The Crodie Files Podcast- For Administrative Assistants and Business Support Professionals
The Crodie Files is a podcast hosted by two career Executive Assistants currently in the role, supporting C-Suite Corporate Executives.
With over 40 years of combined industry experience, we came together to share the knowledge!
We unite Administrative Professionals, Assistants, and all Business Support Professionals globally with our honest, realistic approach to common questions and problem-solving.
Our show provides a space for listeners to learn about the challenges and triumphs of the Assistant Profession and to gain insights into the strategies and approaches that make these professionals successful.
Our episodes are kept to around 30 minutes as we appreciate how precious your time is and never use a typical interview format. Instead, our voice note approach makes each episode easy to listen to and relatable.
Our "Hi Crodie..." initiative is where we invite you to send in your questions, bugbears, and comments that relate to the role and your learning & development. To be featured on the show visit our website www.craigandjodie.com and send in yours today.
If you enjoy listening to our podcast, please support us to help keep the Crodie Files going https://www.buzzsprout.com/2227725
Supporters will get a shout-out on social media and in future episodes.
The Crodie Files Podcast- For Administrative Assistants and Business Support Professionals
Bonus Episode: Personal Branding & Generative AI Tips for Administrative Assistants with Amelia Sordell & Amy Lester
This episode is sponsored by Autograph Events - THE experts in providing a complete event management solution – from free global venue finding through to full onsite event management. Connect today and ask more about the collaborative promotion for our listeners!
Elevate and Automate | Personal Branding & AI for Assistants
Join us for this memorable, interactive episode recorded LIVE at The PA Show London!
This was the first time The PA Show had a podcast for administrative professionals exhibiting and delivering a Keynote Session - we are incredibly proud of this one!
Have you ever wondered how you can elevate or even get started with your personal branding and why it is necessary for our profession?
In this bonus episode also available to watch on YouTube we share personal stories of growth, illustrating how authenticity isn’t just a buzzword, but the currency of personal branding.
Our guest speaker, world-class personal branding strategist, LinkedIn's top voice influencer, speaker, advisor & founder at Klowt - the personal branding agency -Amelia Sordell, sheds light and shares top tips to get started for Administrative Assistants.
Are you overwhelmed with the THOUSANDS of AI tool options to assist us in our tasks and want to know first-hand from a successful Virtual Assistant how to stay ahead of the game? Our other guest speaker Amy Lester - business owner, executive assistant, VA mentor and coach, shares her top tips and knowledge from a virtual assistant's perspective.
Your personal brand is more than a self-promotional tool—it's a magnet for attracting those who will propel you towards your 'North Star'.
It's about networking with purpose, giving value without expectation, and the realization that follower counts pale in comparison to genuine connections.
We invite you to share your own experiences and strategies through our "Hi Crodie..." initiative get involved and send us your questions.
Value Bombs
Amelia Sordell - " Personal branding is essentially your reputation at scale, right? Every single one of you has got your roles in the jobs that you're in right now because of your reputation to deliver results for your customers or your employers, right? Your personal brand is simply an elevation of that.".
Amy Lester – " Certainly for me, the way that I utilise AI at the moment is in areas that maybe I'm not particularly strong. ".
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This episode was brought to you by Autograph Events, our sponsor.
Speaker 2:Welcome everyone to the Crowdy Files live episode recording at the PA show London. Thank you so much for coming. It really means the world to us. We are delivering a PA show first, by the way, so this is the first live recorded podcast that the PA show had, yeah, so we're really happy that you're here and we'd like to just thank everyone for coming and taking time out of your schedule today. We are absolutely over the moon to have our amazing contributors help us deliver this episode, elevate and automate, which is a real hot topic coded for our industry. So we're going to be talking about elevating the profession, elevating yourselves, how and also linking that today, as it's the VA conference, to VA's and how AI is shaping the VA industry and how, also, personal branding is absolutely paramount for VA's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're really excited. Thank you for coming. So today we were going to talk about personal branding and AI for our assistants, which is quite important for our CEAs to if you want to be recognised, to get into where we want to go to, to make sure that we get the right job. So over to you, jodie.
Speaker 2:Right, without any further to do, we're just going to get straight into it and introduce our first. Well, she needs I always say needs no introduction. But yeah, you absolutely do. Amelia Sordell, linkedin Blue Badge, linkedin's top voice, blue Badge influencer and founder of the personal branding marketing agency Clout. If you don't know, get to know very quickly, because it's super aligned with what we all do as well. Amelia launched her first business, a clothing brand, at the age of 21.
Speaker 3:Yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:That failed quite quickly. I'm just thinking about this.
Speaker 3:I'm not here talking about that.
Speaker 2:Then went on we're just skipper. Huge chunk. But you went on to build a six figure personal branding agency Clout during the pandemic. You've also worked with tech startup founders to FTSE leadership teams, including the National Lottery, on building their personal brands that deliver results. Keyword A strong leader and renowned public speaker. Please help me welcome Amelia Sordell.
Speaker 5:Yeah thank you Seven figures actually.
Speaker 2:Seven figures now. We'll be right soon.
Speaker 1:We're going to be discussing with a virtual assistant AI is Amy Lester, award winning and renowned EA and VA. Amy is a virtual assistant and an EA VA mentor. Amy provides assistance and consultancy services for her small business owners since 2019. She offers her client solutions to every at every stage of their business journey. She's was shortlisted for 2020 VA of the Year Westminster Region in the UK VA Awards and 2021 VA of the Year Westminster PA Awards. Can everybody congratulate her? Oh yeah.
Speaker 4:Amy.
Speaker 6:Good to be here.
Speaker 2:Let's get into it then.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, amy, is personal branding. Why is it important to us, how can we connect the dots and how do we make it relevant in our roles? Why is it relevant? There's a hell of a lot of discussion and hot topic around how we, as any assistant, can elevate our careers and what the gaps are in between. So what are the dots in between to get from where you are now to where you want to be? What is the plan? Well, there's not much in between getting there and the hot topic at the moment is the chief of staff role. In between that moving into a strategic executive assistant role, but there's a hell of a lot missing in the middle.
Speaker 2:I believe that the next hot topic and it is because we are here is personal branding for all assistance and how we are not needed anymore in the shadows and how we come to the forefront. So I want to ask Amelia why should we make the dots for us? Why should we and how do we remain relevant? Why is it important to me and everyone else here today to understand more about personal branding? What is it, what isn't it, and how can we make it relevant in our role, in our career aspirations?
Speaker 3:Okay, I'm going to start first by like talk about what personal brand is, because I think a lot of people think it's an ego driven activity that's all about. Let's post on Instagram and get a thousand followers and like look at me, me, me. That's not what personal branding is. Personal branding is essentially your reputation at scale right. Every single one of you has got your roles in the jobs that you're in right now because of your reputation to deliver results for your customers or for your employers.
Speaker 3:Right, your personal brand is simply an elevation of that. It is your resume, it is your reputation, it is your business card to get the in the door of the doors that you want to go in. I think it's really important that, first of all, acknowledging that Amy's my EA and, with this out, without this woman I could not live like literally ensures that I actually we were laughing at it because there's a bell ringing for, like all the things, she's my bell. Like I might be late to everything, I'd miss everything. I'd miss lights and miss picking my children, amy. So I want to first of all acknowledge that what you guys do as a function is, like, absolutely critical to the performance of individuals, with their leadership, but also business at its core.
Speaker 3:Like, you guys are the glue that keeps the ship together as it might be, but why personal branding is relevant, for you guys particularly is. I'm sure there's a few VAs in the room, so I'll start with you first and then we'll move on to the EA side, the virtual assistants. Your bread and butter is obviously providing services to the customers that you work with, but I imagine that a lot of you struggle to get new business because you're so in the weeds of your business. You therefore struggle to market yourselves to get that new business in right. By building your personal brand, you're positioning yourself as someone that can solve all of the problems that your ideal customer has without even having to ask them for anything in return. You're not trying to convince anyone, you're just telling them.
Speaker 3:And actually Amy does a really good job and I suggest you all go and follow her of putting herself out there and getting people to know who she is and why they should work with her and not anyone else. And she does that with a really perfect blend of like talking about the fact she's a mum and she's juggling motherhood with also like working with our customers. She also talks about, like all the trials and tribulations of what it's like to be an executive assistant, like all the things that she does for her customers and long suffering list for you, I'm sure. But because of that, she puts herself at the heart of her business and ultimately, you are all the products that you're selling.
Speaker 3:Whether you're employed or not, you are people based service, right, you are delivering your knowledge, your experience and a service to your customers or to your employers. By you building your personal brand, you're marketing that in its core of what it is, which is yourself. You're marketing the product. So it's a really big missed opportunity if you are a virtual assistant and you're not building your personal brand, because otherwise you're going to have times when customers leave you and then you're scrambling to backfill that hole that's been left in your business because you haven't been had the foresight or the proactivity to go and market yourself from the jump. Now, for those of you who are employed cannot stress to you, hands up, anyone here who's feel like and this is a safe space, right, there's not a camera on you who has not felt appreciated by their employer.
Speaker 4:Not now. I'm not gonna say that In the past, In the past John.
Speaker 3:A lot of you have felt unappreciated by your employer Hands up. People who feel like they know they're the glue that keeps their employers' diary together, but they don't feel acknowledged for that.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right, you guys are doing these incredible roles for these high functioning people and you don't get the recognition you deserve because you're not visible.
Speaker 3:You are behind a curtain making sure that everything is working, making sure the pulleys are going down, making sure the curtain goes up, making sure the curtain goes down. You don't get the recognition you deserve because you're not seen. I cannot stress to you enough how valuable it is for you to build your personal brand online, because it's going to put your face and the stuff that you do at the forefront of your employer's mind. So when a Chief of Staff role comes up or an Operations Manager role comes up or something, or even a promotion opportunity, you're going to be right at the forefront of their head, every single opportunity that comes up, because you've been in their face the entire time, on their LinkedIn feed, on their TikTok feed, wherever it is that your clients live. I can't stress to you enough how important it is to be visible within the organisation that you're working in. Has anyone seen that episode of Friends where Rachel starts smoking because she wants to get a promotion?
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay so if you're not in the smoking area, you're not going to get a promotion, and the smoking area here is LinkedIn. So that would be my kind of speech to kick off with.
Speaker 2:Let's pause there for LinkedIn. I want to kind of demystify social media and the relevance to personal branding. For me, not even four years ago, there's no way I would be thinking about a post or typing anything out without thinking, oh my God, they're going to think she's showing off, she's boasting, what's the point? I don't understand what I'm doing it for, who's watching and the visibility terrors I call it. So we've spoke about this before, where I just fast forward a little bit to unpack what I'm saying is you think, oh, no one's engaging with me, there's no point. I get one like I feel a bit crap now. No one likes me, I'm not getting an engagement.
Speaker 2:And then you see high engagement and maybe low interactions in the forms of likes or comments. So can you demystify that visibility piece where people are still absorbing and reading and seeing what you're posting in form of sharing the knowledge which is what Craig and I are all about is just sharing what we know and that fear, that visibility terror of someone's watching, hr's watching, my boss is watching. I can't be authentic because I want to talk about this. And what if it highlights me? How's that then going to look? See a few of you nodding. I think you can relate to what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:I don't know what happened to me. I just something just fell off me and clicked and I just got to the point where I don't care anymore. I'm going to work on me. I'm doing that. But for Amelia specifically, unpack the visibility terrors and the. I call them the silent stalkers, if you like, in a good way and the reason why we should be visible and there, but we don't need to be prolific on every social media site. But how does it tie into just trying something on LinkedIn and why? I think?
Speaker 3:there's like three questions there, so I'll try and break it down. But I'll start with the visibility piece, because I think actually everyone has a fear of visibility, and I don't just mean that on social media.
Speaker 3:I think every single one of us are scared in some capacity of something like, whether it's asking for a discount at Zara or like asking that person out on a date, or like trying to negotiate with your toddler or something whether they're broccoli, like, everyone is scared of something and I think I understand the scaries that you're talking about. I used to have them. It's very easy for me to sit here presenting as a very confident woman on a stage. You know doing this, but five or six years ago I had no self-esteem, no confidence. I remember I used to get my ex-husband to order food with the waiter because I was so nervous to speak to like a stranger, like he would order for me. And I'm sitting here on this stage right now because I built my personal brand. I'm not saying that from an expertise perspective. I'm saying that from a confidence perspective.
Speaker 3:Posting content online and people telling me you know co-signing stuff and say, well done, that's really fantastic. But also telling me I'm wrong and disagreeing with a lot of the stuff that I post has given me a sense of confidence, sense of self-worth, self-esteem. I don't give a shit whether someone thinks that they like my stuff or not anymore. And to your point about a like, I don't care whether I get one like or zero likes or a hundred thousand likes, because I know who I am and I'm confident in who I am and I know that, whether or not you know, someone agrees with me on LinkedIn or TikTok or Instagram or wherever channel I'm building. That is not validation from my personality and it's just a distribution channel for it. And I think we spend so much time particularly I know I'm not going to try and make this about gender too much, but there's lots of women in the room we spend a lot of time seeking validation from other people for our self-worth.
Speaker 3:When you start building your brand, it gives me goosebumps to talk about it, because it changed my life. It changed my life. I was left with unhappy marriage. I bought my own house. I now run a multi-million pound business with 13 employees. I get to do this for fun. You know what I mean. It changed my life, but it started with me being okay to share what I wanted to share and be who I wanted to be and choose how I showed up in the world and be 100% okay with the consequences of that. And the reason that is really important and powerful is when you're confident in who you are and you know who you are and you know what your vision is and you know what that journey is that you want to go on.
Speaker 3:You ooze that in every single aspect of your life and guess who wants to pay people lots of money. They're shipped together Employers right. When you show up in a way with confidence and you know what you're doing and you own the place, particularly in this type of role, people will throw money at you because they want people like you in their business. And to your point about visibility what do people think that I'm making about me, mimi and whatever? Building your personal brand is not about look at me. It's about look what I can do for you.
Speaker 2:Say that again.
Speaker 3:Personal branding is not about look at me. It's about look what I can do for you. Love that.
Speaker 4:Really, really helpful. There it is, that's it.
Speaker 3:This is the difference between having a camera in your face and being like, oh look, how amazing my makeup is and look at the new bag I bought and whatever. And that's fine, we all love that content. Go get me a new one. I love an earmaid as a hawk Big fan, but that's not going to get you employment. That's not going to get you customers. That's not going to get you your dream role.
Speaker 3:Your dream role is showing up exactly how you present in the real world, because, guess what? That's why your employers have hired you, because they think you're fucking great. If you can present that in a scalable way, you will not only be able to ask for more money when it comes to promotion times and get more clients and charge more and all of those things, but you will get opportunities to do things like this. If this is the kind of thing that you want to do, you will get opportunities to enter rooms that you otherwise just wouldn't have access to. Building your personal brand helps you kick down doors that simply just wouldn't exist without it, and so if you're not willing to do that, someone else will and you will miss out on opportunities that you deserve.
Speaker 2:And that's what we've been saying. If not you, who? Meaning if you don't do it or start doing it in some capacity? Not the full blown package, if you've liked it starts small.
Speaker 4:You need to be a videographer to your Start small.
Speaker 2:Just do one thing and, trust me, one thing just leads on to other things. And with the topics of how do we elevate and how do we progress in our careers, when we are the backbone, the company, we are the glue that holds everything together, we're always behind the scenes, which is great. I love doing that. I've been doing it for over 20 years. I still love doing it. But there's also room for progression. There's room for growth. And if you do want to move in your career and you're not sure what that looks or sounds like or what it is on paper as in job title, well, guess what? It's a stepping stone towards working with the C-suite, it's a stepping stone towards working as a chief of staff. It all means something. But again, choose your platforms wisely.
Speaker 2:We don't need to be everywhere.
Speaker 3:I just want to pick up on something you just said there, which is it's not about being the best, it's about being the best known, right, and that is Look at Amazon, for example. You can buy books anywhere, but we all choose to get it on Amazon because Amazon is, like you've meaning, yes, but also the best known. If you're the best known in your industry at what you do, and become significantly easier to get what you want.
Speaker 3:I love that, I love that, but also on your point about platforms like I was only on LinkedIn. So I've been building my personal brand now for four years, five years, and now on every channel I have a podcast, I have a weekly vlog that goes out. Hence the videographer, Hi Ollie Hence. You know we were on TikTok or on Instagram, we're on all the things, but I was on LinkedIn only for like three of those five years.
Speaker 4:Wow.
Speaker 3:I didn't even have a website for the first 18 months of my business. A lot of our business came through my LinkedIn profile.
Speaker 6:The other thing is as well.
Speaker 3:Obviously, you set the foundations whilst you were still employed as well, because I built my personal brand. So as I pulled the lever of I'm starting this business, we were over subscribed within four weeks. So, yeah, I think it's really important that you understand where your audience is. You don't need to be everywhere. You don't need to be everything to everyone. You don't need to please everyone.
Speaker 3:If someone doesn't like your content, great, that means you don't have to worry about dealing with someone who's not going to buy from you anyway. Be okay with being yourself. Afford to be yourself, I think, is probably a good way to put it. And if LinkedIn is where you need to be, because that's you're trying to attract executives, you're trying to get the attention of your CEO, whatever it might be, stick on LinkedIn. Don't worry about the other channels. If you're someone who's operating in a slightly different space and you think TikTok is your bag, go on TikTok. But I would always say focus on one channel, focus on where the money is, focus on where the opportunity is and then don't deviate from that goal until you've learned how to execute unbelievably well and, trust me, you'll learn very, very quickly. I think a lot of people think that this kind of stuff is hard.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Trust me, I'm. Most days. I don't even have two brain cells. This is not that hard. It just requires a level of consistency which all of you are going to be much better out than I am because, this one has to remind me to do most of this stuff all the time.
Speaker 4:No everyone.
Speaker 2:It's all about social media, then. I think I don't know about you guys, but social media a few years ago just petrified me, because I am behind the scenes, I do keep things ticking along. It was this is kind of an old story so I don't mind sharing it but there was an assistant who asked me how do I get from there to here? What course do I need? What education do I need? What letters after my name do I need? What's relevant?
Speaker 2:And I said to her well, what are you known as in the office? Just as a bit of a joke. And she said I'm known as the office mum. And I almost didn't need to say anything. So do you think we need to start shifting that persona towards office mum to office manager, and then office manager to operations manager, operations manager to director of administration? Do you think that might help? And it was just a bit of a light bulb moment for both of us, really, when we thought, ah, you can't actually go from zero to hero. You do need to put in some steps. And social media isn't the only way to build a personal branding, is it? No, it's not just social.
Speaker 3:All of you here are sitting. You should all be meeting each other after this and shaking each other's hand and seeing if you've got any opportunities with each other. Like we really really grossly underestimate the value of networking and I feel like it's a bit of a COVID hangover, right Like pre-COVID, there were loads of these events happening. We'd meet people, we'd interact with them, we'd go for drinks, we'd take a week grab a coffee. No one does that anymore and I feel like your competitive advantage of the people sitting in the room right now is you're in a room right now with people in your industry that can open doors for you that you otherwise don't have access to or might open doors for you in the future. And if you can get into their space right now and make friends with them and keep up with them and remember the fact that they have a two-year-old and ask them how their day at first at school went, if they're four or five, not two, that stuff really compounds and turns into really meaningful relationships. That actually becomes opportunity long-term.
Speaker 3:To your question about social media thing, social media followers it's not about followers. It's about creating friends, because followers aren't gonna advocate for you, followers aren't gonna open doors for you. Followers aren't going to invite you to do things like this if this is what you wanna do, or invite you into closed interviews for executives on the FTSE 100. It's going to be personal recommendations from people who've got to know you, who've got to know your experience and think you're really great in what you do. But it's gonna open those doors for you and you can do that at scale online, like I have.
Speaker 3:We've had some incredible opportunities come up recently we were just talking about this before we came on stage Inbound for us, where people have seen our content on cloud and my content and my team's content and gone on VACC agents and for us they've never met us but, more importantly, they've thought that we know what we're talking about because they've had other recommendations to people who have met us. So your personal brand is not just something that sits on LinkedIn or sits on TikTok or since Instagram. It's actually how you just show up and if you're very different in this room as you are online, there's a really big problem there, because it means that the people do interact with your content online and they meet you and you're completely different. Like that creates mistrust.
Speaker 3:It's like if you booked a service and then the service was or you ordered a burger and it turned out to be like a burrito. It'd be like what the hell? So don't be a burrito.
Speaker 2:So how do we get started, then, for some of us that have never touched social media, or we've just been lurking, how do we get started? How do we find our why? And we talk about goals a lot how do we get going when some of us have never done it before, we haven't got a clue what to post, don't know how to get started. What are your top tips? What are my?
Speaker 3:top tips. How long have you got Right? I think the number one thing is what is your goal. And this is an interesting thing, because when you say what is your goal, most people go I want 10,000 followers. I was like, no, that is not the goal. Dream bigger than 10,000 followers, please.
Speaker 3:What is your goal? Is it that you want that choose-of-stuff role? I know from many of you that might be that next stage, or maybe there's your current stage. But what is that? North Star? Is it that you want to buy your first home? Is it that you want to be able to I don't know get enough income coming in that you can save to then have a baby in a year? Or you want to take your wife on holiday?
Speaker 3:Like, what is the goal that you're trying to work towards? And it needs to be something intrinsic that's going to keep you on track. Once you've worked out your goal, you can then go beneath that and go cool. Who do I need to attract to make that goal happen? So, if your goal is that chief of staff role, who do you need to attract into your network to make that happen? It might be CPOs, it might be CEOs, it might be like really, really top level recruiters and headhunters. Who is that audience that you're trying to attract to make that goal happen? Once you know who your audience is, you can then work out what you need to talk about to be able to position you as someone worth following by those people.
Speaker 3:So, for example, if you are somebody who wants to be the chief of staff role and you're on LinkedIn and you need to attract because you want to work with startups, right, you want to attract founders and executives. You know as chief execs, you know that those audience are. If I were you, I'd be posting content that you know will resonate with those people because you already work with those people. So what are the trials and tribulations that they have?
Speaker 3:You know, lots of my previous employees have really struggled trying to balance family time and work time and, like I know, at the start of a business, that can be really, really difficult and my role as a chief of staff is to make sure that the team are working together to execute that for that executive, because if he or she can't show up, then the rest of the team are fucked Like. That might be something that you want to post because that's going to resonate with those founders. That's going to resonate with those chief execs and you all know that because you work with these people day in and day out. So all you need to do is basically take your every single day and then turn that into content. That then is going to resonate with the people you're trying to attract, and what you would do is bring those people into your network and they'll start seeing a lot of this and they'll say, wow, this person really knows what they're talking about Boom.
Speaker 3:You then open up all these opportunities and people would be like, oh, I saw you posted that the other day. That's really interesting.
Speaker 2:We've actually got this role coming up with this VC backed text style that would you be interested in applying, and that's really interesting to just pack that into this conversation. Don't be afraid of sharing your knowledge, and that's what Craig and I are all about.
Speaker 2:You can't work in a silo and expect growth. Share what you know. It's not about allowing other people to copy you. No, there's only going to be one you and the way you do it. Don't be afraid to share the knowledge. You'll get much more interactions, engagements, and the ROI of just being new is going to be so much more valuable than just keeping it to yourself. You'll be amazed at who the doors are open where you can just let your guard down, take the cloak off and just add value. Network, learn and grow is what we promote all the time.
Speaker 3:That's such an important point to make. So, as an agency sorry to interrupt you, but I really need everyone to understand this as an agency, we charge a lot of money. Our entry level is like 50 grand a year to work with an executive. I give 100% of my knowledge away for free. If you really wanted to, you could just follow all of my LinkedIn posts and you could actually do what we charge to do yourself. But 99% of people can't do that Because A they don't have the time, they don't have the expertise, they haven't got the knowledge, etc.
Speaker 3:Don't believe, don't be arrogant enough to think that your ideas are unique. If you think the way that you do things is unique, you're really, really going to be barking up a very, very large tree, because there are lots of other people in the room who could do exactly what you do in the same way you do it. But the thing that makes you unique is you right. You might be doing exactly the same job function as every single other person in this conference right now, but the way you do it and your personality is what makes you unique. One of you might not work very well with someone else, but the other person might be perfect for that person. I think it's really, really important and Amy does this so well is to bring her personality and who she is as a person into her content, which is what makes her likable, trustable and someone that you want to do business with.
Speaker 2:The Crowdy Files is brought to you by Autograph Events, our show sponsors. Autograph Events are the experts in providing a complete event management solution from free global venue finding through to full onsite event management, executive away days, team building and offsite meetings. They can help us plan it all. They offer that extra pair of hands, a bit like the assistant's assistant. The best part is, they understand how we like to work. They understand our role. So for more information, email events at autograph eventscouk, quoting Crowdy Files 2023, to find out how they can help you plan your next event and for your personal reward. Terms and conditions apply. Please see our website, craigandjodycom. Perfect link into Amy Yep.
Speaker 5:Amy.
Speaker 2:Hi, let's bring Amy in, let's bring Amy in.
Speaker 1:I've been in EA for almost 20 years but I've worked in large corporations and production companies. But I have to take my hat off. I am unbelievable Virtual assistants. I could never do that. I'm a people person. I have to see people, I have to talk to them. Even if I'm not getting an email back, I'm going to call them just so I can have another voice on the other side and go hi, my name is Craig. Virtual assistants. How do you do that? So that is really admirable.
Speaker 6:Thank you.
Speaker 1:I'm going to ask you those questions that we've been getting about virtual assistants, For example. Can you explain that AI is shaping the task of all assistants? How much is it used by VA's and what tasks are you using the AI for?
Speaker 6:Sure, I think it's something that's very much emerging at the moment. I know there's a lot of noise around AI within our industry. I also think there's a little bit of fear there, maybe that we're going to get replaced and that it's going to replace a lot of our bread and butter, particularly so we AI's and VA's at the start of their career, their journey. I think in terms of the kind of day-to-day tasks that it can replace, I think that's very much depends on the unique sort of responsibilities of the VA or the EA. Certainly, for me, the way that I utilise AI at the moment is in areas that maybe I'm not particularly strong, so things that might take me a lot longer.
Speaker 6:Obviously, va is in particular. Obviously we work under the concept of time. So whether that's the time that we're charging to our clients, how long everything's going to take, they're paying us for a fixed amount of time. So anything that can create an efficiency, anything that can streamline a process that takes away you having to actually manually do something, that is, I guess, an easy way to implement AI into your workload. For me, specifically, that's things that are, I guess, more creative. So I'm very good at you. Tell me what to do, I'll get it done. I'd like to think of anything to testify to that you tell me what to do.
Speaker 6:If I have a task that I need to complete, it's getting done. My clients don't have to ask me twice for things. They know that that's been delivered. That's obviously the whole point of having an exec assistant or a virtual assistant. But for me, I know that I can over procrastinate with particularly things that are slightly more creative. So, for example, if one of my clients turned to me and said I want to do a team day like a team building day, we need two activities.
Speaker 6:I would literally probably spend, if I had the luxury of the time, half a day thinking well, how long the breaks need to be and what structure does that need to have and whereabouts should we base it?
Speaker 6:Something like chat GPT can take away that thinking and give me that template that then, as an experienced DA, as an experienced virtual assistant who knows her clients inside out, I can then plug my knowledge into that template.
Speaker 6:But it saved me the time of that procrastinating time to start off with and I think that's where AI can really add value Having software platforms that can talk to each other, removing that manual process of having to go into one platform and then replicate things in another. They're very easy ways to alleviate some of the manual responsibility and the benefit of that is that then you can focus your time on being more strategic and, particularly if you're a VA that's looking to attract higher value clients or clients that are, like Amelia, completely sort of bossing it and or, equally, that kind of promotion, you want to be positioning yourself in a more strategic sort of vein and taking away that kind of busy work, that mundane, repetitive work, by using something like AI to your advantage. Yes, that's replacing you actually doing it, but it allows you the capacity, the time, the brain space to actually position yourself as a strategic advisor to your clients or to your exec. And ultimately, I think that's what we all want here.
Speaker 6:We want to be the person supporting them and being able to identify the problems before they happen. Make those suggestions to make their lives easier. Otherwise we wouldn't be doing what we're doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I totally agree, and I don't think AI is here to take our jobs away. I think it's the EAs that learn the AI software and how prompts are working are going to take the jobs away from the EAs who are. I don't have time for that. I don't know how to learn more software. I'm too old I mean, it was my 50th birthday two days ago. I'm not old and I'm still learning the prompts.
Speaker 1:And I think, getting back to what you were saying, is that, for example, you time your clients you know per hour, for example and then you've got this task of 6,000, spreadsheet of 6,000 contacts. You need to find all the email addresses for that. So what you do is you create a prompt within the AI chat sheet, you see, or whatever software you would use, and then you would say go to all these folders, what you want to extract all those emails, put this and you put the Excel spreadsheet code or the file name in there, and that would automatically which would take you about six or maybe a lot of hours to put 6,000 emails into a spreadsheet and then what you can do is use that same prompt two weeks time, just copy and paste whatever information you want in that same prompt and it'll just carry on doing it in the background while you just crack on with other stuff. So that's where you were talking about.
Speaker 2:I think AI is just another whole thing. As me and Craig say on the podcast all the time, this is a whole different thing. We can go a bit deeper with that in other episodes for you and invite Amy to come and chat about that.
Speaker 2:I do want to mention that Amy also mentors and coaches VA's to how to get started and she offers strategy days. So connect with her afterwards or come and see us on stand E16P and she has a free downloadable for you all free giveaway, sharing her knowledge on some useful prompts for VA's. We've come into question time now, so we have got time for one question for Amelia. Anyone on the floor got a question for Amelia? Zoe, you've always got question no-transcript.
Speaker 5:Thank you, this has been great. Thank you so much. It's a real honour to be able to listen to you guys and I'm a huge fan of the CRODE files. I guess one of the things that I've kind of seen from the admin industry is that we've all got such big personalities and we're really good at projecting that to each other. One of the things that I find is EAs have a tendency of they struggle to do that in front of their principals and executives. What would be your three E tips to be able to project their personal branding to their executives?
Speaker 3:I'm going to be really naughty. She knows what I'm going to do. I think she should answer this question, because Amy's actually got a really strong personal brand and actually she challenges me a lot as well.
Speaker 6:I think, from my perspective, building that trust and that authority, I think that is the key, fundamental being able to back yourself up in terms of what you say and being able to pack that up for any of the execs that you're supporting. I think from my experience, I really like quite heavily on LinkedIn. I often will share social proof. Being a VA is slightly different because obviously I've got lots of different clients, but being able to say this is kind of an example of what I did, this is a problem that I'm having and this is how I solved it, and being able to speak as an authority on that, that's kind of the way that I do that within.
Speaker 2:You're showing your value, you're adding value, you're not being all sizzle and no steak. You can back up everything you've done. You can show what you're doing. You can show this is my to-do list, but this is what it transferred into ROI for the business because I freed up so much of your time in, confident enough to say I'm doing this and I'm doing it really well and I stand by it. Rather than well, I could have done this, or I make sure it's a bit better next time, being having that confidence. So personal development, equally as important as professional development, always one. You can't have one without the other in my opinion. I know Virginia's got a hot question over here on this whole book.
Speaker 1:For those who have questions and want them to be answered, you can come to E16P and we can recall them and use them for our podcast episodes so we can get some answers from other collaborators.
Speaker 2:Virginia.
Speaker 4:Thank you. I've been in the AI for over 30 years now and their technology has been incredible Everything that's happening and it's emerging. What advice would you give to people that are just starting out, for them to focus on? How would they start? What would you recommend? Thank you.
Speaker 6:Terms of software, terms of everything. Yeah.
Speaker 4:If you're just starting out as an AI and you want to become a VA, things like that.
Speaker 2:Oh, stepping stones. What do we need to go from? Personal, maybe the personal branding yeah, standing out, adding value, showing your worth.
Speaker 6:I think so because I think you can add value and you can have a relevant opinion and relevant knowledge, even if it was day one of what you're doing. I'm going to quite Amelia, but just a thing, I'm not as far through it.
Speaker 6:And actually it's a particularly as a VA. I think we again we can spend a lot of time procrastinating like is the logo right? Is the website right? Is the messaging right? Have I got business cards? Have I got this? Have I got that?
Speaker 6:And particularly when I transitioned from being kind of an executive assistant ops full-time employee into running my own business, I spent an awful amount of time just trying to get everything perfect. So I think the one piece of advice I would have is to just jump into it, particularly. As I said, I'm obviously looking at it slightly from a VA side of things, but you might change the services that you offer. You might start down one path of focusing on a particular industry, or I'm going to become a specialist in email marketing and you might get three months into it, but actually I hate email marketing, I don't want to do that anymore and you can pivot there's no harm in doing that but if you don't actually get started, you're not going to know.
Speaker 6:Equally, I found myself in a bit of a weird niche where I have a couple of clients that work in like entertainment and like video production.
Speaker 6:Well, I didn't really have an extensive background in that, but I found those clients and now that's a major sort of part of the service that I offer. That allows me to offer additional services to other clients in other industries. But if I just sat down there on day one and gone, I'm going to go and approach the entertainment industry. Well, I haven't known how to do that but now I have that skills and experience just from actually getting started to kind of jump back slightly. Obviously you were talking about, you know, building trust and the kind of power of, obviously your personal brand and promoting yourself online, but equally having that authority and being a trustworthy figure just your clients or the people that in your organization and how that opens doors. And one thing that I think has really sort of helped that for me is being able to sort of back everything that I'm doing and talking about with examples of relevant sort of work I've done, maybe for the clients Can.
Speaker 1:I just add one quickly. From my point of view, I would always showcase my soft skills, my adaptability, my empathy and my emotional intelligence, and that will get you into the doors and try and get you a better job than you would get Absolutely.
Speaker 3:There's two things here and it's not necessarily relevant to just executive assistants. Number one is you're going to suck at everything that you start when it's new. I sucked at personal brand.
Speaker 3:I look back at some of my videos now and I'm like Jesus Christ, I can't believe I posted that. But here we are. You suck at everything when you first start. I think the second thing is everyone here is talking about add value. Like what does value mean? Value could mean a meme. It could mean a dancing video on TikTok. It could be that you give people a white paper on how they should be building their personal brand or how they should be running their business.
Speaker 3:Value is defined by the person you're trying to be valuable to. So if you're someone who's really funny and that's a huge part of your personality it's also a big reason why people like you lean into it. If you're someone who's really, really organized and you're someone who is employed for that organizational skills, lean into it. If you're someone who is an introvert and finds the concept of even posting content online really quite scary, lean into it. The thing that makes you unique is you and to your point about what's your advice for people when they first start out. Like I said, everyone has to start somewhere, but document your journey from zero to expert and I think people will be really, really bought into you as a person and ultimately will want to be a part of your network Great, excellent, fantastic.
Speaker 1:So I think that's our session for today. It's been amazing. Thank you so much for joining us and coming on stage and really it's been my favorite episode so far.
Speaker 3:I think you guys absolutely nailed this, by the way, so well done.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:The world is changing and technology is right in our future. Without us, there is no tomorrow. We need to change with the times. Help in, guide in and teach in each other Is the only way we will get through this together as a team.
