It is strange how surprising it is for people to hand off tasks to someone else. The first surprise tends to come in the form of this question:

“So what should I even ask for you to do for me?”

Our first response tends to go something like: 

“Well, what would you like to not be doing anymore?”

But that doesn’t always work.

Our clients often haven’t had the time to think about what they no longer want to do, or shouldn’t do.  They also don’t often think completely through how they’re even going to delegate a task. Moreover, they’re not yet aware what the most time-cost-effective tasks they can outsource are.

This is where we come in.

With Well Aware as a time management partner, our job is to pay close attention to the time and tasks of our clients. Through our 3rd person perspective, we spot actions our clients can delegate. From there, should the client approve, we can help delegate the task with them if not for them. This way we can then get our clients to focus on more valuable options for their time.

The following are 3 examples of tasks we’ve identified and performed for our clients. Each example covers a different focus on our clients’ time-task.

The first is a health-based task focused on our client’s nutrition.

The second is a wealth-based task focused on our client’s business development.

The third is a self-based task focused on our client’s review of their time.

Our goal in sharing these is to spark awareness of the time you can delegate to a virtual assistant. Be that with our help, or through someone else. Enjoy.

Note: Names used are different from our actual clients for privacy reasons.

Case Study #1: Delegating Meal Planning & Grocery Ordering.

Our first example brings us under the umbrella of health.

A client of ours was finding themselves despising the time it took him to decide what to eat each week. They also hated grocery shopping. Our client was willing to cook. In fact, he enjoyed time making meals, so long as they weren’t too complicated. This sparked an opportunity to delegate:

“Mark, why don’t we come up with a meal schedule for you every week?”

Mark highlighted: “Look, I don’t plan on cooking EVERY meal.”

We responded: “Not a problem. Based on your schedule, we can make sure you make enough food for leftovers.”

Mark lamented: “Okay, but then I’ll have to make sure I buy enough ingredients.”

To which we replied: “Oh no, we’ll grocery shop for you. Once you approve the meals, we’ll get the right amount of food delivered right to your door.”

It helped that Mark was already used to ordering groceries to his home. 

He’s never had someone else order those groceries for him though.

“What about security? Your VA would need my credit card to make the order, wouldn’t they?” – Mark asked.

“That’s easy to address. There’s this feature within our recommended password manager LastPass. It allows you to share necessary credit card information for specific sites only. It also autofills that information without letting the VA (in this case, April) see it or use it elsewhere. We’ll show you how to set that up. Your information is safe and always in your control.”

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Mark got to experience weeks where his meals were not only planned for him, but ordered. Within that time, Mark would share which meals he enjoyed and which he didn’t. The former would end up returning to his meal schedule for future weeks. We played around with the style of showcasing each meal and ended up with a Kanban board. Within each card of the Kanban, April, Mark’s fractional VA, would include an image of the meal. As well there’d be a stripped down checklist of ingredients needed. We included a checklist for recipe instructions along with a link to the source article.

This first example highlights a nutrition-focused scenario of time-task delegated. We also make time suggestions for exercise as well as sleep. In Mark’s case, we got to talk about timing his food schedule to when it made the most sense for him to exercise. We also considered his sleep schedule which needed a change so that he could get more of his professional work taken care of in the morning. 

On that note, let’s move on to the next case study.

Case Study #2: Delegating Outreach within a Prospecting Strategy.

Our second example brings us under the umbrella topic of wealth.

Cue our client who’s job is as a fractional VP of sales – Carla knows very well how to run her own prospecting campaigns.

The problem for her was manual outreach via direct message. It didn’t make sense, for her time, to send out pre-scripted messages herself. What did make sense for her was getting cued when to step into a stage of the prospecting where the lead became warm.

This was our opportunity to help Carla map out her prospecting strategy. By this mapping, we could identify all the touch points that a VA could perform on her behalf. Then, given a positive response by a lead, the VA could notify Carla to step in. If not, the VA would provide a report of what happened with failed prospects.

We started out by diagramming the prospecting strategy. Carla sat with us over Zoom after preparing her scripts. We talked through each of the steps and their decision trees. It then became clear when the VA, Mavie, would send a message to a prospect, and on what channel(s).

From there it was a matter of giving Mavie access to those channels. Again we used LastPass to share credentials in a secure way for Carla. We kept organization of all the prospects’ information and progress via Google Drive. This was also where we housed the scripts provided by Carla. Through the Drive, Carla could make changes to scripts, add new contacts, or make comments that would guide Mavie based on her feedback.

Carla not only benefited from the virtual help for her prospecting. LastPass saved several minutes each day just by filling out passwords for her online tools.

Through her prospecting work, we also needed to organize Carla’s existing contacts. This data cleaning project served to bring all Carla’s contacts under one address book.

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Now in this particular case, we also highlighted security concerns. See it turned out Carla was saving passwords to her address book for recall. IT security consulting is not our primary function, but it has played an important role for our work. That said, we explained the dangers and reiterated the value of good password management. Progress to her address book by the VA halted until she deleted all password-related data.

I digress: You can read more about how we make our clients aware of better IT choices in those case studies.

With that, this second example highlights a prospecting-focused scenario of time-task delegated. We also make time suggestions for networking as well as creating & delivering value in your business. In Carla’s case we analyzed and discussed time-cost ROI with each of her networking groups. And when it came to her creating value, we made sure she had enough time each week to deliver on her client’s needs. 

From there, let’s shift over to the last case study on reviewing one’s own time.

Case Study #3: Delegating Calendar Activity Review.

Our third and last example ends us under the umbrella of the self.

In this case, our client was actually… me! I wanted to look back on all the meetings I held this year as part of my review. This is something I like doing for clients to address their relationships. I figured it was good practice I perform it on myself.

Though I knew where to find the information – all on my calendar – I didn’t want to scan back from January 2021 to now the start of Q4. It didn’t make sense for my time. I also knew that at the time earlier this year, I wasn’t documenting every interaction well into my CRM…

As such, this was an opportunity to catch up with myself before I was even as organized as I’ve become today! I gave Geilord, my VA, access to my calendar (but not my whole account). I then instructed him to create an excel sheet of all invitees on my calendar. I asked for the date met, and each invitee’s email. He himself included the name of the calendar event – a small thoughtfulness I hadn’t considered – that ended up really helpful.

After reviewing his report of my interactions, I immediately started recognizing tasks. Contacts to catch up with, old projects to reflect on, strategies to revise…

And now due to the way I’ve now set up my CRM, I can have Geilord set those follow ups for me. I can also have him enter data about each of my contacts’ social media profiles, and have me follow them. Old projects and strategies are up to me to reflect on. But the actions I generate from there, I don’t also have to do! That is unless I’m looking to get my hands dirty with something new that I don’t know how to do yet – therefore, I can’t simply delegate it, as Geilord may not be able to do it well! An important principle.

With that, at this point, I’m able to create an agenda item with my advisors about what I’m seeing from this review of my time. In this practice, I aim to preach a similar call to action for you.

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This third example highlights a review-focused scenario of time-task delegated. We also make time suggestions for studying as well as resting. Yes, we even have suggestions for how you can study smarter given your time. As well how you can rest smarter given the same. With that, our main principle which makes all that possible stands on this simple message:

Review your time, and focus. There’s only so much you can do in a day. 

You more than likely have tasks you can pay someone else to do. When it comes to the costs of that, you can pay as low $3 an hour for a VA. With that, you are more responsible to train and educate that VA. For $5 to $10 an hour, you will have less of that responsibility, but still have to manage the administration aka hiring & payroll.

Whereas for $12-15 an hour and above, there are plenty of agencies that will handle all things for you. That can include walking you through how to delegate. Well Aware is among these parties, and we partner with an agency to hire our VAs. And yet with that, our effort goes beyond identifying how to outsource for you.

We analyze your time in life as a whole. We are your awareness partner, highlighting opportunities that best buy back your time. If you could complete a task with even less cost through, say, automation, that’ll be our suggestion. If we should streamline a process only you can perform because of the time benefits, that’d be our focus for you.

With that, I hope the time you chose to invest in reading this found you well. If you want to open a discussion with me about your time, please feel free to schedule 30 minutes with me. Until next time, be well on your way.

– Conrad Ruiz

Founder | Well Aware

“The decisions you make and the actions that follow are a reflection of who you are. You cannot hide from yourself.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

P.S.

One consistent highlight I want to address is my mentioning of LastPass. LastPass is a great password management tool. That said, it’s not the only one out there. Nor is it the only one we’ve tried. For instance, we tried out OnePassword, but found the UX/UI lacking in intuitiveness. That ended up costing our clients a lot of time and frustration. We also have used Keeper as that was an IT client’s existing password management tool. I like it about as much as I would LastPass for having not gotten too involved with it – point being it’s simple and it works, and that’s what you want out of a tool like these.

All this is to say that I do have an affiliation link available to anyone who’s interested in using LastPass. Using this link gives you (and me) one free month of LastPass Premium (valued at $3). With that, I welcome you to explore LastPass without consideration to my affiliation. For your convenience if so, here’s an unaffiliated link to their site.

Again, thank you for your time. – Conrad