Personal Assistant to a Creative Entrepreneur

My name is Tim Aikin, I'm a designer and entrepreneur with over 20 years experience starting and building successful creative businesses. **I'm looking for an outstanding assistant to play an integral role across my personal and professional life.** You'll be employed by my company, Pencil Factory, but you will work with me across four businesses and my personal projects. The rolewill cover three broad areas:

- Assisting in the complex task of playing an executive and creative leadership role across three similar businesses which I co-founded and/or help run: Spinning Fox (a digital design and technology agency), Magnetic Rock (a product incubator), and HelicalLevity (a cyber security edtech business).
- Working with me to expand and/or launch a number of creative projects in my other business, Pencil Factory, including a typographic art project, an illustrated kids book, a design education product, a couple of floristry themed services, and more.
- Helping me get the most out of my personal life, covering everything from arranging family holidays to helping me build a new house.

The role provides an amazing opportunity for someone who is creative and entrepreneurial, but also has excellent organisational skills. Your previous experience might be as a personal or executive assistant, but I’m also open to those with project management,design, start-up and/or creative business experience.

**About the role**

You'll be tasked with a variety of responsibilities, from the specific logístical elements of diary management right through to helping me run complicated creative projects. Some of the things you'll be working on include:

- Running a complex management set-up which I use to stay on track and oversee a variety of businesses, product teams, creative projects, people I manage, and much more.
- Assisting my running of concept and design teams in my main focus business, Magnetic Rock. You'll support me in the actual running of these teams as well as helping oversee the many creative projects involved.
- Helping me finish a typographic art project and launching it as a standalone product venture, including the logistics of selling a physical product online.
- Managing a nascent project to create an illustrated kids book that I'm working on with an illustrator colleague, taking it from idea to execution.
- Working with me to design, plan and build a new house, including finding and working with an architect, and location scouting.

**About you**

Ideally you will:

- Have two or more years experience in a similar role and/or as an entrepreneur.
- Be able to be a trusted 'right hand', with high levels of integrity, who can quickly build up a picture of the different businesses, the role I play within them, and find opportunities to maximise my impact.
- Be highly self-sufficient, proactive, and able to initiate and manage your own workload against the backdrop of my varied schedule (some days full of meetings, others focused on deep creative work).
- Be a natural and efficient organiser with exceptional attention to detail, and experience of (or the ability to learn) key assistant fundamentals, like diary, task and project management.
- Have a strong interest in entrepreneurship, especially in creative industries, with bonus points if you've run your own small business or 'side hustle' previously.
- Have excellent communication skills and the ability to converse with a wide range of people with different skill and experience levels.
- Be a calm presence with relentless positive energy to get the job done.
- Be willing and able to pick up the smallest menial task with complete humility, as well as own and tackle bigger long term projects. You'll have a selfless approach to a role where your primary goal is to make me more effective in service of a bigger missionto make all the businesses successful.

**Other important details**
- The role is permanent and full time, working for Pencil Factory Limited. You'll typically work a standard Mon-Fri week, but some evening and weekend work may occasionally be required.
- Salary is negotiable and based on experience, but in the range of £25-30k. You will also receive 28 days paid holiday and pension contributions.
- The businesses are all remote-first, although I tend to split my time between the south east of Kent and Ascott-under-Wychwood in Oxfordshire where the main businesses operate a stunning office. You'll be based remotely, but need to be able to travel toboth locations and therefore ideally be within an hour or two of either (preferably closest to Kent).

**How to apply**
- If you're successful at that there will be a second stage involving a combination of a short written research task, a further chat with me and possibly a conversation with one of my colleagues.