WHO ARE BY YOUR SIDE
Lynne Wright
ONLINE BUSINESS MANAGER, RECRUITMENT & ONBOARDING SUPPORT
With a background in small business operations and a passion for processes and people experience, Lynne excels at defining, documenting and improving business and HR processes.
How Lynne's skills can help you set up and start your business:
Hiring, and retaining, the right people is crucial for business success. Lynne specialises in developing and delivering recruitment processes, onboarding experiences and employee engagement initiatives that enable you to find - and keep - your ideal employees.
How Lynne's skills can help as you scale your business:
As you grow, it's important that the tasks and policies in your business are clearly documented and defined and don't just live in the heads of the people who deliver them. Lynne’s happy place is extracting this information to define and document processes, procedures and policies that ensure your business runs efficiently, effectively and consistently.
Michelle Jamieson
VIRTUAL ASSISTANT & ACCOUNTS ADMIN SUPPORT
As both an employed Assistant and a Virtual Assistant, Michelle has assisted with establishing and running busy offices, right from start ups to larger enterprises and brings a wealth of administrative experience and skill for every stage of a business’ growth journey.
How Michelle's skills can help you set up your business:
Whether you’re becoming a Ltd company, or taking on your first employees, Michelle has the know how to support you through the transition, ensuring you’re set up correctly and compliantly from day one.
How Michelle's skills can help as you start
and scale your business:
Michelle loves “the regular bread and butter tasks” that keep a business running. Taking on those finance and business admin tasks that are bogging you down and freeing up your time (and headspace) to focus on other business priorities.
OUR VALUES
Be a supportive partner
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We work in partnership with our clients; encouraging them to achieve their aims, celebrating their wins and helping them navigate challenges.
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We are a team; in this together.
We support each other - within the BYS business, our individual businesses and our lives outside of work.
Play to your strengths
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We free up our clients’ time to focus on the elements of the business that only they can do and that they’re best at by taking on the tasks that we excel at.
We never take on any work that we can’t do (but we do have a little black book of people that can do the things we don’t).
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We are clear about the work we are/aren’t able and willing to do and don’t take on tasks that we don’t believe we can deliver value on.
We understand and accept each other’s experience, strengths and weaknesses and divide / delegate each task to the best person for the job.
Live to work,
don’t work to live
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We give our clients the ability to focus on the elements of the business that they enjoy doing, by taking away the tasks that don't bring them joy.
We only work with clients where there’s a mutual understanding that work is no longer a Monday to Friday, 9-5. It happens around family, and other commitments.
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We value and seek work that brings us joy, not that simply pays the bills
We work around our other commitments. To our families, to our health and to ourselves.
A PARTNERSHIP FIVE YEARS IN THE MAKING
By Your Side was set up by Lynne and Michelle whose paths crossed in January 2020 just before life as we all knew it was turned upside down.
Over the years that followed a partnership formed. They supported and cheered each other on through business, and life, challenges. Until, five years later, an idea blossomed. An idea that developed into By Your Side.
Read more about our story below…
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Lynne: At the start of 2020, the agency I was working for needed some admin support and I was tasked with finding us a Virtual Assistant. As a local option, I contacted Michelle about the work and she ticked all our boxes so we started working together. Unfortunately, a few weeks later, I was furloughed - and subsequently made redundant - and Michelle ended up picking up many of the tasks I’d been responsible for. Fast forward a couple more months, and Michelle provided me with a lifeline taking me on as an Associate for her VA business while I established and built a client base for my own business.
Michelle: Although we only worked together directly for a few months, there was clearly a spark. Lynne was always a phone call away, even when she was furloughed, talking me through tasks and filling in the gaps. It was clear we had similar work ethics and could work well together so it was a no-brainer for me to bring her on as an Associate. Then, as her business grew, our working relationship evolved to genuine friendship and we were cheerleaders for each other, supporting each other through the highs and lows of self-employment.
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Michelle: Working with Lynne has never been like it was when working with my other Associates. I am always confident when delegating tasks to her that she will understand what is being asked and deliver what my clients are looking for first time with minimal input from me, it is what makes working with Lynne a dream (I like to call us the dream team). We are like partners in crime, celebrating the wins, no matter how small they are, building each other up when we have a wobble and supporting each other through life’s inevitable lows. I really wanted to find a way to work together properly, in a collaborative way, rather than working for each other. Because, no matter how much I love being a Virtual Assistant, I still miss that one to one connection you get having a colleague.
Lynne: Being a sole trader is not for the faint hearted. So when Michelle suggested building a partnership, it sparked something in me. I intuitively knew that it was the right thing to do. We just needed to work out what. The process of working that out, throwing names and ideas around, provided further evidence that this was the right thing to do - not because we necessarily agreed on everything, but because we could see how well we worked together to reach our end goal. -
Michelle: We have such complimentary skill sets. Not just in the tasks we specialise in and enjoy doing (me: finance and VA, Lynne: HR and processes), but in the ways we work together and the skills we bring to building and growing our own business. We communicate amazingly well too, Lynne often knows what I am trying to say, before I even finish my sentence, and is normally starting the task and researching what is required before the call is ended! We also have this ability to balance each other out, asking the right questions and finding solutions together, I think that is our super power.
Lynne: Our work styles, skillsets and interests compliment each other so well. I often joke about how I love developing processes but have little interest in the day to day execution of them, whereas Michelle is much happier being given a process to follow and just getting on with it. I don’t understand her, but gosh do I appreciate her! And we’re genuine friends who have supported each other through a lot in recent years.
Michelle: I’m so glad our paths crossed all those years ago, it has made my sole trader journey so much less lonely and now I have a friend and a business partner who I trust implicitly.
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Lynne: Other than Michelle, my biggest cheerleaders are my hubby Nick and 8 year old daughter. In fact, she’s already talking about joining By Your Side and working with Mummy when she’s older!
Michelle: My husband Andy, who is a software developer (often pulled in to help with tech support when we need it) and son, Thomas. He’s just about to start secondary school and loves to be outside all the time, so a desk job is not for him, but he loves that the way I work as it means I can be there when he needs me. This has always been my driving force for being a virtually based business.
Our mission is to provide the processes and support that solopreneurs, small business owners and charity directors need to achieve their ambitions.
Outsource the admin you don’t have time or enthusiasm for to people who do.
Delegate the work you’re looking to get off your task list to people who specialise in it.
Bring in dedicated resource to support you with a specific project or one-off, or ad-hoc task.
If that sounds like something you’re looking for…