Yaro is a serial entrepreneur, blogger, podcaster, angel investor and digital nomad.
I’m excited to announce that the first release of our new website and brand – 50hrs.com – is now live.
This new brand is a spin-off from InboxDone.com, the company I started with my co-founder Claire all the way back in 2017.
InboxDone has grown to a team of 80 executive assistants who specialize in email management.
While we are specialists at managing email for many different entrepreneurs, in reality we take on a far wider range of tasks.
What starts with an email often turns into various action items – from updating a CRM, scheduling a meeting, turning meeting notes into a task list, chasing up leads over text and DMs, issuing an invoice, preparing a report, researching data for a proposal, planning an event, replying to a social media message, uploading images and videos to social media, adding emails to an autoresponder, following up with failed payments – the list goes on and on.
Yet, because of our company name and very clear positioning around email, many people were surprised to know we do so much more.
This email specialization has been fantastic for us to stand out from a very busy industry of executive assistant service providers, but also means if email is not your main problem you don’t consider us as the assistant you need.
This is why 50hrs.com was created.
This is a new website, part of a marketing campaign that will promote us as premium assistant service provider, but it is not a new business.
Behind the scenes it is the same team, the same hiring and training processes designed to recruit and develop the best American and Canadian assistants.
However rather than focusing on the very narrow message of email management, 50hrs.com hits right at the nerve of what busy business owners and leaders want, to get back 50 hours of their time per month, by delegating all their day-to-day operational tasks to our assistants.
Yes that still includes delegating email and calendar scheduling, usually the starting point to free up time, but we can now have a place to show case the broader range of tasks we do.
For example, here’s a list of tasks our assistants have done for our clients:
Daily Operational Tasks
- Protect Time: Route questions, information requests, meetings away from senior executives (CEO, COO, CTO, etc) to other team members
- Research: Use AI to conduct research, compile reports, source and format data, create slide presentations
- Schedule Calendars: Handle confirmations, re-scheduling, take meeting notes and turn them into tasks, use tools like Calendly, Reclaim.ai to automate scheduling
- Email Management: Write and send replies, bring critical emails to attention, turn emails into tasks, inbox zero every day
- Email Backlog: Sort through email backlogs of as much as 100,000 emails, labeling, archiving, resending responses (if needed), and highlighting important messages
- Phishing/Spam: Stay vigilant for phishing scams, spam, identify theft, report incidents
- Project Management: Track projects and to-dos in tools like Basecamp, Asana, Monday, ClickUp, Trello
- Task Management: Update CRMs, task-management software
- Payments & Subscriptions: Set up recurring payments and invoices, track failed payments, followup with overdue invoices
- Documentation/SOPs: Create SOPs for multi-step processes in tools like ClickUp, Notion, monitor team members and contractors to ensure accurate SOP implementation
- Knowledge Base: Collect every asset, SOP, template needed to perform all tasks in one digital repository
- Curate/Summarize Content: With help from AI provide summaries of social media, news, podcasts, industry journals, mainstream media, newsletters
- Bookkeeping: Chase up receipts and payments from clients and vendors
- Payroll: Manage employees using ADP, JustWorks, Paychex, generate 1099’s using CCH and CFS
- Expense Reporting: Create expense reports for business entities using tools like Expensify
- Employee Healthcare: Maintain and update employee healthcare plans and facilitate communication with healthcare vendors
- Credit Cards: Pay balances, monitor costs, generate reports for accounting purposes
- Pay Bills: Make payments, avoid late fees, use tools like Checkbook.io, Paypal, to pay vendors, contractors, suppliers
- Financial Reports: Draft monthly management reports for C-suite using Google Sheets to deliver monthly sales data, sign-up info, financial reporting
- Filter Pitches: Review pitches or proposals, filter only the best to the top based on set criteria
Marketing & Sales
- Presentations: Use AI design tools such as Canva, Decktopus, to design slides, graphs, charts, source data
- Sales Calls: Use AI to book calls and confirm attendance for each step in sales process, take notes and turn them into action items
- Sales Automation: Use AI and automation tools to send followup emails, texts, calls, social media messages, track response rates and keep leads warm
- Contacts Management: Collect and maintain key stakeholder information, use AI tools to research new contacts
- Pitches & Proposals: Produce proposal documents, collect data and content for sales pitches
- Proofreading: With help from AI tools like Grammarly, review reports, web content, press releases, documentation, proposals, letters, whitepapers, guides, any content
- Translation/Captions: Use AI to generate translations and captions of any content
- Content Production: Use AI tools to create articles to help with marketing, sales, product guides
- SEO: Use AI tools like SEOBot to create content and conduct keyword research to rank higher in search engine results
- Google Reviews: Request reviews from clients, respond to new reviews, manage Google company page
- Social Media Replies: Reply and manage DMs in LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, social posts and paid ad replies
- Publicity/Press: Manage press contacts, podcast interviews, provide/collect photos, bio, contact details and content for media releases
- Influencer Research: Use AI tools and platforms to research YouTubers, Podcasters, Social Media personalities, to create contact lists for outreach and ad campaigns
- LinkedIn Outreach: Use Sales Navigator to identify prospects, send messages and book calls with leads
- Cold Email Outreach: Use AI tools like Instantly to find contacts and send email sequences to book calls
- Celebrity Outreach: Generate a contact list of relevant celebrities using IMDb Pro, ContactAnyCeleb, bookingagentinfo.com, RocketReach and Google Research
- Podcast Interviews: Contact podcast hosts to secure invites to speak as a guest
- Email Newsletters: Use AI writing tools and newsletter automation software like Active Campaign, Beehiiv, Kit, MailChimp, add and remove contacts, set up automation rules
- Marketing Metrics: Pull data from Google Ads, Google Analytics, Meta Ads, Microsoft Ads, etc, and provide performance reports
- Track Referrals: Monitor leads and new clients to determine referral sources
Processes
- Product Upgrades: Contact customers with special deals, upgrade opportunities, VIP experiences, new product releases
- Logistics: Track and query status on shipments, delivery times, handle returns, broken and lost items
- Manufacturing: Research suppliers, obtain quotes, present summary of production options
- Manage Students: Support students in learning platforms like Kajabi, Thinkific, LMS
- Customer Success: Track customer progress, monitor KPIs, conduct check-in calls
- FAQs: Produce and maintain internal and external FAQs in Notion, Scribe, Docs
- Recruitment: Review and screen job applications in Indeed, Glassdoor, LinkedIn to create shortlists for potential hires
- Evaluate New Hires: Review and evaluate applications for various company roles, determine a “score” for each candidate based on predetermined criteria
- Staff Training: Source and schedule experts, speakers, authors and consultants to train staff on latest trends, skills, technologies
- Research Software: Test software and recommend best solution for your situation
- Budgets: Plan budgets, track expenses for events, projects, training programs
- Book Research: With help from AI, conduct research for a book, conduct surveys, interview experts and format content into chapters, references
- Audits: Supply requested information to IRS, govt departments, audit requests
- Funding: Secure funding from investors, qualify for grants, win competitions by creating documents, presentations, datastores, completing application forms
- Acquisitions/Mergers: Assist with due diligence information gathering, verify data
- Manage Overseas VAs: Assign tasks and coordinate other virtual assistants to ensure tasks are completed correctly, on time and to budget
- Legal/Compliance: Help to prepare legal forms, collect relevant client information for compliance purposes
- Lawsuits: Keep track of key communication that may need to be referenced in case of a lawsuit
- Tax Documents: Compile information for tax returns, generate signature forms, using tools like ProSeries, UltraTax, and CCH
- IRS Communication: Handle IRS and State notices by collecting information and faxing it to the IRS/State using HelloFax
Communications
- Project Coordination: Coordinate with your team to keep projects moving forward
- Client Onboarding: Generate engagement letters, deliver welcome materials, conduct introductory calls, encourage participation to reduce cancellations/refunds
- Team Chat: Integrate with your team using Slack, MS Teams
- Identify Bottlenecks: Track communication between executives, sales, production, and customer success teams to identify bottlenecks
- Email Automations: Use inbox tools like Front, Superhuman and AI solutions like Fxyer, to make email more efficient, collaborate with team members in the inbox
- Team/Vendor/Prospect Meetings: Prepare pre-call summary about every attendee, notes about meeting purpose, confirm attendance, create to-dos based from recording
- Text Messages: Send SMS/Text/Whatsapp/Facebook messages to communicate with prospects, clients, team members, vendors, family
- Voicemails: Listen to recorded voicemails to extract relevant information, create tasks and communicate key details
- Coordinate With Staff: Route appropriate information to team members, query internal staff to solve problems independently
- Voice Messaging: Send and receive voice recordings to communicate tasks, pass on information, work with the team
- Curate Reports/Newsletters: Compile newsletters, Salesforce reports into one document, deliver to WhatsApp daily, add review time to calendar
- Community Moderation: Moderate Facebook groups, Skool communities, forums, reddit, to reduce spam, support clients, generate leads
- Customer Support: Respond to all customer support queries using helpdesk tools like FreshDesk, ZenDesk, Intercom, etc
- Livechat: Provide livechat support using tools like Intercom, Zoho, LiveChat.com
- Physical Mail: Monitor virtual PO Box, bring to attention important letters
- Accountability: Use Notion, Motion, to keep track of due dates for each team member’s tasks and follow up when tasks not marked as “complete” yet
Travel & Family
- Travel Planning: Find best flights, hotels, airbnbs, arrange transportation
- Events: Research locations for conferences, team retreats, organize food, transportation, speakers, hotels
- Activities: Arrange dinners, lunches, sports events, team bonding activities, tours
- Trade Booths: Organize materials for trade booths, banners, lighting, presentations, branded clothing, promo materials
- Phone Calls: Call banks, doctor/dentist offices, children’s school, caterers, restaurants, hairdresser, barber, tailor, etc to make appointments, place orders
- Boards/Charities: Provide updates and maintain calendar for charity commitments and board participation
- Family/Household: Reply to requests from school, childcare, after school activities, house maintenance, cleaners
- Property Management: Communicate with tenants, building contractors, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, fill out mortgage application documents
- Presents: Order gifts for holidays, anniversaries, retirements, promotions, employee rewards, family birthdays
- Personal Activities: Schedule and coordinate non-work activities such as music lessons, personal training, cooking classes, date nights, weekend getaways
- Family Calendar: Maintain shared family Gmail calendar for kids’ sports, band, school, and religious activities so parents know where kids need to be
- Christmas Party: Arrange all details for annual christmas party, venue, food, gifts, entertainment
As you can see, there’s a lot here beyond just email!
I spent several months working on the copy for the website and then coordinating with the web designer to get it live, this time using the Framer website builder.
Next we will continue to build out more content and establish a reputation for the 50hrs.com brand online.
I feel better knowing we will have a destination to send people who need email specialists, and a brand to represent the broader scope of what we can do, if email is not the main need.
Yaro