Assistant for an entrepreneur with several businesses in Dubai executive assistant, chief of staff or both, and what it costs

A typical week without an assistant

The symptoms repeat from owner to owner, whatever the industries.

• A trade licence of the smallest company lapses because its renewal lived in a manager's inbox, not in your calendar; a fine and a frozen bank account follow
• Three managers send three reports in three formats on three different days; you spend Sunday night rebuilding one table
• Your inbox mixes a supplier of company A, a tenant of company B and a school letter; the important one is read on Thursday
• The PRO of one company does not know about the visa expiry of an employee who moved to another company; the paperwork starts a week late
• Meetings are stacked across two free zones and the mainland on the same day, with no travel time
• Decisions wait for you: a manager needs a yes on a 2,000 AED purchase and waits three days, because the message is buried

What the assistant takes over

Below is coordination and administration. Strategy, hiring and firing of managers, money and signatures stay with the owner.

• Business, executive assistant: one inbox and one calendar for all companies, with rules on what reaches you and what is handled; travel time, priorities and a daily short list of decisions you owe
• Business, executive assistant: a licence and renewal calendar per company, trade licence, establishment card, lease, insurance, bank documents, with reminders well in advance and the responsible person named for each item
• Business, executive assistant: PRO coordination across companies, the list of employee visas and Emirates IDs with expiry dates, documents collected for the PRO officer or PRO services firm to process
• Business, chief of staff: a single reporting format from managers, weekly numbers collected and summarised, follow-up on the decisions you made until they are closed, preparation of the weekly owner's meeting
• Business, chief of staff: priorities across companies, a project list with owners and dates, the first draft of a plan or a problem analysis for your decision
• Personal and household: travel, family calendar, personal documents, household staff coordination, so your private life stops competing with four companies for the same hour
• Not delegated: hiring and dismissal decisions, signing, bank approvals and transfers without a written rule, confidential HR and partner matters, anything a manager should decide within their own authority

Which type fits and what it costs

Two roles solve two different problems. Salary lines are market estimates in AED per month, full package of basic salary plus allowances; the employer also pays visa, health insurance and a gratuity provision.

• Executive assistant: puts your day, inbox, documents and renewals into one system; about 12,000 - 20,000, senior to an owner with a family office 20,000 - 30,000
• Chief of staff: works with your managers, drives reporting and follow-through, prepares decisions; orientation 25,000 - 40,000 depending on the size of the businesses
• Hybrid multi-assistant: business plus personal plus household in one person for an owner whose private life also needs running; about 10,000 - 18,000, senior 18,000 - 25,000
• One person is enough when the companies are small and you still run operations yourself: start with a strong executive assistant
• You need two when managers run the companies and your bottleneck is follow-through, not scheduling: an executive assistant for the system and a chief of staff for the managers
• A common mistake is to hire a chief of staff and use them as a diary keeper; write the two scopes separately even if you hire one person first

How to find and check

Executive assistants come from EA roles in holdings, family offices, banks and consulting; chiefs of staff from operations, consulting, project management or from a strong EA who has outgrown the diary. Test on your own mess.

• Practical skills assessment, executive assistant: a list of 30 items across three companies (renewals, meetings, a trip, a bank document, a personal appointment) with two hidden conflicts and one lapsed deadline; ask for a calendar, a renewal tracker and a note of what they would escalate today
• Email triage: 20 messages from managers, suppliers, a bank, a free zone authority and family; which three reach you first and how the rest are handled
• Profession-specific task: build a renewal calendar for two companies from a sample set of licence, lease and insurance dates, and book a conference trip that does not collide with a renewal visit
• Chief of staff task: three reports from three managers in different formats; ask for one page for the owner with numbers, open decisions and a recommendation
• Red flags: wants to decide for the owner, speaks about previous employers' numbers, has never kept a renewal or compliance tracker, cannot explain how they would handle a manager who ignores them
• Probation plan: month 1 inbox, calendar and renewal tracker with every outgoing message approved; month 2 PRO coordination and reporting format; month 3 priorities and follow-through with managers, with a written review each month

Risks and boundaries

A person who sees all your companies sees everything. Boundaries protect you and also protect the assistant from impossible positions.

• Confidentiality and non-disclosure in the contract, covering all companies and the family; what the assistant may share with each manager written down
• Access by role: delegated access to your inbox and calendar, their own logins in each company's systems, no personal banking passwords, two-step verification everywhere
• Money: approvals and transfers stay with you or with a named manager under a written limit; the assistant prepares and tracks, never pays
• Authority with managers: a chief of staff speaks with your mandate on follow-through, not on decisions; tell the managers this yourself on day one
• Dependence on one person: the renewal calendar, the logins list and the reporting format live in shared systems, not in one head; a handover document is updated monthly
• Backup: a second person who can run the calendar for a week, for example the office manager of your largest company

How we help

TLNT is a hiring consultancy. We help an owner of several businesses define the two scopes, executive assistant and chief of staff, set salary ranges as market estimates, find and assess candidates with a practical skills assessment on real tasks (a renewal calendar across companies, inbox triage, one page from three reports) and prepare a clear offer. You make the hiring decision and agree the terms with the candidate yourself; the person is employed directly by one of your companies, the employer sponsors the visa and we give you a step-by-step checklist. See also our chief of staff, hybrid assistant and executive assistant pages.

Our fee is fixed for each role and agreed before the search starts. A 10% prepayment of the fee starts the search, the rest is due once the person has started work. If it does not work out, we find a replacement free of charge; the period is set in the contract. Consulting and CRM projects are priced after a free review.