Overwhelmed?

Running a business is hard when you are overwhelmed and the desire to hire help is so strong…

STOP! – before you hire a VA or ask anyone to help you in your business, there are a few things you need to do. Not kidding, unless you are asking people to stuff envelopes, you need to be sure you are clear on what you need, why you need it and what you are willing to give up to get it.

And if you want them to be successful at helping you,
you better be ready to write it all down.

Yep, before you bring on help, you need to be sure that new helper can operate without hand-holding. To do that, you need to get clear about 4 things:

Your business purpose should be clear and documented.
The work you need done must be organized and the requirements clear.
What your big picture timeline looks like.
What problems you need them to solve.

Spending one or two hours to make sure the four items above are clearly documented can make it easy to identify the right person to hire, ensure you are not wasting money or time clarifying objectives and redoing work and even will help you make sure you are spending your own time on the right things!

Getting started

The pages below will walk you through documenting these four things. Each section starts with a narrative explaining why the step is important and provides a walk through with examples. Each section ends with a “Take Action” section with the steps summarized for you. This process should only take you an hour or two and can save you hours in lost time in the future.

Think of the plan below as your very own DIY “get it done” insurance policy – let’s get started.

Communicate your Purpose

First – you must be able to describe your business clearly. Often, as small businesses owners, we forget that we are the central knowledge point and that something we know inherently, others may find confusing. These three elements act as your “north Star” and help you make decisions along the way. They will help team members understand your business better and will help them bring better questions and solutions to the table.

A clear picture of your business includes:

Vision statement – Why do you care about your work? What is your ultimate vision for your business?
Mission statement – What are you doing to make that vision a reality? What are you actively working on as a business owner to achieve your vision?
Goals & Metrics – What outcomes and results do you want to see for yourself? What about for your clients? How are you going to measure progress toward success?

Take Action – #1
Communicate your Purpose

Grab 15 minutes of quiet time and write down your Vision, Mission and Goals in a way that you can easily share them with others. Post them on your website or in a notion file you can share with your team – I promise, having it written down will change how you work!

Organize the work

In this exercise we are going to break down the work and identify what it looks like when it is done. Breaking down the big work into smaller components helps you see the requirements, opportunities, gaps and gotchas more clearly. It will also help identify if your goals are unrealistic considering your available resources, time, skills, and money.

As with the previous step, it is important write this down someplace sharable. If you can’t share it, your team can’t know it 😉.

1. Brainstorm to break down the work

Use the goals you identified above and focus ONLY on those in the immediate future – for my example, it is “Q1” work. For each goal, list all of the targets, the big work to be done. The start to break it down into “chunks” of work that can be done in a few days or less or that require a specific set of skills you do not have.

I like to do this on sticky notes on the wall, designating a different area on the wall for each “big rock” I want to move. You could also use a virtual tool like Miro or Trello or a mind mapping tool. Just don’t get too structured or you will miss things. Keep putting work on the board until you can’t think of anything else. Then group the work together according to the goal it supports.

Check out this picture of my board and that same picture imported into Miro using my FAVORITE app – the “Post-it®” app!

2. Scope & bare minimum requirements

Once you have identified the smaller blocks of work to do, write up a quick description of what “done’ looks like. This will help you determine if you have access to the things you need to complete the work or if you need to get external support. I often identify new items to add to the board as I go through this process – that is perfectly normal! Make sure you have the following for each item:

Name
Definition: What is it and why is it needed?
Date: When MUST it be LIVE
Minimum Requirements: If it had to go live tomorrow, and you were going to beg a friend to help you, what is the minimum you must have? Be really clear here. If it must be on Kajabi, then state that. If it must have a picture of your dog, that needs to be noted. Even branding requirements, reading level, and tone for copy should be included.
Best case: If you could hire a team of experts, what would you LOVE to have?
Skills required: If you know them, list the skills required to complete the task. Command of the
Acceptance criteria: should it be tested? How? Do you need to review it?

3. Evaluate the truth

It’s time to get real.

Now that it is all laid out, ask yourself a few questions about each:

Is it really necessary?
Can I do less? What does a “B” look like instead of A+ work?
Is it possible with the resources I have?
1. Do I have the skills to do this on my own?
2. Do I have the time to do this on my own?
What am I willing to trade to get it done?

Pro tip – if you answered yes to #1 and then “no” to #3, there is a “no/low cost” option you can pursue. Look to your network for people who are good at the thing you need done but need social proof for their own business or support in something they are working on and collaborate with them for an exchange of services!

Once you have identified items you need help with, mark them! My chart below shows the items I need help with identified with orange sticky notes. I also determined that I needed to bring in 300 leads per channel per month if I wanted to hit the goal I set. 😬

Take Action – #2 organize the work

1. Identify all the work to complete your goals

2. Document your requirements

3. Identify gaps to fill

Map it out

Next step is to organize the work on a timeline. Working through this helps you ensure that you are allowing ample time for the work to be done. It also ensures that you don’t work on things too soon! Sometimes the biggest work feels most pressing and putting it on a timeline helps you ensure that you are putting the right work first.

As you are working through this part of the prioritization, pay attention to the effort needed. If a work item is bigger than a few days, you need to break it down so you can split it across weeks. In the image below, “Write Copy” for website & posting was too big for the time available. That item was split to allow other work to get done as well.

To help you visualize, mark each item with the number of days you will dedicate to completing the work. And be careful – don’t break work into chunks so small that you are creating task lists and micromanaging yourself or your team!

Take Action – #3 Map it out

For this, you will need to move the stickies, so if you have not taken a picture yet, now is the time!

1. Mark critical dates on the timeline

2. Move sticky notes on to a timeline according to their due dates.

3. Review time to complete tasks and balance them across the timeline accordingly. Breakdown work that is too big focusing on days of work, not tasks.

Evaluate and solve for the Gaps

At this point you should have a very clear picture of the work that needs to be done, what goal it supports and what it will take to complete it. To ensure you do not waste valuable time or money, you now need to create a list of the gaps to solve for. For each work item you can’t complete in time with the team you have, you will need to note the following:

What is needed? Time or Skill?
How will you manage the gap? For a skill, will you hire or learn? For time, can you adjust your schedule?
How much can you budget (time or $) to solve the gap?

Creating the above list will allow you to not only identify the right people or training needed but also will help you identify opportunities within your map. A few questions to ask yourself:

If you don’t have enough hours in the day and are hiring to double the energy, will you get a return on that investment? Is it better to adjust the timeline? Moving dates out to allow you to do the work may or may not be a good idea depending on your situation. Be sure that hiring will bring a good return on the spend.
Can you contract each gap to a specialist? It may be easier to find a resource with a strength in a specific area of expertise than a generalist who can do wonders on many things.
If you hire someone in another country so we can work on opposite schedules, will there be challenges with communication? The appeal of hiring an assistant in another country where the exchange rate and cost of living works in your favor comes with risks. Even if the individual speaks your language flawlessly, there will be a significant difference in culture that will influence their work. If they are setting up technical systems for you and you are providing all of the content, the challenges may be less as long as long as they are already experienced in the system.
Creating content is nuanced, can I find someone to replicate my voice and vision and honor my brand? Does it matter to me? If yes, focus on finding someone who has expertise in content creation.

Take Action – #4 Document & Find the Support Needed

1. Create a list of all of the work that you need to outsource, include the amount of time projected to complete, and the deadline.

2. Consolidate the list into like skills and add up the total time needed for that type of work.

3. Identify the team member(s) needed. Will you contract specific work out or hire a generalist?

4. Write postings targeted to the specific work to be completed.

5. When reviewing candidates, make sure that they clearly understand the specific work they are being tasked with and request examples of their work. Ask questions about style changes, can they handle adjusting to your brand? Will they need any special tools or access to your systems to complete the work? There may be an additional cost to calculate into your support matrix. Be sure to review references and ensure they have completed the same work for others in the past.

Share!

Now that you know what you need and what you are willing to spend and compromise on, you are ready to bring someone on to your team!

Make all of the information you have gathered sharable with your new team member(s) and ask them to review it as part of their onboarding. For simplicity, I recommend a Notion page or a Miro board. This allows you to share a live link to everything they really need to know about why they are here to help you!