Episode Summary

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a remote executive assistant for your business? Today’s episode peels back the curtain and shows you exactly how Melissa Swink is filling this role for Melissa Swink & Co.! You’ll learn how to create a job description and outline responsibilities. A remote executive assistant can provide administrative and operational support, accounting assistance, inside sales support, email management, schedule management, gift-giving, invoicing, proposal drafting, payment tracking, and following up with prospects and clients. Melissa also walks through her hiring and interview process and how to find the right person for the role.

Key Highlights:

• An executive assistant can provide valuable administrative and operational support.
• When hiring an executive assistant, it is important to find someone who is a good fit for the role and the company's culture.
• Tips and tricks for creating a job description and interviewing candidates. 

About Melissa:

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped more than 100 businesses grow through the services they offer, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Her work is all about doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results. Visit www.melissaswink.com to learn more! 

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Hi everyone, welcome to the Make Space for More podcast, where we talk strategies for growing and scaling your business in a way that's authentic and aligned for you. I'm your host, Melissa Swink, and in today's episode, I thought it'd be fun to peel back the curtain and give you a glimpse behind the scenes of my search for my new executive assistant. But before we dive in, I just wanted to take a minute to welcome you. Thank you so much for tuning in today.

My goal is to share with you some very practical tools and tips for growing your business beyond you, whether you're at solo pernure stage and looking at what's next for me and my company and the successful business that I've built. Maybe you've already, you know, are well on your way to building and growing your team and are just looking at, you know, how do I continue to improve upon and stay focused on my role as CEO in the company and beyond, no matter what stage of business you're at.

I am hopeful that this information gives you some valuable insights and inspiration to continue growing your business beyond you. So Going behind the scenes, my current executive assistant is going to be moving into a new role within my company. It's something that I will share more about in the coming weeks. It's all in process right now, but she has discovered some things that she truly enjoys doing and wants to focus her time and energy on those.

which I love whenever I am interviewing potential team members. I spend a lot of time learning about what is their experience, who do they work best with, and what kinds of things do they love? Like, what could you do all day, every day, and just love it and be in flow? Because those are the types of things that I want you to be doing, maybe for me, but then also for our clients as well. So.

My executive assistant is going to be moving into a different role and we are beginning the search for a new executive assistant for me. And so like many of our clients, colleagues, people that I know in my network, they may exclaim, I need an assistant. I hear this all the time. And so I thought I would peel back the curtain on the search that we are doing. So just to give you a glimpse of how we're preparing for this search and how we're preparing for this transition behind the scenes.

My executive assistant is currently making sure that SOPs and videos and how -to information is up to date. And that way it'll be so much easier for a new executive assistant to jump in and have kind of a guiding light to show him or her the ropes as they are getting acclimated to the role. And this is something that I highly encourage you to have your team do regularly.

because it is immensely helpful for cross trading. Even if you have a team that really enjoys working with you, they're 100 % committed, you never know when they may suddenly need to take a step back. God forbid life happens, people get sick or need to have surgery, things like that. In the event that you're gonna be without that team member for a period of time, hopefully expectedly where you get some planning if it's as simple as a vacation or

maybe as gentle as a surgery or God forbid full on out, I'm so sorry, I need to take a step back, this has happened. We wanna make sure that we've got these in place so that it makes it that much easier for somebody else to come in and help keep this moving forward, not only for that person, but for you, for your clients, for your vendors, whoever else this is going to touch. So that is my advice to you. Now the other thing that I wanted to mention about SOPs,

I've shared this before in previous episodes. This does not mean if you are operating solo and you are looking at hiring an executive assistant or your very first team member, do not feel like you have to create all of these SOPs yourself prior to bringing someone on. This is something that the two of you can co -create together as you're cross -training them. So maybe you have a training session where you are on Zoom or

if you're virtual or if you're even sitting together where you can record a screen share and record exactly the steps that you take to get such and such task or project done and explaining those steps as you go along, that's huge. Or having the person documenting the steps as you're explaining them, have them send that back to you for your review. Maybe there's something else that you forgot to mention or you need to edit or tweak and all of that. There's ways to co -create SOPs.

but I can't emphasize the importance enough of having these in place and having these stored in your company's shared files that other people can access them. So all of that being said, my assistant is preparing those and updating those behind the scenes, and that way when this person is hired, she has a starting point for them to work off of. So I wanna dive into detail of what is included in this job description because I think it's always interesting to see

you know, what are people outsourcing or what are they asking for their executive assistant to do and all of that. So the job description, I actually created one that was kind of a one pager, fairly simple. And then my business coach stepped in and offered some advice to make it a little bit more polished, make it more intriguing to somebody who would be a good fit for this role and really speak to.

who is the best fit for something like this. And so I'm incorporating some of her edits in here as we're going along here. But basically the whole overall flow of the job description, at the top we have the facts, things like what is the title of the position, about how many hours are we looking for, location, you know, this is remote in this case, remote US. I will get to that reason in a minute.

what the deadline is to apply and so on. So just kind of the facts in the beginning. But then she encouraged me to write a section of a day in the life or does this sound like you sort of thing. So maybe it's you enjoy and this is something that we're in the process of writing, but I think that this person will ultimately need to enjoy having.

a list of tasks and checking those tasks off the list where they go in and they see what needs to be done, check, check, check, and they're just feeling like in the flow and productive, and they can knock things out relatively quickly when they dive in in the morning. And then different character traits like somebody who enjoys taking full ownership of projects, like they see something that needs to be done, they're confident that they can do it, they have the skills to do it.

and they want to run with it and get things done. I think that that's super important. I think it's super helpful. I also am looking for somebody who genuinely cares about others and will serve not only our clients, but also our internal team members well, taking care of them. When somebody comes to them with a question or a concern or a need that this person

takes it seriously and has that servanthood heart of wanting to solve the problem and make life better for everybody. I think that's an important trait in this role. So just kind of sharing with you openly and kind of off the top of my head some of the things that we are thinking of including in the day in the life and is this you sort of a description. But diving into some of the nuts and bolts of what we're looking for because I think this is always super interesting to hear about what are people outsourcing.

There are three core areas that I am personally looking for in my next executive assistant in order to help me with. So these would be key outcomes or key responsibilities. There's really three categories, which is administrative and operations, accounting assistance, and inside sales support. So diving into administrative and operations, it's just the day to day. I have noticed personally in the last couple of months,

that I have had a huge influx of email. I don't know if it's just me. One thing that we have done also to help alleviate this is we've created additional inboxes to help funnel different types of messages coming through. We have an accounting email where all of our receipts go for all the different software subscriptions that we have and such that are automated payments.

This is where our team members send their invoice for the work that they have done. All of those things go into accounting. And then we have a hello at email, which is connected to our website. These are where inquiries come in and things like that. Podcast inquiries come in or questions come in. And then we also have team and this is more for recruiting.

checking references, people applying for different positions within our company. So we have segmented those inboxes, but I still do have quite a bit of email coming through. And so that's probably going to be another operational deep dive that we need to do is exactly what is still coming in. Can we funnel these elsewhere? Am I still the best person to be receiving these and so on. So I just wanted to mention that with email because I feel like

It is never ending. But I would love to have somebody going in, filing the things that need to be filed, responding to things such as scheduling. Like, you know, when you send out that email, you say, how does 11 o 'clock on Thursday work? Okay, great. Seeing that, putting it on the calendar, setting the invite. I don't need to be doing this myself, ladies and gentlemen. I just don't. Somebody else is perfectly capable.

of getting that taken care of for me and on my behalf. Same thing goes with introductions for potential referrals. We have some templated responses to general common questions that come in or common messages that come in. I think that my executive assistant can run with some of those things. And then that way, by the time that this person is done triaging my email inbox,

When I go into my email, I only see the things that truly I am the only one who can respond to. And that saves me a lot of time. It saves me a lot of energy. I am somebody who easily falls into reactive mode when it comes to requests coming in, especially through the email, which I've shared some tips and tools with you in the past of how I try to alleviate that and put those boundaries in place around my attention and focus. Scheduling, I just mentioned this, you know,

responding to, yep, 11 o 'clock works great, sending out that calendar invite and so on, but also reaching out and helping get things scheduled would be immensely helpful. We also do events throughout the year, online events throughout the year, and I think coordinating those would be extremely helpful, just the logistics of all of that. Also, when we look at overall company...

strategy and implementation and projects, we're always looking to improve and get better at what we do, serve our clients better. And so providing some project management and some support with completing those projects would be immensely helpful from an operational perspective as well. Another thing that I have on my list for administrative is sending gifts to clients, team members.

whether they be birthday gifts or new client gifts, thank you for referrals, or we always do a seasonal gift, usually around Thanksgiving, sometime in November, for all of the people in our network who have contributed to our success that year. Our clients, our team members, referral partners, vendors, and so on, we do a large gift -giving campaign.

And so that is why I decided that in order for me to get more support on this, because I'm currently doing this, is something I think is very meaningful. And I also realized that it doesn't always get done as timely as I would like it to because it's on my plate and there sometimes can be more urgent things that need to get done. And so I am looking for an executive assistant in the U .S. who can ship these easily from where they're located. My current executive assistant is in Canada.

She is amazing, she wants to help with this, but the fact of the matter is, is that having her ship these things from Canada is just going to be extremely expensive. And so having somebody who can support here in the US with that gift giving and somebody who gets excited about gift giving and loves to work on projects like that would be ideal for something like this. So that is some of the administrative and operational things that are on my wish list. The other thing is some accounting assistance and

I say light accounting assistance because my intention is ultimately to have a bookkeeper working on more of the day -to -day finance type of things for the company and then ultimately have a tax strategist and preparer in order to file taxes, whether it be quarterly or annual taxes and things like that. Looking ahead at, here are some of the projections, here's a note.

how much you need to be paying in, quarterly, enough that I don't get hit with an unexpected tax bill at the end of the year. I like to be proactive. I ultimately, honestly, I realize that there's a lot of different schools of thought. I like to get a little refund at the end of the year. I like to figure high, file my taxes, get a little bit back. I mean a small amount, not thousands of dollars. I realize that a lot of people feel like, well then you just,

you gave the government interest -free money to use at their disposal through the year. I'm not talking thousands of dollars, but you get the idea. I don't want the panic of suddenly needing thousands of dollars that I didn't expect. So I want somebody to help prepare for that. All of that being said, going back to my executive assistant, certainly things that they can help with, hourly and project invoicing, like we work on monthly retainer. That's the majority of our billing that is all automated.

I can share more about that if you're interested in just send us an email to hello at melissaswink .com if that's a topic or you have another topic that you'd like me to explore on the show. But hourly and project invoicing, which is kind of a one -off situation, my executive assistant can handle. Updating client and vendor payment information. So inevitably when we have...

Invoices automatically send, payments automatically process. There's usually one a month that fails. And it's usually because, you know, darn hackers, somebody's credit card gets hacked, they're waiting for a new one, old one, of course, is shut down and that gets declined. You know, all those logistics of just helping a client get their credit card payment information updated in our records for those payments, that's something my executive assistant can help out with.

Mileage reports is another thing. Now I'm fortunate enough to work remotely. I don't often have a lot of business travel, but it is nice to have somebody review my calendar at the end of each month and say like, okay, did Melissa have an in -person meeting? Did she have a speaking engagement locally? Did she attend an event, anything like that? It's helpful to have somebody look back and record that for me. Also preparing team payments for our bookkeeper.

is something that my executive assistant has been immensely helpful with. When we receive in invoices from our team members for the work that they're doing, my executive assistant has been great of basically tallying those up for me. Here's the amount of labor charges. Here's any expenses that need to be reimbursed. Here's also any overages where, you know, maybe a client needed help with an extra project or something like that. And they're able to tally all of that for me. And then ultimately,

The goal is to have our bookkeeper pay out all of those vendor invoices. But this is something that is easy for my executive assistant when they're checking that accounting email folder to go in and organize. Sending W9 requests is another one that I think would be helpful, not only for when we are onboarding a new team member, but then also when we onboard new clients, often their accountant is looking for W9 from us in tax forms and things like that. It's all very standard, very simple.

That is another thing that my executive assistant can take off of my plate. The last key area that I'm looking for support on for my executive assistant is inside sales support. So right now, this is something that I take time on. I take it to heart in terms of who am I meeting with? How can we best serve them? And actually taking a step back, can we serve them?

to the best of our ability? Will we solve the problem that they have or is there somebody else who ultimately might be a better fit? I'm very selective about who we work with because we want it to be mutually beneficial and that we're the right fit and everybody is getting their needs met. All of that being said, our sales process, because it is so personalized, can take a lot of time. And so to remove myself from being the bottleneck,

of increasing our sales, I would love to have my executive assistant potentially joining calls with potential clients so that this person is able to be taking notes and begin putting together a quote for that client, assuming that we can solve the problem that they have, meet their needs within our team, consult with other team members, like, hey, especially in the area of marketing, hey, this is what the client is currently doing.

What are your recommendations? What are your quote for those recommendations? And all of that happening behind the scenes. Would love to have some support from my executive assistant on moving that along. Drafting proposals for clients, presenting those to potential clients, something that I would love support on. The other thing in terms of inside sales, and this is something that I see a lot with clients. This is something that...

our team often provides support on is tracking and following up with maybe prospects or past clients. You know, we all had those conversations with potential clients or maybe even wrapped up work with a client and known that, you know, they may need our services again in the future. And this is an example that I think applies to a lot of different businesses, certainly a lot of clients that we work with. But

there needs to be a consistent system for keeping track of those and then also following up with them appropriately. Now I'll let you know that I don't have a formal CRM system that is keeping track of all this information for me. I have these honestly in a sales project in my Asana project management system where it'll be like check in with so and so every three months or invite so and so to lunch this summer.

You know, just different things like that, but it's immensely helpful to have support on keeping track of all those activities and those relationships so I can continue to nurture and grow those. Okay, now that I have given you kind of a summary of some of the key responsibilities and things that I'm looking for support on for my executive assistant. Lastly, just to wrap up the job description, I'm going to include some information about my company, you know, how we got started and

Where are we headed in the future? What is it like to be on our team? What types of clients do we serve or who do we tend to work with? And then of course, instructions for applying for the job itself. So once we have this job description complete, at the time of this recording, we're about 95 % there, we're just making a few tweaks, then we're gonna be posting this. And so when I post a job description, I also wanna be highly strategic of

where I'm posting it so I'm not inundated with people who just ultimately aren't the right fit. And so I'm going to look at potentially virtual assistant job groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. I may send it to others in my network to see if they know of somebody who might be a good fit for this role. I may even send it to some select members of our team and say, hey, do you know other virtual assistants who are looking for this type of work and see, you know,

ultimately who is out there who might be a good fit for something like this. And as those applications roll in, I plan on having my executive assistant reviewing them first just to see and kind of weed out, like, here's the experience that we're looking for. This person seems very polished, professional. I think that this person deserves an interview. And then I believe that we'll go through a couple of interviews and I would like to have, you know, my executive assistant or certainly one of my team managers.

in those conversations so that I can get their perspective on how the conversation went, who they think might be a good fit in terms of knowing the type of business we have and what our needs are, and certainly the culture that we have. I will also have support from my current executive assistant on checking references and certainly with onboarding and cross -training. So that's something that I'm not taking on myself.

Thank you so much for sticking with me. I hope that this gave you some food for thought in terms of the support that you need in order to continue successfully growing and scaling your company. So if you know a small business owner or a busy professional who has said, I need an assistant, would you please share this episode with them because it may gave them some.

helpful information, maybe a template to follow in order to jumpstart this project because it can certainly be daunting. But the sooner that you have the support that you need, the sooner you can keep growing and scaling your business beyond you. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see you in the next episode. Bye -bye.