The founder was billing £1.5 million a year. He was also managing his own inbox, booking his own travel, formatting his own proposals, chasing his own invoices, scheduling his own client calls, and updating his own CRM. He was doing roughly 15 hours a week of work that had no business requiring his time.
The company that needs a £1.5M founder to book his own flights does not have an operations problem. It has a priorities problem.
We placed a virtual assistant. Twelve weeks later, the founder had reclaimed 15 hours a week. He used that time to close two new enterprise clients worth £210,000 combined. The VA cost £1,200 a month.
What a Virtual Assistant Actually Does
The phrase "virtual assistant" covers a wide range. At the low end, it means someone who can book a meeting and reply to basic emails. At the professional level — which is what we provide — it means a skilled operations specialist who manages:
- Inbox management: triaging, drafting replies for approval, flagging urgent items, archiving noise
- Calendar management: scheduling calls across time zones, protecting focus blocks, managing rescheduling
- CRM maintenance: logging calls, updating deal stages, creating follow-up tasks, generating pipeline reports
- Proposal and document formatting: taking rough notes and turning them into polished client-facing documents
- Invoice creation and payment chasing: generating invoices, sending automated reminders, escalating overdue accounts
- Research: competitor analysis, prospect background research, market data gathering
- Travel and logistics: flights, accommodation, transfers, expense reporting
Research from ExecViva on VA ROI shows that virtual assistants reclaim 2–3 hours per day for senior leaders, with some engagements freeing up to 20 hours per week when calendar, inbox, and project management are all delegated together.
The Cost Comparison
An in-house executive assistant costs £65,000–£85,000 annually in the UK when you include salary, employer NI, pension contributions, and holiday cover. A professional virtual assistant from our team costs £1,000–£2,500 per month depending on hours and scope — £12,000–£30,000 annually. The saving is material. But cost is rarely the primary reason clients engage us.
The primary reason is time. The founder or executive has work that only they can do — strategic decisions, relationship management, sales conversations, product vision. Every hour they spend on admin is an hour not spent on that work. The true cost of a founder managing their own inbox is not the time the task takes. It's the opportunity cost of what they could have done instead.
How the Engagement Worked
Week 1: Audit and Setup
We spent the first week doing an inbox audit. We reviewed the last 90 days of email to understand what types of messages the founder was receiving, how long he was spending on them, and which categories could be handled without his input. We set up email filters, a shared label system, and a simple triage protocol: respond immediately, respond within 24 hours, forward to the founder, or archive.
Week 2–4: Gradual Handover
We don't recommend handing everything over on day one. The VA spent the first month shadowing — drafting replies that the founder approved before sending, scheduling meetings with his explicit sign-off, and handling lower-stakes tasks independently. By week four, the founder was reviewing and approving less than 10% of what the VA was handling. The rest was managed autonomously.
Week 5–12: Full Operations
By week five, the founder's calendar was being managed entirely by the VA. His inbox was triaged by 8am every morning. Proposals were formatted before he saw them. CRM was updated the same day as each client interaction. He was reviewing a clean, prioritised to-do list each morning rather than wading through administrative noise.
What the Founder Did With 15 Hours Back
He used three hours a week to reactivate relationships with past clients he'd lost touch with. Two of those conversations led to new projects within 60 days. He used five hours a week on content — LinkedIn posts and a short weekly email newsletter to his prospect list — which generated three inbound enquiries over the quarter. The remaining seven hours went into deeper work on two enterprise pitches he'd been deprioritising.
Two enterprise deals closed. £210,000 in new revenue. £14,400 in VA cost over 12 months. The return on investment is not a close calculation.
Is a VA Right for You?
If you are regularly doing tasks that don't require your specific expertise, and if those tasks are crowding out work that does — a virtual assistant is almost certainly worth the investment.
The right question isn't "can I afford a VA?" It's "what is it costing me to not have one?" If the answer involves delayed proposals, unanswered emails, missed follow-ups, or a calendar you're managing yourself at 9pm — the cost is already higher than the solution.