How to Buy Back Your Time Through Delegation & Automation with Mike Abramowitz

A conversation with Mike Abramowitz on delegation, automation, and building systems that work

Most business owners start their companies dreaming of freedom, but end up trapped in a cycle of endless work. They become the bottleneck in their own success story, answering every call, handling every crisis, and working nights and weekends just to keep things running.

Mike Abramowitz knows this story intimately. As co-owner of Better Than Rich, he helps business owners systematize their operations to gain time freedom while maintaining or increasing profitability. But his journey to this expertise came through hard won experience including a devastating financial collapse that taught him the difference between working hard and working smart.

From Financial Ruin to Freedom

Mike’s story begins in New Jersey, watching his father run a plumbing business. At 84 years old, his dad still works six days a week, answering every call. “For almost 50 years he’s been running this business,” Mike explains. “I watched him hustle and grind.”

Determined not to follow the same path, Mike threw himself into real estate investing while in college. By age 22, he had three rental properties and dreams of retiring at 40. Then 2008 hit.

“I lost the rental properties, I was negative $130,000 in debt, I had foreclosed on the properties, a 400 credit score,” Mike recalls. “I called it the valley of my 20s because now the rest of my 20s was just climbing out of this hole that I built.”

The irony wasn’t lost on him in trying to avoid his father’s grind, he became exactly what he feared: someone working six to seven days a week with no time for friends, hobbies, or relationships.

The Turning Point

The breakthrough came when Mike fell in love and hired a business coach named Andrew in 2016. Andrew had corporate experience scaling a company from $6 million to $30 million with 1,400 team members, and he brought those systematic approaches to small businesses.

“He helped me corporatize, meaning I brought in virtual assistants offshore, I brought in automations and Zapier and technology solutions and delegation,” Mike explains. “I pretty much McDonaldified my business to make it super simple.”

The real test came on New Year’s Eve 2020, when Mike’s son James was born at just 1 pound, 4 ounces at 26 weeks. The family spent eight and a half months in the NICU.

“During that time, my office, my Cutco business, was able to run without me because of all those systems that Andrew helped me put into place,” Mike says. “It still produced seven figures in sales 1.3 million in sales, a quarter million in revenue without me there running the day to day operations.”

The Time-Rich Framework

From this experience, Mike and Andrew developed what they call the “Time Rich Six” six key areas where business owners can create systems to buy back their time:

1. Boundaries

“Your business is a vehicle for your life, it’s not your life,” Mike emphasizes. He uses a provocative example: if you’re making love to your spouse at 2 AM and the phone rings, do you answer it?

Boundaries are really about protecting priorities. Mike created what he calls the “BFF Triangle”:

Base: Business predictability
Middle: Family leadership
Top: Financial freedom and legacy

Every decision should flow from these priorities.

2. Communication Guidelines

Establish clear parameters for what constitutes an email versus a text versus a live call. Even high-end clients can respect simple guidelines like: “If it’s an emergency, call me. If it can wait until business hours, please fill out this form and you’ll be first on our contact list.”

3. Systems

These are the if-then processes in your talent journey (hiring, training, retention) and client journey (sales, onboarding, delivery, follow-up). Most blue collar business owners understand how to do the technical work but struggle with systematizing the business operations.

4. Playbooks

Document those systems with videos, SOPs, and training materials. Mike recommends the “camcorder method” use tools like Loom to record processes, which can then be converted into written documentation with AI.

5. Team

There are two types of talent: experts (who cost more but know what to do) and doers (who cost less but need training). The key is methodical delegation, not dumping tasks and hoping for the best.

As Mike puts it: “Dan Martell says 80% done by somebody else is 100% awesome.”

6. Technology

Simple project management tools like ClickUp, Asana, or Trello help manage remote team members and track progress on outcomes rather than just time spent.

The Replacement Ladder Strategy

Mike follows Dan Martell’s replacement ladder for knowing what to delegate first:

Administrative tasks (first to go)
Marketing
Fulfillment
Sales (keep until $5-10M typically)
Leadership (last to delegate)

For home service businesses specifically:

$1M: Need a rockstar CSR managing communications
$2-3M: Have delivery systems but often miss the admin piece
$3-5M: Still the best salesperson but hire additional salespeople
$5-10M: Need rockstar salespeople and next layer of management

The Hidden Goldmine: Client Lifetime Value

One of Mike’s most powerful insights for home service businesses is the untapped potential in existing clients. “We have a couple in that $3 million range and they could double the entire business model without spending any more money on marketing and without hiring any salespeople just by getting back into the homes of people they’ve already sold to.”

This happens through:

Upsells and maintenance visits
Referral systems with simple “give the gift” campaigns
Commercial transitions by asking residential clients about their business needs

Mike shares examples of clients who’ve received $50,000+ commercial jobs simply by asking existing residential customers: “Who do you know that might need something like this done for their commercial business?”

Making Remote Work

For business owners worried about managing remote team members, Mike offers practical advice:

Use project management software to see exactly what tasks people are working on and their progress.

Focus on outcomes, not time. Manage the metrics and KPIs rather than micromanaging people. If calls aren’t converting, the problem might be your system, not your people.

Test before you trust. When hiring virtual assistants, pay them upfront for a test project but include incorrect login information. See how quickly they identify the problem and ask for help this reveals their integrity, reliability, and problem solving skills.

The Power of Systematic Thinking

The transformation Mike describes isn’t just about individual tactics it’s about shifting from a firefighting mentality to systematic thinking. Instead of reacting to every urgent email or crisis, successful business owners create systems that handle routine decisions automatically.

“There’s reaction mode like being a firefighter when there’s always an emergency and there’s distraction mode with shiny objects and new ideas,” Mike explains. “Both steal your time from high-leverage activities.”

The solution is building what Mike calls business predictability systems so robust that the business runs smoothly even when you’re not there.

Getting Started

For business owners ready to begin this transformation, Mike recommends starting with the “lead domino” the one small change that will create momentum for bigger improvements. Usually, this involves either systems or playbooks.

The simplest starting point? Pick one process you do repeatedly and document it. Use your phone to record a voice memo while doing your best sales call or service call, then turn that into a written process.

Your Next Step

Mike’s journey from $130,000 in debt to building a business that runs without him proves that freedom is possible but it requires intentional system-building, not just harder work.

The question isn’t whether you can afford to build these systems. The question is whether you can afford not to. Every day you spend trapped in operational details is a day you’re not growing your business, serving your family, or building the legacy you started your business to create.

As Mike learned from watching his 84-year-old father still answering every plumbing call: your business should be a vehicle for your life, not your life itself.

Want to see these principles in action? Mike offers a free 30-minute session where his team will build four custom systems for your business no pitch, just value.

How to Buy Back Your Time Through Delegation & Automation with Mike Abramowitz