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Trusting the Captain of Your Ship – Your EA

Apr 10, 2024 | About Athena, Business, Delegation, Getting Started with an EA, Mental Health, Remote Work, Uncategorized

Gina celebrated a milestone birthday a couple of years ago and wanted to do something on her bucket list – a yacht trip around the beautiful Puget Sound area where she lives most of the year. How the heck do you plan something so fabulous? You turn to your EA, of course! 

Gina’s EA did all kinds of research that was new to both of them. They learned a ton about what it takes to charter a yacht and all the planning that goes around an epic week-long adventure at sea. 

“The trip was stunning in many ways, but what was most remarkable for me and surprised me the most, was our captain. I kept finding myself in awe of all that he had to do and handle, and how graceful and amazing he was in the process, with anything and everything that came up. As I watched him work for us each day, I thought of all of the high-caliber executive assistants out there. 

I made some requests around the itinerary, as there were a few key places that I wanted to visit. But I had no idea what I was really asking for until I watched it play out. I didn’t know that I was asking to go places where the timing of the current and the tides would be difficult! 

I didn’t know the depth of the Swinomish Channel could be an issue. I just wanted to go to La Conner (quaint town on a channel of water, which I will never look at the same again!).

I didn’t know there were swirling currents and tricky tides at Deception Pass. I just wanted to go under the Deception Pass bridge. 

In many cases I did not know what I was asking for, and day by day as I watched it play out, I was amazed and frankly almost moved to tears by the situation. What situation? The situation where every day this captain (Captain Dick was his name) thought through so many details (tides, currents, weather, moorage, fuel, places to eat, etc.) all with a smile on his face and consistently tending to the happiness of the guests on board. Walking past me while he was going from the bow up to the fly bridge (yep, I have boat lingo now) he would pause and say, “Are you having a nice birthday Gina?”

The picture of the paddling duck feet underwater comes to mind. Gliding on top. Rapid kicking under water. Much like the life of a high-caliber executive assistant. 

Captain Dick was always striving to get the best for us. The best what? (Again, things I would never have thought of.) The best moorage slip at a very popular resort Marina. The best crab. (He caught us five large Dungeness crab! What?!) Anchoring in the best cove to watch the sun set and to watch the big glowing full moon rise in the sky. (Like I said, moved to tears at times by this man’s desire for excellence for his guests and clients.)

Of course, things never went 100% according to plan, and yet he pivoted, adapted, and adjusted with grace and calm. And continued to ask, “Are you having a nice birthday Gina?” I was amazed!”

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Your Time and Your Health

Feb 27, 2024 | About Athena, Delegation, Mental Health, Productivity, Uncategorized

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

– Henry David Thoreau

We all know that rest and sleep allow our body and mind to recover, rejuvenate and heal. Studies have shown how important this is. Experts have published articles and papers about the increased levels of productivity and satisfaction with one’s work when you allow yourself to take brain breaks throughout the day. People who do high intensity activities for their workouts know the importance of stretching and recovery time. Yet with all of this knowledge few people seem to schedule and honor times in their calendar for rejuvenating their mind or their body, their mental or emotional wellness.  The more you demand of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally, the more you need to refuel and rejuvenate those parts of you.

Great Executive Assistants design a life for their executive that is the kind of life that a person would want to wake up and live! Left to our own devices as business owners and executives we will be awful with ourselves. We overbook ourselves. We try to keep squeezing one more thing into the day. But when somebody else, who has our best interests in mind, goes about designing our schedule, they do a much better job! Sometimes your assistant is the only person who knows or cares that you leave the office at a decent hour.

Rejuvenate yourself. Get yourself fed. The world needs more people like you! The world does not need the exhausted version of you. You at your best, is a gift to the world! If you can’t trust yourself to schedule and honor living a balanced life (however you define that for you), then turn it over to somebody who will support you in that. If you think a more balanced life is truly not possible for you, we should talk.

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Learning and Growing Together

Feb 15, 2024 | About Athena, Accountability, Business, Delegation, Getting Started with an EA, Mental Health, Uncategorized

A couple weeks ago we had our Athena Leadership retreat. This happens a couple times a year with me and our two managers, Jennifer and Dorian. We met together right back where we were last January, in Pismo Beach, California. This is one of my happy places. It’s on the central coast of California. It’s never too hot and never too cold there. (However, as I write this today, it is getting pummeled with rain and wind).

Dorian drove up from LA and Jennifer flew from Peoria, IL. Jennifer had one of those travel days that we’ve all had at one point, where one delayed flight, leads to an enormous layover somewhere, and then you reconfigure and reconfigure your itinerary until you end up getting as close as you can to where you’re going, and then say “Screw it! I’ll get a driver service to get me the rest of the way.” So, at midnight after being awake for 20 hours, she arrived. And when she was good and ready to wake up the next morning, we began.

The retreat was a time for being open, curious and audacious. Thinking big thoughts and creating big ideas without having to know how we will achieve them. Some conversations were right on the agenda. Some topics bubbled up while we were soaking in a hot tub or gnawing on barbecue for dinner.

If I think about my experience of being together with the two of them, living together with them for a few days . . . Well, if I think about it too much I will cry. They are bold and inspiring, and some of the greatest human beings I have ever known. Getting to spend time in person with them is a real treat.

We covered a lot of ground, from short term action plans to long-term dreams. But I was curious, now a couple weeks later, what were the highlights for them? We talked about this after everyone returned to their homes and families. Needless to say, I was thrilled with their take on the weekend:

Creating 2024 Together: The opportunity to collectively envision and shape the future of the company for the upcoming year served as a powerful catalyst for inspiration and motivation. With the groundwork laid in 2023, the retreat provided a blank canvas for creativity and innovation.

Magic in the Air: The act of sitting together and looking “eyeball to eyeball,” yielded a deep level of connection and commitment.

Safe Space and Trust: Being in a safe space with supportive colleagues underscored the importance of psychological safety in fostering creativity and collaboration. This trust gave us the freedom to express ourselves without fear of judgment and led to more authentic and meaningful contributions.

Partnership and Support: We know we have the full support of each other. Coming together and sharing bold ideas can be daunting, but feeling supported in expressing them is safe and validating. We understood that even if some ideas didn’t immediately resonate, they might contribute to future innovations. No bad ideas!

Culture of Winning: We are creating a space together and with the entire Athena Executive Services team that ensures success is not a zero-sum game, but rather a collective endeavor where each individual’s achievements contribute to the overall success of the company.

Diverse Approaches to Rejuvenation: Our discussion around team members’ diverse rejuvenation needs highlighted the importance of accommodating individual preferences for recharging and self-care. Not everyone recharges in the same way!

Our Responsibility as Managers: We really got into the significant impact a manager has on the lives of team members, clients, and their respective circles. Beyond direct interactions with team members and clients, we hold a broader responsibility for fostering an environment where fulfillment and success are prioritized.

Looking ahead to 2024, I asked Dorian and Jennifer who they were going to be in 2024 that stands on the shoulders of who they were in 2023?

They each had answers that were uniquely their own which I will hold to myself. But I will say that they are both looking to tackle 2024 with bold confidence! Our intention as a leadership team is clear: to empower and uplift team members, foster a culture where every team member feels valued, supported, and integral to the company’s success, and create a dynamic environment where the Athena team and our fabulous clients thrive!

It was so interesting for me to learn what the managers got from the retreat, and I wanted to share these highlights with all of you, because I think it paints a picture of what it’s like behind the curtain at our firm.

– Gina Cotner, CEO, Athena Executive Services

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Interested in learning more about hiring your own Virtual Executive Assistant? Click here to schedule a free consultation with us.

 

 

 

 

Delegating: Take the Risk and Be Surprised

Feb 8, 2024 | About Athena, Business, Delegation, Financial Advisor, Productivity

I have been doing a lot of podcast interviews lately. (Thank you, Your Expert Guest.) It has given me the opportunity to speak to many different audiences and communities, from architects to bookkeepers, to women lawyers and moms running businesses. I particularly like the podcasts with spicy titles like one I did last year, “Permission to Kick Ass”.

I usually am asked for our “origin story”, or “how Athena came to be” and frankly that is a fun story that makes me smile every time I share it! Then the Podcaster and I usually dive into conversations around the VA industry. What all is out there? What is there to choose from?

We explore some of the challenges people deal with in deciding whether or not to hire a VA, and I am very frank and transparent in my answers. 

On a recent podcast I dove a little deeper into the topic of delegation. I wanted to start to share about where I found access to real freedom in my life. By freedom, I mean more time for me to do the things I most enjoy in life, or more time to spend where I am needed most, or in the areas that are the highest and best use of me and my talents. Previously I had been talking about how to delegate, all while saying to myself in my head, “Ya, this is good. People should delegate stuff and get things off their plate, but what they really need to do is this.

So, what is the this that I think is the big deal? It involves delegating for sure, but this is graduate level delegation. It can be discovered in the kind of delegating and partnership that you find with someone that is beyond giving them tasks and projects to do. Beyond making sure invoices go out on time (and yet, that better happen!), beyond just regular updates to your CRM and booking your travel.

I was being interviewed by Davina Frederick of Wealthy Woman Lawyer and I started talking about delegating thinking. I thought to myself, “Well, let’s just go there and see if I can start to speak somewhat intelligently about this.” Again, this is where I think the real freedom lies.

Yes, the graduate level delegation is delegating thinking. Consider saying to your assistant (or someone who reports to you) something like:

“Go think about this please.”
“Go research this and tell me what you think and what questions you have.”
“What questions should I have?”

The other graduate level delegation skill is to delegate an entire process or project, knowing that your assistant or whomever is working for you, doesn’t know much about the topic. And perhaps neither do you! Rather than me doing the initial research to figure something out and then delegating smaller pieces and parts of the next steps, I give the entire project to someone. After I explain what I think I want and what I’m after (having done very little research myself) I then say, “This project is yours. I know you’ve never done this before, and neither have I. No problem. You please dive in. Lead the charge. Do some initial research. Let me know what you learn, what you think, what you see next steps might be and then let’s talk.”

After this, the project is theirs. It belongs to them. Now I work for them. Now I work for my assistant. My job is now to be a useful, valuable, responsive team player.

Once they get me educated on the basics about a topic (such as possible new payroll software, how to self-publish a book, or how to charter a yacht for a week, or different options available around the United States for personal wellness retreats, or any number of things I have wanted or needed to do and know nothing about), now I have more useful questions and concerns and ideas. They also need answers from me. So, I drive up more questions. I also give them answers to what I can and then off they go to continue managing and driving the project. The project is again theirs. I’m there to help them win at what they are doing, rather than them here to help me get what I want done.

I hope you’ll now experiment with delegating thinking or, delegating whole projects and systems that “they” can then own while you become the support staff.

This whole idea does not have as much to do with the caliber of assistant that you have, as you might think it does. Some of you are thinking, “Well yeah, if I had a more senior person to delegate to, someone with more business knowledge and acumen, I might be able to do that.” Au contraire.

When you delegate more than you think someone can handle, or more than you think they are equipped to do, you will find out what they really are capable of! They may not be able to do 100% of what you have asked, but you may find that they can accomplish 90% and previously you would have bet they could only do 70%, but you got surprised while discovering that they are more capable than you thought.

So… go experiment…and get surprised!

– Gina Cotner, CEO, Athena Executive Services

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Interested in learning more about hiring your own Virtual Executive Assistant? Click here to schedule a free consultation with us.

 

 

 

 

What Does an Assistant Really Want to Do?

Jan 30, 2024 | About Athena, Accountability, Business, Delegation, Getting Started with an EA, Productivity, Remote Work

What FEEDS a high-caliber Executive Assistant? 

They want to be of Service to you!

You may think to yourself, “Really, they want to do this stuff that I absolutely do not want to do?” Yes, they do. “Really, they want to book my airline tickets and send out birthday cards? They want to help me iron out this issue with payroll, and look into better software to use for project management?” Yes, they do.

Not only do they want to do most all of those tasks and projects that you would find mind-numbing, annoying or soul-sucking, they want to do them with Excellence! They are after Excellence, I promise you. Nothing empowers an assistant more than knowing they “crushed it”!

What feeds them is you investing in them. This is, you helping them help you. You may think, “If I have to help them, then why am I even giving them this task to do?” Why? Because the direction and support you give them this week, will be the foundation for what they do next week. Next week you’ll feed them with a little more direction and support, and it will build on what they received last week. This week they will have new questions. Smarter and wiser questions.

Each week you’ll feed your assistant a little more direction and support. Then, exponentially, week by week they will become more and more valuable. Next month you will be able to say three sentences to them, and that task will get done, and it will get done the way you want. Why? Because of how well you invested in them last month.

Help them help you!

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Interested in learning more about hiring your own Virtual Executive Assistant? Click here to schedule a free consultation with us.