Hi fellow founders and VC Friends!
Each week we deliver one awesome person to your inbox. These are the people you need to know—the marketers, sales gurus, engineers, ops wizzes— who give your startup superpowers 🚀. The best part is, everyone is hireable on a part-time basis.
Please meet Eryn (and her team), Your Strategic Executive Assistants! 🤩
Eryn came referred by another Awesome Person, Fabri. During a catch-up, Fabri casually referenced his EA who took meeting notes, pre-drafted emails, and managed his inbox. He had me at “pre-drafted emails.” Obviously, I had to meet these magical EAs.
Eryn has over 20 years of experience as an EA and founder and now runs an EA agency. Most recently, she’s launched her own EA agency and has worked with founders at companies backed by Techstars, Founder Collective, Kleiner Perkins, and more. Since their first 6 months in business, Eryn has grown the co 9x, expanded it to 7+ countries, and provided service in 4 languages on referrals alone. Fun fact about Eryn: she loves practicing traditional archery and made her own longbow and arrows!
You can hire Eryn’s team to make your business more efficient, enrich your working relationships with your customers, and serve as another set of eyes and ears for your startup.
Full disclosure: I tried them out and loved them. That said, they’re on the pricer end, so they’re best suited for Seed+ companies who have a proper budget to augment their exec team.
Want an intro to Eryn and co? Lmk and I’ll connect you!
She was gracious enough to share some pro-tips with us here 🙏
Save hours by delegating small tasks to your EA
Earlier this year, we realized that a client was receiving 40-50 important emails per day. This added up to 3,960 emails over 3 months. He started to delegate all his emails to his EA. At about 2.5 minutes per email, this saved him 165 hours per quarter. He valued his time at $500/hr. He gained $330,000 in value per year.
Pay attention to where you spend micro-minutes. Delegate as many of those tasks as possible. If you’re worth $300-$800 per hour (or more!) to your company and you’re spending 2 hours a day on things that can be delegated, you’re missing out on $3-5K of lost opportunity per week.
So the next time you think “I can do this in just 2-3 minutes,” remember to delegate it to an EA who has your back!
Integrate relationship management with the help of your EA
We once had a client who struggled to balance his work and personal life. He was so busy that he often missed important family events. It put a huge strain on his family. We connected with his wife to make sure that family time was added and protected on his calendar. This immediately removed stressful static and enhanced our client’s focus and general happiness.
Relationship management is often overlooked. Too many organizations use CRMs to push people through a pipeline without regard to the individuals. If you’re not nurturing relationships, personally and professionally, you’re missing out on opportunities. Relationship management should be proactive, not reactive.
Here are a few tips on proactive relationship management:
Block and protect personal time on your calendar
Ask your EA to prepare meeting agendas with easily forgotten details about the people you’re meeting
Create a list of connections to initiate follow-ups with every month
Find a top-notch VA with these questions
When I meet new clients looking for an EA, they usually come from one of two starting points: either they’ve never had an EA, or they’ve had an awful experience with a cheap, outsourced VA (virtual assistant).
Right now, it’s hard to find a reliable VA service. There are thousands of VAs who over-promise and under-deliver. Here are some good questions to ask when interviewing potential assistants or agencies:
Will you have one VA or will you get passed around to whoever is available? Some assistant agencies use a pool of VAs to resolve tasks on a first-come-first-serve basis. This works for some work but isn’t ideal for long-term relationship-building. Know what you’re getting into!
Will you have to detail out every single task or can you present ambiguous details to strategize and work out together?
What kind of security protocol is in place for your personal/business data?
Are these VAs new to business with little hands-on experience, or do they have 10-20 years of solid experience under their belts?
Can this VA write email drafts/communications with excellent language proficiency in my native language? If not, will you need to proofread everything they write?
Looking for an executive assistant? Respond to this email and I’ll connect you to Eryn and co!
As always, let me know if you have any questions and if you want an intro to any of the folks in this email (including the PS section 🎉).
Stay awesome,
Founder of Awesome People Ventures (join the syndicate here)
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Want intros to anyone here? Lmk and I’ll connect you!
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That’s all for now folks ❤️ 🚀 ❤️