How I Stopped Doing Everything Myself—and Outsourced to My First Virtual Assistant | Ep 240

Dr Steve Day: Welcome to Systemize Your Success. I\'m Dr. Steve Day. Today, we\'re going to be talking about outsourcing your work. Getting started with creating systems, and basically, how to free your time. This episode will be particularly useful for you if you\'re a solopreneur. So you haven\'t got anyone on your team, or you\'re a small business owner. You\'re still doing so much of the admin and day-to-day that you can\'t find time. Time to do the stuff you really should be doing. It\'s all about how to get stuff out of your head in a really efficient way.

Hand it over affordably to an assistant who can do that work for you. Stick around to the end. I\'m going to go through the entire process. From absolutely no idea what to do to the point where you\'ve actually got an assistant on board. They\'re doing work for you and therefore freeing your time. And do remember to hit subscribe so you don\'t miss future episodes.

For example, next week I\'m going to be talking about how to do the same process. If you\'ve got a team in place, if you\'ve already outsourced some of your work. Maybe you\'ve already got some assistance. But now you\'re looking to actually create better, more robust and more scalable available systems in your business. That\'s going to be the focus of next week. So do remember to hit subscribe. So whatever stage in business you\'re at, these two episodes will cover you from the very start.

Or getting stuff off your plate to the point where you\'re actually delegating entire systems to your team. Okay, so this episode came about because of a conversation I had recently with a new client. They\'ve joined us. They are, in effect, a solopreneur. They\'ve got a few people helping them out. Boots on the ground, but the whole operational side of the business is done by the business owner.

This person is still doing all of their admin. They\'re still posting on social media, they\'re still doing all their invoicing. They\'re chasing people up, they\'re basically doing everything that makes the business work behind the scenes. And they came to me because they wanted to change that. They want to start actually creating a business that serves them. That allows them to focus more on serving their clients in the highest way they can. Also have more time to do more higher value work.

To do more leadership, to grow the business. To have more free time to actually spend time doing stuff they love to do. After all, that\'s why they started their business. To have freedom. But they found their business has now taken away that freedom. And that is a story I empathize with massively. That happened to me for over 15 years. When I was a complete solopreneur and basically doing everything myself.

It\'s what I\'m going to tell you today. The process that I went through. I made loads of mistakes along the way. It took me a lot longer to get there than it does for our clients when we help them. Because all the things I did wrong, I\'ve now realized were wrong. Now when we teach people to do this, we can do it far quicker. In a far more structured and planned way. That means we actually get to that result we want. Somebody doing stuff effectively far quicker than I ever could have done.

In the early days when I was figuring all this out. So if you are in that position where you\'re a solopreneur or a busy business owner. You\'re still doing far too much admin. You\'re still involved with all the little things you know you shouldn\'t be doing. But you just don\'t have anyone else to help you. If that\'s the pain you\'re feeling, that\'s a red flag. This is the time you really need to hire an assistant.

To do this as early as possible is ideal. I do this before you get to the point where you\'re feeling overwhelmed. Because when we take anything new on, it\'s going to actually increase our workload for a while. Until we get proficient at it. We still have to learn a lot of stuff to be able to. For example, how do you hire somebody? How do you delegate work effectively? How do you get the stuff in your head down? What do you give them? All of the stuff I\'m going to talk about today. You need to have time and headspace to do that. So the earlier you start this process in, my advice is the better. So many people talk about not creating systems until you get to a certain stage in business. I think that is false advice.

I think the earlier you can do this, the better. Because we\'re not talking about creating a complex system. Not one that maps our entire sales process. Because if you haven\'t got a sales process or marketing process or a client onboarding process that\'s rock solid. It\'s going to change and change and change loads. In the beginning, we\'re talking about creating simple systems. For the things that are repeating in your business. The things you can effectively get off your plate. It doesn\'t need to be the final version of it. If we can just get whatever you\'re doing right now, however bad that system is. Or however inefficient the way you do it is. If you as the business owner are doing it, it means you\'re not doing something else.

So if we can hand that over to another person. Then they can then do that for us. They can be the one that helps to optimize that process. To make it more efficient. To actually figure out a better way to do it. In the future, if it ends up that\'s no longer needed, that\'s fine. That\'s just the nature of business. So much stuff that I\'ve outsourced, systemized, and documented in the past. Probably like 90% over the years of what I did in the early days is no longer how I run my business. That is just the nature of business evolution. You have to be prepared that you\'ve got to hand stuff over. To free yourself, to be able to take your business to the next level. But in doing that, some of the stuff you hand over now isn\'t going to be used going forward.

And that\'s totally fine. That\'s normal in your business. I think people have a mindset. Like I spoke to someone recently. They didn\'t want to get started with the process of creating systems. They didn\'t feel they were ready. But they were feeling overwhelmed. They were feeling the stress. And the pressure of having too much to do. Making too many decisions. Because what they were doing right now was just relying solely or too much on them as the business owner.

So wherever you\'re at in how you do your work, as in the process or systems behind your work. Now is the right time to start thinking about how you can offload that in a reproducible way. To get stuff done to a high level. Then it doesn\'t have to be you that\'s doing it. As I said before, that other person, whoever that is, can be involved in the optimization process.

So therefore they are the one spending their time thinking about it. While you\'re now moving on to something of a higher value. So this is the way we do it. This is the way we teach it in our Systemize your Success Academy. And if you\'re interested in learning more about how we can help you do this. With all the frameworks and systems and courses that we allow you and your team to do this really efficiently. In a standardized and proven way. Then check out join.sys.academy . That\'s join.sys.academy . There you\'ll find details about our academy and how you can join and get involved. Okay, so let\'s walk through this entire process.

There\'s roughly six stages to this and walk you through each of those stages. But before we get started, I want to define very clearly what the goal or the outcome of this is. Our goal is for you to have an assistant in place. One who you are confident in delegating work to. We want them to be doing the work that is currently taking up your time. That is stopping you from doing your higher value work. What that work is, will be pretty unique to you. So we need to define how we address what that is.

Then how we hand that over. We also need to be able to do this with confidence and visibility. In a managed way so you do not feel like the management of this person is another burden you have to take on. We want to be confident that when that work is done, it\'s done to a standard that we are happy with. And we are confident it has actually been done.

We don\'t want to be delegating stuff out, hoping for the best. Or spending our time asking, you know, was that ever done? Or checking in on it. We need a really structured way to do this. To make sure that when we offload stuff, it\'s done right first time, every time. And you\'re confident that is happening. That is the only way we truly get to free our headspace and our time. Without us becoming more stressed.

That is a mistake that many people make. They think it\'s just about hiring an assistant, chucking stuff at them. And that\'s going to make your life better. But if we don\'t do this in a structured way, it can actually make your life worse. You\'ll end up losing that person or sacking them. Or they\'ll leave. You\'ll be back to square one. Probably worse off than you were before.

Now you\'ve got the headache of all the extra work that\'s being created in the meantime. So let\'s walk through this really carefully. The first and crucial step is to actually decide what you\'re going to give this person to do. And to be really mindful about the type of work you\'re giving them. You can\'t just give somebody a bunch of stuff randomly and hope for the best. If you give someone creative work and admin work and sales work and research work and detail orientated work all mixed together.

It\'s going to be very hard to find someone who\'s brilliant at all of it. They\'re probably gonna get really stressed out. Be bad at some things and good at others. It\'s gonna be a bit of a mess. So if we do a little bit of thought behind this, we can find somebody. Who\'s gonna help us take over the biggest chunk of our time. As in, hand over the biggest chunk of our time to them.

So therefore we can free ourselves up and we can focus on the other stuff. Then eventually we\'ll hire other people to do the other types of work. To do this, we create something called the personal systemization plan. This is when you track the tasks that you\'re doing on a daily basis. For example, am I checking my emails from my business? Am I invoicing, am I creating a draft proposal, am I doing some sales or marketing? Am I doing my website, am I creating course content, am I recording podcasts, am I publishing podcasts? Whatever it is you are doing, just start noting down what you\'re doing each day.

And also note down, is this a daily task, a weekly task, or a monthly task? And ideally also, what kind of time am I spending on this? Is it a one-minute task? Is it ten minutes? Or is it taking you an hour? You can be really specific about this. Actually measure how much time you take. Or you can just call it a low, medium or high time task. That\'s probably the easiest way to get started. If you\'re not into getting analytical and using time tracking software. That is a barrier that we don\'t need. The point here is to give you a clear task list. With a general idea about over how long this stuff is taking you. The other thing to consider is how easy would it be for you to give to somebody to do.

So if it\'s something you know really well. That doesn\'t involve a huge amount of your brain and thinking and decision making. Then it\'s probably something that could be easily done by somebody else. However, if it\'s something that you are really involved with. Like coaching a client or writing up a proposal. And you don\'t have any system behind that at the moment. Then maybe keep hold of that for now and delegate the easy stuff first.

The other important point to note here is we\'re delegating stuff we are already doing. We\'re not saying, oh, you know what, I\'d love to put my podcast into blogs. Or I\'d love to be using TikTok and Instagram. But now I\'m only doing it on YouTube. And therefore I\'m going to hire someone to help with that stuff.

That is important in business, but not if you\'re already overwhelmed. Because bringing somebody else in to do whatever work you\'re not currently doing will only generate more work for you. So at this stage, the goal is simply to offload what you\'re currently doing. However good or bad that is. Then you can look at what capacity is left in the team now we\'ve got this new person in. What more could we do?

Start with the stuff you\'re currently doing. That\'s really, really important. Now we know the type of tasks we could be delegating to this new person. If we group those together. Like marketing type tasks, creative tasks, detail-orientated or admin or spreadsheet tasks. Group them into the type of personality that would be good at that type of task. Then you have an idea of who you need to hire.

So you can hire an admin person, you can hire a content creating person, you can hire a salesperson. All the tasks that fit into that category, that\'s what we\'re going to give them to do. There may be some other administrative stuff that anybody could do and that\'s fine. So you can add a few of those extra bits once they\'ve got started.

But for now I want to focus on the group of tasks that\'s taking you the most amount of time. Hire that specific type of person first and then offload that. Then you can then think about, okay, do we need another person for some other work. Or can that person maybe take on a bit of extra stuff as well. Once you\'ve got to that stage, we\'re now ready to start the hiring process.

So all we\'ve done so far is is note down what you\'re doing for a couple of weeks. Decided which bits are possible for you to actually figure out how to delegate to somebody else. I\'ll talk about how you do that in a second. Then group them together to decide the type, personality, type of the person we\'re going to hire. Then we start the hiring process. Now you can use like a hiring system, like we have the recruit right hiring system. Or you can go through an agency. Or you can just wing it and sort of go on to Onlinejobs.ph or Upwork or Fiverr.

And so find someone that way and just hope for the best. Whichever way you do it, it\'s going to take you two or three weeks, maybe four, to find someone good. After you\'ve gone through a bit of elimination, done some applications, test tasks, done an interview. And now you decide, yeah, I\'m going to hire this particular person. So you\'ve now got two or three or four weeks maybe to actually start recording the work you\'re going to hand over.

Now, this is the point where some people sort of bulk when I talk about documenting what you do. But we\'re going to do this super, super simple. All you\'re going to do is hit record on a screen recording app. The one we recommend is ScreenPal.

If you head over to sys.academy/guides, you\'ll see a link to ScreenPal. There\'s also a podcast about ScreenPal which tells you why we love it. And some of the cool stuff you can do with it. And there\'s a link to get a discount as well on that website. So sys.academy/guides. Sorry, Tools, sys.academy/tools , sorry. Guides is something different and so on. There you\'ll find a link, as I said.

So once you\'ve got a screen recording app, you\'re going to then hit record next time you do the task. And just do the task as you would anyway, but narrate yourself through it. So talk through what you\'re doing, just like you were showing somebody who sat next to you in the office. They\'re looking over your shoulder on their first day of their job. You\'re showing them, hey, this is how I want you to do this.

And you\'re talking them through just like you were training them one on one. That\'s what we want to do to create a training video. It doesn\'t need to be polished, it doesn\'t need to be perfect. It can contain mistakes. Just correct your mistakes and explain how they should do it. And the person, if they\'re intelligent, which hopefully are after your recruitment process, will just figure it out.

So the idea is just as quickly as possible over that period while you\'re going through the recruitment to be recording some of the stuff you\'re doing. Then when they arrive, you\'re going to have this bank of videos available. For them to actually start doing stuff immediately without you having to actually spend any time training them.

That is absolutely essential for it not to become an overwhelming process of you onboarding this new person. And as you record These videos, you want to put them somewhere that\'s really easy for this person to find. Not in some folder which is like your operation manuals, fold or something, or your sops. They\'ve got to go and search every time they want to try and do a task. But instead on their task board.

A task board for me is a board say on Asano that we use. It could be on Trello, it could be on ClickUp, Zoho Task, it doesn\'t really matter. Just a Kanban style board with some columns for daily, weekly, monthly and periodic tasks. We can also use it for ad hoc management of tasks. So for just tasks that working on right now and priorities for example. But in this case we\'re focusing on the stuff that\'s happening recurring in your business. Because that is the stuff that you are currently doing right now.

So each time you record a video, create a little task placeholder on their task board. So if it\'s a daily task, stick in the daily column. If it\'s a weekly task, put it in the weekly column. Then put a link to the video you\'ve recorded on that task on their board. Now when that person starts on day one, they can be directed to go to their task board. On their task board will be all of their daily tasks. A weekly task with the dates they\'re due. The day of the week it\'s due. The monthly tasks with the day of the month it\'s due. And any periodic tasks. So quarterly or yearly, whatever.

And now they\'ve actually got completely clear plan as to what they need to do. When they need to do it. And because you\'ve got the video, how they need to do it as well. Doing this simple process, planning a little bit ahead, recording some videos. Then putting them onto a taskboard is how you can make this experience of hiring your first assistant work like an absolute dream. And get you that result you want, of freeing your time. It\'s that simple. It\'s not complicated.

But if you do want extra help with doing this. If you want to get all the frameworks, the hiring process, the task boards, templates. If you want to get recording your work training, if you want to have this person being trained up for you on how to use all of this stuff. Then head over to join.sys.academy and check out our Academy and community platform. Where we share all of our courses and content on there for you. To then actually do all this without having to think or figure anything out yourself.

Either way, I wish you all the best with bringing your first assistant on board. And please do hit subscribe so you don\'t miss out on future episodes. For example, next week I\'m going to be talking about how you go through the process of systemizing your existing systems. When you\'ve already got a team in place.

How do you document and make that into a standard way of working. To allow you to scale your business. And also to protect your business if any of your existing knowledgeable workers leave. And just take knowledge with them? We want to avoid that at all costs. Because it\'s a real massive hit to a small business owners. When someone we\'ve been training or working with for weeks or months or years suddenly leaves the business. And sadly, it happens all too often.

So we want to be able to get whatever they\'re doing down in a way that other people can do it for. For them or you should I say. So that anybody can do that work in that absence. This is also brilliant because people want to go on holiday from time to time. And it\'s great if you\'ve actually got the entire system documented. So that somebody else can step in and help out when they\'re away. Without it all falling to pieces. So that\'s it for today. Thank you very much for listening, and I\'ll see you next time. Take care!

How I Stopped Doing Everything Myself—and Outsourced to My First Virtual Assistant | Ep 240

This is what worked for me and my clients.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: How Business Outsourcing Transforms Your Workflow

BEST MOMENTS: Business Outsourcing Insights

TIMESTAMPED OVERVIEW

Episode Transcript

VALUABLE RESOURCES

LINKS TO CONNECT WITH THE HOST

ABOUT THE HOST

For more articles related to systemising and outsourcing your business, you may also like:

SYS 199: Why We Use Fathom AI Notetaker: Pro Tips to Maximise Value and Minimise Cost

SYS 120: Winning Marketing Strategies: How to Stand Out, Attract Customers and Grow Your Business – Interview with Chantal Cornelius, Founder of Appletree Marketing

SYS 207: Adapting to Change: How We Keep Our Team Updated with Rapidly Advancing AI and Tech

Discover How Small Business Owners Leverage The SixR System To Achieve Time Freedom In Under 90 Days

How Small Business Owners
Leverage The SixR System
To Achieve Time Freedom
In Under 90 Days

Free On-Demand Masterclass