Website Easol
Company
Easol
Location
London
Job Title
Chief of Staff
About the Job
Easol is the leading all-in-one ‘experience commerce’ platform built to power experience businesses including festivals, wellness retreats, food and drink, sports and adventure trips. With Easol, experience businesses have complete control to drive more direct sales, retain more revenue, own their data and run their business on their terms.
Easol has deep roots in experiences. The platform was founded by former festival founders, Lisa and Ben Simpson in 2017, after the husband and wife team endured challenges and frustrations first-hand while setting up and growing their own experience business including Rise, Europe’s biggest Snowsports and music festival, and Beyond Adventures, a series of adventure travel experiences in remote locations such as the Sahara desert and the Swedish archipelago.
As Chief of Staff to our CEO, you will play a pivotal role in shaping the business, collaborating closely with the CEO and acting as a strategic partner in driving the company’s vision forward. You’ll operate as a fast-moving generalist with a wide range of responsibilities. You’ll be a ‘doer’ who takes on anything that the company needs done to move forward – no matter how glamorous or tough the project. We’re a small team and we’re moving fast – you’ll have a big impact on our success and an opportunity to see all aspects of the company.
Responsibilities
- Act as a thought partner and strategic advisor to CEO, standing in on meetings, challenging ideas and offering a different perspective, and following up on action items with the team accordingly.
- Acts as an extension of the CEO and information funnel, filter, and facilitator with internal and external stakeholders.
- Act as a point of contact for the CEO’s direct reports triaging all incoming requests for the executive’s time and work collaboratively with the Executive Assistant to ensure his calendar is aligned with the priorities of the organisation.
- Working closely with the CEO to support the line management of direct reports.
- Help identify priorities, strategically align time with those, and revisit them regularly to assess progress.
- Lead on development, implementation of company wide systems, processes to support rapid scaling of the business.
- Lead cross-functional strategic initiatives, facilitate special projects, and ensure action items are executed on behalf of the CEO.
- Track high-priority initiatives for the Founder to identify any/potential obstacles.
- Provide analysis, recommendations, and options to the Founder regarding high-impact decisions.
- Manage key relationships and build a process to track and nurture key stakeholders, investors, and clients.
- Oversee meeting preparation and planning for Board of Directors; support CEO in managing interactions with board and stakeholders.
- Manage the content and execution of the Quarterly Board Packs and internal All Hands presentations for the team.
- Build and lead the daily operations of the executive office.
- Provide communications support: drafting emails, reports, memos, presentations, internal and external communications, and/or social media posts.
- Assess all inquiries directed to the Founder, determine priority and the proper course of action.
- Plan leadership and team retreats, developing objectives and agenda, coordinating with executive assistant on logistics.
- Manage the CEO’s EA, ensuring that they are efficiently keeping the calendar aligned with the priorities of the organisation.
Qualifications and Requirements
- You have a proven track record of excellent performance (top 10%) in a highly competitive environment.
- You have a bachelor’s degree or equivalent in business administration or similar.
- You have 8+ years of work experience, preferably in an executive or business management role and a track record of department and team management.
- That said, we are open to extraordinary talent from a variety of backgrounds.
- You are highly analytical and data-driven with the ability to dissect and interpret large sets of data.
- Experience with Google Sheets and Excel for reporting and analysis is also vital.
- You are highly empathetic and have excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- You have experience working in a startup or scale-up or any other fast-changing environment.
- You have a valid working visa for the UK.
About You
- Work well and thrive under pressure.
- Ability to motivate, coordinate and ensure proper time-management among reports.
- Are highly discreet and safe pair of hands with confidential information.
- You are hands-on with an attitude that no task is too small for you.
- You have an incredible drive for success and a high work ethic.
- You are process-oriented and always show meticulous attention to detail.
- You love to work in a competitive and fast-paced environment and have a natural sense of urgency.
- You don’t wait around for opportunities to come to you, but you actively seek them out.
- You are unique in the way that you are both commercially astute and emotionally intelligent.
- You love solving problems but you prefer preventing them.
- You are a team player who is compassionate, friendly and always seeks to empower others and learn from others.
- You are organised, have excellent time management skills and know what key priorities you need to focus on.
- You are adaptable and have a huge and never-ending desire to learn and improve.
- Our business is changing and growing fast and along with it are the demands and skills needed to succeed.
- You believe in the growth mindset and have no doubt that you can learn and develop almost any skill.
- You are passionate about experience travel and adventure.
- You are likely to spend your holidays kite surfing in Sri Lanka, hiking the Nepalese mountains or at an alternative music festival.
What you’ll enjoy at Easol
- You’ll have real visibility of what’s happening in the business. We have weekly company meetings, where we all get together to discuss our wins, learning opportunities, our goals and direction.
- There is an open forum for you to have your say in what we do and how we do it. We empower our team to share their ideas – no egos here!
- You’ll have access to our incredible perks, such as a company-funded “deep week”, where you can travel to a destination of choice and have dedicated time to focus on a project that is important to you without distraction.
- In addition to that, we offer a monthly contribution towards a gym membership and your mobile phone contract, an annual personal development budget, support to choose your own equipment and a lot more.
- ✈ You’ll have 33 days of holidays, inclusive of public holidays.
- Employees of all backgrounds and physical abilities will be supported by us in every way possible to thrive.SPACE