Annie:
Hey there. Does the idea of booking car service for your executive or maybe an important client make you just a little bit nervous? If so, try using Savoya. When I use their car service, they did a fantastic job of keeping me informed with real time status updates via email and text notifications. And while they provide an amazing experience for your executive, the booking process and technology is geared towards you - the Executive Assistant. They have an easy to use travel management portal I use to book trips and easily manage them with passenger profiles that save your credit card information that may be different and frequent locations. Now we know itinerary changes are almost inevitable, so Savoya plans for it. Their client care and customer success teams take the burden off of you and find solutions to ensure your executives travel is seamless.
Annie:
No matter the circumstances. Whether you're booking in town or across the globe, the service is always consistent, meaning peace of mind and less stress, which we all know I'm a fan of. Mention me to the sales rep or click the link in the show notes for 20% off your first three trips. Welcome to the Whole Assistant Podcast. I'm your host, Annie Croner. I'm a former assistant who's passionate about our profession, and I'm also a certified coach who's invested in your success. You've come to the right place if you want to know what it looks like to stand in your power and achieve success as an assistant without overwhelm and burnout.
Annie:
Now on to today's episode. Hello. How are you today? I am doing very well. I'm really excited because today we are talking all about how to have a side hustle when you're an executive assistant. But before we get there, before we actually tackle that question and all the questions I've received around working as an executive assistant and running Whole Assistant simultaneously. Before I quit my full time executive assistant role, I just want to mention a couple of things. So I have started a new kind of segment on the podcast called Ask Annie anything and it is designed to answer your burning questions. So go down to the show notes.
Annie:
There you will find a link to a Google form. Please fill out the form and let me know how you want to be acknowledged on the podcast episode. If you want to remain anonymous, that's okay, but I would love to answer your questions, so please go to that form and ask me a question. I want to make this the most valuable podcast in our executive assistant space, and I'm super excited to answer any question you may have, and I do feel like that could benefit everyone. So that's what's really fun about this. So go fill out the ask any anything form, first and foremost. Second of all, on this April 24, 2024, I am hosting an admin day celebration and Savoya, it will be sponsoring it. Savoya car service.
Annie:
They are excellent. They've got a really great platform that they built for executive assistance. So please, please come. It's free. The link to register, the link to sign up for that is down in the show notes. This is just going to be a fun time of networking and prizes and just celebration. Often we don't get celebrated even on administrative professionals day. So.
Annie:
So this is our chance to come and celebrate with one another, to give ourselves a pat on the back and also to maybe win a prize. So please come and join us for that. It's always a good time. Everybody always walks away just feeling so much joy. I think what's so great about us is that we are so eager to help everyone around us and we can feel so siloed and this is a great opportunity to come and really celebrate one another and feel connected with one another. Nobody really understands the role of executive assistant or administrative professional like another executive assistant or administrative professional. So please join us again. That's going to be on Wednesday the 24th at 02:00 Central us time.
Annie:
So please, please come. And the link to sign up to get the link to join is in the show notes. Okay, today I'm going to be sharing a bit about what it looks like to have a side hustle. And maybe if you're interested in having a side hustle or have thought about a side hustle in the past, or maybe your role is a secondary passion and you want to do something else and you're just doing your role to pay the bills, or you're wanting more from your role, or there's like this creative piece that's missing for you. Whatever the reason is, we all have a variety of different reasons for wanting to run our own thing or do our own thing, I just thought I would address that today and I would share kind of my journey and how I did both for like four and a half years. So I started whole assistant, man, it's going to be six years ago this summer, and I ran whole assistant and worked as an executive assistant for four and a half years before I was finally able to set aside my full time role as an executive assistant and run whole assistant full time. Now, at the time, I never saw myself leaving my last executive. I really, really enjoyed the work I did for him.
Annie:
I really, really enjoyed his wife and his family, they were a lot of fun to work for. And I always said that he would be my last executive I ever supported, but I kind of said that tongue in cheek, thinking that I would never, was never actually going to leave the role. And so I started whole assistant. I did both simultaneously for a long time. And the question that I often got asked was like, how do you do it? Like, how do you actually run your business and support a full time, support an executive full time? And so I want to share kind of my tips and strategies for how I did that in the hopes that if you want to start a side hustle, if you've got a passion project that you're working on, which is kind of how my business started out, started out as like this passion project, and then it kind of evolved into more and kind more of grew, which is a lot of fun to witness and to be a part of and to grow that. But whether, whether it's that or you just have a curiosity or you just would like to make some extra dough, whatever it is, I'm going to share kind of how I did that. I, first of all, was very fortunate to have worked for a fantastic executive. He was an ER doctor who created an app and sold it and then now funded other startups.
Annie:
So I was working in venture capital, and he just didn't want to be in the office all day. He was totally happy to work and work hard, but he wanted a more integrated lifestyle with the rest of his life, so he wasn't in the office all day. He also had this background as an entrepreneur. So I think once I started whole assistant, we really connected on that level because he got the entrepreneurial journey. He knew what it was like to start something from scratch. And I think he always trusted that I had his best interest at heart, and I just had his trust all like across the board. So I pretty much was able to own and manage my time as I saw fit. Now, of course, the role was very demanding.
Annie:
Of course, there was a lot that I managed for him. There were just a lot of moving parts and pieces of this man's life and of his world. But I think the foundation for, or actually my reason why rather for starting whole assistant. And the success of that was that I really did have a fantastic and supportive executive. I could go into his office and tell him about my wins. I could go into his office and tell him about all these things that were going right with whole assistant. And I think we had a mutual admiration for each other's backgrounds as entrepreneurs. Like, I think that he saw that part in me and was really encouraging of that.
Annie:
So I I don't believe that you have to have an encouraging executive in order to have a successful side hustle. But for me, that was a true advantage because I was actually able to own my time because he was seldom ever in the office. So that's the first thing that really helped me in starting whole assistant and running it successfully while working a full time job. The second kind of thing that really helped me was I had to release perfection. I'll never forget in those early days doing trainings and really just outlining something and then going live. So I was asked to speak at a couple of different virtual conferences. I started my business in 2018, summer of 2018, and then, of course, in 2020, we were full on in COVID, and so everybody was doing webinars and masterclasses and that sort of thing. And so I was actually approached by a few different platforms to come and speak for their group.
Annie:
And so I would literally, like, put together an outline of what I wanted to talk about and then go. Like, I didn't put. I didn't have any bandwidth to put together a deck. I didn't have any bandwidth to practice what I was going to say ahead of time, other than to have my notes right in front of me. And in order to be able to do that, I had to release the perfection part of things. And as I have now been able to focus more on my business full time, I've actually been able to build out decks. I've actually been able to go back and really consider how I wanted the flow of any training that I do to actually look like how I wanted that to actually be now. But back then, I just didn't have any bandwidth to do any of that.
Annie:
So I really had to release perfection. I will say, like, in the last week's episode, I talked about messy growth, and this was totally a period of time of messy growth within my business, not being able to go back and fine tune things as much as I would have liked. But there's also kind of a beauty to that, right? There's also kind of this rawness and this authenticity that comes out whenever you release perfection and whenever you show up for yourselves and for others in that way. So it was a very beautiful time in the life of whole assistant and in my business. It was a growth time for me, for sure. And I was still developing all my thought leadership around different topics and that sort of thing. So it was kind of a cool time. And also I'm really glad now that I'm able to go back and kind of fine tune a bit better before I go talk to somebody's group.
Annie:
To be perfectly honest, the third thing that was really helpful or that I did that made my life so much easier, having this, like, side business and working full time as an executive assistant, was that I optimized my time management. Every minute of my day, every moment of my waking hours was optimized and maximized. I did not have the luxury of working suboptimally. I just did not have that luxury. So I discovered during that time that if I actually close out of my inbox, that it allows me the time and space to focus, and I'm able to get so much more done in less time. So I started closing out of my inbox. I also recognized and realized that email can be a total time suck if you let it. And so I recognize those things.
Annie:
I also closed out of all the tabs when I was working. I also turned off all of the notifications on my phone, which, by the way, I still have them turned off until I open up my phone, and then they all pop up all at once. But I had turned off all notifications on my phone with the exception of text messages, because that's how I told my executive to reach me in the event that I had my inbox closed. So we had this process, and I told him, hey, if you need me on a moment's notice or you have something last minute or durgent, please text me. Otherwise, send me an email and I will get to it just as soon as I open up my inbox. So he knew that's how to reach me. I knew that that was the best way to maximize my time and energy. So that's how I functioned.
Annie:
I did not have the luxury of not functioning that way because that was the only way everything got done in a day. I also didn't have the luxury of not having a task tracking system. I made sure that everything was optimized. I had a Trello board that worked really well for me. I had my Trello board up on one screen. I had my working screen on the other screen so that I could make sure that I'm tracking with all the tasks of the day and all the priorities of the day. And that was how I managed my time. I also batched similar items together, similar tasks together.
Annie:
So, you guys, I use every trick in the book, and I was not afraid to try it. I just went for it. And I got to tell you, it absolutely revolutionized how I worked as an executive assistant, which is so great because I also now coach executive assistant. So now I'm able to guide my clients to maximize their time as well. So that was the third thing that I did. The fourth thing that I did, or kind of like how I viewed whole assistant at the time, was building the business in the cracks of my life. So literally, any moment that I had was spent ideating about whole assistant or was spent on whole assistant. Now, I was very intentional about that.
Annie:
So when I say about the business and the cracks of my life, here's what that looked like. I would wake up around 05:00 every morning and I would do some writing for whole assistant. I do some content creation. I prepare a script for videos I was doing back then, or I would write a blog post, or I prepare a training, or I prepare some other thing. That was my time. That was my creative time, was really early in the mornings, and then I would go to work all day. And I would also, when I started coaching, I would take clients over lunch break, and then maybe, maybe like towards the last half of the week, like a late afternoon client as well. But I really did build my business in the cracks in my life, especially after I had babies.
Annie:
So before I had children, it made it a lot easier to get up early in the mornings. After I had my babies, I also had to get up throughout the night to feed them, and I also had to get up early in the morning to take care of them. And that shifted everything. So then I kind of relied on those time management skills, and I relied on the processes I built for being an amazing executive assistant throughout the day. And I also relied on the processes I built for whole assistant as well. So as my babies began to sleep through the night again, then I was waking up early again to create more content. I remember leaving the house early in the morning before I had my boys. I remember leaving at like six or 630 every morning to get to the office, to record, to write, to do things for whole assistant.
Annie:
I'm a firm believer that we all have the capacity for that if we want to. Now. I was also extremely driven by passion. I think a lot of people kind of look at me and look at what I'm doing now, and they wonder kind of how it all happened. This is how it happened. I was literally getting up at 05:00 every morning for years, guys. I still like to get up really early to write my content because that's when my brain is fresh, and that's when I'm able to think up creative ideas, and that's when I'm able to really, like, get a lot of content out of me and onto paper. So that's another kind of strategy I use, I think.
Annie:
I'm really. I'm very proud of that. I'm very proud of all the hard work I put in early on. But I'm gonna be honest with you guys. It didn't feel like hard work to me. It felt like fun. It felt like joy. It felt like fulfillment.
Annie:
Sure, there were days where it felt like a lot of work, but it didn't feel like a burden. It just felt like it was what I was supposed to be doing. And I am so passionate about encouraging you guys that it doesn't really mean much to me at all to wake up so early. Like, it's just. It's fun for me, and I'm an early morning person anyway. I would find 15 minutes throughout my day, and I'd be like, I've got 15 minutes. Let's see how much. How far I can make it on this project for whole assistant, and I would just get to work.
Annie:
Like, if it was a sales page, if it was, like, a landing page for a registration for something. Like, let's see how far I can go. And I often surprise myself. You can get a lot done in 15 minutes or an hour over lunch. And I'm not even kidding. Like, you really can get a lot done, guys. It's just that we don't ever challenge ourselves to do that. Most of the time, most of us don't really challenge ourselves that way.
Annie:
And last but not least, I got really great at fast failure. So last week, again, I talked about messy growth, and I talked about failure as my superpower, and I truly believe it is my superpower because I just did not have any bandwidth or any time to wallow whenever anything was kind of subpar or didn't meet my standards, I just did not have any bandwidth for it. Not that I didn't strive for excellence, because I'm always striving for excellence, but anytime I would fail and, like, pivot and then fail and then pivot and then kind of, like, find my way that way, and I did not make that mean anything about me because I did not have the time to make that mean anything about me. I literally was running a business and supporting an executive full time, and then I also had two babies at the end, like, since 2019 when I had my first child. So it's been a lot. It's been a lot to manage and I'm so, so grateful that I started the journey because it's led me to some amazing opportunities, it's led me to some amazing things and my impact is just continues to grow. So if you want to start a side hustle, I'm not saying your journey has to look like mine, but I am saying that these are the steps that I took in order to kind of get there in order to navigate my way to where I am today. So if you want to start a side hustle, I strongly encourage that regardless of what it is, if you just want to do other assisting or if you want to like, I don't know, write for movies or you want to like write be a script writer or whatever producer, whatever it is you have in your heart to do, I hope that this episode encourages you that way.
Annie:
And just start. Just start somewhere. The reality is, is that you aren't. You'll never know what you have in you and you'll never know what you're capable of until you give it a shot. So that is what I have for you guys today. I do hope you find it encouraging. I know a lot of us have considered starting side hustles. If that's you, please feel free to email me at [email protected] and please join us on April 24.
Annie:
We're going to have a great time. Just going to be an hour long starting at 02:00 Central for administrative professionals day there again. That event is going to be sponsored by Savoya, and last time they gave away a free ride to an executive assistant. Not for their executive, but for them. So it's going to be a good time. I also like to do a giveaway, so I'll also be giving away some coaching and that sort of thing. So if you're interested in joining that, please do and I hope to see you there. Alright guys, that is what I have for you guys today.
Annie:
Be intentional. Behold. That is all for now. I help assistants apply the concepts I share on this podcast. If you're ready to take your growth deeper and you're curious whether working with me in a coaching capacity is right for you, please email me at [email protected] to schedule your complimentary discovery call.
