Why is it important take breaks from work? Because it’s good for us! But we’re well aware that argument isn’t enough – our work needs us, particularly when we run our own businesses.

However, taking a break during the summer holidays when our children are at home or we’re going on holiday is important for family harmony and all-round wellbeing. Let’s take a closer look.

Take a break when your children are at home

 “They grow up so fast” is a cliché but it’s also true. How many more summers with your children do you think you have before they leave home? Whatever the answer, it’s fewer than last year.

Many of us were on our career paths before we had our families. But work takes on a new dimension when we become parents. Work matters to parents because we are making money for our families and setting an example to our children. But it’s important that working for our families doesn’t stop us spending quality time with them.

If you’re worried that your business will grind to a halt if you’re not there, or if you’re scared that ends won’t meet if you take a day off to be with your family, we understand. But it’s also a good idea to rationalise your fear – chances are that you can take time off and nothing will go wrong. If you’re still worried, read our interview with life coach Gloria, or our management tips from regional director Hazel.

Take a break to go on your summer holiday

Whether or not you have a family, taking a complete break once in a while is important. No one knows better than you how hard you work, but you can’t keep it up indefinitely.

Taking a break from work is important for your health, but it also benefits your productivity. In truth, it’s almost impossible to work “all the time.” And the longer we work without a break, the less work we get done.

Most business owners notice how much they get done in their first week back after a holiday. Their heads are clear and they’ve regained their sense of proportion. The situation that seemed like an insurmountable problem hasn’t disappeared; it’s just no longer a problem or insurmountable.

Why take a break in the summer?

Summer is a lovely time to take a break and spending time in the sunshine has lots of physical and mental health benefits.

Sunshine gives us vitamin D for healthy teeth and bones. And if you struggle with sleep, exposure to sunlight will help reset your natural rhythm and remind your body of the difference between day and night.

Sunshine is good for mental health too. It encourages our body to release serotonin, aka “the happy hormone.” (Incidentally, our bodies also release serotonin when we eat chocolate, dance and hug people so try and work some of those activities into your holiday too!)

Of course, the sun’s rays can be harmful to skin so remember to put on your sunscreen before topping up your health and happiness!

Get Ahead can help you take breaks from work

The Get Ahead team have helped countless business owners get away from it all for a week or two in the summer. From back-office support like virtual assistant services, email management and telephone answering, to improving systems so someone else can take the reins, there are lots of ways we can help.

Even if you’re not sure what help you need, talk to your local regional director – they’ll help you unpick whatever’s holding you back and find the right solution for you. Don’t worry if you’ve left it to the last minute – we can set up support for you in as little as twenty-four hours. Explore our site to find out more, or get in touch here.

PS – for more ideas on managing your workload during the holidays, why not follow us on LinkedIn?

Business admin for personal trainers can be a distraction from your core business. If you’re a personal trainer, your business is to help your clients get fitter, stronger and healthier – it’s a brilliant job and you make a real difference to people’s lives. 

The downside of being a great personal trainer and offering a fantastic service to your clients is that you might fall behind on your business admin. Fortunately, Get Ahead are here to help! In this blog, our admin expert, Lucy, looks at some of the key challenges personal trainers face and how she helps overcome them.

Business admin for personal trainers – challenges and solutions
Personal trainers are never at their desks!

Your core business takes you out and about, to parks, leisure centres and even people’s homes. This is great for your clients, but it does mean you get far less desk time than people with office-based jobs. It’s easy to leave your admin, emails, social media and invoicing until the evening, but this isn’t ideal either – I know many of the personal trainers I’ve worked with have very early starts. 

However, outsourced support could be the solution you’re looking for. I’m proud to say I’ve built strong, trusting relationships with the personal trainers I’ve supported. This means they can leave their admin to me while they’re with their clients, doing what they do best.

No one can do everything, but everyone can do something

I love that quote – it describes the reasons for outsourcing perfectly! If you’re an experienced personal trainer, you’re probably amazing at creating individualised fitness regimes. You’ve invested your energy at improving in that area, rather than learning how to use accounting software or streamline your social media. Your clients love you for it, but it might not be great for your business. 

But just because admin or marketing isn’t your thing, it doesn’t mean you have to worry about them. Instead, pass them onto someone like me who loves back-office jobs and does them quickly. I might be able to do a job in one hour that would take you two hours – that’s an efficiency that makes sense for a small business like yours. 

You want to improve your service, not increase your numbers

When you work on your own, gaining more clients is not necessarily your business goal. When will you have time to train them all? Instead, you’re probably focused on improving what you offer to the clients you have. 

If improving your service is your business goal, tailor-made support is probably a better solution than a crash course in growth. When you receive support from a virtual assistant like me, I’ll listen to your needs and – working with your local Get Ahead regional director too – we’ll find a solution to help you achieve your specific business goals.

Business support for personal trainers – a flexible solution for micro businesses

Get Ahead supports lots of businesses in the wellness industry. We’ve built up our knowledge of the different challenges the industry faces and we’re working on improving our service so we can help you meet specific goals. 

If you’re a personal trainer looking for reliable, affordable business support, we’d love to help. Explore our site to find out more or contact your local regional director. 

PS – we’ve put together some of our ideas in this infographic


Outsource digital marketing and you could see a real difference in your online presence. 

Getting your business out there can be tough if you work in the wellbeing industry. Your diary is so busy with appointments that it’s hard to find time to blog or post on social media. Equally, your expertise might lie in hairdressing, manicures or reflexology, rather than marketing. That’s no bad thing – everyone can do something but no one can do everything. 

Fortunately, outsourcing can be a time and cost-efficient way to market your business, especially when you don’t have time to do it yourself.

In this blog, our digital marketing expert Mel explains the advantages of social media for the health and beauty industry, and shares her top online marketing ideas. 

Why does outsourcing digital marketing help health and beauty businesses?

Outsourcing digital marketing is a great solution for businesses like yours. Many people seeking health and beauty treatments start with the internet – often, it’s social media that has given them the idea to have the treatment in the first place.   

With a ready-made online community, it’s important to find your own way to tap into it. Marketing your wellness or beauty expertise online is a great way to connect with new audiences and grow your business. Make it personal – what you do is all about trust and building relationships with clients. Don’t be afraid to be yourself! 

Here are some of my favourite ideas for marketing your wellness business online:Share before and after pictures

Share before and after pictures

Instagram and Facebook are both fantastic platforms to share before and after pictures. If you’ve transformed a client’s look, show how they used to look and how they look now. And if your business is about feeling good rather than looking good, sharing a testimonial about how much better a client feels now can send a powerful message too. 

Build your community of people in the know

Everyone wants to find their tribe so why not build a community of your clients? These will be people who know what makes your services different and come to you time and again. When would-be customers see the interactions, in-jokes and generous sharing of tips and advice, they’ll want to join in too. 

Build a community by tagging clients and asking questions that encourage discussion. Remember to reply to comments and thank anyone sharing their own top tips. You can also encourage your community to use certain hashtags. This will make your brand available to a wider audience, as well as showing those beyond your community that you do what you say you do. 

Create and share videos

A great way to show people what you do is to create videos and share them on your website, social channels and via your newsletter. A video can help a potential client know what to expect from a session or treatment with you. It’s also one of the best ways to get your personality across – really important for health and beauty businesses where trust and a personal connection matter. 

Sign up for a Google My Business page

Google My Business is a free service where your business will appear when someone searches for what you offer within your local area. This is a brilliant opportunity for businesses offering in-person treatment – they can increase their online visibility and reach more customers. Find out more about Google My Business here.

Send out a regular newsletter

A newsletter is a great place to share news, offers and top tips. Encourage readers to open it by putting a special offer inside, or share some helpful information that will help them get more from their sessions with you. Depending on what your business offers, you might like your newsletter to be for “members only” – people who have paid to receive regular wellness advice, health challenges or seasonal beauty tips from an expert. 

Sell your products

Facebook and Instagram both have selling features, enabling you to sell products online. If you make your own health and beauty products, you can use social media as an extension of your ecommerce website. Alternatively, your business might be a named stockist of a particular cosmetics brand. And if your business is about fitness, why not use your social channels to sell yoga mats or performance clothing? 

Outsource digital marketing to Get Ahead

If you like the sound of Mel’s suggestions, we’d love to help you make the most of them! Outsourcing your social media, newsletters and other digital marketing will give you the results your business deserves, without taking you away from your clients. To find out more, contact your local regional director today – they’d love to help you take your business to the next level. 

2022 has been quite a year! With war in Ukraine, price rises, loads of industrial action and three prime ministers, very few businesses will have experienced completely plain sailing. But sweet are the uses of adversity. Here at Get Ahead, we’ve learned a lot about ourselves and our business. We’ve seen interesting opportunities arise and we’re already feeling positive about what 2023 has to offer.

In this blog, we look at how businesses can learn from mistakes and find exciting opportunities to take them into the new year.

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Get Ahead’s business model helps our team and clients find a healthier work-life balance. We believe in flexibility – we’ve seen time and again that it translates into better productivity and better mental health. We were delighted to hear that the organisation Working Families is holding its annual National Work/Life Week from 10th-14th October 2022.

This year, the emphasis is on increasing access to flexible working, and finding the flex in every role. Let’s take a closer look.

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Happy twelfth birthday to us!

Rebecca Newenham created Get Ahead to provide not just outsourced support to businesses, but also flexible work options for herself and her team of professionals. The fact that we’ve been operating this long shows that we’ve got something right, so we thought we’d share twelve of our tips for building in flexibility and a healthy approach to work.

Here goes….

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Burnout is a word we’re hearing more and more. It is usually associated with being under pressure at work, but it can be brought on by any area of your life where you’re under pressure, like being a carer. Burnout is more than just a bad day, and it’s more than getting a bit stressed because of a deadline. It’s important to remember that burnout is a physical and/or mental breakdown which can cause permanent damage.


What are the signs that we are heading towards burnout?
We all have bad days from time to time, but in general, we should enjoy our jobs. Even if we’re not in our dream role, we can still feel fulfilled knowing we’re playing our part in the world, or providing for our families.


But when work turns sour, we always feel under pressure and it’s affecting our self-esteem, we might be on the road to burnout. Here are some signs to look out for:

  • Doubting ourselves and feeling the need to prove that we’re the best
  • Working harder because we think we’re not doing enough, but actually being unproductive
  • Neglecting ourselves, our relationships and our interests
  • Imagining problems have been created by us because we’re not working hard enough
  • Losing perspective and feeling helpless
  • Behaving uncharacteristically
  • Not feeling fulfilled by work, and feeling empty, detached and isolated instead
  • Developing depression

How can we protect ourselves against burnout?
Fortunately, there are ways we can progress in a fulfilling career without burning out. At Get Ahead, we’ve seen for ourselves how working flexibly has created career opportunities balanced with fulfilling family life, and how this turns into high productivity and achievement of business goals.

Here are some pro-productivity, anti-burnout mindsets we’ve learned:

  • Value yourself for who you are, not just your job title or how much money you earn
  • Make time for your physical and mental health
  • Taking breaks increases productivity
  • Enjoying life outside work helps you maintain perspective and build resilience
  • Making time for relationships, with yourself, your partner, family and friends helps you look outwards while also maintaining your support network.


Let Get Ahead help!
If you’re worried you’re heading towards burnout because you’ve got too much on your plate, Get Ahead can help. Your local regional director can meet you and do a time audit, working out how much time you’re spending on different responsibilities and helping you manage your time more effectively. Our diary management service means you can concentrate on the task in hand, confident that the others are not forgotten. And if you’ve got a list of tasks that you could delegate, our virtual experts are ready and waiting.

Find a life or business coach
Get Ahead has many life coaches and business coaches in our network of clients – many of them support us too! If you think you might benefit from talking to a coach about the problems you’re experiencing, we’d love to put you in touch with the right person.

However overwhelmed you’re feeling, Get Ahead can help you get things under control. Get in touch today – we’re here for you.

Procrastination is the thief of time. So many of us sit down at our desks with the best of intentions, then put off doing the important jobs that will drive our businesses forward.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can beat procrastination and spend our working time productively. For this blog, we’ve gathered together some of our favourite tips for beating procrastination.

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One of the biggest working trends during the pandemic was the 50-hour week, with homeworkers not knowing when to stop, or not feeling confident that they’d “done enough.”

But working a fifty-hour week should be a warning sign. No matter how determined you are, you cannot be productive for fifty hours of your week. It’s not good for you, and it puts pressure on your colleagues and family too.

Another lesson to come out of the pandemic is that life is precious. Flexibility is important to us at Get Ahead – most of the team have families, interests, pets and more and we don’t inefficient working to rob us of our time with them.

It’s time to work smarter, not harder.

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Climate change impacts all of us, and we all share the responsibility for slowing it down. Operating individually, we can easily feel overwhelmed – how will a fabric-wrapped shampoo bar make any difference to such a huge problem? Fortunately, as business owners, we have more power. When we adopt sustainable practices on a business-wide scale, we can set an example to others and have a wider positive impact.  

Here are five ideas to help businesses lower their carbon footprints and operate more sustainably.

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