Episode 460: 6 Levels of Delegation with Humans and AI

Notable Quotes:

“If they are not using AI as a tool, then you are severely misled.”

“I don’t want you treating AI like a magic eight ball where you shake it and start over every time.”

“Analytics is like where you go to die… it kills your creativity and overwhelms you.”

“You’re no longer in every decision. AI is making choices with your guardrails. This is how you get your real freedom back.”

Resources and Links:

• Marketing with Bella

• The Mastermind: Join us for month-to-month coaching at 

• Custom GPT Class: Buy the $70 class and learn to build your own assistant.

• Book a Chat: Let’s talk in real life. 

Transcript

Welcome everybody to another episode of Bella in your business. My name is Bella Vasta. Today I’m really going to try to keep this shorter episode just because we’ve been getting to be so long because I’ve been so excited. But I have to admit this episode is another going to fire episode. I mean they all are right. Last week I want to give a big shout out. I had one of my gals say about episode 459 where I talked about social media and what was working and what you need to stop doing in 2026. She said, I freaking love this. This episode has some serious gold in it. I’ll be joining the group chat finally today. I think my favorite thing is I don’t have to think about being perfect and you can just be yourself and real in marketing. Another person said, and I’m telling you guys this because if you have not listened to that episode, I’m telling you, it’s going to change your 2026. Please do it. Another one she literally started off, said, hashtags are stupid. They’re old school and they should have went away when payphones went away. I will agree. Well, I mean, they weren’t around when payphones were there, but you get the drift, right? I will agree with you there. Biggest takeaway is that everything is content and that posting to blogs, posting info like blogs is kind of a waste of time because people don’t pay attention to it . and also agree that today’s vibe is a real and is being real and it speaks to an individual person. says, Nicole left me a longer message. I’m not gonna read the whole entire thing to you, but guys, you have to go check out episode 459 if you haven’t already. She says, I definitely am someone who struggles with social media mostly because she works two jobs, right? And she was really inspired to hear that I was talking about. It’s that and what she’s also noticing is that making a boring carousel that takes her 20 minutes never gets any views. So I’m talking about like one of those points was those carousels that everyone’s making and they’re trying to do like overly graphics when like really all you need is a picture and something to look like you wrote on top of it. Yeah.

you’re gonna wanna go check that episode out, because I not only tell you what you shouldn’t be doing, but what you need to start thinking about doing to change your strategy. And of course, this is all the stuff that we do with marketing with Bella. We still have one more spot if someone wants to jump in for this semester, just go on over to jumpconsulting.net forward slash marketing, or shoot me a DM at Bella Vasta or Bella at jumpconsulting.net. All right guys, today we’re gonna talk about something that is really, really important. And this is gonna be like, this is more strategy. This is what people pay me for. But you know what, my team’s gonna kill me, but I’m gonna give you all the golden nuggets today. Again, I actually have a coaching session starting in 29 minutes. So hopefully I’m gonna be pretty concise and fast here with your time today. Because when I do get excited, they do tend to go about a half hour. But today we’re gonna talk about delegation. And before you go roll your eyes, let me explain something to you. This is not only gonna be delegation for as you think of it traditionally when it goes to like your office manager or maybe a VA, but also AI. Because what was my promise to you is that everything we do, it’s always gonna have AI weaved into it. And let me tell you right now, if you’re paying anyone, I don’t care if it’s internally like in your company, or maybe it’s like a coach or a mentor . or a strategist, if they are not using AI as a tool, keyword tool, then you are severely misled. Because AI is a tool that everyone’s gonna be using in the future. It is literally the same thing as hiring someone who doesn’t believe in using email and a cell phone, okay? Let me be very clear about that. So let’s just all start off on that understanding. But I’m gonna talk today about the six levels of delegation and because of AI, I also have this amazing graphic. I think I’m gonna actually, Chris, if you can, he’s my podcast producer, pop that up if anyone’s watching us on Spotify or YouTube. Go ahead and pop that up for reference so that people can see it maybe for about 60 seconds. And if you’re not watching us on YouTube or Spotify and you’re listening . then I’m gonna put it in the show notes on my website so you could also see it there. And of course, I’m gonna post it all over social media. But let’s get into it because for each level, I’m gonna literally show you what it looks like to delegate to a human, what type of person operates at that level, and where it gets really good is gonna be the AI, okay?

So like literally, I’m gonna get right into it, so level one. And this is… This is gonna become so clear and I wanna hear all your comments you guys. Comment wherever you’re listening to this podcast right now. I wanna hear like what your biggest takeaway or your aha moment or like my gosh, this is why it’s not working for me, okay? So level one, this is like the very basic level, okay? This is the follow the recipe. You hand someone an exact step by step instructions, think SOP, okay? Think like the mom factor and they execute. There’s no decision making. There’s no creativity. It’s perfect for repeat admin work like scheduling posts or data entry. The human delegation, this is your button pusher. That’s who they are. So they’re your virtual assistant who schedules your social media posts, enters client information into your CRM or like time to pet, precise pet care maybe, or processes invoices. They’re not making decisions. They’re following your exact process. It’s like literally, punch and pull, okay. That you say, this caption on Instagram at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, and they do it. This person might be a part-time VA, an entry-level admin, or even a high school student, and they don’t need business experience. They just need to follow directions. Now, here’s where it gets wrong, is because sometimes there are people like that, that have this high horse because everyone’s a VA now, and they’re like, oh, it’s gonna be $30 an hour . and I’m just, but you have to tell me how to do everything. And it’s like, no, I’m sorry, you’re not worth $30 an hour. If you are only doing exactly what I have to say and I have to be your brain, then that’s not worth $30 an hour, okay? So these are things that you really have to understand and that I help a lot of my clients with when they’re starting to bring on office people or VAs, because every office manager is not equal, okay. When someone says, oh, how much do you charge? How much you pay your office managers? Like, well, what’s their scope and what is their responsibility level? Do you get what I’m saying? I know I just exploded your brain right now and you’re like, okay, what else you got? So let me translate this to AI, okay? This is where most people are at with AI right now. You’re asking it one off questions. Write me a social media caption about dog walking. Give me five subject lines for my newsletter. Summarize this article. Yes, if you’re not doing that already, you should. It’s great. You get an answer, you copy paste it and that’s it. Every single time you need something, you have to start from scratch. There’s no memory, there’s no context, there’s no building on previous work. This might even be for the people who have the free AIs and think, I don’t need to buy AI. It’s like, I can get it for free. Well, you’re missing out on a lot of memory and that memory saves you a lot of time and mistakes, but that’s another story. So, like a pet business, like the old way, you sit down every Sunday and manually write out all your social media captions for the week. It takes you two hours, okay, or type out. Level one, you ask ChatGBT, write me a social media caption about why dogs need mental stimulation, and it gives you one caption. Then you ask for another one, then another one, and you’re still spending an hour because you’re doing it one at a time. It gets old fast. Because with human, you’re micromanaging everything. With AI, you’re treating it like a magic eight ball. You shake it, you get the answer to start over. It’s exhausting and you leave so much money and time on the table. I don’t want this to be any of you jumpers, okay? So this is why I’m doing this podcast. Listen to me. And if you don’t, if you go and you try it and you fail miserably at any of this, reach out. This is why I’m here. You literally make my day every single time you reach out.

Okay, let’s move on to level two. Research and report back, okay? It is what it says, all right? So they gather options, information, possible solutions, but they don’t act, all right? They just bring it to you and then you decide. You’re still the Indian chief. This is useful when you’re testing new tools or strategies, but you’re not ready to hand over the delegation or maybe you don’t quite trust them yet. All right, so this is someone with a little bit more capability, maybe a junior team member, someone maybe more experienced with VA or office work. You say, I need to find a new scheduling software, research five options, compare pricing and features, and bring it me to a summary. Maybe make a spreadsheet, which by the way, guys, I hope none of you are actually doing this in 2026, because the AI version of this is where you say, research the top five pet sitting platforms, or you might give them which ones you want and create a comparison chart with, and then you give them the features that you want, like pricing, features, new users. I’m about to sneeze. I can feel it coming on. And then you could also say, look at my last 10 social media posts and tell me which ones got the most engagement and why, analyze my email open rates from last month and identify patterns. You’re still making all the decisions . but AI is doing the research and synthesizing the work for you. This is like, this person might not know what to look at or what to go research, but you’re telling them what to bring to you. Do you understand? The old way is you spend three hours Googling different client management systems, reading reviews, comparing features, making a spreadsheet. Level two AI is you say, run a dog walking business with 15 dog walkers and 50 clients. I need software that handle scheduling, GPS tracking, client communication and invoicing. Research the options and give me the top three with pros and cons to my specific business. Now, where people feel friction here is they don’t stop to think what’s important to me. So then they like have someone and spend time and money on someone going and doing something, then they come back with something and then they don’t know how to make a decision and they just make it based off of how they feel the software is and then. A year later, or six months into it, they realize, shoot, I really wanted the GPS tracking, and this doesn’t have it. Okay, let me go get a third app to go try to Mickey Mouse it, and then it gets all jarbled, and then you’re creating more time. You see what I’m saying? All right? So the difference between level one and two is level one, you were just asking for one thing. Level two, it’s gathering multiple options and doing some comparison work and presenting it back to you in a useful format. Okay, you’re starting to save a little bit of time.

Number three, I told you we’re gonna go through this fast you guys, research and recommend. So what it’s when they look at the options, they weigh the pros and the cons and they tell you what they think is best. You still make the final call, but now they’re building judgment. And this is where you start to see time savings because they’re pre-filtering the noise. This is really good if you think that there’s someone that has a good potential that you could turn decision making over to, but you still want to have a little bit of control and make sure that you guys are on the same page and that they would be making the same decisions that you would make. All right? So in the human form, this is someone who understands your business well enough to make the recommendations. Maybe it’s your lead dog walker that’s been with you for two years or your operations manager. You say, we need new leashes for the walking team. And they don’t just bring you five options. They tell you, recommend these specific leashes because X, Y, and Z, they’re durable. They have the right length. They’re within our $15 budget leash. They’re not flex leashes or retractable leashes, right? And here’s why I choose the other options. Now you get to understand their decision-making, therefore building your confidence in their future decision-making. That’s key, okay? Sometimes you’re asking a level one VA to do this level three thing and then you don’t get the right answers and you have friction and then you’re saying I can’t have anyone do it. I don’t trust anyone. Okay, and I get it, but it was just it’s not that it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work that way and that’s a really important thing for you to like consider and recommend. Now, let’s translate this to AI. Now you’re teaching AI about your business and you’re asking it to make recommendations based off your situation. This can only happen when you have the paid version, whether it’s Grok, Claude, Gemini, ChatGBT, whatever it is, the free versions are not going to comprehensively and longevity, is that the right word to use for that? Remember what you need, okay? I want you to really consider like, like things like based off my business model and target client, which of these three marketing strategies should I prioritize and why that’s how you would use it in AI. Now, what is that assuming? It’s assuming that you have trained the model and I’m not talking just in a chat. There’s a lot more details that you got to do there. Okay. But this model really deeply and broadly, not in a paragraph, this model understands your business model. and your target client. You’ve already done the work there and was able to save it to a GPT, a gem, a style in its memory, something like that. And it is just how you guys work. If I were to go into someone else’s, they wouldn’t have my information. And just because you have one conversation with it doesn’t mean that it remembers it all. That’s a whole other story. Another example would be like, here’s my current onboarding process. What are the biggest bottlenecks and what should I fix first or I’m deciding between hiring full-time operations manager and outsourcing a VA Agency given my revenue my team size growth rate. What do you recommend? Okay, and I would also preface that by saying that there were some sort of a growth strategist. Now you’re giving AI context about your business and asking it to apply judgment the old way would be your Email Nurture Campaign sends the same five emails to everyone who signs up. I hope you guys aren’t still doing that. Email on day one, email on day three, everyone gets the same thing regardless of whether they’re interested in dog walking, pet sitting, or training. Level three AI would be you tell AI, here’s my email list. I have people interested in different services. Analyze which emails are working for which segments. Recommend how I should restructure the nature of my campaigns so that people can get relevant information based off of what they actually want. Because guess what? People know you did not write that email. People know that a whole bunch of other people also got that email. Kind of like, refer back to my last podcast where people are not falling for this generic corporate one size fits all stuff anymore. The reason why this matters is because you’re no longer doing the analytical heavy lifting. And let me just pause there for a second because I have never, in the 20 years I’ve been doing this, has anyone said, Pella, I love analytics. It’s so fun. Okay, hardly anyone. I can maybe think of two people, okay? But then they stay in the analytics and then they’re not creative and they don’t actually put anything into action, right? Analytics is like where you go to die. I hate to say it, but there’s so many business owners because you’re so overwhelmed with all this other stuff, okay? That when you get into analytics, it kills your creativity, it kills your decision making, it overwhelms you. It’s basically like this giant weight on your chest for a lot of people, okay. And so what this stage, level three does, is it takes away all that analytical heavy lifting. AI looks at your data or this person . and they understand your business and they make smart recommendations. You’re just making the final yes or no recommendation. The problem is, is that so many people ask like the free AI or an AI that has no like established history of your business or knowledge of your business, they’re asking it level three things when they haven’t done the foundational work. Do you see what I’m talking about with strategy? Okay. This is so important, you guys. I want you to really, really, really be thinking about this. It is not AI that’s dumb. It’s the person that’s using it not properly needs to understand this. You’re not dumb. Okay, let me say that. You’re not dumb. This is why I’m doing this podcast, because I want to empower you to understand that there’s a different way of thinking about the strategy of how you execute this stuff, okay?

Level four. decide and inform me. Now you give them parameters, okay? They make the choice and they tell you what they did. You still have oversight, but you’re not bottlenecking everything, okay? We also create a bottleneck for ourselves all the time. We have everyone do all this stuff, it comes back to us and then we need to do something in order for it to move forward. In this level, that doesn’t happen, okay? So for example, booking travel with a budget or choosing between vetted vendors. The human delegation, this is a trusted team member, your operations manager, your team lead, your right-hand person. You say, we need to book our team for a professional conference in Vegas, right? The budget is $1,200 per person for flights and hotel. Book it and let me know what you choose. They make the decision within your parameters. They don’t need you to approve every single flight option. They book it and they tell you it’s done and you move on. This person has earned your trust. They know how to make a decision that aligns with your values and your goals. Okay? So the way this looks with AI is you create custom GPTs. Yeah, girl. Or styles or gems, okay? I am a firm believer and if you’ve been listening to this podcast, please do not put all your eggs in one basket and chat GPT because eventually you will be behind. You cannot just only be speaking one LLM language. And let me also get rid of the, I should do a myths and facts podcast. It’s not hard to learn the others. If you know how to type or talk into one, you know how to do all of them, okay. And you’re probably paying for Gemini right now if you use Google Workspace. All right, so you create custom GPTs or train AI assistants for your brand voice, your business processes, your decision-making criteria, budget parameters, quality standards. This is a really good time for me to tell you that I gave you a two things actually. This is exactly what I’m talking about today. I did two things for you. One, I have a class on GPTs where I teach you how to create a GPT. Now that’s an open AI chat GPT. I also, when I’m on calls with people, when we’re doing like I did this with Jenna last week, we’re redoing her website. We created an entire brand voice GPT for her. Okay. It has everything in it to speak like her business. It knows the emotional feeling. It knows the avatar. It knows what she services. It knows her lingo. It knows if she calls it number one or two or poop or pee, all of it. Okay. It took us over an hour to interview her for this. This is how deep and granular we go. Now that GBT that’s your branding voice should not also have your SOPs in it. It’s too much. Okay. You should have them separate. And what a lot of my clients do, yes, because we’ve been doing this now for 14 months, they name them. So Susie or Pam or like they all have names and we all know their names in the mastermind. So you can either A, join the mastermind for only $177 a month, month to month, no long-term commitment. If you wanted to make a year commitment, I’ll give you $50 off a month saving $600. Just go to jumpconsulting.net forward slash mastermind or you can buy the actual class on my website for $70. That’s jumpconsulting.net and go to where I have the shop, okay? So all of these things are what you need in your business in order to go forward. So you could try to figure it out on your own. It’s never gonna tell you, no, you didn’t do it, but I want you to do it right. And I give you all the nuances and the tips and the tricks in order to make sure you’re doing it right, okay? All right, so once you have all these GPTs, then you can give them tasks like create this week’s social media content calendar, schedule the posts and send me a summary or review all client inquiries from this week, categorize them, draft responses and flag anything that needs my attention or analyze my business expenses from last month and create a report showing where I’m over budget. Okay, I love the money one. The money one is awesome because that’s analytics that nobody ever does. And that’s a definite like You want to know how to make your $20 a month in like, you know, your subscription back. That’s a really great way. So let me do another example. So a pet business old example would be every time a potential client fills out your inquiry form, you personally read it, decide if they’re a good fit, draft a custom response and send it. And it takes you like 15 or 20 minutes per inquiry. Or someone got really pissed at me in a Facebook group. I don’t usually… like respond in other groups, but I did this week. And this girl went off on me. She was trying to tell us that there is this really great app. I don’t know if she was trying to make money off it or what, but she said like there was a really good app and it would automatically text back your people and tell them that you’ll get back to them within 48 hours. I was like, no one’s going to wait 48 hours to get a response from a pet sitter. So I know you don’t want to hear it, but there’s actually AI receptionist. That’s for like a whole nother show. And she was not happy with me about that. But that’s nothing new in the industry. Anyways, moving on. You build an AI assistant that knows your service area, your pricing, your ideal client profiles, plural, which inquiries are high priority versus low priority, your response templates, okay? Now when an inquiry comes in, It can literally go in your inbox, review the inquiry, determines if they’re in your service area in a good fit, drafts a personalized response, either sends it automatically if it meets the criteria or flags it for you to review, sends them to your CRM, sends you a daily update, five inquiries today, three great fits, responded this, two out of service area center referral. I’m gonna just bookmark this right now. I’m recording this on January 19th, 2026. And I know right now, y’all aren’t ready for that. And I know that if you’re listening to this in the future, I wanna hear from you. I’m gonna send a message to our future selves. If you’re listening to this, the end of 2026, 2027, maybe even 2028, because Lord knows I’ve been doing this for 10 years, probably not gonna stop this podcast anytime soon. Tell me, yeah, Bella, you were right, we’re doing this now. This is what’s happening. Whether you guys are ready for it or not, it’s happening. Again . the difference between a smartphone and a landline, okay? All right, I’m gonna keep going. I said I would keep going. The shift, you’re no longer in every decision. AI is making choices with your guardrails and you just are keeping it informed. This is why you’re getting your real freedom back.

Now let’s move on to level five, decide and act, no need to inform unless necessary. What this is is at this level, they have full trust in certain areas. They’re running the system for you. and only escalate if there’s an exception. This is where you free up real brain space because you know it’s covered. This is like the office manager that you absolutely love, okay? You don’t say book the conference. They just know the conferences are their domain. They research, book, coordinate, travel, manage the team, schedule everything, and you only hear about it if something goes wrong, okay? Or this could look like, sign us up for, you know, four really great community events. I wanna booth at it . and we want to represent our company. This is someone who thinks like an owner. They’re not waiting for instructions. They see what needs to happen and they make it happen. Okay. This is where almost every one of you want someone to do and you just expect them to do it without going through all those other layers and levels to build them up. All right. This is like a full agent, AI agent territory. Agents that monitor your business metrics and alert you when something’s off. Content systems that create schedule and publish . compliant communication systems that handle 80 % of inquiries without you ever seeing them. Yeah, that is already happening in small businesses. Workflow automation that moves clients through your process from inquiry to booking to service the follow-up. I know a lot of small businesses that are already doing this. The pet industry is always a little bit behind in technology, but there’s roofers and there’s air conditioning companies and there’s house cleaning companies that are already doing this, okay? All right, so the old way, someone would join your email list, they’d get email on day number one, email on day number two, email on day number seven, same emails, same schedule, everyone gets the same experience. You built it once and it runs forever without changing. The AI version of this would be someone joins your email list and AI analyzes what page they signed up from. Was it dog walking, pet sitting, I need a new roof, I need a new air conditioning? It looks at what the emails they just opened. It adjusts the next email based off of their behavior. It sees that they clicked on separation anxiety and sends targeted information about that to the point that the person who receives it, they’re like, how do they know this about me? Guys, HubSpot’s been doing this forever. It’s just you manually had to work that into the conversation. It identifies that they’re getting close to booking, escalates them to high priority, and might alert you. If they book, it automatically moves them to the client onboarding sequence. Okay, Zapier can do this inside like Time to Ped or Precise Pet Care. If they go cold, it moves them to a re-engagement campaign. It’s not a static sequence anymore. It’s a dynamic, responsive system that adapts to each person in real time. The old way is that you would sit down, write your blog post, create a social media post, write your own newsletter, record your podcast, five or 10 hours of work. Whew, I’m tired, okay? In level five AI, it would monitor trending topics in the pet industry, it would send them to you daily, would analyze what content performed well for you historically, it would create a content calendar, it would draft blog posts, social media, newsletters, it would basically schedule everything. You went from 10 hours to 30 minutes, okay. The difference is you’re not giving instructions anymore. The system is running, whether it’s AI or it’s a person. It’s making decisions and it’s taking action. All right, this is where you stop being in your business and you start running it like a CEO.

boy, I got three minutes left guys. Number six, you gotta own the outcome. This is the holy grail, all right? They don’t just execute or decide, they’re responsible for the result, okay? So you don’t manage tasks anymore, you manage the expectations and the metrics. Think running your email inbox to reduce your hours in it by 80% . or owning your podcast production from start to finish, that would be me, okay? This is rare with humans. It’s usually a partner or a COO or someone with significant equity or responsibilities in your business. You say, our goal is to increase client retention by 20 % this year and they own it. They don’t wait for you to tell them how. They figure out the strategy, they implement the systems, they manage the team, they track the metrics, they have course correct when they need it, they report back on results, okay? and then you manage the outcome, not the process. That’s really important, all right? This is where AI becomes a true business partner. Full agent systems that own the entire business function. It’s like that social media post where I showed you, I took a picture of this recipe I wanted and I told ChatGBT to order it and send it to my house via my Instacart and it went and it did it while I went off to swim school with my daughter. If you wanna see that, Buzz me, Bella Vasta on Instagram or bella at jumpconsulting.net. I’ll show you the post where it shows you that whole thing. This would be like before, it would be chat, GBT, give me a recipe for dinner tonight. You get one recipe, you still have to shop and cook. Level six would be, I want dinner tonight, like Italian food. I don’t eat gluten, I have 30 minutes to cook, my budget’s $40. And so then it… Suggest three dinner options based off your preferences. You pick one, it creates a shopping list, it places the order on Instacart, it schedules the delivery for five, it sends you the recipe with timing, so everything’s ready at 6.30. Dinner shows up at your door, you cook it, you’re done. Guys, I’ve done this in my own personal life. This is not science fiction. Like, our world can operate like this right now. So the old way would be like your client books, it sends a welcome email, it sends service agreement. You have to chase them to sign it. It has to send an invoice. You have to chase payment. You schedule the service. You send the walker assignment. You send confirmation. You follow up after the first walk. You request a review. I am exhausted just reading all of that. Level six with the AI agent owns it, right? The welcome email will be sent, the service agreement sent via DocuSign. If it’s not signed within 24 hours, it follows up. Once it signs, the invoice is sent. If that’s not paid in 48 hours, the whole system is automated, okay. You get a notification, new client, fully booked, fully onboarded, first scheduled service for Tuesday, no action needed. You own the outcome, all right. This is where things just get amazing. Level six is like, it handles the outcome. You tell it what you want the outcome and you have the system set up. Now you have to set up these systems in order to get there. And I think a lot of people try to just ask it to do this without realizing that they need to set up these systems.

So you guys, this has been episode 460 of Bella in Your Business. come a long way since the first episode. I want to know what your biggest takeaway is. Please subscribe. Please hit me back and let me know what did you think of this episode? How are you going to change the way that you think about hiring an office manager or promoting your lead sitter to a leadership role? How are you going to change the way that you use AI? And if you’ve been on the fence and you’ve been trying to figure out for more than a month, then I want you to reach out to me. I have a lot of different options at a lot of different levels. No pun intended with this episode that I can help you and I want to help you. I’m here to help you. It makes me giggle and it makes me so happy every single day I get to talk to you, especially if I’ve never talked to you. If I’ve never talked to you, jump on my calendar right now, jumpconsulting.net forward slash 20 and we can have a chat. And yes, you could talk to me in real life. This has been another episode of Bella in your business. Thank you so much for your time. I’m gonna go jump on a coaching call right now. It could be you. It could be you. Just go to jumpconsulting.net forward slash 20. And remember when life gets you down, always keep jumping. Bye now.