S2. Ep2 - Can AI Replace Your VA? A Conversation with Ashley Kay of Champagne Collective

Katie: Welcome to the AI Automations for Business Podcasts. We're your hosts, Katie and Null, and we'll be discussing how you can use AI for your business along with the latest news, updates and automations to help you stay ahead of the curve, allowing you to grow and scale your business more efficiently. Please be sure to subscribe and I hope you enjoy this episode. Hello and welcome back to another episode. Hi, hello. It's always, it's me, Katie, and I've got Noel here with me as well. Hi, Noel.

Noel: Hello.

Katie: How you doing?

Noel: Oh, amazing as always. Oh, good.

Katie: And also joining us today is the amazing Ashley Kaye of Champagne Collective. Welcome, Ash. I'm so, so excited that you're here and talking with us today. Hi, thanks so much for having me. Before we dive in, Ashley, would you like to introduce yourself and share a little bit about the work that you do and tell us who support.

Ashley Kay: Yeah, absolutely. So I own and run a virtual assistant and online business management agency, also known as VAs and OBMs, and we provide a vast range of VA and OBM support services to female-owned companies around the world. We primarily work with coaches and marketing and social media agencies, but we also have a variety of other clients like makeup artists and photographers and jewelers. And we work alongside our clients as their partners to help streamline their back end, optimize their systems, manage and handle all of their admin support, sometimes marketing support, and a variety of other areas. Yeah,

Katie: amazing. The work you do is incredible and what I'll make sure is at the end, we'll put like all your website and Instagram and social media details so people can check you out. So yeah, we'll make sure to drop those and for everyone as well. Amazing. Okay, so today we want to talk about like AI and like VA. So I feel like there's quite a bit of noise on the internet at the moment that, you know, VAs are worried that AI is going to replace them. And I think what we would love to hear, Ash, is from you, like, what's your take on what's happening? Yeah, definitely.

Ashley Kay: Yeah, there's a lot of, you. noise is a good way to put it in the online space and a lot of trending videos and posts and articles about how AI is taking over the VA space. AI is going to replace VAs. And I mean, in my opinion, it's just not a thing that's ever going to happen. AI is amazing. I love AI. We use AI at Champaign Collective. I use AI extensively personally. And it's an incredible tool, but that's just it. It's a tool. It's not a person. It's not a human that has a conscience or empathy or the ability to connect with other humans or make critical decision making or lead a team. And I think a lot of what's being said about VAs and AI, well, number one, VAs are often a lot more than what a lot of people are depicting VAs to. to be in these articles and videos and things you're seeing, like, oh, AI could take this over, but VAs do so much more than you may think or no for AI just to be able to step in. Absolutely, there are tasks and things that AI can do. The repetitive were the things that don't require that critical thinking intervention or that strategic thought partnership and utilize AIM for that. Like, it's a tool like any other software program or tool you would use in your business, right? You want to leverage it. You want to utilize it for its capabilities and functionalities, but you also need to remember that it's not a person. It has no ability beyond a computer to connect. It has no ability to troubleshoot in real time when people are involved or do a variety of things. So, I mean, my opinion, I know AI will never take over VAs or VA roles entirely, but I do think that AI is a really, really valuable tool that VAs and VA agencies and company owners can utilize alongside VAs in their business. Yeah, I 100% agree with that. Yeah.

Noel: So have you seen the VA and OBM roles shift since like tools like ChatGBTBT and things that have come out and also like AI agents and things like that?

Ashley Kay: Yeah, definitely. I think the biggest shift that we've seen in the industry is the evolution of VA and OBM roles. OBM, for anyone who doesn't know the difference between the VA and OBM, it's probably good for me to clarify that. VA is much more task doers. Here's the task completed. Very task-based. OBM roles are very strategic in nature, thought partnership, thought leadership. Think of it as like your right-hand person in your business. So one of the biggest like evolutions that we've, and changes we've seen in the industry with tools like chat, GPT and AI is that VA roles have expanded and evolved so much to start moving more into that OBM role of that strategic partner, right? So less of the here's a task completed because a lot of those repetitive tasks like calendar bookings or these other things, we can utilize AI to do. We can utilize AI to do A, B, and C, whereas before a VA may have been doing that, which has allowed and given VAs the opportunity to fill that space by expanding their role. And ChatsyP, things like ChachyPT or AI tools, they're also really, really great for training and up-levely VA skill sets. So they've also given VAs the opportunity to learn more, to expand their skills, to grow, and to be able to support clients in a more valuable, higher touch, more impactful nature, right?

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: Do you find that clients are expecting different things now that they won't perhaps expect them before from you guys?

Ashley Kay: I would say it depends on the client. So, I mean, in my experience, so we have almost 100 clients at Champagne Collective. And I would say about 50% of them are really against AI. So they actually give us very specific instructions to not use AI in our support. They don't want it used in their business. And then about 50% are like, I want AI to do everything to which we're like that can happen. So let's find a happy media. So with the clients who want AI utilize, it's like, yeah, we can utilize it. Here's the ways in which we can utilize it. So what we've been seeing, at least at Shampaign Collective, is a trend of clients being like, how can we incorporate AI tools? And what would those tools allow us to take off of your guys' plate so that you can focus on different areas of the business or different things that I want you to focus on? Like, can we get calendar management and this and this off of your plate so that you can focus on supporting me with this strategy or with my year-long launch plans or these things that critical thinking is required that AI can't do, right? Yeah.

Katie: And is there, obviously, I don't expect you to say anything personal about your clients, but those who are like, you know, you said 50% of them are really against AI. Is there a common reason for that or

Ashley Kay: yeah I mean I'm yes and no some of them don't even give reasons they're just like I don't want AIUs I would say most commonly what they say to us is just it's with a lot of our agents clients who are agencies so marketing agencies social media agencies and what they say to us is like I don't want AIUs like people pay us to write copy or content or produce marketing assets or deliverables that are unique to their brand to their voice and AI can never fully capture that which is 100% the truth that's a really big area where like us as champagne collective doesn't use AI for our clients we write the blog posts we write the emails we don't get AI to write them because AI can't fully capture the nuances and intricacies and uniqueness of your brand and your voice and how you speak to your client and how you show up and that's usually what we see our marketing agency client. say in our social media agency clients say is like, I don't want AI used because I don't want the content we're producing for clients to be robotic. It needs to be unique to their voice and brand, right?

Katie: Yeah.

Noel: Yeah.

Katie: No, I feel like you would have some input in on what I should just say. Yeah.

Noel: I mean, there is kind of ways of, you know, massaging the AI into, you know, creating content that sounds like you and that. But I guess there's always that point where it's like that it's never fully 100% going to give you that output that you would expect that you would write normally.

Ashley Kay: Exactly. Yeah, I totally agree. And there's so many different AI tools now. And some of them absolutely. What your inputs can be changed to produce things that are more on brand, that are more unique. But a trend that we're really seeing. right now in the online space with anything content-based is very similar terms and words being used consistently across multiple brands. And the reason for that is because a robot has written your content. And the robot is pulling from all these sources of content on the internet no matter how much massaging you do of the inputs and being like, oh, well, I previously wrote something about a similar topic. So here's something. And well, it may be, be nuanced to that company's brand or brand voice, their consistencies amongst it and what we're seeing people say more and more is like, oh, I think I read that in somebody else's email or I saw something like that on somebody else's website and I'm like, yeah, because both of their websites were written with AI, not with a human who got to know you and then wrote the content. Yeah.

Noel: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can see that from your website as well. I get telling that AI hasn't written the content on your website because it's word it's so hyper-personalized that it's like it would never have come up with that

Ashley Kay: yeah exactly and I'm like a big big proponent big supporter of like use AI for ideation like a lot like when you're writing whether it's for a site whether it's for social media whether it's for email marketing have AI support your ideation like hey I want to kind of talk about this theme or this topic but I need some like bullets I can riff off of with that or I need let AI support the ideation like that's what I mean by use AI as a tool to make your processes more efficient to support what you're doing but in my opinion at least don't ever allow AI to remove the human element and the uniqueness from your brand and from your brand voice because that's what it'll do

Katie: yeah you definitely want your personality and like what I call your isms in here, for sure.

Ashley Kay: Yeah.

Katie: And, yeah, unfortunately, AI just isn't able to quite get there.

Ashley Kay: Almost. And it might. One day, here's the thing. It's still new, right? Ten years from now we'll be having an entirely different conversation. Absolutely. But right now, that's where it is. Yeah.

Noel: Mm-hmm. Okay. So what within like with VAs and OBMs, apart from like the brand voice side, is anything else that AI just can't replace within those roles? There's anything that's like, it has to be like the human element, which AI just can't do.

Ashley Kay: Well, yeah, I mean, I would say there's a lot, especially on the OBM side of things. I mean, AI can't lead a team, but I don't know how AI would manage and lead a team, which is something that like we deliver. are under OBM services and a lot of OBMs deliver. Leadership, management of people, that critical thinking aspect. Like, AI is not getting on a Zoom call and reading your facial expression to understand in that moment something has gone sideways and someone needs to step in and understand. It doesn't have, like, it's not, AIS not empathetic. It doesn't understand that human connection in the sense of, oh, my God, What's happened? How do I need to step in? How do I need to problem solve? What can I do here? It's that relationship building side of it, right?

Noel: And the

Ashley Kay: side of it that, I mean, the thing is, is like, I always stand by the statement of people buy from people. People continue to work with people. People grow and expand their businesses with a team of people. One of the most fundamental things in a relationship between people is trust and AI doesn't even comprehend what trust is because it doesn't have a conscience. So it's like, you know, it's kind of like it can't build relationships with team members or with prospective clients or with clients that are built on trust and mutual respect and understanding because it's not a human to make those connections, right? So there's so many intricacies and facets of a business beyond just the task doing. There's so many tasks that AI can do or can automate or can support the optimization of, but can't actually step into the role that an OBM or a VA holds within the company, like a manager or like a leader or like a problem solver, any of those things has to be a human. Yeah.

Katie: I totally agree with you, Ash. So there's so many things as well, like you were saying, like, people don't understand, like, what BAs or OBMs actually do. Unless, unless, like, you have one, you just don't understand, like, how critical and how valuable they truly are to your business.

Ashley Kay: Yeah, that's the thing is, and they don't, the thing about AI is, like, as much as it can, like, do all these things that can summarize, you know, show notes for, you can write show notes for you for your podcast episode. it can like but yeah exactly it can book your calendar invites it can buy there even AI tools that will answer your emails for you like you like as much as it can do all of these things it ultimately it doesn't work alongside you day by day minute by minute to get to know who you are as a person which is something that your VA and your OBM does with you as a business owner as a C-suite executive like they communicate with you daily they understand understand your isms. They understand the ins and outs of how you operate, who you are as a person. And so they're able to not only support you, but your team members and your business in a way that AI can't comprehend because it doesn't do that and it doesn't have that connection with you, right? A hundred percent.

Katie: Yeah.

Ashley Kay: Yeah.

Katie: 100%. And even like your VA or ABM might even like suggest things to you, like for example you're changing the copy on your website or something and you know they might say like you might have sent it all over in like a Google doc or whatever in Slack Nation and you think yeah job done and then I always find like your VA or your OBM will always think of something that you haven't even thought about that AI like it wouldn't even come on its radar and just be like what do you want to do for this or do you want this to match this? Do you want it? And it's just like, exactly. Filling those gaps, right?

Ashley Kay: And it doesn't have the ability like a person who works alongside you day by day and week by week and by month to recognize like where are the gaps in this? Where are the gaps in this project or their process? These people are working alongside you. They know what your strategies are. They know what your goals are for the next six months, 12 months, two years, three years, five years, and they know where gaps need to be filled to achieve those goals. They know how those goals are evolving and moving and changing. AI doesn't know any of that unless you prompt them with that information. This was my goal. Now my goal is this. What should my scaling strategy be? But it's like just exactly to what you said, Katie, it doesn't have the ability to be proactively strategically thinking, okay, but we actually should alter what we're doing here or fill the gap here to be able to scale to this to achieve this goal, right? A human needs to do that who's working alongside you. Yeah, for sure.

Katie: So changing this up slightly now, Ash, would you mind sharing like how you are using AI within your industry, either for like you guys as an agency or I know like I know like I 50% of your clients want to use AI.

Ashley Kay: I

Katie: feel like it'd be really interesting if you don't mind sharing how you and your VA's and your team are using AI within the agency.

Ashley Kay: Yeah, definitely. I mean, within Champaign Collective itself, we usually generally primarily only use AI for ideation like I was talking about. So if I'm writing like a blog post for Champaign Collective, for example, and I'm like, oh, I really want to talk about this topic. I'll be, I'll pop into like chat GPT and be like, I'm going to write a blog on this topic. What are like five highlights I should hit? I'll take those bullet points and then I'll write the blog post. So I'll use it internally for like ideation for that. We'll use it to support with outlines when it comes to ideation. So if we're writing, you know, something like a series of promotional emails or a welcome nurture sequence or that sort of thing, we'll use AI to be like, okay, in this welcome nurture sequence for this type of business, how many emails should we include and what are the main topics we should hit on? And we'll allow AI to help us build like that framework and then from there we write each email. So we use it for really those like ideation, planning, beginning stages of things at Champaign Collective and for all of our clients, unless they have specifically and explicitly stated they want us to. We do not use AI to complete any work. So meaning like we don't use AI to answer emails or to book calendars, like send invitations on AI. There are AI tools that can do all those things. Yeah. We really only have two clients who have specifically stated like take this list of things off your plate. Let's just use AI to do them. Even the rest of them that support AI, they generally only want it use for things like ideation or. or, hey, I want to build this in my business, can just use chat GPT to give me the framework. I'll brain dump into the framework and then you guys actually finalize it by writing it. But we don't ever complete tasks using AI. We really just use AI to support how efficiently we're working so that we are getting our clients and end results or a deliverable that is unique to them and unique to their business, but so that our process has also been as streamlined and as efficient as possible. With that being said in the industry, overall, people are using AI for lots. I mean, they use, people use AI to fully produce their podcast now. People use AI to, I mean, I had a client and the client who's worked with us for six months now, so they came to a six months ago, and they asked us to perform an audit on their email marketing to start before we got into writing their email marketing. She's like, I've had terrible open rates and click rates. I knew reading the emails that chat GPT had written them, but I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. So I asked, by chance, did you write these emails to which she said, no, my friend chat GPT did. And I said, and that's why we have low open and click rates. Because these literally sound like a robot wrote them. There's like no. I said, if I got one of these emails i would never click on something i half of these subject lines wouldn't even make me open something and part of that obviously is was her use of the tool and and like use and all like how she massaged what she put into it and stuff and not knowing how to utilize it but still i was like she's like oh my god no yeah we got to get off using AI for this i just want your copywriters to write it and um so yeah in the industry people are using it for lots to write their social media marketing to write their email marketing to write the copy that goes on their sales pages or their people are even using it now to produce graphics to produce entire like PDFs and deliverables that you would get if you opted in for like a lead magnet so on and so forth so we're seeing a really obviously a big uptick and trend in a lot of people utilizing it for a lot of things in their business I'm noticing the most of that when client well when prospective clients reach out to us and they're like, hey, we're looking for support. I've been doing it all myself. I've been using chat GBT or I've been using this and it's just not getting me the results I want. And I'm like, because you don't have any human. And even if you use chat GBT for, or AI for the base of it, like we need a human to be QAQC in this and to be adjusting it for your brand, which is over the last probably three to six months, a lot of what I've seen on sales calls is, is business owners coming to me and being like, I need to bring a VA on because we, be like on that capacity. I'm doing too much on my own and I've been using AI to help take some of this stuff off my plate. But it's just not reflecting my brand voice. And again, some of that is how they're utilizing AI or their lack of knowledge and utilizing it. But a portion of it too is also like you can't just spit it in, spit it out and then put it out into the world. Like you want to still check it. You want a human to be huaing it. And but they just don't have the capacity to do so. right so yeah i mean i would say that's how we utilize it for our clients our clients no we don't use AI to complete work everything is done by a person yeah um and if they ever ask how we use i we're very transparent about it if we have clients who are like you can use AI for these things then we will they've requested that um yeah that's really interesting

Noel: yeah yeah i guess i kind of like in the in the in the i world where i'm like deeply embedded in it. So, you know, I'll see a lot of the misconceptions and a lot of it is, you know, around like, with like VAs would be like, well, they're just going to just go off and use chat GPT.

Katie: So it's, you know, it's kind of nice to

Noel: hear that that's, that's, although yes, there will probably be some agency that does, but obviously yourself, it's like, yeah, we're fully authentic. This is, you know, if you want us to write it, we'll write it.

Ashley Kay: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, we have that, I have that, I probably haven't had a single. sales call in the last six months that that the prospective client has not asked me do you use do you use usually they specifically say chat gpt do you use chat gpt and if so how because i want to know that like my copy's actually being written by a person or i want to know to which i always say like we if you're against chat like a i we won't use a i in any format or any way ever we don't need to my copywriters can right from scratch, from ideation to, if you're okay with us to use it to support ideation, we will, but that's the farthest we take it. From there, we write, we complete all tasks. We, and yes, there are a lot of agencies who will use AI. I think the most important thing, to your point, no, there's a lot of misconception about what VAs are doing with AI now. And to your point earlier, Katie, there's also a lot of misconception about what VAs do in general. And I think the most important thing for any VA, whether they're a solo VA or an agency, is just be transparent. If you use AI, just tell them you use AI. Because there are a lot of companies who don't mind that you use it. They're like, great, do that. That's fabulous. Use AI, then QC it, then get it back to me. But then there's 50% of our clients who are like, don't touch AI when you're working on our stuff, right? So I think the biggest thing is just be transparent about how you're utilizing it, where you're utilizing it, if you're utilizing it, and make sure that your clients and the people you're working with are comfortable with that.

Katie: Yeah, I think as well, it's a big difference as well, like for your agency as well, like as people are, you know, paying for service of a copywriter. So if I was paying for a copywriter, I would not expect them to be copywriter of chat GPT.

Ashley Kay: Exactly. You wouldn't expect with the blog or the four-part promotional email series. you got back to have been written by chat GPT because you're paying for a copywriter. Yeah. But that is happening.

Katie: Yeah. But if someone was transparent and said, look, I'm going to create a custom GPT with your brand voice, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we're going to use it to write a blog. We'll send everything over for you to check first before we post it. And if you're happy with it, you know, we'll put it online. I think if you're very transatlant, transparent in that way. I think that's completely like different. But yeah, if I was paying for a copywriter and then find out they were using AI or would be like completely mortified.

Ashley Kay: Yeah, that's the thing, right? And that's where that transparency comes in is like, I don't, and support services like copywriting are charged at a premium price compared to like admin support, right? So it's like, I'm paying a premium price for a copywriter who is what, massaging a bit, an input, plugging it into an AI tool, and having them do the writing, well, I probably could have just done that myself. Why am I paying this premium price to this copywriter who should be SEO certified, who should be writing this, all these things. And again, there are clients who will totally be okay with copywriters or VAs utilizing these AI tools. The biggest thing is just be transparent about how you're utilizing them if you're utilizing them and make sure that the ways in which you're doing so your clients are comfortable with. Yeah. Yeah,

Noel: because there's a big thing about transparency coming up soon anyway with like voice agents and things like where you know, you have to disclose that you're not talking to a human first and all that sort of stuff. 100%. But even with like the copyrighters also comes down to the who owns the IP for that as well if it's created by AI. We've done episodes on that before, haven't we? Katie, we were going into a bit more detail than that. And it's like, well, if someone's created that for you, you want to own that piece of content. But if AI's created it, then, yeah, that then becomes that massive grey area where no one really knows who it belongs to.

Ashley Kay: Absolutely.

Noel: That's a thing, right?

Ashley Kay: And like, for us, because we create everything, AI doesn't create everything. Our, like, our contracts with our clients very clearly state anything we create for you, you and your business own, like we've created it for you. So it's very clear. We're designing the graphics or the pages or writing the copy. And when we deliver that to you, it's then owned by you and your business, right?

Noel: Yeah. Yeah. Really important. Yeah,

Ashley Kay: absolutely.

Katie: Ash, what do you wish, though, like if there was one thing you wish, more business owners understood about hiring BAs or OBM in the age of AI, what would that be? Just one thing.

Ashley Kay: Oh, boy, I would say I would just wish that business owners understood that, I mean, I guess the simplest way for me to put this is that you can have the best of both worlds and you should, that you can utilize the AI tools in your business. your VA or OBM can utilize those AI tools to be more efficient, to help streamline ops, but that you need the human person as well. It's not only that you can have the best of both worlds, you need the best of both worlds. And you need to ensure that those two things can merge and operate cohesively in your business. don't have the expectation that AI can do things that it can't and don't have the expectation or maybe don't limit yourself to believing that VAs have to do everything and should not ever use AI. Find that cohesion amongst them because then your VA will be more successful. They can support you in a higher level, more elevated role and your business will be more streamlined. mind, you could utilize both of those things together if you give them the opportunity to cohesively function, right? Yeah, I love that. Great answer. Thanks.

Katie: Okay, Ash, I've got one last question for you. What's one piece of advice you'd give to a business owner who's trying to navigate AI and human support right now? I

Ashley Kay: would say my piece of advice would be to allow your team to be part of the decision-making process for how AI is used in your business. So sit down with your team members, whether that's a VA, whether that's an OBM, whether that's a marketing specialist, whomever's on your team, or if you're looking to hire at the moment and you're bringing a role in, allow them and support them, and being part of the decision-making process of, okay, what is this going to look like? Where do we want to use AI in the business? Where is AI going to be most impactful? Where is it going to be most efficient? What does your role need to be in managing or utilizing the AI? And what is my role as the business owner or C-suite executive need to be? And how can we work together to make sure all the parts are operating cohesively and efficiently and effectively without any additional work on anyone's part. I think that's the biggest thing. Rather than looking at it like, well, I have this VA or OBM or CMO or whoever it is, and I also have AI over here and I want to use AI. So I've been seeing online that AI can be used for A, B, and C. So I'm just going to tell my VA there, I have to use it for A, B, and C. Well, your VA may actually already know that using it for A&B wouldn't be effective in your business or so on or so forth. So they're part of your team, make them part of the decision-making process and the plan for how can we utilize AI in the business? How can they manage it so you can step out of that whole process and then watch what they can do when they utilize and manage AI in the ways that would be most effective?

Noel: Yeah,

Katie: that's really great advice. Thank you, Ash. This has been such like a wonderful, conversation and it's been really refreshing. So thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. We will put your website and your Instagram links in the show notes so people can follow you and obviously check out the amazing work that you do.

Ashley Kay: Thank you.

Katie: And thank you so much for listening to AI Automations for Business. If you've enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone who needs to hear the human side of this conversation and we will catch you next week.