We believe you should have a brilliant assistant by your side

...and we've made it easier and more affordable than ever

We've liberated our clients from

2,138,157

hours of time-wasting tasks so far

Entrepreneur Virtual Assistant Family time
That's enough for…
  • 285,088 days spent growing their businesses
  • £160,361,775 earned in extra billable time
  • 25,657,884 bedtime stories with their kids
  • 12,727 interruption free holidays
Barnaby Lashbrooke - founder and CEO of Time etc

This is me - trying not to look frozen on a cold January day!

Our story


Hello, I'm Barnaby - it’s nice to meet you!

When I started my first business, I did everything myself and that meant spinning a lot of plates - from sales to customer service.

Before long, I was working 100+ hour weeks and still not getting everything done. I'd stopped being able to grow my business, because I was so busy running it.

Working late one evening, feeling stressed and disorganised, I realised that things needed to change if I wanted to succeed. I needed some help.

I set about trying to hire an assistant but quickly hit a brick wall - I had absolutely no idea how to find a good one or even how I would afford it.

Time etc now

Penni with Sir Richard Branson on his houseboat

I knew there must be lots of people, like me, working long hours and struggling with long to-do lists who couldn't justify hiring an assistant or simply didn't know how.

Then, one day, I met Penni Pike, who had been Sir Richard Branson's closest assistant for many years.

Penni explained how Richard had achieved incredible things because he delegated so much of his work to Penni. She also explained exactly what to look for in a brilliant assistant.

Feeling inspired by Penni's advice, I created Time etc - a service that would pair hard-working entrepreneurs with brilliant assistants for an affordable monthly fee.

Time etc now

Our incredible operations team

Since then, we've helped more than 22,000 entrepreneurs to achieve more and given meaningful work to thousands of assistants.

In 2023 we came 19th in the Elite Business Top 100 Businesses awards and ranked as one of the top 250 outsourcing companies in the world. We're also a Certified™ Great Place To Work®.

We've painstakingly assembled a team of the very best part-time assistants with the skills and traits that entrepreneurs need, including an average 12 years experience in companies like AOL, Virgin and Apple.

Together, our mission is to help you feel less stressed and more organised so that you're able to do more, achieve more and earn more.

Barnaby Lashbrooke, Founder

Watch Barnaby's Tedx talk

Tedx: Why following the rules isn't always good for you

Watch now

Our values

Our values sit at the very heart of what we do.

  • We Go Further

    We don't do "good-enough." We do the very best for our clients.

  • We're Smart

    We think on our feet. We don't ignore problems, we solve them.

  • We're Entrepreneurial

    We move quickly and fearlessly to try new things. We own what we do.

  • We Do The Right Thing

    Everyone walks away happy. If there's a challenge, we'll solve it.

  • We're In It Together

    We're part of your team. We're stronger together. We grow together.

The Hard Work Myth - a book by Barnaby Lashbrooke

We’re so passionate about helping entrepreneurs to achieve more, we wrote the book on it.

Endorsed by best-selling author Nir Eyal and billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, The Hard Work Myth is packed full of powerful techniques you can use to achieve more.

Buy your copy

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