How exactly can an Executive Assistant help? What can you delegate to your assistant? We’ve put together the master list of ways a virtual Executive Assistant can help:
Manage your to-do list
There are many things you CAN do. Most of them, you shouldn’t. Your time is valuable, and you generate the most value when you spend your time on high-value tasks. Your assistant helps you manage your to-do list by:
- Helping you identify delegable tasks
- Keeping you accountable for removing those tasks
- Keeping you accountable for staying on track with your goals and commitments
- Reminding you of what’s on your list
- Helping you organize when and how you complete those tasks
- Protecting your schedule by not allowing new delegable tasks to fill your schedule
Schedule management
Your assistant can manage ALL of your calendars, ensuring you stay on top of your commitments – avoid those dreaded double bookings and forgotten meetings. They can help by:
- Adding all your commitments to a unified calendar
- Blocking out times to handle tasks
- Identifying tasks that need to be removed
- Identifying events that should be on your calendar but are not
- Giving you extra prompts for tasks you have a history of neglecting or forgetting
- Communicating with others to coordinate your calendar with theirs
Optimize your schedule
You have a unique work style and unique strengths, weaknesses, and preferences. Your assistant can be the objective second pair of eyes that helps you build your ideal schedule and maintain it. They help you block out your tasks in a way that fits your unique needs and maximizes your productivity.
Inbox management
Your inbox is the communication center of your business, but it can also consume a lot of your time and get out of control. Your assistant can:
- Get your inbox back under control – goodbye to those mountains of unread emails.
- Monitor your email for you, addressing low-value emails and flagging only the emails you need to see
Project management
As your liaison, your assistant can be a project manager in your place. As you delegate tasks out to your team, your assistant can:
- Identify delegable tasks
- Find the best person for the job
- Provide instructions
- Monitor delegates’ progress
- Give you important updates
Be your meeting guru
You can delegate to your assistant by having them:
- Conduct research and compile information before meetings
- Prepare presentations and visuals for meetings
- Write meeting itineraries
- Purchase any gifts or materials needed for the meeting
- Take notes for you during meetings so you can be fully present
Gift giving
Thoughtful gift-giving can strengthen your relationships, both personal and professional, but do you usually have time to select the perfect gift for special occasions? This is a high-value task you can delegate to your assistant. Your assistant can research and select gifts that stand out and fully reflect your sentiments.
Manage your CRM/contact list
CRMs are great for keeping you organized but maintaining them can be time-consuming. Your assistant can keep these resources up to date, so they are always ready for you to quickly reference and find the information you need.
Correspondence with vendors and clients
There are certain high-value conversations that you will want to handle yourself, but you can delegate to your assistant many of the day-to-day back-and-forths with vendors, clients, podcast guests, and brand advocates. When it’s beyond their purview, they can always tag you in.
Be your liaison with your team
As with clients and vendors, many of the back-and-forths with your team don’t need to fill up your to-do list. Your assistant works closer to you than anyone else. So they will soon learn your work style and expectations. Most of the time, you can quickly pass the skeleton of your directives on to your assistant, and they can ensure it reaches the rest of the team in the best medium and fullest form.
Example: You might send them a quick voice memo of your thoughts, and your assistant can process those thoughts into a full directive and send them to your team by email.
Manage your blog
You can become more hands-off on your blog. All you need to do is pass any high-level ideas for the blog and your can handle the rest. They can directly handle or delegate:
- Copyrighting
- Research
- Currency audits (Is everything up-to-date?)
- Aesthetic/organizational changes to the UI
Manage your company’s social media channels
Your assistant can:
- Conduct currency audits
- Create or delegate the creation of posts
- Respond to and moderate messages and comments
- Engage with important contacts using the company’s social media accounts
Maintain your personal social media presence
Your assistant can represent you on social media. They can:
- Post content for you
- Engage with the content posted by important personal and professional connections
- Provide high-value updates on people in your network
Conduct research
New project/idea/initiative? Need to do market or competitor research? The research is a time-consuming process you can delegate to your assistant.
Event planning
Need to plan a company Christmas party? How about organizing a family birthday party? You can delegate to your assistant the entire process:
- Schedule the event
- Book the venue
- Book catering
- Send invites
- Plan the theme and activities
- Order decorations
Trip Planning
Whether it’s a business trip or a personal family trip, your assistant can:
- Book hotels, flights, and restaurants
- Plan activities
- Ensure you will have no conflicts
- Monitor your email and goings-on at the company, alerting you only when there’s an emergency
Customer Service
Your assistant can handle many customer service concerns that may otherwise fall on you.
Oversee internal resources and culture
Your assistant can help develop and maintain company culture and resources by:
- Facilitating conversations in employee forums
- Creating and auditing company resources like how-to’s and policy manuals
- Holding and organizing events for the company
Information summation
Your assistant can review important reports, books, and podcasts and provide summations.
Monitoring performance reports
Your assistant can review performance reports for your company’s different operations and provide concise overviews.
Data entry
Your assistant can handle the time-consuming, necessary process of documenting important data for your company. You may not have time to collect and process these high-value KPIs, but it is something you can easily delegate to your assistant.
Copywriting/Proofreading
Your assistant can write copy for your site, marketing content, and any other written works that will represent your company. When they are not the writer, they can proofread, conduct quality control, and ensure other copywriters produce content that follows your company’s language and values.
Handle crises/hiccups
Things happen. IT issues, forgotten commitments, employee no-shows. An assistant is your partner when these problems come up. Either you solve them together, making the process easier, or your assistant can take on the problem while you keep moving forward and handling the high-value tasks you need to address.
Handle all the little things
Your assistant is there to make your life easier, even with the small things:
- Small, incidental purchases
- Quick research
- Booking a babysitter
- Booking dinner with a client
- Canceling a subscription
- Sending thank you messages
- Anything small on your to-do list
Optimize workflows
Your assistant can document processes and procedures for you and your company. This allows you to identify inefficiencies and redundancies in your operations. Once you have documented your processes, your assistant can use these as tools for streamlining delegation and handling hand-offs when employees transition in and out of roles.
Press Release/Public Relations
Your assistant can put together press releases, monitor correspondence with the press, and research any mentions your company is getting across media.
Organizing your personal and company-wide filing systems
Sometimes your digital files can get out of hand and this disorganization can lead to lost time and missing files. Your assistant can clean up and reorganize your filing systems.
Gathering and comparing quotes
You may need quotes from different vendors or providers to understand your best options. Often, this is something you can delegate to your assistant.
Website updates
Your assistant can handle small updates to your website, monitor it for currency, and facilitate the delegation of more complex projects to specialists.
Project launching/development
Want to launch a new project? Your assistant can help you think through the first steps in a project and how to effectively execute upon the project. At Superpowers, we train our assistants and provide them with tools that are highly effective in getting projects off the ground quickly and without complications and hiccups.
Represent you
Because of their proximity to you, your assistant can rapidly learn your preferences, work style, and expectations. They learn to anticipate you, represent you accurately, and address issues even before you have time to ask them to. In time, they become a second you, able to represent you in decisions and meetings. With enough time, you will be able to delegate to your assistant any task.
Keep you up-to-date on relationships
Your assistant can keep you up to date on important relationships by monitoring your social connections through social media and by tracking important dates like birthdays, anniversaries, and company anniversaries, so you can engage with important connections in a meaningful and timely manner.
Be your distraction filter
As they manage your correspondences, your assistant can protect you from distractions. Low-level concerns at your company, spam emails, questions someone else can answer – your assistant can catch these before they reach you.
Handle the “what” while you handle the “how.”
When you have a lot on your plate, much of your energy goes toward juggling and keeping track of what needs to be done. Your assistant can handle the “what” while you focus all your mental energy on completing each task as it comes up, the “how.”
Keep you accountable for non-work goals.
Since your assistant has access to and manages your schedule and to-do list, they can also help you stay on track with your non-work goals. Trying to stay healthy? They can schedule workouts and check in to see if you follow through. Trying to read more? They can keep you on track and keep a running list of good books for you.
Maintain your entrepreneurial vision
Entrepreneurs are all dreamers, but even dreamers have their rough days. At Superpowers, we teach our assistants the entrepreneurial mindset. We train them on how to keep you focused on the future instead of current setbacks. Our EAs are trained to help you develop quantifiable goals and action plans to meet those goals.
Mental health support
While EAs are not mental health professionals, they can be a support to you as you navigate the stresses of entrepreneurship. We provide a wealth of training resources to our Superpowers Assistants that cover techniques for identifying stress and burnout and for helping you build healthy habits that will allow you to maintain long-term, healthy and productive growth.
Do something new
What are those new ideas, initiatives, and tasks that have been sitting on the “someday maybe” or “I should get that done” list? Your assistant could be the one to finally get those things done. These are the perfect tasks you can delegate to your assistant when you feel there is nothing else to do.
Maintain balance
Start enjoying the fruits of your labor. You don’t need to work continually. Your assistant can help you develop a healthy life balance by:
- Freeing up your time by removing delegable tasks
- Encouraging you to schedule and take time off
- Protecting your free time as your task and distraction filter
- Helping you schedule time for yourself, your loved ones, and for self-care
Be your “leader”
As the leader in your business, sometimes you need someone to be assertive with you and keep you accountable. You need someone to “lead.” They know you, your weaknesses, strengths, and commitments more than anyone else. Your assistant is perfectly positioned to keep you accountable and on track with your goals.
Conclusion
We hope this painted a picture of what you can delegate to your assistant. Are you seriously considering an assistant and have more in-depth questions about the process? Sign up for a discovery call, and we’ll discuss them with you. It’s a no-pressure, no sales gimmicks environment. We believe in starting with a helpful hand.
