Celebrating 10 years of First Rate PA – Part Four: The future

As part of our 10 year celebrations, we are writing a series of short blogs to tell you more about our business.  This week we look to the future, what will it bring?

Well, when we started 2020, I don’t think anyone would have predicted our current situation.  Michelle had plans to grow the business further with more clients, more VA’s and more services.  However, with the current pandemic bringing a lockdown to the country it has put many plans and celebrations on hold.  But staying positive, it has been a great opportunity to reflect, learn and create strategies for the future.

Stay positive

Staying positive has been a key aspect of the last two months.  With many local businesses being affected by the changes in the economy, we have not been able to grow our clients.  We have however continued to support our existing clients and finding new ways to collaborate with other SMEs.

Although we have not been able to attend the regular networking meetings across Sussex and Hampshire, we have moved to the virtual world.  We have supported our current connections and made new connections in Facebook networking groups.  Also, in scheduled zoom events and through conversations on other social media platforms.

Reflect

Reflecting back on the services that we offer as a team, we have been able to identify new skills that our team have developed.  This has allowed us to look at what other services we can offer now and in the future.  Understanding that some businesses cannot always commit to a monthly retainer, we are looking to develop our pay as you go services.  Offering ad-hoc services to businesses to help them develop key areas of their business, knowing that they always have our services available when they need them.

Learn

Our team of Virtual Assistants are used to working from home, hosting virtual meetings and managing their workload.  We have learnt to support others, share our knowledge and show support to our local network.

Looking at the extra skills we have learnt over the last few weeks, we are looking at producing some quick guides for businesses to download. This will help them to quickly review their business strategies, or learn some quick tips on how to effectively use social media platforms, or software programmes.

Create strategies for the future

Having been given the opportunity and the time, we have looked back over our plans.  We have come up with some comprehensive strategies to help us develop, adapt and review how our business is performing over the next few months and the year.  Being reactive to changes by constantly reviewing what we are doing, we are planning for our future, looking to grow our number of clients.

So the future of First Rate PA is to not only provide more services to other SMEs, but to help provide employment opportunities and grow our team.  Find out more about our services.

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash