There’s a particular kind of LinkedIn post making the rounds again. The one where a founder claims they’ve replaced their entire ops team with an AI agent and a few Zaps. Revenue is up, headcount is down, and they’re enjoying their morning espresso while the bots handle everything. What’s missing from that story is what happens at 4pm on Thursday when something breaks. AI is genuinely good at a lot of operations work now. Drafting standard responses. Pulling data. Maintaining

Most founders hire an executive assistant hoping for relief. What they actually need is resistance. The instinct is to find someone agreeable. Someone who’ll say yes, learn fast, stay out of your way, and protect your calendar. That’s a calendar manager. It’s not an EA. And it’s definitely not the person who’s going to keep your business from running on whatever fire you set on Tuesday morning. Your first EA should be the first person in your company willing to tell you no. T

You’re probably already behind on this. Not because you haven’t been paying attention, but because the tools moved faster than the hiring criteria did. Most job posts for virtual assistants still list “proficient in Microsoft Office” as a requirement. Meanwhile, the best VAs on the market are using AI to do in 20 minutes what used to take three hours. That gap isn’t closing on its own. TL;DR Hiring a virtual assistant in 2026 without asking about their AI skills is like hirin