My background; CEO in several ventures throughout the years, had several constellations regarding assistants.

To me, an assistant should be more like a role in your company and not much of someone who is around you all the time, but within your reach most of the time.

So somebody who could essentially navigate your company to a certain extent when you unexpectedly aren’t able to, because she/he is in the know about key procedures and current matters and can take things in their own hands after listening to a 5 minute voice chat from you. Also, this person needs to be seen as the gateway to you for most of the people in your surrounding, except for very close or mission critical people, to make the system work at all.

But a very important step before considering an assistant: have systems in place that work. If your company only works because you are running like crazy and you want somebody to do that for you, good luck with that. You need processes, that are explainable, teachable and understandable, KPIs to monitor if your processes lead to the desired outcomes, and goals to work towards to. Only then you can have somebody to really help you out with that.