Right-Hand Executive Assistant for Media Founder (AI-Fluent)

READ THIS FIRST: start your proposal with the word TANK as the very first word, and include a link to a 60 to 90 second video of yourself (Loom, unlisted YouTube, anything). No video, no TANK, I do not read it. If you do not know why TANK, that is part of the test. Keep reading. WHAT THIS IS I have spent twenty years building an audience without algorithms and without traditional marketing. They are still here. I am now building a media brand in public, and I am looking for one person to be my right hand while I stay the voice. Call yourself whatever you want. VA, EA, chief of staff. I do not care about the title, and plenty of excellent people use VA. Here is the difference that actually matters to me. Some assistants wait to be told what to do. I do not have time to assign tasks. I need someone who watches what is coming, takes it off my plate before I ask, and can act on my behalf without checking in on every step. Someone who can write as me, follow up with people as me, and make calls inside boundaries we agree on. If you are a VA who already works that way, you are exactly who I mean. That also means business and personal both. They are not separate lanes in my life. Scheduling, travel, appointments, following up with people, chasing down the thing I said I would handle three weeks ago, keeping the personal logistics from eating my week. The entire point of this role is to give me my life back so I can do the part only I can do. You will see personal information. Discretion is not negotiable, and it is the one thing I will not give a second chance on. ONE MORE THING, AND I WILL BE BLUNT The business world changed enormously with AI, and a lot of assistant work did not change with it. Twenty years of experience is worth a lot to me. I have twenty years of my own. But experience is not the same as being current. So I am going to ask you directly, and I will ask again on the call: how has the way you work changed in the last two years? What do you do differently now than you did in 2024? If the answer is "not much," we are not a fit. I am not looking for someone who has done this job the same way for a decade with a newer laptop. I am looking for someone who is paying attention right now. And to be clear about what this is: I am not a new entrepreneur. I have built and run businesses for twenty years. This project is new, that is all. I want someone building it with me from the start, not someone waiting for a task list. THE THREE SKILLS I ACTUALLY NEED, AND EXACTLY WHAT LEVEL Everyone writes media, assistant, AI in these posts and it means nothing. So here is precisely what I mean, so you can tell in thirty seconds whether this is you. 1. AI at a working level. Not beginner, not expert. Not enough: I have used ChatGPT. Not needed: you build agents, you write code, you work with APIs. Here is the real test. I hand you a draft my AI produced. It is about 70 percent right, 30 percent wrong, and it does not sound like me. Can you fix the 30 percent, and then tell me what to change in the prompt so it does not happen again next time? If that sounds obvious to you, that is the level. If it sounds hard, you are not there yet. The whole setup is already built. You are driving it, not building it. 2. Basic video editing. Not cinematic, and not a hard requirement. What I need: cut the dead air off the front and back of a clip. Pull a good 40 second moment out of a 50 minute recording. Stack two or three clips together. Add captions. Export vertical for social and wide for YouTube. Not needed: color grading, motion graphics, After Effects, anything that takes a week. This one is not a dealbreaker. I will be doing a lot of the content creation myself, and I have tools like SuperCool doing the heavy lifting. If you cannot cut video yet but you are the kind of person who would teach yourself in a week, say that. I need someone who will learn my tools and help, not a video specialist. 3. Media sense. This is the one most people fail. When I say media I do not mean scheduling posts. Scheduling is the easy part and my AI can mostly do it already. I mean you actually pay attention to what is traveling right now and why. What format is working on YouTube this month. What kind of hook holds someone past three seconds. Why one version of an idea gets seen and an identical one dies. Then you go into my archive, which is twenty years deep, and pull the thing I already said that fits what is moving right now. The test: name one thing working on YouTube or Substack this month and tell me why you think it is working. If you cannot answer that, this is not your job. WHERE THE HEAVY FOCUS WILL BE Alongside the assistant side, a lot of your week lands here, because this is what the brand runs on. - Substack. The hub. Publishing, scheduling, keeping three months of pipeline sitting there at all times. - Teasers to social, long form to YouTube, everything pointing back to Substack. - Community. Comments and replies, in my voice. - SOPs. Every process written down as we build it. - Platform setup. The unglamorous things that stall me. A Shopify store. An Amazon store. Getting a tool running on my own server. This will shift as we go. Some weeks are heavier on content, some weeks are heavier on me needing my life handled. I am telling you that up front so it is not a surprise. HOW THE WORK FLOWS - My AI drafts from my archive. Twenty years of material, already organized. - You review it and make it sound like me. This is the part that matters most. - I record audio when something sparks me, sometimes for hours. You turn that into everything. - You keep the machine running while I go make the next thing. THE STACK Claude and Claude Code (I have custom agents already built, with an interface, so you are not starting from a blank page), Obsidian, Google Drive, Substack, YouTube, Signal, ChatGPT for graphics, and a video tool called SuperCool. You do not need to already know all of it. If you can ask an AI for step by step instructions and then actually follow them, you will be fine. If you need a human to sit with you and teach you each tool, this will not work. THE VOICE BAR If it sounds like AI wrote it, it failed. That is the bar. I am direct. I say the thing. I am warm, I am funny, and I get genuinely angry at people who sell certainty and do not keep their word. I do not sound like a newsletter. Short sentences. Real words. And no em dashes, ever. I will notice. You are not writing my strategy or inventing my positioning. I do that. You are the human check that keeps everything sounding like me. WHAT I ACTUALLY WANT Someone who wants to build this with me. This is early. You would see it from close to zero, and what you do will visibly change where it goes. I am not looking for someone to fill hours. I am looking for one person who gets what I am building, wants it to work, and treats it like it is partly theirs. If you have been waiting for something to be in on rather than a queue to work through, this is that. I have never wanted a big team. One good person and my AI. That is the whole plan, which should tell you how much this role matters. WHO THIS IS FOR, AND WHY TANK If you have seen The Matrix, you already know who Tank is. If you have not, go look him up before you apply, and tell me in your video what you think I mean by it. That is deliberate. Working out what I want from a two word clue is the actual job. I tell you what I need, you go figure it out and come back with it running. - You bring solutions, not just problems. If something breaks, I want the problem plus three ways we could handle it. - You ask what I would do here, and you are usually right. - You read instructions exactly. I am specific on purpose. If I phrase something a certain way, I have already thought it through. - You are comfortable with a role that moves. Things will come up neither of us predicted. - You are discreet, always. WHO THIS IS NOT FOR I would rather be direct now than waste your time. - Order takers. If your instinct is yes ma'am, whatever you say, we will both be miserable. - Anyone who needs to be trained into the role. I do not have the hours. - Anyone loose with instructions. Precision is not me being difficult. - Anyone who ships AI sounding copy and cannot hear the difference. - Anyone who reads marketing as I will build your strategy. Strategy is mine, execution is yours. - I know Instagram and TikTok. Not enough. - Shared or borrowed computers. You need your own machine you control, reliable internet, and a backup plan for power. - Anyone who wants a fixed job description that will not change for a year. - Anyone who would be uncomfortable handling personal matters for someone. HOURS AND SETUP Starting around 20 to 30 hours a week, growing to full time for the right person as the workload builds. I would rather grow into it than over commit on day one, and I will be straight with you either way. Independent contractor. I am in Pacific Time. A lot of this work happens on your own schedule and I am genuinely flexible about that, but I do need some real overlap with my day, every day. Not just a handoff. If you are in South Africa or another far timezone, that is fine, I have worked with people there before and I would again. Just tell me honestly what hours you would actually work, and whether you would still want those hours a year from now. I would rather know now than find out in month eight. Your own computer, reliable internet, backup power, and the ability to install Signal, which is how my team communicates. English strong enough for real time back and forth, written and spoken. HOW TO APPLY Start with the word TANK. Then link a 60 to 90 second video of yourself answering two things: what do you think I mean by Tank, and why do you want this job? Talk to the camera like a person. No script, no slides, no production. I care more about seeing and hearing you than reading a resume, and I will know within a minute. Please do not send a proposal an AI wrote for you. I will know, and it is the exact skill I am hiring against. Shortlisted candidates get a paid two hour test project before any offer.