- I actually want you to come in frame, Jared.
Get over here.
(upbeat music)
What and how to delegate to a virtual assistant
in a way that doesn't cause you a lot of rework.
If you've ever felt overwhelmed, staying up late at night
doing paperwork, managing your financials,
dealing with onboarding new employees,
new customers, following up receivables and really just
processing your inbox and you know that there's an opportunity
to have other people support you but maybe you feel like you
can't trust them because it's like well it's gonna take me
more time to do the work than to ask them to do it or maybe it's
even a sense of value like, "Why would I pay somebody else to do
"something I can do myself?"
Well I want to share with you in this video not only what can you
get them to work on but how do you do in efficient way that
gets you the result that you're looking for.
And it's a beautiful nirvana where you can literally have
just a list where you drop things and it gets done.
You drop ideas, you drop projects,
you drop tasks.
These get done and it just magically happens.
It's crazy.
I mean when I started my company Flowtown,
had a cofounder, Ethan, and we got so busy.
We were venture backed technology company,
raised almost $1 million in funding and we started getting
really busy with administrative tasks and we thought you know
like social media, publishing and HR type stuff and just
scheduling we thought you know we could really use somebody to
support us and we went through the process of hiring and
managing and trying to have somebody else
that we could delegate to.
And the first few goes were really tough.
It didn't work.
We had some major projects that we outsourced that came back not
even done correctly.
We had things it just got dropped and it was through that
process that I realized that there's a way to do it where
it's gonna give you the confidence and the courage to
really just start 'cause I think most people need to start and
ensure the work gets done properly.
So a few things that are gonna help the strategies improve the
process, number one, is you need a password management tool or
I like to call access control.
Because you probably have several,
if not dozens of online SaaS cloud tools like Dropbox,
like Slack, like your email tools,
like your bank accounts.
All these online tools and you might want to give somebody else
access so they can follow through and get something done
for you but you don't want to give them your password.
There's literally several and I'm gonna link them below in the
description, tools that you can use to manage all of your
passwords in one place and in select and delegate so you can
create a marketing group and delegate all of the marketing
tools over to this group, give somebody access and they never
see your password.
So if you have a spreadsheet or you have a bunch of sticky notes
or you've literally emailed people your password,
stop doing that and go sign up for an online tool.
Again, link below but I call that access control.
It's step one in the strategies to really do this the right way.
Two is what do I even delegate to other people.
You know it's like I get it, I want to do it.
I found somebody but I can't seem to keep 'em busy.
I'm gonna suggest the gateway drug to getting into that and
then finally the right tool, the right mindset to get in.
So number one is just think about purchasing.
Everything that you want to buy and it sounds trivial because
you're like I can totally do this stuff myself but
I literally start off if you want to buy books.
Have somebody buy your books.
Have somebody buy clothes.
Have somebody buy birthday gifts.
Have somebody buy gifts for friends.
Whatever it is maybe it's coworkers or recognition but
just having somebody that you set up that you can delegate
with a credit card again they don't see the numbers if you use
the access control or the online tool and just getting those
types of things done.
They don't add any value to your customer.
They're important, they need to get done and it's just a very
clear and simple execution that you can start with.
The second area I always recommend is research, right?
Think about all the things that you love to know about your
market, your customer, the events that you could go to,
the people you should be talking to.
Maybe you've heard my concept of a dream 100 list of all,
you know, the peers and mentors and advisors you need in your
business to really scale.
And you don't even have time to do the research
to find out who those people would be,
you can give the criteria to somebody else.
They can do the research and pull you back a list to finally
do the final processing.
I really think that even BPM, business process management,
all the back office, okay, from the accounting,
the financials, things that don't touch the customer,
can easily be outsourced to a virtual assistant.
So that is the what in step two.
One, is access control, two, is the things you get them to do.
Now three is how do you do it?
You gotta use an online project management tool.
And again I'm gonna provide you the tools that I've used or used
today because they would probably change so I'll just
update them there but you need to have something online that
provides the ability to see a list of all the things you have
outsource or out-tasked to other people to accomplish so that you
can monitor it, so that they can leave status update,
so that you can see if something needs your review or that have
moved to done because if you don't have it in one place and
it's just your inbox and your inbox becomes overwhelming and
you don't feel like you're getting a lot of value so
definitely use your online project management tool to
manage everything you asked somebody else do.
But I know you're thinking why would I do that?
If the email comes in and then I got to forward it somebody else,
then I go to my project management
it's gonna allow you to scale.
I'm all about process, repeatable,
scalable, this is a big one.
So online project management tool.
Then finally the way you outsource big projects,
where I got a lot of trouble were we were updating our
website and there was literally 150 pages to be updated and
instead of doing a small batch to big batch,
that's the fourth step, I just had them do the whole thing.
And they literally like, "Done," after four days it's like,
"Done what? You did everything.
"Okay I checked, it was wrong."
That was my fault because I should've started with a small
batch say, "Look, go to 10 pages.
"Follow these instructions and let me know how that looks," and
I would've discovered oh we need to tweak,
we need to iterate. Okay, tweak this,
do another 10.
Then tweak it and do another 10.
Good, let's process the 120 left over.
So the fourth step is small batch to big batch.
Now, most entrepreneurs get in trouble because they don't use
this one tip and strategy to get everybody to understand the
goal, the endpoint, the result they are looking for
and it's called the DOD.
The definition of done.
So as you're asking anybody, this can be internal,
this can be external people, define what that looks like when
this project or task is done.
Being clear about who's notified,
where the documents live, how you're gonna name it,
how you're gonna feel, how your customers are gonna feel in the
definition of done it can be one or two sentences will just give
so much more context and clarity to the people executing those
tasks to hit that mark for you.
So again, starting off with number one,
make sure that you have an online password management tool
but it's not 1password 'cause it's information that's locked
up like your credit cards so I call that access control so
you can delegate and give different groups of people
in your company access to those tools online.
Two, make sure that you delegate the right types of work.
Things like the business process management of the back office of
your company, doing online research and
the gateway drug is purchasing.
Three is make sure that you use an online tool to list all the
different tasks that they need to work on so that you have a
place to review and move things forward if their stuck and they
can communicate and collaborate that's not your inbox put it on
there and then four, make sure you always start with a small
batch before expanding it to a big batch.
You're gonna save yourself a lot of rework.
As per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger
life and a bigger business and I'll see next Monday.
If you liked this video be sure to subscribe to my channel to
get other tips and strategies on how to start
and grow your business.
I'd also invite you to join my newsletter where I sent out
exclusive invites to events, free entreprenurial training and
other community contest.
And if you're ready to keep going,
I've got a couple videos queued up.
I'll see you next week.