Flight Attendant Starts Own Business as COVID-19 Ravages Airline Industry

Virtual White Rabbit makes business owners’ lives easier.

By Jim Pytell, Assistant Editor On Nov 4, 2020

Many commentators have called COVID-19 the worst crisis ever encountered in the history of the aviation industry. With travel restrictions barring airlines from functioning at full capacity, hotel closures at destination locations, and a general trepidation from travelers concerned for their health in the midst of a global pandemic, the airline industry has experienced record job losses.

One of those affected by the ailing industry is Keith Belitrand, founder and owner of Virtual White Rabbit, who had a successful career as a flight attendant for more than five years up until COVID-19. 

“It was definitely scary,” Belitrand says, realizing that his future in the airline industry was about to come crumbling down. 

However, instead of letting his inevitable layoff crush him, Belitrand decided to take matters into his own hands, realizing his skillset and tapping into an entrepreneurial mindset he didn’t realize he had. 

“At previous jobs, I’ve received a lot of compliments about how I was always so on top of things,” Belitrand says, who worked part-time as an assistant at a salon. “There are a lot of businesses right now that are struggling with the small details of things, whether they don’t want to do them or it’s simply too much for them to do. I wanted to extend my services [to them].” 

And that is how Virtual White Rabbit was born. The company provides live virtual business assistants (real people) that provide clients with a secretarial service that assists with administrative support, tedious tasks, process improvement, organization, productivity, virtual efficiency, project management, communication and more. 

Belitrand says that his goal with Virtual White Rabbit is to take tasks off the plate of business owners and allow them to focus on their customers and, in the current environment, rebuild their business. 

The company, whose name was inspired by the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, launched in May, and by July, Belitrand says he was struggling to keep up with demand. “Everyone who I introduced myself to was immediately on board,” he says. “It was at the point where I was getting a new client every week.” 

Overall, the decision to take a leap of faith in the face of adversity is something that Belitrand certainly doesn’t regret. 

“I had to think to myself, ‘What am I good at? What am I passionate about?’ If you are passionate about something, and you can find something that you are good at and capitalize on that, I think that you will be so happy,” Belitrand says. “I wish I did it a lot sooner.”

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