Ashwood VA is the brainchild of the dynamic and passionate entrepreneur, Emilie Ashwood. Emilie is proud to announce her recent win of the prestigious national “VA of the Year 2023 – Solo VA” award. This award is a testament to her dedication, innovation, and unwavering commitment to providing exceptional virtual administration and support to professionals and business owners particularly within the photography industry. Ashwood VA offers a lifeline to these businesses by taking on all aspects of their social media management and other every day, but time-consuming administ ..read more

This year’s VA of the Year is Katie Stone, a teacher-turned-entrepreneur living in Ludlow. Ludlow businesswoman Katie Stone is celebrating after she was crowned “Best VA of the Year with a Small Team” at the UK VA Awards 2022. The annual VA (Virtual Assistant) Conference and Awards were held in Bournemouth on the 30th September 2022 following on from the VA Conference. A former teacher, Katie founded the business during the first lockdown of 2020, choosing to work with education businesses such as tutors, educational consultants and EdTech companies, helping them to manage their business admin ..read more

Welcome to part 5 of my mini-series for VA Pro, and this article is about how offboarding is just as important as your onboarding process! I Am A Video Tutorial! How do you like to learn?You can read me , watch me or listen to me ! Choose your option below… What is offboarding? We have covered Onboarding, which is when you bring clients into your business, through proposals, leads, capture forms, questionnaires, kickoff calls, contracts, payments and business procedural parts so that you then start working with the client. That’s all done at the beginning, and if you don’t know, Offboarding ..read more

Essex businesswoman Colette Walls is celebrating after she was crowned ‘Best Newcomer’ at the prestigious UK VA Awards 2022. The annual VA Conference and Awards were held virtually on the 2nd March 2022 with the aim to highlight the achievements of Virtual Assistants in the UK. The ‘Best Newcomer’ award caps a whirlwind 11 months for Colette, whose business qVirtual has gone from strength to strength. A former legal EA, Colette founded qVirtual in April 2021 and works with small businesses as well as private individuals who need support with their personal affairs. Colette, who lives in Brentw ..read more

National Internet Day! SMH & GOAT are among the most confusing text abbreviations, according to users. SMH (shake my head) tops the list as the most searched for text abbreviation, with nearly 900,000 average monthly global searches. Search interest for GOAT (Greatest of all time) has seen a 300% surge in the past 12 months on Google Trends. 35 out of 100 abbreviations analysed have amassed more than 100,000 average monthly searches worldwide. Millennials and Gen Z are continually evolving, implementing ways to shorten the words they use while texting or crafting their social media post ..read more

What do you need to do? The EU has special rules for what you need to do when sending data in and out of the EU. Many VA’s do not realise they are doing this since a lot of the terms used can be misleading. If your prospects and customers, or your clients’ prospects and customers are in the EU, then EU GDPR laws are, according to the EU, applicable to you, even if you are not based there. This affects VAs all over the world – and your clients. Are you processing personal data? Sitting at your desk viewing data without changing it at all is ‘processing data’ from the EU GDPR point of view. You ..read more

VAs can get very confused by GDPR advice. A lot of it is aimed at large organisations and many of the processes and policies are impossible to understand or implement if there is really just you, or you and a few associates. Another complication is that VAs are handling data privacy and data security not just as business owners, but as service providers to other business owners and even as associates further down the chain. Here are some of the fundamental ideas to take on board Are you a data controller? If you are running your own business you are a data controller. A data controller is som ..read more

If you’re new to the VA business, or you’re an existing VA whose business plan hasn’t quite got the momentum you’d hoped for, you might be wondering what the next steps are when it comes to growing your business. We’ve been amazed at just how hungry some VAs are for quicker growth and bigger profits. There’s a real wealth of entrepreneurial spirit in the VA industry but even if you’ve got the desire, it isn’t always easy to harness this and achieve the results you know you’re capable of. As you think about growing your business, it’s natural to have concerns about how you’ll get there – from ..read more

Hello again, this is the fourth article in my series all about Onboarding, and how as a VA you can give a great onboarding experience to your clients. This article is all about managing that onboarding experience – for free!  I Am A Video Tutorial! How do you like to learn?You can read me , watch me or listen to me ! Choose your option below… Save on subscriptions Subscriptions add up, and when you are starting out those payments can be too much, rather than paying out and using software such as Dubsado, you can simply list it all yourself or hunt for free software that can get the job ..read more

This month I came across a small business owner who has written a song that has gone viral and I think MANY of us can relate to it, it’s very honest and is probably something that we have all mumbled under our breath when chatting to clients about pricing and services we offer. But it did make me have a little giggle… You can check out the song that I am on about by clicking here, *DISCLAIMER* there are some naughty words in the lyrics! Her Instagram is @woahdudedesigns she sells some wonderful and unique items and also has other songs on her profile that we all relate to as well!   &nbs ..read more