I was recently a guest on Lucy Gordon's podcast, The Lifestyle Business Show, and she asked me the question I now build most of my advice to our clients around:

How do you help someone who's overwhelmed, but still completely convinced they're the only person who can do the thing?

Eight years into running The Lifestyle VA, my answer is simple.

I put a question to them - “Ask yourself if it actually needs to be you.”

We’ve all fallen into the "it's quicker if I do it myself" trap haven’t we?

I hear this from nearly every single (very overwhelmed) client before they hire us, and I said it on the podcast because it's worth repeating: that thought is your downfall.

Yes, it might be quicker if you do it yourself. This time. But what else could you be doing instead that needs doing specifically by you?

If you teach someone else how to do a task properly, it works like compound interest, you do it once, it takes ten minutes, maybe they've got two follow-up questions, and then they've got the hang of it and it’s off your plate.

Aren’t you better off out of the weeds of doing repeat tasks that just don’t need you to be the one doing them?

Otherwise what’s the alternative? Doing the same task yourself, every week, for years, because handing it over felt like more effort than it was worth in the moment.

That's not efficient. It’s also not very productive if you’re trying to grow a business or just not be joined at the hip with your laptop day and night.

You can see how carving out a few extra minutes a few times a day to teach and then delegate makes better sense for you and your business.

Write it down before you're ready.

The biggest struggle for growing Founders isn't finding the right person to delegate to. It's that most of what runs a business lives in one person's head, and you haven’t written it down.

Hiring a VA before thinking about things like - how and what you’ll delegate, what the process is and what ‘done well’ looks like makes it hard to get the benefits of the service.

That’s why when I started building my team, the first thing I did wasn't a job description. It was a manifesto and a guide.

I covered so much, from what we believe and what our values are as a business, to how I expect the team to serve clients - what meets the standards I’ve been delivering if someone else is about to do it instead of me, right down to the response times we've promised contractually.

It’s vital information your VA needs, or any new hire does.

From there it became proper SOPs, written down, screen-recorded, filed somewhere findable. I use a tool called Komodo.ai (similar to Loom) to talk through a process on screen and it takes it and turns it into a recording and guide that fits into my SOP template.

Document your processes, your ways of working, your ‘whys’ before you're ready to hire.

If there's a part of your business you have an inkling you'll want to hand over one day, start documenting it now, while it's still fresh and you're not under pressure to explain it to someone in a hurry.

Take ten minutes 3-4 times a week to screen record your processes, it could be as simple as how you upload your blog to Squarespace, a video talking walk through of your most important clients and any nuances so your VA knows your clients quickly.

Time-track before you decide what to hand over

I always say the same thing to clients who aren't sure what to delegate first: for one week, track everything.

Every task, every email, every "quick" admin job. Not just client work, all of it.

Most people are truly surprised by what they find.

Hours disappear into invoice chasing, light book keeping
Inbox tennis with people in different time zones trying to organise a multi-person meeting
Reading and re-reading the same emails and sending tasks out or adding to your task list
Research and prep ahead of a meeting
Scheduling that email newsletter or social media content

None of that is directly client billable and also…none of it needs your brain.

And you can't run a business profitably if all of the unbillable stuff is taking you away from spending more time on revenue generating work, or supporting your clients properly.

Once you can see where your time goes, what you can delegate in black and white, the decision about what to hand over feels so much easier.

**My top tip: Automate before you hire**

Here's the bit that surprises people: you might not need a Virtual Assistant yet.

You might need someone to sit down and automate the day to day repeat processes first, so that by the time you do hire, there's actual breathing room for that person to work with and processes they can maintain and own.

VAs aren’t strategists, so sometimes you first need an operations expert, or automation specialist first, just briefly.

Sometimes these service providers used to be VA’s, who have now niched into a more specialised area. We have a whole host of incredible experts we can recommend to our clients to get this stage complete before they hire one of our VAs.

Why do this part first? Handing a bunch of mess and manual processes to maintain to your new VA will drain your finances.

It’s time your VA could spend doing more of the things that help you move your business forward, so get automations in place so your VA can do more with their time.

I know this too well myself, because last year I built a simple fix to a manual system that proved automations are needed.

Months earlier with scaling in mind, I'd set up an automation so clients could top up their hours without needing me to send a manual invoice, contact the VA and update my time tracking system.

Instead I created a link, some quick Zaps and it meant the client added two more hours when they needed, it notified the VA their client had topped up, confirmed it with the client and I never needed to touch a thing.

Little wins like that add up with automations. It’s more efficient for them and the team, less work for me. Win win.

Because of things like this being pre-built, I was able to step away from the business for four entire weeks after a direct family loss.

While I was gone, my systems held the fort, my team had a library of SOPs to answer questions so they didn’t need to bother me unless 100% necessary.

That's what a properly automated, properly documented business gets you. Not just more time day to day. Room to actually step away when life unexpectedly demands it.

Delegating is an art, but teaching needs to come first.

None of this is really just about the hours saved, even though the hours saved are meaningful. It's about what you do with them.

Some clients can spend more time on getting new clients in, knowing someone else can support them with on-boarding, day to day business admin - so they provide a slick experience to their client because their own business runs smoothly.

Others use the time we’ve saved to just close the laptop at dinner time, be present with their families and know when they open it again the following morning, their emails have been scanned, flagged and tasks assigned or moved off their plate by their Virtual Assistant.

So, does it need to be you doing that task, that thing?

Probably not, right?

Start with the thing you resent doing most or procrastinate on, write down how you do it, and hand it over properly, once.

On Lucy Gordon’s podcast The Lifestyle Business Show, I talked about all of this business and life efficiency and more, including exactly how and why our VAs work with some of the best business minds in the world, right through to the things we do to serve our family and lifestyle clients and all the things we do for them outside of business, on the ‘life admin’ side of things, including the client who came to us and simply said "I just need you to help me create core memories with my family".

Listen to the full episode:

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

If you're at the point of wondering what you could hand over first, that's exactly the conversation I have on every discovery call. Get in touch and let's see how we can help.

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