How to Hire Your Secret Weapon: An EA
The most undervalued asset of a CEO is an Executive Assistant.
My EA saves me 60% of my time. Instead of working 90 hours a week, I work closer to 36. For many who run a business, this might seem absolutely ludicrous.
I can run a tech startup, coach 7 CEOs every month, write and surf every day, cook dinner and read every night. I even took David Perrell’s Write of Passage writing course last month to learn to become a good writer. How?
My EA is my secret weapon. Along with automations, my EA helps me clone myself every single day.
Here’s a list of tasks that my EA helps me with:
Email - Handles most of it so that I only focus on what needs my specific attention.
Builds and manages my entire fundraising process so I can focus on pitch meetings.
Sales - From gathering leads to landing sales meetings through email campaigns.
Build Playbooks - This is a big one. Anything we do more than 3x gets a playbook.
Operations - All the things I have no time to do. Xero, updating finance models, run & manage payroll, etc.
Recruiting & onboarding new employees.
Drafting investor updates.
Manages invoices for coaching clients.
Research - She's better than an MBA intern.
Angel investing - Helps me do diligence.
These might seem like tasks that only I or someone experienced could do. With the right playbooks in place, repeated tasks are easy to delegate to someone else.
The most challenging part of delegating is letting go. Trusting that someone else will do what you want and how you want it done is hard. Playbooks help build trust. Your process is already written down so that someone else can just follow the steps. Training is easier too.
How Much Experience Does An EA Need?
Previous experience as an EA can matter a great deal, but not in the way you might think. I once hired an EA that spent nine years working for the president of a large media company. He was now retiring. I was so excited to work with her. I mean, how lucky did I get here? I assumed she would jump right in on day one, fix all my problems, and we would live happily ever after. I was so wrong.
She had spent so much time learning how to work with her previous boss that his work style was ingrained into her very core. She was frustrated with how much we automated and how much tech we used. I moved too fast on my own. My work style frustrated her at times making her feel useless. We tried to make it work, but the reality was that she had learned how to be an incredible EA for the president of a large media company. And I wasn’t him.
I’ve had the most success with EA's who have had little or no previous experience. I prefer to invest my time teaching an EA how to work with me rather than unlearning how they worked with someone else.
My current EA is in the Philippines. She has been my best EA hire, hands down. She has a law degree and comes from an affluent family that has a long lineage in politics. Why is she my EA? She hated practicing law. She knew she could make more money and have more flexibility being an EA.
How to Hire An EA
I typically post jobs we are hiring for on AngelList and onlinejobs.ph. I use onlinejobs.ph for any role I'm looking for in the Philippines. It's one of the most popular sites with quality people.
Screen for someone who is coachable, smart and has strong decision making intuition. You’ll likely work together for a very long time. To work well together you’ll both need to fully trust each other.
I’ve set up an application process that handles a large portion of the screening for me. I use Airtable forms to substitute for a 1st interview. It’s tied to Zapier and Calendly so that well written personalized emails are sent to applicants as they move through the application process.
I have an entire process set up from recruiting to interviewing to sending an offer. It's automated so that I don't have to do all the work in responding, sending interview links, status emails, etc. I want every individual who applies to receive a response from us.
This process helps me focus on the 3rd level screening which includes the candidates I am most likely to work well with. Once I have a small list who appear to be a good fit, I will invite them to do a 45 minute Zoom video interview.
Here’s my screening process at a high level:
1st Level Screening: Job posting with specific instructions on how to apply via Airtable Form. This screens for those who follow directions.
2nd Level Screening: Use Airtable views to filter through application screening questions. Here I am looking for individuals who are coachable, smart and have strong decision making intuition.
3rd Level Screening: Communication skills.
I only hire someone with impeccable communication skills. I find in the long run it creates frustration for the employee, lowering their self-esteem. Ask for a Loom video of themselves answering a question to test out their communication skills. An easy question to answer is: Where do you live and why do you love living there?
Ask a few open ended questions in your application. You're trying to evaluate how they think, not their skills. If they're smart, they can learn anything. They should, however, have a strong tech ability so they can learn new software tools quickly.
4th & 5th Level Screening: Zoom video interviews.
I do two Zoom video interviews before making a decision to hire. During the interviews I like to learn more about their decision making intuitions. Would you make a decision without me? What if you screw up, how would you handle that? I'm looking for someone who is thoughtful but takes action.
If you’re looking for an alternative to hiring yourself, consider using Alice, a company I founded that provides entrepreneurs with pre-vetted, trained EAs.
Working Hard ≠ Working On The Right Things
We have this backwards. The majority of time we spend “working hard” includes things we shouldn’t be doing. Are these small tasks really what will move the needle on our company? Are we doing our job, or someone else’s?
It takes hard work and discipline to know what not to work on.
I went against the rules set out on what a CEO should be. To keep up with my heavy workload I need time to sleep, exercise, play, eat well and rest. I need space to be curious. I work hard by ruthlessly cutting out the things I don’t need to do. I refuse to slowly kill myself “working hard” with long wasteful days.
Being a CEO is one of the hardest things I have ever done. No one can do this job alone. Hiring an EA is one of the best investments I’ve ever made.