The Mind Your Time Podcast | Empowering Entrepreneurs to Streamline, Scale, and Live Their Legacy

Stop Hiring in Chaos: How to Delegate Successfully

• Episode 214

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If you’ve ever hired someone to lighten your load and still felt like you were doing everything yourself, this episode is for you!

Entrepreneurs are often told, “Just hire help,” but what no one tells you is how to prepare your business to receive that help in a way that actually works. Without structure, even the most capable virtual assistant can’t succeed. 

And without clarity, you’ll find yourself stuck in the same cycle: repeating tasks, chasing updates, and wondering why things still feel so heavy.

So today, I’m pulling back the curtain on what really causes delegation to fail and it’s probably not what you think. It’s not about who you hired. It’s about what you dropped them into.

You’ll hear how my client went from swearing off VAs altogether to creating a structured plan to bring on the right support with confidence. All because she took the time to prepare her backend with intention instead of rushing into another chaotic handoff.

What we cover today:

2:43 – What a messy backend taught me about why delegation keeps breaking down

4:23 – Why hiring help without systems just creates more stress

5:41 – How the Back Office POWER Checklist shows you what’s really slowing you down

6:56 – What changed when Carla 2.0 stopped hiring from burnout and started preparing with intention

8:00 – How a clear plan made Carla confident about hiring again

10:02 – The mindset shifts that make delegation work and give you your time back 

Resources Mentioned:

📋 Grab the Back Office POWER Checklist, a fillable Google Doc that will help you  quickly audit your back office, spot inefficiencies, and create a smoother, more efficient operations one system at a time!

Let me know your thoughts! Click here to send me a text.

Tired of feeling stuck behind the scenes?

Book a POWER In Motion Jumpstart Session! A 60-minute call where we’ll pinpoint what’s holding you back and build a 30-day action plan you can use right away.

It’s the perfect first step before joining the Founders Circle.  Book your session here.

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Speaker 1:

If you've ever hired someone to help relieve the overwhelm you feel in your business and you still feel like you're doing everything yourself, this episode is for you, because I'm going to be talking about why you keep failing at delegation. And spoiler alert, it's probably not the reason you think. It's not about who you hired. It's about what you hired them into. Whether you're the CEO trying to grow your business or you're just trying to get control of your time or get time back, your systems matter and delegation isn't the problem, but your back end might be. So let's talk about it. Welcome to the Mind your Time podcast. I'm Shannon Baker, your coffee loving host and business operations strategist. If your business feels chaotic and you're tired of spinning your wheels, you're in the right place. Each episode contains bold strategies and practical insights rooted in my power and motion framework to help you streamline your operations, reclaim your time and grow without burnout. So, whether you're just starting out or scaling the six figures and beyond, I'll help you simplify, set boundaries and build a business that works for you. So grab a cup of coffee or your favorite beverage and let's dive in. Okay, so let me start by taking you back to one of the first clients that I ever worked with as a virtual assistant. We're going to call her Melissa. Now, on the outside, everything in her business looked amazing. She was almost making six figures, she was booking speaking gigs and she had a waitlist full of dream clients. But once I got to look behind the curtains and see the real deal, her business was a mess. There were no SOPs, there was no task management system, nothing was documented, it was just pure chaos. Now, during her discovery call, I noticed some red flags that I should not have ignored. She was very vague about how she worked and she couldn't explain her processes. Actually, she was pretty scattered, but I ignored all of those red flags because I was new and I just really believed that I could help her. Well, guess what? I couldn't. Every time I tried to create structure in Melissa's business, she just got frustrated. Melissa's business she just got frustrated, flustered or she just plain out ghosted me. One day she even said that I was giving her too much work, when all I was doing was trying to introduce a little clarity and help her get organized. Needless to say, I ended up firing her as a client, but that was the moment that I realized delegation isn't always the issue Nine times out of 10, it's the back end of the business. I remember sitting at my desk thinking, is it me, am I asking for too much? But deep down I know I wasn't. I was asking just for basic things clarity, communication and structure. And that's when it hit me. It wasn't about my effort, it was really about her readiness. And that moment has stuck with me ever since because I've seen it happen time and time again, especially with women who are purpose-driven and really focused on reaching their goals in their business. So let's really talk about this Now.

Speaker 1:

If you're anything like my client Carla now, this is another client then you're probably thinking delegation just doesn't work for you either. You've handed off a few tasks every now and then. Maybe you've even hired a VA once, twice or three times, and each time you failed. But somehow it always ends up the same. Things start slipping through the cracks, you find yourself repeating your instructions and you get frustrated. So you just end up doing whatever it is yourself. So you tell yourself it's easier if you just handle it.

Speaker 1:

But let me tell you what's actually happening. You aren't failing at delegating You're not but you're delegating into either disorganized or non-existing systems. So let's say you hire someone and say, well, just help me, jump in wherever I need support. Does that make sense? No, it doesn't. But that's what you've been doing. Without clear expectations, documented steps or a system a person can plug into, they are left guessing, and guesswork leads to mistakes, mistakes, create mistrust and the next thing you know you're right back where you started Stressed out, burned out and alone in the weeds. So the problem isn't that you hired the wrong person. It's that your back end wasn't ready to support them so they could support you.

Speaker 1:

Now I need you to hear me out, because this doesn't mean that I'm telling you to go create a 200-page SOP manual overnight, but you do need a system. That's a foundation that gives your support, clarity, direction in a documented way so they can actually help you. And that's where the back office checklist comes in. It's the very first thing I give anyone who is preparing to hire or who's had a poor experience with hiring in the past. It helps you honestly look at what's working, what's missing and what's creating bottlenecks in your business behind the scenes, because if your business is built on adrenaline and last minute decisions, no virtual assistant in the world can keep up with that. But if you give them a roadmap, give them the big picture and give them breathing room to work within your existing systems, they can help you lead. That's exactly what another one of my clients that we're gonna call Carla 2.0 did.

Speaker 1:

She came to me completely over the whole hiring building a team thing. She'd already written off hiring another virtual assistant because she had failed at it a few times. She said it didn't work and it was more stress than support. But during her power in motion jumpstart session we took a different approach. Instead of rushing to fill in the gaps in her back office, we slowed things down and got clear on what she actually needed behind the scenes. So we started with completing the back office power checklist and we did it together. That changed everything. She could see exactly where her systems were fuzzy, where handoff points were breaking down and where her expectations had been living only in her head. This gave Carla 2.0 a whole new level of clarity, not just on what wasn't working but on what she needed to have in place before anyone else was bought into the business. By the end of her session she didn't feel that she was quite ready to hire yet, but she felt equipped to do it differently.

Speaker 1:

The next time she decided to try again. She had a starting point, a 30-day focus, a way to prepare for the kind of support she actually wanted and needed. And for the first time she wasn't hiring from the verge of burnout, she was hiring with intention. Now her plan is to bring on a VA who can truly grow with her, and when she does, she already knows what the onboarding process will look like for her virtual assistant, because we mapped it out together. She's also planning to enroll them into Founder Circle once they work together for at least 90 days so that the virtual assistant can be more familiar with her business, and then they're going to complete the delegate with confidence guide so they can build out her backend end together and she will no longer be the bottleneck in the process.

Speaker 1:

What a difference preparation makes. And it started with one honest look at what was happening behind the scenes in her business. That's what I want for you. So let me ask you do you know what kind of support you actually need, or are you hoping you can hire someone that will just figure it out for you? Do you have a repeatable way to hand things off, or are you winging it every time something comes up, answer those questions honestly. So here's your quick win challenge for this week. I want you to download the back office power checklist and complete it honestly. A link to it is in the show notes and I don't want you to sugarcoat it. Don't skip over things, because they kind of work and if it's not efficient, it's slowing you down or making delegation harder then it's time to address it and fix it. This will give you a real starting point and I'm not just talking about for hiring, but it's the starting point for building a business that can actually support the growth you want.

Speaker 1:

Now let's wrap this up with a few key mindset shifts that are gonna change how you approach delegation for good. First of all, hiring someone is not the fix, but getting yourself and your business prepared is. So if your backend is chaotic, it's not gonna matter who you bring in, you're going to have the same problem. So you have to make space for them to be able to succeed by creating systems before you hire. We also talked about the fact that delegation works when you lead it well. So that doesn't mean you micromanage the person. It means you give your team structure systems those will give them the context that they need to step into their role and support you with confidence.

Speaker 1:

The third thing we talked about is you don't need to do a massive overhaul of your business to get results. Sometimes, the change that you need is very simple. It may only take one focused audit or a clear 30-day plan to help you shift the way everything works in your business, just like Carla 2.0 did. Now, if you're ready to finally get support that sticks, then the back office power checklist is your next step. It's a great place to start, and so many women that I work with they avoid this step because it feels like it's slowing them down. But slowing down to assess the back end of your business accurately, it's not a setback. It's what makes scaling possible. Skipping this step that is what keeps you stuck. But if you want more personalized support as you complete the checklist, I would love for you to book a Power in Motion Jumpstart session with me. In just one hour we will create a 30-day action plan that gets your back in organized and prepares you to hire the right person the right way, so you can finally get out of the weeds and into the role you are meant to lead from Again. You can grab that checklist from the link in the show notes, or you can also click the link and book that power in motion jumpstart session with me.

Speaker 1:

One thing I want you to remember is you don't need to do more to make your business run better. You just need the right foundation. So let's build it together. Thanks for hanging out with me this week. If you've made it this far, it's clear you're ready to shake things up and take control of your business, and I'm here for it. But remember, just listening to this episode won't get you better results. I challenge you to break the mold and take action today. Your next move let's connect, head to the show notes and book a call with me to learn how the Mighty Society membership can help you streamline your back office and reclaim your time. If you're not ready for that step yet, no worries. Connect with me on Instagram at the underscore Shannon Baker, and tell me what resonated most from today's episode. And if you're loving the podcast, leaving a review is a quick way to show your support and help more entrepreneurs like you break free from the chaos. Listening is great, but action creates transformation. Go, make it happen and until next time, keep calm and streamline.