Having the ambition to work for yourself shows an excellent attitude and one that it likely to succeed. To harness that ambition before it goes stale, it’s important to define business goals to keep you on track. But what happens when you don’t achieve your goal? How do you stay motivated and moving in the right direction?

If this happens to you, it’s important to stay strong, turn negatives into positives and find opportunities for improvement. Here are some questions to ask yourself and your team:

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If you’re new to running a small business, you’re not naturally organised, or you just hate finance jobs, it can be easy for your accounts to get on top of you. Of course, it’s much better if you can get on top of them. The best way to do this is to break your accounting tasks down into regular responsibilities. In this blog, we look at what you should be doing daily, weekly, monthly and annually so you can keep up to date with your finances.

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Happy birthday to us! Get Ahead turns eleven this autumn and we are so proud of how far we’ve come. Of course, we don’t just want to keep our success to ourselves.

Here’s what we’ve learned in the last eleven years – we hope our experience will help you too!

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If you’ve just set up your business, or you’re offering a new service, it can be difficult to know how to price your offering. You don’t want to rip off your customers…but you don’t want to rip yourself off either. Working out what to charge for services can be very complex, so we’ve put together some do’s and don’ts to point you in the right direction.

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Most of the time, clients and customers pay on time, cash flow is steady and all is well. But sometimes, invoices go unpaid. Perhaps the client is trying it on; perhaps there’s a genuine reason why they’re struggling to pay. Whatever the reason, unpaid invoices can hold up your business, reduce your income and restrict your business growth. In this blog, we look at how best to chase unpaid invoices, and how to avoid the situation in the first place.

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Many businesses have welcomed apps like Xero and Quickbooks. They have definitely made life easier, and empowered entrepreneurs to manage their own finances. Xero is certainly making life easier for the Get Ahead regional directors! But how far can you go with finance software? When do you need to hand over to an accountant?

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Ambitious entrepreneurs want to take their business to the next level. Depending on where you are in your career, “the next level” might be a taking on a second client, or opening a second office. Whichever step is right for you, outsourcing can help you expand at an affordable pace, without committing to a huge outlay before your return is guaranteed.

Here are three ways that outsourcing can take your business to the next level:

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If you’re a busy business owner, you’ll have jobs you need to delegate. But do you really need the hassle of the recruitment process? At Get Ahead, we believe that outsourcing to one or more virtual assistants is a realistic alternative to recruitment for businesses of any size. Here’s why:

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The Get Ahead team has been growing steadily over the ten years we’ve been running. Now, in addition to our virtual assistants, we also have an ever-growing team of regional directors. The regional directors are all experienced people managers who have come away from the conventional workplace to run their own teams of VAs and manage client accounts. Valuing all the members of the Get Ahead family is an important part of our business – we’ve thrived and grown in the last decade because we’ve invested in our team.

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Delegating is the key to working smarter and building a business. Without delegating, we can only go so far. Some business owners delegate to a colleague, but we are firm believers that delegating to a virtual assistant can also achieve great results for any business.

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