I don't understand why nobody talks about it more for VA work. I was spending so much time doing research for my client by going through multiple websites and copy pasting information. Someone told me to try Perplexity, and it literally pulls everything together with sources in one place. Is this actually reliable enough to use for real client research, or is it just good for quick lookups?

Let me save you some stress. You don't need to learn everything at once. Pick one tool that solves your biggest current problem and learn that one properly For me, it was Fathom because meeting notes were eating my time. One tool, one problem, actually solved. Then move to the next one That's it — that's the whole strategy that's been working for me

I genuinely don't know why I waited so long. Before I was copy pasting numbers from different places into a Google Doc every Friday — taking about 90 minutes per client Now I have a live dashboard that updates automatically and clients can check it anytime they want without messaging me The first time a client said 'I already saw the numbers, looks great' instead of waiting for my update I realized how much that one change shifted how they saw me If you're still doing manual reporting for clients you're spending time on something that shouldn't need your hands on it anymore

Onboarding docs, project tracker, approval boards, SOPs, client resources all in one workspace, all linked together. I build a dedicated Notion workspace for every client I work with and structure it the same way each time so I can duplicate and customise it in under an hour. the client gets one link and everything they need is in there. no more "can you resend that doc" or "where did we land on that" it's all in one place with a clear structure. if you're only using Notion for random notes you're leaving a lot of its value on the table.

I’ve tried a couple and honestly some summaries sound smart but leave out the actual action items 😭 Still trying to figure out the balance between “AI helps” vs “AI creates more cleanup work.”