Getting started · 6 min read
The 20-hour test: working out what to hand over first
Most owners hire before they know what the job is, then blame the hire. Two hours with a notepad fixes it.
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The most common reason an offshore hire fails is not the person. It is that nobody defined the job, so the new starter spent three weeks waiting to be told what to do and the owner concluded it was not working.
Track a week first
For five working days, write down every task you do and roughly how long it took. Not a time sheet, a list. At the end of the week you will have between forty and eighty items, and the pattern will be obvious before you finish analysing it.
Sort into four piles
| Pile | What goes in it | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Only you | Sales conversations, pricing decisions, anything requiring your judgement or your face | Keep. This is what the hire buys you time for. |
| Delegate now | Recurring, rules-based, low-judgement: inbox triage, scheduling, data entry, invoicing, chasing | First 20 hours of the role. |
| Delegate later | Needs context you have not written down yet: quoting, client comms, reporting | Month two or three, once they know the business. |
| Automate instead | Repetitive with no judgement at all: copying between systems, reminders, formatting | Do not hire for this. See our AI guide. |
Write the job from the pile, not from a template
A job description assembled from the tasks you actually listed will beat anything generic. It also makes the interview easy: you are asking whether the candidate has done these specific things, not whether they are a good communicator.
Before you brief us
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What those hours are worth
Use your billable rate, or revenue divided by hours worked. Not your salary, the question is what the business loses while you’re doing admin.
- Your time, per year
- $51,750
- A VA for 15 hrs/week
- $5,700
Value released
$46,050
Per year. Assuming you actually spend the freed hours on higher-value work, which is the part that is on you.