Marcus Richards
Award Winning Virtual Assistant, and Founder of the South West Virtual Assistant Collaboration. We work with growing businesses to help them manage the day to day admin, enabling business owners to focus on their clients, growth, and developing their teams.
Tell us about yourself?
I founded Joanne Manville Virtual Assistance in 2015, drawing on my love of admin and organising, and coming from a background initially as a Mortgage Advisor, and latterly as an Executive PA.
Within every role that I have had, I have always been incredibly organised and loved the admin side, so when I started my business it made absolute sense to focus on those strengths and my years as a PA.
I am very proud of the team that I have built, which has in the most part been organic, in responding to client’s needs.
My favourite part of being a Virtual Assistant is experiencing the moment when a client sees the support we are giving is making a real difference and that they are getting real results through the space we have freed up for them.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Well, not to panic when the Pandemic hit!! I lost a few clients, mostly coaches and trainers who had the courses they were running cancelled. That worried me as my income dropped over night but as people started adapting and many businesses went on line, things soon returned to normal.
What problem does your business solve?
People who run their own businesses just don’t have the time to do everything, so invariably there are a few things that suffer as a result – either systems and processes are not as efficient as they should be and things they don’t like doing get left, or they stop looking after themselves and neglect their own self care, or they neglect friends and family.
By using a Virtual Assistant those individuals and businesses can ensure that all key tasks get done, that they have more time to look after themselves and spend time with friends and family, and that they can spend the time they do work in their business on growing it rather than non-income generating tasks.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
I heard about Virtual Assistants many years before I became one. It was only after several frustrating years as a PA that I decided to make the leap and I have never looked back. We help small business owners to get things done, enabling them to focus on development and growth. What we provide is a very accessible and flexible service, which really works well for small businesses that don’t want to go down the road of employing staff.
What is your magic sauce?
We provide a really high level of support and are thinkers as well as do-ers so we will always be sharing new ideas and ways of working with our clients, which they appreciate.
We are a team of 17 amazing Virtual PAs with a very wide cross section of skills – from traditional PA skills like diary management, email management and minute taking to technical VA skills such as website design, graphic design, email marketing.
This means that we are a one-stop-shop for our clients as there’s usually someone in the team who can help them, whatever they need.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
I don’t have any ambitious growth plans, and to date it has been very organic. I just simply want to continue giving the best service to our lovely clients and continue helping more businesses to grow through our support.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
My biggest challenge is ensuring that I continue providing a great service to the clients that I personally look after as well as supporting the team, it is a fine balance to make sure everyone has the attention they deserve from me!
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
I welcome hearing from small business owners who deliver an amazing service to their clients but know they could be doing more, and want to be doing more but just can’t see how they can give more of themselves. We want to help these business to find the headspace to continue to grow, whilst ensuring that they have a great work/life balance at the same time.
