When Should You Hire An Executive Assistant?
When should you hire an executive assistant? Typically, you should look at 3 key factors: time, money, and stress level.
As your business grows, you will have more customers or clients, possibly a team to manage, and you will be wearing all the hats. You will be working on client forward facing activities, marketing, internal operations and the list goes on. Your time capacity becomes very limited and eventually one or more areas of your business will start to suffer, and this could include you!
I list below some of the excuses I hear for not hiring some help, and I explain why you need to and how to approach it:
I can’t afford it
You are doing all of the admin work yourself and people tend to forget the value of time. Hiring an assistant will give you back your time in order for you to focus on income generating activities, such as, marketing, sales calls etc, which will then lead to more business that can pay for that assistant and MORE!
I can handle it and I can do it faster
This one is probably true, but it doesn’t remove the fact you are probably too overwhelmed, and again, can’t focus in your zone of genius in order to grow your business. Plus, one of the superpowers that executive assistants hold is that they learn quickly when trained right and also very resourceful. Once they are all set and get into their own rhythm and groove, most times they are actually more efficient on doing the thing than you.
I don’t have the time to train
Sure, you don't have time, on top of that, you're stressed and ready to pull your hair out! Training might seem daunting but having an action plan in place, some SOPs in place (even just an outline to start off with) and a couple of Loom videos, your assistant can start taking things off your plate one by one while documenting your existing processes.
So with all that, a few things to keep in mind BEFORE and AFTER you hire an assistant:
Know what type of support you need - not every assistant is going to be the same and offering the same type of skills, experiences or services
Don’t wait for too long to hire that you end up becoming desperate. You might end up choosing the wrong partner to support you, which is costly and painful if you end up having to retrain a new person if the previous assistant didn’t work out.
When you do find someone that would be the right fit for you, don’t throw everything at once to your new assistant, because the last thing you want is them feeling stressed, overwhelmed, miscommunication and confused which can then lead to mistakes. Even if it’s a busy time, it’s best to hand things off one at a time.
Ideally we would do everything in our personal and business lives because society has conditioned us that we should do everything ourselves or else we’re a failure. But when it comes to getting support, having someone partnering up with you and be by your side to remove the administrative burden would bring some much value into your business and life.
Do you feel like you need support today? If so, I'd love to have a chat and help you figure out how and executive assistant can support you now. Just schedule a time with me using the button below:
