Article · 18 min read

An Exact Breakdown of How One CEO Spent His First Two Years of Company-Building

Sam Corcos (as told to First Round Review) · First Round Review Free Intermediate

This is the E-Myth idea made measurable: Levels CEO Sam Corcos logged 7,922 hours across two years into ten categories and shares the exact spreadsheet so you can copy it. The gut-punch is the actual-vs-perceived gap: he expected to spend big chunks on recruiting and strategy and found recruiting was 3 percent and strategy just 5 percent, while email quietly ate 30 to 35 percent every week. That is precisely how you tell 'in the business' from 'on the business': you count.

• Build ten or fewer time categories, log every hour in your calendar, then export to a sheet and review it, because the work that feels light (email, easy meetings) is usually the work eating your week
• Founders systematically overestimate time on strategy and underestimate time on information processing, so trust the log over your memory
• A CEO's real job is to be an information router unblocking the team, not the top individual contributor, so protect the hours that only you can do