How To Delegate Tasks To Your Virtual Assistant Like A Pro
I’m going to give you five simple tips to help you delegate tasks and get the results that you want.
Tip four and five are about you, the business owner, the success of your business has to do with the skills that you learn and the shifts that you’re willing to make.
In order to become a business owner, you know, you can be if you’re interested in building a six, seven or eight figure business, you know, you’re going to need to build a team to support you. And we’re here to help you do that.
If you haven’t already, please subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified each week when we post new videos before we jump in.
Hi, I’m Kirsten. By nature, I’m bossy my dad used to joke that I would do really well in the military, if they let me start off as a general, all joking aside, delegating is a skill that you can learn, you can delegate to get the results that you want, and to grow your business.
Tip 1: Get Clear
If you’re hiring for the first time, a virtual assistant or a marketing assistant, or perhaps another support person, make sure you get really clear on what you want them to do.
In order to hire the right person, you need to know the tasks you’re going to delegate. I love this quote by Albert Einstein, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid.”
So when you’re hiring someone, you want to make sure that you’re not hiring a fish to climb a tree. If you want someone to do admin work, or marketing work, or do customer service, these are very different skills.
You need to make a list and get super clear on what you want the person to do. So you can hire the right person for that job. The reason this is tip number one, because if you get this right, everything else will be so much easier.
Tip 2: Write out Instructions
Tip number two when delegating tasks, you want to make sure you’re very clear on what you want your VA to do. You want to write out step by step instructions. You also want to give them a due date. And you want to make it very clear that they can ask questions.
After we delegate a task, we say, “Do you have any questions?” And we remind them if at any point, “When you’re doing this, you run across a problem, please reach out to us, we’re happy to answer your questions.” 
Once your virtual assistant has done the work, make sure you review it, and then give them feedback. If they did it really well, say “Hey, great job.”
If it needs to have some changes. Then say, “Hey, this is awesome. But can you please change this”. After your VA has made the changes, you need to review it again. If you do this consistently with your virtual assistant, over time, they’ll know what you want, they’ll know how to do these tasks.
And it’ll get easier and easier and take less and less of your time. So it’s important that you, as the business owner, are very detailed when given instructions if you want to get things done correctly.
Tip 3: Leverage Technology
Now my third tip is about leveraging technology. If you’ve ever been involved in an email that goes on and on and on, and you’re searching for things because you can’t find what you’re looking for. It’s really frustrating.
You do not want to manage your virtual assistant, or anyone else for that matter.
Using email, you want to use project management software. And here’s a couple to consider. There’s Trello, Asana and Basecamp. They all have a free version. 
To start off, it’s a lot easier to delegate tasks in project management software. After all, that’s what it was designed for. So if you’ve never used a software like Trello, or Asana, just YouTube some videos and learn how to do that, it’ll make managing and delegating 100 times easier. I promise.
Tip 4: Get rid of False Beliefs
So the fourth tip is false beliefs. It drives me crazy. And I mean really crazy when someone says “I cannot delegate a task that I don’t know how to do.”
I just don’t even understand that sentence. Why could you not delegate a task if you do not know how to do it? Now you may be thinking well, “Earlier, you told us to tell them step by step what to do.” And that is true. But if you hire someone and you say, “Are you capable of using Canva? Do you know how to create quote cards?” and you actually review some of their work before hiring them, you know, they have that skill set.
You could say as the business owner, “I would like for you to create five quote cards for Instagram, use my brand colors and be creative. I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with.” So once they designed five quote cards, it’s up to you to tell them “Oh my gosh, I love this. But could you change that? Or oh my gosh, those aren’t my colors. Could you please stick with using my brand colors.”
If you do this, you do not have to know how to use Canva. You don’t have to know how to create a quote card. You just need to make sure when you hire someone, you’ve hired the right person, and you know that they have that skill set. But as the business owner, you are fully capable of saying I like what that looks like and I hate what that looks like.
So again, you do not have to know how to do that specific task in order to hire someone to do it. And then to coach and guide them through it.
Even if you’re asking your virtual assistant to do something they’ve never done. You can simply say “Do you feel like this is something you can learn how to do. What do I need to do to help you get the skill set? Can you learn everything you need to know from YouTube? Or do we need to hire a class or something for you?” It’s not uncommon to invest in your people so that they can level up their skills to better serve you and your business.
But again, you don’t have to know how to do everything in order to delegate it.
Okay, so the next false belief is, “No one can do it as well as I do.”
Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not. The reality is, if you continue to do low level tasks, you’re never going to be able to earn the income you want, or that you deserve. 
It’s taking you away from doing what you should really be doing, and working in your unique ability. So I want you to think about this. Let’s say let’s use a quote card as an example. Let’s say you do know how to use Canva. And you normally create your quote cards, and you have a system and you love what you’re doing. It shouldn’t be that hard for you to say to your virtual assistant. “Look what I’ve been doing, this is what I like about it, can you do my quote cards very similar to my style” they may not get it right right away.
Over time, I have faith that your virtual assistant could create, quote, cards that would fulfill your expectations, or perhaps even exceed them.
But I want you to think about this 8020 rule, even if someone does a task 80% as well as you do, is that good enough? Sometimes in business, we slow ourselves down by getting hung up on perfection, or excuses to continue to do what we’re comfortable doing.
Delegating is a new task, it’s a new skill.
Your mind is going to come up with all kinds of reasons and false beliefs as to why you cannot delegate a task, I just want you to challenge every false belief that comes up so that you can build your business and leverage other people to help you do that.
Tip 5: Become the real boss
Okay, so tip number five, which is my last tip is you need to be willing to become the boss, the leader, the manager and the coach.
If you think about it, this is a whole new skill set for you. It will take time to learn and you are going to make mistakes, but it’s okay. That’s how we all learn. We make mistakes.
When you start to grow your business by using other people to help you build your team, you’re going to start to see your confidence go up, you’re going to start to see your revenue go up. And you’re going to realize that yes, delegating is scary. And yes, sometimes you get it wrong. And yes, sometimes you hire the wrong person, and you have to fire them.
At the end of the day, if you want to grow a business, you need to decide I can become the boss, I am a leader, I am a great manager, and I can coach people in order to do what I need them to do to help me grow my business. So don’t be afraid to take risk. And don’t be afraid to fail. It’s one of those things, again, new skill, I will say it over and over and over again. It’s just a new skill. And I promise you, you can learn it.
Here’s what’s going to happen. Here’s what I hear all the time from my clients and I love it. They say
“I feel so much more confident now that I have a support person, or I feel so much more inspired to do my work now that I have someone doing all these little tasks”
“Oh my gosh, I had no idea how good it was going to feel to wake up in the morning and see all these tasks that have been checked off that my virtual assistant did for me.”
One of my clients even said,
“Oh my gosh, I get home from work at night, I’m tired. And I just want to binge watch a TV show. But the reality is, I have to check it on my virtual assistant. And so I do that. And then when I finish interacting with my VA, I’m excited about work again, I’m more energized.”
Delegating is a skill that can be learned
So think about that. As you learn this new skill to become a boss, your competence is going to go up, you know your referral partners are going to see that your clients are going to see that you’re going to get more referrals, more business, and you’re going to feel more confident to raise your prices.
By learning to delegate and becoming the boss, it’s going to have all kinds of wonderful benefits for you as the business owner, so don’t be afraid to give it a try.
I hope this has given you the confidence and the desire to want to hire and delegate like a pro.
Also, if you haven’t already, we would greatly appreciate it if you would subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified each week when we post a new video.
And until I see you again. Dream Big
