You Can't Afford NOT to Hire

"I don't have a budget for an assistant," says Nikita, who fills out spreadsheets, edits Reels, replies in DMs, hires, fires, etc.
At this moment, Nikita thinks he's saving money, and when he becomes big and rich, he'll hire people.
In reality, at this moment Nikita is robbing his own company.

Don't be like Nikita.

Let's break it down with math. No need to pull out a calculator—I've done the numbers.

1. What is your hour actually worth?
There are about 2000 working hours in a year. That's 40 hours times 50 weeks (assuming you actually work 8 hours a day, yeah right).

Take your income.
• If you take 300,000 rubles/month out of the business (3.6 million per year) — your hour is worth 1,800 rubles.
• If 1 million rubles/month (12 million per year) — your hour is worth 6,000 rubles.

Now watch closely.
You sit and spend 2 hours making a presentation or reconciling receipts in Excel.
The market price for this work is 500 rubles/hour. A student could easily do it.
But you do it yourself. So that presentation costs your business 12,000 rubles (if your hour is 6k).
You just overpaid by 12 times. You burned time that could have been spent on strategy, sales, or rest.

2. The 25% Rule (Buyback Rate)
⛔️ No one should do work that can be delegated for 25% of their hourly rate.

Why 25%? Because for every ruble spent on an employee, you should get a 4x return on investment.

Example: Your hour is worth 4,000 rubles. 25% of that is 1,000 rubles. Anything that costs less than 1,000 rubles/hour on the market, you must delegate.
Searching for resumes? Delegate.
Video editing? Delegate.
Calling bank tech support? Delegate.

Important: this works not only with assistants.


I gave the example with an assistant because it's the simplest first step. But the principle works for any position:
• COO
• Sales Manager
• Marketer

If your hour is worth 6,000 rubles, and you manage managers yourself (work worth 1,500 rubles per hour), you are killing your margin.

You're not saving on a sales manager; you're losing millions due to the lack of strategy that you're not working on because you're busy with operations.
The math is the same for everyone. If you want to grow, buy other people's time cheaper than your own is worth.

3. But I really don't have extra money!
This is a vicious cycle. You don't have money because you're buried in cheap operations. And operations prevent you from making money.


How to break the cycle?
Don't immediately hire expensive top-level people.
Start small. Hire an intern assistant. Pay them 10-15 thousand rubles to take 20 hours of routine work off your plate per month.

Those 20 hours you will spend on what actually brings in money:
• Negotiate with a major partner.
• Refine the offer.
• Get some sleep =)

Summary:
Buy yourself time. It's the only asset that cannot be replenished.

Today's assignment:
1. Divide your annual income by 2000 (or by the actual number of hours you work). Get your hourly rate.
2. Multiply by 0.25. That's your cutoff rate.
3. Find ONE task this week that costs less than that rate, and give it to someone. Please.