Five top tips to move your business forward

Guest post: Rosie Morley, Virtual Assistant My clients often come to me once they’ve reached maximum output, are desperate to move the business forward but are stuck sorting out the seemingly endless amounts of paperwork and admin. Are you also wondering how to turn your start-up into a fast-growing company? It’s definitely not about waving a magic wand – if only right! However, if you were to talk to one of my clients these 5 tips would probably be amongst their top 10 ways of moving the business forward.

1. DEDICATION Dedicate time to getting your business up and running, don’t treat it just as a hobby. You need to invest time as well as money. There will be a lot of late nights and probably tears, believe me I’ve been there.
2. 2. NETWORK Try and mingle as much as possible, either online or face to face. There are so many online communities now that are very supportive and can help get your brand out there. Beat the nerves of attending your first networking event by preparing a little synopsis of you and your brand so you don’t get stuck when someone asks you what you do. Once that first intro is done, I promise you will feel more at ease.
3. GROW YOUR SKILLS When starting a small business, you definitely won’t know everything there is to know about running a business so if there is something you think you really should know then research lots or invest in a course to learn the basics. You will learn a lot on the job, as a SME you need to be all job roles and if you try to avoid something that you don’t know it may make life tricky so face it and learn it.
4. SHOP AROUND It definitely pays to shop around. Whether it be supplies or services it is definitely worth shopping around to get the best price, pennies make pounds after all!
5. PRIORITISE This is probably one of the trickiest to master when you have to be every job role in a business but appreciating that you can’t do everything right now is vital. Make a list, check it twice and ask Santa for an elf – oh no wrong post. Delegation’s what you need…. (insert Record Breakers them tune here!) My personal favourite tip for cracking down and pushing your business forward is to turn off your email and all those social media notifications when you are working. If the thought of switching them off for a whole day makes you twitch, turn them off for blocks of time during your working day so you can get chunks of work finished. That constant ping can be far too distracting. This leads me nicely on to why Virtual Assistant’s rock. So firstly, what is a Virtual Assistant I hear you say?! Having a small business of my own, I used my extensive experience to grow my business to a point where it happily runs itself, so I found myself using my time to help others grow and evolve their businesses. I began to recognise that I myself have the skills and passion for helping others in their business goals, this is why I added being a VA to my skills pot of gold. I've only been working as a VA for a relatively short period but I frequently get asked what a VA is and my go to response is, think of me like your offsite PA.... a trusted asset who takes away your frustrations, by completing the tasks you don't.
   • It is our job to get jobs done, so if you are a procrastinator we can help to make things happen.
   • We have a great network of contacts to help get anything done.
   • Delegating frees up time for you to concentrate on the fun jobs.
   • We can be a sounding board for ideas, that second pair of eyes that you can draw on when needed
   • We can be a great use of budget, if you only need ad hoc assistance we can work on a rolling hours basis The skills of a VA can differ between each assistant but they range from website building, product photography, accounts tracking, admin, social media, email management, blog writing, product sourcing and costings, manufacturing guidance and organising and much much more! Contact Rosie at www.fabrose.co.uk

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