How to be a mum and run a business

Mother’s Day is just around the corner (Sunday 31st March), and to celebrate we thought we’d ask some of our VAs what it’s like to be a mum and run a business.

At Get Ahead VA, we offer our virtual assistants a flexible approach to working, so that they are able to provide a professional service to our clients, whilst also fitting their work around other commitments, such as family. As a result, many of our VAs are also parents, and they’re brimming with good advice about managing life and business side by side!

If you’re a parent who’s interested in starting a business, here’s are some tips from our VAs to get you started.

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Service Spotlight: Accounting

Get Ahead VA offers a wide range of business and marketing services. In our Service Spotlight, we take a closer look at one of these and show you how our virtual assistants can help you and your business. This month, with the end of the financial year coming up (5th April), we’re looking at accounting.

Why do you need accounting help?

For many business owners, the worst part of running a business is managing the accounts. In a survey of 508 small business owners conducted by TD Bank, nearly half of the respondents named bookkeeping as their least favourite part of running a business.*

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Service Spotlight: Telephone Answering


Get Ahead VA offers a wide range of business and marketing services. In our Service Spotlight, we take a closer look at one of these and show you how our virtual assistants can help you and your business. This month, we’re looking at telephone answering.

Why do you need telephone answering?

Phone calls can be one of the biggest distractions in the workplace. We all know the feeling of being fully immersed in a project or piece of work, only for a phone call to break our flow and add extra tasks to our to-do list. Business calls can also happen at the most inconvenient times – when you’re travelling, in a meeting, or even (horror of horrors) when you’re at home with your feet up!

If you find yourself bombarded with calls, or you just want a break from the phone while you finish an important piece of work, then a telephone answering service could be just what you need.

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Service Spotlight: Administration

Get Ahead VA offers a wide range of business and marketing services. In our Service Spotlight, we take a closer look at one of these and show you how our virtual assistants can help you and your business. This month, with the aim of getting organised for the new year, we’re looking at administration.

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The truth about Press Releases

Press releases are a fundamental part of media relations work and one of the main ways you can share your news with journalists.

But unless you work in PR or comms, knowing how they exactly work and what they can actually achieve is somewhat of a mystery. For instance, just because you’ve issued a release to the media, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get any coverage.

In this blog, former journalist and Get Ahead VA team member, Sanina Kaur, sheds some light on the world of press releases.

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5 things you didn’t know a virtual assistant can do

When asked to list what a virtual assistant does, many people stick to everyday administration tasks such as managing databases, replying to emails and answering telephones. Yes, virtual assistants do all of these things, but we offer many other services too – and some of them might surprise you.

Want to learn more? Here are 5 things you (probably) didn’t know a virtual assistant can do.

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How to write a marketing email your customers will read

Email marketing: it’s a crucial part of business, but it can also be one of the hardest things to get right. That’s because inboxes fill up quickly and online attention spans are short. If you want to be welcome in your customers’ inboxes, you’re going to need to stand out from the crowd.

Let’s take a look at some of the stats. The average email user receives 88 emails per day, and marketing messages, newsletters and spam account for almost half of these. Only 30% of all emails received will be opened, and just 3.2% of marketing emails will get a click-through to the sender’s website.

Those are tough odds to go up against, so how do you make sure your emails get noticed? Look no further – here are 5 tips for creating marketing emails your customers will read. (more…)

Give your LinkedIn profile a new lease of life

LinkedIn might have been around for a while, but stats published earlier this year show that it is still hugely influential. There are around 500 million users on LinkedIn, 40% of whom use the site daily. Research by the Society for Human Resource Management discovered that, of the employers who use social networking sites for recruitment, more than 90% use LinkedIn.

Even so, it can be tricky to keep your LinkedIn profile up to date, and with so many other tasks demanding your attention it’s all too easy to let your profile languish, out of date and unloved. If this is how your profile is feeling, here are some things you can do to freshen it up, so you can keep making those valuable online connections.

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5 ways to manage small business stress

Stress at work is an extremely common problem in the UK. According to the Health and Safety Executive, in 2016/17, 12.5 million working days were lost to work-related stress, depression and anxiety. Add to this the pressures of being your own boss, and stress can be a particular problem for small business owners.

So what can be done about the stress epidemic? One of the schemes that has been put in place is Stress Awareness Month, which takes place every April. The aim of the month is to encourage people to talk about stress, share their coping strategies and take care of themselves and others.

If you’re looking for somewhere to start with managing your own stress, here are 5 of our top tips. (more…)

5 myths about working with VAs: debunked

When it comes to working with virtual assistants (VAs), there are all sorts of myths out there that can make it seem like more trouble than it’s worth. Fortunately these simply aren’t true, and VAs can actually provide plenty of benefits to your business.

Do you want to know more about what working with VAs is really like? Here are 5 of the biggest myths about VAs: debunked.

Myth #1: Anybody can be a VA

Many people think that, as long as you have a computer and an internet connection, you can be a VA. This might be off-putting to people looking to hire a VA, who might be concerned about working with someone unqualified, unprofessional or likely to disappear halfway through a job. Of course, this isn’t true. Being a VA is a business that requires investments of money and time, and therefore professional VAs take their work very seriously. Furthermore, VAs who work for agencies such as Get Ahead are thoroughly vetted to make sure they have the skills to reliably deliver high-quality work.

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