Nik Sharma has been in the world of marketing, creative advertising, investing and promoting for the last 12 years.

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“We’re like the McKinsey of eCommerce, except we do all the work, too, not just provide the strategy.” - Nik Sharma, Founder & CEO

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Through his brand strategy agency, Sharma Brands, Nik talks to new entrepreneurs and founders who’ve likely spent months, if not years, building something to go from a mere idea or a problem they’re trying to solve to launching something into the world and allowing others to experience it. Sometimes, it’s a supplement brand, an enhanced showerhead, or new recipes for cocktails that were developed with the best bartenders in the world.

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At Sharma Brands, Nik and his team often focus on getting brands through launch.

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“We go through the full launch strategy, the website design, development, copy, product positioning, the tech stack setup, email design, 3PL search, setup and integration, and more. Basically, you bring the product, and we’ll have everything else covered.”

- Nik Sharma

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Still in his 20s, Nik is only getting started and he’s already a major success. Famously dubbed “the DTC guy”, he is one of AdWeek’s Young & Influential, Forbes 30 under 30, and an investor and advisor to some of the fastest-growing brands in commerce.

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With much on his plate (podcasts, events, newsletters-all in addition to running Sharma Brands itself), this New Yorker was starting to feel things slipping through the cracks at times.

• Client calls were not scheduled promptly, requests for appointments were missed leading to large losses of revenue
• Inbox over capacity; previous assistants had never taken the time to clear out/respond to emails
• Contracts were going missing and not signed; yet another loss of revenue

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THE BIGGEST PAIN POINT: Nik’s life was based on New York minutes. He didn’t have the time to delegate, nor did he have the time to dedicate to training an assistant or even really working with them. He was always on-the-go!

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…Until he met his match with Rameez Rumy, Executive Assistant at Oceans.

He finally found an EA+ he could “vibe” with!

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RECOGNIZING THE PROBLEM

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Nik had been crammed with his workload for a while now, it wasn’t news to him that he needed help.

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Despite having multiple team members to look over the agency and its functions plus his other interests, Nik needed someone who could sync with him and help with better overall management, sometimes even to “be” him when Nik couldn’t be omnipotent to be present for all his stakeholders.

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Previous experiences had also played a role in holding Nik back. Having worked with agencies from the Philippines and India, Nik had fruitless experiences with previous executive assistants.

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Why? He found that:

• they needed micromanagement
• constant delegation was required or things would go amiss
• they were not proactive
• they could not take charge

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THE EA+ SOLUTION

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STEP 1: Find an EA+ that you “vibe” with

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“He’s always on-the-go. Working with an EA+ is very difficult for both parties. Getting anything you as an EA+ need done from him is also a task!”

- Rameez Rumy, EA+

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A. The real challenge for Nik in his unique situation was finding someone he could “vibe” with. Someone who was in sync with his style of working and

able to take charge.

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This was one particular pain point that Nik had expressed in initial conversations to Rameez, regarding previous executive assistants.

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Today, if you take a look at Rameez’s daily schedule, most of the tasks are actually self-allocated and not from Nik.

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B. “Am I really needed for this?” This was an all-important question that Nik asked himself when it came to liaising with multiple clients, team members and other stakeholders everyday.

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Regardless of the fact that Rameez works for Nik from halfway across the world, Nik has made Rameez a client-facing member of his team. What exactly does this mean?

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“I’m front-facing with a lot of people on behalf of him, sometimes as Nik and sometimes as myself. So Rameez, Nik’s EA+, is now known amongst the ecommerce community based in New York.” - Rameez

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This was something that Nik, despite wanting to, couldn’t do with previous executive assistants. There was always a lack of competency and insufficient communication skills.

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An Oceans EA+ like Rameez tends to come from a corporate background working in operational roles, sometimes at multinational corporations or at Sri Lankan-based companies within regional roles.

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C. Don’t be afraid to lose control: Just as Nik was confident to leverage Rameez for communications as him or on his behalf with the external world, Nik made sure everyone within his company knew to reach out to Rameez first when they needed Nik.

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“Nik has a lot of things going on simultaneously. I have been given the most access into everything at Sharma Brands. Even the CEO and everyone below in the hierarchy reach out to me. I manage a lot of things Nik doesn’t even know about, that gets done behind the scenes. It’s only Founder-level work that he needs to get involved in.” - Rameez

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STEP 2: Cut out the cr*p, not every tool/app online works

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While an Oceans EA+ tends to bring in a lot of tech know-how and efficiency-building platforms, tools, practices, Rameez understood the key to working with Nik was SIMPLICITY.

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A. CRMs aren’t for everyone: Nik tends to meet different people everyday in his line of work. However, none of that information was ever going anywhere. For this reason, although he wasn’t tasked with this, Rameez decided to trial a personal CRM for Nik.

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The CRM was dropped almost as fast as it was set up.

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“Believe it or not, 95% of all his work-the day-to-day between him and I runs on iMessage!” - Rameez

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B. Task Tracking: Nik and Rameez use the Notes App to set up a task tracker that they both share synced to their phones.

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Rameez sets up tasks that Nik needs to sign off on/get done from his end and if he has any questions for Nik, Rameez goes the extra mile of giving Nik multiple choice answers for Nik to cross off!

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C. How do I keep track of my investments? Nik is an angel investor in multiple companies, on top of which he had a few advisory investments he was involved in but hadn’t really kept track of.

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Rameez came in, independently went through his entire inbox to track down each and every one of these companies and the status of each investment. All this information was gathered then into a tracker:

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THE IMPACT

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It’s been over a year since Rameez and Nik found each other through Oceans.

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After a few trial and error runs in the beginning, trying to figure out their rhythm;

• Nik has now entrusted Rameez with a vast expanse of the running of his business. From responding for him/as him to being the official contact person shared with both internal and external stakeholders

• Rameez has fully donned the Founder’s thinking cap and absorbed Nik’s email etiquette, thinking patterns and pretty much runs the administrative and operational tasks of Nik’s business independently.

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“I don’t see this as a job for me, it’s actually quite fun! I’m very lucky to be here and work with an exec like Nik. The top thing that I do to be a better EA+ is with every task, email, meeting - I do it thinking that I’m Nik. The approach is always from a Founder level, which is probably what helps Nik and I vibe so well.”

- Rameez

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