263: The Strategy Behind Delegation with Gala McCray

Hi there. You’re listening to the Leading Lady podcast. I’m your host, AliceAnne Loftus, and I’m a certified professional coach specializing in leadership and work-life balance. I work with clients to shift their limiting beliefs, insecurities, and self-doubt. This podcast will be filled with tools and strategies to help high-achieving women like you feel connected, empowered, and in the lead—both personally and professionally. Let’s transform your life, starting now. Lead yourself. The rest will follow.

AliceAnne: Hi there, leading ladies, and welcome to today’s episode. I’m joined by fellow Leading Lady ambassador and a dear, dear friend, Gala McCray. For our listeners that don’t know who Gala is—number one, how do you not know who Gala is? Everyone should know who Gala is! Gala is the owner and lead consultant of Two Arrows, a boutique bookkeeping firm that helps established service professionals lead with clarity, confidence, and control.

With nearly 20 years of experience in operations and financial strategy, I really want to hit that point hard. Her financial strategy that she has done with me as a business owner—and that I’ve witnessed her do with other business owners—is just, chef’s kiss. She’s more than a bookkeeper; she is your strategic partner when it comes to the finances in your business. She knows that true growth comes from knowing what to hold onto and what to delegate. Hi Gala, thanks for being here today.

Gala: Hi there. I’m so happy to be here.

AliceAnne: I’m so excited. I was just laughing that we literally spoke yesterday and I didn’t realize you were my guest today. I put the “pro” in procrastination of planning these things out. So when I saw that you were my guest today, I was like, yes! Always need more time. Awesome. I’m excited.

Why Delegation Matters

AliceAnne: So Gala, before we jump in, we’re talking about delegation today, which I think is so aligned because last week’s episode was about the internship program and how I’m actually being very strategic in team building. To go from team building to delegation is just beautiful, seamless. I love how that works out. Why do you think delegation is so important for business owners to talk about and to understand?

Gala: Delegation isn’t just about time or getting back time; it’s also about financial clarity and knowing what’s going on in your business. Every task you hold onto comes at a cost, whether it’s time-based, mental energy, opportunity, and sometimes it’s the actual dollar amount that goes with a task.

AliceAnne: Yeah, you talk about delegation—it is a financial strategy because we talk about the value of our time and how we’re spending our time and what our time costs. So let’s go deeper into that. How is this a financial strategy?

Gala: When you’re looking at how you’re spending your time, you want to see if it is aligned with how you’re pricing yourself. We as business owners have the luxury of having a price attached to how we’re spending our CEO time and a price attached to when we’re working in our business on things that we could delegate to someone else. If we have an understanding of what our CEO time is worth, how much time are you spending on checking emails or something else that could be delegated? Is that an opportunity that you could be out being the face of your business and bringing in more clients? And earning the trust of your clients.

Solopreneurs and the Cost of Delegation

AliceAnne: Before we even get into delegation, I see this a lot when I’m coaching women business owners. Most of the women I work with—maybe 70%, 75%—are solopreneurs. They don’t have big teams; they’re on their own. Maybe they’re not ready to outsource. The thing I hear them talk about is how they can’t afford to delegate. Before we even get to the point of outsourcing or delegating to somebody else, we have to be keeping track of our time and what it would cost us to pay ourselves.

Gala: Yes. Knowing how much it costs to pay yourself in the position that you are—as the head of this company, as the visionary, and your intellectual property, the brains behind the whole system—knowing what that is and how valuable that is not only to you as the business owner but also to the people you are helping with your product or service. It’s very, very important. The secret of all of this delegation is not to jump directly to delegation, but understanding the tasks and the things it takes to run your company and do what you do, and find ways to automate before you delegate.

Automate Before You Delegate

AliceAnne: Ooh, automate before you delegate. Tell me more.

Gala: When you’re automating and using technology—we’re in this technological age where we have all these things at our fingertips and so many free tools out there. I use Toggl, T-O-G-G-L, not only to track the time of the people I work with but also to track my own time. How am I spending my day? That’s a free tool, but what else can we use to automate? QuickBooks for one, for bookkeeping. Gone are the days of the old man with the bushy eyebrows, thick glasses under the green lamp, visor on, writing things down one by one. We have the technology to automate and integrate with our banking and credit cards to see everything, and it really eliminates a lot of the human error that comes with doing it manually. There are Flowdesk and so many email management systems that you don’t have to spend the time doing it yourself—ConvertKit, ClickUp, Notion, Trello, Asana, all the project management systems. There are so many things out there.

AliceAnne: Calendly—what’s the one that you use? Acuity.

Gala: Acuity. I always say that if it’s something you’re doing over and over and over again manually, you need a system for it, you need to document the system for it, and you need to figure out how to automate that.

AliceAnne: Yes, templates. There are tools like Zapier—do I say that right? Is it Zapier or Zapier? It makes programs talk to each other. I remember my early days of growing my Facebook group. I would try to collect people’s email addresses, write them down on a piece of notebook paper when somebody joined, and then manually add them to my email list. Golly, this is taking a lot of time. Or I would forget. The whole point of the Facebook group—not just for community, but as a lead magnet—is to get people on my email list and part of the community so that I’m directly communicating with them. Once I learned how to automate that—oh my gosh, hours of my life back. Human error, I’m not forgetting.

Gala: So think about the hours that your CEO, right? And then if you were to hire someone to come in and do that, how much time would you be using for that? If you zap it or create some automation for it, it’s done instantaneously.

Systems, Overwhelm, and Delegation

AliceAnne: I think this is where it all falls apart. When you have that business owner, that solopreneur who’s trying to do all the things and doesn’t have systems or automations, they’re so overwhelmed and think, “I need somebody else to do this.” Before you even bring on somebody to delegate, are you making the task of recording emails? Is that person going to be spending the same amount of time doing it, or do you have a system in place to make things faster and more efficient?

Gala: I love that this episode is right next to the internship episode because I’ve been working with one of the interns. As soon as we had the opportunity to work together, I did a brand dump: “These are all the things I need help with.” Then I took some time, thought about it, and when I met with the intern, I said, “Okay, I have all these things, but let’s prioritize. Which ones do I really need your help with?” When you are delegating, that’s what you have to do with yourself—whether you’re bringing someone on or just asking, “How can I help myself do this better?” I’d love to introduce five different things to look at when you’re figuring out what you need to delegate. It’s not just the gut feeling of “I need help with this.” It’s more informed reflection:

• Capability: More than likely, you’ve already been doing this yourself, so you’re capable, but are you the best person to do this?
• Inclination: Even if you can do it, do you want to do it? That’s usually where the bookkeeping comes in.
• Complexity: How hard is it? If things are difficult or too complex, it’s easy to put them off. Sometimes it’s just figuring out how to simplify so it can be delegated or automated.
• Urgency: Is it urgent? Does it have to be done right now? Do you have time to train someone else? Is this going to make or break your business?
• Importance: What is the impact on your mission and vision?

AliceAnne: That is powerful, Gala. Thank you for such a succinct way for us to have this checklist of understanding the steps and needs before outsourcing and delegation.

The Cost of Delegation and Automation

Gala: Delegating, automating—all of it comes at a cost. At the beginning, we talked about whether it’s time, mental energy, opportunities missed and captured—what is the cost? Then the bottom line: the dollar amount. How much does it cost for us to do these things? We talked about the CEO price and the price of someone else on your team. We talked about automation, the different technology out there, subscriptions and tools we can use or are underutilizing to automate things, and looking at bottlenecks in our business.

AliceAnne: Oh gosh. I am such the bottleneck in my business. I know this. Have you seen the meme—it’s like a reel or TikTok trend—where a family goes on vacation and one person says, “Hi, I’m Janet, I book the flights,” then the next person says, “Hi, I’m Ellen,” and it cuts back to Janet: “Hi, I’m Janet, I do all the reservations.” I should totally do that for my business. At this point, I don’t feel like I do a whole lot. “Hi, I’m Kayla, I do the bookkeeping. Hi, I’m Heidi, I do the social media. Hi, I’m Aubrey, I send out…” and it comes back to me: “Hi, I’m AliceAnne.” But the truth is, I’m not doing all those things. I’m getting to work in my zone of genius. There’s also a level of guilt when we delegate things—at least that’s what came up for me. I could be doing that. I feel bad that I’m outsourcing. If I was better with my time, I could be doing that. We get into this trap of feeling like we should be doing it, or just because we can doesn’t mean we should. I see this a lot in myself—the guilt of outsourcing. That’s one more hour a week. I could get that done. But what we forget is that’s an hour of bookkeeping, an hour of social media, an hour of organizing the calendar. Now I’ve got to come up with three hours more of my time.

Gala: Right.

AliceAnne: So we feel this guilt, like I should be doing it myself. This is going to take us to our next point: We have to let go to level up.

Gala: Yes.

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Letting Go to Level Up

AliceAnne: There was a conversation you and I had a few months ago about some opportunities coming up, and we talked about being ready for opportunities when they come up. You know, I’m scared out of my mind.

Gala: When it comes to delegating and automating, the thing we don’t talk about—we have those guilty conversations in our mind about, “Oh, I could be doing this.” But peace of mind is invaluable. And then, what about the missed opportunities? There was a very high-profile person I was working with. They were doing amazing things, started a business, and had the opportunity to go into a big-name department store. They missed the email by three months. Three months—missed opportunity. The hidden cost of doing it all yourself is the missed opportunities.

AliceAnne: Yes, so true. We “should” all over ourselves. When we’re holding on so tight because we think we should do it, or we’re afraid someone won’t do it the way we do it—number one, if you documented your systems and processes, it makes it easier to train other people. Plug for your SOPs and processes. Two, sometimes it’s okay for people to do things differently than we do it.

Gala: And we learn.

AliceAnne: That’s definitely something I’ve been learning with the interns. The interns are 20 years younger than me. I’m not looking at them thinking, “Oh gosh, they don’t know anything.” I’m looking at them thinking, “What do they know?” The world is fast-moving and I want people who think differently than me. I want people who will look at my systems and say, “Actually, here’s how I think we could make it more efficient or user-friendly,” or “Hey, have you heard about this new tool?” When we let go, we open ourselves up to do things better, to level up. I saw a great interview yesterday with Demi Moore, talking about parenting. She said she never tells her daughter how to do it; she’ll bite her tongue. “Just because I’m right, because I’m more experienced, doesn’t mean she’s wrong.” Isn’t that so good? When we’re building our team and outsourcing, we have to give a little bit of trust—actually, a lot of trust. Let people work in their element and trust that we’ve built the system and communicated clearly what we need. We can go back and make adjustments when necessary, but we will never level up if we’re trying to do it all ourselves or think our way is the only way.

Gala: Yeah, and I don’t know about every business owner, but so many I encounter, especially in the Leading Lady community, we’re not in it to get rich quick.

AliceAnne: No, there’s no such thing. Exactly.

Gala: We’re not chasing the dollar to be chasing the dollar. We have a mission and a vision and something we’re trying to do. For some of us, it’s creating opportunities for others, bringing the ladies around us to the next level as we go to the next level. When we’re creating those opportunities, hiring and outsourcing, usually it’s someone from our community. The win-win is that we’re bringing that person along, supporting our community, and making the space required for strategic partnership ideas, visibility opportunities, the new offer we’re creating. We need space for all those things. One thing I ask myself is, “What have I not pursued because I don’t have time? How many hours could I free up by simplifying or automating just one system?”

AliceAnne: This is powerful stuff. And being that you work in people’s books, you know the value of their time and can probably see very clearly where they need to be outsourcing or delegating.

Gala: Yeah, and it all comes back to trusting the systems you’ve built and honoring and valuing your time—not just the time you’re putting into your business. Like I told you yesterday, AliceAnne, it’s been summer camp mom. My kids officially start camp next week, but they’ve been home with me. I love the time they’ve been home, but without delegation and finding ways to automate, they wouldn’t be able to be home with me. I was able to spend time with my great-grandmother—101 years—to be there for her. It takes automation and delegation, and those are things we have to make time for.

Parting Words

AliceAnne: So powerful, Gala. What are your parting words for our listeners today?

Gala: My parting words would be: Remember that of all the finer things in life that we value, peace of mind is one of them. So lean into that when you’re thinking about automating, delegating, simplifying, and eliminating tasks from your to-do list.

AliceAnne: Oh, so good. Gala, thank you for being here today. And to our listeners—until next time, take the lead.

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