A report by the Financial Times at the end of last year showed that small business numbers surged during 2020. Many embraced a new opportunity life had thrown at them, starting up the business they’d always wanted to run. We know what it’s like to be a start-up, and the Get Ahead team are thrilled to be providing outsourced services for some of the pandemic’s newest entrepreneurs. Our services include admin, marketing and business development, all of which are crucial for any growing business.

For many new business owners, the time will come when you have to start taking your business processes seriously. You’ve stopped being a start-up; now you’re a scale-up. Usually this happens because your business has achieved a size where carrying information on a basic spreadsheet no longer works. Sometimes you have to change your processes in response to a problem, or you might be trying to look more professional in order to attract the right clients or finance.

Here are four things you can put in place that will streamline your systems and support business growth:

(more…)

The team at Get Ahead have talked to a lot of business owners over the last ten years. We’ve found that while many know what business support they need, just as many don’t. However, it is often the case that the people who don’t know how to ask for help are the ones who need it the most.

In this blog, we look at how to recognise whether you need help and how to access the right support.

(more…)

LinkedIn always goes a bit quiet over Christmas, with many of us closing for business until New Year. When we all reopened for business, however, Get Ahead hit the ground running and we were pleased to see our first posts of the year getting good traction. Our social media managers are always encouraging Get Ahead clients to be consistent in their posts and we’ve seen for ourselves that it works in practice. In this blog, we look at why it works and how to achieve it for your business.

(more…)

While Get Ahead greatly increased its number of franchises during 2020, some of our regional directors have been up and running for some time now. One of these is the outstanding Fiona Ibbetson who has been running Get Ahead Leeds since January 2018.

(more…)

Many of us will have made new year’s resolutions. Whether or not yours was to manage your time better, good time management will enable us to take more exercise, eat more healthily, be less stressed and generally achieve whatever we resolved to do!

Good time management also helps productivity – you can do more in a well-planned hour than you can in a chaotic afternoon. Good time management can even keep you motivated, and support a good work/life balance. Above all, it’s important in these trying times, with more of us working from home and juggling work and family.

Here are our top tips:

(more…)

Here are four points that are on our January checklist – we hope they’re on yours too!

(more…)

A virtual assistant (VA) can be useful for a small business at any time of year, but especially so over Christmas, when things get busy and people start taking time off for the holidays. Get Ahead VA’s franchisees know how much their VAs are needed during the festive season, and they offer a wide range of services to help out local businesses at this time. Here are 5 key ways that hiring a VA can make a difference to your business this Christmas. 

(more…)

Our West Yorkshire franchise has recently had a number of requests for support with landing pages and newsletter automation. Landing pages are great for increasing conversions, and newsletters are a great communication tool. Best of all, once your automation is set up, it’s easy for you, your team or your virtual assistant to run email marketing campaigns without having to start from scratch each time.

In this blog, we look more at landing pages and automated newsletters, and how virtual assistants can help you.

(more…)

Maintaining some kind of balance between work and life is hard enough when you’re going out to work, but when you’re working from home, the challenge is even greater. Fortunately, by identifying the problem and really addressing it, you can get your life back without your work suffering.

The team at Get Ahead VA have been working at home for years. Here are our top tips:

(more…)

As we embark upon England’s second lockdown, it’s great to see how many businesses have been able to relaunch (or continue) homeworking, building on everything they learned last time. In these trying times, we’ve seen a material demand for Zoom facilitation, particularly for training sessions. We’ll be honest with you, we’ve had to ramp up our skillset pretty quickly too, but now Get Ahead VA is offering a behind-the-scenes service for online training that we are really proud of.

Because Zoom training facilitation is a new service, we’ve noticed that while some clients know exactly what Zoom challenges they are trying to overcome, others have no idea what aspects of online training they could possibly outsource! In this blog, we break down the elements of online training facilitation to give you a clearer picture of how outsourcing Zoom management and tapping into our Miro expertise could help you.

(more…)