Get Ahead Team

Why our VAs love their jobs
14
Feb

Why our VAs LOVE their jobs!

Happy Valentine’s Day! Love is in the air, and we hope that you’re taking the time today to appreciate the things that are most special to you. It could be anything – a loved one, your family, your friends… or even your job!

That’s right – here at Get Ahead VA we’re celebrating this season of love by thinking about why we love our jobs. So, we asked everyone in the Get Ahead VA team to tell us what they love about being a virtual assistant, and this is what they had to say:

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Hazel Spencer
4
Jan

Meet the VA: Hazel Spencer

Here at Get Ahead VA, our people are everything. Our ever-growing team includes a wide range of highly skilled professionals with different backgrounds, expertise and personalities to ensure we can find exactly the right virtual assistant to match our customers’ requirements.

Here’s 60 seconds with one of our VAs, Hazel, who joined Fiona’s team in Leeds this year.

Name: Hazel Spencer

Areas of expertise: Social media management, online research and data entry.

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Melanie McDowell blog
14
Dec

Eating Elephants

Some of us have significant people in our lives whose words have helped us immeasurably in difficult situations.  And mostly, those people have no idea how much their pearls of wisdom have stuck with us: for me, that person is my dad.  He’s not that old, my dad.  Whilst he doesn’t have much hair left, and he’s old enough to qualify for a free bus pass, he’s certainly no wizened old sage who sits cross-legged atop a mountain.  He just has a way with words, and as I’ve grown older, I’ve realised that half the things he says aren’t even his own words, so perhaps his real skill is knowing the right thing to say at the right time.

Why on earth was he asking me about elephants?

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Allison Wood
7
Dec

Meet the Regional Director: Allison Wood

Here at Get Ahead VA, our people are everything. We’re dedicated to growing our business all over the country, so our customers can access a wide range of highly skilled professionals wherever they are. We currently have regional offices in Leeds, Reading and Bristol, and we’re pleased to announce our latest addition: Newcastle.

Here’s 60 seconds with one of our new Regional Directors in Newcastle, Allison, who is working alongside fellow Regional Director Karen McCulloch to bring Get Ahead VA to Newcastle.

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Karen McCulloch
20
Nov

Meet the Regional Director: Karen McCulloch

Here at Get Ahead VA, our people are everything. We’re dedicated to growing our business all over the country, so our customers can access a wide range of highly skilled professionals wherever they are. We currently have regional offices in Leeds, Reading and Bristol, and we’re pleased to announce our latest addition: Newcastle.

Here’s 60 seconds with one of our new Regional Directors, Karen McCulloch, who is working alongside fellow Regional Director Allison Wood to bring Get Ahead VA to Newcastle.

Name: Karen McCulloch

Area(s) of expertise: 20 years’ experience working as an Executive Assistant at a senior level, managing multiple priorities and working across a range of tasks. Being able to work creatively and analytically, as well as maintaining confidentiality and discretion.

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8 tips for productivity
28
Sep

8 tips for productivity

We’re back with another Top 8 list to celebrate Get Ahead VA’s 8th birthday, and this time we’re talking productivity! If you’ve ever wondered how you can get more done in the day without feeling overwhelmed, here are 8 useful tips from Senior Virtual Assistant Melanie McDowell.

  1. Schedule your days

Forget about writing to-do lists – they’re always too long and you never get to the bottom of them. Instead, I prefer to schedule every day, or even better, write out my next day’s schedule the night before I go to bed. Attaching a specific time to each task helps you keep on track and avoid distraction. Don’t forget to schedule in down-time, and time for travel between locations. When you first start scheduling, you might find that you put far too much into one day, so scale it back to what you can realistically achieve. I used to beat myself up for not ticking lots of things off my list, but it’s tremendously rewarding to see what you can actually get through in a day.

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Favourite apps
18
Sep

More of Get Ahead VA’s favourite apps

Here at Get Ahead VA, we’re happy to let you in on some of our business secrets – the things that help our virtual assistants to be as organised and efficient as they can be. Previously we’ve told you about Get Ahead VA’s favourite apps, and today we’re back with another helping.

So without further ado, here are 5 more brilliant apps that can help you to manage your business and keep yourself informed!

Bitly

Bitly is a URL-shortening app that you can install on your phone or add as an extension to your web browser. If you need to share a link with your social media followers or members of your team, just pop it into Bitly and get a shorter, more shareable version to use in its place. With this app you can also customise URLs to fit with your branding, and track the analytics for each link.

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Best Business Reads
14
Sep

Our 8 Best Business Reads

As we are celebrate our 8th year in business, we would like to share our 8 best business reads with you – kindly compiled by one of our team – Senior Virtual Assistant, Melanie McDowell.

1.  Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker.  This will shock you into getting an early night!  Full of evidence for why we should prioritise sleep, including research about the implications of sleep deprivation on our health and well-being.  Compelling and utterly terrifying reading.

2.  View From The Summit by Sir Edmund Hillary.  I find autobiographies by people I admire to be incredibly insightful and inspiring.  This is one of my favourites, being both a New Zealander and a rock climber myself.  Find someone you admire and read their story.

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RD Salvatore
12
Sep

Meet Regional Director: Salvatore Catania

Here at Get Ahead VA, our people are everything. We’re dedicated to growing our business all over the country, so our customers can access a wide range of highly skilled professionals wherever they are. We currently have regional offices in Leeds and Reading, and we’re pleased to announce our latest addition: Bristol.

Here’s 60 seconds with our new Bristol Regional Director, Salvatore, whose background in business consultancy makes him the perfect candidate to bring Get Ahead VA to a new region.

Name:  Salvatore Catania

Area(s) of expertise:  Experienced in selling and delivering market-leading products and services across the science and technology sectors. Skilled in: consultative sales, proposal writing and presentation, bid management, forecasting, and business strategy development and implementation.  I am an experienced team builder, coach, and manager with a keen eye for talent.

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8th Birthday
7
Sep

Happy 8th Birthday to Get Ahead VA!

Get Ahead VA is 8 years old!

In September 2010, our founder, Rebecca Newenham, started Get Ahead VA after spotting a gap in the market for flexible, professional virtual assistants for SMEs and start-ups. Now here we are, eight years later, with a thriving business and a bigger team, and we’re ready to celebrate our successes.

Get Ahead VA now has three regional offices, two of which have opened in the last 12 months. As well as the head office in Surrey and our first regional branch in Reading, we’ve expanded into Leeds and Bristol this year and are always on the lookout for new regional managers. If you’re interested in this opportunity, you can contact our head office to find out more.

We’re also very proud of our growing team of virtual assistants, those hard-working professionals who are at the heart of the business. In the last year we have welcomed new team members, and said goodbye to those who have moved on to new jobs. We support all our departing VAs, and are happy to have been part of their transition.

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