80,000 emails. Time to let go.

Mary Berry had tried getting help. Four executive assistants and account managers, hired between 2016 and 2018, had taught her an exhausting lesson: someone asking what to do next can become another thing to do. Later, running beauty manufacturer Cosmos Labs, she faced an inbox containing 80,000 emails. According to Oceans Talent’s account, she was losing business in the pile. The entrepreneur had become the sorting office.

A founder friend persuaded Berry to call Oceans. In January 2024, she met Tanuli Shenanya, who helped organize client information and protect focus time. Cosmos eventually hired three Oceans professionals. What changed was Berry’s willingness to entrust somebody with the machinery surrounding her work.

“I didn’t want an assistant.”

Mary Berry / Founder, Cosmos Labs

The distance was the easy part

Oceans connects businesses with full-time professionals, primarily in Sri Lanka, and calls them Divers. Ian Myers’ familiarity with the country predates the company: a 2024 interview traced his work with Sri Lankan colleagues to 2019. Pandemic-era remote work helped reveal that the relationship could survive the distance.

Myers built Oceans with co-founders Katie Scarpa and Andrew Deitchman. The proposition addresses a familiar small-business bind. A founder needs experienced help before the budget comfortably allows a local hire. Finding someone overseas introduces another job: screening, training, contracts and ongoing support. Oceans packages those functions around a dedicated person.

Its distinction is the combination of Sri Lankan recruiting, deliberate matching and continued people support. The alternatives include managed assistant firms such as Athena and Prialto, broader staffing providers, freelancers and direct recruitment. Buyers are choosing how much hiring and employment infrastructure they want someone else to operate.

The bill has two columns

The public offer starts at $3,000 monthly; Oceans’ hiring page shows $3,000-$4,000 tiers, with custom enterprise pricing. At the starting rate, three months means $9,000 in service fees. That arithmetic is useful because the initial trial runs for three months before rolling renewal. A low hourly freelancer budget is a different purchasing decision.

The other column contains the client’s time. Oceans typically promises four to five hours of live overlap with the client’s time zone, followed by independent work. That arrangement rewards clear instructions and decisions people can make without waiting. A manager who needs constant, simultaneous availability should settle the schedule before committing.

The division of responsibility matters. Oceans supports the person through training, coaching and people management. The client still supplies business context, priorities and a workable definition of success. Paying for support does not make the business explain itself.

Give somebody the whole problem

The range of work is broader than calendar management. EA+ roles extend into expenses, recruiting, projects and automation. Finance specialists handle accounting, reporting and analysis. Marketing hires work across paid media, SEO and content. Oceans advertises more than 600 client companies; recognizable names include Morning Brew, Cheers and True Classic.

MXA, a Pennsylvania manufacturers’ representative, offers another route into the service. Its initial experiment was a business development hire to help account managers find leads. The relationship expanded into finance as the company grew. Oceans’ case study reports $200,000 in annual savings and an entirely offshore finance team. That is one customer’s reported outcome, rather than a forecast for the next buyer. It also shows how the first placement can serve as a test of whether a larger working relationship makes sense.

At Coffee ’n Clothes, the obstacle was knowledge trapped inside founder Ryan Glick’s head. In Oceans’ July 2026 case study, Mishaal Weerasekera helped build operational processes around Google Sheets, a tool Glick already used. Isura Kahandawala subsequently took on marketing operations. The interesting detail is the spreadsheet: improving a business sometimes starts with making its existing habits transferable.

“Before Oceans, I was the bottleneck.”

Ryan Glick / Founder, Coffee ’n Clothes

There is a smaller version of the same lesson at Inbox Collective. Newsletter consultant Dan Oshinsky hired Nataasha Hallaldeen after becoming a parent. In the company’s account, she progressed from administrative work to reorganizing the systems tracking clients and invoices. Regular check-ins and end-of-day emails helped the handover. Responsibility expanded as trust accumulated.

A colleague needs colleagues

Working exclusively for a client can leave an offshore employee professionally isolated. Oceans’ answer includes Pod Leaders, ongoing learning and a local community. Its careers page lists medical coverage for employees and family, coworking stipends, coaching and social activities. These benefits make the model more substantial than an introduction followed by an invoice.

The company is also adding physical infrastructure. August 2026 reporting described a new Colombo office for optional gatherings and Oceans Academy, a programme preparing prospective hires. The remote-first business is investing in places and relationships that help people sustain remote careers.

The handover still belongs to you

A useful warning comes from consultant Ariana Gil’s experience before Oceans. She cycled through three part-time assistants, spending scarce hours deciding what to delegate and checking the work. A dedicated hire offered a different arrangement, but the underlying requirement remained: enough shared context to make another person useful.

The first useful assignment should therefore have edges. For invoicing, that might mean agreeing who checks the figures, when reminders go out and which exceptions come back to the founder. For a marketing hire, it means specifying the campaign objective and approval rights. These are ordinary management choices. Writing them down lets both sides distinguish an unfamiliar business from a missing skill, and a reasonable question from a decision that can safely be delegated.

That leaves clear limits. A few scattered errands may not justify full-time staffing. Work requiring physical presence cannot travel through a video call. A founder unwilling to explain priorities will keep attracting questions. The practical lesson is to choose a recurring responsibility, document how decisions get made and create room for feedback. An ocean is manageable. An unexplained business is harder.