Executive Partnership
Inbox, diary, document control and project coordination, plus a second brain for the weeks when everything lands at once.
Exec support · Project delivery · Content & design · Psychometrics
Sophie's Bureau provides ongoing executive partnership to consultants, coaches and small-business leaders: inbox, diary, document control and project coordination, plus a second brain for the weeks when everything lands at once. Delivered on a monthly retainer, by one person, from France, in UK and Central European hours.
This is the practice most of my long-standing clients started in and the one that grew into the others. A consultant with a full diary does not need another tool; they need someone who reads the inbox the way they would, keeps the client relationships tidy, gets the deck finished, and notices when a project is quietly drifting. That is what a retainer buys.
Executive and project support
Inbox and diary care, client communications, document control and presentation preparation, meeting follow-up, and the coordination of projects, launches, events and client programmes: timelines, stakeholder chasing, and the running record of who has agreed to what. For a leadership development consultancy I have run programme operations across more than twenty cohorts; for a London leadership advisory firm I keep the client relationships and business processes moving.
Content and design support
Writing, editing and proofreading for web, articles and social channels, headlines and calls to action tightened so a site reads as one voice, and the decks, workbooks, one-pagers and visuals that give a consultancy's material a consistent finish.
Psychometrics and team diagnostics
Selection and administration of established workplace assessment tools, report design, and embedding the results into hiring, onboarding and team rhythms, for coaches and consultancies who use diagnostics in their work.
A strategic sounding board
Part of every retainer above the Essentials level is time set aside to think: a second brain for decisions, a person who has seen how the whole business fits together and can say what a plan will cost in practice before it is committed to.
Who this is for
Solo consultants and leaders of practices with up to around ten people who have grown past the point of holding everything in their head and want reliable, structured support without hiring in-house. Twenty-plus years in executive support, twelve of them fully remote, is the background this rests on; there is more on the about page.
How it is priced
Essentials Support is €850 a month, the Digital Operations Partner level €1,650, and the Strategic Business Partner level €2,750, all ex-VAT and month to month. The packages section sets out what each includes, and the FAQs answer the usual questions on scope and notice.
Sophie is an exceptional assistant. She is extremely reliable, deeply conscientious, very patient and also strategic. She ensures that our ongoing client relationships and business processes are managed with a very high degree of professionalism. Strongly recommended.
Richard Jolly, consultant and adjunct business school professor
Questions people ask before this kind of work
- Is this a virtual assistant service?
It covers the same ground as a good executive assistant, inbox, diary, documents and follow-up, and it is done by someone who also builds the systems those tasks run through. The difference shows up as fewer recurring tasks over time, because the cause gets fixed rather than the symptom handled again.
- How many hours or days a month do I get?
Retainers are scoped as a set number of days each month rather than a bag of hours. Essentials Support is the lightest; the Digital Operations Partner and Strategic Business Partner levels add systems work, project delivery and a sounding board. The right level usually becomes clear on the first call.
- What are your working hours and response time?
Within one working day for email during business hours (Central European Time), usually much sooner, with retainer clients first. I do not answer messages outside working hours or at weekends.
- Can I pause or stop?
Retainers run month to month with 30 days' notice on either side. At the end of an engagement I hand over documentation, access and any systems in a clean state so you or someone else can carry on.