(Straight from your EAs themselves)

We asked our EAs what makes a client great to work with. So, if you’ve ever wondered how to get the most out of your EA partnership (and make life easier for both of you), here’s your cheat sheet.

No one likes to talk about what happens when things go wrong. A crisis, a sudden resignation, a family emergency, a market shake-up, whatever it is, your business is either ready for it, or it’s not.

Recently, we had one of those moments. The kind that tests your systems, your culture, and your people all at once. And here’s what we learned:

Famous last words of a thousand overwhelmed founders.

It starts innocently enough. A quick reply here. A calendar tweak there. Maybe a follow-up email you meant to delegate, but… it’ll only take a sec, right?

If time is money – and it is – sales processes sure do waste a lot of it.

According to Salesforce, the average rep spends just 28% of the day on sales activities like prospecting and interacting with customers.

Where does the other 72% go? Most of it goes to administrative tasks like planning, generating proposals and entering data in the CRM.

Consider a high-value sales rep’s salary – that’s a fair bit of dosh for data entry. Not to mention the cost of missed revenue opportunities.

One study estimated companies may lose as much as 38% of potential revenue every quarter to inefficiencies in their sales process.

Taken all together, it’s pretty clear the fastest way to fatten up the bottom line is to slim down reps’ to-do lists.

So, you’ve decided to work with an Executive Assistant—awesome! As we always say, you don’t need much to get started. Just a good attitude, a rough idea of what you want to delegate, and your big boy pants so you can actually put some trust in this new stranger suddenly managing your life.

But if you want to turn that EA relationship into a legendary one—think cheese paired with wine—it’s going to take a bit more than that…

While employees spend the holidays relaxed and festive, many business owners are secretly fretting over whether they crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s before the end-of-year close.

All you want to do is unwind, sip some cocoa and give your family your undivided attention. But you can’t keep your mind from wandering back to work.

Maybe you missed a few goals this year, and you’re worried next year will bring more of the same. Maybe it was a year of growth, and you’re not sure if you’re set up to keep the momentum.

It’s critical to spend the weeks before break pulling your socks up, getting organised and planning ahead for a successful year.

Follow our end-of-year checklist so you can spend your break opening presents and decking the halls, not opening emails and making calls. Come back in January relaxed, recharged and ready to go.

Most people dislike debt collection. It can feel so icky. But you deserve to be paid! Here are some tips for getting the money you’re owed without feeling like you need a shower.

Well done – you listened to the experts, bunkered down and wrote a business strategy.

But don’t relax just yet.

Though organisations all over the world spend millions each year devising new strategies, Gartner says fewer than half actually execute on them.

You, my friend, are going to be in that elite group that executes – and succeeds. Because we are going to show you how.

Is the idea of a business strategy overblown? After all, there are loads of businesses out there chugging merrily along without one. Loads more have some vague ideas they like to call a strategy, but are really more like a wishlist.

So yeh, maybe flying by the seat of your pants can work – for a while.

You may be able to run a business without a strategy, but you can’t grow it. Sooner or later, you will hit a wall you can’t break through, and you’ll be stuck there spinning your wheels while the rest of your industry zooms on by.

You also won’t know how to build resilience or change course if you need to, making your business vulnerable to disruptions – like economic downturns, changing markets, alien invasions and whatever other scary thing pops up on your newsfeed.

OK, so a strategy might not feel necessary in your day-to-day. But it’s actually a pretty big deal if you want your business to have long-term security.

Loads of stressed-out executives out there have a sneaky suspicion a virtual executive assistant could make their lives so much easier. (Spoiler alert: they’re right.) But they don’t hire one because they’re not sure what the process is like or what they’d have an EA do.

At Zembr, we take the mystery out of the decision with a clearly documented process we call the Zembr Experience. Let’s walk through it with an imaginary business owner so you can see just how easy it can be to streamline your life.