How a Kombucha Brand Found Its First Executive Assistant in Under a Week
A Michigan consumer goods CEO needed an EA who could function as an integrator — someone to catch the chaos, organize it, and own it. Ataraxis delivered three vetted candidates in seven days. She made a hire.
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The Challenge
Courtney is the CEO of a consumer goods company in Northern Michigan that manufactures and distributes kombucha. The brand operates a brand ambassador program, recruiting individuals to run in-store product samplings at large-scale grocery chains, alongside growing Instagram and TikTok presences and a Shopify-powered e-commerce operation.
The company had no dedicated operational support. Courtney was managing her own inbox, sourcing and booking brand ambassadors, coordinating in-store scheduling with major grocery accounts, and fielding social media and marketing tasks. Everything that didn’t get done was sitting on her.
The decision to hire wasn’t complicated. The business was producing work faster than she could process it. Inbox management alone was her single biggest time drain.
There were two additional complications. First, Courtney had tried offshore hiring before (years earlier through Fiverr) and had a bad experience with a contractor who appeared to be farming work out behind the scenes. She was cautious about getting burned again. Second, she had already reached out to two other EA and VA companies and had been underwhelmed. One sent four candidates, three showed up, and the ones who did felt scripted and rehearsed.
She needed someone different. Not someone who wanted a job. Someone who was actually good at the work.
The core requirement: a true integrator. Someone who could manage a high-accuracy scheduling operation (wrong store, wrong date = real business consequences), handle inbox triage and correspondence, coordinate UGC creator outreach, and still bring structure to the chaos that comes with running a fast-growing brand.
What Ataraxis Did
- Defined the role clearly before searching
The initial conversation revealed that what Courtney needed wasn’t just an EA or just a social media coordinator; it was one person who could anchor the operation. We worked through the role in the intake call, distinguishing the two workstreams (admin/EA versus social media coordination) and establishing that a sharp EA could own both. The core profile that emerged:
- Inbox management and executive support
- High-accuracy booking coordination (brand ambassadors, grocery store slots, SOP-driven scheduling)
- Social media scheduling and basic UGC outreach coordination
- QuickBooks familiarity preferred, Shopify a bonus
- Strong documentation and SOP orientation
- Management style fit: structured onboarding, direct communication, process-minded
- Matched to a candidate already in the pipeline
Within one week, Ataraxis presented Courtney with three fully vetted candidates at $11/hr. All three had passed our multi-step screening process: remote work setup verification, one-repeat communication test, take-home role-specific assessment, culture fit interview, and professional reference checks.
She interviewed them and made a hire.
The Candidate She Hired
Grace — Executive & Administrative Assistant | Nairobi, Kenya Rate: $11/hr (full-time)
Grace brought more than five years of executive support experience working directly with U.S.-based companies in fully remote settings. Her background was an unusually strong match for what Courtney needed.
At a New York-based tech company, Grace supported the CEO and executive team with scheduling, vendor communication, documentation, and operational data entry — all hallmarks of the brand ambassador coordination work Courtney needed covered. She built SOPs, managed project tracking across Asana, Monday.com, Smartsheets, and Notion, and integrated AI tools to automate repetitive administrative tasks.
Before that, Grace managed day-to-day administrative operations for a CEO, created and documented workflows and SOPs, and handled digital marketing and communication strategy on Facebook and Instagram — giving her direct experience with the social channel management Courtney also needed.
Grace holds a Bachelor of Mass Communication with First Class Honors and is pursuing a Master of Science in Digital Marketing.
Tools she walked in knowing: Google Workspace, Asana, Monday.com, Smartsheets, Notion, Canva, HubSpot, Slack, Zendesk, Microsoft Office Suite, ChatGPT, Claude AI, Breezy HR, Ashby, Zendesk.
For a role requiring high accuracy, SOP discipline, social media coordination, and executive support — Grace had done all of it, for U.S. companies, remotely, for years.
By the Numbers
| Time to first candidates | 7 days |
| Candidates presented | 3 |
| Rate | $11/hr |
| Monthly cost | $1,950 |
| Annual cost | $23,400 |
| Comparable U.S. hire | $55,000–$65,000/yr |
| Estimated annual savings | $30,000–$40,000+ |
| EA experience | 5+ years, U.S. companies |
| Candidate's degree | B.Sc. Mass Communication (First Class Honors) |
What Made This Work
The Fiverr experience Courtney described (a contractor who turned out to be farming work to others behind the scenes) is exactly what Ataraxis’s vetting process is designed to prevent.
Every candidate we present has cleared a direct, in-person assessment with our team. We’re checking communication quality, remote work setup, and actual hands-on ability. By the time a candidate reaches a client interview, they’ve already passed a process with a 95% dropout rate.
Courtney didn’t need to sift through a stack of resumes or run five interviews to find someone passable. She met three strong candidates and picked one.
That’s the model.
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