Category: Home working

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!

If you’re researching franchises and considering Get Ahead, you might have noticed that we’re a really supportive team. Helping each other out and not competing for clients is an important characteristic of a Get Ahead franchise, and one that’s only possible because our franchisees pull together. At Get Ahead, you get out what you put in.

Let’s take a closer look.

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What does “choose your own hours” look like for a Get Ahead franchisee?
All the support and none of the targets

Get Ahead’s regional directors have the freedom to work as much or as little as they like. This because, unlike other franchises, they are not given targets.

When Rebecca Newenham first founded Get Ahead, she wanted it to be flexible so that regional directors and team members could have work life balance the freedom to adjust their priorities if needed. That is why she doesn’t set targets – she just gives loads of support instead, exactly the right kind of motivation for the business to grow.

A scalable business model

One of the reasons Get Ahead regional directors can work flexibly is that the work is scalable. Each RD is a team manager for their local team of virtual experts. The virtual experts deliver the work for the clients, whether that’s social media management, admin, marketing or something else.

The franchisee does not need to deliver work themselves – instead, they can spend their time connecting clients with team members or building their networks. They can push themselves and become a local business support hub, accepting every job because they know they can outsource it to the team. Or they can limit their client base, maybe to manage their own workload or because there’s something happening at home which has to take priority.

What could choosing your own hours mean for you?
The best of both worlds

Choosing your own hours means the best of both worlds. You can lead your team and run a thriving business, working for yourself but not by yourself. But you can also have a happy family life, with the flexibility for hobbies and lunch dates. Our franchisees find ill partners and school snow days less stressful to deal with too!

Work life balance

When work and life are truly balanced, they should each be important and each fulfil you. A true balance is difficult to find, but we believe our flexible model comes very close.

A healthy attitude to work

Bags of stress and fifty-hour weeks are bad for us. So is measuring our worth only by how hard we work. Fortunately, choosing your own hours means you can nurture a healthier attitude. You’ll have time to exercise both body and mind. You’ll have time to spend with the people who bring out the best in you. You’ll have time to be a hand-on parent instead of being the one who’s always late for school pick up.
With more balance and less stress in your life, you should be able to keep things in proportion. We’ve seen this translate into working more effectively, and having fewer parental meltdowns too.

Become a Get Ahead franchisee

Rebecca founded Get Ahead to provide flexible support for business owners…and flexible opportunities for team managers like you. If you’re looking for a better work/life balance, we could be your next career move. Contact Rebecca to find out more.

Networking is a key part of the franchisee role when you join Get Ahead. It’s an important way of finding new leads and building lasting working relationships.

In this blog, we look at why networking is such an important part of the franchisee role. We also share our tips for successful networking. Let’s take a closer look.

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Social media is a fantastic marketing tool, but it’s not without its downsides. Many business owners struggle to find a balance between maintaining their presence online and managing their time. Could the decision to outsource social media be the right one for you?

Let’s take a closer look.

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We are very proud of the flexible opportunity we offer our franchisees. Everyone works better after they’ve taken a break, whether it’s a fortnight’s holiday abroad or lunch with a good friend.

When you join the Get Ahead family, you are free to work in the way that suits you. However, if you’re used to nine-to-five, managing your own hours and your own holidays can seem daunting. Fortunately, our franchise model works means you can take holiday without your business grinding to a halt.

Here are five ways to manage holidays when you’re a Get Ahead franchisee:

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IT breaches are nearly always serious. No business can afford to compromise data security or risk losing trade because of a computer virus.

In this blog, we look at some of the ways businesses of all sizes can protect their computer systems from hacking, data breaches and other problems. Some of these responsibilities are for management; others are good habits that everyone should get into.

IT responsibilities for management

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You know you’re about to make your next career move and you know you want to be your own boss. Perhaps it’s time for more freedom, or perhaps you’d like more flexibility and balance in your life. If this sounds like you, you might be trying to work out whether you’d rather set up on your own, or you’d rather buy a franchise of an established business. 

Let’s take a closer look.

Should I run my own business?

Running your own business is exciting, challenging and rewarding. Successful entrepreneurs have a great business idea and the drive to make it succeed.

When you run your own business, there are many benefits:

  1. You are answerable to no one (except your clients!).
  2. It’s as much freedom as you can have and still be at work.
  3. You can choose how to spend any profits.
  4. You can shape your business as you see fit, and take it in whichever direction you feel it will succeed.
  5. You can create your own business ethos – if you want to see something done differently, you have the freedom to implement it.

But there are downsides as well:

  1. Starting a business from scratch is hard work with a lot of demands on your time.
  2. You need at least basic knowledge of finance, admin, client care, data management, marketing and more.
  3. You might not see any profits for a few years.
  4. The buck stops with you and there is a lot of responsibility.
  5. It can get lonely – you might miss having a colleague who can provide some objectivity.

Should I buy a franchise?

If you’re not sure whether or not starting your own business is the right step for you, you might consider buying a franchise instead. A franchise can provide a lot of the freedom of running your own business, but without the pressure of working alone to deliver your own ideas.

There are many benefits to buying a franchise:

  1. Enjoy the freedom to work for yourself
  2. Take advantage of existing brand and reputation
  3. Join a family of supportive franchisees
  4. Continue on your career path, managing your team and making many of your own business decisions.
  5. Benefit from centralised resources like marketing material, training courses and software.

However, buying a franchise isn’t for everyone.

  1. The business model and ethos are driven by the franchise owner. Fortunately, ours is tried and tested!
  2. The role of a franchisee is to lead, not to do – if you like rolling your sleeves up, you might prefer your own business where you can deliver your core work yourself.
  3. You’ll make regular payments to the franchise owner, in addition to the upfront purchase – this covers the cost of centralised resources.
  4. Some franchises (not Get Ahead!) set compulsory targets for franchisees.
  5. Some other franchises (again, not Get Ahead!) impose limits on how and where you work, preventing you from scaling your franchise.  

When we decided to franchise Get Ahead, we identified some of the problems of franchising and set out to address them. That’s why our franchisees aren’t under pressure from performance targets, do receive regular training and, above all, benefit from our scalable business model so they can push themselves and their franchise as far as they like.

Buy a Get Ahead franchise

Whatever you decide your next step should be, it’s got to be right for you. And if do decide to buy a franchise, we hope you’ll choose Get Ahead! Our site is full of resources to help you make your decision. You could also follow our social channels and find out more about our ethos. You can even book in a call with franchisor Rebecca Newenham – why not have a chat and get your questions answered before you take the plunge?

Online safety is an issue for everyone. Sometimes, very sadly, it makes the headlines, with vulnerable teenagers unable to escape social media’s darker side, or celebrities falling prey to trolls or cancel culture.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably not a vulnerable teenager or a celebrity. But social media safety is important for business owners too. In addition to protecting your identity and mental health, business owners are in a strong position to set a good example with relevant content, moderate views and helpful advice.

Let’s take a closer look at online safety for business owners.

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Every business carries an element of risk. If your small business is seeing opportunities to scale up and break into new markets, you might feel cautious about committing to a new product or department. Above all, you’ll need a cost-effective method to minimise the gamble you take. However, we believe outsourcing could the solution you’re looking for!

In this blog, we explore how flexible outsourcing can help you seize opportunities to take your business in new directions.

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