Read time: 4 min, 37 secs
Bookmark this if you’re a manager/founder who needs your time back
(it’s in depth)

Hey there - it's Brian 👋

Confession.

I was drowning.

➟ Updating CRM
➟ Updating Asana
➟ Writing content
➟ Researching content
➟ Managing my posting schedule

Etc etc

I felt like I was stuck doing the day-to-day.

But couldn’t actually focus on the things that moved my business forward.

So I called my friend, Houck who replied:

“What are you doing?! I have 9 assistants.”

I realized I was behind.

“If I don’t have an assistant, I AM the assistant.”

So I used his recruiter. Spent the weekend building my SOPs. And got my time back.

So today’s issue is for you if you want the ultimate hack to build your own leverage, or get the most out of your highest-paid employees:

➟ How do you know what to delegate?
➟ How do you find an assistant to delegate to?
➟ How do make sure they don’t take too much time to manage?
➟ How much should an assistant cost?

Let’s make your business an outlier: 👇

For my friends: what’s going on with Brian?

📌 This section is a business + personal update. Skip this section if you want to get right to how how you hire + manage an assistant.

I’m ecstatic with our client delivery.

70% of our clients have come back to buy again!

That’s a sign that quality and delivery is great.

So now we’re focused on nailing client acquisition:

1) Inbound (Newsletter + LinkedIn + Twitter):
Socials are by far our best channel. I made one LinkedIn video that got 7 calls booked.

Sales from socials are much easier too. They’re already convinced they need to buy and trust us.

We’re hiring a content writer to expand harder on socials. I want this person to write my YouTube scripts too so we can get back to video content.

2) Account-based marketing (Multi-channel):
We’re working through a targeted list of 100 agencies to reach out to (email + LinkedIn + phone).

Account-based marketing is usually better for bigger deal sizes (our average deal size is $10 - $12k, CLV = $30k).

Response rate is incredible since it’s hyper personalized.

3) Email outreach
Biggest thing that’s boosted our email responses has been testing as many angles as possible. We’ve been testing 1 per week but that’s too slow for my taste. I’d love to get that to 3 - 5 tests.

Angle = target customer + offer + framing.

4) Twitter outreach
I love the agency we hired. But there’s been a spammer who’s been flooding Twitter inboxes with horribly generic messaging. It’s been hard to stand out.

We’re doing a highly personalized approach here. I expect better results these next 2 weeks.

I used to be against outbound.

But outbound is far more predictable than inbound.

Inbound is higher quality leads, higher trust, but takes time to build and can be feast or famine.

Outbound creates a more predictable revenue stream.

So you need both.

On the personal side:
I’m back to Colombia next week to meet talent in person for TalentHQ!

And I’ll be speaking at a few events in person.

A lot of updates this week! Reply if you have questions (or if you’re in Medellin) and I’m happy to share.

Okay let’s get into it 👇

How do you know what tasks to delegate?

Your goal is to buy your time back and build leverage.

Instead you’re stuck doing day-to-day things that don’t compound.

So what leverage should you be focused on?

Don’t take my word for it.

Here’s Andy Grove (CEO of Intel) on doing leverage right (vs wrong):

To clarify,
you info gather to make the best decisions for your business:

➟ Who to hire?
➟ Launch a new service?
➟ Should we increase prices?
➟ Change our business model?
➟ How to incentivize our talent?
➟ Which countries to expand into?
➟ How do we get customers to buy more?
➟ How do we get customers to stay longer?
➟ Which acquisition channels to expand to?

Etc etc etc.

The things that don’t build leverage for your business? Delegate:

➟ Content writing
➟ Customer service
➟ Managing projects
➟ Updating CRM data
➟ Engaging on socials
➟ Outreach (clients, influencers, peers)
➟ Managing socials (when to repurpose content)

Etc etc etc.

📌 I made a list of 100 things you can delegate. If you want it, reply “Delegate” to this email and I’ll send it to you.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

Okay, Brian. This works for Intel.

But what about a new agency? A startup? You can’t just be info gathering + nudging + and making decisions when you start out, right?

True.

You start by doing things that are inefficient, so you can learn how do them right. Once you learn + get the revenue to buy your time back…

BUILD leverage. Every. Single. Day.

And to do that? Delegate.

How do you find someone to delegate to?

You can do it yourself.

Best way to do that is posting on job boards like LinkedIn or Indeed.

Two risks:

1) Each role takes on average 25 working hours of your time.

2) If you haven’t gone through the process as often, you might hire the wrong person. You waste time + money onboarding them, only to find out they aren’t good. Then add on ANOTHER 25 hours to find your new hire.

Obviously I’m biased towards outsourcing to get your time back and hire right the first time since I built TalentHQ.

Here’s why:

➟ We receive ~400 applicants per role
➟ Read all 400 resumes
➟ Run them through a pilot project
➟ Assess project results
➟ Interview the top 20

Send you the top 3.

We ONLY do a few roles. So we’ve seen these roles over and over.

We know what good looks like.

And we give you the tools to make your processes so you don’t spend more time managing the talent (than the time it would take to do it yourself).

How do you make sure they don’t take more time to manage?

Just record yourself doing the task.

Save it in Notion so it’s easy for your team to find when they need help.

Here’s what our Notion “how to’s” look like:

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

Okay I know internally I call them Standard Operating Procedures “SOPs.”

The low leverage stuff is just recordings. The high leverage stuff is detailed guidebooks.

You really only want 10 - 15 detailed guidebooks. I know people who have 1,000+.

No one reads 1,000 SOPs.

I should probably call them FAQs instead of SOPs.

But it works so you get the point.

How much does an assistant cost?

How much does an hour of your time cost?

$500? $1,000? $2,000?

An assistant will run you anywhere from $8 - $10 an hour.

$1,000 - $1,500 / month.

If you’ve figured out what low-leverage tasks are eating your time and can record yourself doing them, you’ll buy your time back for $10.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

I’ve hired an assistant for $800 a month.

You can do it but you start to risk that they aren’t as experienced, critical thinkers, or self-starters. Any of which will eat more of your time than it’s worth.

I’d rather spend the extra $2 / hour to actually get my time back.

If you don’t have an assistant, you ARE the assistant

Never leave out the cost of inaction.

Waiting to delegate is expensive.

Buy your time back. Build leverage.

Make me and Andy Grove proud.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
[email protected]
Twitter
LinkedIn
TalentHQ

P.S. I know I nerd ranted a lot today. So if you want to bounce outsourcing ideas off me let’s chat (link here)

🙋 Vote: How did we do?