Category: Business administration

WHAT RETAIL TAUGHT ME ABOUT BUSINESS – POST 2 OF 4

Before I became a Regional Director for Get Ahead, I spent years as a Buying Director for major UK retailers including Ryman and Signet. This series isn’t a career retrospective. It’s about the skills, instincts, and lessons from that world that still shape how I work today, and why they matter for the business owners I support. 

In retail, margin is everything. It’s the number every buyer is accountable for, the measure by which every decision is ultimately judged. You’re always looking for ways to improve it: better pricing, smarter sourcing, tighter ranging, fewer markdowns. 

But after years in buying roles at Ryman and Signet, I came to believe something that sounds almost counterintuitive in such a commercially driven environment: the most reliable way to protect and grow your margin isn’t the deal you negotiate. It’s the relationship you build. 

The suppliers who delivered the most value, consistently, over time, were rarely the ones who came in with the lowest price. They were the ones I trusted. And trust, it turns out, is worth a great deal more than a percentage point on a cost price. 

What trust actually delivers in a commercial relationship 

In buying, a trusted supplier relationship changes the texture of everything. When a product isn’t performing, a trusted supplier tells you early and helps you find a solution, rather than waiting for the markdown conversation you’ll inevitably have anyway. When something goes wrong in the supply chain, they call you before you have to chase. When an opportunity arises, a new product, an exclusive, a promotional window, they think of you first. 

None of that is contractual. None of it can be negotiated into an agreement. It emerges, slowly, from a consistent pattern of honesty, reliability, and mutual respect. You show up as a fair and straightforward partner. They do the same. And over time, that relationship becomes genuinely more valuable than any individual transaction within it. 

My best supplier relationships weren’t always with the cheapest option. They were with the people I trusted. That’s still true today, just in a different context. 

The flip side was equally instructive. The purely transactional relationships, the ones built entirely on price and pressure, were the most fragile. They worked, up to a point, in stable conditions. But under pressure, supply disruption, a difficult trading period, a product that needed support, they had nothing to draw on. There was no goodwill in the account. No genuine partnership. Just a series of transactions that neither side felt particularly good about. 

Spotting the difference between partnership and performance 

One of the most useful things buying teaches you is how to distinguish between a supplier who is genuinely invested in your success and one who is simply managing your account. The signals are often subtle. It’s in how they respond when things go wrong. Whether they’re honest about problems before they become your problems. Whether their questions are about your business or just about their order book. 

That instinct for genuine partnership versus transactional performance has stayed with me, and I use it constantly in my role at Get Ahead. 

When I’m working with a business owner to understand what kind of Virtual Expert support would make the most difference for them, I’m listening for the same signals I used to listen for across a supplier meeting table. Is this person genuinely interested in understanding the business, or are they focused on filling their diary? Do they ask questions that go beyond the brief, or do they take the brief at face value and run with it? Would they tell a client if they thought the approach wasn’t working, or would they quietly keep delivering the wrong thing? 

Those aren’t just questions of competence. They’re questions of character. And character, in a working relationship, is what determines whether it stays good under pressure. 

Why relationship intelligence is a commercial skill 

There’s a tendency to treat relationship-building as the soft counterpart to the hard commercial skills: negotiation, analysis, margin management. Something the more people-oriented members of a buying team do while the serious work happens elsewhere. 

In my experience, that’s precisely backwards. The ability to build, maintain, and read relationships under commercial pressure is one of the most difficult and most valuable skills a buyer can develop. It requires emotional intelligence, yes. But it also requires strategic thinking, patience, and a willingness to invest time in something whose return isn’t immediately measurable. 

For business owners, the same is true. The relationships that drive growth, the clients who come back, who refer others, who give you honest feedback rather than quietly moving on, are built over time through consistent, genuine engagement. Not through a slick pitch or a well-timed discount. Through the accumulated weight of interactions that left the other person feeling heard, valued, and well-served. 

That’s not soft. It’s the most durable commercial asset a business can build. 

WHY THIS MATTERS NOW 

This is worth holding onto at a moment when AI is making it increasingly easy to simulate relationship-building without doing it. Automated follow-ups that sound personal. Generated messages that use your name and reference your last conversation. Agents that engage on your behalf while you’re elsewhere. 

None of that is relationship-building. It’s the appearance of it. And the businesses that have tried to grow on the back of simulated connection tend to find, sooner or later, that there’s nothing underneath it. The real margin, in retail and in business support, still comes from the relationships that are genuinely built. 

What this means for how I work with businesses in Oxfordshire 

When business owners ask me how Get Ahead works, I find myself talking about relationships more than processes. The way we match clients with Virtual Experts isn’t just about skills and availability. It’s about finding people who will genuinely invest in understanding your business, who will be honest when something isn’t working, and who will show up consistently over time rather than just at the beginning. 

That matters because the value of good support compounds in the same way a good supplier relationship does. The longer a well-matched Virtual Expert works with a business, the more context they carry, the better their judgment becomes, and the more they can contribute beyond the immediate task in front of them. 

It starts with the right match. But it grows through the relationship. And the relationship is, ultimately, where the real value lives. 

A Final Thought

Retail taught me that the best commercial relationships aren’t the ones you extract the most from. They’re the ones that give most back. 

That requires a different kind of investment than price negotiation. It requires showing up well, consistently, over time. Being honest when it’s uncomfortable. Caring about the other person’s success, not just your own outcome. 

It’s slower than a transaction. And it’s worth considerably more. 

If you’re thinking about what good business support could look like for your business, and you’d like to explore that with someone who takes the relationship seriously, I’d love to hear from you. 

I’m Vicky McKenna, Regional Director for Get Ahead in Oxfordshire. 

Next in the series: Knowing When Something Doesn’t Fit. 

What Retail Taught Me About Business

What a career in retail buying taught Vicky McKenna about business, and why those lessons matter more than ever.

  1. The Art of the Brief
  2. Relationships are the Real Margin
  3. Knowing when Something doesn’t fit
  4. The Weight of the Decision

WHAT RETAIL TAUGHT ME ABOUT BUSINESS – POST 1 OF 4

Before I became a Regional Director for Get Ahead, I spent years as a Buying Director for major UK retailers including Ryman and Signet. This series isn’t a career retrospective. It’s about the skills, instincts, and lessons from that world that still shape how I work today, and why they matter for the business owners I support. 

In retail buying, the brief is everything. 

Before a single product is selected, before a supplier meeting is booked, before a range is built, there is a brief. What does the customer actually want? What problem are they trying to solve? What does success look like for this category, this season, this store format? Get the brief right and the rest of the process has a chance. Get it wrong, and you can spend months pursuing something that was never going to work, however good it looked on paper. 

I learned this early in my buying career, and I learned it the hard way. A range that made perfect sense in a meeting room could fall completely flat on the shop floor, not because the products were poor, but because they answered the wrong question. The brief had been assumed rather than established. And assumptions, in buying, are expensive. 

The question beneath the question 

What buying teaches you, over time, is to listen for what someone actually needs rather than what they say they want. Those two things are often related. They’re rarely identical. 

A supplier might tell you they have a product that will transform your stationery range. What they mean is: they have a product. Whether it transforms anything depends entirely on what your customers are actually looking for, and that’s a question only you can answer, if you’ve done the work to understand it properly. 

The discipline this requires isn’t complicated. But it does require slowing down at the point where most people are tempted to speed up. When there’s pressure to fill a gap, to make a decision, to move forward, the instinct is to reach for the nearest available solution. The brief disciplines you to pause and ask: is this actually the right solution, for these customers, at this moment? 

That pause is where the real value is created. Not in the selection itself, but in the clarity that precedes it. 

What this looks like when a business owner comes to me 

The conversations I have as a Regional Director for Get Ahead often begin in a very similar place to those supplier meetings. A business owner knows they need help. They can feel the weight of what they’re carrying: the tasks that aren’t getting done, the skills that are missing, the hours that are disappearing into things that aren’t really their job. What they’re less clear on, often, is exactly what kind of help would make the most difference. 

That’s not a criticism. It’s completely understandable. When you’re inside a business, running it day to day, it’s genuinely hard to step back and identify the precise point where external support would have the greatest impact. The pressure creates noise. And noise makes it hard to brief clearly. 

In retail buying, the brief was everything. Get it wrong and the whole range suffered. I’ve taken that same discipline into every conversation I have with business owners today. 

So the first thing I try to do, before any conversation about Virtual Experts or matching or how Get Ahead works, is ask the questions that help establish the real brief. Not ‘what tasks do you need doing?’ but ‘what would a good outcome actually look like for your business in six months?’ Not ‘what skills are you missing?’ but ‘where is the gap that’s costing you the most, in time, in energy, in lost opportunity?’ 

Those questions slow things down, briefly. But they save an enormous amount of time and frustration further down the line. 

Why getting the brief right changes everything downstream 

In buying, a poorly established brief has consequences that ripple through the entire process. The wrong product gets selected. It takes up space on the shelf that a better product could have occupied. It delivers disappointing sales. It damages the relationship with the supplier who was briefed incorrectly in the first place. The cost of the initial misalignment compounds at every stage. 

The same is true in business support. A Virtual Expert matched to the wrong brief, even a talented, experienced one, will struggle to deliver what the business actually needs, because what the business actually needs was never clearly established. The hours get spent. The invoices get paid. But the outcome falls short, and nobody is quite sure why. 

Getting the brief right upfront protects everyone: the business owner, the Virtual Expert, and the working relationship between them. It creates the conditions for genuine success rather than a technically-fulfilled arrangement that doesn’t quite hit the mark. 

This is one of the things I value most about how Get Ahead approaches matching. It’s not a transactional process – here’s a list of available VAs, take your pick. It’s a conversation. A careful one. One that starts with the brief, and takes the time to establish it properly before anything else happens. 

What I’d ask any business owner to consider 

If you’re thinking about bringing in support, whether that’s a Virtual Expert, a specialist freelancer, or any form of external help, the most useful thing you can do before that conversation is spend some time getting clear on the brief yourself. 

Not a job description. Not a list of tasks. A genuine answer to the question: what would need to be true in three or six months for this to have been the right decision? 

That answer is your brief. Everything else follows from it. 

And if you find the answer hard to articulate, if the pressure and the noise make it difficult to see clearly what the real gap is, that’s a conversation worth having too. Sometimes the most valuable thing a buying conversation does is help you understand what you actually need. The same is true here. 

WHY THIS MATTERS NOW 

This applies, perhaps more than anywhere right now, to how businesses are approaching AI. The temptation is to adopt a tool because it’s available, because everyone else seems to be using it, because not using it feels like falling behind. But a poorly briefed AI implementation is the same as a poorly briefed buying range: it answers the wrong question efficiently. 

The discipline of the brief – what problem are we actually solving, for whom, and what does success look like – is exactly what most AI conversations are missing. The businesses getting the most from these tools aren’t the ones who adopted them fastest. They’re the ones who were clearest about what they needed before they started. 

A Final Thought

Retail buying taught me that the brief isn’t a formality. It’s the foundation. 

Get it right and everything that follows has a chance to work. Get it wrong and even the best people, the best products, and the best intentions won’t save you. 

That’s as true for a stationery range in a Ryman store as it is for the decision to bring in support for your growing business. 

The question is always the same: what do you actually need? Not what’s available. Not what’s easiest. What would genuinely make the difference. 

If you’re wondering what kind of support might make the most difference for your business right now, and you’d find it useful to think that through with someone, I’m always happy to have that conversation. 

I’m Vicky McKenna, Regional Director for Get Ahead in Oxfordshire. 

Next in the series: Relationships Are the Real Margin. 

What Retail Taught Me About Business

What a career in retail buying taught Vicky McKenna about business, and why those lessons matter more than ever.

  1. The Art of the Brief
  2. Relationships are the Real Margin
  3. Knowing when Something doesn’t fit
  4. The Weight of the Decision

There is a moment at every event I run when I stop. Not because everything is done, but because everything that can be prepared has been prepared. From that point, my job is simply to watch, and to troubleshoot if something needs it. If I am running around, something has gone wrong.

That stillness is the product of weeks of work that nobody attending the event will ever see.

I have been running conferences and events for a long time, from one-day pitch events through to three-day residential programmes, in the UK and overseas. The thing I have learned, repeatedly, is that what makes an event feel effortless to the people attending it, is never actually effortlessness. It is structure. Structure built far enough in advance that by the time the doors open, every question that could have been asked has already been answered.

This is the first post in a series about what senior event management teaches you about running a business well. Not because events and business are the same, but because the operational disciplines overlap more than most people expect.

It is a bit like planning a wedding

The shape of event preparation is something most people recognise even if they have never organised one professionally. There is a lot to do at the beginning: agree dates, book a venue, find speakers, build a budget and try and think of all the logistics that will be needed. Then there is a quieter middle period, leading to the final few weeks where everything intensifies again.

Those last weeks are the hardest part of the whole process. Dietary requirements, accommodation logistics, which delegates are arriving on which day, whether a speaker is planning to update their slides at the last minute. The sheer density of detail is precisely why the planning that came before it matters so much. If the foundations are not solid, the final weeks break you.

The same shape applies to almost any significant business project. A product launch, a client proposal, a period of rapid growth. The visible work is at the end. The invisible work is what determines whether the visible work goes well.

Stop getting caught out by the same thing twice

Early in my events career, a venue asked me whether any of my delegates had access requirements. I had not thought to ask. I had to contact everyone again, after the fact, to find out.

That has not happened twice.

Now I use proforma logistics emails for every category of attendee: speakers, session chairs, exhibitors, delegates. They have been created over years, refined every time I was caught out by something I had not anticipated. Whatever event I am running, I adapt them. But the foundations are already there, because I built them once and I maintain them.

The same principle applies to anything that gets handled on the fly when it should not be. For the first two years I ran events, I managed the microphone logistics in my head, allocating mics as I went. Then I asked myself why I had not simply written a one-page mic and speaker plan and handed it to the AV team at seven in the morning. I did. They never need to ask me anything about it again. They know exactly what they are doing. So do I.

The goal is not more process for its own sake. It is to remove yourself as a bottleneck. When everyone on site has the information they need to do their job, you are free to do yours.

Walk the journey before anyone else does

One of the first things I think about for any event is not the programme or the venue layout. It is the experience of arriving.

If someone is flying in from the United States to a venue in rural Cambridgeshire, they need to know which station to use, which taxi firms operate in the area, and whether there is anywhere nearby to eat the night before the event starts. None of that appears in the conference agenda. None of it is particularly interesting. All of it matters to the person arriving.

I put this into a single page of local information that goes to every delegate in advance. It answers the questions before they are asked, which means nobody arrives flustered, and I do not spend the morning helping people stuck at a rural station unable to get a taxi that needed to be pre-booked.

Thinking about your customers’ experience from their perspective, not yours, is one of the most useful habits senior event management creates. What do they need to know, and when do they need to know it? Not what is convenient for you to send.

The contingency you never have to use

A few years ago I was running a two-day event at a science park. There was a pre-event drinks reception the evening before, and the only realistic dinner option locally was a small village pub. Seventy-five delegates, one pub, no advance notice: a problem waiting to happen.

Before the event, I contacted the pub. I explained the situation, negotiated a simplified menu they could manage at short notice, and made sure I was there on the night to manage the flow. The first year, sixty-five people turned up for dinner. The pub coped. None of the delegates had any idea there had been a plan behind it.

That arrangement is now a fixture of the event’s annual programme. We have a standing relationship with the pub. Guests assume it was always that easy.

Operational planning is, in large part, the work of finding the single points of failure in advance and quietly defusing them. Not every contingency gets triggered. The ones that do not are the ones you planned for.

On the day, your only job is to do nothing

This is the principle I come back to more than any other, and the one that most surprises people when I talk about it.

When an event is running well, I am not busy. I am present, attentive, and available. I carry one folder with me throughout: the full delegate list, all dietary and accommodation details, and a supply of blank Post-it notes. If something needs my attention while I am in the middle of something else, I write it on a Post-it and come back to it at the next natural break. Nothing gets forgotten. Nothing interrupts the flow of what is happening around me.

This is not a relaxed state. It is a deliberate one. Every task I assign to myself on the day is a task I cannot drop if something more urgent arises. So I assign myself none. The event organiser is not there to man a desk, set out chairs, or manage the registration queue. Those things need to have been handled, or delegated, before the day starts.

If I am running around, the planning was not thorough enough.

What this means if you are running a business

I am not suggesting that running an owner-led business is the same as running a conference. It is not.

But the underlying discipline is transferable. The businesses I work with often carry more operational detail in their heads than they realise, make decisions on the fly that could have been systematised, and arrive at conversations underprepared because the preparation felt disproportionate to the task. It never is.

Operational rigour is not bureaucracy. It is the thing that protects you when something unexpected happens, and something unexpected always happens. It is also, done well, the thing that lets you be calm when it does, because you have already done the thinking.

The next three posts in this series go further: into how to delegate without losing control, into the post-project review most businesses skip, and into what all of this means for growing a business with the right people around you. But it starts here, with the planning nobody sees.

About the Author

Read more about Suzanne here.

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

Why SME Projects Often Stall, And the Missing Piece That Makes Them Work 

I spent nearly two decades working in supply chain and project management at Morrisons. In that time, I was part of projects most people would find genuinely daunting: integrating the Safeway business after the acquisition, implementing Oracle across manufacturing sites, and building new supply chain teams from scratch. 

What I learned from those experiences – and what I see confirmed every week in my work with SMEs across Yorkshire – is this: the biggest risk to any change project rarely lies in the strategy. It lies in the structure around it. 

Specifically, in what’s missing from it. 

The moment every growing business recognises 

There comes a point in the life of most growing businesses where change stops being optional. 

A new CRM system needs implementing. An operational process needs redesigning. A reporting framework needs rebuilding. A new service line needs launching with proper structure behind it. 

These projects are sensible and often genuinely important. The leadership team agrees the objective. The budget is broadly understood. Someone is asked to lead it. 

And then, quietly, something happens. 

The project slows. Decisions drift. Tasks get started but not completed. Months pass, and the business finds itself asking the same question it was asking at the beginning: why hasn’t this moved forward? 

What large organisations know, and that SMEs rarely have 

When I was part of the Safeway integration, the project didn’t succeed because the strategy was brilliant. It succeeded because there was an entire infrastructure of people keeping it moving – project managers, operational coordinators, finance oversight, communications leads, administrative support. 

Each of those roles played a small but essential part. They weren’t the headline act. But without them, nothing would have come together. 

In most SMEs, those roles simply don’t exist. 

Instead, the project sits alongside everyone’s existing responsibilities. A director sponsors it. A manager contributes when they can. A supplier delivers their specific piece. Individually, everyone involved is capable. But the connective tissue that holds the whole thing together is missing. 

The keystone nobody talks about 

In architecture, a keystone is the single stone at the top of an arch that holds everything else in place. Without it, the structure collapses – not because the other stones aren’t solid, but because there’s nothing binding them together. 

SME projects have their own version of the keystone. It’s rarely the most visible part of the work. It’s the unglamorous, practical coordination layer that makes everything else function. 

It’s the person who orchestrates the meetings and keeps momentum between them. The one who translates a good idea into a clearly articulated operating model that everyone can actually follow. The one tracking actions, chasing progress, making sure decisions are documented and communicated before they get lost in someone’s inbox. 

It’s budget and resource tracking that’s genuinely up to date. Stakeholder management that keeps everyone aligned as the project evolves. The discipline – quiet but essential – of making sure that the right things happen at the right time. 

None of these tasks feel like “the project.” But without them, the project doesn’t really happen. 

This isn’t a leadership problem 

I want to be clear about something, because I see it misdiagnosed all the time. 

When SME projects stall, it’s rarely because the leadership is weak or the vision is flawed. It’s a structural consequence of growth. Most SMEs don’t have the scale to employ dedicated project teams for every piece of change work. Most senior people are already running the business day-to-day, at full capacity. 

The strategic thinking exists. The expertise exists. The intention exists. What’s missing is the operational structure that keeps everything moving – and that gap doesn’t close by itself. 

Where the right support changes everything 

This is where external support – the right kind – makes a real difference. 

Not consultants who produce a report and disappear. Practical, operational people who understand how change actually works – and who can step in to provide the coordination layer that most SME projects lack. 

At Get Ahead, this is something we see first-hand. Every project is different, and every business has its own pressures and priorities. But the pattern we return to again and again is the same: once the missing glue is in place, projects that were drifting suddenly regain momentum. Not because the strategy changed, but because the structure around it finally exists. 

The support might look like project coordination and orchestration. Process mapping and operating model design. Communication and stakeholder management. Budget and resource tracking. Sometimes it’s simply someone who makes sure things actually happen – consistently, at the right time, without the business owner having to carry all of that themselves. 

Change doesn’t just need vision – it needs structure 

Most SME leaders I work with have no shortage of ideas for improving their business. Better systems. Better processes. Better ways of working that would genuinely free them up to focus on growth. 

The ideas aren’t the obstacle. The gap between idea and operational reality is. 

Bridging that gap is detailed, unglamorous, genuinely important work. The coordination. The communication. The tracking. The quiet discipline of making sure things actually happen, in the right order, at the right time. 

That’s the keystone. And in many growing businesses, it’s the piece that makes everything else possible. 

If you’re leading a change project that’s lost momentum – or planning one and want to get the structure right from the start – I’d love to have a conversation. 

Get Ahead’s team works across the full range of project support – from coordination and documentation to process design and stakeholder management. We provide the glue that makes change stick. 

 Get in touch: fiona@getaheadva.com  

About the Author 

Making Change Work – A series discussing project management in growing businesses:

Why It Makes No Commercial Sense for Directors to Do Their Own Admin (And When to Change That) 

As a Regional Director supporting more than 40 businesses across Yorkshire, I regularly work with growing SMEs with a turnover of between £5m and £20m.

There is a consistent pattern. The business scales. Revenue increases. The board formalises. Governance expectations rise.

And yet directors are still managing their own diaries. Formatting board packs late in the evening. Chasing actions. Rebooking travel. Clearing inboxes. Updating operational spreadsheets.

Not because they lack support. And not because it is required at their level. More often, it is because in the moment it simply feels efficient to “just do it myself”. Over time, it has quietly become the default.

But at a certain stage of growth, that approach stops making commercial sense.

What Is Board-Level Administrative Support?

Board-level administrative support is structured operational assistance that enables directors to focus on strategic decision-making rather than diary management, document preparation or governance tracking.

It is not simply PA support. It is about protecting leadership capacity and strengthening governance processes as businesses mature.

In SMEs approaching or exceeding £10m turnover, the cost of misallocated leadership time becomes increasingly significant.

Should Directors Do Their Own Admin?

Directors are perfectly capable of managing their own administration. The real question is whether it represents the highest commercial return on their time.

A director in a £15m business may cost the organisation £70–£80 per hour once salary and overheads are included. If five hours a week is absorbed by administrative activity, that equates to nearly £20,000 per year – time not spent on strategy, growth or governance.

That is not a criticism. It is arithmetic.

Beyond the cost, there is emerging research showing that many boards today are not positioned to add maximum value. Recent UK analysis of boardroom effectiveness found that only one-third of board directors believe their board is essential to value creation, with many boards focused disproportionately on backwards-looking reporting rather than forward-thinking strategy and growth planning.

This highlights a deeper issue: if boards are structured in a way that limits strategic focus, any diversion of director time into operational tasks compounds that constraint. In growing businesses, leadership time is one of the most expensive and scarce resources available. How it is deployed matters.

The Hidden Cost: Opportunity, Not Efficiency

The greater risk is not the hourly cost. It is the opportunity cost of time lost for reflection, thinking and strategy.

Industry insight suggests that directors are increasingly overwhelmed with information and under-prepared for meetings, in part because boards are not set up effectively and directors are expected to absorb huge volumes of operational detail.

This overload makes it harder to engage deeply with strategic priorities, especially in leaner organisations where external executive support is not yet formalised.

In a £15m business, a 1% margin shift represents £150,000. Even modest improvements in strategic clarity can outweigh the cost of structured support many times over.

The risk is not that directors cannot do their own admin.
The risk is that they are.

When Should a Business Formalise Board Support?

There is no single turnover trigger. But there are warning signs:

  • Board meetings are dominated by operational detail
  • Directors regularly prepare board materials outside working hours
  • Governance documentation lacks structure
  • Follow-up actions are inconsistent

These are not failures. They are growth signals.

As organisations mature, informal systems that worked at £3m rarely sustain £15m.

Protecting leadership capacity is a sign of organisational maturity, not extravagance.

What Effective Board Support Looks Like in Practice

Board-level support typically includes:

  • Coordinating structured board agendas
  • Preparing coherent, accurate board packs
  • Tracking decisions and actions
  • Managing governance documentation
  • Aligning director diaries with strategic priorities
  • Ensuring follow-up is completed between meetings

In one of our larger SME clients, providing consistent support to the Commercial Director has released meaningful leadership capacity back into revenue-driving activity. Preparation is sharper. Follow-up is tighter. Strategic focus has improved.

The change was not dramatic. But it was material.

Governance Is Ultimately a Capacity Question

Board effectiveness is not just about who sits around the table.

It is about whether those individuals have the time and clarity to exercise sound judgement.

In growing SMEs, directors often remain highly operational long after the business has outgrown that model.

Supporting directors operationally does not dilute their involvement. It enables better oversight, stronger governance and more considered commercial decisions.

It moves leadership time back to where it has the greatest impact.

In Summary

  • Director time is one of the most valuable resources in a growing SME.
  • Administrative activity carries a measurable financial and strategic cost.
  • Structured board support improves governance and commercial focus.
  • Protecting leadership capacity signals organisational maturity.

If you sit on the board of a scaling business, it may be worth asking one simple question:

Are you spending your time where it delivers the highest commercial return?

Because capability is rarely the issue.

Capacity often is.

There are always lots of things to do at work before taking a holiday, particularly if you run your own business. Fortunately, when we know what they are and we manage our time well, we don’t have to bookend our holiday with two stressful weeks. 

We’ve caught up with virtual PA Amanda who shares her list of things to do at work before taking a holiday.

What should we do at work before going on holiday?

Tell people

Amanda: If you do nothing else, tell the people you work with that you are going away and when. Even if you own the business and you don’t have to apply for annual leave, it’s a good idea and common courtesy. Telling others means that they can manage their work accordingly, whether that’s asking you about matters now before you go on holiday, or taking the initiative so they don’t interrupt your break. Let anyone outside your business whom you’re collaborating with know too. 

Set up email management

 Amanda: We’re all used to out-of-office replies now – they’re a very handy invention. If you’re in danger of forgetting to set yours, write it now and schedule it for your holiday period. 

While you’re automating emails, take the opportunity to set up the “focused” and “other” inbox system that Outlook provides (if you haven’t already). This can make things smoother when you’re back from your holiday – the messages that need your attention should be easy to find.

Some of my clients ask me to manage their inboxes while they’re on holiday – it’s a great solution. I create folders for different types of email and I can even field them out to others in your organisation. You won’t come back to thousands of emails and you will be able to pick up where you left off. 

Test your automation

Amanda: If you’re going to use, say, social media scheduling software to cover you while you’re away, test it out first. If you trial it while you’re still in the office, you’ll have time to iron out any wrinkles so the system runs perfectly in your absence. 

Write a to-do list for your return

Amanda: Writing things down is a great way to get them out of your head, even if you can’t deal with them immediately. I always encourage my clients to write their to-do list for their first day back. Not only does it mean a more organised return, but it gives them more freedom to enjoy their holiday!

Plan for core work and big projects

Amanda: How you cover bigger projects depends on many factors. However, it’s important to remember that everything won’t grind to a halt without you. You might choose to put work on hold while you’re on holiday. Or you might choose to set it up in advance so it can run well in your absence.

 If you’re a good employer or collaborator (and I’m sure you are!) your team should feel empowered to carry on without you and act on their own initiative. Maybe the team could use your holiday time to address the areas that don’t need your specific input, like the actual printing of a new publication. Or maybe you could set up a task in your last week and they could use your holiday to put it into action. 

Virtual PA services from Get Ahead

Get Ahead has built up a team of nearly a hundred virtual PAs, VAs and sector experts to support your business while you’re away on holiday. We’re here for when you get back too! Follow us on social media to find out how we work, and get in touch whenever you’re ready. 

The first budget of the new Labour government has been much anticipated, and Wednesday’s announcement had everyone glued to the news. Families, workers, savers and borrowers were all wondering what the budget meant for them. And entrepreneurs and CEOs were wondering, “what does the budget mean for businesses?”

In this blog, we look at what additional payments and reductions businesses need to cover, and how Get Ahead can help. 

What does the budget mean for businesses? 

The rise in employers’ National Insurance contributions (NICs) was not unexpected, but it has still raised the costs of taking on employees. 

In addition, the increase to interest rates means that business loan repayments will increase – another cost to business owners. 

It’s easy to see that, with these cost increases, business owners will be looking to make any savings they can. 

One way that small businesses can save is by taking advantage of the increased employment allowance, whereby they don’t have to pay NI on the first £10,500. 

Another way to save is to consider outsourcing instead of employing. Whether you’re new to outsourcing or you’ve used the model for years, Get Ahead is here to help.

How Get Ahead supports businesses impacted by the 2024 budget

Get Ahead is an established outsourcing agency. We work on a regional basis: business owners approach our regional directors in search of practical, back-office support. The regional director then connects the business owner with one of our virtual experts who delivers the required work.

There are a number of reasons why our business model gives businesses better value for money than conventional employment:

No NICs, sick pay, annual leave or pension contributions

    All our virtual experts are self-employed. This means that our clients only pay for our experts’ work and don’t have any other financial responsibilities towards them. 

    Remote working

    Our virtual experts work from home, meaning you don’t have to provide office facilities or tech hardware. This could save you renting office space, freeing up more of your profits to grow your business.

    Only pay for hours worked

    When you employ someone, you continue to pay them even when they’re on a tea break, watering the plants or signing team birthday cards. But with our outsourcing model, you only pay for the work they do for your business. We are also completely flexible – there’s no need to commit to paying for the same number of hours every month. 

    Your virtual team

    Get Ahead’s virtual experts can work seamlessly with your other employees, or even form your entire team. Use outsourced work to plug skills gaps or provide support for project work. Alternatively, let us hand pick a group of people with the specific skills you need to take your business forward in a cost-effective way. 

    We believe you’ll see considerable savings when you outsource, enabling you to meet the new increased payments while still growing your business. 

    Find out more about the financial advantages of outsourcing here.

    HR outsourcing and accounts outsourcing solutions for UK businesses

    Unlike typical virtual assistant agencies, we offer a wide range of back-office services, including finance and HR outsourcing. Our finance experts can review your systems and might find other savings, like unused subscriptions and unpaid invoices. This could mean freeing up funds to cover the increased business costs, without having to let any of your current team go. 

    Our HR experts can help you stay compliant with the new rules, ensuring that you’re making the correct contributions and doing right by your employees. And if you find yourself in the unfortunate position of having to reduce the number of people you employ, our HR experts can help you manage the situation so it’s legal, fair and handled appropriately. 

    Get in touch to find out more

    If our blog has got you thinking about ways to save money after the 2024 budget, we’d love to hear from you. We offer a range of outsourced back-office support, including administration, bookkeeping, marketing, social media, finance, HR and more. Visit our service pages here, or get in touch with your local regional director for a friendly, no-obligation chat. 

    Content writing services are an important part of any marketing strategy, particularly in the internet age. Written content is essential if search engines are going to find your website or social media pages. But did you know that it’s a great way to convert customers too?

    In this blog, we talk to Charlotte, one of Get Ahead’s longest-serving copywriters, about content marketing, why it matters and how it works.

    What is content marketing?

    Charlotte: Content marketing is a way of showcasing your products and services so that potential customers can gain a deeper understanding of your offering.

    Blogging is my personal favourite – a 500-word blog is a great way to explain what you do while also sharing more detailed insights than you can on a web page or LinkedIn post. But there are loads of different types of content marketing to choose from, including video, newsletters, social media posts, ebooks, white papers and more.

    Every piece of content is an opportunity to reinforce your brand, your message and your ethos. I often think of content marketing as like having coffee with a friend. You sit down with your friend (the potential customer) and talk in a chatty, human, real-world way about what you do and why it matters. You’ll both have a laugh, maybe a cry, but most importantly, you’ll reinforce your emotional connection. This means that in future, when the potential customer needs what you offer, they’re more likely to come to you because they understand what do and feel a connection with your brand.

    Why is content marketing more effective than a hard sell?

    Charlotte: We all know that a hard sell rarely works. If you’ve ever been pressured into buying something, you probably know that it didn’t work out in the long term. Think of the car you sold on after a few months, or the subscription you’ll be cancelling at the earliest opportunity.

    Some business owners are so averse to hard selling that they end up avoiding marketing altogether. This is a mistake, because your business won’t grow unless you market it. Instead, I always encourage my clients to consider content marketing. With content marketing, you give the customer all the information they need but the decision to buy always rests with them.

    How does content marketing convert customers?

    Charlotte: Content marketing converts customers because it gives the buyer the chance to make up their own mind. Through the content you create, the buyer can build up their own view of your business, products and services. They can find the answers to their questions and decide if yours is the business they want to deal with. And if it is, they can reach out to you and become part of your community of customers or clients.

    Because the customer has arrived at this decision for themselves, they are more likely to develop a loyalty to your business. This means they’ll probably keep buying from you into the future and recommend you to the rest of their network. This is great news for your business and puts you on track to become a market leader.

    Outsourced content writing services

    If our blog has set you thinking about finding content writing services, Get Ahead can help. Charlotte and our other content experts love digging deep into clients’ businesses, finding out what makes them tick and how to communicate that in a way that resonates with the ideal customer. Check out our Resources section to see how content works in practice, or contact your local regional director for a supportive chat.

     

    Virtual PA services have revolutionised business support. One of our most popular services, we believe using a remote PA is a cost-effective, efficient solution. However, we also know that it can be hard to break away from the traditional idea of an employed PA. That’s why we’ve put together our top reasons why working with a virtual PA is as good – or better – than the traditional model. Read on to find out more.

    1. A close working relationship

    Recent tech advances have changed the way we communicate with colleagues. In addition, working from home some or all of the time has become the norm, meaning we’re often in a different location from our team members. What we learn from this is that it’s completely possible to have a great working relationship with someone even when your desks aren’t side by side.

    Get Ahead helps the working relationship get off to a good start too. Our regional directors (your first point of contact) will spend time getting to know you and how you work. With this information, they’ll choose someone to support you who has the right personality match and who’ll thrive in the environment you’ve created. This will help your new working relationship develop all the closeness of the traditional version.

    2. Advances in communication technology

    Your virtual PA can work with you as smoothly as if you worked in the same office, thanks to platforms like Zoom, WhatsApp and Microsoft Teams. Faster internet speeds make real-time interactions easier too.

    3. Changes in the PA role

    The role of the PA continues to evolve. Advances in tech clearly help this evolution (see above) but there are social factors at work too. With many businesses having a flatter hierarchy than they used to, PAs are less of an extension of the boss, and more of a responsible team member. This means that the modern PA role is easier to do remotely than its former incarnation. It’s time to let go of the old-fashioned image and see the situation as it is in the 2020s.

    4. UK-based support

    If you choose virtual PA services from Get Ahead, your new assistant will be based in the UK. This means you’ll be in the same time zone, making it easier to coordinate tasks, diaries and meetings. Most of our virtual experts have English as a first language, so you won’t encounter the language barrier you might if you used an offshore solution.  

    5. A cost-effective solution

    The bottom line is nearly always costs. When you use virtual PA services, you only pay for work completed. This means that if your business only needs support for a few hours each week, that’s all you have to pay for. There are also no recruitment costs, pension contributions, sick pay or holiday pay – you don’t even have to provide coffee!

    Virtual PA services from Get Ahead

    If you think your business could benefit from virtual PA services, we’d love to hear from you. Your local regional director will take time to find out how you work, so they can match you with the best business support expert for your needs. And if you’d like to see how this works in practice, read our case study here.