Thinking about getting a VA? Listen here first.

You hired an admin assistant to take work off your plate, and somehow you are doing twice the work just handing things over. The service agreement comes back not quite right, so you fix it yourself, because that is faster than explaining it again. Most therapists quietly conclude the admin assistant is more trouble than they are worth.

In this episode, Imogen challenges that conclusion. Having lived through a failed VA and several admin assistants who added to her load rather than lifting it, she has learned that the setup rarely fails because of the assistant, it fails because of how the work is led.

Imogen walks through what actually makes delegation work in allied health: the kindness that lives in clarity, why getting your processes out of your head and onto paper is what frees your capacity, how to build an ecosystem of co-accountability so stale admin tasks actually get actioned, and why handing over genuine ownership and risk is what makes someone step up. She also does the maths on why a clinician billing over 150 dollars an hour holding onto 60 dollar admin is a decision worth revisiting.

If delegation has always felt harder than doing it yourself, this episode reframes why, and what to change.

Imogen is running a masterclass on the power of delegation and building a scalable practice on the 1st of September at 8:15. LINK IS HERE

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Transcript

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Welcome to Cognitive Capacity Chat. This is the podcast for the therapist ready to think beyond the therapy room. I talk about our cognition as our foundation, not just for our clients, but for ourselves. Because the way we think, organize, and live directly shapes our clinical work, our capacity, and longevity in this profession. I'm Imogen, an OT, here to bring you practical conversations that fit into real life. This podcast is for the therapist who wants more depth, more clarity, and more life. Welcome. Hello. Thanks so much for jumping on the Cognitive Capacity Chat this week. I'm so excited to talk all about admin assistants in general, but the idea, the space of being able to actually delegate and make that decision in allied health, and particularly y- the small business owners or the sole traders who are ready to scale, but they just have the barriers that I've had. So I'm keen to dive into that. I am so excited. I will be working from my office, my renovated office, which is on my house this week. So things are starting to get a little bit back to normal. My office space in itself is actually the size of the upper level that, uh, Evie, Jacob, and I are living in, which is pretty crazy to think about. Like, our house is just so huge. And so it will be nice to feel like I have a separation of space, of having separate space for the office and then a separate space for living, 'cause we will still be m- at my mother-in-law's for a little while until the, the bedrooms all get sorted. In the health industry, there is this overarching theme of admin assistants requiring All right. The overarching theme of today is admin assistants, virtual assistants, receptionists, whatever you want to call them, in the health space. Because I feel like there is a common thread that admin assistants are more hard work than what they're worth in terms of pay. That often you end up redoing the work that you wanted them to do, that you delegated to them, It just feels like more work on your plate because you have to do twice the work with handing things over. And I know this because I have had a number of admin assistants that actually haven't helped me, and I've felt like it's an additional load. I actually remember at my old clinic practice, I would, and the whole team would, just prefer to do it myself because I felt like it was more work to hand over and delegate compared to what it was worth me just doing it and taking my time. And that's really challenging because the whole point of an admin assistant is to assist you with admin. So the frustration arises that they are no longer taking or saving you time. They are actually just causing you to have extra cognitive load, which is obviously not my jam and not what we want to achieve. Also, I had a failed VA when I first went out on my own, so I have well and truly lived through some admin assistant doozies. But the reason I believe, reflecting on it now, that that was a failed setup is because I just wanted them to come in and organize me. I just wanted them to come in and make their own role up because I was a sole trader. They were an admin assistant. They technically should know what I needed, and I suppose they just took advantage of that. They took advantage of that and unfortunately I was without an admin assistant for a while as a result. But what I have learned from my experiences with admin assistants is that it is on me, onus is on me, the business owner, on how I actually lead those admin assistants to doing their job well and thoroughly and to a standard which actually reduces my cognitive capacity. I also want a little disclaimer because I'm not saying that every VA is going to be perfect. Sometimes you do get the ones that really don't even do their role that they're supposed to do, even when you are delegating them or the request is really plain and simple. But I would love to challenge the idea that admin assistant is the main problem associated with your admin assistant role not working very well. And I think this is particularly true if you're someone who operates at a high speed. You really wanna see clients, wanna service clients, you accept referrals, you are able to do things and do things well in a clinical lens, and almost you understand the system so well that you are also able to do service agreements, case management, all of that jazz independently as well, and sometimes it feels like it's just gonna be harder to delegate. But I'm here to tell you, if you're a therapist, you are at least earning over $150 an hour, if not substantially more, and your average admin assistant costs you from 60 to $80 an hour. So we need to think about what our priorities are. If you can get someone else to do two hours of admin, you are either going to be able to make it up by getting a 30-minute walk in every day, or you are going to be able to bill additional two hours per week. And so you're actually going to start creating that scalable model that all business owners want, or more time, which depending on your goals, depending on how you take that extra time to yourself What I find with the clinicians that I just spoke to, they're the fast movers, quick movers, they understand processes, and it feels easier to do it yourself. So you do just do it yourself. Things come back that you've delegated that aren't quite right, so you just pick it up and you take it off their plate because that is easier than going back So what I wanna say about my learnings from an admin assistant, I actually have an admin assistant at the moment. I have onboarded her about two months ago, and I actually asked her for feedback associated with her role, and Fortunately, her feedback was very similar to what I propose as interventions or how to approach admin assistants, and I think how to approach any delegation really. So the things that I have learnt, because I'm obviously not immune to an admin assistant going awry, is that there is kindness in clarity. Now, this, this goes both ways. This is not just you alone, it's also the, admin assistant's ability to be clear. However, as a person in authority and as a leader, it's great for you to represent it as the example. And so I find that, and I find this true with staff as well, that the m- the more you lead by example, the more they organically follow you in a way that enables you to, to achieve what you wanna achieve as a business owner. So kindness and clarity. So being clear with your expectations versus just saying, "Get me organized." So if your emails are chock-a-block and you really want someone to go in and filter them out, you're not just saying, "Go and get my emails organized," you're saying specifically what the outcome is. So I want you to go and organize my emails so they have a filter or tag, folders, I want them all on my CRM. What- whatever it is, versus you just saying to the admin assistant, "Go and get my emails organized." Because I anticipate that you have a idea in your mind what your emails will look like, and then when they don't deliver it, you just think to yourself, "Ah, it was probably easier if I just did it by myself." When you're delegating project work, like you wanna set them up a system, focus on the outcome. So every single meeting I am focusing on an outcome. I'm saying, "This is what I wanna achieve in this meeting. This is what I wanna achieve in this system. This is not working." I'm pretty clear and frank about the fact either what's the purpose for changing this, or why am I telling you this feedback to enable us to get to the outcome? There's kindness in telling people your processes that are currently just rolling around in your head. So this inclu- so this includes your communication process. What, how are you guys... What is the source of truth? How are you actually communicating and delegating correctly? Because I know sometimes we're forwarding emails, sometimes we're chatting over Teams, sometimes we're texting for something else as well. How are we honestly communicating and what is the source of truth? So we both know, we're both clear, and we're not feeling like, "Ah." Feedback. I've already spoken to this a little bit, being clear and direct. The more feedback you give them and early on, the more likely they're going to learn Or the quicker you're going to say, "You are not taking on my constructive feedback, so it's not going to work because I can't foresee you improving in this role." I mean, you'd say it in a nicer way, but obviously you've got probation periods for a reason the other thing is, is not explaining urgency or priority. People love a due date. People love the idea of priority, and you just need to be clear. I know that a lot of us can get an idea in our head. I am guilty of this too. I continue to work on it and realize that I actually haven't articulated or communicated what I actually believe to be a priority. This goes beyond just work. But getting processes out of your head and onto paper, or urgency, or how are you gonna communicate that? The more you put on paper, the more you'll be able to delegate. And I'm telling you that the more that you put out of your head, then you'll get a business development idea because you have space to think, then you put that on paper, and then you think, "Oh, maybe my admin assistant can action that small task or that small task, or start here." Being able to think about your workflow as any single person could pick it up and run with it associated with how you hold your tasks is going to change how your brain operates from a cognitive capacity lens. I've also learned that there is ways to work out an ecosystem so that you have that co-accountability. So I have to do a task, they have to get back to me, but there's also that ecosystem of creating ownership when it comes to the tasks that they are delegating me. So it keeps those stale admin tasks that often don't happen, like let's say someone doesn't return a service agreement, that just sit there. They're actually actioned because we've got this ecosystem. Really good for my Type B therapists out there to actually keep yourself accountable. The other thing is, is creating ownership, leading through delegation, and enabling them to actually own areas. The idea is that if they start having ownership and they carry risk, then they're going to find that they actually step up to the task. So if you, say, are always redoing their work and redoing the service agreement, then you are actually going to find that they don't really mind if they get it wrong because it... there's not really any risk. However, when you're really clear that if you get the service agreement wrong, it means the business is not paid, which means there may be a shortfall in cashflow, and it means, you know, we, we are not gonna be able to be paid, or we overcharge someone's plan, the consequences of having a service agreement that's not correct, and giving them that risk, because then they'll start to understand why we need an accurate service agreement and why you are wanting it correct f- from the start the full ownership is on you. As a business owner, all the responsibilities fall on you. You overcharge an account because your admin assistant got the case wrong, that's on you. It's not, it's not a good look to blame your admin assistant. It's a good look to own up to your mistake as a business and to understand why that fell down. But it's also on you even if you have someone that potentially isn't the right fit for you, it's on you to make that call, to provide the feedback, to potentially be the one to say, "This is not working." That is on you as a business owner, and that is so powerful to have full ownership and operate in a has so much integrity all of these learnings are things that I am going to talk through even further on my master class that's gonna be on the 1st of September. It's gonna be at 8:15, and it's all about the power of delegation and admin assistance, and actually making your practice scalable. So I would love to invite you to that because we are being practical. We are not just talking about the podcast episode and what we discussed here. Of course, I'm gonna rehash these things in more detail of actually how to provide feedback, how to create that ecosystem, how to create ownership, how to be really, really clear, and I want you in the room, so I'd love to invite you there. Link will be in my show notes. Otherwise, imogenot.com.au will have everything there ready to go. Thanks so much for jumping in on the podcast this week