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Laura Nicole: 0:02

Welcome to your Virtual Assistant Coach, the podcast for moms who want to make money from home on their own terms. I'm your host, Laura Nicole, a successful six-figure earning VA and coach, who replaced my college professor salary in just five months back in 2020, after my daughter was born, and I have never looked back. I'm here to help you build a profitable, flexible VA business that fits into your family's lives, so you no longer feel like you're living just to work. Let's dive in.

Laura Nicole:  0:33

It literally feels like we cannot get on our computer or open an app and not say something about AI. Lately, it has become so prominent and it is being used in so many ways that I know a lot of y'all are wondering is there even a future for virtual assistants, or are VAs just going to be completely replaced by AI? And I get it. I understand the concern, but I want to put that worry a little bit at ease for y'all today, because the truth is the AI is not replacing virtual assistants. It's actually making the VA role even more valuable for small business owners. So today I'm going to break down for you why AI cannot do what you can do and how smart small business owners are actually integrating the use of AI, along with the use of their virtual assistants to help their business be more systematic and more efficient.

Laura Nicole: 1:34

So the myth that is out there right, is that AI will just completely replace virtual assistants, the root fear of that being why would someone pay me if they can just use AI? And the reality here is that, yes, ai is very powerful, it is very helpful, it has its place in business, but it is not a business partner, it is not a collaborative team member. It is simply a tool, it is a resource, it is a super helpful software to have in your back pocket and to utilize, but it is just that it is a software and that software cannot replace the human nature of actually having a human on your team, that human being, a virtual assistant. Because, yes, ai can do a lot, but it cannot do it on its own. Ai requires a human to operate it, it requires a human prompt, it requires human input. If there is not a human there plugging something in to AI, then the AI isn't doing a damn thing. And that human who is putting the input into AI or asking the question or putting the prompt in, that can be you, the virtual assistant, also, you guys. The output of AI has to be fact-checked. It has to be checked by a human all the time, even on smaller scale questions or projects that you're working on, because it gets stuff wrong a lot and, to be quite frank, it also just makes up a lot. If it doesn't know the answer, it just makes something up that sounds good and drops it in their answer.

Laura Nicole: 3:16

Being a small business owner myself, I use AI. I have a little chat bot that I built out. I call her Lola, and Lola helps me with so many things, you guys. But there's also so many times that she'll give me an answer and I literally type back Lola, where the hell did that come from? Like literally, what are you talking about? And she'll say, oh good, catch Laura. And then retry whatever the prompt was right. But, like, if there was not a person with a brain and critical thinking skills reading the answers, then who freaking knows what would be getting put out there, right? Literally inside of ChatGPT, it says at the bottom of the chat that everything has to be fact-checked and that some things could be inaccurate.

Laura Nicole: 4:01

In addition to that, even if you train the AI on the client's brand and their messaging and their voice, ai is still, again, a software. I was going to say a robot. It's not a robot, but it's a computer software, right? So we can only truly understand those things to a certain extent. It cannot nail the nuance of your client's messaging and their brand voice, and I don't want you guys to forget that business owners hire VAs because they want a person. Right? We've talked about how small business owners look for the VA who will be the puzzle piece to their team, and to be that puzzle piece, they are looking for someone who can think critically, who can catch mistakes, who can anticipate future needs and who fits into the team's overall culture. Right, and that's not something that AI can do or probably will ever be able to do, but it's actually really great because you can utilize AI and ChatGPT or Cloud or whatever right, there's so many of them out there now to make your job as a virtual assistant faster and more efficient.

Laura Nicole: 5:09

Using AI can help you speed up some of those repetitive tasks that you do in business, which will save you and your client so much time. A perfect example of this is some of the work I'm doing for one of my new clients. We are curating this massive list of CEOs that she can do outreach to. And if I were to just try to hop on the internet and use Google and research it myself, it would take a freaking year to create the list that I was able to create using my chatbot, lola, in a week, because she can scour the internet at fucking lightning speed. But again, the reason she's not enough at doing the job right, the reason that my client still needs me, is because Lola just goes and pulls the info and brings me back the data. But I have to sort it, I have to go through it, I have to decide which ones are worth keeping on the list, which ones aren't actually a good fit, and then organizing the data and putting it into a format that both me and my client can understand to communicate on them moving forward. So by using AI right, I became incredibly more efficient, which then increases my value and my capacity for what I can deliver to my client.

Laura Nicole: 6:24

The biggest takeaway here, y'all that I want you to remember is that the human element that business owners are looking for and what they want when they're hiring a VA, they cannot get from AI. That comes from a person. They want someone they can trust, that they can communicate with because you are truly a part of their business culture. So I do not want you to see AI as a threat. I want you to see it instead as a very useful tool in your toolbox, and the more you know how to use it, the more valuable you can become as well. Now I'm not saying to go out and get certified and become an expert in using ChatGPT, but go play around with it every now and then, just kind of see what it's capable of. Ask it some questions. Right, I have my chatbot and I use it a lot for business, but I also use it for just random life things, like I have a couple of category of projects on the side that if someone logged in, they would be like, huh, that has nothing to do with work. So pop in there, give it some prompts, see what it comes back with, ask it questions about your hobbies or things they're interested in and just kind of see how it works.

Laura Nicole: 7:29

It will not be eliminating VA roles. It simply elevates them and if you're ready to learn the exact services that business owners are actually really looking for and how to position yourself as a valuable human to add to their team. I would love for you to join me for the next live round of Discover your Superstar VA Skills, which is one of my absolute favorite events to run. I hold it monthly. It is a four-day workshop where you will spend just four hours of your time spread over four days because listen, I get it, I know that you are busy, but we can fit in a total of an hour a day for four days, where you will learn and identify exactly what you can offer as a VA with the skills you already have. I'll show you how to monetize those skills by actually turning them into virtual assistant services and will create a resume to highlight your skills and services that you can then go confidently share with potential clients to get out there and start actually making money as a virtual assistant.

Laura Nicole: 8:36

Spots for this event are always limited because you essentially get coached by me for four days and I want to make sure everybody gets the attention that they deserve. So if you have not attended one of these workshops in the past and you are feeling ready to get started as a VA, this is the jumpstart that you need. So pop down to the link in the show notes to register and save your seat. I will see you there. Thanks for hanging out with me today on your Virtual Assistant Coach. If you loved this episode, be sure to share it with your best friend, your sister or even your favorite coworker, who you know wants to start making a flexible income. I'll see you all next time.