Strategy, Solutions, & Sanity | You Don’t Need It All Figured Out to Hire an Assistant

Think you need a full playbook, polished SOPs, and perfect systems before you can hire an assistant? Think again.

In this quick episode, I’m breaking down the real things you need in place before bringing someone into your business—hint: it’s less than you think. We’ll cover:

• The myth that keeps leaders stuck and overwhelmed
• What a “good enough” starting point looks like
• Why waiting until you're “ready” is just a fancy form of procrastination

Whether you’re drowning in admin work or just tired of doing everything yourself, this is your permission slip to move forward—even if it’s messy.

🎯 Want support finding and onboarding an assistant who actually makes your life easier? Head to auxosvs.com to learn more.

🗣 Got a question about hiring, delegation, or operations? Send an email to [e-mail] with #AskSam in the subject line and I’ll tackle it in a future episode! 

What is Strategy, Solutions, & Sanity ?

Building a business shouldn't mean losing your mind.

Strategy, Solutions, & Sanity is the real-world business podcast for owners and leaders who are serious about scaling — but don't want to drown in chaos while doing it.

Host Samantha C. Prestidge cuts through the noise with practical insights on hiring, delegation, team building, operations, and leadership for family businesses and second-stage entrepreneurs.
(No vague "10x your mindset" fluff here — just the strategies, systems, and sanity moves you actually need.)

Each week, you'll get short, actionable episodes that help you untangle the bottlenecks, lead with more confidence, and build a company that runs smoother — without losing the heart, hustle, and humanity that made you successful in the first place.

Whether you're navigating early team growth or getting ready to finally step out of the daily grind, this podcast gives you the tactical tools and real-world advice to build your business the smart, sustainable way.

👉 Follow Strategy, Solutions, & Sanity for practical strategies to help you lead, grow, and actually enjoy your business again.

 You don't have to have it all together before you hire an assistant. 📍

Welcome to Strategy Solutions and Sanity, the show for those family run businesses and serial entrepreneurs who are done letting chaos run the show. I'm Sam, business and team strategist, and you're no fluff guide to making business simple and fun. This is a quick cast, a short, sharp dose of strategy and action.

'cause I know sometimes you just need that quick next step to get your sanity back. So let's get into it.

All right. A question that I got recently is, what should I have in place before I hire an assistant? So they're thinking that they had to have all their processes and SOPs and this whole thing put together before they hired someone to help them with their day to with their day-to-day stuff.

And I'm here to bust that myth 'cause it's something that I hear so often and it's just prolonging your pain.

The idea of, I want help, but I have to have systems in place first, or I need to have a plan first. I gotta figure this out. That idea and that mindset is just prolonging how long you need to sit in this overwhelmed over capacity seat, and that is not fun. If you had the time. If you had the time to build perfect SOPs and create a whole playbook for an assistant, you probably wouldn't be looking for help in the first place.

So here's what I tell people that think that they have to have it all together before they hire an assistant. You don't need a full blueprint. You don't need a full blueprint. You don't need a full playbook. Yes. That would be awesome. That's something I do for my clients when they hire me to help with cleaning up the ops and all those things.

Right? We create a full blueprint, so we create a full playbook so that it's easier to hire and train and get someone up to speed. But if you don't have time for that and you don't have the budget for that, that's okay. You just need a starting point to set you up for some strong delegation. So here are three.

So here are three things that I would recommend. Here are three things that I would recommend you think through before bringing on an assistant. The first is having a rough idea of what you want your day-to-day to look like. Whatever seat you're in, the C-E-O-C-O-O, director, founder, president, whatever fun, super cool job title you've got.

What should your day to day really look like? What are those high value tasks that you want to be focusing on? Just get an idea of that. Then get an idea of what good support would feel like. Is it less stress? Is it better follow through feeling, more productive? Kind of what is that qualitative feeling that you'd wanna have by having someone super awesome by your side?

And the last thing is. What might get in the way of you being willing to let someone in, even when things are messy? 'cause for good delegation, we've gotta open those doors of vulnerability and allow someone to actually help you. So what are the things that might get in the way of that? And notice what I said with all of those things is just think through it.

Have an idea. You don't need a bastard. You don't need a master plan. That's something I help you with when you onboard with us. We talk through all that stuff and we create the plan for you if you choose to work with us for an assistant, but you just need an idea of those things, and that will set you up to be able to work well with an assistant.

You figure out the rest as you go, and a good assistant will be able to be nimble with you and compassionate with you as you figure those things out. 📍 So remember that the goal is not to have everything perfect, shiny awesome before you hire and before you start delegating. The goal is to stop pretending like you're gonna get to it when things slow down, because they're not gonna slow down. You are not going to get to it, so just bring someone in who can help you with the things so that you can start focusing on those high value tasks that you really enjoy anyway.