Executive Personal Assistant Model for Modern CEOs

The best performing executives are backed by proactive assistants who handle time-consuming tasks so the principals can focus on the 20% of work that generates 80% of the company’s results.

So if you are a CEO drowning in administrative tasks or experiencing burnout from back-to-back meetings, it’s time you get executive support.

The right executive personal assistant will serve as your extension and clear the path for you to perform at your best. 

Let’s see how a CEO can benefit from an executive personal assistant.

What Is an Executive Personal Assistant?

An executive personal assistant (EPA) is a professional who provides high-level support to senior executives, including CEOs, directors, and C-suites. The term ‘executive personal’ means they cater to your business and non-work support needs, so you can focus on strategic tasks. 

The defining characteristics of an executive personal assistant include:

• Strategic Involvement: EPAs participate in business strategy discussions, such as attending stakeholder meetings and preparing meeting notes to support your decisions.
• Comprehensive Life Management: The best EPAs understand that executive support is a spectrum that requires them to handle both administrative and personal tasks to help you reclaim your time.
• Autonomy: Unlike traditional assistants, who require constant guidance, you can trust your EPA to make decisions within defined boundaries, such as approving payments for office expenses.

What Does an Executive Personal Assistant Do?

Executive personal assistant roles cut across their principals’ work and family dimensions. An exceptional EPA understands that your business and personal responsibilities are interconnected and influence your ability to undertake your strategic role.

Ethan and Stephanie Bull refer to these EPA roles as performance multipliers because they support the executive to achieve more while working fewer hours. 

The roles include:

• Business Partner: Your EPA is the perfect person to bounce ideas off of to get a different, but informed, perspective on your business. Additionally, they can represent you in essential meetings with stakeholders and vendors, freeing up your time.
• Chief of Staff: The best EPAs serve as the executive’s primary point of contact, aiming to protect the executive’s time. They screen meeting requests and determine high-value ones that require the executive’s personal attention.
• Project Manager: You can entrust your EPA with overseeing projects from start to finish, including organizing stakeholder meetings and planning travel arrangements.
• Scheduler: Your EPA should be a master at playing calendar Tetris, especially with the organizational skills to adjust your schedule as priorities shift. Additionally, they should know when to block your calendar so you can focus on strategic tasks.
• Personal Assistant: Exceptional EPAs understand the importance of helping their executives manage their lives outside of work. For example, your EPA can help you coordinate your personal errands, such as liaising with an HVAC contractor to repair your home’s AC or purchasing a gift for a family member’s upcoming birthday party.

EA vs. PA vs. the Blended Role: What Executives Get Wrong

Some executives conflate all types of assistants into a single category, viewing the differences as merely semantic. Unfortunately, this means you are likely to hire the wrong assistant, which will leave you without the support you need.

Let’s explore what each type of assistant does and how they support executives:

Executive Assistants

These are high-level professionals who provide administrative support to their executives. The top tasks to delegate to an executive assistant include:

• Email management
• Calendar management
• Document handling
• Research and documentation

Additionally, EAs can serve as strategic partners with whom executives can discuss key ideas.

Personal Assistants

A personal assistant’s primary role is managing their executive’s non-work-related affairs and schedule. Some PAs do handle work-related tasks for the executive, such as email correspondence and stakeholder meetings.

However, even when PAs undertake functions outside of their JDs, the goal is often to align their principals’ schedules to improve their work-life balance.

The EA/PA Overlap

A common trap busy executives fall into is hiring a traditional EA or PA to streamline their schedules. However, given that most executives have fluctuating professional and personal demands, they need an assistant who can wear both hats and excel at the roles. 

Additionally, executives must account for variables that determine whether they need an EA and PA, including:

• Professional/Personal Complexity: A CEO who already has a company-assigned EA may only need to hire a PA for their non-work schedule. In contrast, a startup founder likely needs both EA/PA support to manage their hectic schedule, especially during the seed funding period.
• Delegation Comfort: If you are a natural delegator, you are likely to hire an EA and delegate both administrative and personal tasks to reclaim your time. However, executives who want full control over administrative tasks often prefer hiring a PA to handle their communication and scheduling, as they handle all other tasks. 

The Blended Role

Many executives need both administrative and personal support to reclaim their time. Proassisting offers a hybrid solution: executives hire an EA who streamlines their schedules for better work-life balance.

In a hybrid role, your EA undertakes various roles to support your performance multipliers:

• Business partner
• Scheduler
• Project manager
• Personal assistant
• Chief of staff

Additionally, the blended role offers flexibility, allowing you to utilize ⅓, ½, or ⅔ of an EA’s capacity based on your support needs. For example, you could hire a fractional executive assistant at ⅓ capacity and increase support to ½ or ⅔ during hectic seasons, such as quarterly reporting cycles and mergers or acquisitions.

Our ProAssistants have over 5 years of experience supporting CEOs and other C-suite executives at global brands such as Oracle, NBC Sports, and Target. Additionally, you receive premium EA/PA support at 50-80% less than the cost of hiring an in-house assistant.

Schedule a free consultation to learn how our ProAssistants can help you reclaim your time.

Key Benefits of Hiring an Executive Personal Assistant

As a C-suite executive with a demanding schedule, you likely need an executive personal assistant to make your life significantly easier. 

An exceptional executive personal assistant will undertake most of the administrative roles, delivering the following benefits:

• Time Arbitrage: Delegating tasks that don’t require your professional input helps you reclaim time otherwise spent on projects that don’t add value to your business. Suppose your hourly rate is $1,000 and you spend 3 hours per week managing your family’s logistics. You would be losing $3,000 in opportunity costs.
• Increased Focus on Strategic Tasks: Exceptional EPAs handle most administrative and home errands, reducing your cognitive load. The reduced mental burden allows you to focus on tasks that impact the company’s bottom line. 
• Improved Work-Life Balance: An executive personal assistant helps you reclaim time to spend with your family and friends or to take vacations. Additionally, you’ll stop stressing over forgotten errands like grocery shopping or picking up your suits from the dry cleaner, ultimately improving your mental well-being.
• Efficient Workflows: The best EPAs create systems and processes for recurring tasks, ensuring consistent outcomes. This includes preparing an executive assistant daily checklist that outlines all the administrative tasks they will undertake, ensuring even the least impactful ones don’t slip through the cracks.
• Better Stakeholder Management: Exceptional EPAs function as extensions of their executives across personal and professional networks. They leverage their emotional intelligence to adapt communication styles appropriately, preserve partnerships, and protect the executive’s interests.

How to Find and Hire the Right Executive Support

An exceptional executive personal assistant serves as your extension. However, finding and hiring a personal assistant requires a systematic approach that considers your support needs and their skill set.

Here’s a simple guide to help you pick the right executive support:

• Outline Your Support Needs: Be honest with yourself and identify what you need help with. For example, you could create a list of tasks that you don’t mind delegating or identify time-consuming projects that are skewing your work-life balance.
• Draft a Job Description: Outline the specific roles and responsibilities the hired executive personal assistant will undertake. Additionally, list the required skills, experience, working hours, and compensation for the role.
• Conduct Preliminary Resume Reviews: Screen candidates thoroughly by evaluating their resumes to check if they have prior experience in a similar role. Additionally, review how well they write their cover letters and resumes to assess their written communication skills. Lastly, shortlist candidates that meet your criteria for a one-on-one interview.
• Conduct Interviews: Assess candidates’ soft skills, particularly emotional intelligence and empathy. Ask how they previously handled or would handle executive needs similar to yours.
• Set a Trial Period: Once you have settled on your ideal executive personal assistant, consider starting with a probation period, during which you’ll assess their capacity to support you effectively.
• Onboard the Assistant: Create a list of your preferences, explaining how and why you like tasks done a certain way. Additionally, schedule regular check-ins to provide ongoing feedback, highlighting what went well and areas for improvement.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Let’s answer common questions C-suites ask about executive personal assistants:

Is a Fractional Executive Personal Assistant as Effective as a Full-Time Hire?

Yes. A fractional executive personal assistant is as effective as a full-time hire. Most CEOs only need an EPA working 15-20 hours per week to streamline their personal schedules and improve their work-life balance. 

Additionally, the fractional arrangement offers scalability, as executives can increase EPA capacity to meet fluctuating needs without incurring the cost of full-time wages.

Do Executive Personal Assistants Travel with Executives?

Most executive personal assistants don’t travel with their executives, as they can leverage executive assistant tools to support them remotely. 

Smart executives choose ubiquitous tools that empower their EPAs to provide consistent support across time zones.

What Is the Ideal Executive-to-Assistant Ratio?

The ideal executive-to-assistant ratio is 3:1. It allows executives to receive high-quality, responsive support without overwhelming the EA. 

When Should a CEO Hire an Executive Personal Assistant?

Hiring an executive personal assistant makes sense for a CEO under the following circumstances:

• You are spending too much time on repetitive administrative tasks like email correspondence.
• Your team is experiencing communication bottlenecks as they wait for approvals.
• You are experiencing burnout.
• Your schedule is jumbled up with missed or double-booked appointments.

Conclusion

As a CEO, you might have previously benefited from hiring either an EA or a PA, depending on your support needs. However, as your professional and personal life dynamics evolve, you will likely need an assistant who can play both roles, which is where an executive personal assistant comes in.

At the ProAssisting Academy, we prepare our EPAs to provide high-level executive support that helps principals reclaim up to 15 hours weekly. Additionally, we provide customizable support, allowing you to utilize ⅓, ½, or ⅔ of your executive personal assistant’s capacity, depending on your support needs.

Book a personalized call to discover how you can benefit from hiring an executive personal assistant.