Holly Brown on the Biggest Opportunity in the EA Role

Holly Brown · 0:00

Hi everyone, my name is Holly Brown and the leadership quote today is, good leaders make you believe in them, great leaders make you believe in you. And it's widely sort of adapted from an Eleanor Roosevelt quote.

Intro · 0:25

The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistants to become confident, game-changing leader assistants.

Jeremy · 0:32

Hey friends, welcome to the Leader Assistant Podcast. It's episode 398. You can check out the show notes for this conversation at leaderassistant.com/398. So today I'm really excited to be speaking with Holly Brown. Holly, welcome to the show.

Holly Brown · 0:53

Thank you very much for having me, Jeremy. I'm very excited actually. So it's an honor to be here.

Jeremy · 1:00

Awesome. And tell us where you're located and what you like to do when you're not working.

Holly Brown · 1:06

Yeah, sure. So I'm located in Perth, Western Australia, quite across the river from where you're located. But in my spare time, I am really into running at the moment. I'm watching a lot of like ultramarathon YouTube videos and things like that. Outside of that, I listen to a lot of podcasts. I enjoy cooking. I play some PC games. So it's actually quite a bit of a mix. Um, I find myself doing lots of different random things most of the time.

Jeremy · 1:38

Love it. What, uh, yeah, what type of PC games do you play?

Holly Brown · 1:43

Um, online. So I have a whole library of, uh, Steam games that I play, but I really actually enjoy like sim games. So sort of a lot of building games. Um, Just downloaded some sort of survival game. So, you know, gonna get all the tactics and strategies, that sort of gaming for sure.

Jeremy · 2:02

Cool, cool. Well, it's, yeah, it's great to have you on the show. Really appreciate you taking time. I know it's early morning for me, or not super early morning, but morning for me and pretty late for you. So, appreciate you Doing this little nightcap podcast.

Holly Brown · 2:22

No worries.

Jeremy · 2:24

So let's jump into your career then. Tell us a little bit about where you started in your journey of being an executive assistant.

Holly Brown · 2:34

Yeah, so I guess going right back, I started in office administration. I kind of wanted to leave school and not go to, like, not go to university, not go that traditional path. But I know that I knew that I wanted just to get in there and start working. And for me, being obviously in Western Australia, it was the mining industry. So, going straight into sort of that area of work within office administration, seeing how that all sort of worked. And then I went into accounts and then more office administration. So, it's always been sort of office-based without having the university degree or further sort of courses and things like that. It's all been sort of self-paced learning and on-the-job learning, which I love. I think For me, that was the best way to learn and adapt to situations. And then I went into a consulting role with a consulting company. And I guess that's when it really all changed. You sort of see how different businesses really work at that large scale, like thousands of people. So from there, I was office coordinating, working with, you know, the directors of the company. It was a software company as well as a a personnel company. So what they would do is put their software into companies and also put their people into the companies to run the software. So that was really intense, obviously working, um, with multiple consultants internally and externally, uh, taught me a lot there. But I think deep down I always knew that I wanted to get into and be an executive assistant. Um, it just took a very long, different sort of path than what I thought maybe how I would get into it. I went on to work with my partner's close friend as a management assistant. And I guess how that pretty much all sort of started to roll into, I went off to, from there I went to a big EPCM company with maybe 12,000 people as a project support coordinator and sort of got the tap on the shoulder to say, Are you interested in becoming an executive assistant to a couple of people, higher-up people within the company? And I snatched that up pretty quickly. I was not going to say no to that opportunity. And from there, I am now supporting a COO in a mining company, an ASX-listed mining company with a newly producing mine site over on the east coast of Australia. So, it's been awesome. Lots of different— yeah, that's great. I supported a lot of people, but this is, um, this experience is extremely different. We've gone from explorer with maybe 20 people in the company to producer in with 200 people in the company, about approximately up there of 200 people in about 2 years. So yeah.

Jeremy · 5:38

So that's, uh, yeah, it's been a fun ride then.

Holly Brown · 5:43

Yeah, a different ride, but, um, certainly a ride that I've really enjoyed. It's been hard as well, right? So nothing's easy, but it's been good and I've learned a lot and I've got to work with really amazing people.

Jeremy · 5:54

Love it. Well, what, what's been maybe throughout your, your journey as an assistant, what's been maybe your favorite part of the role?

Holly Brown · 6:08

Yeah, so I think what really attracted me to being and wanting to be an executive assistant and now executive business partner is the level of access it allows you with people at that level of business. So we're talking managing directors, regional directors, COOs, C-class, and things like that. And I think just being able to sit next to them and learn pretty much like being in their brain, right? We sort of understand what every next step is. We sort of, we want to learn every move that they do. And I go back to not going the normal route of, you know, leaving high school and going to college or university. But this was sort of my way of being like, okay, well, I have access to amazing people around me. This is a different opportunity. And I wanted to be involved with people like that and learn from people. on the ground. And that, I think, for me, was why I wanted to get into that role, is to be able to be next to people who've done it for 20 years and just know the ins and outs and actually love what they do. I love being surrounded by that energy. So that was really attractive to me. Also, being able to get onto projects that people outside of an EA's office or EA's executive would never see.

Jeremy · 7:27

Right.

Holly Brown · 7:28

So, there's just so many opportunities.

Jeremy · 7:29

Awesome. So, on the flip side, what has been one of your least favorite things about the role?

Holly Brown · 7:37

I think there's certainly a stigma around the role, right? That we're still, even today, you still get people go, okay, well, what's an EA? You just sort of do admin tasks or you're just the office girl or something like that. So, that has been really hard and that's a stigma I try and always removed. Like, I'm very stern in how I talk about the position because I love the position. I think very highly of the position and the people in those positions. So, that's something that is a bit of a stigma that's really difficult. Other than that, like, you know, we have general days where we don't like things, right? Where there's some things you have to do and you don't want to do it, or you know that it should be done a different way, but unfortunately, we just have to do it the other way. And I think whenever you get paired up with a new executive or someone else that you're working with, there is so much time spent at the very beginning of that sort of being a little bit tiptoe-y and a little bit more like on the line of making sure like we're learning how each other works and things like that. So there's always that time constraint and is it going to work? Is it not going to work? I think it goes both ways. So that's always an interesting view when you're first starting. with a new executive, but I've been very fortunate to work with great people.

Jeremy · 8:56

Great. Well, I'm really excited. I really appreciate you again being here, and I'm really excited to dive into the topic for this episode, which is really that the fact that we as assistants are sitting on the biggest career opportunity that our role has ever had, and That's the AI, the innovation with the AI, um, automation. And so I would love to hear your, you know, pitch, if you will, to assistants who are maybe resistant to AI or, you know, been resistant. Now they're opening their, their minds and saying, you know what, I need to, I can't ignore this.

Holly Brown · 9:45

Yeah.

Jeremy · 9:46

You know, how we should handle these AI tools and, you know, yeah, just all the things on AI.

Holly Brown · 9:56

Yeah, sure. So as you'll already know that I'm a big user of AI, I love AI. I probably really started diving into it within the workplace maybe 2 years ago and coming into this role at the company I'm at now, there was no AI. So there was no AI set up, no one. I mean, you know, people were using ChatGPT and things like that, but we had no internal program at this company. And I remember doing a one-page sort of pitch to be like, we need Copilot. Like, we need something. We're a, you know, when you're a junior mining company, you don't have, and you're not producing, you're not producing funds then, right? So it's always like, how can we do more with less? Hence, here's AI. And I remember handing over the pitch and it was— One page, they read it and they thought, yes, like, how can we— let's implement this. And what I did was essentially just showed hours timed versus— sorry, hours saved versus dollars saved, all of that sort of stuff. So if you can go in with the evidence, I think that always works first and people are really excited. But then you've also got to back it up by the training, right? So I understand where people's hesitations come in because, you know, there's the whole doom and gloom part of it. But I think it's in the way that we use it, right? So if we're using it for tasks that we can, as executive assistants, use it for those repetitive tasks where it's taking us like an hour or 2 hours just to do a meeting brief, that we can get AI now to sort of scan an email, scan last week's 3 meetings that we had and the 2 meeting minutes and put it into a brief within, I don't know, 5 minutes. There's 55 minutes we've now got with our executive to sort of plan and use for different workings within the business, growing the business, right? So we're there for the success of the business, the success of our executive, and obviously setting ourselves up for success. So for me, this is the biggest career growth opportunity that I've come across using AI. I think when people are hesitant to use it, I think it's probably not being shown how to use it in the best way possible for their job. It's not about fear-mongering and being like, and you know, we'll see the articles saying that AI is going to replace EAs. For me right now, I just don't see how that's possible because I know a conversation with an executive is more valuable than a conversation they're going to have with ChatGPT or something on their computer screen. So it's really about being curious about how we can remove those repetitive tasks Make AI work for us, not the other way around. I'm quite big on that, where we can save time, what we can automate, how we can help the company, how we can help with planning the company, how it grows. There's so many different use cases, and I think it's just about being curious. And with everything in life, there's this level of adaption, and I think it's just about adapting to what's new. And it is scary, yes, but there is fortunate enough now, 2 years later, there are a few more platforms to go and have a look and talk about AI and show real-life cases. And I guess that's what I'm trying to do as well, just show the community that there's so many different opportunities to add value in using AI in the workplace and for yourself, right? You get opportunities if you know how to use AI.

Jeremy · 13:24

Yeah. What's your— I know you shared a couple examples, but what's maybe recently one of your favorite use cases for how you've applied AI to your role?

Holly Brown · 13:35

Yeah, sure. So this one I'd been working on for a very long time, um, and because it just had so many outputs. So it's a daily market report that goes out and it scans sort of all the mining news, um, companies. We look at ASX tickers. I just gather information, see what's out there, track media, see what articles, um, gold prices, silver prices, you know, copper prices, all of that information that is relevant to understanding what's going on in the mining industry. And it's a report that it's the first thing I do when I walk in. And before I had automated that, it was probably taking me— and this isn't going to sound like a lot of time, but maybe 30 minutes because I was still using different AIs. I think I was using 3 AI platforms to try and pull it, and it was still taking 30 minutes. And I recently in the last week have been able to fully automate it. And now I can walk in at 5:30 AM because I just start earlier because of our East Coast. working and it's done for me.

Jeremy · 14:34

Hmm.

Holly Brown · 14:35

So it's actually removed that whole reporting, the daily reporting I have to do, and it's about 6 pages, right? There's so much news on what's going on, um, and that's condensed. I've built sources into it and everything like that. So I can now walk in not knowing, like, sorry, knowing that if I get a phone call, it's not going to change my routine and structure in the morning. That report's good to go. I just need to review it and hit send. So that's just one case, but then I have all of these other cases where it's now taking minutes. I've built out minute forms on how I want it structured. So when it goes out to the team, it's in that way. So there's actions, you've got risk registers, all that sort of stuff. Then yeah, briefing notes the day before for meetings. There's all sorts of things you can do in Copilot, and I use Claude as well. So those 2 platforms.

Jeremy · 15:26

Nice. I was actually going to ask you, the daily briefing research on all the mining, is that in Copilot or Claude?

Holly Brown · 15:33

That one is in Claude.

Jeremy · 15:36

Gotcha. Great.

Holly Brown · 15:37

Yeah.

Jeremy · 15:38

Awesome.

Holly Brown · 15:39

Can be done in Copilot. I just, um, yeah.

Jeremy · 15:42

That's the thing. Like most, most of the things can be done in multiple AI tools.

Holly Brown · 15:47

Yeah.

Jeremy · 15:48

It's just a matter of which company or which your, uh, which tool your company has the license for and which, which tool your company lets you kind of connect to your Microsoft suite or your Google Workspace.

Holly Brown · 16:01

Exactly.

Jeremy · 16:03

And yeah, so that's great. So, okay, so then let's shift gears just a little bit. What, let's, you know, you've got all these things that AI is doing for you. People often ask, I did an AI training in the DC area the other day and you know, one of the more frequent questions was, okay, so I've automated scheduling, I've automated these reports, I've automated summaries from meetings, I've set up all these things.

Holly Brown · 16:34

Yeah.

Jeremy · 16:34

But now what do I do with, with all this? You know, and it's kind of tongue in cheek 'cause, you know, we assistants can always, always have too much work to do on our plate. But what do I do with this free time, right? What do I do with the time that AI has freed up?

Holly Brown · 16:50

Well, I think that's the opportunity, right? So we now have free time to create opportunity for ourselves within the business. So the opportunity for me has been, well, I now get to own the AI rollout and implementation within our business and try and train people up to use it, bring in creation of dashboards with obviously Copilot apps. and things like that has now come out. There's a whole learning opportunity where I can go and learn how to implement Power Automate builds and Copilot apps and things like that to generate dashboards across the business. I can train other people, but it's also now— it's interesting you say that because I think the relationship with executives become a little bit stronger. Now I get to sort of see other areas of working that I probably— I never had time to do before. So I'm in different meetings now. I'm working on different projects that I would never in a million years think I'd be working on. I get to be involved in different sort of compliance governance. There's so many different areas now that I get to sort of step into and train myself on, I guess.

Jeremy · 18:08

Yeah. I love, I love how you put that because the way I see it is, you know, on-the-job training is the best training. And when you free up this, you know, the mundane, painful, repetitive tasks with AI, then you get more opportunity for on-the-job training.

Holly Brown · 18:27

Exactly. Go sit with someone, go check out a different meeting, go learn the business. Yeah, that's what I really love doing. In, in the time that I get back and sit with my executive and sort of learn from her as well.

Jeremy · 18:40

Yeah. Well, this is super, super helpful. I know we could talk about AI all day, but I actually want to hear a little bit about your title change and your title story. So you went from, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but you went from executive assistant to executive business partner. So, what actually changed? How did the scope shift? How did you— did you present that business case to try to get that change, or did they bring it to you? Like, how did that all work?

Holly Brown · 19:12

Yeah, so I think I, like, have a lot to credit to AI for that as well. I think the opportunity for me to walk in confidently and say, look, I want my sort of JD reviewed and what I'm doing with the business and things like that. So, if we go back to when I was an EA, in that EA role, I remember the job description being probably a one-pager. And mind you, remember, we're talking about a junior company who was junior at that time. It's a different story to where it is now. And looking at that JD, and then I look at the JD that I have now, and it's maybe 3 pages thicker. That was the stuff that I was doing on top of the role that I was already hired to do.

Jeremy · 19:53

Mm-hmm.

Holly Brown · 19:55

obviously bringing AI into that landed a whole bunch of other stuff. So, you know, registers, like just telling people how to use Copilot and all of that. But the opportunity for— so if I— sorry, if I go back, it's sort of tracking all the extra stuff that I was doing and then feeling confident enough to be like, well, I have the results here. This is— Let's look here 12 months ago, and then let's look at this list because this is what I'm doing. And I feel that I'm confident in saying that my value here is worth a title change. I feel that I am doing more than what the title is sort of described as at the moment with the JD. And then look, there's back and forth around what that title was going to be, if it was going to have an operations or a coordinator role title. It's not something that screamed to me having operations or coordinator in my role title because I still wanted to be part of being an executive assistant. Like, I really, really love that. I just wanted the next step up and I wanted to be recognized within the business that I was bringing more to the table than what I started with. So it was just about backing up what I brought with my experience and all of the other extra stuff.

Jeremy · 21:15

Hmm.

Holly Brown · 21:17

But yes, I did have to go to my executive and get the confidence up to say, look, I would like to have a look at this. I feel that it's fair. I would be open to a discussion. And sort of, you know, those things can take a few months as well. And I will say that it depends on the business and the executive that you're working with if that is, you know, a possibility. Because at the last job for me, At a company with 12,000 people, there's obviously bands and levels and titles and stuff that there's just that red tape you cannot move.

Jeremy · 21:53

Yeah.

Holly Brown · 21:53

So it's about knowing your business as well.

Jeremy · 21:55

Yeah. So that's great. So then the AI side of things was a big part of your business case because you were essentially training and teaching other people and showing other people in the company how to, how to utilize AI.

Holly Brown · 22:12

Yeah, yeah. And then coming in as well and having a structure. I remember the first month at this job having the structure to go off and just say, okay, we need you to now build out SharePoint and building all of those sites, all of the filing structures. You know, they had a model and stuff, but they just didn't have the time to actually implement that. And so I implemented quite a lot of digital spaces with SharePoint. and builds like that as well. So I think it's just knowing your value and knowing what you can bring and just be confident. The worst thing that they can ever do is say no, right? And then you can just keep trying, right?

Jeremy · 22:48

Yeah. My, my go-to is, you know, the worst thing they can do is say no. And then wouldn't you rather know the answer so that you could kind of really assess, all right, if they say no, you can follow up with, okay, well, what do I need to do? Over the next 6 to 12 months to get this opportunity to have a salary increase or a title change or both. But then it also kind of, you know, wouldn't you rather know what you need to do? But also if there doesn't seem to be an opportunity for growth in the organization, if it were me, I would want to know that sooner than later.

Holly Brown · 23:29

Me too. Exactly.

Jeremy · 23:31

It's kind of a—

Holly Brown · 23:32

because it's your career as well.

Jeremy · 23:33

It's a win-win situation, I guess.

Holly Brown · 23:35

Exactly.

Jeremy · 23:36

No matter what happens. So anyway, that's, that's awesome. Super, super helpful and great examples there for, for assistants listening. What, what would you say is actually step back before I ask the final question? So you are doing a lot on LinkedIn and sharing a lot of tips and you've You launched a website. What, tell us a little bit about what you're doing, whether you call it a side hustle or a hobby or whatever you, whatever you call it. Tell us a little bit about what you're doing outside of your day job.

Holly Brown · 24:10

Yeah. So who knows what to call it at the moment, right? But it is, it started just like, it started as this hobby because I'm so passionate about it. I guess it's another thing that I do outside of my, my work is I spend a lot of, a lot of time on the computer just building things with AI, looking into AI, seeing how I can make changes with builds and models and just playing around and being curious. The more people I spoke to, the more people that were saying, I don't use AI in my workplace. I don't do this. I don't do that. Then I'd hear about what they were working on or I'd see them working on their laptop and I thought, why are you doing that? Did you know you could do this? Or do you know that actually that Copilot model will edit it for you if you just tell it what to do? There was all those things. And then I just realized that when you're stuck in that AI bubble on LinkedIn and in your little AI crews that you talk to and things like that, you, you don't know how little information that a lot of people have externally or like the knowledge and the use cases of implementing AI into their lives. So for me, I was like, well, if I can do it, I mean, I'm not a tech background, like I just have an interest in it. I see that it's not going away. I wanted to be early into it. It's something that I really love doing. I want to allow other executive assistants and administration and business support people the opportunity to sort of learn really easily and see real use cases where it doesn't work or it does work. And I just want quick wins. So a lot of the posts that I do is the main goal for me is, is that post going to allow someone to walk away right now and implement it into their day? So for me, if someone can take quick wins every day from me, that's what I love the most, really. I just want EAs and administration business support people to feel confident because, look, there's so much fearmongering around our discipline of work. I just thought, no, look, let's get people curious and confident that they can use it. You don't need to be in a tech background. simple solutions every single day are going to elevate you and create career opportunity, and it's going to look good on your CV. So let's just be a community and learn together. And this is sort of what I'm doing. I do that on the website as well. I've got free resource packs. I show what I'm working on. I have my Substack where I go into a bit more long form about being an AI— an EA, EPB, and working with AI. Um, I been fortunate enough to do some workshops with AOP, EA How To, um, and look, it's, it's opened me up to connecting with so many more wonderful people as well and having them message me saying, oh, did you know, can I do this? Um, thank you so much for showing me how to automate this or create a routine or a task. Um, so I think it's just being helpful in this community, and I think you'll find that with a lot of people in this sort of discipline, that's a huge goal of ours.

Jeremy · 27:17

Yeah.

Holly Brown · 27:17

And that's what I really wanted. Yeah.

Jeremy · 27:18

That's amazing. So the best place for people to reach out then and say hi and learn more about what you're doing? Yeah.

Holly Brown · 27:28

So on LinkedIn is probably a really good one. So Holly Brown AUS. And on my website, which is hollybrownaus.com, all my links are on there. So feel free and always just Send me a message or an email. I'm more than happy to have a chat or help you out.

Jeremy · 27:43

Perfect. And I'll put all those links obviously in the show notes at leaderassistant.com/398. And yeah, be sure to reach out to Holly. And she's definitely been a helpful LinkedIn follow at the least for little AI tips here and there. And yeah, it's been fun following your journey and learning a little bit from you. Yeah, I appreciate you again taking time out of your evening, your late evening over there on the other side of the world. And yeah, so what's the— to kind of wrap things up, what is maybe the one thing that you want AIs to take away from this conversation? Or sorry, EAs, not AIs.

Holly Brown · 28:29

We can talk to that.

Jeremy · 28:30

We could talk to the AIs too.

Holly Brown · 28:31

You talk to the bots. Yeah.

Jeremy · 28:33

Yeah. What's one thing that you want EAs to take away from this conversation as it relates to AI?

Holly Brown · 28:41

Yeah, so I think the biggest thing is to be curious and actually just have a go. Jump on YouTube. I spent hours and hours on YouTube. I spent so much time trying to find the right things and learning how to do this, to sort of become sort of second nature almost. So to be curious, to make AI work for you and not have AI work as you, right? So yeah, just become— just be curious, have a go, learn as much as you can. And if you get stuck, jump on YouTube, jump on our, you know, websites. There's so many websites now out there. And don't be— I know, yeah, don't be scared. I think that is the biggest thing. Don't be scared that there won't be EAs anymore or executive business partners. They'll just look different and it will be different. And you can make it different in a good way to sort of allow this massive opportunity that we have to grow into different positions and opportunities like I've done going from an EA to an executive business partner.

Jeremy · 29:52

Great, Holly. Well said. Thanks again for being on the show and sharing your wisdom. Uh, again, those listening can check out the show notes at leaderassistant.com/398. And yeah, we really appreciate the work you're doing in the executive assistant slash executive business partner space and the AI space. And, uh, really appreciate you, uh, again for being on the show.

Holly Brown · 30:17

Thanks, Jeremy. Thanks for having me.