If you’re an entrepreneur or CEO and you know your life would be easier, or you’d
be more productive IF you had a great executive assistant, then I want to share with you how
to find the BEST executive assistant to help you scale your business.
Because I struggled for more than a decade of my life trying to build my first business,
and one of the most pivotal decisions I made, that literally took me from living on credit
cards… to building a multi-million dollar company, was hiring an executive assistant.
And Yes – I hired her when I couldn’t actually afford her, but I was committed to
growing and here’s why…
Because, almost 20 years ago, I was at a YPO meeting.
Which is an organization of relatively successful entrepreneurs who have all founded or run
companies that do at least $10mm a year.
Tell me in the comments below if you’ve heard of the YPO, or if you’re a member.
Anyway, at this particular meeting there was just a handful of us, but each person there
had started their company from scratch, and the smallest company in that room did probably
around $40 million a year.
And I remember having a talk with one of the guys there whose name is Stephen.
And Stephen was, at the time, significantly further ahead in business than I was.
I think his company was doing about 55 million and he had a large team of employees, so he
knew stuff I didn’t know at the time.
I was still learning the basics of how to be a decent leader, and how to understand
metrics, and understand how to really scale a company in a big way.
Because, like I eluded to earlier, at the time, I was growing my first company – and
making a lot of mistake - and although the company looked big on paper, the profit it
generated was embarrassingly small.
I mean, I knew people with small 7-figure companies (who were barely doing a million
dollars) - who made far more PERSONAL INCOME in one year then I had made in (four or five
years) with my company.
That’s how unproductive I was at the time.
Anyway, Stephen and I had known each other for about three years at that point.
And he had heard me complain about time management about 1 million times.
And at that meeting I asked him a very trite question.
I said…
“Hey if you were me, right now, what would you do the scale?”
And without hesitation, he said “I would hire two people”.
Now before I tell you who those 2 people are – I have a question for you… when you
were just starting out, who were your most important 2 hires?
And if you’re just starting out now, who do you think COULD BE your most important
2 hires?
Tell me in the comments below.
Now…
Stephen said - the first person he’d hire is a gopher, who would pick up anything around
my house that need to be picked up, and they would water the plants, and they would cut
the grass, and they would do anything he needed done around the house so he didn’t have
to think about any of that stuff.
And then he said – he would hire an executive assistant, to take everything off of his task
list every day that he did not absolutely need to do himself.
Because scaling a company in a big way, requires the person at the head of the company to spend
80% of their time (or more) focusing on the 1 or 2 key actions that drive growth for the
company.
In short – I left there thinking, I needed to know how to find the best executive assistant
if I wanted to scale my business.
So… that night I sent an email to all my friends who were business owners, asking them
if they knew anybody who was an executive assistant and looking for work.
And I also asked everybody who I knew HAD an assistant - if I could pick their brain
and find out exactly what that assistant does for them that makes them more successful – because
I had no idea what an assistant could do for me – I just knew I was nowhere near as productive
as I wanted to be.
And I spent the next month or so, making this list… and talking to candidates that came
from that email I sent out.
The problem was – there wasn’t one good applicant, because all my friends were sending
me their wife’s emails, or their friend’s emails, or an email to someone they hired
but it didn’t work out for them.
And I thought that… because those people were coming from referrals – they might
be good.
…but the first few people I hired – sucked.
Because I wasn’t CLEAR on: WHO I should hire… and HOW to use them to become better
at what I needed to be better at.
I when I say they sucked – what I guess I mean is that they sucked the energy out
of me, because they needed to be managed every step of the way.
And the point I want to make clear is that there’s a lot of people who will SAY they’re
great at assisting you, but what they’re really saying is that they want to be great
at assisting you (but that’s not what you need).
You are not running an “executive assistant training program” – you need someone who’s
going to step in and make a big difference in your life from day 1.
Anyway, I went through several assistants during the first 18 or so months.
Then I got smart, and I learned where to find a great assistant, and how to attract them
(meaning – how to make someone want to work for me instead of the president of some massive
company), and I learned how to be crystal clear on what they need to be great at in
order to free me up so I could be more productive, and a better leader in my company.
And that system helped me find Emily, who’s now been with me for about 18 years, and it
helped us find her two assistants, because over the years, Emily’s become so valuable,
that we needed to offload some of the more minor tasks FROM her list ONTO another assistant’s
list (that’s Sandra – who’s Emily’s direct assistant), and Sandra free’s Emily
up so she can assist me with higher level projects.
NOW… that system is used in each of my companies to help our leadership team and our c-level
team to locate and vet amazing assistants.
And if you want to see the interview questions we use to hire GREAT executive assistants,
I’ll put a link in the description so you can have a copy…
Or go to my blog at ChrisGuerriero.com/blog and search for the Executive Assistant Interview
Questions… and you can download them there too.
Now, one of the most important concepts to keep in mind when you’re looking for, or
hiring an assistant, is that you are not responsible for managing them.
And I know that might be shocking to you, but if you’re managing them, then they’re
making you less effective – less productive… …and although your assistant may have 5
pages of responsibilities, to be honest - they can screw them all up, and if they get just
this one thing right – then they’re worth their weight in gold.
The #1 most important thing your assistant needs to do is… make you more productive.
So if you’re constantly MANAGING them, they’re failing.
If you need to keep TRAINING them, they’re failing.
And if they don’t know how to use EVERY MINUTE of their day to make you more productive,
they’re failing.
And they’re costing you a lot of time and money.
Again – this all starts with having a great set of interview questions so you don’t
fall for any BS – and we’ve hired more than a dozen GREAT assistants for the executives
inside of my companies over the years, so the interview questions we use are pretty
well put together.
And again, you can have those questions for free by using the link in the description.
There’s no catch – just do me a favor and let me know in the comments what you think
of them and if you have any great interview questions you think we should add – please
share those with me in the comments too.
That would be a big help!
With that said, the platforms that are currently working the best for my companies to locate
executive assistants are: Indeed, Zip Recruiter and Craigslist.
And there’s a lot more out there that we test – those are just the 3 that are currently,
as of today, working best for us, but we’re always testing other platforms too.
Where I HAVEN’T had a lot of success is asking friends, or through organizations like
the YPO or EO or Tiger 21.
I’ve been a long-term member of organizations LIKE THOSE, I’ve sat on the board of some
of them, and most of the people on MY board of directors are members of them.
So, I’ve tried tapping into them for assistants in the past, and although you MIGHT find an
assistant there, I haven’t EVER had success finding good referrals for assistants from
contacts in organizations like those.
Anyway - to sum up – you need to be amazingly clear on what tasks that, if someone were
to take them off your desk and handle them autonomously (meaning they not only took care
of them proficiently, but anticipated each task and took care of it before it has a chance
to slow you down).
So you need to be CLEAR… and BTW that’s the hardest part for more entrepreneurs – in
fact, tell me in the comments what’s one things you’d love for a GREAT assistant
to be doing for you because it would save you a LOT of time or a LOT of frustration…
is it sorting through your emails, or paying your bills, or handling calls, or picking
up your dry cleaning, or drafting letters, or even doing your bookkeeping…
…HELL, when I first hired Emily, her list of responsibilities was 5 pages long!
I mean – it started with just a few things, but after I got focused… before I knew it
I had 2 pages of responsibilities… then I met her for her first interview and she
gave me another several pages of tasks she could do to make my life easier.
Because AGAIN - a great assistant should walk in knowing how to make you more productive
from day 1.
So, you need to be clear… and you need to know WHERE to look (and where not to waste
your time looking) for an assistant… and you need a detailed job description so you
only get the cream of the crop – and finally, you need a great set of interview questions
that filter all the job candidates so you’re not wasting time interviewing a bunch of people
who are JUST not a good fit for you.
Now, I’ll post more on how to find and manage a great executive assistant (and if I get
enough requests in the comment section, I might even ask Emily to join me and share
her experience as my executive assistant :) But, I hope you got value from this video
– and if you did, please hit the subscribe button because I post videos every week sharing
my experience and the things I know from building, acquiring and selling companies - in the hopes
that it helps you shave some time off your growth curve.
So make sure you click the link in the description now and download our interview questions,
and if you have any questions, just ask me in the comment section.