every single day with a mindset and practice of stewardship over ownership and applying billionaire biblical principles. Our ultimate goal is to be scale and compound your wealth and life so youcan give more all of it away to help MVPs. My name is Brett Swartz. Each and every episode, weare joined by some of the world’s top entrepreneurs, millionaires or billionaires, where theyshare their secrets and insights and wisdom with us so we can all level up and make a biggerimpact. I’m excited about our next guest. You know, he’s focused on helping founders. Alot of them get burnt out because they lack drive, not because they lack drive, but because they burn out because the business still depends on them for their decisions, approvals and momentum. And he’s going to help us give some key tips to reclaiming 10 to 20 per hours in the next 90 days, and so we can start working less and removing the bottlenecks. And we’re going to be talking all about this today, and the episode is going to be talking about buyback time formula. Please. Welcome to show with me. George Rivera, George, how we doing?
George
Hey, Brett, great. How are you doing?
Brett
I’m doing great. Good. To meet you over the podcast for our listeners, getting to know you for the first time. Would you give us just a little bit more about your current focus and your kind of your little bit of your experience?
George
Absolutely. Yeah. So going on 31 years now. In direct response, I started when I was 17. This was back in1995 when dinosaurs used to roam the earth a long, long time ago. And, yeah, I started in the supplement space. And at the time, you know, the Internet was up and coming, as was, GNC was the fastest growing franchise in the country at the time. Kind of like following along with the baby boomers, whatever they’re interested in. It’s kind of like they were kind of leading the way as far as the economy went. So, I kind of piggybacked on two up and coming trends and hit some really big successes early on. And it’s a typical entrepreneur journey is it’s like, you know, like this, and it’s kind of, Hey, welcome to entrepreneurship. That’s how life is. Had a number of peaks and valleys. But I circled back into the supplement space about 1213, years ago, and it’s been a primary place where I’ve been, you know, as far as, like, you know, making money online for me goes. I started a company 10 years actually, 11 years ago now, from zero, took it to over 200 million in sales over that run, it still exists today. I’m a minority owner in that company now, but over the last year, six months to a year, I’ve sort of had this kind of this line in the sand moment of, okay, nobody’s ever come to me and I’ve sold millions of bottles of pills, but nobody’s ever said, Oh my gosh, this bottle of pills completely transformed my life. I mean,
they’re good products. I can sleep well at night and how I market them, but, you know, maybeyou get a little bit less joint pain, maybe clear memory, but that’s it, and that’s what it’s
designed to do. But I feel like, God, put me on this planet to do a lot more than just sell a bunch of pills and stack money. So, over the last six months, I’d say, I’ve come out with this movement called buyback time. Formula happens to be a book by the same title, and it’s basically for cash, rich time, poor people. Basically, the meat of 10 years ago, where I built myself in this founder prison. I didn’t really know how to get out of it, and everything sort of depended on me, because that’s how I built it. I didn’t know any better, and over the course of a couple of years, implementing the frameworks they now teach. I didn’t know anything about frameworks or bottlenecks or even the buyback time formula, but I implemented that, and I more than doubled my business from 20 million in 2018 to just shy of $50 million in 2021 but as opposed to working 80 hours, the old way, the new me is like semi-retired, never working more than 30 hours and then really pouring into my family, and so kind of a super, super high level, but yeah, going back to how nobody ever said anything about the pills, well now people are saying, oh my gosh, I didn’t realize how much my presence meant to my kids, and, you know, so that puts a smile on my face, that satisfies my soul, gives me some purpose, and it’s also helping people. So, I feel like it’s a win, win. But yeah, threw a lot out at you, so wherever you want to pick it up
from there,
Brett
That’s awesome, George. Thank you so much, by the way. Can learn more and get going on what Mr. George is speaking about by going to buy back time formula.com, buy back time formula.com, let’s just dive into the topic. Or what’s the number one secret to the buyback time formula,
George
yeah, really, the first thing is, you got to be aware of where you are spending your time. So the first thing to do is really take an audit of your time. I call it the freedom audit, but just, really just an audit of the last two weeks. And if you’re like me, you know you hear that you’re like, oh my gosh, well, I have things on my calendar, but I can’t really tell you.
Brett
So if you’d like this little, short clip of the interview I just did, click over here to watch the. Full interview, and please don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much, everybody.
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About George Rivera
George Rivera is a serial entrepreneur, business strategist, and creator of the Buy Back Time Formula, a framework designed to help founders scale their companies while reclaiming their time. With more than three decades of experience in entrepreneurship and direct-response marketing, Rivera has built and helped scale multiple companies, generating hundreds of millions in revenue across industries such as e-commerce, health, and digital marketing.
After growing one of his businesses from startup to over $50 million in revenue, Rivera realized that traditional entrepreneurial success often comes at the cost of time freedom. That realization led him to develop the Buy Back Time Formula—a system that teaches business owners how to eliminate low-value work, build scalable teams, and install systems that allow the company to grow without the founder becoming the bottleneck. Today, he shares these principles through coaching, speaking, and his book, helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses while working less.
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