JUN 22, 2021 Ethan Brooks

How and When to Hire a Digital Business

Manager

Trends member Deya Aliaga Kuhnle first landed on our radar when she
shared her (brilliant) system for prioritizing business projects:
 Source: Trends Facebook Group

Deya runs DBM Bootcamp, an intensive online training center for

digital business managers (DBMs). 

While most people are familiar with VAs, few have heard of the even
more powerful DBM, but they can transform your company.

The main difference is agency — a VA does mostly the work that’s

delegated to them, whereas a DBM is expected to fully own a project,
understanding goals, solving problems, and driving results.

A great DBM is like a 2nd version of you, and can help with:

People Management: Handling weekly team calls, onboarding new

hires, and serving as a contact buffer to protect your time.
Project Management: Including scoping and budgeting projects,
managing contractors, timelines, and more.
Systems Development: Creating standard operating procedures
(SOPs) for key business units, automating tasks, etc.

Deya says business owners are ready for a DBM when they’re
established enough to offload projects, and feel their time is worth
“I’m a huge perfectionist control freak at heart. I would love to do every
single thing in my business,” she told us. “But that’s so catastrophic
for your business… If you want to grow, you can’t [do everything]. You
just can’t.”  

Time commitments and budgets vary, but here’s what you can expect:

Source: Trends interview with Deya Aliaga Kuhnle

In her free training on how to hire a DBM, Deya offers resources like a
job description template, a list of tasks you can hand a DBM, and
interview questions that reveal how someone thinks or behaves under
pressure, including some unconventional favorites, like:

What’s a weakness you’re actively working on?

What honest feedback would you give to your last boss?

If tomorrow you had 10k unread Slack messages and emails and
only had enough time to respond to 100 of them, how would you
decide which to respond to?

She also offers a free DBM hiring platform where you can post a DBM
job or browse the directory of students who’ve finished her training.
 Source: DBM Bootcamp

Once you’ve found a DBM, the next thing you need is a good way of
interacting with him or her, prioritizing projects and keeping track of
what’s on the DBM’s plate (and yours).

This is where her spreadsheet shines (you can swipe the Airtable
template here):

Each idea is scored 1-5 based on its impact, likelihood of success,

and effort needed. Effort is inverse-ranked (5-1), with 5 being easy
and 1 hard.
A 4th column calculates the average score for each idea. The
higher the number, the better and more important the project.
Additional columns for scope (time needed), status, and
ownership allow you to filter results in useful ways.

In her business, full-timers are only allowed to have a max of 5 items in

progress at any given time — part-timers are limited to 3 — forcing
the team to prioritize, and keeping their energy focused.

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