How an EA Transforms Businesses

How an EA Transforms Businesses

by | Nov 22, 2023 | Business Growth, Executive Assistant

If you’re a business owner, hiring an Executive Assistant can be a game changing addition to your work life. You might not have an Executive Assistant yet, but there will likely come a time when you should consider investing in one.

Are you able to perform many daily tasks efficiently and on your own? Of course you can. After all, you’ve probably been doing them all since the early days. But your company is bigger now, or you’re trying to grow it, so it could be time to consider the opportunity costs of going it alone.

A skilled Executive Assistant can be the backbone of your more efficient operations. Their primary purpose is to perform a range of administrative tasks, like managing schedules, making travel arrangements, and organizing your inbox–so you can focus on strategic decision making and other higher-value responsibilities. More specifically, a virtual Executive Assistant can swiftly adapt to your changing needs, because they are skilled at using digital tools to handle tasks, manage schedules, and provide crucial assistance without needing to be in a physical office.

Butterfly in Flowers

Curious about what jobs you should hand off first? Here are some guidelines about what we recommend you outsource first to a virtual Executive Assistant.

Case Stories

Rather than talk about the benefits of hiring a virtual Executive Assistant, the following case stories exemplify how two of our clients at VEA have incorporated these skilled practitioners into their businesses in the real world.

 

Case Story: Improving the Intake Process

One client regularly sends multiple intake forms to its customers. For years, these forms were attached to emails and sent to individual users. Not only did customers often forget to attach and send back completed forms, but gathering was a manual process, leaving the door open for human error.

Using a combo of Microsoft Office Suite, Power Automate, SharePoint, and Power apps, our VEA Executive Assistant created online forms that could be updated in real-time and sent out as a simple link. Fewer attachments translated into fewer mistakes and a welcomed uptick in customer compliance.

Versioning issues are a thing of the past. Information is digitized, eliminating all that copying and pasting that was eating up employees’ time. An error-prone system was cleaned up, and since all data is stored in one place, our client can run reports and learn more about customer behaviour. With just a few small changes, so much was gained.

 

 

Case Story: A Better Billing System

Our professional services client needed to streamline its time tracking system and invoice clients more efficiently. Under its legacy system, they were still creating all invoices manually. It took two whole days to compile information and send invoices!

Working in partnership with a VEA Online Business Manager, the virtual Executive Assistant successfully implemented new digital tools to improve processes and meet newly formed goals.

Using a mixture of Clockify, Excel, and business analysis, this virtual Executive Assistant was pivotal in reducing the billing process from two days to just two hours, saving the client 14 hours per month in labor. Freeing up time by creating better processes enabled the business owner to grow without a lot of added administrative muscle to make it happen.

 

Business Gets Personal

Do you ever feel like your personal life seeps into your workday? It happens to the best of us. At VEA, our virtual Executive Assistants not only handle administrative jobs, but they are also happy to take on personal assistant duties, like arranging social plans, ordering household basics, and even sending flowers and gifts, all in the pursuit of giving you more ways to stay in the game rather than getting yanked to the sidelines throughout the day.

 

An Executive Assistant can even drop work blocks into your schedule, giving you permission to simply focus rather than be pulled into last-minute meetings that sabotage your flow. They can also help you strive for “inbox zero”, a productivity strategy and philosophy that seeks to declutter your mind by decluttering your inbox through methodically deleting, sorting, and clearing incoming emails.

Is it Time for an Executive Assistant?

The right virtual Executive Assistant can truly transform how you structure your week and make it more productive. VEA prides itself on hand matching business owners to their Executive Assistants to ensure a good fit from the onset.

Give VEA a call to talk about your virtual Executive Assistant options. Our team can explain what to expect and then walk you through our tried-and-true onboarding process that ensures you and your virtual Executive Assistant work together as an indispensable team.

Book a Call or email me directly at  [email protected]. I am always happy to help.

 

Derek Burbidge
Manager of Sales & Marketing

How a Meeting Assistant Can Make You More Productive

How a Meeting Assistant Can Make You More Productive

by | Nov 20, 2023 | Executive Assistant, Productivity Tips

You wake up in the morning and see your calendar is jam packed full of meetings. You take this schedule one of two ways:

#1 – Stress: You know you are going to be ghosted at least once or twice, you see the tight time windows and worry about being prepared for each meeting and having proper notes taken during. Then there is the follow-up afterwards that will take time out of your day.

#2 – Ease: You have a meeting assistant who schedules all the meetings, follows up with a reminder to confirm with those you are meeting with, prepares all of the notes and will take minutes, follow up and not only create to-do lists out of those meetings but complete many of those tasks as well. You know today looks busy but will be pretty seamless.

In the online meeting era with Zoom fatigue being a buzzword surrounding it, your days can look stressful, or you can enter them with productivity and ease knowing that these meetings are going to go smoothly.

What Causes an Unproductive Meeting?

To run a smooth meeting, we need to address what makes for an unproductive, clunky meeting.

An unproductive meeting includes no:

  • Agenda
    • An agenda provides guardrails for the meeting, if you haven’t properly prepared one or transferred a meeting template to this meeting it will delay the meeting or lead to an unproductive meeting.
  • Meeting notes
    • If notes are not properly taken with to-do lists created, important topics covered and completion timelines set, it usually means the meeting was a waste of time.
  • Reminder emails before the meeting
    • Setting these up for all attendees beforehand is crucial to prevent no-shows and 5-15 minutes wasted in an empty Zoom meeting room or coffee shop, not to mention potential time driving to the meeting.

Not having these three areas covered leads to meetings running over time, going off-topic, and ending with no conclusions or concrete takeaways.

 

How do I Set Myself Up for a Smooth Meeting?

Having an agenda prepared beforehand with meeting notes and reminder emails sent means you are much more confident going in. You know attendees are most likely going to show up and you have everything in front of you to get started immediately on topic. This is where a meeting assistant will save you hours a week and set you up for productive meetings. Business owners know how many hours are taken up by meetings, feeling like one was a waste of time means many wasted hours which translates to dollars.

Our virtual Executive Assistants are experienced meeting assistants for Business Owners, C-Suite Executives and Entrepreneurs. They work with clients who go from meeting to meeting with very little to no buffers. Instead of leaving one meeting with a few notes rushed and a quick follow-up email before jumping late to the next meeting, they structure their day and meetings to maximize their time. Here are the goals of your virtual EA when it comes to your busy meeting days, your EA wants you to:

  • Rarely have to book a meeting.
  • Never be double-booked.
  • Go from meeting to meeting fully prepared.
  • Leave the follow-up to them.
  • Review the notes and to-dos in a specific folder or project management software that has been created by them.

 

Are You the Bottleneck?

If a decision maker is in a meeting it can quickly go off the rails if the decision maker is the bottleneck to the organization. If their team cannot get a hold of them to answer requests or move projects along everyone wants to have their ear during the meeting so they can move tasks/projects along. If you are being asked numerous questions by multiple team members during a meeting, ask yourself “is this part of the agenda for this meeting?” and “are they asking this because I haven’t responded to their email or previous request?” If the answer is yes, it means you are a bottleneck in your organization.

Chances are you will never have a focused meeting again. If you are finding yourself to be the bottleneck your virtual Executive Assistant can manage your email to ensure anything not needing your attention gets removed or answered on your behalf. This leaves only the most pertinent and important communication on your plate and removing the rest.

Your virtual Executive Assistant can also be a gatekeeper to your email and calendar. If your calendar is a free for all, your EA will help you set rules for who gets your time and for how long. They will set time blocks so you can focus on actual work, not just replying to emails and having meetings.

 

Conclusion

If you are sick of meetings, feel like you are in too many or meetings are unproductive your virtual Executive Assistant has vast amounts of experience being a meeting assistant, gatekeeper, calendar manager and email manager to help you gain your time back. If it’s time to get your life and business back under control schedule a call with our team to learn how a virtual Executive Assistant will get you more productive, in less meetings and back to doing what you love.

Book a Call

Derek Burbidge
Manager of Sales & Marketing

Utilizing Your Virtual Executive Assistant as an Online Personal Assistant

Utilizing Your Virtual Executive Assistant as an Online Personal Assistant

by | Nov 15, 2023 | Executive Assistant, Task Management

If you are looking to find an online Personal Assistant and getting frustrated by the lack of options, you will be happy to know that our virtual Executive Assistants can take on the role of an online Personal Assistant as well.

On top of corporate responsibilities like email and calendar management, travel booking, data entry, research, meeting assistants and the many other tasks they take on, they can also take on personal to-do lists.

It is one thing a lot of our clients ignore delegating for months into their relationship with VEA’s virtual Executive Assistants (EA). Our clients mainly focus on their business-related tasks and don’t utilize their virtual EA as an online Personal Assistant. Once they have the epiphany that their personal tasks are taking too much time and are not necessary for them to complete the tasks start falling off their plate and on to their EA’s.

Their EA is obviously still virtual, but they can handle many of the various tasks on your personal to-do list. An online personal assistant can’t go to the grocery store for you, but they can order groceries or meals and have them delivered to your door.

Typing on a computer

 

Here are a few common tasks our virtual EA’s do for their clients that fall under the umbrella of an online Personal Assistant:

 

• Reservations

• Any appointment booking for things like the doctor, dentist, massages, or chiropractors.

• Scheduling house cleaners, maintenance people.

• Buying gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, etc.

• Family vacation booking including flights, hotels, excursions, and rental cars.

Keep in mind they are not travel agents but if you give them your choices, they can book directly for you or give them the area you want to go so they can research the top places and run it by you in your 1:1 meeting before going ahead and booking.

• Time blocking

This is usually the focus of productivity in your workday but if you need an hour to hit the gym, want to pick up your kids from school or can’t find time for that hobby, let your EA know. They will make sure there are blocks in your calendar for activities that recharge and are important to you.

 

 

Your virtual Executive Assistant can perform many other various tasks to ease your workload. The easiest way to utilize them as a Personal Assistant is to look at your to-do list. You can easily decide what is something an Online Assistant can do and delegate it to them.

 

Tasks of a Virtual Executive Assistant for Business Owners

In many other blog posts, we discuss at a high level what a virtual EA can do for you, but let’s be a bit more specific with examples.

 

Tasks your virtual Executive Assistant can perform:

 

Meeting Assistant – Imagine going from one meeting to the next without having to book them yourself. While at the meeting you will have the notes in front of you so you don’t skip a beat and the minutes taken to review afterwards if needed. Having a meeting assistant will make your meetings more productive and make more space in the rest of your day.

Travel Booking Assistant – Before you travel your virtual Executive Assistant will act as your travel assistant booking flights, hotels, and rental cars. Using your rewards points and preferences for seat location on a plane, type of car to rent and any musts for your hotel. Once we have the information on file, your dedicated EA will never have to ask your preferences again. You give them your travel dates and they will get to booking. Taking yet another time-consuming, tedious task off your plate.

Calendar Manager – Most business owners are sick of booking meetings, being stood up and accidentally double-booking meetings or appointments. With your virtual Executive Assistant taking over your calendar management, all you must do is wake up in the morning and review your day. Pairing your virtual EA’s calendar management abilities with their meeting assistant role, you can move through your day at a steady, flow-like pace, not wasting precious hours on small, administrative tasks.

Email Manager – Email management is the number one task that all our clients hand off to their virtual Executive Assistant. Instead of adding a new email management software to your ever-growing list of new software, having an EA take it over is a much more productive choice. Your EA will delete spam or unwanted emails, respond to emails as needed on your behalf and keep only what is urgent or needs your attention. Instead of waking up to 100 new emails, you will start your day with only what matters.

 

Conclusion

Many Business Owners, C-suite level Executives and Entrepreneurs look for a Corporate Assistant who can do email management, calendar management, book and manage meetings, and become a travel booking assistant. As the role evolves, they get stuck on the executive-level tasks an in office Administrative Assistant would normally do in person. However, they don’t expand the role to their personal lives. If you are missing date nights, buying gifts last minute or living off a fast-food/convenience diet, talk to your virtual EA to learn how they can support you more in these areas.

 

Derek Burbidge
Manager of Sales & Marketing

How to Find and Hire a Virtual Executive Assistant in North America

How to Find and Hire a Virtual Executive Assistant in North America

by | Sep 11, 2019 | Business Growth, Executive Assistant, Productivity

Learn what a North-American-based executive assistant can do to help you scale your business

 

How awesome would it feel to take your to-do list from “overwhelming” to “complete”… and keep it that way?!

Manage Your Tasks More Effectively

VEA is a virtual Executive Assistant (EA) and bookkeeping company. We help business owners and executives free up their time so they can focus on what matters most – working on (not in) their companies!

You probably have a number of administrative tasks that are taking up too much of your time. VEA offers a solution that will help you focus on the most impactful tasks to grow your business while delegating other jobs to a trusted partner.

Administrative Tasks

In many cases, checking email, booking travel, managing expenses, and scheduling appointments is not the best use of your time. We call these items menial tasks, and offloading work to an executive assistant is a great step toward focusing solely on the biggest projects that help scale your business. 

 

When deciding what to hand off first to an EA, a good rule of thumb is to pass along the tasks that drain your energy, you don’t enjoy, and drain your time. 

For example, many of our clients have told us that they spend hours a day sifting through endless emails, many of which do not even provide valuable information. A skilled EA can help you achieve Inbox Zero, which is the idea that you spend less and less mental energy on managing your emails as your EA oversees that task for you. Can you imagine waking up one morning with no emails in your inbox? Miracles can happen.

What Tasks Can My Virtual EA Perform?

All of VEA’s EAs are highly experienced and possess a broad professional skill set. Here are a few of the top ways you can work with an EA to lighten your daily workload and refocus on the things that generate growth.
  • Email Management: Productivity and mental well-being improve when your inbox isn’t cluttered with hundreds of unread and un-categorized emails. Your EA will not only help you manage incoming emails but also establish filing protocols that will ensure you can stay on top of emails well into the future. Inbox Zero is possible with the right executive support. 

 

  • Document Processes: Make employee and customer onboarding a more successful and rewarding experience when you can easily share your tried and true business processes with stakeholders. Your EA can draw up detailed descriptions of how to execute processes and outline the exact steps needed to complete a task from start to finish.

 

  • Calendar Management: Ensure important meetings and deadlines don’t fall through the cracks. Your EA will manage appointment setting, reminders, and even help you get ready for appointments so you are always prepared and in control of your workday.

 

  • Travel Booking: Have you tried to change or cancel your travel arrangements in recent years? An experienced EA can effortlessly navigate the world of flights, hotel reservations, and rental car bookings. They also know all the tricks for transferring vouchers, using your points cards, altering itineraries – so you can be on your way without losing years of your life to on-hold music in meantime.

 

  • Vendor Management: If you run a business, or even head up a department within a larger organization, chances are you contract out for various vendor services on a regular basis. Your EA can communicate with vendors, track and place orders, and stay on top of contracts. There is a lot to do, and nobody should be expected to manage it all on their own.

 

  • Research: Similar to vendor management, an EA not only keeps tabs on all current vendors, but they can also help research and vet potential vendors, suppliers, product research options, software, etc. If you give your EA the parameters, they will be happy to find relevant options.

 

  • Data Entry: It may feel tedious to some, but accurate data entry is essential to knowing your customers and building valuable relationships. A good EA has an eagle-eye for precision, and fast typing fingers don’t hurt either, so your databases are always up-to-date and working for you.

 

  • Appointment Setting: How often do you set a meeting, only to have someone change or cancel it? Or, perhaps your unpredictable schedule oftentimes leads to scheduling gymnastics in order to accommodate you and the team? Rather than risk missing meetings or feeling frustrated over the amount of time you spend on rescheduling, let your EA take over this menial, yet critical, task, so you can be sure you are showing up to the right things at the right time, and not stuck in renegotiating times and schedules if something changes on the fly.

 

  • Transcribing: Yes, there are a host of tools and apps these days to turn audio into text. However, no technology is foolproof, and transcribed audio still requires some heavy editing in order to make it understandable. No surprise here that a good EA is happy to take on this transcribing challenge. Also, not all conversations can be perfectly recorded by a speaker. An EA can also transcribe what is said during key meetings or presentations so you have a long-lasting record of what was discussed, and when.

 

When is it Time to Hire an EA?

How do you know if you are ready to hire an Executive Assistant? Ask yourself – what is one hour of my time worth? Calculate your current hourly rate by dividing your salary by 48 weeks (assuming you take vacation) by 40 hours/week.

$125,000 / 48 weeks / 40 hour = $65 hourly rate

Or, calculate your intended future salary by dividing your desired salary by 48 weeks by 40 hours/week.

$250,000 / 48 weeks / 40 hour = $130 hourly rate

Once you have learned your business and you become profitable, start handing off tasks that drain your time and energy so you can focus on the highest-value jobs. If you are taking out a business loan or bringing on a VC, you can start to build your team and outsource faster.

 

 

Free up Your Time and Grow Your Business

VEA offers a range of executive services to support busy business owners. We find passionate, creative, experienced, and dedicated talent in many of the departments necessary to run a successful company. 

 

In addition, our staff is 100% North-American based. Whether you need a virtual Executive Assistant in Canada, a virtual Executive Assistant in Texas or anywhere else in North America, we will provide one for you. 

 

Our specialty is long-term partnerships that come at a fraction of the cost of traditional, in-house employees. There is only a 20-hour minimum requirement per month for our EA services and no minimum requirement for bookkeeping and fractional controller services. And, we’ll never ask you to sign a long-term contract. Set up is quick and easy, and your EA will become a vital part of your team in a short time frame.  

 

Contact VEA to learn more! Visit our EA services page to discover more about the many ways we can help you grow your business.

 

 

Derek Burbidge 

Manager of Sales & Marketing