Have you been considering hiring an assistant, maybe for executive tasks? It can be easy to delay this hire because it is hard to justify. Often, executive tasks are not direct moneymaking activities. But I want to share my experience hiring my first EA, and what I learned from it. I hope it will help you as you grow your business.

They Said I Needed an Executive Assistant
Back in 2015, my business coach focused on executive sales as much as business. Everything that they taught really kind of had been towards sales, which I needed at the time. But a few months into working with them, they began encouraging me to get an executive assistant. However, every time they mentioned it, I got hung up on why I would need an EA and what an additional assistant would even do.
However, I reluctantly do it. So I hired a full time person and was paying them a $50,000 salary. And of course, I was getting an idea from my coach of what it was going to be like. However, I had no idea what they were going to do, and I didn’t have a job description. I just went hired the person.

How Things Went
I probably put together some sort of one-pager for them before hiring. But more than anything, I just talked to him enough and convinced him that this can be a great opportunity. When she began work, I remember transferring over some permissions to her to help manage my inbox. But really, she had no idea what he was going to be doing. Every time an email would come in, she would ask me what to do. So it wasn’t saving me any time. Eventually, I had her support my appointment booking process.

Putting My Executive Assistant To Work
She would get all the customer information, contact the customer, verify the appointment, prepare the paperwork, and do similar preparation. And then when the person showed up, she would hand me the portfolio for this prospect. Then, I would go back and have the conversation to sell them. That sounds all well and good, right? Well, sort of. This EA was doing the best that she could. Honestly, I was not prepared for my first executive assistant at all. I had no systems in place, no operating system for the business in any way, and no standards of performance.

It Didn’t Work Out
This means that every single time that I was sharing challenges and needs, it just wasted so much time and so much money. Because I would share something with her about one specific email or a slight tweak to handling appointments. However, I never documented anything, and neither did she. So about a year later, whenever she left, all of that intellectual property left with her. Unfortunately, I felt like I was starting over yet again. That was a terrible place to be. So I took up an attitude of dismissing assistants.

Do You Need An EA?
Some of you have executive assistants, but some of you have never even considered having an EA. Honestly, I can tell you any business that I would start now, I would make my first hire an EA. Why is that? Because an EA is helping you to do the thing that matters the most. That’s buying back your time so that you can focus on what is actually going to move the business forward.
Think about it this way: You wouldn’t delegate selling a million dollar client to an intern or brand new hire. However, as an owner, you’re doing tasks that someone else could do for $10/hr. If you’re making $300K per year, your hourly rate is $150! So hiring a $10/hr employee can buy back incredible amounts of your time. Then, you can focus on the things that are gonna really move the business forward. And not only that, but you can also allow your EA to begin to build playbooks in the event that they want to move on. I think your EA is the one that can really begin to help you to unlock the playbooks for you to have every single time that you’re making tweaks or adding things or adjusting things.

The Value Of A Playbook
I mean, the amount of times that I did things, thinking that it was going to be a one off time, but the reality as it came up probably once a month. Instead, I continually repeated myself. Now, my mindset is, “If we’re going to build it, we’re going to do it once. Let’s create a playbook for it.” Try putting it into a Word document. This will allow me to have consistency with every employee in my business.

Your Secret Weapon
For every single person reading this, I know some of you where you may be starting out and business may be doing $300,000 a year. You may not need an executive assistant full time. Hire somebody that’s at five hours a week. This breaks down into one hour a day, and they’re just helping manage your calendar and inbox. Then, bump them to 8 hours, and then bump them to 10 and so on.
Maybe years ago that was a little more foreign to have someone that was going to be fractional. I don’t even call the people that work for me part time. I call it a fractional team member, because they’re still on the team. So hopefully you can learn from this as one of the many mistakes that I made with my executive assistant. While that was the very first one that I had, I have successfully hired multiple others. They are absolutely are your secret weapon.
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