In this episode, we discuss how you can use the power of Web3, the Metaverse and AI to grow as VA and expand the Virtual Assitant brand.

We discuss the fear-mongering that has been going on with regard to AI and how people are claiming it is the end of this type of business. We dispel these rumours by talking about ideas as to how you can use these tools to create incredible packages for your business.

MENTIONED IN THIS WEBSITE
Chat GPT – https://chat.openai.com/
Midjourney – https://www.midjourney.com/app/
Apple Vision Pro – https://www.apple.com/apple-vision-pro

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Gary Vaynerchuk – https://garyvaynerchuk.com/

We hope you enjoyed the show and that it inspired some ideas. Join us next week to delve further into the Metaverse

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IMPORTANT NOTICE
This podcast is for entertainment and education purposes only. We do not give any investment or financial advice and we strongly recommend you always DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH.

Enjoy!

Show Transcript

[00:00:00] Cheryl: Welcome to Women of the Metaverse. I am Cheryl Laidlaw. 

[00:00:08] Angela: I am Angela Harkness. We have been and are still on a journey to discover the Metaverse with 3.0 NFTs and anything that we are required to know to join this world. 

[00:00:21] Cheryl: From this podcast, we will help you to unlock how the metaverse is going to impact your brand.

[00:00:27] Cheryl: Your business and even your personal life. 

[00:00:31] Angela: Join us as we take the mystery out of this new digital universe. 

[00:00:37] Cheryl: Welcome to Women of the Metaverse. In this episode, we are talking about virtual assistance. Since AI exploded into our world, There have been an ever increasing number of videos claiming the downfall of particular industries because of ai, and we wanted to do this episode to try and dispel these [00:01:00] dramatic videos for those of you that are VAs or thinking about starting a business as a va, because we actually believe these tools use creatively can help you create many more opportunities.

[00:01:13] Cheryl: And it’s not just ai, but the metaverse that can see you add a new dimension to your business. We have all come to recognize that there are what are considered digital VAs, such as Siri and Alexa, and there will be high volume added in the coming years. But we want to talk to you in this episode about you and your business and how you can transition and grow in harmony with ai, the Metaverse and web three.

[00:01:41] Angela: I was only watching some of those videos yesterday. Yeah. This of this industry, this is the end. 

[00:01:47] Cheryl: I mean, there’s so many industries we could do about this. How about how AI is gonna ruin each and every single one of them? I mean, we could, we could write them all, couldn’t we? Yeah. So that it’s a relevant episode for everyone [00:02:00] really.

[00:02:00] Angela: Yeah, you’re right. They just, they really annoy me cuz it’s just scare mongering and it’s not, it’s not explaining AI for it. The purpose of it. So I think if you watch one of those videos, just ignore them. Maybe look at 

[00:02:16] Cheryl: what you could up crying all the time. Yeah, no, I did at the beginning. It’s the end of, it’s the end of the world as we know it.

[00:02:21] Cheryl: As a designer. Yeah. Oh 

[00:02:23] Angela: God. And it really isn’t. So we mentioned in a previous episode that Gary Vaynerchuk was asked a question about AI taking people’s jobs, and he gave the perfect answer. And he was talking about, because he’s, he’s an expert in wine, and this woman said to him, how would I stop AI from taking my job?

[00:02:46] Angela: And he gave this answer about how he would ask that G P t a question about wine. And it was to do, it was actually do with champagne and Prosecco. And he said, that’s how you do it. Because [00:03:00] he asked the question that if you don’t know wine, you would never ask. And he was basically saying, you know how to ask the question.

[00:03:08] Angela: In fact, at your event, the Cheryl had an event last week and I was sat next to a woman who was a surgeon and she specializes, she’s an orthopedic surgeon and she specializes in shoulders. And I was talking to her about chat, G P T, and explaining I would ask a very different question about a sore shoulder than you would ask it.

[00:03:34] Angela: You would know, you know your anatomy, no biology, you would ask a much more precise question than I ever would be able to, to get the answer out of it. And that’s what, that’s why if you are skilled at something, AI can be your friend rather than your enemy. So everyone can use ai, but people don’t know what they don’t know, which is what we were just saying.

[00:03:57] Angela: In the industry of VAs, [00:04:00] regardless of which area you specialize in, you will get the best answers from AI because you know what to ask it. You know from your experience, the little details that those with no experience would never think to ask. And we are all learning that the greater the input into ai, the better the output.

[00:04:21] Cheryl: I think I’d like to elaborate on that a little bit because I was, again, with her, working with a client using chat gtp. I mean, we’re predominantly talking about chat GTP at this precise moment, but, um, I, we did a screen share and I was like, well, I need a title here. And she was like, oh, I, and she couldn’t think of one.

[00:04:38] Cheryl: I was like, oh, do you know what I’ll quickly ask chat gtp. And she’s like, how are you gonna do that? So I put the whole paragraph into, Chat GTP and said, told it it. You are a copywriter. Give me a title for this paragraph. Pasted in the paragraph. And she, uh, she was so bored over, she was like, oh my God, I need a session.

[00:04:58] Cheryl: I need a session on this. And we, [00:05:00] and it actually was so just, we just got sidetracked, um, talking about it and she was like, how, oh my God, this is incredible. This is incredible. So people do not know how to put input and what to ask the machine. She said, oh, I’ve used it before, but I just didn’t know. Yeah.

[00:05:15] Cheryl: That you had to like, instruct it and give it a bit of background. Knowledge. I was like, the more you input, you know, the better, the better the result. Yeah. She was absolutely 

[00:05:28] Angela: gobsmacked. We even did it though, didn’t we? When we were doing Mid Journey, which is a text to image AI tool, and it’s just incredible.

[00:05:36] Angela: But you have to learn how to ask it the right question. And we were trying to create an image of a woman with wearing headphones. And we asked it once and it gave us these really rubbish, just rubbish ideas. And then we like, we sort of put a bit more into it and eventually by putting the right prompt in, we got these really, [00:06:00] really good images.

[00:06:00] Angela: So it isn’t just a case of, oh, somebody’s gonna ask, go in, ask AI questions about being a va and it’s just gonna give them everything. It’s, that’s not how it works. And the more experience you have, the more knowledge. The more you are gonna train your chat G P T agent to give you the best answers. So all of these videos about, oh, it’s gonna ruin this interest.

[00:06:27] Angela: It really isn’t. 

[00:06:28] No. 

[00:06:29] Cheryl: Well, you can definitely take advantage of AI to help you, and if you do not have the budget to outsource work, then there are tasks that need to be done, and you can certainly get the most out of it with AI to help you. Whether you want to respond to emails, you want to write content, create social media posts, ask AI ideas, get mid journey to create designs for you.

[00:06:52] Cheryl: Use des script, tra transcribe text, or even create an AI influencer or chat bott. You only need to go to [00:07:00] TikTok to see how many people are automating their workflow, increasing their efficiency and output by using AI tools. It’s actually incredible to the point where I just need a whole day to just watch these TikTok videos.

[00:07:14] Cheryl: Oh, no, no. Sending them over to Angela. 

[00:07:17] Angela: I’ve got a folder in my TikTok. That’s called Cheryls on holiday. And these were videos. This was, oh, like is that because I 

[00:07:27] Cheryl: got away too much? No, 

[00:07:28] Angela: no, no. This was months and months and months ago when we were sending one another. A lot of videos. But you went away, I think you went to San Francisco, I think you were at, um, San Diego.

[00:07:39] Angela: Yeah, San Diego. So I thought, I’m not gonna bombard while she’s away. I’ll save them to a folder called Cheryl on on a date. This folder now, and I never changed the name of the folder. This folder now has got over 700 videos in it. Oh, wow. Yeah. So at some point I’m gonna have to go, [00:08:00] I need to watch these videos.

[00:08:02] Angela: Oh, 

[00:08:02] Cheryl: I wanted that. I wanted to do that this week. But again, yeah, it’s away with 

[00:08:06] Angela: you. Yeah. But to say that, you know, having a VA can add a budget to, um, somebody’s small business, so, We’re not trying to scare you off from using check G P T as well, we are just trying to say, yes, it can help your small business to just make it more efficient so you can actually focus on your business.

[00:08:28] Cheryl: Absolutely. And it, again, it doesn’t have to be chat G T P, it’s just because that’s what. Yeah. Andrew and I are using on a daily basis 

[00:08:34] Angela: and we, yeah, there’s a lot of tools. Oh, there’s so 

[00:08:37] Cheryl: many. Every time I go again, every time I go online, there’s something new and may, oh, could I add that to my budget on a monthly basis?

[00:08:43] Cheryl: Yeah. We want to give you a warning because using ai, the bills can start to stack up because pretty much all the AI tools require some level of payment. Also, there is always a danger of spending too much time marketing your business rather than [00:09:00] actually focusing on what you are. Truly skilled at and why you set up your business in the first place because there is a cost to that.

[00:09:08] Cheryl: So you had to create a balance between how you spend your time and money. Also, also that you can trust it given you the right answer. We asked Bard a question the other day and it gave us the wrong answer. So again, be aware that you don’t know what you don’t know. Yeah, that’s very true. Yeah. We, we did, we, uh, put them up against each other, didn’t we?

[00:09:31] Angela: Yeah. We asked you a question about our podcast and it told us that somebody else hosted our own podcast, so you have to How rude. Yeah. We, you have to be very careful, and I was listening to a story the other day where two lawyers in America used it, used chat g p t to legal briefs, and there were mistakes in those briefs.

[00:09:54] Angela: And both these lawyers are now gonna get disbarred because they didn’t, they [00:10:00] didn’t put the work in themselves. So yeah, you have to be careful, you’ve gotta be careful about, 

[00:10:06] Cheryl: you know, it does save you time, but you do need to put the time in to actually read it and see if it’s correct. Like I said, like only a lawyer would know if that, if that yes.

[00:10:14] Cheryl: Information that it spat out was wrong or Right, exactly. You know, so it just, it just says everything about the lawyer that you know that Yeah. That’ll do. 

[00:10:23] Angela: Yes, exactly. Yeah. 

[00:10:26] Cheryl: So back to VAs, how can you grow your business as a VA using ai? 

[00:10:32] Angela: There are so many different ways to do this. Depending on your area of specialism in, you can increase clients because the amount of work that you can get done, maybe increase because of how quickly you can automate everything.

[00:10:48] Angela: You can sell single packages to those that can’t afford a full-time VA to actually set up AI workflows. You can specialize in ai. That might be a good [00:11:00] one, because I think that’s the, you know, something people aren’t gonna do. Like we said, people aren’t extending their knowledge. You can extend your services so that you utilize these tools and you can create partnerships with other experts.

[00:11:17] Angela: I think one of the ones that’s really gonna become big is the automation element to all of this. Mm. I’m seeing that a lot now and again, 

[00:11:25] Cheryl: people think, oh well everyone’s gonna be doing it, so I just won’t bother. Nobody’s doing it. No. Only 16% of people are using chat. G T P. Yeah. And God knows how many of them are using, using it correctly.

[00:11:39] Cheryl: Probably only 2%. It’s 

[00:11:41] Angela: really, really small numbers. If you are. If you are doing some research around ai though, Cheryl and I do a lot of this, my TikTok, F Y P is full. Just every other video is about ai. So you’re gonna see it a lot because it’s gonna come up on your algorithm. But [00:12:00] you know, at the event that we were at the other week, a lot of women had either never heard of some of the tools or had not used them at all, and that will be commonplace.

[00:12:11] Angela: So don’t think that everybody’s getting into it because they, they’re not at this stage. I think there’s a window of a few years where you can really make, make a mark for yourself in this before it does. Yeah. Now’s 

[00:12:25] Cheryl: the time to do it. Now’s the time to, if you don’t it it, and then now and start learning ai, you’ll just be like everyone else in three years time.

[00:12:31] Cheryl: Yes. 

[00:12:34] Angela: So what about the metaverse though? How could that create opportunities? 

[00:12:40] Cheryl: So Angela mentioned, mentioned in a previous episode about couples who are paying 30 K for a consultant to help them pick a name for their baby. This is to explain that some people have money and that they are willing to spend.

[00:12:57] Cheryl: Yeah. We have, on countless occasions [00:13:00] now, spoken about how avatars will become very important to people, whether they are acting as themselves or they have characters that they can use. In the Metaverse, you can create opportunities to take your VA skills to the metaverse. Simply Flows is an automated and productivity company that in 2022, started offering Metaverse via asep.

[00:13:24] Cheryl: From the website, it says that you can hire and train your VA to do whatever tasks you don’t want to do. You can customize their avatar to look how you want, and you can call it a name that suits you in your business. There are other companies that are doing it. As well and are doing AI power tools. I mean, this is genius.

[00:13:44] Cheryl: I can’t wait to get my own va that’s a, you know, well, you 

[00:13:47] Angela: can just create the metaverse. What can you, I think one of the big tools now, one of the big things now is to create these AI bots using a, using an [00:14:00] avatar or a, like a human looking avatar that you can create that has your own voice or someone else’s.

[00:14:08] Angela: To answer questions or do videos for you or you know, you can turn that into animation. You can. What you can do is just incredible. So yeah, it’s, yeah. I think the whole metaverse thing, especially now with Apple bringing out its Vision Pro, which I think is very much more grid around business. It’d be really interesting to see what technologies now come out and what’s new apps now come out as a result of this.

[00:14:37] Angela: Definitely we think that as a VA you could expand into the area of the metaverse. You could utilize the AI tools, but you can also give a personal touch. Again, coming back to, you know what, you know, automation of workflow creates a very efficient company, but there are always these anomalies where [00:15:00] humans are involved that require human knowledge and experience to deal with it.

[00:15:04] Angela: And this is where you, you could take up your opportunities. Also, the creativity you could give to this could be incredible. You could let your imagination run wild as to what kind of avatars you could create in the Metaverse. It does not need to be a standard person at a desk. In fact, I bet the more creative and out there you are, the more people would pay.

[00:15:32] Angela: It’s almost like creating superhero type avatars that can just, yeah, do everything or animals. Or you could create an avatar in their. Persona that your customer wanted, couldn’t you? Yeah, I, I 

[00:15:46] Cheryl: would have a Tinker Bell one. Me. Do you just flew around? Yeah. That’s cute. Yeah, just when I needed her, she’d be there, there and I’d have my, with her.

[00:15:53] Cheryl: Yeah. Hi Cheryl. How can I help you? Am that right? Well, there’s a couple of emails that need writing up, please. I love [00:16:00] that. How I speak to 

[00:16:00] Angela: her. Maybe that’s what we start Ta you. Tinkerbell VA services. I think we get sued by 

[00:16:08] Cheryl: Disney. 

[00:16:09] Angela: Yeah, maybe. But yeah, your imagination, you know, if somebody’s a cat person, they can have a cat va.

[00:16:15] Angela: If somebody’s, you know, the VA can do stuff at, in whatever way, I think your imagination could just go crazy, couldn’t it? 

[00:16:26] Cheryl: Absolutely. I mean, I know mine is right now, I’m like, oh, Butler in the buff.

[00:16:33] Angela: I’m not sure how sexy a naked avatar.

[00:16:39] Cheryl: Yeah, I’m not either. But yeah, as always, we encourage you to do your research. Some industries, we do understand that it can be a worry in time, but we truly believe that the opportunities. Outweigh the downside. If you take the steps and learn and transition, don’t wait for the others. [00:17:00] Being a VA in this new digital universe could massively transform your business, and we want to be with you every step of the way.

[00:17:07] Cheryl: We hope you enjoyed this episode. Join us next week as we continue our journey into the metaverse. Bye for now. 

[00:17:14] Angela: Bye.

[00:17:17] Angela: Thank you for listening to this episode of Women of the Metaverse. 

[00:17:22] Cheryl: You can find all information, links and people we talked about in the show notes on our website. If you have enjoyed 

[00:17:29] Angela: this podcast, please comment and subscribe. 

[00:17:32] Cheryl: Join us again in the next episode as we continue this exciting metaverse journey.