81: EA vs VA - 2 Months Out of the Inbox

Honestly, every very successful entrepreneur that I know could not live without their ea.

I'm Bonnie Christine and this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today. I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and

experience the same success.

I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom

you want, and is wildly profitable.

Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast.

A few months ago I made a new a new hire in my business and I can't wait to tell you about it. I hired an executive assistant, which is something that I wasn't sure I was ready for, I wasn't sure if I needed and my goodness, it has completely changed my life. And so I want to introduce you today to the difference between an executive assistant and a virtual assistant and tell you how it's been going. We're about to two months in to me working with my executive assistant and I've got some incredible takeaways for you. So firstly, let me demystify these acronyms, right? So a va, which I'll reference a bunch in this episode, stands for a virtual assistant and an EA references an executive assistant. Both roles are absolutely paramount, but they serve two very different functions. The role of a va, a virtual assistant, is someone who's able to handle many of the online tasks. So my va, her name is efia, has been with me for about three years and EFIA does many, many different tasks related to our online business. So she's not local to me. She lives in the United States though, and she does a mixture of digital tasks like handling emails and updating our website and scheduling posts and and then also some specialized skills. So you could find a VA that helps with content creation or your accounting or graphic design or even SEO. RVA handles many of our spreadsheets and organization. For example, when we create study groups out of our course students, that's like a spreadsheet organization thing. And EFIA does a great job with that. She also handles our cancellation survey and our failed payment recovery process emails. She handles A lot of the research that we need done in the business. She handles our resources page and also does one off tasks. Like for instance, right now she's combining all of the feedback we have around a course for me to review as I go into refilming. So a VA is really flexible. They can touch many, many different tasks in your business and their time is generally pretty flexible as well. So they don't necessarily, necessarily have a super strict schedule, but they can be coming in to touch your business and their tasks on a daily basis. A VA is oftentimes the very first hire that I recommend someone get, because as you wear many different hats in your business, so can a va. And so a virtual assistant is the perfect person to come in and just take some of that off of your plate so that you can focus on doing the things that only you can do. Now let's talk about the role of an ea, which is executive assistant. An EA plays a slightly different role. They're often the right hand to an entrepreneur, constantly thinking just one or two steps ahead. And so honestly, every very successful entrepreneur that I know could not live without their ea. There are two main parts that an EA touches, that's calendar ownership and inbox management. So, so we're going to talk about that today, how we've done it, what's working, and how you might be able to do the same. So the first one is calendar ownership. This includes scheduling meetings, managing meetings, and often coordinating with other people. So other team members or other people who have requested an interview or questions of me or something like that. Notice that I said calendar ownership. That means that I don't own my own calendar anymore, meaning nothing gets put on the calendar unless it goes through her. And so she has real ownership over that. Now, I know that may be hard for you to wrap your mind around, but just consider how many times you might miss a meeting or not. You know, get to work and be surprised at the things that are on your calendar. Or maybe you're going back and forth with someone, trying to find the perfect time to set up that that call or you're sending, you know, zoom invitations. All of that is what she takes off of my plate. Now, one of the keys to a very successful relationship with an EA is, well, there's two keys. It's trust and communication. You have to trust this person and you have to communicate a lot. And so one of the keys that make calendar ownership possible is that I created an ideal week. So my ideal week is basically everything that I do on like every single week. So it's when I work out, it's when I go home, it's when I have like date night, it's when I go to church, it's when I have meetings. And so then I open up time on my calendar. So this day and this day I'm free to take meetings from one to three. And on this day and this day, I want to block off for deep work from 10 to 2. Right. So you just kind of map this out. I actually have an incredible free download for you today. I'm going to give you the ideal week that I used as well as an EA doc, which I'll talk about in just a minute. So handing this off has been honestly a game changer. I'm not kind of getting dragged into looking at the calendar and figuring out when I can meet with things and, and schedule it in. If someone wants to meet with me, I direct them straight to erin, that's my EA's name, and plans it out and puts it on the calendar. Now, of course, things pop up last minute, right? So if I need to take a day off, I'd let Aaron know she blocks it off on my calendar. So of course, again, high communication makes that possible. But the key is to give complete ownership because if you've got things in your head that aren't on the calendar and then she puts something on the calendar that overlaps, then you have a mess. So high communication, if it's in your brain, make sure it gets to the calendar. And then all you've got to do is live by your calendar from a day to day basis. And so we use Google Calendar and it's awesome. Now the next one is what I really want to talk about. It's inbox management. So let me kind of break this down for you because I used to handle all inboxes. So I had a business inbox for questions and business opportunities, but also students and members. And then I had my personal inbox, which was, you know, things like orders, online orders and communication from the school. And so I handed off my team inbox several years ago now. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I talk about how I was able to do that back in episode number 56 where I teach you how I created a brand voice guide. So, so this doesn't mean that I'm never in the team inbox, but it does mean that I'm not first line. And so I held onto my personal inbox this entire time. Personal inbox is again, all of like the newsletters I'm interested in communication from the school, online orders, all of that stuff that doesn't need to be in the team inbox. And so I very much struggled to think about how would I hand that off to someone. Now let me get to back to the team inbox. I did not hand that off until it was requiring of me at least two solid days a week to manage. It was oftentimes three solid days a week. I had gotten to a place where I felt like I was doing nothing but answering emails and that kept me from making the impact that I really wanted to make. And so it was vital that I hand that off. Now. My personal inbox. I gotta say I just don't do a very good job at it. I am slow to get back to people. I, yeah, it's I, I let it pile up just a little bit and so I started thinking about how I could hand this off and of course all these things bubbled to my mind like, well, what about privacy and what about trust and what about banking and what about like my online orders and what about communication from the school? And so I had all of these LIM beliefs around, well, I don't think I can do that, but let me tell you that you can. There's a system that makes this tremendously impactful and part of it is that you have to release it to someone else. That doesn't mean that you don't answer emails. I'll get to that. But it does mean that it's not your priority. It's your EA's priority to sort and look through your inbox, which has lifted so much brain bandwidth for me, I can't use even believe it. Mark your calendars for this, October 19th through the 21st. Because our annual conference for Creative Immersion Live is coming up, we've gathered a spectacular lineup of industry leaders, artists and entrepreneurs like Amy Porterfield, Morgan Harper, Nichols Glow Otonmo and Nicholas Wilton, plus many, many more for an unmatched virtual conference experience. Immersion Live this year is all about the art of business for the professional creative. Over three days, you'll unlock strategies to guide your business effectively, refine your designs and establish a flourishing creative career. And the best part is that you can experience it all from the comfort of your own home. We do a live virtual conference like nobody else. Sessions will allow for real time interaction, questions answered, and a sense of community that's honestly hard to match. Our event kicks off with Open studio night on October 19th, where you'll get to peek behind the curtain of some incredibly successful artists and designers. The next two days you'll immerse yourself in keynote sessions and workshops where you'll learn, interact and have all your questions answered. Come engage with like minded creatives, make meaningful connections and open the doors to collaboration. We're also recording every session so you can revisit and absorb this wealth of knowledge at your own pace. Head on over to bonniecristine.com forward/2023 immersion live to join us. So I want to talk to you about the system that we use for inbox management. But first let me tell you about the free download for today's episode. You can get it over at our show Notes for Today's episode@PropriationalCreative.com and it's basically the outline that I use. I call it the EA Megadoc. And so you can imagine if someone is in your inbox and they're managing all of your life things, there's quite a lot that they need to know. For instance, your family's birthdays, all your holidays, your travel preferences, the school dates, your vehicle information, some financial information, what you typically give as gifts. So it includes all of these things like your personal information, contact information, family details and everything is in one place. So your EA has the stage doc to reference as they work through some of your to dos and tasks. This is why you absolutely have to have trust in this person. But please let me tell you there are trustworthy people all over the world who would love to be an ea. So let me tell you what this looks like from a system perspective. I actually adopted this system from Dan Martel. So Dan Martel has a book called Buy back your time. I highly recommend it and he has this created the system to use with his executive assistant and we adopted it and love it as well. So my personal inbox is held within Gmail. So what we did was make several folders. So I'm I'll put these over on the show notes so you don't feel like you have to write them down, but I'm going to walk you through them. So the number one folder is to respond to. So items that need to be responded to. Number two are things that need to be reviewed. So my EA puts those in there when she has questions about them and needs to review them with me before she responds. Number three is responded to so I have a folder with every email she's ever responded to so that I can go look at them and make sure she's doing, you know, exactly what I want. Number four are things that are being waited on. So they're kind of just in the wings. They don't need to be reviewed, they haven't been responded to. We're waiting on something. Number five is for all receipts and financial information that don't need to be responded to, but needs to just be kept. Number six is newsletters. So any newsletter that I get goes into this folder and I get to come in and look at them on my own time whenever I want. Number seven is orders. So any online orders goes into this folder. So what we have done is leave anything that I personally need to respond to in the primary inbox. We did stray from Dan Martell's suggestion on this one because Dan suggests having a folder for you, your personal emails that you need to respond to. But I found in Gmail, it's kind of clunky. I was missing some things and you can't archive from the folder because technically it's already archived to the folder. You don't have to follow me if you're not a Gmail user. But I preferred just leaving my personal ones that I need to tend to directly within the inbox so that I see them. I see them there. And she's aware of them as well. So this has worked so incredibly well. Now, from here we do what we call a sync meeting. So you can do this live, like every day. You could sync with your EA that would typically be on the phone. But what has ended up working well for me and Erin is that she drops a sink for me the night before. This is her preference because she's a night owl. So she drops a sink for me for that day in Slack the night before, and I listen to it the next morning as I start my day. And so this is any emails that need to be reviewed, any questions that she has, any, like, pending items, anything that she has a question on. And then it's also an overview of my day. So what meetings do I have, what deadlines do I have? It's just a really beautiful way to have everything in one place. An audio version of what my day looks like, what questions I need to address first with her, and anything in the inbox that needs my eyes on it. So this means that I'm not missing anything. It also means that if she has a question on any email, meaning if she's not 100% certain, it goes into a review folder. So we just do it together. And this will take a little bit of time. Your EA will learn over time how you would address most things. And so I am absolutely still in my inbox and will personally reply to things that need my personal reply. But I've got her in there before me and she's much quicker. This is her priority every single day and it's not my priority every single day. So it means that she makes sure that I don't miss anything and that we're on track with deadlines. Now, just to be clear, she responds as her, not as me. That's, you know, a piece of integrity that I always like to make sure people know. Your EA is not in there pretending to be you. Your EA is responding as your ea, your executive assistant, on your behalf. And that's made very clear in the inbox with a sign off and an explanation. And then of course, if I'm emailing, it says me. So I mentioned this a little bit already, but I know what you're thinking. There's no way I can let someone in my personal inbox. What about this? What about that? What about, you know, the emails that my mom sends me? What about my online orders? Or no one can handle the amount of newsletters I get, or I can't trust anyone, or what about privacy? And I just want to encourage you to know that it's possible. There are absolutely people that are incredibly trustworthy that can handle your inbox and you tell your mom or whoever it is to text you instead of email you. So texting is truly the only, like super private way to communicate with me now because my executive assistant has eyes on everything before I do. Now, the last thing that we've developed that I actually love, this is just my personal work style. I didn't adopt it from anyone else and I don't know if it'll resonate with you or not, but I'm a big fan of Notes. So I use the Notes app on my phone. It syncs to the Notes app on my laptop or my desktop. And so I just drop things there all the time. I have to do lists and brainstorming, lists and links that I want to quickly reference. Like, I just, I love it. I have it there all the time. So Erin has a love for the Notes app as well. So I created us a combined Notes app. And that is where she puts everything that is a question and everything that is a to do for me. Because if you can imagine, it's in the inbox, it's in Slack, if you're familiar with Slack, as you work through Slack, things kind of get buried. And so the Notes, the shared Notes document that we use has become a really beautiful place for me. To head when I just need a recap of what she needs from me and what I need to do. And so it gets updated every single day and there's a little check box which is so satisfying to check off as you work through your TO dos. And it has. We keep like my upcoming deadlines at the very top of them for me to reference and everything is linked with any relevant links. So I've got everything at my fingertips. So if you can imagine the disorganization of a creative entrepreneur's life comes alongside someone whose love language is organization. In fact, if you are an enneagram person, you'll love to know that Erin, my executive assistant is a two wing one, which is a helper and kind of that perfectionist like highly organized person. It has been a beautiful match. She's also working on my team as our events director so she got her hands in a lot of different things. But my favorite has been executive assistant. It has been such a beautiful role that I didn't realize how much I needed until I had it. And so if this resonates with you, I urge you to consider getting an executive assistant to help. Now I think the last thing that you might be questioning is is this person local? So Erin's not. She only lives a couple of hours from me so we can see each other on occasion. But she's not in my town. And if you hired an EA in your town, you know, they could do even more like help you with shipping and packaging and things in the office or in your studio. But for me I didn't find that incredibly necessary because I have someone who helps me with my house. I also have a house manager and so this role was very much for a virtual, you know, assistance and it's been really amazing. So don't forget, head on over to the professionalcreative.com there you'll find the names of the folders that we use in my email inbox. You'll also find a download to fill out your ideal week, which is a game changer. And then also an outline for an EA week. Call it the Mega Doc, which is everything that you can put in one document to give to someone where they've got it to reference ongoing. I'd love to know what you think. Did this surprise you? Are you excited about the idea? You overwhelmed at the idea? You think you don't need one? Or are you excited to potentially try an ea? Let me know and my friends create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world. And remember there's room for you and your ea.