An executive assistant needs to help in both business and private life. Their job is to provide an extra brain that helps you schedule your priorities, plan how you spend your time, and make sure you follow through.
The interesting part now with AI is that this second brain doesn’t have to be human. It’s definitely great if it is, because a human assistant is naturally more capable on the human side of things. But a lot of the work can also be handled by AI.
Breaking down complex tasks
The breakdown of complex tasks into smaller chunks is one of the most important elements when trying to come up with a proper automation solution. You need to be able to analyze your processes, and then within each process, figure out what the smaller parts are. Some of them will definitely be reusable and can be adjusted and optimized over time individually.
The real question is: how do you make this breakdown clear?
This is where it’s all about asking the right questions. If you have a problem to solve, the first thing I like to do as a consultant is ask a lot of questions. I really want to understand what it takes to execute a process, to work on it:
- What resources do you need?
- What external assets do you need?
- What programs do you need?
- Where is the process documented?
- Who is going to sign off?
- Who is going to provide the necessary input?
- Who needs to receive the next step?
Automating a business — especially a small or medium-sized business — requires a lot of efficient questioning, paired with the experience of what is possible and what things could look like in a partly automated world.
If you think you have a task that’s too complex to automate, reach out — I would love to try to break it down for you as a first step. Once we’ve broken it down, we can then decide whether it makes sense for you to go down this path.
What an AI executive assistant can actually do
Think about optimizing a schedule, handling prioritization, sending daily reports and updates, or setting reminders for special occasions. Mother’s Day is coming up? An executive assistant reminds you to organize a gift on time instead of leaving it to the last minute.
Even running on AI, an executive assistant can provide a lot of value — and it’s available 24/7.
Mine lives in a Telegram chat. It reads every meeting I have and makes sure I don’t forget any tasks I agreed to in those meetings. It can also quickly summarize the evolution of what was discussed across the last five meetings with a particular person. Things like that are incredibly helpful.
From reactive to proactive
It gets even more interesting when the AI assistant starts to act proactively.
In practice, this could mean it knows from my schedule that I haven’t had dedicated time with my kids for a few days. It might notice I haven’t worked out this week, but it also knows that staying fit and healthy is one of my goals. So instead of adding another work block, it asks me to prioritize fitness time.
Time management is probably the most important piece, but it goes beyond that. I can ask my assistant on the go to quickly send an email to a client asking if they’re free for lunch next Friday. The assistant sends the email: “Hey, I’m Gert’s assistant. Gert would love to take you out for lunch on Friday. Would this work?” Done.
This works because the assistant has access to my calendar, my meetings, and my Slack workspace. It might remind me that there’s still input from my end missing in a particular Slack channel. Or it might check ClickUp and see that I’ve been tagged in comments and confirm whether I already answered on Slack instead of in ClickUp.
There are so many ways an AI executive assistant can help a business owner reach their goals. It becomes something a lot of CEOs and founders might really want to look at. Ultimately, it’s about figuring out where you add the most value and making sure you do that more often and more consistently.
Family first, then everything else
I’m a father of two kids, and I have the priority set that I want to be a family-first entrepreneur. For me, that means arranging my work around the time when my family doesn’t need me. To achieve this, I need to be very strict with my schedule and make sure I have enough headspace to flip the switch and be fully present when I’m with my family.
My executive virtual assistant Eva had a rough first few weeks, but is now at the stage where things are getting noticeably easier and better.
Pairing this with voice notes and transcriptions — like I’m doing right now on my Plaud device — and having the assistant regularly ask about my priorities, how my family is doing, and what’s important for them creates an entire picture of what’s necessary to double down on working my priorities.
How to get started
Ideally, you base yours on a system that already has quite a few things figured out. There are SaaS products out there where you can pay a couple of hundred dollars a month and they run it for you. But they come with a lot of features you don’t need.
And based on my experience, they don’t come with one feature I absolutely want: taking care of my private life as well.
This is why I opted for building my own executive virtual assistant Eva — one that fits into my life, just like an in-person assistant would, that’s around whenever I need it.