Month: January 2020

We are pleased to announce that Rebecca Newenham, Get Ahead VA’s founder, will be part of this year’s #ialso100 campaign, which celebrates businesses led by inspirational women in the UK.

The campaign is part of f:Entreprenuer, which was started by Michelle Ovens MBE on International Women’s Day in 2017, with the aim of bringing more recognition to the UK’s female-led businesses. Michelle says, “This is a campaign that highlights the work of incredible women, showing everyone the entrepreneurs who are creating purposeful small businesses and supporting their communities every day.”

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Instagram is an ideal social media platform for many businesses, especially if you have a strong visual brand or physical products to promote, and it has the potential to bring you lots of interest and a substantial following. So how can you go about building a beautiful, recognisable profile? Here are 5 key things you should think when building your company Instagram account.

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Get Ahead VA is here to help business owners. Our team of virtual assistants (VAs) can take on the jobs you don’t have the time or the skills for, freeing you up to focus on what you’re best at. In order to get the most out of your VA, you will need to provide a good brief, but what should you include? In this series, we look at how to write a useful brief for every kind of job, and this month we’re looking at website design.

Whether you have an old business website that needs updating, or you’re looking to build one from scratch, the team at Get Ahead VA can help. To kick things off, here are some of the key things you should think about when writing a brief for your website designer.

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Get Ahead VA is very proud to have regional offices across the country, and we’re always on the lookout for ambitious, business-minded people who are interested in opening a new regional office in their local area. Our Regional Directors are brimming with good advice about being your own boss. Today, Karen and Allison, co-Directors of our Newcastle office, are here with some advice about finding clients.

So you’ve launched your business, your systems are in place and you’re raring to go – but how do you go about finding clients? When we set up our Get Ahead VA office, we used a number of different strategies to find people to work with. Here are a few of the most effective!

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Two years ago, Fiona Ibbetson launched Get Ahead VA Leeds. Since then, this office has gone from strength to strength, and we’re delighted to wish both Fiona and our Leeds regional office a happy birthday!

Since she launched, Fiona has helped more than 40 business owners, large and small, from architects to surgeons, accountants to plumbers. She has coordinated projects between her clients and a team of 15 Get Ahead virtual assistants, and delivered great results for her clients. Fiona says: “I love jobs where more than one person is working with a client and we are all playing to our strengths and working as a team. It’s great to know that we are helping other businesses to grow and providing flexible support when they need it.”

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Two years ago this month, Fiona Ibbetson launched Get Ahead VA Leeds. Since then, the Leeds office has gone from strength to strength, and we’re delighted to wish Fiona and her business a happy birthday!

Since she launched, Fiona has helped more than 40 business owners, large and small, from architects to surgeons, accountants to plumbers. She has coordinated projects between her clients and a team of 15 Get Ahead virtual assistants, and delivered great results for her clients. Fiona says: “I love jobs where more than one person is working with a client and we are all playing to our strengths and working as a team. It’s great to know that we are helping other businesses to grow and providing flexible support when they need it.”

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Get Ahead VA is delighted to have branches across the country, and we’re always on the lookout for ambitious, business-minded people who are interested in opening a new regional office in their local area. Our Regional Directors are brimming with good advice about being your own boss. Today, Kristy and Suzanne, co-Directors of our Berkshire and North Hampshire office, return to share more of their organisation tips for business owners.

We’ve already shared with you some of the ways we stay organised (see our previous blog post), but we have plenty more where they came from! So without further ado, here are three more things you can do to keep your business running smoothly.

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Get Ahead VA is very proud to have branches across the country, and we’re always on the lookout for ambitious, business-minded people who are interested in opening a new branch in their local area. Our Regional Directors are brimming with good advice about being your own boss. Today, Kristy and Suzanne, co-Directors of our Berkshire and North Hampshire office, are back to share more of their organisation tips for business owners.

We’ve already shared with you some of the ways we stay organised (see our previous blog post), but we have plenty more where they came from! So without further ado, here are three more things you can do to keep your business running smoothly.

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It’s a new year and a new decade, so what better time to refresh your business plan?

A business plan is a strategic document that describes your business, where it fits within a particular industry, and your goals for the future. A business plan helps you to think clearly about your business and where it is going, and so it’s very important that you update yours regularly.

Of course, strategy can easily fall by the wayside when you’re dealing with the day-to-day running of your business, but the mental reset of a new year is a great excuse to dig out your business plan and make sure it’s up to date. Not sure where to start? Here are three key ways you can refresh your business plan for the year ahead.

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New Year’s resolutions are tricky things: we all know that most don’t last beyond January, and the enthusiasm we feel for them at the start of the year can quickly fade when the day-to-day realities of life set in. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t set them – especially if you’re a business owner.

All good businesses operate on clear goals. Unlike resolutions, we don’t limit ourselves to setting these goals just once a year, and if we fall behind with them we usually extend the deadline rather than abandoning them forever. This is a good approach to take to New Year’s resolutions too, so with that in mind, here are four resolutions to set for your business in 2020 that you can actually keep. They’re achievable, specific and you can keep working on them throughout the year!

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