Cameron Herold argues CEOs waste time on low-value tasks like pulling logos or scheduling. Delegate anything below your hourly rate to an EA, pay them well with bonuses and vacation, and hire one before you hire a COO.
Questions this video answers
$200 an hour.
Five years.
Five weeks paid vacation per year.
Hire an executive assistant first; hire a COO/second-in-command later (maybe a year later).
Chapters
So at the end of the day, when you're the CEO or a COO of a company, your time is really critical. And the reality is you should only be working on the critical few things that either really drive the business forward or really give you energy. And if you're working in the business and around the administra, around the details around stuff, the reality is you're not driving the business forward. So I spoke with a CEO this morning and they were up until midnight last night pulling down a whole bunch of logos off of a bunch of different websites of all their clients logos to do some basic marketing on it. And I said, like, why didn't you sub that out? Like just pass that off to an EA or to a virtual assistant or somebody? And she said, no, I just like I need to get it done. And the reality is it needs to get done, but not by us. And the most critical hire that you have right now is an executive assistant. And I want to tell you something, if you don't have an executive assistant, you are one. Even my ea, Meredith, who's been with me for five years right now, I actually push her more and more to try to outsource even some of what she's got on her plate. In fact, I've got it on my list to talk to her other next one on one to look for some things that are on her plate that she can funnel off to some other people so she can work on some of the higher projects that I need to get done. And that will really kind of free up her time and her mental bandwidth as well. So I want you to think about that as a CEO for a second. If you're the CEO of a company or an entrepreneur in a company, and let's say that you, you know, take out $400,000 a year, your effective hourly rate is 200 an hour. You should be delegating any task off your plate that's less than a $200 an hour task. If you're working on opening emails, replying to emails, booking meetings, checking mail, setting up appointments, following up with customers, billing or research, posting things on job boards, posting things on, you know, upwork or fiverr, etc. All of that stuff can be done by somebody else. My EA Meredith is amazing. She takes care of my business stuff, my personal stuff. She books flights, books, hotels, books, travel coordinates, restaurant bookings. She even checks me in for flights. So the amount of stuff that you can get off your plate onto somebody else's is huge. And I'm always asked by entrepreneurs and CEOs. You know, when should I hire a second in command? And my first response to that is, don't hire a second in command unless you already have an executive assistant. Hire an EA first. Use that to really free up your time to leverage your time to get more stuff off your plate. And then look to hire a COO or a second in command much later, maybe a year later. You also really don't want to underpay your ea if you're looking for a proper ea. You want to pay them properly, you want to take care of them, you want to give them bonuses, give them flex time, give them vacation time, give them vacation pay. You know, I pay my EA 5 weeks paid vacation every year. I pay her very well. I give her good bonuses. Last year I sent her and her family away on a trip to Mexico for a week. But really looking to take care of your EA is a real extension of you and not look at it as like a small little role that you're only going to pay $35,000 a year for. These are people that you should be treating fairly and paying well and looking at them as an extension of you. So super helpful for you in your business to think about how to leverage your free time or how to leverage your time. And hiring an executive assistant is a key one. If you don't have an executive assistant, you are one.
