Is AI coming for your job?

How to use AI to your advantage (and cat pictures)

Apr 23, 2025

Assistants! It's OUR month - is it fitting that National Administrative Professionals Day (today!) is the same month as many of us eat our weight in chocolate?

And this day we are celebrating YOU - Take a moment, remember how fabulous you are and what an incredible job you are doing. The Assistant role has become 30% more strategic in the past 3 years*, we are all upskilling, anticipating our clients needs and giving more than our weight’s worth in gold in value.

This month, I want to talk to you about AI. It is everywhere, and it is so easy to get overwhelmed thinking that you, ‘aren’t doing enough’. BUT according to LinkedIn data, assistants are some of the earliest adopters of AI in their work.

Read on for my recent learnings on the pace of AI and how everyone really feels about it (from an Oxford University professor no less).

*Stat from Lucy Brazier’s fantastic book The Modern Day Assistant, please read!

Points of Business: How VAs can use AI to their advantage

I had planned to speak about AI in this edition for a while, so it’s incredibly fitting I write this after a couple of the BEST AI webinars this week as part of my Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses programme.

My key takeaway? No one really knows the level of impact AI is having or when we’ll begin to understand it, even Oxford University lecturers who specialise in AI. We are all struggling to keep up. One lecturer shared the term ‘AI whiplash’ - he can deliver a talk on AI and as soon as he sits down it’s obsolete because of the pace of development.

What does this mean?

Everyone is struggling to keep up.

Is it me or does that make anyone else feel better?

I speak a lot about tech FOMO. Before it was automations and systems - founders are convinced everyone else has something more exciting/efficient/productive than they do.

Now, it’s the same with AI.

So what can we do?

Play play play - set time aside, make it a habit (read my thoughts on habit stacking and consistency here)

Here is what I am playing with:
ChatGPT - for everything
Perplexity - for knowledge building
TL;DV - for calls
Notion - for creating tables, formatting etc within pages I’ve created
Claude - similar to ChatGPT but when I fancy something different ;)

Be curious and proactive - what tasks can it help with?

My Examples:

Personalising sales proposals, helping me write trials, edit trials, review things

HAVE FUN - here’s an AI-generated picture of my cat (OK that was pure procrastination)

I asked ChatGPT to take everything it knew and feed back to me what I am really like.

“Given what you know about me, tell me what you know about me. And go deep. My upbringing, family, career, friends, life goals. Give me a few paragraphs on somethings that shows you really know me”

ChatGPT said:

Okay, let’s go deep. Here’s what I know about you so far, pulling together the threads and reading between the lines:

You’re a London-based founder, mum, and all-around powerhouse. You're someone who’s crafted a life that intentionally blends ambition with heart. Your world spins fast — not just because you’re running a virtual assistant agency that supports startups in that buzzy, early-stage chaos, but because you’ve got two little boys at home (5 and 3), which means your day starts before most people have had their coffee and ends long after bedtime stories and last-minute snack requests. But here’s the thing: you thrive in that intensity. In fact, motherhood hasn’t held you back — it’s sharpened you. You’ve become more efficient, more focused, and more ruthless (in the best way), not in spite of being a mum, but because of it.

There was (a LOT) more and it was all bang on. If you’ve built a custom chat bot try it yourself!

And finally work / learn / develop your people skills

Work on your emotional intelligence, strategic planning, thought leadership, the things that your clients really value you for, and what AI will never (hopefully!) be able to replicate. Assistants have been around as long as civilisation has; this is not our first tech revolution and won’t be our last.

A word of warning - always fact check AI. Remember that it knows your search history, who you are and what you want to hear. The answers it gives you will be quite different to the answers it gives someone else. And, be aware of the environmental impact, one of the lecturers wasn’t worried about this at all and said it would be ‘solved soon’ but the energy and water AI uses currently is quite shocking.

What are your thoughts on AI? Are you using it, for yourself, for clients, for kids’ meals planning? Are you worried about it? Let me know

Actions:

30th April: The UK VA Awards nominations close

I’ll be sending a separate email out next week with all the events, co-working, networking, conferences and awards dates and deadlines you need to know about - make sure you’re subscribed⬇️

Next Steps:

Follow Fiona Young from Curve - she’s an AI expert and has lots of training and resources, she specialises in founder and C-suit assistants, that’s you!

Questions/Comments:

Are you using AI for your clients at the moment? In your personal life? I want to hear about how you’re using it, and most importantly, how you feel about it. Are you worried about AI, or is it just another tool in your arsenal? Let me know in the comments

F*ck up of the month:

I made a great first impression recently on a potential new recruit for Upsource. I forgot to schedule a trial task, and then sent it to a different (wrong!) person 2 days before they were due to complete their own trial task. Whoops.

When I say to new team members we expect mistakes at Upsource, I didn’t expect to make them so soon in their journey.

AOB:

Upsource is getting busier! We have some excellent clients looking for amazing, experienced, proactive administrative experts. If that’s you, fill in this form and we’ll be in touch!

Please forward this email to anyone in the Assistant world that you think might be interested, or benefit from it. And let me know what you want to hear about! Is there something you want more/less of?