You're the Most Expensive Person in Your Company
This is part three of our Productivity Playbook series. Watch the full series here and read part one here.
You’re working 60-hour weeks during peak season. Answering emails. Updating availability calendars. Scheduling guides. Posting on social media. Responding to reviews. Basic bookkeeping and invoicing.
All of it feels necessary. All of it needs to happen.
But here’s the uncomfortable question: what are you actually paying yourself to do this work? Because if you’re answering routine emails and chasing down guide schedules, you’re doing $20 an hour work.
And every hour you spend on $20 tasks is an hour you’re not spending on $200 tasks—the stuff that actually moves the needle in your business.
The Hidden Tax on Entrepreneurs
Tour business owners often get exhausted during peak season, working 50, 60, sometimes 70 hours a week. When we ask what’s filling their days, it’s usually some version of the same list: inbox management, guide scheduling, social media posting, review responses, basic admin.
None of this is unimportant. But you’re the most expensive person in your company to be doing these tasks.
We have to use the framework of opportunity cost. Every hour you spend on tasks that someone else could do is an hour you’re not spending on work that only you can do. Pricing strategy. Business development. Designing new products. Building systems that scale.
Tim Ferriss calls this the hidden tax on entrepreneurs. We think we’re saving money by doing everything ourselves, but we’re actually paying the highest possible price: your time and your business growth.
The $20 versus $200 Rule
Here’s a framework that makes this concrete.
$20 an hour tasks: Inbox triage. Scheduling. Data entry. Posting pre-made content. Responding to routine guest questions. Basic admin.
These tasks are necessary, but they don’t require your specific expertise. Someone else—a virtual assistant or team member—could do them.
$200 an hour tasks: Pricing strategy. Negotiating partnerships with hotels or concierges. Designing new high-margin tours. Fixing a sales page that isn’t converting. Building systems so you’re no longer a bottleneck.
These require your judgment, your relationships, your vision. You as the tour business owner should be doing these things. Or put another way, if you’re not doing them, who is?
When you start adding this up, the math gets brutal. If you spend just four hours daily on $20 tasks, that’s 20 hours weekly. Over a year, that’s over 1,000 hours you could have spent on $200 work.
That could be hundreds of thousands of dollars in possible growth and profit, ultimately wasted. That’s the true cost of spending your time on $20 tasks.
Why Tour Operators Don’t Delegate
If delegation is so obviously valuable, why don’t more tour business owners do it?
We hear the same objections constantly when working with clients.
“No one can do it as well as I can.”
Maybe. But the real question is: does it need to be done perfectly, or does it just need to be done?
If somebody else can do a task 80% as well as you, that’s usually good enough because it frees you to do work that only you can. Perfectionism on low-value tasks is just procrastination in disguise.
“I can’t afford to hire help.”
You might not be able to afford a full-time employee. But can you afford $15 an hour for a virtual assistant for five hours weekly? That’s only $75—less than one or two guests pay for your tour in all likelihood.
Here’s the flip side: can you afford to keep doing $20 work when your business needs your $200 attention?
“It takes longer to explain than just do it myself.”
This one is true the first time. But if a task repeats weekly, training somebody once saves you hours forever. Short-term friction is worth long-term freedom.
Three Questions Before You Delegate
Before you delegate any task, ask three questions in this order:
First: Can I eliminate this entirely?
Some tasks exist just because we’ve always done it that way or somebody asked us to do it. We can often eliminate them entirely.
Second: Can I automate this?
A lot of $20 work can be handled by tools, software, or systems you probably already have in your head. Automated email responses. Zapier connections between software. Canned responses for common guest questions.
Third: Can I delegate it to a person?
If you’ve never had a virtual assistant or admin assistant, we highly recommend looking into it.
A few quick points: If you’re based in the West—the United States or Europe—keep in mind you can often work with talented people in different parts of the world who speak excellent English, are highly skilled, and very affordable. We’ve worked with folks in the Philippines, India, Jordan, Central and South America through sites like Fiverr, Upwork, and OnlineJobs.ph.
Even something as simple as Canadian virtual assistants offers currency arbitrage if you’re US-based—you can hire someone for 75 cents on the dollar.
Finally, many of these $20 tasks are actually part of our personal lives. We as entrepreneurs think we could hire an admin assistant for the business but wouldn’t want to blur personal and professional boundaries. We’d encourage you to rethink that. We actually use a virtual assistant for tasks my wife and I need done. If something consistently eats up three or four hours monthly, that’s a great task for a VA.
Putting This Into Action
Like many things in this productivity series, it starts with tracking your time.
Look at a week. Write down what you’re actually doing hour by hour. Be honest—nobody’s watching. Label each task: is this $20 work or $200 work?
Second, pick at least one $20 task that repeats weekly and figure out how to get it off your plate. Can you eliminate it? Automate it? Or delegate it to a VA or team member?
Third, protect two hours this week for $200 work only. Block it on your calendar. No email, no admin, no fires. Just high-leverage work that moves your business forward.
If you go through this exercise and realize a lot of your time goes toward $20 tasks, don’t be disappointed or frustrated. A big part of this productivity series is about doing things differently and bringing awareness to how we spend our time.
One of the best things you can do after auditing your time is to have a second set of eyes review your work. We’d love to invite you to book a free strategy call with one of our tour business coaches at guestfocus.com/bookacall. We can go through your average week and help you find where to eliminate, systematize, or delegate.
Drop a comment below. What have you been able to get off your plate as a tour business owner? Do you have recommendations for hiring a virtual assistant or admin assistant? We’d love to hear about your biggest breakthroughs.
If you’re getting value from this series on productivity for tour business owners, share it with a friend or colleague.
