I faked having an assistant and it transformed my career

One writer’s dirty secret is your next boss move

WORDS: JULIE VADNAL

Meet my assistant, Alex. She’s a recent grad who just moved to London, and I hired her to help me with my emails. (I get a lot of emails.) No, wait. Alex is actually a guy from a small town in Wales, trying out for West End shows and in need of cash on the side. Whoever Alex is depends on how I feel. It works, of course, because I made them up. The whole concept of having a fake assistant began after lunch with a friend a few months ago, when we agreed that hiring actual employees would make us look baller and help us snag bigger, better gigs. And I’d seen on Insta that an editor-turned-freelancer had hired someone to open boxes of swag and coordinate her schedule. I…

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Cosmopolitan UK (Digital) - 1 Issue, April/May 2025

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