Why Your Admin Is Costing You More Than You Think (And What To Do About It)
Updated: Jun 11
There's a question I want you to sit with for a moment.
How much is your time worth?
Not in a vague, aspirational way. Actually — if you work out your annual revenue and divide it by the hours you work, what's your hourly rate? For many of the female founders I speak to, it's somewhere between £75 and £200 an hour.
Now here's the uncomfortable part.
How many of those hours are you spending on admin?
Emails. Invoices. Scheduling. Chasing payments. Formatting documents. Updating spreadsheets. Managing your inbox. Rescheduling appointments. All the invisible, unglamorous, behind-the-scenes work that keeps a business running — but doesn't actually grow it.
If you're spending even five hours a week on tasks that someone else could handle, and your time is worth £100 an hour, that's £500 a week — over £25,000 a year — of your highest-value time going into the back office.
And that's before we even talk about the mental load.
The cost nobody counts
There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes not from working too hard, but from working on too many things at once. The cognitive weight of holding everything in your head — the follow-up you mustn't forget, the invoice that still hasn't been sent, the client who's waiting for a reply — is genuinely draining. And it takes up mental space that could be used for the creative thinking, the big-picture strategy, and the client work that only you can do.
This is what I call the hidden cost of doing it all yourself. It doesn't show up on a spreadsheet. But you feel it. Every day.
So what's the alternative?
Working with a Virtual Assistant — a good one, who truly understands your business — gives you back far more than time. It gives you clarity. The freedom to focus. The ability to end a Friday feeling like a CEO, not an exhausted administrator.
As a VA with a BSc in Applied Accounting and hands-on bookkeeping experience, I work with female founders in wellness, coaching and creative industries to take everything from inbox management and diary coordination to financial admin, invoicing and bookkeeping completely off their plate.
My support starts at £55/hour, with retainer and project packages available. For most of my clients, the question very quickly stops being "can I afford a VA?" and becomes "why didn't I do this sooner?"
Is it right for you?
You're probably ready for VA support if:
You regularly end the day feeling busy but not productive
Your inbox is a source of stress rather than a tool
Invoicing, bookkeeping or financial admin gets pushed to last
You know what you should be doing, but the back office keeps pulling you away
You've thought "I need help" more than once this month
If any of that sounds familiar — I'd love to have a conversation. I offer a free, no-pressure discovery call where we simply talk about where you're at and what support might look like for you.
No hard sell. No obligation. Just a calm, honest chat.
Comments