The Captain Coder Podcast
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The Captain Coder Podcast
Scale Your Business Through Delegation with Cathy Baillargeon
On a scale of one to “Why did I start a business,” how burned out are you right now?
You started your business because you were GREAT at what you do. But you didn’t start it because you wanted to do all the admin work of running your business.
Many entrepreneurs and business owners are convinced that even though they hate it, no one can do things in their business quite like they can.
Want to love your business AND scale it? It’s time to delegate the things that are sucking the life out of you.
Cathy Baillargeon and I are opening up your mind to the many possibilities that you have in getting help in your business.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- The signs it’s time to delegate
- Common excuses to not
- How a VA differs from employees
- Common delegation misunderstandings (and why they’re wrong)
- How to make delegation easier
- The hidden value of delegation
- What you can get help with
- And the real results of asking for help
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It really gives you the head space to be able to drive your business and start thinking, envisioning, okay, what do you want to do in the next year, three years, five years? And then start building upon that. Start having more foundational structure to your business because you have time to put that into place. Maybe it's a pivot or a shift into a completely different niche or specialty. And now that you have the time to do that. You're listening to the Captain Coder Podcast. Each week I take you through actionable strategies that can help you scale your service-based business online. I'm your host, Marisa Van Skiver, AKA Captain Coder. Have you been putting off asking for help in your business because you think it's going to take too much time, it's going to cost too much money, and it's just going to be a drain on your resources? Listen, I used to think that too, but it's not true. In fact, it's honestly the opposite. We're talking all about the beauty of delegation today with virtually Kathy. I cannot wait for you to listen to this interview and think a little bit differently about what it's like to ask for help in your business and some of the results her clients have gotten when they've reached out. Well, thank you for joining us today, Kathy. I am so glad to have you with us. I feel like what we're going to get into today, talking about delegating, talking about getting help in your business can be really hard for a lot of people and saying, yes, it's time. So I'm excited to dive in and get to know you and how you help people. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much. So tell me a little bit about yourself and your business. You are virtually Kathy, so how do you help your clients? Sure. So I was previously a business management consultant and worked with a variety of different businesses in all different stages and started virtual Kathy because I saw such a need for admin support in my own local business community and really wanted to create something that was more remote. Did this about almost six years ago now. Oh, perfect timing. So just before covid? Just before, yeah. So we'd already gotten established and then we were here to basically blow up when Covid came. And what we do is provide personable and professional admin support. So all of those admin tasks as well as marketing tasks, that's what we provide to small business owners as well as nonprofit organizations. Very cool. So what's your team look like? How many people do you have? I have a 20 plus person team and also a management team. Somebody who is like that client relations manager and operations director, and then just an amazing team of virtual assistants who just do an amazing, they do amazingly for their clients. People that can actually step in and help. And it sounds like you have enough people on the team that you can help in a large variety of ways and see people's needs and their businesses too, because you have 20 different people helping out these businesses. And we set ourselves apart by, we are all US based, and so we have VAs in all US time zones to really That's nice. Be able to support their clients during their business hours. So that's. Nice. Yeah, I mean, that's a big thing because it can feel frustrating when you're waiting for an overnight email that something is done. So I like that. Now, you talked about seeing people realizing that they need an admin help, but when you talk to a business owner who's coming to you and how do you know to tell 'em yes, it's time? What are some signs to look for that? Yes, you're probably six months late, generally speaking. There's so many different stages that people are in, especially when it comes to delegating. So we have the people who come in and know exactly what they want to delegate. Perhaps they had a VA before, or maybe they had even an in-house admin and just didn't have enough work to support somebody, even part-time. And so they were looking for an alternative type of employment or alternative support. And then there's the people that are like, I am so overwhelmed, I have no idea what I need to delegate. I just know that I can't do it all. And so being able to navigate what are the priority tasks? What are you doing, what needs to be done immediately, and what can be worked as a project? We see, I feel like the biggest sign is when a business owner finishes their day and they're providing whatever kind of service they're providing, and then they go home and they sit in front of the computer and they know they have four more hours worth of admin work that they need to do on top of their day. And they're just telling themselves, I shouldn't be doing this. This is not why I got into business. And that is such a clear cut sign that they're ready for support and they're tired of doing it. Because, right. Yeah. I mean, most of us, I think, and I think especially with the type of people that I tend to work with, the service-based businesses, we typically started a business because we were really good at doing the thing. And this has talked a lot about, and I, I'm going to totally forget the book reference that I'm making here, and I can see the book visually in my head, but it's all about creating an actual business, not just creating your passion project. And you could be a really good pie baker, and so people tell you to go make pies for a living. But the point is that's what we want to do. We don't want to do all this other crap over here. Oh, the ETH revisited. Yes. Thank you. Oh my gosh, perfect. I knew, I'm like, hopefully you can remember. Yes, ETH Revisited, which Good. And it's a really good point that we didn't necessarily get into business to run the business, and for a lot of us, we didn't get into business to do these admin tasks. So it's nice to get some help, but what do you think? I think for a lot of people that I've talked to, what stops them is thinking that no one else can do it like that. Yes, absolutely. It's so funny because there's a handful of really common excuses that I hear business owners tell themselves all the time. One being. Yeah, I would say, let's go through that list. What do we often hear? So one is what you had said, nobody can do this as well as I can. Second is, well, why should I pay somebody if I know I can do it myself? And then third would be, well, it's going to take longer to train somebody to do it than if I just did it myself. And then there's that person where it's like, I don't know if anybody can do it the way that I want 'em to do it. So all of these are premised over the fear of being able to adequately delegate to somebody and truly get that off their plate. There's so much emotion involved when it comes to delegating. You'd think it would be so cut and dry for us as business owners, but there's that guilt of, well, should I be paying money to do something that I know that I can already do? I think there's also like, this is my baby, and nobody can mess it up, even though us doing some of these tasks is definitely going to mess it up. At some point, it is going to get to the point where you just can't keep up with everything and some part of the business is going to suffer because you're too busy trying to do it all. And that's the tough part. Yeah. So have you had a client, a story, a client who came to you with these reservations but went ahead and signed on and saw the other side? Absolutely. I had one in particular that when I was just simply explaining some of the things that we can be doing for her business, she started crying because I mean, she had just taken all of it on for so long and she just had such a hard time visualizing what it would look like for somebody, especially somebody remotely, to be able to handle some of those things. She just assumed that she would be stuck doing all of them forever. And it was the type of business where it may or may not ever make sense to actually hire an employee at any point in time. So that was kind of where she couldn't really envision somebody else working in her business. And it just came at such a relief at a time of just such high stress. And we were able to really kind of take her admin, all the backend customer service part of her business so she can focus on training horses. That's what she was doing. Oh, fun. Yeah. So tell me, I mean, let's talk about that a little bit more because VA is, and what I think a lot of people, and this is probably just the old, especially if you come from corporate business model of you must hire full-time employees and you can't afford help until you can pay a full-time employee, but that full-time employee needs, taxes, benefits, things that you, yeah, all these things that you're like, I can't possibly afford this. So how do you think, I mean, let's talk about the difference what the VA and what that looks like, having somebody to come in and just do these few little things. Absolutely. And independent VAs, VA agencies, they all run a little different, but ultimately, virtual assistants have really grown so mainstream for business owners because again, they're an alternative to all of the scary things that would come with hiring an employee. And a lot of times, VAs, they may work maybe 10 hours a week. We have plans that start at 10 hours a month. So that's the beauty of being able to offer a service like this because for any business as little or as big as they are, we can provide some kind of support and scale and grow along with their administrative needs over time, rather than somebody taking on a good chunk of revenue or the cost in relation to hiring somebody even part-time 25 hours a week. Yeah, I mean, when you think about too, I think it's become much more culturally acceptable to go this route, especially post covid, but just in the last few years, working with remote employees, working with remote contractors, and a lot of businesses are seeing this is valuable, and this makes help attainable for somebody whose business hire full-time help. Yes. And there's also this freak out that business owners do when they hire somebody part-time or like, I know that these tasks need to be done, but probably not. It probably doesn't equate to even part-time work. And then they're scrambling to try and figure out, okay, well what am I going to give to this person next? And that's when the stress and the overwhelm and is this really worth all of that trying to figure it out? That's the hard part. So virtual assisting is definitely a great alternative to help support businesses until it makes sense for them to hire somebody or even full-time. Yeah. And I mean, what do you think when we are looking at, because it's different than an employee, but just in delegating in particular, what do you think a lot of people misunderstand about delegating tasks? Like we talked about, a lot of people say, well, nobody can do this as well as me, or it's going to take a long time to train. I mean, let's talk about your client that trains horses. I mean, what did she find? What was she misunderstanding about delegating, and what did she find that was actually the truth? That it would probably take more time to train somebody up on a specific task, depending on the virtual assistant, they may be well versed in the type of processes that a business has in place, and they might even know something even more efficiently how to do something more efficiently than the business owner's doing currently. And so there's kind of that misunderstanding that, oh my gosh, it's going to take me forever and I'm already drowning, and how am I going to get this person up to speed? And so the nice thing about virtual assistants is that bite-size pieces, bite-size chunks, train 'em up on three things that you want to prioritize first and foremost, and allow them to grow into that role versus an employee where it's like, okay, I'm stuck training this person for a full week plus 40 hours a week trying to get them up to speed. And so that's the nice thing about the remote virtual assisting. You can start small and build onto that. For sure. Yeah, I have clients that come to me all the time for stuff on their website, and they think it's going to take all this time. Remember what takes you five hours can take me five minutes. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. And I mean, that's the other part I think where a lot of people misunderstand with delegation and with getting help is that you're hiring people that know more about this than you do, and so they can come in and make improvements once they figure out what your outcome is. And that's also another kind of misunderstanding. A lot of business owners think that they can't hire even a virtual assistant unless they have some documented process in place. So then they're like, okay, well, I'm going to have to document this process and then I'll hire a va, and then it just never happens. And so then they're just constantly waiting for themselves to document this process when that's not, it can be so much easier than that. It could be as simple as recording on a loom video, what you're doing. You don't have to even talk and then have the virtual assistant create that documented process, or depending on who you're hiring and what their skill level is, a lot of times you'd be able to just say, this is the result that I'm looking for. And then have them figure it out as long as they have access to everything. And then again, they may find a much simpler, more efficient way to do it than the business owner was even doing. Yeah, I mean, I think delegating based off outcomes, that is something my own business coach hammers into me every single time we talk. Sure. I have ways that I like things done, but he is delegate off outcomes, look at the goals. That's how I work in my own business. When we build for clients, when we build websites, we build based off what their goals are. So I think that makes the most sense. I mean, does it matter, have you seen with all of your clients, does it matter that they do exactly the same process or is it often better that they're coming in and improving things or changing things up? Both. So I mean, there's. Depending on the project. Depending on the person, depending on the personality of the project, for sure. If somebody comes in and is like, this is already documented, I want you to do it this way, absolutely. But then there are plenty of clients that come in and they're like, Hey, this is kind of how I do it, but if you have a better way of doing it, they really lean in on the expertise of the virtual assistant, which is really great because that's ultimately the role that we want to play. It's never that the business, we never expect the business owner to not know how to do something, but they're paying for the convenience of us doing it for them and potentially even. Yeah. No, I like that. So what are some ways, we've talked about the idea of delegating, being better than we think, but it's also overwhelming to hand off a task because we might think we need a whole standard operating procedure written out with all of the steps and everything documented. How can we make things easier when it comes to delegating? What are some recommendations that you've seen that have helped? The first thing that we tell all of our clients, especially when they're kind of like, well, I don't know how we're going to be doing this, and it's always scary. The unknown is that first and foremost delegation, we see delegation as a skillset. Not everybody is innately born with the ability to explain processes clearly and concisely. And. I am one of those people not good at it. The phrase, I ruin our business at least once a week. I'm sorry, are you nodding my head? That's exactly right. And then you're having to deal with unmet expectations on both before both parties. And so ultimately it's like, okay, go into this delegation with knowing that it's a skillset that it will be improved over practice and time. And then figure out the best way that's going to work for you. Because there's plenty of people who delegate in all sorts of ways, and it's hard for somebody to adopt a way of delegation that works for somebody, but that might not work for them. So really playing what's the best communication method? Is it better to talk through a process on a zoom call and then record it and then have that person document it? Is it easier for the person to, again, give the results that they're looking for and then have the virtual assistant do the research and figuring out the best way to go about getting that result is do they have a better time emailing a list of instructions? Because that's just a better communication method for them. So figuring out what works best for them, knowing that it's going to improve over time, but you got to give it time and practice and start as simple as you possibly can. What's going to make it super simple on the client side, on the business owner side, if it's going to be complex and complicated right out of the gate, how overwhelming is that going to be and how discouraging is that going to be for them thinking that they're going to go into this working relationship? And it's all difficulty. Right? Right. I mean, nobody wants to make their life harder. Especially. When you run a business. It's the last thing we want. We're already on a roller coaster of nervous energy. We don't need to make our lives harder. So making that a little easier too mean, would you ever, and this is something that comes to my mind a lot, and I keep reminding myself, how much is your time worth if you're spending an hour on this versus if you're paying somebody to spend an hour on this, how much are you paying them? The monetary value is there too. I mean, I think we often forget that time is money. Absolutely. And seeing it in that point of view makes it a little bit easier for people to reconcile the decision of hiring somebody. So it's like, okay, if it takes you four hours to do a certain thing, what could you do? Lead generation for your business in those four hours? And if you were to land a client, what kind of revenue would that pay for a month's worth of virtual assisting services? Plus you get, I would assume, more than four hours worth of work for that, rather than just seeing this is just a certain amount going out every single month, do myself kind of thing. Yeah. And I know mean that's hard for anybody who, especially is a solopreneur making their first hire, their first VA contract or whatever. That is a hard mindset shift. I was literally walking my dog and I realized that I could train somebody to do some of the things that I was doing that was really weighing me down. I was like, oh, duh. It took real thought and ownership over if I delegate, I can make my life easier and I can grow this business. Absolutely. And then especially for the people who've been solo, entrepreneuring it for a while now, and they're starting to lose that drive and motivation because the stuff that they don't necessarily want to do is just sucking the life out of them. It's a beautiful thing where they can get back in to focusing on what really drives that passion of theirs. For sure. Oh, I love that. It gives you space, creative space to do the thing that you love to do. That's amazing. Well, let's talk about the mean virtual assistant, I feel like is an all encompassing term. It used to just mean admin work, and now I feel like you can hire a VA for quite literally anything. As. Long as it's virtual. It's become such an umbrella term that I know people who are editors and call themselves VA video editors and graphic designers that are calling themselves VAs. So anything remotely could potentially be considered a virtual assistant, which makes it very confusing for business owners when they're trying to figure out who they want. And then there's this discrepancy of like, oh, if virtual assistant is on the title, am I paying less? Then? Am I paying less for a podcast editor, VA versus a podcast editor? And so there's kind of this whole confusion around that, such a general term. Or does this person, because they have VA and their title, do they have less experience? Yeah, absolutely. That's always a question as well. But what are some things that you could, I mean, if somebody wants to delegate a variety of tasks, what are some help they could look for with a va? Some roles that typically people, I think especially that they typically start with. Typically people will start with a general admin or executive assistant va. So that's the person that's going to be like their assistant within a business, and it's admin. So you're thinking email management, calendar management, online research, invoicing, probably that gatekeeper to that client for their clients. So then they're not having to be answering frequently asked questions or questions that this virtual assistant can do. It kind of eases that. And as well as any kind of projects that they're doing, maybe it's updating, there are documentation or cleaning their email list up all of this stuff. The second, I'd say the second most common type of VA that people like to hire, especially if they don't like marketing, probably more of that creative va, whether that's a true social media manager, which that's its own thing, not necessarily a virtual assistant, but somebody who can take templates and create content that they can use for whatever kind of social media platforms that they have. It could be scheduling out that content or repurposing it or sending out an email to their lists using email templates. So all of those things, maybe even blog writings, those kind of really tangible marketing tasks that the business owner may never get to because. Because everything else comes in place first. Exactly. Those are probably the two largest, most common things that we see clients needing right out the gate. And I can totally see that. So let's talk about results. If somebody starts delegating, they start asking for help. What do you see typically happen in their business? Well, we definitely see them scaling. So ultimately, there's some business owners that are like, they're great with where they're at in terms of their client workload. They just wanted to get some stuff off. They have no intention of really growing. They like where they're at, which is great. But a lot of business owners, especially if they're hiring support, they're looking to scale and they're looking to grow. And so being able to focus on lead generation is going to allow them to bring in more clientele, customers, whatever the case may be. And then having an increased support, like customer client support system is going to also increase their word of mouth for the services that they provide. And so ultimately what we see all the time is their admin needs increasing along with the growth of their business. Yeah. See, that's really cool. That was the one thing that, it sounds counterintuitive, right, to spend money on somebody else and somehow you get more money. Oh, it's so true. It sounds so counterintuitive, but I think that's exactly what happens every time we reach out and we ask for help, we typically grow, and you could stay at a certain level, but your income can still go up because you're able to attract higher paying clients potentially and better types of contracts where you have time to put together better packages that are more profitable. Yeah, absolutely. It really gives you the head space to be able to drive your business and start thinking, envisioning, okay, what do you want to do in the next year, three years, five years? And then start building upon that. Start having more foundational structure to your business because you have time to put that into place. Maybe it's a pivot or a shift into a completely different niche or specialty. And now that you have the time to do that, it's a lot of opportunities there. That's amazing. I mean, it feels like a magic trick, honestly. And it's amazing. I have a VA virtual assistant who her main function is email management, and it sounded like the most ridiculous bougie thing when I started doing it. And I still have friends that are non entrepreneurs who are like, you have someone, literally, you pay someone to check your, I'm like, do much time. That saves me, oh my gosh. And the fact that she can filter things that are most important for me to look at right then and there and take things out that are tasks. And I have other clients who don't realize that when they're talking to me, sometimes they're talking to her and they'll crack a joke that I'm like, I don't understand. So I have to scroll up to see that she's learned how to talk like me and crack jokes like me. And I'm like, that is just the most amazing thing because I'm able to have the headspace. I'm not bogged down. And something as simple as how many emails, because I mean, a lot of 'em, I mean, you aren't running business. How many cold emails do you get a day? Oh. My gosh. It's ridiculous. And I could delete them, but at least now I have somebody actually looking to make sure they're not legitimate first. It was a really scary thing when I got to a point where I was also having one of my VAs in my email. It's almost like you're a. Little invasive. It's incredibly, you feel very vulnerable, and I remember thinking, oh, man, this is what my clients go through all the time when they decide to take the leap and get us in their email. But just knowing that somebody's eyes are in there that don't necessarily have to be mine. I don't have to. I open up my email maybe once a day, and I'm in there for 10 minutes because everything is prioritized. I know what I need to respond to immediately, what can wait, whatever the case may be. But I used to live in my emails all day long. Yeah. I don't have notifications on my phone. My email exists on my phone because we manage websites, so I'm like, okay, somebody's website goes down. She can ping me. I can look at the email, whatever while I'm on the go. So it's on my phone, but it doesn't ping. I get no notifications. Yeah. It's beautiful. And it is most relaxing environment. It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It's tough. Those kind of things where it starts kind of causing that anxiety a little bit. Like, I'm going to miss something important. What if somebody's website goes down and I'm not there or responding in the next 10 minutes? What are they going to think? Right. Or maybe it's invoicing. Where or what if I want to take the day off? Right. Exactly. But people have such a hard time with money, and so they feel guilty or they feel icky when they send out invoices or somebody else do it, and then you don't have to worry about that, but the money will still continue to come in. Yeah. No, I absolutely love it. Well, this has been a great conversation. Where can people get to know more about you and how you help people get to this point of levity in their business? Our Instagram and Facebook handle is your virtual Kathy, Kathy with a C. You can find me on TikTok at virtual Kathy as well. And we also have a YouTube channel, and yeah. Awesome. Well, great. Well, thank you so much. I cannot wait to think more ways about what I can delegate now. I'm having ideas. No, I'm kidding. As you should. Oh, man. The joys. The joys. Awesome. Well, thank you again for today's episode. If you loved our episode today, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or share this with an entrepreneur friend of yours who needs to hear it. Now. If you have questions about today's episode, reach out@katcoder.com. That's CAPT coder.com or on Instagram at Captain Coder. Thanks so much for tuning in and talk to you next week.