In this video, Alicia Fairclough, Founder of EA How To, talks about the best executive assistant tools for everyday success.

Today I’m going to tell you about 3 tools I’ve used this week that are super helpful for executive assistants. 

GroupTogether

First up, I want to tell you about GroupTogether. 

You know when you have a colleague who is having a baby or retiring or maybe they have a milestone birthday coming up and someone brings up doing an office collection to chip in for a gift? 

This always ends up being the EA's job and it’s a bit of a crap task. 

The logistics of getting people who are never in the office at the same time or maybe aren’t in the office at all, to sign a group card and chip in their $10 is a pain. Then you have to look after the money and hope none of it goes missing lest you be branded the office pickpocket. Then you need to think of a gift for someone when the only thing you know about them is that they work in finance and they leave their dirty tupperware in the kitchen. 

None of it’s ideal. 

Well GroupTogether have solved this problem.   

GroupTogether is an online platform that facilitates the process of signing a group card and collecting money. It takes 30 seconds to set up and you can send a link to everyone you’re asking to contribute and then it’s up to them. 

It means you’re not personally handling your colleagues cash or having it transferred to your personal account which is always a bit yuck. We love full transparency when it comes to finances.   

When signing the card you can add gifs along with your personal message and the recipient gets a lovely animated card along with a gift card. 

Now… you can give a specific gift card if you like but most people choose what’s called an AnyCard which means the recipient can choose from over 150 different cards. 

It’s fabulous and I love it. 

The card signing function is available worldwide and financial collection is available in Australia and the United States. 

ChatGPT 

Next up, we have ChatGPT. 

The most talked about tool in the kit right now is already proving to be super valuable and I’m going to do a whole video dedicated to ChatGPT soon so stay tuned for that. 

In the meantime, what I can say is I’ve been using it every day for months now. 

I’ve used it to: 

• Check grammar
• Explain concepts to me that I didn’t understand 
• Research travel arrangements 
• Give me information 
• Review social posts 
• And rewrite tricky emails 

Jessica McBride, the Tech Savvy Assistant, is all over ChatGPT and she recently did a webinar for EA How To all about how assistants can use it. If you missed it, you can catch the replay in the EA How To Plus members portal and I also recommend following her on LinkedIn. 

Transcription Services - Kapwing, Otter AI et al 

The final tool I want to talk about today is AI transcription tools like Kapwing and Otter AI. 

Before I go into detail about these, it’s worth noting that I’ve made other videos with tools and tips that I use and I highly recommend checking them out. I’ve popped links to those in the video description too. 

As for AI transcription services, if you’ve ever had to transcribe an entire meeting, I probably don’t need to explain the benefit of having a tool do this for you. At the moment I use Kapwing but it’s certainly not the only tool out there. Another really popular one is Otter AI.  

You can upload a recording or a video and it will do the transcription or subtitles for you. You’ll need to make a few corrections - AI isn’t perfect just yet but it really does take most of the work out of the task and it will save you a tonne of time. 

For more tools and tips for executive assistants, check out my other videos in this series and of course subscribe to this channel and give this video a thumbs up so I know you want more. 

And by the way, we also have the private EA How To Facebook group that I would love you to join. Make sure you answer all of the questions so you get in. It’s the most valuable and welcoming community of assistants you’ll ever find.

Join the worlds most valuable community of Executive, Personal and Virtual assistants by becoming an EA How To Plus member. You'll be joining a network of thousands of talented assistants and you'll get access to replays of amazing EA How To webinars as well as invitations to small group coaching sessions and more.