£39 including VAT
The First 90 Days: the complete guide
A strategic blueprint for Executive Assistants and PAs starting a new role, written by Lily Shippen and Emily Partridge.
This is not a checklist. It is a framework for building trust, demonstrating judgement, and quietly becoming indispensable, before anyone has asked you to prove yourself.
Written from both sides of the desk
Emily Partridge spent fifteen years as an award-winning Executive Assistant before managing sixty EAs around the world. Lily Shippen has been placing Executive Assistants and Personal Assistants for over a decade and has watched hundreds of people start this role. Between them they know, usually within the first thirty days, who is going to flourish and who is going to struggle, and it is almost never about technical skill. That is what this guide is about.
What’s inside: six parts, ninety days, one working companion
- Before you begin. Research, questions and intentions before day one, so you arrive already in motion.
- Days 1 to 30: Listen. Learn. Land. Your first week, how to extract what you need without overwhelming anyone, the communication loop that stops assumptions breaking trust, and the thirty-day moment that sets up the whole partnership.
- Days 31 to 60: Consolidate. Confirm. Connect. Looping back, building the relationship rather than just the function, and managing priorities against urgencies.
- Days 61 to 90: Establish. Evolve. Lead. The shift from reactive to proactive, and setting the terms for who you are going to be in the role.
- For the principal. A section written for the person you support, so you can share it with them. It covers the context only they can give you and what gets in the way when they do not.
- Tools and templates. Four working tools built from the practices of EAs who got the first ninety days right.
The four templates
- The open questions bank, to weave into conversations rather than read from a list.
- The 60 and 90-day emails, so you can loop back and propose where the partnership goes next.
- The intelligence map, the private working document you build from your first week and return to every Friday.
- The 90-day self-review, a private reflection to complete before your ninety-day conversation.
Who it is for
- An EA or PA starting a new role, who wants a structured, honest and practical plan.
- An experienced EA moving to a new principal, who wants to reset with fresh intention rather than the assumptions of the last role.
- An employer or principal who wants the partnership to work from day one. The dedicated section is written for you.
How to use it
Work through it slowly and come back to it at thirty, sixty and ninety days. It is designed to be read with new eyes at each milestone, which is why it is a PDF you keep rather than a course you finish. 59 pages, £39 including VAT.
Questions before you buy
Yes. The role titles differ but the first ninety days do not, and the guide is written for both.
No. It was written for a new role, but experienced EAs use it to reset an existing partnership, and the section for the principal is useful at any point.
A checklist tells you what to do. This guide works through how to build trust, read the organisation and show judgement in the order the first ninety days demand, with templates for the conversations and emails that matter most.
Yes, and we would encourage it. Part five is written for the principal and is designed to be handed over.
A 59-page PDF that you keep and come back to at thirty, sixty and ninety days.
A 30 60 90 day plan sets out what you will understand, deliver and own by the end of each month in a new role. For an EA or PA the first thirty days are for listening and landing, days 31 to 60 for looping back and confirming priorities, and days 61 to 90 for moving from reactive to proactive. The guide is built on that structure, with the 60 and 90-day emails to send your principal at each milestone.
