Do I Need an Executive Assistant? A Founder Self-Test

Ask it in plain language. Do I need an executive assistant, or do I need fewer meetings and a quieter definition of urgent? Both can be true. Only one of them is a hire. The hire version is a look at four systems you already run, badly or well, every week: the calendar, the inbox, the follow-ups, and the hour you keep spending on work a competent operator could close.

Score the last two weeks. A yes from a grim quarter you have already turned into a story does not count. Twelve questions, then a way to read the total, then a way to price your own hour without borrowing a benchmark from the internet. If you want the longer timing story, when a founder should hire an executive assistant is the sibling. This page is the worksheet.

Do I need an executive assistant? Score four systems

One point per yes. Do not bargain the point down because you plan to fix it next week. Next week is where these points are manufactured.

Calendar

1. You accepted a meeting with no agenda because declining took more energy than attending.
2. A focus block died, and you were the person who moved it for something that was merely loud.
3. You personally rescheduled a time, a room, or a “can we do Thursday” that did not need your judgment.

A calendar with no owner becomes a log of other people’s preferences. The repair is an owner and a few written rules. Calendar and inbox as one system is what that looks like once someone else holds both. The test is whether the system currently lives in your head, which means it lives nowhere on the days you are in back-to-backs.

Inbox

4. Unread is storage for things you might need, and you would not say the count out loud.
5. A message that needed a decision from you sat more than two business days, and you were the only person who knew it needed one.
6. You are the only filter between FYI and waiting-on-you, so the pile is one pile, and you sort it at night.

Night sorting feels like discipline. It is a second shift on work that already had a home during the day. If the sort requires your taste, write the taste down. If it requires your presence, you have appointed yourself the filter forever.

Follow-ups

7. You can name three open loops older than a week that nobody is chasing. A vendor, a candidate, a warm intro, an invoice, a teammate who owes a date.
8. Something warm went cold because the reply lived in your head instead of on a page someone else could see.
9. You left a meeting with owners and dates. By Friday the owners were a memory. The notes, if they exist, did not move anything.

Follow-up failure is quiet. Nothing crashes. A deal cools, a candidate takes the other offer, a vendor assumes Thursday still works. You notice in retrospect and call it bandwidth. It is a missing owner.

Your hour

10. Yesterday included a task a competent operator could have closed from a written rule. Name the task. If the evening was admin and you cannot name a single item, the point still counts.
11. Given eight hours back this week, you know what they would go to. A customer, the product, a raise, a hire. “Catch up” does not count. Catch-up is the same pile with a cleaner name.
12. You are doing the assistant’s job inside hours you already promised to work only you can do.

How to read the total

Zero to three is not a moral victory and it is not a problem. A full-time seat with nothing real to own will invent work, and you will feel guilty managing it. Remove the standing meeting that has no decision. Batch the chores. Re-take the test in a month if the company is growing into the role.

Four to seven is where founders stall. The pain is real and still intermittent, so a calmer month feels close. The calmer month is the one where you are not the inbox. Waiting for spare time to hire the person who creates spare time is the loop. If you will not share the calendar and the inbox, stay in this band on purpose and call the role a scheduler. An EA with view-only access asks you what to do, and you will describe that as a bad hire.

Eight to twelve means the company is renting its most expensive hour to sort, schedule, and remember. Hiring is late. Late is normal. Late is still cheaper than protecting the lateness for another quarter because onboarding sounds like one more project. The onboarding project is smaller than the night shift you already run.

Price your hour from a week you remember

Skip published hourly rates for founders. You do not need someone else’s number, and most of those numbers are a vibe with a dollar sign. Use a week you just lived.

Write down the hours that went to calendar chores, inbox sorting, nudging, booking, and reformatting. Be dull. If it was six, write six. Next to that, write the item that did not happen because those hours were gone. A customer you did not call. A spec you did not finish. A candidate you did not close. If the honest item is sleep, write sleep.

Then set the seat beside it. A dedicated Teleforce EA is $3,000 a month on a 3-month commitment or $2,700 a month on a 12-month commitment. Full-time, on your hours, employed by us. See Terms. Taxes are extra. There is no separate payroll to stand up.

You are comparing a known monthly figure to a week you can still picture. If the missing work was worth more than that month, and questions 10 through 12 were yeses, you already have the answer. If the missing work was rest, that can still be the right buy. Say so. Rest is a use of the hour. Pretending the hour will become revenue, when you know it will become sleep, is how people resent the invoice in month two.

If the hours you counted are under a day a week and they are truly chores, do not buy a full-time seat to feel helped. Fix the chores, batch them, or wait until the test climbs.

If the score is loud, stop being the system. A dedicated bilingual EA from LatAm, on your U.S. hours, one person who owns the week you just scored. Meet your assistant →

Turn the yeses into the first brief

A score without a handoff is a mood. The yeses are the job description. Write them as work, not as feelings.

• Calendar yeses become rules: no agenda, no hold; focus blocks move only for a named reason; reschedules under a certain kind go to the EA without a ping.
• Inbox yeses become a sort: what they close, what they draft, what they put in a must-act list of five or fewer. Night sorting ends on a date you pick.
• Follow-up yeses become the waiting-on list, including the three loops that are already late. Late is a fine place to start. It is evidence.
• Hour yeses become the block you will actually keep. Put the customer, the spec, or the sleep on the calendar before the seat starts, or the freed hour will fill with a new kind of admin.

Bring that page to whoever you hire. A candidate who lights up at the list and asks what “no agenda” means in your world is the one you want. A candidate who talks about passion and does not touch the list is interviewing for a different job.

What an assistant will not repair

An EA will not turn a weak strategy into a strong one. They will not take the customer conversation that has your name on it. They will not enjoy a principal who rewrites every draft and then asks why the queue is slow. They will run the four systems in this test. They will get better at the judgment around those systems if a written rule is allowed to survive a real Tuesday.

Some work stays in the room. Packages, a front desk, a person who has to be physically there. A remote seat is the wrong tool for that, and a serious provider will say so instead of stretching the job until it breaks. Teleforce is that conversation: one dedicated bilingual EA, English and Spanish, LatAm, your hours. You choose the person. We do not need a vision deck. We need the week, and the self-test is the week with the romance removed.

See pricing or bring the score. The self-test is a yes when those four systems already have a full-time occupant, and the occupant is you.

Teleforce places dedicated bilingual (English/Spanish) executive assistants for U.S. leaders — one person on your hours, on a Fortune 500-grade support backbone. Get matched →