Airbnb is handing the phones to AI. The company says its custom-built agent now resolves about a third of customer support issues in the U.S. and Canada, with a global rollout next. CEO Brian Chesky framed it as both a cost saver and a service upgrade, while newly hired AI chief Ahmad Al-Dahle works on an app that “knows you.” The bet is that AI layers deepen loyalty rather than replace the platform. (TechCrunch)

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Chinese carmakers are circling the U.S. market, and this time it feels real. Companies like BYD and Geely are exploring U.S. factories to get around 100% tariffs, opening the door to selling their ultra-cheap EVs to American drivers. With China now exporting more cars than any country on Earth, the move would bring badly needed price pressure to a U.S. market where new vehicles average around $50,000. (CNN)

LinkedIn is rolling out a new $99-a-month “All-in-One” Premium plan aimed squarely at SMBs. The idea is to give founders one dashboard for finding customers, posting jobs, and marketing themselves. The package also bundles $150 in monthly ad and boost credits, which means LinkedIn is basically daring SMBs to try running their whole GTM strategy on the platform. (Social Media Today)

Warner Bros. may reopen talks with Paramount after receiving an amended offer, raising the possibility of a second bidding war with Netflix. Paramount’s new terms cover Netflix’s exit fee, backstop debt refinancing, and offer shareholder compensation if the deal stalls. Some Warner Bros. shareholders, including Pentwater and Ancora, are urging the board to engage, arguing Paramount could deliver a better deal. If Warner Bros. re-engages, Netflix could counter, turning this into a live auction. (Bloomberg)

A couple of months ago, I saw someone post about how they “haven’t checked their email in three years” because they hired a VA.

It makes for a great flex, but let’s be honest. 

You have checked your email. I have checked my email. Everyone who runs a real company still checks their email.

That said, a good VA or EA genuinely changes how you operate.

We recently hired another one, and within days she was already learning our systems, moving between teams, handling scheduling, cleaning up communications, assisting with recruitment and making everyone’s day a little easier. 

There’s no need for exaggeration because good assistants don’t just “manage your inbox.” They can upgrade your entire workflow and often improve your whole life.

But most founders never get to that point because they get stuck in what I call Virtual Assistant Hell, and that’s often not just because you hired a ‘bad VA’.

It comes from hiring them the wrong way.

Virtual Assistant Hell usually starts the same way:

You hire someone because you’re overwhelmed.

You give them a vague list of things.

They do about 40% of it right, but you spend the rest of your time correcting, clarifying, and redoing the work.

Soon, you’re spending more time managing the VA than you ever spent doing the work yourself, and you wonder why you even bothered.

Now, there are a couple reasons why this happens:

A high-performing VA’s job is to take half-formed ideas, scattered requests, and things you don’t want to think about, and turn them into clear workflows, clean execution, and real progress.

That only happens when three things are true.

Most people skip all three and then wonder why their VA isn’t giving them time back. 

The fastest way to end up in VA hell is to hire someone to “help with admin.”

That tells them nothing about what success looks like.

Instead, you want to think in outcomes that describe how your day should feel when things are working.

For example:

Those are problems a VA can own.

If you can describe what is broken in your day, you can turn it into a role.

Most founders use their VA as a pair of hands. They send instructions, wait, and then send more instructions.

That keeps you in the middle of everything.

What you want instead is ownership.

There is a big difference between saying, “Can you follow up with this client?” and saying, “You own client follow-ups, and if someone has not replied in 48 hours, you decide what happens next.”

Ownership turns a VA from a messenger into an operator.

And, when they own a process, they do not need constant direction. They know what success looks like, and they work toward it.

This is the part that almost nobody documents, but it is what separates a decent VA from a truly great one.

You do not need to teach them every step. You need to teach them your standards.

That means explaining things like:

Once they understand your logic, they can make good decisions without asking you every time.

That is when the time starts coming back.

A strong VA will naturally start creating checklists, fixing broken workflows, organizing files, and noticing where things keep going wrong.

Do not shut that down.

You are not paying them just to keep up with your roadblocks. You are paying them to make an effort to remove them.

The invisible cleanup is where most of the real value comes from. 

When you hire and manage a VA properly, you do not suddenly stop working.

What happens instead is that fewer repetitive and cumbersome things float around in your head and on your to-do list. 

Your inbox becomes manageable. Fewer things fall through the cracks. You get fewer interruptions. You have more time to think and more energy to build.

That is what people actually mean when they say a VA/EA changed their life.

Not that they never check email, but that they no longer have to carry the entire operation in their brain.

Virtual assistants are pretty darn useful if you set them up for success with good systems and clear instructions. 

If you treat a VA like cheap labor, you will get expensive mistakes. If you treat them like the operator of your company’s control panel, you get leverage.

And for business owners, leverage is the whole game.

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