AI Summary
5 min readMia Higgins, who leads the team of roughly 40 assistants at Ramsey Solutions, started her own career there as an assistant and spent eight years in the role. She now oversees the function, and she has a clear diagnosis of what most leaders get wrong: they still picture an old-school secretary, a passive task-taker who just executes orders. That mindset, she says, causes leaders to miss the real value. The better picture is a strategic partner—someone who can get into the work with you, see business problems, connect dots, and help move the work forward. A trusted extension of you. A force multiplier.
The real bottleneck is context, not skill
The most common mistake leaders make after hiring an assistant is not inviting them into the business. They want the assistant to think like them, communicate like them, and act as an extension—but they don't teach them how they communicate or give them visibility into what is happening. As Higgins puts it bluntly: "They can't solve what they can't see."
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:05) **The Core Promise: Reclaiming 10-20 Hours Per Week** - The episode opens with the central value proposition: a single hire can give a business owner back 10-15, even 20 hours of their week.
- 2 (01:00) **The Biggest Mistake Leaders Make About Assistants** - Mia identifies the outdated "secretary" mindset as the primary barrier to getting real value from the role.
- 3 (03:00) **The Critical Ingredient: Giving Context** - The conversation pivots to the leader's responsibility to invite the assistant into the business so they can actually be a strategic partner.
- 4 (04:00) **Where to Start: Building Trust Through Small Wins** - Mia advises on the initial steps a leader should take when bringing on a new assistant.
- 5 (05:05) **How to Lengthen the Rope: Observing Judgment and Communication** - The discussion moves to how a leader can know when to delegate more to their assistant.
- 6 (06:20) **Advice for the Assistant: Do What You Say and Be Observant** - Mia offers direct advice for assistants watching the episode, focusing on building trust from their side.
- 7 (07:28) **The Hesitation Trap for Assistants** - Mia explains why assistants often hold back from being proactive, which can stall the partnership.
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Show Notes
Hiring an assistant isn’t just about getting busywork off your plate.
In this episode, head coach John Felkins sits down with Mia Higgins, Ramsey Solutions’ director of assistant operations, to unpack the biggest misconceptions about assistants and how the right person can become a trusted partner who helps you focus on the work only you can do.
Next Steps:
· 😅 Still the chief everything officer in your business? Learn how to delegate with our Quick Read from Dave Ramsey.
· 🎥 Watch our video The First 3 Hires You Should Make in Business.
· 🎯 Not sure what to do next in your business? Let’s figure it out together. Book a free 30-minute consult call with the EntreLeadership® Team.
· 📞 Have a question for the show? Call 844-944-1070 or send us a message.
· 📚 Order Dave’s most recent EntreLeadership book, Build a Business You Love.
· 📧 Get EntreLeadership’s free weekly newsletter: expert advice and practical tips from the same playbook we used to build Ramsey Solutions into a $300 million company.
· 🌎 Attend our world-class leadership conference, EntreLeadership Summit.
· 📝 Stop guessing. Get a plan built for your business and someone who holds you to it. Find out which coaching option is right for you.
· 📈 Bad hires. Strategies that never get off the ground. 60-hour workweeks. Sleepless nights. EntreLeadership Master Series is where you trade all that for the exact systems our Executive Team used to scale Ramsey Solutions to $300 million. Don’t wait until seats are sold out.
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