How much time does a good assistant actually save a CEO? Let’s keep this simple.
When I talk about the value of an experienced assistant, I always start with conservative numbers.
No inflated salaries.
No exaggerated claims.
Just evidence.
Harvard Business Review tracked nearly 60,000 hours of CEO time in the article ‘How CEOs Manage Time’.
CEOs work around 62.5 hours a week.
Much of that time is spent on:
• Email
• Meetings that default to one hour
• Reactive interruptions
• Routine and legacy work that has never been questioned
Before doing any maths, I followed a simple three-step process.
1. Use AI to analyse the HBR data to list where CEOs actually spend their time.
2. Ask AI which of those activities a capable Executive Assistant could realistically take ownership of and add value to.
3. Ask how much time the CEO would get back if the assistant fully owned those activities and did them well.
Nothing speculative. Nothing inflated.
Now the numbers.
Assume a CEO earns $300,000 a year.
That is very conservative. In corporate America, most CEOs earn many times this. $300,000 is closer to the average salary of a small business CEO in the US.
That works out at roughly $150 an hour.
Here is what a capable assistant can realistically take off their plate:
• Email and communication: 7–10 hours a week
• Meetings: 6–8 hours a week
• Routine and legacy work: 3–4 hours a week
• Reactive issues: 4–5 hours a week
• Protecting strategic focus: 2–3 hours a week
Let’s take the low end.
That is 22 hours every week.
The maths:
22 × $150 = $3,300 a week
That is $158,400 a year, using conservative assumptions.
And that figure is only the cost value of time reclaimed.
It does not include the revenue or growth a CEO can generate in those hours.
If the average EA earns $70,000 a year, and can reliably return over $150,000 a year in reclaimed CEO capacity, the question is not whether you can afford one.
It is whether you can afford not to use them properly.
The conclusion is obvious.
Assistants are not a cost.
They are an investment.
Tomorrow, I’ll show why AI does not replace assistants, but frees them to create even more leverage for their leaders.
