Behind the Scenes of Biotech: How Executive Assistants Drive Efficiency with Ann Albrecht, Founder & CEO of Ann Albrecht Consulting

We just got to hang out and chat with Anne Albrecht and she is the founder and CEO of her own consulting firm and she provides virtual executive assistance for biotechs. And it's really fascinating all of the behind the scenes that she does.

Yeah, there's so many things that you don't think of that happen in a biotech and I think this is a theme we've sort of brought up a few times on a few different episodes now. But this fractional help so that the CEO, the founder, the executives can focus on the things that matter like the science or getting funding, not booking their travel or worrying about how that board meeting is going to get scheduled. Those are all the things that Ann takes off your plate and it's such a valuable service.

Her model is super interesting too. She has really figured out how to work within the confines of a growing biotech and how to help them scale reasonably. She's also just a delightful person, so much fun to talk to. She has a really cool career journey. I think this is an awesome episode that people are really going to find super interesting and I hope you enjoy.

Welcome to Building Biotechs, a podcast by Rekryteromics Consulting.

We've helped over 75 biotech, life science and venture capital firms strategize, hire and retain thousands of employees to scale companies that bring life saving drugs to patients.

We speak with those at the forefront of growing biotechs to learn their tactics on building these companies from the ground floor to the C suite.

We're your host, Karina and Allison. Ann, thank you so much for being.

Here with us today.

We are so excited to get to talk to you on building biotechs. And like we always do, we're just going to jump right into it with the first question, which is what did you want to be when you were 7? What are you now? And how did you get there?

Thank you for having me on here. This is great. I had to think back because I don't know how many people remember what they wanted to do when they were seven, you know, cause that was such a long time ago. Depending on what the subject matter was going on in school. Like I really wanted to earth sciences, so it was like meteorologist or once I got even older than that, I knew I wanted to travel. So being a flight attendant, how cool would that be to fly everywhere? And obviously I didn't do any of those. So, you know, because who dreams of being, you know, a professional executive assistant for a career? No one. Right? Unless they had somebody who was an amazing Parent who did that before. Right. I went through various stages. I was big into music, believe it or not, when I was growing up, I was a flautist for about 12 years. And when it came to college, I had to decide which direction I wanted to go in. And there's tons of flautists out there, so where would I go? I wouldn't get very far, you know, if I had high aspirations. So it's like, well, maybe I can do manage a concert hall or something. So I actually went into management and then said, there aren't too many concert halls. So then I'll, you know, maybe I'll go into fundraising. And that was my specialization. And then I did it and I hated it. I ended up saying, well, what's similar? So I changed jobs, went into marketing as an assistant, thinking I could move up the ranks and tried it out. They gave me for six months when I was at a firm called Digitas. They, they let me try it out both as an admin and working on the marketing team. I was good, but I didn't have a passion for it. But I was really good as an assistant. Maybe I should do that. And then that's kind of how I ended up where I am today.

That's a great story. I love that. And I think that that's so interesting too because I feel like people who, sometimes we talk to people and they, you know, they knew they wanted to be a scientist or whatever and that's their path. But people who tend to fall more in that operations role, like myself, were the people who were like, I kind of thought this sounded cool and I kind of thought this sounded cool and.

I kind of figured it would all.

Come together in some capacity. But I think that makes you like a really nimble thinker maybe, or maybe really adaptable to just trying different things and in different industries.

Yeah, I think that running joke too. So I am nominally a recruiter, right? That is if you break down what I do on a day to day basis. I do a lot of things, but one of them is recruit. And for a long time that was the main thing I did before I was running companies and doing more strategy work. Who thinks they want to be a recruiter when they grow up? Right? That's another one of those that's like, no, you, you end up there through a combination of hilarious events and circumstance and whatever your passions ends up being that you follow. I think that the behind the scenes is so important and we don't talk about it enough. And so I think we're really hoping to dig into that with you today and think about, you know, all of the things that you don't think about that go into actually running the business. There's a lot.

So you're working with a marketing firm and then you made the jump into working with biotechs. So how did that kind of come about?

So I've been in various industries, obviously nonprofit and marketing. When I left there I worked with recruiter and they put me in with a, an early stage biotech. And as anybody who's been in that field long enough, even if they've been around for seven years, doesn't mean they're going to stay around for seven more years. Right. It was a fabulous company based Waltham Small. It was a great investment environment. I worked there for a year. Then 2008, 2009 hit the fundraising nightmares. They had some interesting data that came out that wasn't helpful kind of, I wouldn't say it's similar to this environment but you know, it makes it harder. And they realized that they couldn't, couldn't sustain and within a month they went belly up. Right. So then I went from A, to Children's Hospital and then worked with a VC firm after that. That was the last 10 years of my life was working with a, a venture capital firm who did early stage biotech investing. Right. And seeing everything that they did. So all of the spaces that I've been in in the past 20 years has kind of, and my educational background have all kind of steered into that direction. So I clearly know what's required for an assistant. I've been exposed to both the front end and the back end of how a biotech is funded and how it runs and then also seeing how it's built up by working for, you know, I was working at 5am for 10 years of seeing hands on of how that works. And then when it came to me deciding what I wanted to do next, it was like I had these ideas in my head, let's go for it. You know, I think there's a huge need for fractional assistance. Support that for folks that do what I do, who need it on a smaller basis, but also for the biotechs who aren't as lucky, not everybody's lucky to have these really well funded VCs helping them out because when I was at there they would hand us out every once in a while to some of these portfolio companies, give them the support. But nobody has that. Not everybody has that but everybody deserves it because they need it. And so I went and went for it.

What are you doing today? Tell us about your company. Because you are the founder and CEO of your own company now.

I am, right? So started it a little over three years ago, just as me. Wasn't sure which direction I wanted to go, if I wanted to keep it micro, just be it me and have five, six clients and just go from there. But people kept asking me, do you have time? Do you have capacity? Can you take on more? So after a year after that, I hired somebody, hired two. Now there's six of us in total. We've had over 25 companies sign on. There's about 15 or 16 of them active. And that's where we are right now, with some very happy clients.

I love that. That sounds a lot. That sounds very similar. I'm feeling deja vu. I'm resonating with that a lot. When I started as a consultancy of one, I felt the same thing. I was like, do I want to grow this? Do I want to just stay? So I know that there was the market pressure to grow that, but also as a, you know, the ability to expand your offerings, you know, what do you now provide to clients that maybe you couldn't when it was just you, you know, how has that expansion enabled you to give more?

The immediate impact is that. Call it selfishness. I can take a vacation, right? You know, micro, you can't really take a vacation, have backup. So now, you know, not only do I have backup, but my staff has backup. So that if they are supporting clients and they are out, they have backup as well. There's the collective knowledge that all of us have over the 60, 70 years combined experience that we have, so that if one of us gets into a rut, we can reach out to each other to say, hey, do you have any suggestions? And then they would come up with something so that there's that. So which is very valuable. Otherwise you'd be going off to message boards, you know, that I'm various. Part. Part of that I could see, like they're stuck, but they have nobody else to go to. But we have our own internal group that we can go to.

I love that. All of that sounds so familiar. And I just think that's a great business model, but that's also ours.

And now does your firm operate? Are you fully remote? Like, are your employees all remote? Do you go into clients? How does that work?

When I started, it was mostly virtual. Sometimes I would call a few of the clients remote only because they were local to where I was. And so if they had something special, I could go out and support them. So at that part was remote, you know, because there's obviously a difference between virtual and remote. Everybody seems to think that they're the same, but they're not exactly the same. Now most of the time it's, it's virtual except for various occasions where there's a big important board meeting or event that's happening and then we will send our, the assistant who's assigned to that client out if needed to help support them on site. Because not everybody is virtual. All our companies, some of them are completely virtual, some of them are hybrid, some of them are all in person. And then in terms of our staff, they're located all across the US because we have clients both on the east coast and west coast, we had to be considerate of time zones. So we've got a few folks in the east coast central and not quite west coast, but out in Hawaii. It was important to make sure that we had people in similar time zones to where the client is because we mostly support US based companies and they're looking for assistance who are actually working in their time zone.

So remote and virtual, let's just untangle that a little bit because I have a feeling I'm one of those people who just uses either term kind of ad hoc. So what's the difference? Can you educate all of us?

So when I think of a remote, you're obviously working mostly virtually, but it means that every once in a while you could go into the office or go to an event with other people from your firm and so then you're not really virtual anymore, you're just remote. Virtual means that you are never probably ever going to see them in person. It's all going to be exactly what we're doing right now. It's, you know, over zooms or phone calls, it's all electronic communication. So that's how I view the difference of virtual and remote.

I really like that and I think that's a really critical distinction that I actually don't think has been made abundantly clear. But it makes a lot of sense the way you're describing it.

Remote is different than hybrid too, because hybrid obviously means that you're going to be going into the office or wherever you work, your folks are co working space or whatever, more than, you know, once or twice a year. That's not hybrid, that's remote.

That makes sense. Let's talk strategy because I love to think about how fractional teams can help biotechs build more intelligently, extend Runways, cash runways, and think about using leveraging internal full time employees better for their actual skillset. So how do you approach that with your clients and what's your messaging around that and your offerings?

So no matter how small company is, they obviously need all the, all the basic functions and support of one way or another. And in terms of assistant support, whether it's executive assistant, administrative assistant, they still need it. But obviously they can't support somebody full time or even part time because part time implies specific hours of the day, each day of the week. Right. So what we do, and this usually helps with their budgeting, is we provide support within a reasonable amount of time and we only charge per hour. So for their budgeting purposes, we don't do the retainer route either. So if it's like a small, if they don't have anything going on, say for the month of October, they don't have to worry about, oh crap, you know, we're paid for the support, we're not getting it right. So for that it's very helpful, especially for the early, early stages, which when they're really, you know, counting their dollars, but yet they also get the support of knowing that we know what we're doing, we can jump right in and don't need too much training so that when they start doing scheduling meetings with investors, creating these board of director meetings, booking travel expense reports, we can jump right in and there's no training involved, which saves a lot of cost on their end. Um, so for a lot of these companies, it's anywhere between 5, 10, 15 hours a week or even sometimes just a month, and we cater it to each individual company. There's no set standard.

Well, even at like let's say 15 hours a month. What is interesting about early stage founders, sometimes they think, oh, I'll save money by doing it myself. And. But if you really think about who is the value driver of that company, especially at the early stages, the founder, they need to be out pounding the pavement. They need to be doing what they do best, right. Whether it's thinking about the science or getting money right, finding that funding, pitching and so every minute that they spend organizing their travel or responding to an email that is not pertinent to the thing they're really focusing on right now, that is wasted time and money, in my opinion.

Oh. What I've talked to a lot, especially lately, because everybody's talking about what's the savings? Because it's hard to actually put hard numbers on it because each individual case is unique. But for instance, let's take the travel aspect everybody's thinking about, or hopefully they've already done it going to JPMorgan. Right. So you think about the rabbit hole that they could go down in terms of trying to find a hotel, trying to find the right flights, if they need car service or a car, thinking about how to get back and forth. You, you think, oh, yeah, I'll just save it on my own. And, and we all know what happens when we book our own travel. You think, oh, it's gonna take five minutes and next thing you know, it's taken two hours to find exactly what you want. And then if in terms of between the, you know, the founder or the CEO and what we are, think of how much per hour they're probably worth in the time spent and then think about where a fraction of that cost. And we do this all the time, so we know the ins and outs and how to find stuff probably a lot quicker than them. It seems simple enough is a reason it was like, why they need us because in that particular instance, we're saving them a tremendous amount of money and time. So that amount of time that they've spent not doing it can be used towards, oh, I need to reach out to these investors to find some new money or, you know, partnerships with pharmas or, you know, that sort of thing.

I'll say too, that there's a little bit of extra clout when someone else is helping you with your scheduling. So if they're going to J.P. morgan and then they're setting up these investor meetings and they're kicking you over, you know, oh, here's my ea. That is a little bit more clout.

Exactly. And the way we function is we're integrated within the company, the biotech or the VC or whatever company that we're in. So when we're messaging with outside individuals on behalf of them, it's from company X, Y, Z. So it's not from, you know, ann albert@annalbertconsulting.com they don't know that we are consultants for the company. They don't know that we're only working a couple hours a week at most for them. They think we're full time and we're part of them.

And I'm really glad you brought up JP Morgan because when you were saying, you know, sometimes it's a month, that was my first thought. I was like, wow, I wonder how busy she is with JP Morgan. And then that, you know, you tackled that. I assume the answer is very busy. You must see a huge uptick in people who need help around this time. What are the other seasonalities that you see? Like, are there other events that all of a sudden you're like, oh, this is coming up and now we're going to get super busy or like, does it quiet down? Significant? Significantly few. In the summertime, what do you kind of see as the trend over a year?

Well, it's interesting. So what I see outside of the individual science specific conferences that happen, and those are obviously individualistic to the companies and the science that they're involved with and they can happen anywhere between the fall and the spring because usually they don't happen too much during the summer because everybody is taking time off. There are the larger ones, there's JP Morgan and then there's bio in June. So those things can get get ramped up and bio seems to be, in my opinion, getting just as big as JP Morgan, not as expensive, but being just as big. And you know, they may not be officially presenting at either one of those conferences, but they'll be doing the networking meeting, which makes it even tougher to find locations because the designated one on one spaces at those two conferences, if they're not attending them, you don't get to utilize them. So there's those. And then depending on how many board meetings they have every year, you know, not all of them are have the traditional, you know, March, June, September and December timeframes. Obviously those ones make it even harder to schedule during the summer or if they waited until the last minute towards the end of the year trying to figure out how to schedule all those meetings for the following year. And then obviously during those particular months of when the board meetings are is make sure everything is prepared, whether or not it's a zoom meeting or an in person meeting. I wouldn't say there's a real downside or really busy side. I guess you could say between the holidays in December and January could die down, but it all depends on if they're attending J.P. morgan or not. And then during the summer, sometimes July and August can be slow. But what happens if they're in the middle of fundraising mode? Then it could be really busy. Like I worked on a client, two of us actually worked on a client that was really heavily working with investors and they were scheduling like 20, 30 meetings. So it was crazy when everybody's trying to go on vacation.

That's such a good indication though of like why someone would need your help. Like everything you just listed out, these all take time to prepare for, right? You can't just be like, oh, okay, we're having a board meeting, I'll send a quick zoom link for tomorrow. Like, nope, you gotta think it through. You've gotta have agendas, you've gotta have everyone's calendars managed. Like, these things take time. And I think people don't think about exactly how much work goes into the back end of getting things actually on the books.

My boyfriend, who happens to be Six Sigma, and I jokingly say, one of these days I really want to have a stopwatch and actually, you know, stopping and starting so people realize how much time it really takes to do something because nobody really thinks it. When I interview a potential client, we go over things, there are time, plenty of times when they think, oh, I think I need 20 hours for an assistant, I'm like, well what do you need them to do and who are they working with? And they tell me. And then I say, I actually think you only need 10 to 15. And they look at me like I'm nuts. And yet when we start doing the work, the number is usually about right. Because I have mentally have been doing this for years, you know, stopping and starting my internal clock, knowing how long it takes to do something.

Well, and then there's the efficiency that you have cultivated where if I'm going to go do a task I'm not used to doing, or I only do every once in a while, like schedule a board meeting, right. I'm not going to, I'm not going to have the emails at my fingertips, I'm not going to have the templates, the protocols I'm going to be searching around. I mean there's so many things that go into that. We do some interview scheduling for our clients as part of our, our work. And we had to have a candidate meet with some board members because it was a quite a high level candidate. And I think to meet with three board members, it was 18 or so emails back and forth to get those scheduled. And of course they're not in the internal calendaring system, so it's not like we can just peek at their calendar and then move forward. So that takes more time than you think. But for somebody who is moving between those same tasks all day and not context switching, that is what they're doing. It's a lot faster.

So I have a question for you that I am super interested to hear your answer on. When you handle communication with your clients and internally, what's your preferred method for keeping everyone organized and on the same page? Because you're obviously disseminating a lot of information and you're also, you know, you're the keeper of all of it.

We use various software for keeping either, you know, spreadsheets that we've utilized, the password management that we have anything for internally and externally. So we use SharePoint, you know, for a lot of our information. Slack a lot, because even our clients use Slack. Some of them use it pretty heavily, some use it very infrequently. We internally use it. So use that one password so that, that we can put all our passwords in one spot and makes it easier in case we have to backfill somebody, just in case somebody was like out sick and we have to fill in for them.

It's always interesting to hear about, like, what's coming up or what people are just like, nope, this is our thing.

We're very individualized because it's not like we have a team of assistants working with one client. It's one person. So it's more like what the client is using. And so outside of making sure that we have things in place for coverage or transition, because every once in a while we do transition, it's all individualized. So it's on their space. The everyday stuff that we work on is core. So it's correspondence, it's calendaring, which goes along with the correspondence. Right. It's travel, it's expense reports. And sometimes we do deal with some contract management stuff and helping to organize that for early stage ones especially so that they're prepped and ready and a little bit more organized when they have to start doing their data realm more.

When you bring up early stage. And I know that your model is super cool because, like, people can, you know, work month to month, they can call you and when they need you. But when is it like the ideal time? Like, when are you like, yes, you brought me in at the perfect time. Is there a perfect time? Do you have like an ideal client that, you know, they're super early stage or is it more mid stage or are you agnostic?

So we have clients that need various different things. So I have one client who is pretty well established and they're actually a public company now, but they only utilize us for doing the board directors meetings because they're pretty slim in what they do. We've got others that are only, you know, a handful. Maybe they've got three, four, maybe five at most, actual staff. The rest of them are consultants. Right? Just like, kind of like we are. And we just the occasional, oh, we need to schedule some heavy investor meetings. Can you deal with that? I would say as soon as you're starting to deal with anything that's slightly complicated, rather than just doing one on ones, it's probably a good, good idea to start involving us. As I said, we have clients that are only five hours and then we've got some steady Eddies that do between 10 and 15 hours. And as you get used to us, then you start realizing, oh well, we can ask you to do this and this and this and then we grow with you. And it's amazing to think of how long we can stay with a firm as they continue to grow until they fully realize that they a full time person. And it's usually longer than they think.

Even then I feel like since you are so flexible in your model, once they have their full time person staying on to be that flex, that overflow, okay, it is JP Morgan season or that person wants to go on vacation and you know, being able to have that steady knowledge base, that coverage, if you are that flexible, why ever wind down with you? Why not just continue on?

We have one or two of those that have done that. Usually they just say we're going to stop it, but we know we can go back to you because you have, we have history with you and we can just jump right in. But we can jump right in with almost anybody though, because on the core of it, the EA work is consistent no matter what company it is. It's just, you know, the little nuances here and there are a little different.

I just find it so hard to believe, Ann and Karina, that you guys didn't build your companies at the same time while knowing each other because it's sort of like you both built the same model and two different functions. There's a lot of similarity. It's needed.

A lot of our clients are really struggling right now because they don't have funding to hire. And so, you know, we've been helping to get really lean in those cases, get really scrappy and think about, okay, well you don't need a full time hire for this role. So that's sort of, that was part of the impetus of starting this podcast is thinking about, hey, there's a lot more ways to build biotech than maybe you've even known about. And it came from, to your point, knowing some of these robust ecosystems where they did give a lot of support to baby biotechs in the different business verticals. And then when we work with clients that don't have that support, it is so obvious they really need it. And so I'm really excited to have this conversation because it's yet another thing that we can offer to our clients and say, hey, you don't need yet to hire a full time ea, but.

You do need an ea. I agree. And we think of the things that they may not have thought of and you know, we have a list of providers just like you do that they ask me like hey, especially when it comes to like it or you know, what happens if they can't always ask us to do the travel. Do you have any travel agency suggestions on who to go with? And you know, we have those is, you know, all, all those sorts of things that I, I'm, you probably have as well, you know, so that if it comes up you're like I know exactly who you should work within the budget that they're looking for and the, you know, the time constraints.

So yeah, that kind of brings me to my next question. When you think about the strategy that you provide, it sounds like more than just doing the work, you also are able to be a resource to your clients. What other things do you kind of spitball with them as they're growing? Are there areas where you step in and you say oh, I've seen a company do xyz, yeah.

So it all depends on whether or not they have something in an operations mode, administrative mode, on board or consultant. And even then, even if they do, they usually ask me if I have any suggestions because anybody who's worked with somebody who's a pretty seasoned EA knows that they've done all that operation stuff, whether it be an office move, obtaining like office equipment or IT equipment or working with IT firms or any of that. So that when they come to me they get to a certain size and they realize that they can't rely on Joe who is a lower level person who is pretending to be IT because like they don't want to hire some an IT firm. Then I can provide them a couple of, of options. For instance, you know, one that's meant for small businesses who does work with biotech so that they're used to that they're very flexible versus some of the bigger ones who, they're great. They obviously know the system and have worked with lots of companies so they've streamlined things. But it's more of, I don't want to say it badly but it could be more like my way, the highway kind of mentality and depending on how the biotech is that may be good or bad for them. So they have choices and I can provide them with some options.

Yeah, we've certainly seen that my way or the highway with a few IT.

Firms, they don't know where to go because that's the other thing. In this fractional space, a lot of people realize that when we need somebody fractionally right, but they don't even know where to go to get those resources.

Well, we happen to have a downloadable guide on our website that we're always building out. So we'll be sure that you're in there, but you should take a look and if there's anyone we missed, we'd love to add them. We don't, for instance, have any travel agencies on there. That's not something that in our recruiting space we've actually been asked to do since before the pandemic. So prior to the pandemic we did occasionally, you know, organize travel for a candidate to come on site. But it's been a long time. They're, you know, companies are, are now comfortable doing zoom hiring.

Yeah. So it's interesting. And with that specific thing, some people think, well, we'll just book it and I'll just have the assistant book it. And nine out of ten times that sometimes can be perfectly fine. But if it's a complicated trip or an international trip or you think there's going to be problems with that trip, using a travel agent in that aspect is actually better because usually they have 24 hour lines you can call. Because what happens if you're, you know, you're flying into Europe and there's a problem with the flight, but yet it's the middle of the night here, I'm not necessarily going to wake up because it's not like we offer, we don't really offer 24 hours, you know, concierge service. But you know, I'm not going to wake up at 3am to jump on online to fix it. If it happened during the day, during business hours, of course I would do that. But you don't want to leave them stranded. So sometimes using a travel agent is helpful for that.

And that's a very specific example. Has that happened?

A lot of us like doing the booking ourselves because we enjoy it. Right. But you have to think about it. If it's a simple trip and there's, you think there's going to be no complications, sure you're going to do that. If it's complicated, totally use a travel agent because sometimes, obviously they can fix things. But most people forget that travel agents can get discounts that you can't normally get. So whether or not it's a higher end hotel that your executive wants to see stay at but you can't. It's super expensive just getting it off of the website. And they don't want to do Hotels.com or Expedia because those third party services can cause issues. Sometimes a travel agent is a good resource because they can get the discounts.

Hey there, just a quick break. I wanted to let you know that if you're listening to this podcast because you are exploring careers in biotech, which it turns out quite a few of our listeners actually are, you might be interested in the Biotech Career Coach podcast. It is brought to you by our sister company, the Collaboratory Career Hub, which is our career career development community. If you would like actionable tips on job seeking and career development, that is the place for you. It is a companion podcast to our Career Coach column that we write monthly in Biospace, but we go a little more in depth and sometimes we have special workshops and all of that good stuff. So if that sounds interesting, click the link in the show notes or search for the Biotech Career Coach on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts back to the show.

I'm really interested too how you're seeing AI impact your clients, if at all. Is anyone adopting any sort of AI? Have you adopted any sort of AI to help streamline things, sort of like travel? But I don't know, there's so many things happening out there that I can't even envision what you're seeing on your end.

That's funny because I think a few of our clients actually they are doing AI ML for the science side. But. But that aside, it's interesting. We've been fielding some searches on apps that help as an assistant. We've been looking into them. Our model is unique obviously because we're working with multiple clients, so it's not as if I'm working for Ann Arbor Consulting and looking at just for Ann Arbor Consulting. It's obviously use for our clients, so we have to make sure that confidentiality is in there, you know, and how they integrate. Especially for ChatGPT, we have some restrictions in our own firm because of all of the bad press that they've received so far. We actually tell our assistants that they aren't to use it unless the client specifies it. Only because I don't want anybody getting into trouble for something that, you know, they've used it for and it's incorrect. Right? But I do know that as an assistant space they have been talking about finding ways to make it a lot easier where it's Looking at multiple calendaring. So it's a little bit more than just using Doodle Poll, which I'm sure most people have heard by now if they've had to do meetings a little bit more robust in that. But the question is, how does it integrate with other people's calendars, both outside the firm and how do you deal with the confidentiality and where does stuff get saved? It's definitely going in that direction and we definitely want to start using it. But I don't think it'll ever, ever negate the human aspect of how we deal things. Because that's been a lot in the news lately about assistance is, you know, oh, you know, like Calendly, for instance, you don't need an assistant because we have Calendly. Well, somebody still has to act as the assistant on Calendly. You know, you send the person a link and then they still to go digging and searching to see what works. And does it work very well with multiple meetings and all this other stuff?

I think there's also something else too. When you're dealing with things, particularly like travel and all the many things, many of which are very confidential that you handle, there's something to having a person there for even like the emotional support side of things, right. If something's going off the rails, you know, you've got a person. If you really need to run an idea by someone, you've got a person. Like, Calendly is great. Again, I still have to send the email that sends the link and if something goes wrong, I can't get into the back end of Cal and fix it. Whereas, like, if someone could just be like, oh, I'll just email them and I'll handle this situation. There's something. There's a huge element of just having that support and feeling like you have a team with you rather than just fully relying on, you know, software. I think that really means a lot to people. People love connection is basically what it comes down to.

The interesting thing with that is that the more things get easier and complicated at the same time, you still have to troubleshoot that. So it means that the assistant actually has to be pretty technically staffy and knowledgeable. So, you know, making sure that they have all that background so that they can figure it out. Because for all those aspects, usually if you have an assistant, they're the first line of defense, even before it is called.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm driving at. It's knowing someone's in your corner. And I think, you know, yes, you have to be tech savvy and all that, you also have to be financially savvy because we keep a really close eye on how many systems we're looking at and paying for. And, you know, it's so easy to be like, oh, this sounds cool. Subscribe to this. Oh, it's one month here, one month here. And then part of what I do is sit down and look at all the systems we have and say, do we even need these anymore? Are these redundant? Are these a security risk? Because the more systems you have, the more security risk you have. So, you know, someone does have to manage that and stay on top of all of the subscriptions. And I think that's where you see, like, you need a person on the ground. No software systems doing that for you.

I agree. At least not yet.

Yeah. In the recruiting space, we're seeing a lot of really interesting stuff with AI for sourcing and outreach for candidates. And there's part of, part of my job at the moment is to stay on top of that because we need to make sure we're cutting edge and we're doing all the things that our clients would expect us to be doing to cut costs and to speed up processes while staying safe, while staying legally compliant. Because we're also seeing that, I think just New York now, but other states are following suit, have legislation on the books about using AI in hiring. So I'm sure that. Well, more to come on that. It's every day I have multiple Google alerts so that I know what is coming down the pipe for recruiting. And I'm sure that that's, you know, in your space too. There's a lot to consider there.

Yeah, I mean, on a side note, I mean, obviously you know this, but AI is built on, you know, obviously it's. It's still built by people and their biases or unconscious bias. It's more than they think it. So that's Obviously like with ChatGPT, what got them in trouble is a little bit of the bias going on there. And I think they found that with some of the, the AI software for, for recruiting is that there was a little bit of bias. Yeah.

So what happened there was really interesting. It's built by people, but then it's also trained by data. And who decides what data it trains on? It's not conscious. It doesn't know to pick through data and think, okay, why would this data set not be totally unbiased? And so some of those early headlines were that some companies had an early start at using the OpenAI system way before we knew it as ChatGPT. And they started to build AI and similar tools into their databases. And these companies were really big companies with large databases, but they also attracted particular demographics. For years and years and years that applied to these jobs. And so an engineer is a white male. That is what their database told it because that was the skew. And so it's so fascinating. So now that, that is, now that we know that it's easier to train on better data sets because it's garbage in, garbage out, just like data analysis for the entire history of the world. We just did it much faster and much larger this time in terms of.

Using it for our purposes. I'd rather wait. Think of it like an update to any like Microsoft software. You know, you get the people who want it right away and. Or the phone, right? Think of the iPhone updates, right? They want it right away with all the new things, whether or not there's bugs or not. And then you have the people who wait until the very end who should have. But I like to be somewhere in the middle. I want to vet it a little bit more so that we don't have as many hiccups. But I also don't want to be the tail end of it to find out that we're one of the last people to use it.

If someone's thinking about working with you as a consulting firm or they're thinking about making an in house hire, what do they need to consider between those two things? Like is there something that you know, differentiates a consulting firm doing EA work or just hiring a full time ea?

So cost savings wise, if you're not going to be actually having somebody truly do 30 or more hours of actual work, it probably makes more sense to hire somebody like us because of all the other extra costs that are associated with hiring somebody full time. But not every executive is savvy about this because I remember when I first started doing this and I would say what our hourly rate is and just sort of like a, a law firm. We booked to the closest 15 minutes, right? And they see it and they're like, oh my God. If I multiplied that by 40 hours and this is what it would have cost if I hired somebody full time. I'm like, but you wouldn't, you wouldn't do that. But the team that I have are annelper consulting staff. So I actually pay for all of that stuff. Then the client doesn't have to worry about. They don't have to pay for the taxes, they don't have to pay for the benefits. You know, whether or not it's health or Dental or 401k or training. Unless it's specific. Specific to them only, you know, that's what we provide and that's all mixed in to the rate and so they don't have to worry about that. So it's actually much more cost effective for them to use us than it would be for them to hire. The only time that it would make sense, obviously as I said, is if it's going to be at least 30 hours or more and especially if they're going to be in person. Yes. Because we're not going to be there in person. Right. But usually the, the, the core is 30 hours or more and we've transitioned a few, few companies once they've hit that mark and I'm very proud to say, and I tell them congrats because obviously that means they've done enough work.

Well, that means you've done your job so well too. Right. Because you've helped them scale and grow. So that's. It is a mark of success the whole way around.

Yeah, that's how we look at it too. Eventually we hire replacements and that just means that we did a good job and everyone wins. Sort of along those lines. The other big cost savings that I as also a W2 employer see are the vacation time too. And people don't think about that. Especially I bet, in your space because when your EA goes on vacation it feels really jarring. That is a big problem if you are used to the support, but with your team that's covered, which is really nice as well.

Exactly. So unlike with a micro company or individual consultant, they get the backup from us. So they take a week or two week vacation. We ask them do you want fill in? And we'll fill them in and depending on what the client is, we'll determine on who should fill in because we all have our strengths.

I think what you do is so valuable because it is. There is so much going on behind the scenes that does not need to be and should not be done by the executives because they need to keep their eye on the prize and they need to be building their biotech and not worrying about all of the things that actually have to be done to build that biotech. So you just are such a facilitator and I think from as a recruiter who did used to go on site, my main counterparts were the EAs. And it is just such an amazing role that it's just touches every part of the company and I don't think enough people realize that especially when they're in a small company, you see it more when they're, you're in the bigger companies and you're seeing, you know, the EA staff is sort of circulating and just handling all the things. But those small companies, you just provide such a valuable service. It's a little taste of that. What's, what's to come and what can.

You facilitate and can I tag in something on that one?

Because you made me think of something.

Anyone who's listening to this who was like, wow, this sounds like a career I'd be really good at. I love organization, I love calendar management. I think this would be really cool. We talked about your career path and.

It'S a little windy.

And my career path has also been windy. But looking back, are there things you would tell someone like, hey, this would be the experience I would specifically go after. These would be the skills I'd start really building because I think that's really, really valuable. If someone wants to be an executive ea, where would they even get that experience?

I don't want to advocate constantly moving around, but I definitely think because each company has a different culture, so and each company is unique between small and large, requiring different things. So that's important. Truly, truly, truly taking advantage of any trainings and encouraging them to speak up to their managers to ask for that training. Because most companies tend to forget, unfortunately, you know, that assistants still also need the training and to, to network. The nature of the assistant position is a very siloed, very kind of lonely position. Even if you're in a larger company and yet you're expected to know all this information and the only way to know all this information is actually to go out there. So yeah, I'm an introvert. So that is, even though it's kind of tough for me to do that, I still force myself to do it. So in order to know the right resources for event planning, I actually go to event planning conferences, to networking because there's a couple of organizations, especially in the Boston community that I'm a part of. So I'm part of that even to a certain extent. A lot of EAs tend to do some of the lower level HR related stuff. Right. So there are some HR related things that they could do and the same thing for operations. So you know, getting out there and learning about that stuff is very important. And if they need somebody to mentor, definitely, you know, find finding somebody who they can mentor and chat to and who can lead them in the right direction.

That's great advice. Yeah. I was going to say there's a lot of crossover between HR and ea. So I've seen people go both directions and enjoy, you know, getting a taste of both and then saying, okay, this is my career path. I love hr. I'm going to stay there, or I love assistant. I'm going to go all the way to, you know, ea. I want to be the EA to the CEO and manage all of the things. And that's not for everyone. And so it's nice to get the taste. And it actually is something we see people move around quite a lot in between.

I remember when I was figuring out what I. If I wanted to go in this direction, and I had a friend who is an HR consultant, and she says, oh, my God, you should totally go into HR because you already know a whole bunch of stuff. You'd be great at going that direction. So I. To your point? Yeah, they get pulled in all those different either way, and they go back and forth.

Same with operations, too, though. You see a lot of people shift into an operations role because for exactly what you said. And I did work as an EA for a while, and what did I do? I planned an office move. We did the real estate thing. You get the furniture. You. You do everything. You end up just being pulled into every last little thing. And so I think it's such a great career path because it allows you to pursue different interests. Right. You could do a little hr. And then to your point, maybe you work for another company and that's not their primary concern and you do something else. I really love your model of, you know, we're here when you need us for the time you need us, because it's another thing where it's a very scalable function. And I think that's fantastic.

All right, so you are firmly ensconced in your current company. What do you see as next for you? Are you growing it bigger? Are you kind of staying where you are? What do you hope for?

I have an executive coach that I've had for a couple years, and, you know, she asked me this every once in a while just so I can get back, you know, on the right path and stuff. And I've always just chose to let this company grow organically as needed. Like, this year was a bit more networking. Next year in the immediate is. We call it the year of the employee. Right. So our goal is to actually get all of us together in one place next year for a little, little retreat, because it's very important because of the nature that we are virtual. Right. But for longer term, I do consider seeing it growing. The last couple years, we've grown it by two or three people every year. So it's probably going to stay that way. But it also depends on the market. Right. So everybody seems to think that when people start laying off and we've helped support some people who've companies that have been, you know, laid off assistants, does that automatically mean that they're going to gear towards us? Not necessarily. They might find a way to, to have that old assistant work as a consultant individually. So it may not grab us, but we are that resource. And just getting us our name out there should have lead more people to say, oh, let's contact them. Right. So yeah, I do see it growing. Personally, it means that as it gets bigger, I'm going to work less and less with clients. Right. I only work with 3, 4 at most. Everybody else, all the other ones are with the other admins on the team. And I only take specific kinds. Now, if not at all, it always goes to somebody else. So if I'm interviewing with somebody, a client, they're not going to get me because I don't have the time. Because just like the other entrepreneurs and the founders that you meet up with, I'm now also now ensconced with all the same startup stuff and the same problems that I actually tell them that they need be. I have to find that I have to start taking my own advice.

Well, Ann, what is your favorite fiction or nonfiction book that you think everybody should read?

It's funny. So I'm a big fantasy and science fiction fan, so most of them I probably wouldn't want to name Light of Day, but if I had to pick one, it would probably be the Outlander. Outlander series, you know, that was made into the Star series. I've read them since they came out like 20 years ago. So, you know, I've been a longtime fan. So for fiction, that would be it. But for non fiction, I mean, outside of reading journals and you know, in the publications, I do have some other books, but the latest one, and you guys are going to laugh. So it's the. The Birds of Massachusetts is a field guy because I live right outside a wooded area, like a really nice nature preserve area. So I'm constantly like, when I have a few minutes and I need to decompress, I go look up, oh, what bird is that?

And I used to live in Florida and I literally have Florida birds sitting right behind me and Massachusetts is up on my Desk because I lived in Massachusetts and I need to get a New Hampshire one. I just realized, I mean, I'm not going to see any of these birds up here. I can promise you it's snowing and the completely wrong climate, but I still have it because you never know.

So I feel you. No one's going to really want to see, you know, the HR guide to startups that, you know, that I have, that I gave to one of my employees or, you know, women's leadership stuff. I'm like, I mean, I have tons of those. And I'm like, I looked at it last night when I was prepping. I'm like, what book should I recommend? And I saw this. I'm like, nope, you know what? If I'm going to be real, that is probably the last nonfiction book that I read. So, you know, as somebody who's super, super busy, you know, you have to decompress and so. And working from home, it doesn't mean I can get out very often, but I have the woods and I, you know, just take a minute. I'm like, oh, let's listen to the bird. And I'm like, what bird is that? So, you know, take your mind off of work to go back to work.

Very cool. I love that we have a whole list on our website of all the books that have been recommended, and I'm absolutely adding that on there.

So, Ann, where can everyone find you and contact you if they want to learn more about you or your company?

Sure.

So we're on LinkedIn, so you could always look up Ann Albrecht Consulting. We have a website, annalbrechtconsulting.com or you can, you know, certainly drop me a line. It's really easy. It's annalbrecht consulting.com.

Perfect. We'll link all of that in the show. Notes that people can click right through of their on their podcast app. But it has been such a pleasure and I really hope people have learned a little bit about this, about all the inner workings, the things they maybe didn't think about building a biotech, and maybe some career paths as well.

Yeah, great. Thank you so much for having me.

It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on.

Building Biotechs is brought to you by Recruitomics Consulting. You can find Building Biotechs in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else podcasts are found. Make sure to click subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes, and join our mailing list for a weekly dose of biotech news and a podcast over overview. And if you need to install a recruitment engine that saves time and money for your growing company, reach out for a free strategy session. I'm always happy to share my expertise and show you techniques to simplify your hiring process and maximize returns. On behalf of the team here at Recruitomics Consulting, thanks for listening.