Module 2: AI Tools for Virtual Assistants
AI Virtual Assistant Business
Marcus Webb runs a six-figure VA business serving tech founders in London. His entire stack is five tools. Five. "Every tool I add has to save me at least 5 hours a week or earn me at least £500/month in new capability," he told me. "If it doesn't hit one of those thresholds, I don't need it."
That's the mindset. Let's build your actual toolkit.
The Core Stack (Non-Negotiable)
1. ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro (£20/month)
Your brain extension. Email drafting, research synthesis, document creation, brainstorming, data analysis. Pick one as your primary — I'd recommend Claude for longer, nuanced work and ChatGPT for quick tasks and plugins. Don't pay for both until you're earning enough to justify it.
2. Zapier or Make (Free tier → £20-50/month)
Your automation backbone. Connects everything to everything. When a client emails, auto-log it. When a calendar event is created, auto-send a prep brief. When an invoice is due, auto-remind. Zapier is easier to learn; Make is more powerful and cheaper at scale. Start with Zapier, switch to Make when you outgrow it.
3. Notion or ClickUp (Free → £8-10/month)
Your operating system. Client dashboards, SOPs, task tracking, documentation. Notion is more flexible; ClickUp is better for task management. Pick one, commit to it, and build everything there.
4. Grammarly or LanguageTool (Free → £12/month)
Your quality control. Every email, document, and message runs through this. Non-negotiable when you're writing on behalf of clients.
5. Calendly or Cal.com (Free → £10/month)
Your scheduling tool. Cal.com is open-source and increasingly powerful. Calendly is more polished. Either works.
The Enhancement Layer (Add As Needed)
- Otter.ai (£10/month) — Meeting transcription and summaries. Essential if your clients have lots of calls.
- Canva Pro (£10/month) — Quick graphics, social media images. The AI features are genuinely useful now.
- Loom (Free → £13/month) — Async video updates to clients. Way better than long emails explaining what you did.
- Perplexity Pro (£17/month) — Research with citations. Faster than ChatGPT for factual research.
Match each core VA tool to its primary function:
The Money Maths
Here's where VAs go wrong: they sign up for everything and end up paying £200+/month in tools before they've landed a single client.
Starter budget (£0-40/month):
- ChatGPT Plus: £20
- Zapier: Free tier
- Notion: Free tier
- Grammarly: Free tier
- Cal.com: Free tier
Growth budget (£60-100/month):
Add Zapier paid, Otter.ai, and Canva Pro when client revenue justifies it.
Pro budget (£150-200/month):
Add Make, Perplexity Pro, premium tiers across the board.
Emma Cartwright started her VA business spending £20/month total (just ChatGPT Plus). She didn't upgrade anything until she hit £2,000/month in revenue. "I was paranoid about tool costs eating my margins," she said. Smart paranoia.
According to the module, when should you upgrade from free tool tiers to paid subscriptions?
How to Actually Learn These Tools
Here's my opinionated take: don't do courses about tools. Open the tool, try to do something real with it, get stuck, Google the specific problem, solve it, repeat. You'll learn faster through real client work in one week than through a 10-hour Zapier masterclass.
The exception: ChatGPT/Claude prompting. Invest real time learning to write good prompts. It's the single highest-ROI skill in your entire business. Everything else is plumbing.
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