You need more hands. Inbox is piling up, research is not getting done, reports are late, and competitor monitoring fell off the calendar three months ago. Hiring someone costs $3,000-5,000/month minimum -- and that is before ramp time, management, and the inevitable PTO gaps. An AI employee like RIRD handles research, email, data work, scheduling, and monitoring starting at $9/week. The math is clear, but the decision is more nuanced than cost alone.
The True Cost of Your Next Hire
Most business owners underestimate fully loaded employee cost by 30-40%. The complete picture for a junior admin, researcher, or VA:
- Salary -- $35,000-55,000/year for a junior hire (US).
- Benefits -- health, PTO, retirement. Add 20-30% of salary.
- Tools -- software licenses, equipment, workspace. ~$3,000-5,000/year.
- Management -- your time training, reviewing work, giving feedback. 5-10 hours/week initially.
- Ramp time -- 1-3 months to full productivity. Full pay for partial output.
- Turnover risk -- average tenure for junior roles is 18 months. Then you start over.
Total: $50,000-80,000/year. That is $4,200-6,700/month for one person who works 40 hours a week.
An Overseas VA
The cheaper alternative: $500-1,500/month for an overseas virtual assistant. Real savings, but real trade-offs -- timezone gaps, communication overhead, quality inconsistency, and onboarding a new person every time one leaves. You also still need to manage them.
RIRD as Your AI Employee
RIRD is a general-purpose AI employee that handles any desk job. Message it a task, it executes, it reports back. No management, no ramp time, no PTO.
- ● $9/week -- light use. Inbox triage, ad-hoc research, a few recurring tasks.
- ● $99/mo -- daily workflows. Competitor monitoring, regular reporting, data processing.
- ● $249/mo -- high-volume ops. Multiple AI employees, parallel tasks, agency-scale work.
No benefits, no equipment, no turnover. Works 24/7 including weekends and holidays. Handles multiple tasks in parallel -- something no single hire can do.
When Humans Win
- ● Relationship-heavy work -- client management, negotiations, partnerships.
- ● Creative judgment -- brand voice, design decisions, strategic planning.
- ● Physical presence -- events, in-person meetings, office coordination.
- ● Ambiguous, evolving roles -- positions where the job description changes weekly and requires deep context.
When AI Wins
- ● Repetitive research -- competitive analysis, vendor comparison, market sizing.
- ● Data processing -- spreadsheet cleanup, deduplication, formatting, enrichment.
- ● Monitoring -- competitor websites, review sites, news mentions, ad libraries.
- ● Email and scheduling -- inbox triage, follow-up drafts, calendar management.
- ● Reporting -- weekly summaries, dashboards, metric tracking.
The Smart Play: Use Both
Give your team an AI employee to handle the repetitive work. Your people focus on judgment calls, relationships, and strategy -- the things that actually need a human brain. One RIRD employee can absorb 10-15 hours of busywork per week from your team, which is like getting a part-time hire for $9/week.
Try it for a month. Start with the task your team complains about most. Read the setup guide to start, or contact us for a walkthrough.