Most professional services businesses treat time as if every hour carries the same value.

Ethan Bull believes that assumption is fundamentally flawed.

As co-founder of ProAssisting, a fractional executive assistant service, Bull has built a company around the idea that the value of support cannot always be measured by the number of minutes someone spends completing a task. In executive assistance, a brief intervention at the right moment may be far more valuable than an hour spent on routine administrative work.

That distinction has shaped both ProAssisting’s pricing model and the operational structure that allows Bull and his co-founder, Stephanie, to manage a nationwide network of assistants without building a large internal bureaucracy.

Not Every Minute Has Equal Value

Consider two assignments.

In the first, an executive assistant spends an hour on hold with an airline seeking a refund. In the second, the assistant receives an urgent message late in the evening that a board chair is ill and tomorrow’s schedule must be reorganized.

The second task might take only 12 minutes. Yet those minutes require judgment, responsiveness, discretion, and immediate coordination with several important stakeholders.

Under a strict hourly model, the airline call appears more valuable because it took longer. In reality, the late-night intervention may protect an entire day of executive meetings and prevent confusion across the organization.

Bull argues that professional support should be viewed holistically. Availability, context, urgency, and the consequences of a task all influence its value.

Reducing every interaction to a timesheet overlooks the reason executives seek experienced assistance in the first place.

Hourly Billing Can Punish Efficiency

Time-based billing also creates a counterproductive incentive.

As assistants become more familiar with an executive, they naturally complete assignments faster. They understand communication preferences, recurring contacts, travel habits, scheduling priorities, and the unwritten rules that guide daily decisions.

That increased efficiency should benefit both parties.

Under hourly pricing, however, the assistant may earn less precisely because they have become better at the work. The faster they solve problems, the fewer hours they can invoice.

This tension appears across many professional service industries. Clients want speed, but the provider’s revenue depends on time consumption.

ProAssisting moved away from that conflict by pricing around a defined share of an assistant’s capacity and resources. The client gains ongoing access to experienced support, while the assistant is rewarded for delivering reliable outcomes rather than stretching tasks to fill billable hours.

A Business Model Should Reduce Administrative Drag

The same philosophy applies to how Bull and his co-founder operate their company.

ProAssisting works with roughly 38 assistants across the United States, yet Bull and Stephanie remain the only two people managing the central business. Neither has an assistant of their own.

That would be difficult under a model dependent on manually collecting, auditing, and invoicing every hour worked. Although the company monitors activity behind the scenes, its core structure does not require constant timekeeping administration.

The result is a lean operation that can grow without automatically adding layers of management.

For entrepreneurs, that distinction matters. Revenue growth does not always need to produce equal growth in internal complexity. A thoughtful business model can remove administrative work before it ever becomes a burden.

Fractional Work Creates New Paths for Experienced Professionals

Bull also sees the fractional economy as an increasingly important opportunity for seasoned executives and specialists.

Professionals in their 40s, 50s, and 60s may possess decades of valuable experience but find that many companies cannot justify hiring them full time. Fractional arrangements allow businesses to access a portion of that expertise while giving professionals a way to build careers across several clients.

This model is particularly relevant for people considering entrepreneurship after leaving traditional corporate roles.

Starting a company remains intimidating, but technology, remote work, and fractional service models have lowered many of the traditional barriers. Experts no longer need a large team or expensive office to build a sustainable operation around what they know best.

Bull’s experience suggests that the most important decision may not be what service to sell. It may be how to structure that service so incentives remain aligned, operations stay manageable, and customers pay for the value they receive.

When businesses stop treating every minute as interchangeable, they can begin pricing what actually matters: access, judgment, reliability, and results.

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