The trap of being "rich but busy" (and how to escape)

Hi everyone,

There is a specific type of exhaustion that only founders know.

It’s not physical tiredness. It’s the mental weight of being the "Chief Everything Officer."

Years ago, I looked at my business and realized something terrifying: I was building a prison. The more successful we became, the less time I had. I had achieved financial freedom, but I had zero time freedom.

If I stopped working, the machine stopped running.

I recently sat down with Parth and Daxesh from TST Technology on their podcast, BuildModeOn. We didn't just talk about "hustle"—we talked about how to systematically dismantle that prison.

It was one of the most candid conversations I’ve had in a while. We traced the journey from those early days of survival mode to where I am now—taking one-way trips with no planned return date, knowing my company grows while I’m in the air.

The Pivot Point

In the episode, I told Parth and Daxesh a story about our hiring process.

At one point, we were drowning in 1,200+ resumes a month. My HR team was burnt out, and we were missing great talent simply because we couldn't read fast enough.

The "old way" would have been to hire two more HR recruiters. The "new way" was to build an Agent.

I broke down exactly how we built an AI workflow that now reads every single email, parses the resume, matches it against our tech stack, assigns a score, and even handles the initial screening.

We went from chaos to calm. We stopped putting humans on robot work.

What We Covered

In this 80-minute deep dive, we explored:

• The Asset Test: How to know if you own a business or just a high-paying job.

• The 3-Month Rule: My strict philosophy on Micro-SaaS. If we can't build and validate it in 90 days, we kill it.

• Service to Product: The messy, real reality of using service revenue to fund product dreams.

Parth and Daxesh asked the kind of questions that force you to be honest about the messy middle of scaling. It’s a great episode if you are tired of the fluff and want the engineering blueprint for a self-sustaining company.

A massive thank you to the TST Technology team for having me.

I hope this helps you reclaim your time.

Best,

Avkash Kakdiya