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 SMEs 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.

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 SMEs 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.

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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.

Platform	Worth it?	The verdict in brief
Meta – Facebook (& Instagram)	For the right business, yes	If your best customers are over 35, don’t write it off. Forget the Page and focus on Groups
Pinterest	Yes – for the right sector	A visual search engine with months-long content longevity. Misunderstood by most, underused by almost everyone
TikTok	Yes – if you’ll really show up	The flattest playing field in social media. But it asks more of you than any other platform
X / Threads	Probably not – with exceptions	X has changed. Threads is still finding its feet. Most SMEs have better places to be
Reddit	Possibly – with patience	Rewards genuine expertise like nowhere else. But there’s one rule you cannot break
LinkedIn	Yes – unambiguously	The one platform where the answer needs no caveats. Show up consistently and genuinely
AI & Social Media	Help and hindrance	A tool for consistency, not a replacement for voice. The 20% that still sounds human is the 20% that gets read
The pattern	The question behind all of it	Where 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.

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.

Our telephone answering service is UK-based support for your business. One of our most popular services, we provide call answering for a wide range of clients. Some only use us once a year to cover the telephone answering while they’re abroad. Others use Get Ahead for other services and bolt on telephone answering when they need it.

In this blog, we look at how an outsourced telephone answering service can help your business and how it works in practice.

How does a telephone answering service help your business?

The invention of smart phones means that fewer people need an answering service than in days gone by. But telephone answering is still an essential business tool, particularly if you’re a solopreneur or work alone. Yes, you can answer your phone while you’re on holiday, but what if you’re swimming in the sea, meditating on a retreat or screaming on a roller coaster with your amazing family?! A proper holiday is one where you don’t take work calls. You need to recharge your batteries and reconnect with both yourself and the people you care about. Ultimately, it helps your business too. When you go back to work refreshed, you’ll be able to give your business and customers the attention they deserve. This will often translate into business growth. Trust us, breaks are important!

So, what you do you do instead of answering a work call? You don’t want to just leave your customers a recorded message. Quite frankly, it’s not good customer service. It’s impersonal and one message might not fit all callers. If your customers need reassurance, there’s no one to give it. And if disaster strikes, you won’t hear about it until you get back.

But a UK-based telephone answering service offers a better solution. The call will be answered by a real person, working as an extension of your business. They can take messages and provide reassurance that you will deal with the query on your return. They can defuse difficult calls and – if necessary – contact you to report emergencies. How does a telephone answering service work? Our telephone answering service works like this. If you’re new to Get Ahead, contact your local regional director here to get started. And if you’re an existing Get Ahead client, just get in touch with whoever your usually deal with! The regional director will take details about the duration of your holiday, what you would like the call handler to say and any other action they need to take.

Then you simply divert your work phone number to our call centre (don’t worry – it’s very easy and you’ll receive full instructions!). Our call handlers will answer the phone with the name of your business and whatever professional greeting you like to use. They will take messages, and when you return to your desk, the messages will be there, waiting for you.

PS – going on holiday tomorrow? Don’t worry – we can get you set up with our phone answering team in as little as 24 hours!

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.