Everyone is busy.

It seems like we could all benefit from a couple of extra hours in the day… to finish a project, catch up on email, have more time with our family. Or (honestly?) take a nap.

Good news: those extra hours are possible.

At Hustle Fund, most folks on our team work with a virtual assistant (VA). This approach gives us an extra 2-3 hours a day. That’s an extra 15 hours per week.

We’ve learned quite a bit about how to work successfully with VAs, and today we’d love to share some of those strategies with you.

Let’s dive in.

"Leverage" Is The Theme of 2025

“Leverage" is our team’s theme for 2025.

To us, leverage means delegating the time-consuming, low-impact tasks so we can focus on what actually moves the needle.

And VAs are one of the best ways to leverage our time effectively.

Here are three game-changing ways our team leverages VA to reclaim our time:

1. Email Triage

One of my teammates, Eric Bahn, gets something like 400 emails a day.

Before VAs, Eric spent hours each week sorting through his inbox. Now, a VA checks his inbox multiple times a day and sorts messages into priority buckets:

• 🔥 Highest Priority: Messages from his portfolio founders and investors
• ⚡ High Priority: Team communications
• 📚 Read Later: Newsletters and content to review
• 📥 The Rest: Cold outreach, sales pitches, etc.

Eric’s VA doesn't delete anything — just organizes.

This change helps Eric process emails twice as fast. He’s still doing the work, but he’s doing it way more efficiently.

🔥 Pro tip: Set up email folders or labels beforehand so your VA knows exactly where everything goes!

2. Calendar Control

Last year, Eric averaged 60 HOURS of meetings weekly — sometimes up to 16 meetings in a single day.

Managing his schedule without help was cutting into precious hours with his family, or sleeping, or doing meaningful work.

Eric must have tried 10+ scheduling tools before finally admitting that he needed human help.

Now, his VA:

• Coordinates meetings with multiple people
• Reschedules when unexpected personal obligations pop up
• Maintains buffer time between meetings so he can breathe

The scheduling headache that used to eat hours of his week now happens magically in the background while Eric focuses on more high-impact things.

3. Creating Repeatable Playbooks

A big concern when starting to work with VAs was… how to train them?

The solution: documenting the repetitive tasks and handing them off completely.

Things like weekly reports, monthly analytics, quarterly updates? All perfect candidates for VAs.

But also… meeting follow-ups, CRM management, repurposing content, event logistics, monitoring public-facing company inboxes are all off our plates.

We use a combination of Loom videos and Notion docs to create playbooks for these repeatable tasks.

The beauty here is that you do the work ONCE (creating the playbook), then never think about that task again.

Every time I catch myself doing something routine, I ask: "Could my VA handle this?" If yes, I create a playbook and cross it off my list forever.

The Result: Afternoon Freedom

The payoff?

I now have 2-3 hours EVERY AFTERNOON for focused work on strategic projects. This uninterrupted time is when my best thinking happens — and it simply didn't exist before.

How to get started

If you want to get started working with a VA, we recommend starting small.

1. Identify your time-suckers: Track where your hours go for a whole week.
2. Start with one area: Don't overwhelm yourself or your new VA. Start with email or calendar management.
3. Document your process: Before you hire, write down how you handle the tasks you want to delegate. Even better: record a video of yourself doing the task, and ask the VA to create a written playbook for you.
4. Set clear expectations: Communicate precisely what success looks like. Be open to answering their questions. Over communicate when something is important.

Be at least a little bit patient.

Your VA might not do everything exactly as you would at first, but the time you gain is worth the small adjustments.

Your Turn!

What's one task you could delegate today that would give you back at least 30 minutes?

Reply to this email and let me know! I truly want to hear your answers. And since my VA doesn’t touch my inbox, I’ll be the one to reply 🙂