Every founder reaches the week where the inbox wins. Delegating to a virtual assistant is not about handing over chaos — it is about packaging five hours of repetitive work so someone else can run it better than you did.

Start with a task audit: list everything you did last week, mark what only you can do, and hand over the rest. Inbox triage, calendar holds, invoice chasing and research summaries are the classic first batch.

Write the outcome, not the clicks. A good brief says what done looks like, where things live and when you need it back — then let your assistant build the process around it.