Book Review: Clone Yourself: How to Overcome Bottleneck Leadership in 90 Days and Reclaim Your Freedom

When I picked up Clone Yourself: How to Overcome Bottleneck Leadership in 90 Days and Reclaim Your Freedom, I thought I was picking up a book that would talk about how to be more productive. Instead, it’s a book about identifying all the things that you shouldn’t do and hiring somebody to do them for you. Unfortunately, not all of us are in the position to do this so I have mixed feelings about the book.

Clone Yourself by Jeff Hilderman is 205 pages long organized into five sections. It has 29 chapters. the sections include:

• The fundamentals
• Drafting your blueprint
• Developing your clone
• Letting go
• Igniting your passion

In this book, Hilderman began by discussing topics that I’ve seen in a number of other places. Basically, you need to get better control of your time and your routines so that you can begin to be more productive. He talked about the amount of time that each of us has in a day or in a week. We need to make better choices in how we use that time. He stressed the importance of protecting that time. We should be doing things that will advance our businesses as opposed to just wasting time. One way of better managing time is to have routines and processes in place.

There are many things that I like about the book. In the second section, Hilderman talked about a concept of drafting a blueprint. In this blueprint, you would outline your vision, mission, and business culture. I think that this concept applies to being a boss or company owner rather than a director. I think it is a lot harder to establish these as a director. While you can define a mission and vision at a department level, one is often constrained by the larger organization.

In Chapter 16, Hilderman focused on job descriptions. Basically, Hilderman wanted you to dissect your job to find the things that you shouldn’t be doing. You should then craft a new job description and hire an individual to do those duties. In the job that I’m working, that is impossible. It would be nice but extremely challenging to pull off. Hilderman then went on to share what you need to do to train your clone properly. He outlined how to find a clone who met the duties of the job description. He also shared how to train your clone, the best way to conduct an orientation, and how to support your clone. Hilderman also listed some strategies for managing multiple clones. There are some strategies that I may employ in my department even though don’t have clones.

This was definitely not what I was looking for when I started to read the book. It caught me off guard. I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m just saying that it was not what I was looking for in this book.

I think that Clone Yourself is a good book but it is not the right book for me at this moment in time. I do think there are some hard-working entrepreneurs and business owners who could benefit from the guidance that Hilderman provided. But for my place and my time, it’s not the right book for me. I am glad that I read it. There were a few things that I I took away from it.

Additional Reading

• Book Review: Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself

In the spirit of full disclosure, this is an affiliate link, which means that if you purchase this item through my link I will earn a commission. You will not pay more when buying a product through my link. I only recommend products & systems that I use and love myself, so I know you’ll be in good hands.
Plus, when you order through my link, it helps me to continue to offer you lots of free stuff. 🙂 Thank you, in advance for your support!