Sam Parr (CEO of Hampton) is Losing $1,372,800 a Year
He's spending it on admin work.
Think I'm bullsh*tting? Keep reading. I'll show you the math. Or if you want to skip ahead and run this assessment on yourself, go for it.
Many of us have learned to calculate our hourly rate. Even voices like Dan Martell who are trying to convince founders to buy back their time give this formula:
So if you make $250,000/year, (according to this formula) your hourly rate is $250/hr.
Which is true if you're a typical employee. That's the value of each hour to you because that is the most the company will pay you for your time.
But for it to make sense to the company to pay you $250k/year, you have to be creating much more than that in value to the company per year than $250k.
Which means, if you're the founder of the company, your hourly rate needs to factor in the value you're creating for the entire company, not just yourself, which, as a founder, is the same thing since you own a large part of the company.
So the formula becomes:
For Sam:
Revenue (estimate): $15m (~1,500 members × ~$8,500/year)
Founder attribution: 25% (co-founded with Jayson Gaignard) = $3.75m annually
Working hours: 60/wk × 52 = 3,120 hours/year
Hourly value: $3,750,000 / 3,120 = $1,200/hr
Dan Martell's formula would put Sam at maybe $350/hr. Ours says $1,200/hr. That's nearly a 4x difference.
How much admin costs
Now here's where it gets ugly.
Sam works about 60 hours a week. Of those, 38 are zone-of-genius work, building elite founder communities, scaling high-impact peer networks for $3M-$100M CEOs, recording his podcasts. That's where Sam should live.
But the other 22 hours?
| Task | Hours/wk | Cost/wk |
|---|---|---|
| Email & Inbox | 6 | $7,200 |
| Scheduling & Calendar | 4 | $4,800 |
| Content & Social Media | 4 | $4,800 |
| Meeting Prep & Follow-up | 3 | $3,600 |
| Member Operations & CRM | 2 | $2,400 |
| Travel & Event Logistics | 2 | $2,400 |
| Investment Deal Flow Admin | 1 | $1,200 |
That's nearly $1.4 million a year in founder time spent on work that doesn't need a founder.
But it's not just the cost. It's the opportunity cost.
What would Sam do with 22 hours back every week? That's 1,144 hours a year, the equivalent of 28 full work weeks.
- Scale Hampton to 5,000 members
- Double down on My First Million content
- Stop the mental drain of managing hundreds of member communications and event logistics that fragment his focus every single day
The most valuable asset the company has is its founder's time. But because what got us here was 0 to 1 scrappiness, we're hesitant to value our time the way we should.
Founders have a moral imperative to delegate.
A public company board wouldn't hire a CEO who scrolls TikTok for 22 hours a week. A private company like Hampton shouldn't want a CEO who does 22 hours a week of admin bullsh*t either.
He owes it to his employees, because he's generating value for them, literally their livelihoods and salaries.
He owes it to his clients, to multiply the value of their experience by putting his best energy into the CEO stuff that only Sam can do.
And he owes it to his family, to be steady, calm, unanxious, and undistracted by low-level busywork.
How many founder marriages would improve if a spouse came home with their bucket fully filled from doing high-level work they love?
Happy Friday,
- Aaron