Author: Rebecca Newenham

Rebecca Newenham is the founder of Get Ahead, an award-winning virtual assistant and outsourcing franchise she launched in 2010 following a successful career in corporate retail buying. With a team of over 90 virtual assistants and franchisees, Get Ahead provides flexible marketing and business support to growing businesses across the UK. A passionate advocate for flexible working, Rebecca is also a Franchise Consultant at Ashtons, helping founders scale with clarity and confidence. She hosts Link Up Networking Guildford and is a Baby Naming Celebrant, proof that a purposeful career doesn't have to fit a single mould. At the heart of everything Rebecca does is people: connecting them, supporting them and helping them build businesses that genuinely work for their lives.

When the phone rings and you can’t answer it, most new callers won’t leave a message. They’ll ring the next business on the list. A telephone answering service makes sure a real person picks up in your business’s name whenever you can’t: when you’re with a client, on a job, in a meeting or, just as important, on holiday.

I have relied on a telephone answering service since 2011. It answers Get Ahead’s own number, and in 15 years we have never missed a call. When clients started asking how we did it, offering them the same service was an easy decision. In this guide I’ll explain how a telephone answering service works, what it costs, how it compares with voicemail and AI, and how to tell whether your business needs one.

Perhaps one of these sounds familiar. “I can’t take calls when I’m on site, and by the time I ring back they’ve booked someone else.” Or: “I haven’t had a proper week off in years, because I’m the only one who answers the phone.”

What is a telephone answering service?

A telephone answering service is a team that answers your business calls for you, using your business name, and passes each message on. You divert your calls to them when you can’t answer, and they pick up as if they were part of your business.

You may also see it called a call handling or message taking service, or outsourced telephone answering. It sits between voicemail, which records a message and leaves the caller waiting, and a receptionist, whom you employ to sit in your office. It suits owner-led businesses that are too busy to answer every call but too small to employ someone to do it: sole traders, tradespeople, consultants, professional services firms and small practices.

How does a telephone answering service work?

You divert your line to the answering team, they answer with a greeting you have agreed, and they send you each message by email or text. Setting it up can often be done the same day. At Get Ahead it works like this.

1. Talk to your Regional Director

Tell them what you need cover for, when and for how long: every afternoon, evenings and weekends, a busy season, or a fortnight in August. We work with two specialist UK call answering partners, and your Regional Director will match you to the one that fits your hours and your callers.

2. Tell us about your business

We agree how calls are answered, your opening hours, the questions callers most often ask, what counts as urgent and whether you want messages by email, text or both.

3. Divert your calls

Most landlines, mobiles and internet phone systems have a call divert setting. You switch it on, and your calls come to us. If your mobile is your business number, as it is for many sole traders and tradespeople, a mobile phone answering service works in exactly the same way.

4. We answer in your name

A trained call handler answers in your business name, takes the caller’s name, number and reason for calling, reassures them that you’ll be in touch, and passes the message on.

5. Switch back when you’re ready

Turn the diversion off and your calls come straight back to you.

Why go through Get Ahead rather than straight to an answering company? Because you get one point of contact who knows your business, the right service chosen for you rather than a price list to work through, and support that can grow beyond the phone. I chose our partners precisely because they are specialists: answering calls is all they do. We were already using them for our own phones, so I knew exactly what our clients would get.

What happens to calls outside office hours?

They can still be answered. If your customers ring early, late or at weekends, or out-of-hours calls are your main concern, we use a partner that specialises in out-of-hours cover, available up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, depending on your specific needs. Callers reach a real person rather than a voicemail, and urgent calls can be passed on to you straight away if you want them to be.

If you only need daytime cover, calls outside your agreed hours can go to a personal message in your business name, and anything left is passed on first thing the next working day.

Whichever you choose, agree in advance what counts as urgent and who should be contacted, for example for a tradesperson’s emergency call-out.

What can a call handler do beyond taking a message?

More than most people expect. A good call handler doesn’t only write down a name and number. Depending on what you agree, they can:

  • answer common questions about your opening hours, services or prices
  • book appointments in your online booking system or calendar
  • find out who is calling and put the call through to you when you are free
  • pass urgent calls to you, or to someone you nominate, straight away
  • take orders and capture the details of new enquiries

Because Get Ahead is a network of more than 90 Virtual Experts, phone cover can sit alongside other support. A virtual assistant can follow up the enquiries, keep your diary in order or deal with the emails that build up while you’re busy, so the calls become work rather than a list of people to ring back.

That is what happened for the Leeds office of Sanderson Weatherall, the national estate agents. We set up telephone answering to handle calls and pass on messages, and alongside it an administration Virtual Expert who booked property viewings and checked prospective tenants were suitable. Within eight months her role had grown from one hour a week to a full day, and that gave the office the business case to employ someone permanently. You can read the case study here.

Should you use a telephone answering service when you go on holiday?

Yes, if your phone is how customers and new enquiries reach you. A recorded message saying you’re away until the 14th tells a new customer to try someone else, and tells an existing one to wait. A person who answers, takes the details and says when you’ll be back in touch keeps both.

It’s also better for you. A proper holiday is one where you don’t take work calls. You need time to recharge and to reconnect with yourself and the people you care about, and you can’t do that while checking your phone by the pool.

Headline Design & Print, a Guildford design and print business, uses our service in just this way. When staff are on holiday or off sick, they divert their line, each call is written up and emailed to the right person, and they switch it off again when the office is fully staffed. Their managing director, Mark Warner, puts it like this: “The service Get Ahead deliver allows me, as the director and sales front end, to take time out of the business safe in the knowledge my clients are able to communicate with us and are not going elsewhere.” You can read the case study here.

Holiday cover works in the same way as everyday cover, for a set period. Give your Regional Director your dates and tell them what counts as urgent, set your diversion before you leave, and come back to a clear list of who called and why rather than a full voicemail box. It’s worth doing for bank holidays and the Christmas closedown too, when many owner-led businesses close but their customers still call. Our bank holiday guide covers what else to think about when you close.

Telephone answering service, voicemail or AI: which should you choose?

It depends on how many calls you get and what your callers need. Voicemail costs nothing but loses callers. An AI answering tool is cheap and always on, but struggles when a call doesn’t fit its script. A person can deal with the unexpected.

 VoicemailAI call answeringTelephone answering serviceEmployed receptionist
Who answersA recordingSoftwareA trained person, in your business nameYour employee
Handles the unexpectedNoPartlyYesYes
Typical costFreeLow monthly feeA monthly fee plus a charge per callA salary plus employer costs
Holiday and sickness coverNot neededAlways onYesNeeds cover of its own
SuitsVery few callsHigh volumes of simple callsOwner-led businesses that can’t afford to miss a callBusy offices with constant calls

AI answering tools are improving quickly, and for some businesses they will be enough. For most of our clients, though, the calls that matter most are the ones that don’t fit a script: a worried customer, a complaint, an urgent job or a new client deciding whether to trust you.

How much does a telephone answering service cost in the UK?

Most UK services charge per call answered, per minute, or a monthly bundle that includes a set number of calls. Published 2026 price guides from UK providers put per-call charges at roughly 60p to £2.50 and monthly bundles from about £25 to several hundred pounds, with set-up fees of up to around £150. Out-of-hours cover usually costs more.

At Get Ahead we have a couple of models depending on your specific needs – you either pay a small monthly service fee plus a charge for each call answered, or block buy a number of minutes per month. Either way, prices start from as little as £15 per month. There is no long-term contract, so you can use it for a few weeks over a holiday and stop when you are back. Your Regional Director will agree the cost with you before anything starts.

When you compare quotes, look at the whole cost: what counts as a call, any monthly fee, minimum term or set-up charge, and what your mobile network charges for diverted calls. Then set that against the work you lose when a new enquiry rings someone else.

How do you choose a telephone answering service for a small business?

Ask these six questions before you sign up. Good answers to all of them are a sign the service will work for a small business, not just a large one:

  • Who will answer my calls, and will it be the same people each time?
  • What hours do you cover, and what happens to calls outside them?
  • How quickly will I get each message, and how?
  • How do you handle urgent calls?
  • Is there a contract, minimum term, monthly fee or set-up charge?
  • Where are messages stored, and how do you look after my callers’ personal data?

The last question matters more than it used to. Every message holds a caller’s personal details, so your provider should handle them in line with UK data protection law; the Information Commissioner’s Office has more information on what that means. The call handlers we work with are trained, based in the UK and handle your callers’ details under UK data protection law.

Never miss the call that matters

A telephone answering service is a small cost that protects two valuable things: the first impression a caller gets of your business, and your own time away from the phone.

Want your phones covered?

For a holiday, the Christmas closedown or every day, your local Regional Director can set it up, often the same day. Or ring us and hear the service for yourself: it has answered our own number for 15 years.

Find your Regional Director Call 0330 223 7580

Frequently asked questions

Can I use a telephone answering service just while I’m on holiday?

Yes. Many businesses use it only for holidays, bank holidays or the Christmas closedown. At Get Ahead you can use it just for holiday cover and switch it off when you’re back.

Will callers know they aren’t speaking to my own team?

Calls are answered in your business name, with a greeting you agree. To most callers, your business has simply answered the phone.

How do I divert my calls?

Most landlines, mobiles and internet phone systems have a call divert setting you can switch on and off. Your phone provider may charge for diverted calls, so it is worth checking. Your Regional Director will talk you through it.

Do you offer out-of-hours call answering?

Yes. We work with a partner that specialises in out-of-hours cover, so evening and weekend calls can be answered by a real person, up to 24 hours a day if you need it. Your Regional Director will match you to the right service.

Can I divert my mobile to a telephone answering service?

Yes. Mobiles have a call divert setting, usually under Phone or Call settings, and you can choose to divert every call or only those you do not answer. Check with your network whether diverted calls are charged.

About the author

A virtual marketing agency gives you the skills of a marketing agency without the agency overheads. Instead of a team in one office on a monthly retainer, you work with experienced marketing specialists who work remotely, and you pay for the work you need, when you need it.

I founded Get Ahead in 2010, at my kitchen table in Surrey, after a career buying for retailers including Sainsbury’s and Superdrug. In 2016 we launched what we called our virtual marketing agency. It was a small pivot at the time, but an important one: the “VA” in our name stopped meaning only virtual assistant and started to mean virtual agency.

When we started, we described ourselves as virtual assistants, and that quickly felt limiting. Our team was offering far more than the label suggested, and clients were asking for more, especially marketing. We had specialists, not generalists, and “virtual assistant” was often heard as someone for the more basic, less technical jobs. Freelance VAs were also starting to appear everywhere, and I wanted us to stand out as an alternative. “Agency” described what we did much better. And, I’ll admit, it sounded a little more bougie.

Ten years on, the idea has grown up, and so have we. In this post I’ll explain what a virtual marketing agency is, how it compares with the alternatives, and how to tell whether it suits your business.

What is a virtual marketing agency?

A virtual marketing agency is a team of marketing specialists who work remotely and flexibly for their clients, usually without the fixed retainers and account management fees of a traditional agency. You get access to a range of skills, from strategy and content to social media, design, email, PR, websites and SEO, and use as much or as little as you need.

“Virtual” describes how the work is delivered, not its quality. The specialists are typically experienced people who have worked in-house or in agencies and now choose to work independently. Many run small businesses of their own, so they understand the pressures their clients face.

How is a virtual marketing agency different from a traditional agency or a freelancer?

Most growing businesses weigh up three options. Here is how they compare.

 Traditional agencyFreelancerVirtual marketing agency
How you payMonthly retainer, often with account management feesBy the hour or projectBy the hour or project, with no retainer
Range of skillsBroad, in one teamOne person’s skillsBroad, drawn from a network of specialists
Cover when someone is awayYesUsually notYes
Who manages the workAn account managerYou doA named contact (at Get Ahead, your Regional Director)
CommitmentOften a minimum termFlexibleFlexible
What your fee also pays forOffices, staff and agency marginVery littleVery little

“In fintech, things move quickly, and our marketing team couldn’t always cover everything, whether that was having the time or the specialist skills we needed. Being able to bring in flexible expertise as and when we needed it was really valuable. For a growing business, a virtual model gives you access to the right people at the right moment, with the flexibility to adapt as priorities change,” says Lisa Middleton, our Regional Director for Wessex, who spent 20 years in B2B marketing.

A virtual agency sits between the two. You get the breadth and cover of an agency with the flexibility and lower overheads of a freelancer. The trade-off is that there is no team under one roof, and large-scale media buying is still usually a job for a specialist agency.

What can a virtual marketing agency do for your business?

The range is wide. A good virtual marketing agency can usually help with:

The bigger advantage is joining these up. A campaign usually needs several skills at once: a plan, the words, the design, the landing page and the follow-up. A virtual agency can bring those together, so you are not briefing three separate suppliers and stitching the results together yourself.

“With a specialist food brand, we were able to draw on expertise from the Get Ahead network as the business needed it, bringing in additional specialists in PR, market research and design at the right stages. Having that support available took the pressure off the business owner, giving them more time to focus on running the business,” says Lisa.

How has the virtual agency model changed in ten years?

When we launched our virtual marketing agency in 2016, the team was seven people: three marketing specialists with backgrounds at companies like Ford and Microsoft, two social media experts, a blogger and a designer. Ten years on, Kate, Caroline and Angela are still with us. Of the other four, three moved into employed roles with clients they met while working with us, and one changed career completely. All of them left on good terms, and that is part of the model too: what’s right for you changes through life, and flexible work should make room for that. We work with people at different stages of their careers, many of them women returning after having children, and the flexibility gives them room to grow in confidence.

Back then, the objection I heard most was “oh, you’re just admin.” People assumed a virtual assistant meant inbox and diary management, when we were supporting clients far more broadly. I still hear it occasionally, “you’re the VA business”, and our clients’ work is the best answer. Today, three things look very different.

Breadth. Get Ahead now has more than 90 specialists, whom we call Virtual Experts. Marketing and creative sit alongside business administration, finance, HR, website development and lifestyle management. That matters because marketing rarely stands alone: a product launch needs copy and design, but also the admin, the website changes and sometimes the HR to support it.

Depth. Each area is covered by specialists rather than generalists. A social media manager, a copywriter, an SEO specialist and a partner marketing expert are different people with different skills, and you get the one the job needs.

Regional Directors. In 2017 I took Get Ahead into franchising and introduced Regional Directors. I was resistant at first. But an independent review of the business showed that we had grown mostly in the south, because that was where I was networking and being seen, and face-to-face matters. The way to grow was to have someone local in each region. I didn’t want to employ people, because our model has always been pay for what you use, and a franchise fitted that. The business had never been built around my name, which made the move easier. And I had proved the model could work within school hours, so it could give other women the same opportunity it had given me.

Today our Regional Directors are local business owners covering eight regions, from Yorkshire to Dorset, while I look after the rest of the country. The one I’m proudest of is Leeds. It is the furthest from us, and I’ve only been up a handful of times, but Fiona took what we gave her, made it her own and built a sustainable business without me being there. Your Regional Director is the person you speak to. They take the time to understand your business, hand-pick the right specialists and stay accountable for how it goes. It is a managed introduction, not a marketplace where you browse profiles and hope for the best.

Remote working has also gone from unusual to normal. When the pandemic hit, I was asked onto local radio to talk about how businesses could work remotely, because we had already been doing it for years. Clients no longer ask whether virtual support can work. They ask who is doing the work and whether it is in safe hands. Our Virtual Experts are UK-trained, work under UK contracts and data protection law, and typically use a Get Ahead email address, so your customers see a consistent face.

When is a virtual marketing agency the right choice?

It tends to fit when:

  • You need more than one marketing skill, but not a full-time team
  • Your workload goes up and down, with launches, seasonal peaks or events
  • You have lost your marketing lead, or never had one, and want expert help while you decide what you need
  • You want to test a channel or campaign before committing a bigger budget

It is less suited when you need someone physically in your office every day, or when you are planning national advertising with a large media budget. In that case a specialist media agency is the better route, and a virtual team can still support everything around it.

How much does a virtual marketing agency cost?

You pay for the hours or projects you use rather than a monthly retainer, so the cost follows the work. At Get Ahead there are no minimum hours and no long-term tie-ins. Your Regional Director will scope the work with you and agree the cost before anything starts.

If you are weighing this against hiring, compare it with the full cost of an employee, not just the salary: employer National Insurance, pension, holiday, recruitment, equipment and the time it takes to manage someone. For many growing businesses, flexible expert support costs less than a single marketing hire and covers far more skills.

How do you choose a virtual marketing agency?

Ask these questions before you commit:

  • Who will actually do the work, and what experience do they have?
  • Where are they based, and where will my data be held?
  • What happens if they are ill or on holiday?
  • Who do I speak to if something isn’t working?
  • Can the support grow beyond marketing if I need it to?
  • Can I speak to a current client?

Good answers to all six are a strong sign that you are dealing with an agency, not just a list of freelancers.

Ten years on

In 2016 we needed a name for the idea, so we called it a virtual marketing agency. Today it is simply how many growing businesses get their marketing done: experienced people, joined up, paid for as you use them, with someone local who knows your business looking after it.

If you still think virtual means second best, I’d say we have proved otherwise. The support we give is as good as, and often better than, having someone sitting in your office. Technology makes it easy to communicate, and our specialists are skilled at getting under the skin of a business quickly without being in the building.

If that sounds like what you need, talk to your local Regional Director or call us on 0330 223 7580. You can also use our Contact form, here. Most clients are up and running within a few days of their first conversation.

Frequently asked questions

Is a virtual marketing agency cheaper than a traditional agency?

Usually, for a growing business. You are not paying a retainer, account management fees or office overheads, only for the work done. For very large campaigns, a traditional agency’s scale can still make sense.

Do I need to sign up to a retainer?

Not with Get Ahead: there are no minimum hours and no long-term tie-ins. Terms vary between virtual agencies, so it is worth asking.

Can a virtual marketing agency work alongside my own team?

Yes. Many clients use specialists to add a skill their team doesn’t have, such as design or SEO, or to cover a busy period.

Who manages the work?

At Get Ahead, your Regional Director makes the introduction, agrees how you will work together and stays your point of contact if anything needs to change.

How quickly can we get started?

Most clients are up and running within a few days of their first conversation with their Regional Director.

Where are your marketing specialists based?

Get Ahead’s Virtual Experts are UK-trained and work under UK contracts and UK data protection law, typically using a Get Ahead email address.

A room full of people who actually listen to each other is still worth more than any amount of scrolling

I hosted my first networking event in 2011, back when “networking” wasn’t something founders talked about doing strategically, it was just something you did or didn’t do. It was called Ladies at 11, launched for one of my early clients: an all-women group, membership-based, visitors welcome, monthly, with the classic elevator-pitch-round-the-room format that most business networking still ran on at the time. The business behind it folded after about eighteen months. By then I’d worked out that I loved hosting networking events far more than I’d expected to.

So I didn’t stop. Ladies at 11 morphed into a partnership with The Best Of Guildford to become Guildford Ladies, another all-women, paid, structured group, which I ran alongside Sally Castro-Gouveia for several years. Around the same time I helped Paul Bridgland get Connect Surrey off the ground: fortnightly breakfast networking, paid membership, elevator pitches again. Different rooms, different formats, but the same underlying instinct each time. Get people talking to each other properly, and good things tend to follow.

Where the free, informal version came from

In 2019 I noticed something the paid, structured model wasn’t covering. I’d been along to LinkedIn Local Farnham and liked how informal it felt against everything I’d run up to that point. No membership fee, no pitch round, just people who’d connected online finally meeting face to face. I brought the format to Guildford, and it grew quickly enough that we soon outgrew our first venue.

With that growth came the realisation that I had a great way to put a spotlight on local venues that deserved more footfall. Over the years we’ve built genuine partnerships with a real range of venues: hotels like The Harbour, the Holiday Inn and The Mandolay, pubs and clubs, co-working spaces, restaurants and cafes such as Mandira’s Kitchen, even a care home and a golf club. The full list is probably a post of its own, but the aim behind it hasn’t changed: give a local venue a room full of potential new customers, and give the meeting itself a fresh setting each time.

Another interesting change came a little later. Those early LinkedIn Local meetings were all evenings, and I started noticing who wasn’t in the room anymore: many of the women who’d been core to Ladies at 11 and Guildford Ladies simply weren’t showing up. So we added morning meetings. They turned out to be some of the most successful sessions we run, especially for women, and it’s probably the single change I’m proudest of making to the format over the years.

This was also the catalyst for Get Connected, set up by our Get Ahead Regional Directors Kristy Roff and Suzanne Evett. In collaboration with Metro Bank the Get Ahead team now run more than twenty free networking meetings a month across the country.

Keeping the room together through lockdown

When lockdown hit, I made a decision that shaped everything that came after. Rather than let years of momentum and connection quietly evaporate, I moved LinkedIn Local entirely online. We used Zoom’s breakout room function, with trusted regulars hosting their own rooms, and one of our GAVA Virtual Experts facilitating in the background so the technology never got in the way of the conversation.

Networking during Lockdown. That could have been a Talking Heads song...

(Networking during Lockdown by Talking Heads)

Those online meetings became a genuine monthly highlight for a lot of people, at a point when very little else was. They also did something I hadn’t expected: they pulled in people from well beyond Guildford, since geography stopped being a barrier the moment the meeting was on a screen rather than in a room. When lockdown finally ended, we came back in person with a community that had properly bonded through a difficult stretch of time together. If anything, we came back stronger than we went in.

What’s stayed the same

A handful of small habits have become part of the fabric of these meetings over time, and I don’t think any of them were planned so much as noticed and kept. Handwritten name badges rather than printed ones. Someone on the door at every meeting, so nobody arrives and has to work out where to stand on their own. An explicit no-pitching rule. None of it is dramatic, but it adds up to a room people come back to because they made a friend last time, not just a contact. That’s really the belief underneath all of it: these meetings are about connections and friendships first, and business, when it comes, comes as a byproduct rather than the point.

Vicki Moore is a wonderful example. She runs a branded chocolate bar business called All About The Wrapper, and I met her at a Guildford networking meeting years ago. She’s become a truly supportive friend since, not just a name in my contacts list.

Client relationships have started the same way. KJ Smith are one I can name, with our first meeting in a LinkedIn Local room rather than through anything that looked like a sales conversation.

What founders get wrong about networking

The two mistakes I see most often are related. Some people arrive expecting to walk out with business in hand from the first meeting, and get discouraged when that doesn’t happen. Others get so anxious about their own thirty seconds, wherever the format still calls for a pitch, that they stop listening to anyone else’s. Both come from treating the room as a transaction rather than a relationship.

The other thing I’d tell any founder starting out is that not every networking event suits every person. Some people thrive somewhere more formal, BNI is the obvious example, and that’s completely fine. Part of getting real value from networking is finding the room that actually suits how you work, rather than assuming the first one you try is the one that should fit.

The bit I don’t usually say out loud

One honest downside: some people assume that hosting is simply my job, something I do because it’s work rather than because I choose to. It isn’t, and managing that assumption, gently and repeatedly, is something I still have to work on.

Still evolving

In the last few years we’ve introduced sponsorship into the format, and put real thought into it. We built a proper sponsor pack, designed to help a sponsoring business get the most out of what’s still a small investment. It works because the audience behind it is real: our Linked In page alone has grown to nearly three thousand followers, and our mailing list means a sponsor gets seen well beyond whoever happens to be in the room that day. It’s a way of keeping the free, no-pitching spirit of the meetings intact while still giving something back to the businesses that help make them possible.

Our evolution hasn’t stopped. We’ve recently gone live with our new Link Up brand, the next step on a journey rather than a departure from anything that came before it. The name changes. The reason I keep turning up consistently for every meeting doesn’t.

Fifteen years on from a hired room in Guildford and a membership-only ladies’ group, my conservative estimate is that I have hosted in excess of 250 networking meetings in that time. The thing that hasn’t changed since 2011 is the reason I keep doing it. A room full of people who actually listen to each other is still worth more than any amount of scrolling.

Taking Time Off: A Business Owner’s Guide to Switching Off (Almost)

Every business owner I speak to says the same thing: “I need a holiday.” And yet, when it comes to actually booking one, taking time off, and being fully present somewhere other than their inbox, most of them find a reason not to.

I’ve been running Get Ahead for over a decade. I’ve had to learn, sometimes the hard way, that taking time off isn’t a luxury. It’s a business decision. The planning, prioritisation and delegation that makes a holiday possible are the same disciplines that make a business scalable.

Here’s what I’ve learned, and what I now share with every business owner I work with.

Why do so many business owners struggle to take time off?

Because the business feels like it needs them. And often, it genuinely does, but usually because systems, handovers and trusted support haven’t been put in place yet. The business isn’t the problem. The infrastructure around it is.

When I talk to owners who haven’t had a proper break in years, it’s rarely because they don’t want one. It’s because the idea of stepping away feels riskier than staying put. That’s the thing we need to solve.

What does good preparation actually look like?

It starts well before you pack. I’d suggest a minimum of four weeks’ lead time if you’re going away for more than a few days. The core areas to address are:

  • Priorities: what absolutely must happen while you’re away, and what can wait
  • Delegation: who is responsible for what, with clear authority to make decisions, not just to escalate
  • Systems: are your CRM, accounts, files and shared drives in order? Can someone else navigate them without you?
  • Communication: who is your point of contact for clients, and what’s the protocol if something genuinely urgent arises?

The key word in that third point is delegation with authority. Handing tasks to someone and then remaining the bottleneck for every decision isn’t delegation. It’s just distributed stress. Trust the people you’ve briefed, and let them get on with it.

What about HR considerations when you’re the one stepping away?

This is something business owners with small teams often overlook. Before you go:

  • Make sure any team members or contractors have a clear point of contact in your absence, with the authority to make day-to-day decisions
  • Set clear expectations about what warrants contacting you and what doesn’t
  • Check that any outstanding HR matters (appraisals, onboarding, contracts) are resolved or safely deferred
  • If you use a virtual team, ensure they’re fully briefed and have everything they need before you leave

The businesses that run smoothly in an owner’s absence are the ones where the team has been trusted, briefed properly, and given room to act. Not the ones where the owner is fielding WhatsApps on the beach.

How do you handle the personal side of being away? The dog, the cat, the house?

This is where our Lifestyle Manager service comes in, and honestly, it’s one of the things I’m most proud of offering. The mental load of a holiday isn’t just professional. It’s personal.

Sorting pet care, ensuring the house is looked after, managing deliveries, handling the things that pile up at home while you’re away: these are all things that can be handed off. A good Lifestyle Manager takes the whole list, not just the work side of it.

When the personal logistics are sorted, you actually get to have a holiday. Not just a change of location where you’re still mentally juggling everything. And knowing that Sydney (aka The Prince) is in good hands and enjoying himself means that I can too!

Do you ever stay contactable while you’re away?

Yes, deliberately and on my own terms. I make sure someone knows how to reach me if something genuinely needs a call. In practice, in all the years I’ve been running Get Ahead, that call has never come.

But knowing it’s possible if needed means I can actually relax. It’s a safety net I’ve chosen to have, not a leash. There’s a difference. And building the right team around you is what makes that distinction possible.

What’s your pre-holiday checklist?

Here’s what I work through before I go anywhere:

  • Goals reviewed: what needs to be done before I leave, and what can genuinely wait
  • Delegation confirmed: named people, clear responsibilities, authority granted
  • Systems in order: shared drives, CRM, accounts, inboxes all accessible and up to date
  • Social media scheduled: posts queued for the duration, evergreen content repurposed where needed
  • Client communications sent: anyone who needs to know I’m away has been told, with a named contact
  • Virtual support briefed: telephone answering, email management, any ongoing tasks handed over with a proper brief
  • Personal logistics sorted: pet care, house, anything domestic that would otherwise be sitting in the back of my mind

What’s the business case for actually taking the holiday?

You come back better. Clearer thinking, more energy, more perspective on the things that actually matter. Every owner I know who has properly stepped away and come back says the same thing: they could see the business more clearly from the outside than they ever could from inside it.

The planning that goes into a good handover also tends to reveal gaps in your systems that you’d been papering over. It’s an audit you didn’t know you needed.

And frankly, if your business can’t function without you for a week or two, that’s the most important signal you could have about what to fix next.

How can Get Ahead help?

Whether you need telephone answering and email management while you’re away, a virtual assistant to keep things ticking over, or a Lifestyle Manager to handle the personal side of life, we’ve been helping business owners take proper breaks for over a decade.

Talk to your local Regional Director about what cover would look like for your business. You might be closer to a real holiday than you think.

www.getaheadva.com or call 0330 223 7580

Rebecca Newenham is the founder of Get Ahead, an award-winning virtual assistant and outsourcing franchise she launched in 2010 following a successful career in corporate retail buying. With a team of over 90 virtual assistants and franchisees, Get Ahead provides flexible marketing and business support to growing businesses across the UK. A passionate advocate for flexible working, Rebecca is also a Franchise Consultant at Ashtons, helping founders scale with clarity and confidence. She hosts Link Up Networking Guildford and is a Baby Naming Celebrant, proof that a purposeful career doesn’t have to fit a single mould. At the heart of everything Rebecca does is people: connecting them, supporting them and helping them build businesses that genuinely work for their lives.

The Latest from get Ahead

Is Your Business Actually Showing Up on Social Media?

I’ve been watching social media change for a long time. And lately, something has shifted in a way that feels different from previous cycles of platform hype and algorithm updates.

The feeds are full. But the people, increasingly, are elsewhere.

What I mean by that is this: the volume of content being published across every major social platform is growing. But the proportion of that content genuinely written by a human being, in their own voice, about something they actually think, is shrinking. AI-generated posts. AI-rewritten updates. AI agents responding to comments on behalf of people who aren’t really there. The mechanics of presence without the substance of it.

For SME owners trying to work out where to invest their limited time and energy, this creates a real problem. The conventional answer (be on every platform, post consistently, follow the algorithm) has never been less useful. Because the question now isn’t just which platforms work. It’s which platforms still reward the kind of presence that actually builds a business.

That’s why I wanted to share a series that one of our Regional Directors has just completed. Because it asks exactly the right question, and answers it with a level of honesty and commercial experience that I think is genuinely rare.

Seven platforms. One question. No waffle.

Vicky McKenna is Get Ahead’s Regional Director for Oxfordshire. Before joining us, she spent years as a Buying Director for major UK retailers and ran her own social media agency, with a specialism in Pinterest for business. She has used these platforms commercially. She knows what drives real results, and she knows when something simply isn’t worth a business owner’s time.

Over seven posts, Vicky worked through every major social platform and asked the same question each time: is it actually worth it for your business? Not a strategy guide. Not a list of tips. A straight answer, backed by real experience.

Here’s what she found.

PlatformWorth it?The verdict in brief
Meta – Facebook (& Instagram)For the right business, yesIf your best customers are over 35, don’t write it off. Forget the Page and focus on Groups
PinterestYes – for the right sectorA visual search engine with months-long content longevity. Misunderstood by most, underused by almost everyone
TikTokYes – if you’ll really show upThe flattest playing field in social media. But it asks more of you than any other platform
X / ThreadsProbably not – with exceptionsX has changed. Threads is still finding its feet. Most SMEs have better places to be
RedditPossibly – with patienceRewards genuine expertise like nowhere else. But there’s one rule you cannot break
LinkedInYes – unambiguouslyThe one platform where the answer needs no caveats. Show up consistently and genuinely
AI & Social MediaHelp and hindranceA tool for consistency, not a replacement for voice. The 20% that still sounds human is the 20% that gets read
The patternThe question behind all of itWhere are your customers, and what does it genuinely cost you to show up there? Apply that to every platform, including whatever comes next

Why this matters, and what it has to do with Get Ahead

The thread running through every one of Vicky’s verdicts is something I believe deeply about how businesses grow.

The platforms that reward you are the ones where you actually show up. Not a scheduled post, a generated caption or an agent monitoring your notifications while you’re somewhere else. You, with a genuine point of view, present and consistent, over time.

The platforms haven’t changed. The humans have left. And for growing businesses, that’s both the problem and the opportunity.

That’s a Vicky line, and it’s a sharp one. But it also captures something that sits at the heart of why we built Get Ahead the way we did.

Every business owner I’ve ever spoken to knows, somewhere, that they should be showing up more consistently: on LinkedIn, in their community, in the conversations their clients are already having. What stops them isn’t lack of understanding. It’s lack of time, lack of bandwidth, and the very real mental load that comes with running a growing business while trying to be visible in all the right places.

That’s the gap our Regional Directors and Virtual Experts fill. Not to replace the business owner’s voice, but to make it possible for them to show up consistently, even when life and work are demanding everything they have.

Vicky’s series is a brilliant example of what that looks like in practice. Seven posts, honest verdicts, real experience, and a body of content that will keep working for the business owners who read it long after it was written. Exactly the kind of presence, in other words, that she’s been advocating for all along.

Read the full series, or go straight to whichever platform has been on your mind.

Social Media – Is It Worth It?

Vicky McKenna’s seven-part series, Is It Worth It?, is an honest, platform-by-platform verdict on social media for growing businesses.

  1. Facebook
  2. Pinterest
  3. TikTok
  4. X – and Threads
  5. Reddit
  6. LinkedIn – and the Metaverse
  7. And Then There’s AI.

The Power of Networking in Business

When people talk about networking, the image that often comes to mind is a busy room full of people exchanging business cards and delivering rehearsed elevator pitches.

But in my experience, real networking is something quite different.

It’s not about selling. It’s about connecting.

And over the years, networking has been one of the most powerful forces behind the growth of Get Ahead.

Networking is about relationships, not transactions

When I started Get Ahead, I quickly realised that building a business isn’t something you do alone. Every entrepreneur needs a network of people around them; people who offer advice, share opportunities, introduce contacts, and provide support when challenges arise.

Some of the most valuable relationships I’ve built started with a simple conversation at a networking event.

Not a pitch. Not a sales conversation. Just two people talking about their businesses and how they might help each other.

Those relationships have often turned into collaborations, referrals, partnerships and friendships that last for years.

The hidden value of being visible

One of the biggest benefits of networking is simply being present.

People work with people they know, like and trust. That trust rarely comes from a single interaction. It builds gradually as people see you showing up, contributing and supporting others in the business community.

Networking helps create that visibility.

Whether it’s attending events, hosting roundtables, supporting local business groups or introducing others within your network. Every interaction strengthens your reputation.

The power of community

Something I’ve always loved about the SME community is how collaborative it can be. Business owners understand the ups and downs of running a company, and there’s a real willingness to support each other.

At Get Ahead we see this every day. Many of our client relationships and regional partnerships have grown through local business networks and community events.

When businesses support each other, everyone benefits.

A collage of a recent LinkedIn Local meeting in Guildford

Networking is about giving first

The most effective networkers are rarely the ones trying to sell the hardest. Instead, they are the people who focus on helping others.

Making introductions. Sharing ideas. Offering advice. Connecting people who might benefit from meeting.

Over time, that generosity has a way of coming back around.

Building stronger businesses together

For me, networking has never been a “marketing tactic”. It’s simply part of how business should work.

Businesses grow faster when people collaborate.
Communities are stronger when businesses support each other.
And opportunities appear when we take the time to build genuine relationships.

At Get Ahead, that philosophy runs right through our organisation. Our Regional Directors are deeply connected within their local business communities across the UK, building relationships that help businesses access the support they need to grow.

Because when strong networks come together, great things happen.

Why not experience it for yourself?

Get Connected - Get Ahead in association with Metro Bank

Across our regions, we host and support a range of networking events, including Get Connected, which we frequently host in partnership with Metro Bank, as well as a growing number of LinkedIn Local gatherings. These events create opportunities for business owners and professionals to share ideas, build relationships and support each other’s growth.

If you’re curious, or even a little sceptical, about the impact networking can have, the best way to understand it is simply to experience what that community feels like in practice.

Take a look at our event calendar to find a meeting near you. You’ll always find a warm welcome and a room full of people who understand the highs and lows of running a business.

Because in the end, businesses – and all of us personally – grow through relationships.

It’s a good idea to set fresh goals every quarter, but it’s also important to be smart, strategic and focused in your approach. Done well, goal setting will keep your business on track and heading in the right direction. You’ll also be able to measure your success and see how far you’ve come, which may motivate you to go further in the next quarter.

We love goals at Get Ahead. As we begin the last quarter of the year, we thought we’d share our views on why goal-setting is important, and how to set achievable goals that will move your business forward.

Read more