How to Outsource Step-by-Step to Grow your Business and Spend More Time Doing What You Love!
“Outsourcing is simple but not simple”
- Jaime Jay
Bottleneck Virtual Assistants
It’s tasks that are busying up your day that take you away from focusing on what matters most, your “30,000-foot goals” as Jaime calls them. And that’s where a Virtual Assistant can help. But, you must know first, what the right tasks are to delegate, and then how to train your VA so that the relationship works, and the work gets done without stress and strain for you and for your VA.
Here’s how you do it, according to Jaime:
The first thing is every single person should start writing a delegation roadmap. It will give you an idea of what tasks you should be doing and what tasks you can outsource to someone else. You can write it out on a spreadsheet. Up at the top of the page write “Tasks” and then you’re going to have three columns. Write down each task. Then, for each one assign two values.
Number one, is this something you must do or can you delegate it to someone else? Yes or no.
Number two, is does this give you energy or does it drain you of energy? And if it drains you of energy and you don’t have to do it, you can delegate to someone else. And now all of a sudden you have a task list with job descriptions.
Then you can go through each job description and start segmenting it out; this is all web, this is all this, this is all this or whatever, this is administrative. Then prioritize them. Ask yourself, “Which ones do I need done first?”
A lot of times. people are too trusting, and they give everything to their virtual assistant all at once, and there’s total chaos because there’s no workflows or systems or processes in place and that doesn’t work. So, own what you’re tasking. Make sure that you write down everything, give little bits and pieces in the beginning, get a good working relationship going with that person. Make sure that they understand you correctly. They’re writing out the workflows, and you can then have a good dialogue going back and forth.
As soon as they start nailing the smaller tasks, it’s less important for you to manage them. Maybe you start giving them a little bit more responsibility and a little bit more, which can happen over the course of the first thirty days.
Take the time to train them. Some say, ” Just hire me; I’m a rock star, but even the best person will fail if they aren’t trained properly. So, take some time to train them, book it off in your day, schedule an hour a day for the first two weeks and sit down and make sure that you’re going back and give them assignments and tasks.
Make sure that the method of communication is clearly stated to them. “This is what I expect you to be doing. This is how you communicate with me. What is the best way for us to communicate?” Little things like that go a long way, and then after that two weeks, you can start seeing, “Okay, I don’t have to train them as much they’re getting this. I can get back to my work and pull back a little bit.”
Then in ninety days, you’re running a completely different business.
To learn more, be sure to listen to this week’s podcast, How to Outsource for Success, The Secret to Hiring and Training a Virtual Assistant to Grow Your Business and Spending More Time Doing What You Love with Jaime Jay at:
www.BooksBusinessAbundance.com/podcast/20
Written by Ellen Violette with content from Jaime Jay.
Ellen Violette is an award-winning book and business coach & Grammy-nominated songwriter, who helps entrepreneurs, authors, coaches, consultants, who value their time and want only the best, become #1 bestselling authors and grow high-income businesses.
Ellen is also a multiple International #1 bestselling author, 3-time eLit award winner, podcast host, former regular contributor to Published! Magazine, CEO of Create a Splash and Grammy-nominated songwriter.
Her company is a full-service company for book services for authors and entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, trainers, and speakers. It also delivers done-for-you services. To learn more, go to www.booksbusinessabundance.com