The Magic of Delegation & the Freedom it Offers When Growing Your Business

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Dortha Hise Podcast.m4a

Transcript

Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we have with us Dortha Hiss. She supports women entrepreneurs who hate the idea of delegation. She teaches them how and what to delegate with ease while bringing in a fusion of self-care. Welcome to the show Dortha.

It's great to have you.

Here. Thanks so much, Joe. I'm thrilled to be here.

We were talking a little bit before we started recording about being a process person.

And.

All the benefits of delegating and I to be totally transparent, I'm the worst at this, especially when it comes to business because I I've just been at it for so long and I know how to do so many things and sometimes it's just like I don't want to train somebody to do something new and then pay them and then.

Have to go and check if their work.

Then it's just like easier to do it myself.

Yeah.

Tell me why that's a.

Bad idea. Well, I mean, there's a lot of reasons. One is it's probably causing you a headache and messing with your sleep at night. And two is that it may likely. Yes. It's something you can do quickly or something that maybe you do and you're doing it grudgingly. And that energy shows up in other places in your business. So.

It can cause you also to get stuck in other areas of your business because you then become the bottleneck of something not flowing, so there's there's many, many prongs to this, and I'm I'm just sort of touching on a few of them.

I also think that while I hear you saying if I train somebody up on it, then it's, you know, taking time away and it's gonna take me longer to explain to them the the benefit of doing that though is that it's gonna get it off your plate. So then you can, it opens you up to doing the things that you probably started your business for and the things that light you up.

Your business that you may be feeling a little bit resentful for because you're having to show up in this other space that you don't love, even though like, if I handed it off, it's just that, like, I want to hold it. And I I I can't quite let go. So there's there's a give and take with it. And I think one of the biggest pieces of of advice I give to clients when they're starting in this, this realm is like putting a toe in the water.

Start with something small. Start with maybe a newsletter, maybe some social media images you know. Just start very small and sort of incrementally build on that. I like the. I think it's James Clear's book the atomic habits, you know, habit stacking. And if you get that in business.

It really can like start to snowball and take a lot of big, big strides, so.

I think, yeah.

What would you?

Say are the places to start. I know you mentioned like images for social media, but.

MHM.

I think it can be, yeah. I mean I think it's it's different for each client. So generally I like to have a conversation with someone and kind of find.

How? Where are they spending their time? Where are they spinning their wheels? Where are they hitting their head on their desk and sort of touch touch base on all of those areas. So for a lot of people, it's e-mail and staying consistent with getting their newsletters out.

Other people, it's no, it's not. We were talking about that before that not your problem at all.

It's not my problem.

So it can be that it could be social media, it could be, you know, that you create the content because you're, you know you really want it in your voice and you want to make sure that it's it's very authentic, maybe then you hand it off to someone and have them schedule it. That can be an actual kind of really easy transition because you know you're adding someone to your accounts as a manager and then they can just go in and schedule the post.

You that might be one of the easiest ways to kind of hand things off.

A prolific content.

Creator and you sort of need someone to hand hold along the way, and then there's a different conversation that needs to happen and it's OK, like maybe having them create some images, maybe sending them some blog posts or some other content that you have so that they can help start repurposing some of that stuff that you have out there and start putting it together so that.

Then all that work that you've done is is resurfacing. It's being used more than once. It's not just, you know, like a one time, you know, flashing the pan kind of.

Thing. So those are some areas I I think you can get into some of the more technical areas, you know things like opt INS, making sure all things are delivering properly a lot of times people think ohh, I have my my, whatever set up and I'll go test it and then I never get the thing and it's like you know that's an opportunity.

Missed opportunity and a big one for the person you know, because sure they've signed up, but then they're probably gonna unsubscribe if you do send a newsletter in a week or six or however long because they've forgotten who you are. You kind of gave them a bad experience at the beginning there. So those kinds of things really are the touch points where.

Or somebody could easily you could hand it off to them and you know, with maybe minimal instruction, they could go ahead and run with it. So it's just you.

Know.

Kind of putting your toe in and figuring out what's going to be the best water to to sort of jump in.

And what are you? What are your thoughts on hiring the right person for the right job?

Well, I'm a big fan and I think you know, having a conversation with somebody, being able to.

Assess where they are so you can meet them where they are is is one of the key things and I I said it a little bit ago where you know it's not a one-size-fits-all situation in any relationship. And I think that the client dynamic of you know bringing someone into your business, there's a big factor of trust involved. So I think that that initial conversation is really important to make sure.

You're asking some of the questions like, you know, do you know the system? Do you understand how this works? Do you, you know, kind of get those questions are all valid. And they're all things that you're gonna save yourself. The trouble of finding out in a month when.

And you said Ohh well, I brought you on because I thought you knew. But did you ask the questions? So, you know, I I'd like to recommend people writing out those questions. I I have a a checklist that that we'll talk about later. That includes some questions to ask someone that you're bringing on. You know, a lot of times I like to tell people to ask for referrals because that is a good place to start.

And it's not always a great place, because sometimes people's personalities aren't a great match. So you know what works for me, and you might not work for me and someone else. So it's just that, like yin and Yang and the dance and the shimmy and the, you know, back and forth and you just have to really find find the thing that's going to work for you and and be willing to do some work because it's not just like.

So here's the thing. Just go do it. There is, you know, give and take on both sides. So I think that, uh.

It's a very critical piece and it can make or break your sanity.

Yeah, I I've hired people in my life and and because it's an online business, sometimes we think, oh, you know, it's just me. And I'm just doing this thing. But if you treat it like a business, and if you treat it like, OK, I'm hiring somebody new.

And if you get some.

Some support from Someone Like You say that like these, these are the the parameters that you should be looking at and do you provide resources for people?

Like, do you have VA's? Do you have a directory of VA's? Do you have a or places for people to actually go from? From my viewpoint, I'm looking at it like, OK, so I want to get help, but I really don't know where to go and get help and the experiences that I've had getting help haven't always been positive.

Yeah, yeah. And I, I definitely, I hear that and I think.

One of the benefits of working with someone like me is that I do have a team that works with me, so I have a team of different people who have different skills and I use them specifically for those things. So if I'm talking to someone and I hear them say ohh, I use XYZ products, I'm going to be already kind of in the back of my head thinking OK when we're done with the strategy and plan which is the.

Big piece of where I come in with my clients and then I hand it off to my team for the implementation part. Then I can see it before it goes back to the client, making sure that I'm thinking of OK. Does that person meet those parameters? OK, does this person and that the The thing is, is that they're always dealing with me.

As the front person, they're not having to deal with my team, which I know is a a thing in a lot of team environments where you bring someone in and you're like, OK, great and then you get handed off to someone and you're like, well, who the heck are you? I've personally had that experience and I it's icky. I don't like it. I'm like, well, I had a relationship with you. I felt like we had a rapport and like what happened?

So I think that's a a question that you want to ask when you're having that first initial conversation.

And then like I was saying earlier, just making sure that you're meeting like how you want it to look, what kind of a relationship do you want to have? Like, what's the communication style? Are you a person that texts? Are you a person that emails? Those are all things that you wanna make sure you have set up and you've touched on before you dive into the, you know, full board of the relationship.

And I'll also say a trial period is a beautiful thing.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure and so.

Mm-hmm.

Are you actually a coach or are you a business that helps?

Why don't you start?

At the beginning and tell me exactly what it is.

You do so, so great question and I would say that I'm I'm a I'm a hybrid of of a lot of things. I've been in business. I think I we were talking about this earlier. I've been in business for almost 20 years and over time my business has morphed and grown and gotten.

More evolved and you know, with the advent of AI now, like I've brought in a lot of things that helped support my clients as well as.

Myself, so I I do coaching, I would call it like business efficiency coaching. So it's like looking at your systems and your processes and helping make sure that things are very well dialed in and that they're operating as you would like. I help a lot of people figure out, OK, the system isn't for me like what would be a better solution.

And then we actually go ahead and help with that migration or you know scrapping whatever.

I was just. Yeah, I was going to go right into the next thought. And I I felt like it was not congruent. But I I think it's OK. So, like, cleaning up an e-mail list is something I had a conversation with a client recently about. She had no idea that she should be cleaning.

Up her e-mail.

List and it's the thing that you know isn't really widely talked about yet. It affects your deliverability.

And it affects whether or not you know you show up in spam all the things so this. And as we were talking about it, she's like, oh, my God, I didn't know this. You should actually do a podcast on this. And I was like, oh, that's actually kind of a great topic. So getting back to your point, I kind of wear a lot of hats.

And I would say like my title being the Chief overwhelmed solver is like the all-encompassing of that. Because what I do in business affects the areas of the person's life outside of what you know, it's not just their business. I also that's where this the self-care piece came in, because I found that once.

We had systems in place and things were going well and they were happy in their business. They were still feeling overwhelmed and it's because they had that need. I work with a lot of high achievers and they felt that need to keep going and keep pushing and they had to be doing something.

I I had to tell exactly. And I'm like, but you don't. So it really became about, like, helping people understand that taking time for themselves a is a non negotiable and B is what helps them when they to unplug to to plug back in, right, to disconnect, to reconnect.

Fill up all that space again.

And I think.

It's for me. It's nature. Getting out, hiking, backpacking, all of that kind of stuff. And I realize that's not for everyone. So some people, it's yoga, some people, it's gardening. Whatever it is, I I help them to kind of figure out what that's going to look like. And then we do baby steps with their business practices. Right. So they take their laptop with them every weekend.

Maybe they take their laptop and they don't turn it on. Maybe the next time they leave their laptop at home overnight, right. It's it's very incremental and it's very baby steps. So there's a lot of coaching and there's also some consulting because, you know, like it's a little best place. It's a hybrid. There's a little bit of both going on.

So in the coaching aspect, when you're you're going in there and helping them set up their systems and or revamp their systems and you're bringing people on, do you do you actually have a team that helps them with that in terms of bringing people on? Like, are you an employment?

Agency, I guess.

No, not an employment agency. But I do like. So I have six people that I work with in my team that like I said, have different skills. And so I can bring in to handle like the migration for example. So like, we've switched from cartera to what was the system you said you were using currently. Yeah, click hubs. So say we're doing that migration, so we're going to go in and if they aren't using it.

Some opening event.

Click hubs.

They don't have a a migration service on the other end, which some do some.

I don't. I'm. I'm helping oversee that kind of in a project management role where I'm making sure all the pieces you know is the list getting copied over are the templates being moved over? Do you have this? Do you have all the tags, right? So like kind of the the quality control and making sure everything is being met so that the client knows when we move and that.

OK.

System is shut off that everything.

Has been moved over.

So it's it's kind of a hybrid where it's me really kind of driving the bus and my team helping with the implementation part.

OK, so the so if they've got projects you can help them do the projects, but if when it comes to like ongoing?

M.

MHM.

In well in my mind, when you're hiring people to come on and help you in different aspects, not like you're not just going to hire one person and expect them to do all the things. Sure, that's not realistic. No. But if you have somebody that says says.

You want to have handle your social media.

Marketing aspect that would be one person and you would help them.

M.

Know where to go to find that person other than you know, just responding to the myriad of LinkedIn spamming.

Proposals, yes.

That you get.

Oh, proposals, that's what they're called.

It's the, it's the market appropriate term.

Yes. So like I do have a person in my team that's is my social media person and I actually have a couple people that do that in that capacity. So some of them are really great at creating images. Some of them are really great at creating copy from existing things that you have, you know, like I've done work with clients who have written a book and like they'll get.

A copy of their book.

And then we can sit down and create posts based on things from their book, and then it's helping to drive sales for that product.

I am.

Does that kind of answer that question?

It does kind of, but mine is more a a longer term, like if I. So you're you're offering that I worked with you. I would have access to your team and your team would help me implement those things rather than.

Actually just going out and finding somebody myself to do the different aspects, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so I think so part of it at that initial conversation is finding out what the client needs and if there's an area that we don't cover.

Her and I'm like I I'm at a loss at the moment because it's the end of the day kind of thing. So I'm. I'm at a loss for that. What that nebulous area is, but say it's an area that we don't cover. So I could say, OK, great, I can have a conversation with people in my team and see if they know somebody who could fill that gap and we could bring them in and help either facilitate you hiring them or I could bring them on as part of my team.

And you know, have them do the work. I I work in myriads of ways. Like you mentioned earlier. So I can get crafty if needed. Ohh, I know an example. I I don't create logos. That's not my skill set in graphic design. I can do page layout like nobody's business.

Uh, but logos, not so much. So I I work with a couple of contractors who they're not part of my team, but they are part of my database resource network people. And so I reach out to them and say, hey, I need a logo and at that point it's best for the client and that person to have a conversation because the needs are very specific. A lot of times I'm able to work with the person and just say, hey, this is what we're doing. Here's what we're going to create. So I'm able to kind of.

To offload that in a project management sort of way so the person isn't having the client isn't having to necessarily make sure oh, is my finger still on that?

Thing they know that it's being handled because I'm. I'm on it. So yeah, it's it's not quite like an employment. It's not definitely not an employment type of thing, but.

It sounds more like a concierge type of thing where.

Yeah, I guess it is. I haven't.

Thought of that I I for instance, I would hire you. You'd go through what I'm doing. You'd look at it and you'd say, OK, we can help you here, here and here. Take all of that off your plate. Open up your day and.

Go outside and play. Do not find more work for yourself to do. Then I'm going to.

Yes, yes, go absorb some vitamin D and yes, yeah, and enjoy it, yes.

Have to take.

Yes. OK. Yeah, that, that's that's.

Really cool. Yeah. Yeah.

The.

Way different than the picture I had going on in my mind when we first started the conversation. So yeah.

When when would be the time that people need to come and see you? There's got to be a like an income break.

Yeah. So.

To make it worth worth their time.

I think, I mean, I don't have an exact dollar amount. I could say that it is people who are generally in the space of up leveling. So that's just a particular space. I know generally speaking they are.

Like I mentioned earlier, they're high achievers. They they know that doing it on their own isn't going to continue to be sufficient. They know they're going to burn out. They know they're going to something bad is going to happen. Uh, whether it's a dropped client or, you know, they miss an opportunity. There's just, there's something. Yeah, they they also.

Get in your own way.

Yeah, exactly like the bottleneck we talked about. They may also have hired people kind of hodgepodge here and there. And so like they have a little bit of experience.

And they know that they're not good at working like in a team environment necessarily. So they could use someone like me to kind of partner with them to help with that management. So they're I, I don't know if that specifically answers the question because it's not necessarily like an income threshold. It's just sort of where they are in the space of their business.

Yes.

Yeah. And I think most people understand the.

The leveling up part.

Because you're you're either just starting.

Now.

Maintaining.

And you maintain for a while and then you recognize crap. I'm going to burn out. I can't sustain this, this. And then that's that's the point. When they need to be on the phone.

Yes.

To you saying. Yep, help help me.

Before you burnout, but you know.

Yes.

Yes.

Push yourself a little.

Bit. Yeah. Yeah. So you're sort of starting to notice some of those signs, right. Like I I think I wrote a chapter in a book many moons ago, and I I won't forget the term I use, which is zombie preneur. And it's like, that's where you are in your business because you're you're doing all the things and you're missing a lot. Right. So you're, you know, you have thousands of emails in your inbox. You're missing your kids.

Yeah.

Fill in the blank. You're missing your partner or spouse or whoever you're missing something like date night with them. You're. You know you're not taking care of yourself. You're you haven't had a haircut in ages. You haven't had. You know what?

Sure, your your your idea of dining out is having the Uber eats person deliver food to you, right? And maybe that is eating out and there. There are other things outside of your home that you could also be partaking and I really feel like, you know, the lifestyle of the pandemic has has put a crunch.

On a lot of entrepreneurs in that space, because, you know, some of us were already kind of Hermite lifestyle and that kind of really like forced more people in. So that's really why I'm even more.

Vigilant about mental Wellness and self-care, like big, big things for me.

Oh yeah, I can.

I can see it in my own life. It's like it. It's so easy to just never go outside. Yeah, but, you know, Summer's coming in.

Yeah.

And I have animals so want to go outside.

They like that outside stuff.

Yeah, yeah, they they kind of prefer it. I always would be gets mad if I don't don't walk.

Your family.

Yeah, yeah. Otherwise we we do, we go feral. I was telling my husband the other day. A friend of mine, I was like, I'm a little concerned. I think they're going.

Feral. And he was like ohh.

Because he knew exactly what I meant.

Yeah, you just like.

Yeah.

So how do people get in touch with you? And I know we talked a little bit about those worksheets. Let's talk a little bit.

More about those, yeah.

Well, I'm on all the socials you can find me on this anywhere. Just my name. Dorothy Heiss and.

My website is summit to your success.com that's one of the easy ways to get in touch with me and and the worksheets. What would you like me to?

Tell you about the worksheets.

Tell me all about them. What? What are they going to have me doing? And do I have to be a worksheet kind of person?

Well, I yeah.

They're going.

Good question. Maybe I need to up the worksheet game and include like a little video tutorial for those who are they prefer video, so they are a checklist and worksheets to help you delegate better. So essentially in this little bundle I have created.

A checklist of things like we kind of talked about, really on things that you start thinking about before you have that first conversation with somebody, questions to ask. Having your logins in order. I can't tell you like how important that is and some clients we have to chase down for days to get their.

Stuff and it's like.

Let's help you wrangle that in. And like, here's this tool that we use.

You don't have to use it. We can find you another one and you know, just keep your your things safeguarded. There are also my favorite activity in the whole thing is writing out the list of things that you do in your day. Everything you do, all the things, every little thing. And then circle the things that only you can do.

Being left can be delegate.

And when people see that in a visual, it's a very powerful moment of, like, holy crap, I've been doing way too much in most cases. So that's the bundle. And you know, there's some emails that kind of go with it and just sort of checking in and touching base with you, and then you will also receive.

My additional ebook, which is a three steps to delegate and with ease and get your piece back and those are ways to help you start getting an action to start delegating right away.

That that's awesome.

I I think I'm going to go sign.

Up. I would love that.

And I probably won't get half the emails that I send to people that sign up.

For each probably won't. You probably won't.

So Dortha, what's the one thing you hope that the audience takes away from this?

Conversation we've had to.

Well, I like to tell my clients that they're superheroes and they don't always have to wear the Cape. So I think the the parting wisdom I would say is, you know, give yourself some grace. It's OK to ask for help and, you know, surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. So that can do the things that you're not great at because it's going to make you shine that much more. So.

Sort of a multi pronged answer.

I love it. Thanks so much for joining me.

Today, thank you so much for having me.