What to Automate, Delegate, or Stop Doing in Your Business

Are you tired of hearing business advice that completely ignores what real life looks like when you're navigating chronic illness?

Autoimmune disorders flare ups, medical appointments, and just life.

Lifing Business with Chronic Illness is for entrepreneurs who know they're capable of building something meaningful but need a way to do it that actually works with their body, not against it.

This podcast brings you honest conversations with founders, CEOs and other bosses, sharing their strategies, adaptations and lessons they've learned while building businesses alongside chronic illness, including what worked, what didn't, and what they wish they had done differently before burnout forced the lesson I'm your host Nikita Williams, a globally ranked podcast host and entrepreneur who's built my business while navigating chronic illness and helping others do the same without sacrificing themselves?

I created this show to open up the conversations most business spaces avoid.

The promise of Business with Chronic Illness is simple to show you that you can build a thriving business with chronic illness and autoimmune disorders without sacrificing your health, your peace or your profit.

You're not behind, you're building differently and you're in the right place.

Welcome back to Business with Chronic Illness.

I'm your host Nikita Williams and this episode I am actually going to talk about something that I have found most of my clients and people who are health coaches and providers and those living with varying capacity.

Whether it's because of perimenopause, menopause or life with chronic illness.

Women entrepreneurs who are service based providers have trouble understanding, especially if you have been burned or you are resistant to asking for help or actually updating your systems.

What should you automate, delegate and stop doing in your business?

Now why am I talking about this on Business with Chronic Illness?

If you've listened to the show multiple.

Times before, you know that this is something that most people often say that they wish they did sooner.

They wish they asked for help sooner.

I just recorded an episode coming up.

Soon with a guest who's like I wish I had just asked for help and I wish I had documented what.

It is that I did and what.

I needed sooner even though they were making money.

So if you are making money in your business around 50 or 80k or maybe 100k and you're stuck there.

Often I have found specifically with clients that I've worked with is that the reason why that they are stuck at that space is because they haven't actually automated, they actually haven't figured out how.

To delegate and they are doing things.

That they should not be doing.

All of my clients that I've worked with as a coach and a strategist, one of the first things that I look at is what do they need to stop doing, what do they need to create a system for or document their system for, and what do they need to delegate?

This in itself helps you to increase your capacity to make more and be better at what you do.

Like, better at the thing that people hire you for.

Like, better for being the health coach, the naturopath, the creative strategist or social media provider, or even, like, if you're in the creative space as a photographer or as a graphic designer.

This alone will help you.

Okay.

Often though, you know, you might be.

In this space, you keep saying to.

Yourself, I just need help and you get help, and then you're frustrated with that help.

I've had clients say to me, like, yeah, I asked for help.

And I ended up feeling like I spent way more time explaining all of the things.

I feel like it took me way more time.

I got frustrated.

I actually felt like this person should have read my brain already.

And I get it, because when we hear about getting help from, like, online and in social media and blog posts and things like that, it sounds like we hire someone and it's just like a miracle they come in.

And this is what I find happens in business.

You all are hiring people and you're expecting them to know your preferences just based off of one or two meetings.

And you haven't actually hired them with the idea of understanding how they think and how they even move as the help that's helping you in your business.

You haven't even learned their strengths.

You haven't even learned the reason why they are good at what they do.

You kind of hired someone because they were a recommendation.

And I just believe that they could help me.

I'm like, well, what was the recommendation off?

Right.

Was it based off of a friend or someone in someone else's business?

What were they helping them with that they felt like it was amazing?

Is that the same thing you need help with?

Right.

And so sometimes we make these trust judgment calls on hiring people to do things in our business that is not really aligned with what we need in our business.

So they might be great for that other person or that other company, but they may not be great for what you need to create the capacity that.

You need to focus on.

The two things that I think every business owner forgets when they're hiring for help.

You need time to be able to help your clients get the best Client results, because that is your responsibility.

For the most part, that is your responsibility.

Second, you have to know how to get clients in the door.

Like, that's a skill that you can try to outsource all day long, but it's a skill you have to know.

And I believe most of the things that we delegate, we kind of need to have a working knowledge of how.

They work so that we can better lead the people supporting us.

So you might just be thinking to yourself, I need help.

And often this is where the frustration comes in.

You hire the help, but you haven't qualified the help one you need.

You haven't qualified what the systems or.

Things you need to do, and you haven't qualified what you actually don't need anyone helping you with, and you don't even need to be doing.

And so this is really, really important because the cost of hiring or working with someone that's not a great fit or paying someone to do something that they shouldn't be doing isn't just like money.

It's your trust in your own ability to hire or to work with someone.

It's also your trust with yourself because it almost reinforces the thought of, well, I should just do this myself because it takes too much time and energy and capacity.

Now, I have helped my clients implement helping people come into their business to help them, either from a like, very tangible, like, I will create your hiring process for you.

Because I know for a lot of people that takes up a lot of brain power and energy.

And since you've never done it before, it's difficult for you to do and know what to look for.

So I've created, like, my own process of implementing, hiring someone into your business as a contractor, not as an employee, as a contractor.

And I set that up for my clients.

I run that whole process for them.

And what I have found with this.

Is there's two type of people.

There's people who are like, thank goodness, let's go through this process.

Then there's the other people who are like, so I finally admitted I needed help, and I'm allowing you to do this.

But then now that people know I'm needing help, I'm getting people telling me other people who help them.

And I feel like it would just be easier to go through that process.

And here is the mistake I have found that people find themselves in is that maybe the help that you are being referred is great for this other person, but not in the way that.

You actually need the help, because the.

Help should not just be helping you.

Get more energy and capacity back because.

That's what we need.

Like we need more time to focus.

On the things that we need to.

Focus on in our business.

We need also them to support our goal of making more money and doing less.

Right?

So the help is to give you more room to create more in your bank account and in your life.

Right?

So this is really important.

What I have found is that if you don't go through this whole process, even if you know a referral who is like someone else has hired someone and it's like they're great and they don't go through this hiring process, you will find yourself spending about six months more trying to get them to where you want them to be because you didn't go through the process or the system that supports you and what your goals are for your business.

I love a good referral.

I love it.

But the other layer to this is making sure that that referral understands your needs and that their strengths lean towards that.

Right?

They work towards that.

So I want you to know you're probably already thinking about asking for help.

You are using systems in your business like automation tools, you're even using ChatGPT, Claude, you might even have a virtual assistant.

You might have templates, you might have productivity system tools like Asana or Slack or something like that.

And you're still worried about the cost and the complexity and the time it takes to train someone and all those things are kind of a part of this process.

But really though, whether you are hiring or looking to figure out whether you need to automate, delegate or stop doing something, there's a couple questions you need to answer.

When you look at a task in your business, so you have your operations.

So your operations are the things that you know are happening in the background that keeps your business going.

Invoices, contracts and emails, back and forth payments, all of that stuff.

Then you have your client delivery system where it's like, how are you showing up for your clients?

How are you delivering and communicating with them in that system?

So that might be Slack emails, it might be Asana, it might be Voxer, it might be your go high level, like your account where you're kind of having that chat, text, conversation with him and then that's your delivery.

Like how are you letting them know what's happening?

And then you have your marketing and sales, right?

So how are you going to create that lead generation of coming into your world?

That might be through content online, it might be in person events, it might be referrals, it might Be networking, right?

So you need to know in those three buckets some of the tasks and things that you are doing.

So things, things like when I am doing my operations, is there something in this task that I need to do that requires my judgment or is it just a thing?

I repeat, for example, a contract.

Your contract should not require judgment.

You should have a standard contract for different types of things, like for coaching or consulting practices.

You should have a contract that's pretty much standard, that doesn't require your judgment all of the time.

It requires your judgment once and then it requires your judgment one more time as you review it once a year.

So it should be a system, it should be something that's automated.

It should be simple, right?

Is this something that repeats?

Again, let's think about the contract.

Of course this is something repeats.

When clients resign, people come into the place.

Does it repeat?

Where does that repetition lie?

Like, what system is that in?

Is it something that you manually have to do?

And if so, is it something that you could put into a system or something that someone else can manage for you?

Again, does the tech handle it?

Tech should pretty much handle it.

For example, for me, Honeybook is the system that I use for my contracts and for most part my payment system as well, which goes through stripe.

It kind of has its own system and stripe, and those things are kind of automated.

When I hire someone that is going to be managing the operations automation kind of these things, these systems, all they really need to know is how it works and what it looks like and if there's a problem, where they go to solve it.

And for most of them, the answer to that question is Google because it's a tech questions or into the.

The tech stacks, Q and A should not require me.

And the only thing that requires me is if my clients have some kind of random flu thing happen and it then requires my judgment.

It's so out of the realm, right?

Can another person do this?

If this is not automated, then you don't have a system.

Yes, of course somebody else can do this.

But honestly, you guys, this is a system that just needs to be managed by a person, potentially someone that's checking it and making sure that it works, that it's accurate, that it's fluid, that it's simple and it's clickable and easy like to move people through.

Is this necessary?

You.

Yes, of course a contract is necessary.

So that's one example.

So you notice these questions.

Does this need my judgment?

Does it repeat?

Can tech handle it?

Can another person do it?

Is it necessary at all?

That last question is, is it necessary at all?

It's going to come into play, especially with some things you think is part of your job when it comes to client delivery as well as marketing.

Okay, so we're going to take now in that second world these same questions.

Think about when it comes to client delivery, what is yours, what does need?

Your judgment, obviously how you decide to work with a client, how the timeline is going to be, what tasks are going to happen, how you're going to, you know, communicate with this person.

Those things are your judgment and they should be clear and boundary and already kind of standard for the most part.

So it is a repeatable thing.

Most likely if you have a really dialed in offer and how you support clients, tech can handle some of this.

However, if you are sharing very nuanced kind of things with people like so for example, after a coaching call with my clients, they get an automated email.

With updated information about what we went.

Over as well as the replay link to our coaching call or a conversation or some tool or something.

I personally send this because I just have the call and I sent it, but I have an automated email that pops up and I just fill in the blanks with what needs to be filled and go.

However, if I wanted my VA to do this, I could, I hold on to this because it allows me to be really dialed in to what is happening with my clients, like what they're doing.

But you could also build a system.

For this that you include at the end of your coaching sessions after your client leaves.

You could do a wrap up on that call after the client leaves and then you can have that tied into an automated system that sends this email or sends this connection with people.

You don't have to separate it.

Right.

So instead of blocking out maybe 30 minutes for a call, you block out on your calendar 45 minutes.

Because that last 10 or 15 minutes is you making sure that that goes into the automated system because you record it and it can upload to like a cloud dashboard and simply send it to your client.

Lots of different options here.

Can another person do this?

Yes, my virtual assistant can if I'm allowing them.

And I'm okay with whatever the type of arrangement I have with my clients to go and review the call and send this email.

Absolutely.

And this is necessary, this question is important here because my question for this is, is it necessary for me to do the follow up?

Yes.

Is it necessary for me to actually like do the hands and feet of it?

Not necessarily.

I can have someone Else do this part for me of technically sending out the information to my client.

And it's necessary also because it's directly affects.

What did I say at the beginning of this call.

Client results are your responsibility as the service provider, as the consultant, as the coach.

That is your responsibility to know and help them get there.

So this is necessary.

But is it necessary that you do all parts of it?

No.

It can be automated and it can be delegated now to the last key of this and I'm really simplifying this just so you know where a lot of you guys are getting hung up on at times when it comes to this and why it taxes your capacity and your ability to move forward in your business.

Marketing and sales.

Does marketing and sales require your judgment?

To some degree?

Yes.

You need to decide where you're going to show up.

Are you going to be on social media?

Are you going to not be on social media?

Where are you going to spend your time?

Where you're not on those platforms, like.

So where are you going to be?

Some of you are going to decide.

I'm going to focus on long form content, which obviously I have decided, and then I'm going to repurpose that content for other platforms.

Why is this important?

Because you need to decide where these things are going to be so that when you create the content, the support.

You might have in place, I hope.

You have in place, can know where it goes.

They don't need to make that judgment call.

Right?

You do.

This is a judgment call you have to make.

So of course you're creating content and.

You're doing whatever it is that you're doing in your marketing.

It's something you're going to do every.

Day, if not every week, in some.

Kind of shape or form.

Okay.

And it's going to repeat.

So that means there should be a system in place to support you with this.

Obviously, if you have a system, you're going to need tech to support you with this.

So does tech involve.

Absolutely.

There are lots of tools and systems, especially now with Claude and AI, that support you with this.

For example, with me recording this podcast episode on my phone with a DJI mic, the system that I have set up is once I record this voice memo, it goes to my descript, it.

Edits it, and then lets me know.

Whether or not it's ready to go.

Like that's the system.

Right?

So I don't even need a VA.

To do that part for me.

I just have a system in place and now I approve it.

I could Decide to approve it or I can have someone else decide to approve it.

Right.

Can another person do this?

No.

I know there's a lot of people.

Out here, like you can hire AI and all this stuff to do your marketing and your networking.

If you are solo provider, like you're a solo business owner, this is the last thing I want anyone to delegate.

Like the last, like actual functioning of it.

And what I mean by that is, of course you can delegate the support system of you creating the content, meaning you can delegate someone getting it out there, pressing, publish, putting it out on whatever platforms, or scheduling your networking in person events or helping you coordinate the events.

But you physically have to be the.

Person because that's part of your job.

Until you get to, I feel like until you get to like a million.

Dollars, this is your job.

Your job is to market and sell and create client results.

That's it.

And so if you are outsourcing that aspect of your business solely to someone else, this is why you're stuck at the income level and the lack of capacity, because you're giving all your core strengths of what you do to someone who is not coping with client results because they don't know their clients and they don't know what's happening and that's affecting the marketing.

Every millionaire that I have talked to in the last couple of years on the podcast, I've constantly said you think you're creating more capacity by hiring people to do your marketing sales, and you haven't figured out what your client needs and wants.

And that's why you're not making money and that's why you're losing capacity.

It takes so much more money and time to articulate to someone how to do something when they are not with the client, when they're not in it with the client, and, and taking that and translating that into the words that people need to hear that help you know, whether or not you can be the person that helps them.

Okay.

The only part of the system is really that's like going to be delegated is the parts that are after you've done the thing.

So after you've maybe gone to the networking event, maybe you pull up a list and you have people that you need to contact.

Your VA or your system can send out emails where you reach out to them and you follow up.

Right?

And a person can schedule those calls, a system can schedule those calls, have a system in place that people can automatically set up those calls with you.

Right.

Same thing with your marketing and content.

Obviously, I'm Recording this podcast episode.

It's actually me.

It's not AI or I'm creating videos or whatever it is that you do for your marketing.

All of that is you.

But then your VA can take all that content or you can use a tool like Repurpose AI or OI or whatever, and those things can do it for you.

All of this is important because it helps you really figure out what it is that needs to happen and what doesn't.

Now, what about that part of what.

Do you need to stop doing in your business?

Some of you all are doing things that you don't need to do right now.

You're setting up systems, you're creating things in your business that you don't need to do that are not helping you.

I've had clients come to me who are trying to offer two and three different offers and only one of them is selling.

And it's the thing that helps them the most.

They're most excited about, but they're frustrated about other things and they're focusing their time on the things that are not working.

If you have limited energy, you're neurospicy, you are living with chronic illness, you're going through hormonal changes.

Simplification is your friend.

And yes, for newer, spicy people.

I know this is hard to hear because you're like, I'm jumping all over the place.

You can jump all over the place in a lot of different ways in your business.

I have a client right now who's doing amazing inside of a one offer container and she's having so much fun because she has one place to do all of her fun things that she keeps doing different things.

And it's all in the service of, of helping her clients have better results.

Right?

Her brain is like tied to like,.

I want to try this, I want to try that, but it's for her.

Clients and it's in that one offer.

So you can still be your neurospicy and do it in those containers.

It's much easier to do that when you have support from a strategist like myself or when you are working with someone who can help you put those systems in place around your offers.

So here's something I want you to keep in mind.

Capacity comes from removing you, the founder, from things that are not really your founder work like they're not the thing that you need to focus on.

And you learning how to lead someone who's supporting you will also help you empower them to help you.

Right?

And help you make money.

Right?

So Your job for hiring someone isn't just to help them help you get more time back.

It's also help you make money.

And one of the things that I really think is important is when you're hiring support, when you're looking to delegate to someone and stop doing something and deciding what to automate the system should be helping you have more time and energy to do the things that make you money in your business.

And that's also things that help you.

Make you money outside of your business.

Spend more time in your crafts or things your hobbies, spend more self reflection time, be more with people that bring you joy.

Why are these things important?

One, because they help you.

You are running this business.

They give you time to replenish and renourish and really settle into who you are and what it is that you do.

Well, not just in business.

I think we forget that when we're.

Asking for help in our business.

It's not just so we can get the business stuff done better.

It's so that you can live your life to fuel your business.

I want you to live your life so they can fuel your business and help fuel your business results.

Because the more connected you are to you, the more capacity and time you have for you, the better.

So this is why this is so important important.

So I'm sharing with you the keep, automate, delegate and eliminate.

This is kind of like the way of life.

This is like your way of running your business and your life now is what do I need to keep?

Like what is yours actually no one else can have and what can be automated, what can be delegated and what should just not be on my plate right now.

And it shouldn't be on anybody else's plate.

Like it should just not be there.

It should be in the idea box.

It should be on the shelf where it's like when we get to at some point, it's not right now.

Right.

So how do you get started with this?

This is the biggest thing.

This is kind of like one of the principles that I really appreciate in the scriptures is to count the cost.

You want to basically look at everything you've got going on before you build the house.

And you want to look at everything.

That's happening in your life.

And that might feel like a lot.

So I want you to start with one of the three systems.

Operationally, I want you to look at things that you keep doing on repeat that you're like, man, if there's only a way to automate it, record yourself or record your screen or Pick up your phone and record yourself saying, oh, I'm doing this such and such and such a thing over and over again.

This is what I'm doing.

I wonder if there's a way to automate it now.

What's beautiful now, you guys, is that you can have your screen record this and then you can pop this into ChatGPT or Claude and be like, hey, I keep repeating these steps and systems.

Is there a system or an automation that we can put in place for this?

I'm a huge proponent for using automations over AI.

One of my favorite tools is Zapier.

Zapier does a great job of connecting different systems and tools and like creating like an automating experience.

Those are a lot easier to maintain.

Even with AI agents, they are becoming more what they call deterministic, meaning they can look at a system that you've connected to another system and make decisions around, oh, this is happening or not happening, but it's through the automation bucket versus through the.

I'm creating a whole new AI agent to run this whole thing, right?

So anyway, those are some of the things you can do for operations.

And you could just start with like when you wake up in the morning, I have emails, I'm sending this and then sending that.

Or when you are working with a new client, record that journey, record everything that you do when it comes to all of these different buckets.

And what's beautiful about this is that you can plop in those screen recordings now into some of these tools and it can give you an sop.

It is a way for your business to have an operating book of how you operate, how things work.

So when I hire a VA or I'm working with the VA on a project, they have access to my operating system of what that looks like.

Here's what we do, here's where things go.

Here's a video of what that looked like.

If we change systems, it's easier for them to find.

I love supporting people and creating that system for them.

So one and kind of done.

You have to keep updating it, but that's easy.

Tasks for a virtual assistant to do.

These are all kind of things that I love working with clients around, specifically around creating these one and done kind of projects and systems, while strategizing around what needs to be automated, delegated so that you can focus on making more money and having more time and energy for you and your business.

Okay, so your implementation step for this is literally in the next week, I want you to think of one or two tasks in your business that you are doing and record yourself doing them and put them in a document and keep it there and decide, is this something I want to keep doing?

Is this something I need to keep doing?

Or is this something that can be automated and if you're like, I don't know, give me a call, send me an email, or you can connect with me in the chat of our community in the show notes.

So ultimately, you guys, I want you to know that part of your capacity is being used up by doing things that are no longer meant for you to do or that can be simplified with a system or tool.

And you guys might be worried about cost and money, but a lot of these tools now are free to a point, especially when you're getting started around using some of these tools.

And some of these things will make you money based on how you're using it.

So all of this is part of the process of letting go.

And letting go allows you to really finesse the capacity you currently have.

Instead of being like, I need to get more capacity and so I need to add more things on my plate.

No, we need to let go so we can really embrace the capacity we have and learn how to steward that and budget that capacity in a way that feels like it's just a way of living versus a task or a chore.

Alright, so that's everything in this episode.

You can go to our show notes to kind of get one sheet of this.

We're going to put like a little PDF for you to grab if you want for this episode and if you would like to learn more or if you're like, nikita, I don't want to do this by myself.

Can you please help me?

You can go to the link in the show notes and book a call with me and we can see what is going on so we can help you have more client results, meaning have more clients with less of your time and make more money.

All right, so that's it for this episode.

Thanks for spending this time with me.

Every week on business with chronic illness,.

We talk about building a business that works with your body and your capacity.

So come back next week for the next conversation.

If this one helped you, share it with someone who needs it.

And if you would like to work with me or connect with our community.

And continue this conversation.

The links are in the show notes.

And you can find us@CraftedToThrive.com I'm Nikita Williams, your host and stay tuned for the next episode.