Delegating and automating sounds easy, but it’s difficult in practice. So I’m going to talk today about a day in the life of a delegator/automator to show you how it can be done.
I recently wrote an article talking about the importance of delegation and automation to get things off of your own plate, and continue to get questions about how to actually put this into practice. The common statement I get is “but it would take me an hour to write up instructions for how someone else can do this or to sit down and train them, so it’s easier for me to just knock it out in five minutes.” Let’s start off with talking about the folly of this thought process.
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Why “It’s quicker to do it myself” Is Folly
We’ve all been there. You see a task sitting in your LeadSimple task list or an email sitting in your inbox, and you know it’s something that you really shouldn’t be doing yourself at this point in your business, but you also know that you can have it done in mere minutes while it would take you a solid hour to teach someone else. So you just bite the bullet and do it yourself.
But let’s do a little math. Let’s say the task you need to do is something you can do in only five minutes. To make it tangible, let’s say the task is an owner sending you their insurance information. So you need to do check to make sure its compliant with your minimums, make sure it names you as additional insured, enter the new policy in your PMS, upload a copy of it to your Google Drive, and then delete any insurance non-compliance auto-charges you had been charging them (if you aren’t doing that, become a Founding Member and learn how to make thousands a month on that). All in all, should take about five minutes.
But here’s the thing: you onboard 100 new properties a year. That means that if you don’t delegate or automate this, you are going to spend 500 minutes on this one task this coming year. That’s 8.34 hours. More than a FULL DAY OF WORK. And this is just one task, folks. You could literally be taking off an entire day of work each year simply by delegating this one task. But instead, you say “it’s just five minutes” and you keep doing it every time the task comes up.
Instead, if you just spent the next hour writing instructions and recording a video on how to do the task, then assigned it to another member of your team from now on, you will have saved 7.34 hours of your time this year, and 8.34 hours of your time every year into the future. Forever. Which makes more sense?
Stop saying “it’s only five minutes!”
The Filter
The first thing we need to do is to figure out what to filter out as stuff that you absolutely have to do yourself. There are some things you just can’t delegate, if for no other reason than legalities. For example, most states require the broker himself to review the reconciliation to make sure it’s triple-tied. You can delegate tasks of the reconciliation, but you cannot delegate your own review and approval (again, most states, not universally true). So this sort of thing has to be held on. You have no choice.
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But that’s really where it should stop. Because no matter how good you are at something, I can guarantee you that someone else out there is better. Maybe you’re great at fielding new owner leads and closing business. That’s fantastic. But you know what? A full-time BDM who has nothing else to do is going to be far better than you are, provided that you do a good job of personality testing and hiring. It’s always going to be the case as you scale that someone else out there will be better than you. So it doesn’t make sense for you to continue to hold on to these things, even if you’re good at them.
That said, we have to prioritize. I’m not a huge Dan Sullivan fan, but if you’ve read his books or heard him speak, he does teach something quite important: find out what you’re bad at and what you don’t like doing, and delegate that first. You should essentially put everything into four categories:
Things you are not good at and hate doing
Things you are good at but hate doing
Things you are bad at but enjoy doing
Things you are good at and enjoy doing
Now work your way down the list. Start off delegating or automating everything that you hate doing and don’t do well. Get all of that off of your plate ASAP. Then move on to the next category. And yes, you’ll even end up doing that last category eventually. Jamie Dimon knows how to read a balance sheet and a P&L, and he probably enjoys it, but he simply doesn’t have the time to do that grunt work. He has people for that. As your business scales, you will end up having to offload even many of the things that you enjoy and are good at. I absolutely love doing budgeting, for example. I’m an accounting nerd. I love working with numbers and spreadsheets. But I simply can’t devote hours of my time to creating our company budget and keeping budgets-vs-actuals and ongoing projections up-to-date. It was one of the final things I delegated, but I had to do it.
Delegate or Automate?
I use these terms together almost as if they’re connected, but they really need to be thought of seperately. Sure, the final outcome is the same: you’ve gotten something off of your plate. But we want to get it off of your plate in the most efficient way possible. Paying someone $25/hr to do a task that can be automated for pennies every month is not a wise business decision. So we have to determine which path to go down with each task.
“Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined.” - Tim Ferriss
This is perhaps one of Tim Ferriss’s best known quotes. You should learn to live by it. Ferriss largely includes outsourcing as part of his automation category, but I break it out separately and use this priority order:
Automate it first;
If it can’t be automated, outsource it;
If it can’t be outsourced, delegate it;
If it can’t be delegated to your current team, it’s time to hire.
You’ll notice that internal hiring comes dead last. The funny thing is that most companies do this the exactly opposite. They realize that they’re drowning in work, so they just knee-jerk hire to solve the problem. “Throwing bodies at it” if you will. But then margins shrink from the bloated payroll, and then companies end up doing what? Outsourcing and automating, then laying off the workers they originally hired. This is just bad business, folks. And not just bad business in the sense that it’s horribly inefficient, but bad business in the sense that it’s just downright immoral. Hiring people and then getting rid of them a relatively short time later is not fair to the people who helped you out of a bind when you were drowning in work.
Instead, work your way down the list. Most things can be automated nowadays, or at least partially automated. I’m not telling you to hand over control of your business to AI. You know I’m not a fan of that. Humans still need to come first. But a lot of the stuff that humans do that isn’t customer-facing simply doesn’t require the work of a human. I don’t want my owner clients talking to an AI receptionist, but I also don’t want my Client Success Manager doing mindless busy work like hand-entering invoices when there are document parsers and Zapier to do that for them so that they can focus on doing their highest and best work: actually talking to clients. If it is technologically possible to automate it, then automate it. No exceptions.
Now, that said, not everything can be automated. I mentioned a receptionist, for example. I don’t mind AI doing some very basic stuff interacting with people, such as helping to diagnose a maintenance issue (props to Property Meld for MAX), but I don’t want my clients and customers getting frustrated dealing with a machine for most matters. If they are frustrated enough to pick up the phone, then dammit, they’re going to talk to an actual person. That said, it doesn’t make sense for me to staff my PM company 24/7 to have a person who can answer leasing inquiries. That’s three shifts a day, seven days a week, which is pretty expensive even at bargain basement RTM wages. The more efficient solution is to outsource, which is why I use VirtuallyinCredible. They handle all of our phone calls, 24/7/365. We pay a simple per-minute rate, so I’m not paying someone a full salary to answer five calls after-hours. We do the same thing with repair calls. They all go to EZRepair Hotline.1 When something can’t be automated, outsource it.
Not everything can be outsourced, of course. Or, at least not at the level of quality that you want. For example, I don’t outsource our bookkeeping. Not only do I find most outsourced bookkeeping services to be more expensive than just hiring a full-time bookkeeper, but I just don’t like not having someone dedicated to my books who only works on my books. It’s a quality issue. If I have a question about our P&L, or we need a special accounting entry made, I want to be able to send a quick Slack message and get it handled in moments. I don’t want to be sending an email to a fractional bookkeeper who is going to respond to me hours later, or maybe even tomorrow. My books are just too important to me for that. So when that’s the case, delegating internally is the way to go. When you’re small, you can delegate bookkeeping tasks to your primary PM team. Maybe your Resident Service person spends an hour on bookkeeping each day. It’s still internal, so you have access as needed, and they know your books well since they’re the only ones they’re working on. But as you grow, you’ll need to hire for this kind of role. Which brings us to…
The last resort is to hire. While this has historically been the go-to first step to fixing a work overload problem for most business owners, this should be an absolute last resort that you only do if you have no other choice. If you simply can’t automate it, it’s too important to outsource, and your team either doesn’t have the skillset or the time, then you have to hire. But the good news it that if you use this hierarchy with every task, then you will VERY rarely reach this step. Almost everything can be automated, outsourced, or delegated. Once you get good at this, you’ll have your internal team down to just the main customer-facing roles. And your margins will be enormous.
A Day in the Life
Now let’s talk about how this all looks in your daily work life. I’ll just tell you what I do.
My “official” work day starts around 8:15am. Sometimes I’ve taken a look at some emails prior to that while having caffeine and breakfast, but that’s when I’m actually sitting down at my desk. My first hour of my day is devoted to delegation and automation. I do not allow myself to answer my emails during that time. I cannot look at my Slack messages. I cannot complete any tasks myself. Instead, I sit down and look at my task list and my emails and then decide which ones can be automated or delegated. Then I prioritize and start with the highest priority item.
If I decide I can automate it, then I get to work in LeadSimple, Zapier, Parseur, wherever needs to be included to get it automated. For most tasks, I can automate them in 30 minutes or less, so I’m usually able to knock out a couple at the beginning of the day. It will take you longer at first, but you’ll get used to it as you get more comfortable with Zapier and the various tools that connect to it. Occasionally a task will be overly complicated and it will take more than an hour to get finished. Generally, I will still keep working past that hour to get it done. Getting that task forever off of my plate is more important than moving on to emails and Slack messages. If I get that task automated today, then I’m creating more time for myself going forward to work on emails, Slack messages, etc. Getting the work off of my plate for good is what matters most. But if I have an appointment or something that just can’t wait, I’ll defer completion of the automation to the next day and finish it then. It’s rare that this is needed, though.
But let’s say a task can’t be automated. What then? I start off by writing down the instructions. I’ve tried using tools like Scribe, but I just don’t like that they don’t format the instructions the way that I’d prefer, and then it takes more time for me to fix their formatting than it does to just write the instructions myself in my own format, so that’s typically what I do. It doesn’t take that long. Even for long tasks. Then I put those instructions into LeadSimple on the task. If there wasn’t already a task that was assigned to me for it, then I’ll create a task or process for it so that I can automate delegating that task to someone else. Everything has a process. Everything has a task. Then I record a screen share video using Loom of me completing that task to show how it’s done. That video is then added to the task in LeadSimple right under the instructions. Finally, I assign that task to the new role that will handle it. Someone other than me. I don’t need to sit down and train someone on it now. The task will just pop up for them from now on, and the first time they do it they’ll have a video to watch for training, and they’ll always have the instructions there as a guide. If that employee is promoted or leaves and is replaced with someone new, the video and instructions will still be there for them. I will NEVER have to do this task again. It is FOREVER off of my plate.
Of course, if a task is so rote that you don’t even need to have your internal team do it, then you can instead use this time to reach out to an outsourced provider for it and get that service setup. Remember, outsource if you can before delegating internally.
Finally, if you can’t do any of the above for a given task, then it’s time to hire. Use this time to create a job description, an ideal personality profile (Culture Index or DISC), and post the job opening. Don’t delay, do it today! The longer you put it off, the longer you’ll still be doing this task yourself. One way or another, get it away from you.
Continue to do this process every morning. The first hour of your day. If your day starts like mine before the rest of the team starts working at 9am, then you’ll have a task delegated each morning before they even start working. As days drag on, more and more tasks get automated and delegated, and you’ll find that your days get easier and easier. Eventually you’re at that “4 hour workweek” that Tim Ferriss wrote about. That should be the goal of every business owner. Create the ability to think about your business and plan for it instead of having to do busy work. That’s why you pay a team. That’s why you have automation tools. That’s why outsourced providers exist. You don’t need to be doing that all yourself. Remember that.
The rest of your day, it’s up to you. As long as you devote that first hour to doing this, things will slowly improve, and your workload will get better. But I encourage you to do this exercise throughout the day if you can. If another task pops up that you need to get rid of it, and today isn’t an exceptionally busy day, then spend an extra hour on automating or delegating. Get rid of as much as you can.
The Snowball
What you will find, if you stick to this, is that after the first few weeks, every day is easier than the last. Those first few weeks are rough. You’re taking away an hour of your day that you previously devoted to completing tasks so that you can instead delegate and automate during that time. So that’s one hour less per day that you have to complete tasks, unless you’re choosing to work an hour longer. That means that it can feel like work is piling up and you’re not making a dent. Ignore that feeling and press ahead. As the weeks go on, and more and more tasks are delegated, you have now eliminated an hour of daily work, so you’re no longer behind. From there, it just keeps getting better and better.
You’ll find that you have more time to focus on planning. You can think more about long-term vision for the business. You can spend time coming up with new ideas and testing out pilot programs for things you want to try. Or, you can just do like I did a few years ago and go on a months-long trip while barely checking in on work the whole time. Whatever you want to do, you’ll have the freedom to do. But you’ll never get there if you keep saying “it’s just five minutes.” Because it’s never just five minutes. It’s five minutes today. And then tomorrow. And then two days later. And then three times next week. And on, and on, and on, forever. Make the change. Eliminate that busy work.
We’re Hiring!
My property management company is looking for another BDM! If you have PM experience, and you either live in Atlanta or are willing to move here, please send me a resume. The position offers a combination of salary and per-door commission (with a heavy emphasis on commission), so we’re looking for go-getters who will put in the work to close leads. You would start off with 40+ leads from day one, so plenty of opportunity. Georgia real estate license required, or must be willing to get it prior to starting. If interested, email me a copy of your resume to toddo@revolutionrm.com
Open to Work
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Debate Me
Disagree with my take here? Have a different perspective? There’s nothing I love more than a good debate or even just an intelligent conversation. If you’d like to jump on a podcast recording with me to discuss this topic, please let me know!
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