Admin Made Easy is helping Business Startups Avoid the Rabbit Hole!

Lizie Lacy, Director, Admin Made Easy

IF you’re setting up a small business make sure to check out the fantastic newly launched Business Start Up package from Admin Made Easy. Designed to look after the interests of the small business owner it can be tailored to your individual commercial requirements, so you get it right first time and avoid the pitfalls!

With a background in legal HR and compliance, and being a natural and savvy marketeer, Lizie Lacy, Director of the Hull-based company, originally established her business in 2019, working in the evenings on top of her day job. She originally set out to provide vital, but cost effective, admin and HR support to small business owners far and near. However, as word spread and demand grew from satisfied clients, the company added a range of marketing packages to its portfolio and Lizie made the daunting move to leave her job and focus on the business full time.

With the aim of providing a tailored offering to suit any small business owner and flexible payment options, Lizie will work with you to create a bespoke solution if none of the standard packages are quite right. This has proven to be a recipe for success and, as the Admin Made Easy home page aptly puts it: “We are the admin assistance you can afford but cannot afford to be without”, she was clearly onto something and business boomed.

Despite this success, it was becoming clear that there was still a gap in the market for people who were starting out in business and finding it difficult to get the help they needed. Even Lizie, with her background found it incredibly scary and confusing to pinpoint all the essentials she needed - then the lightbulb moment occured and she knew she had the answer…
Lizie explains: “To begin with there’s so much ‘free’ information out there, but most of it is vague and doesn’t go into the detail you need to know. Websites only tell you so much, you click on a link to find out more and find yourself going down a digital rabbit hole, wasting a huge amount of valuable time! When I was looking to start my company, all I wanted was a simple list of things I needed - how each step would help and the consequences of not doing it, so I knew why it was
important.”

Frustratingly she says, you also had to contact different professionals for different specialisms as well (e.g., legal, financial and marketing, etc.) - a time consuming process that could end up costing you thousands of pounds to get it right! Lizie was lucky in that she’s developed a wealth of specialist contacts and was able to quickly and cost-effectively able to enlist the necessary support. But she was well aware that others may not be that lucky…

For that reason, Lizie is now excited to announce: “Admin Made Easy has launched a Business Start Up package which removes the stress and uncertainty of the process for the small business owner. You no longer need to pay separately for terms & conditions, financial advice, a web designer and even a business advisor - we give you all the essential tools to hit the ground running in one package for a one-off fee of only £2,250.”  Admin Made Easy’s existing customer Olivia, of Integrate Hearing, felt Lizie exceeds all her promises:

“Lizie has played a vital role in the expansion of my business since taking her on. Not only has she freed up a lot of my time, but she has helped me in areas of business development that I would not have even thought of myself. She is knowledgeable in multiple areas of business which sets her apart from the standard admin assistant. She is extremely efficient with all jobs
completed on time and at times organises me as well, working as my right hand woman. I cannot recommend her services enough and I urge anyone looking to outsource admin to take the leap with Lizie. I just wish I had found her sooner!”

Just some of the complex areas that Admin Made Easy advise on include the implications of being a limited or non-limited business, the legal requirements of paying yourself a salary and the need to be VAT registered - because not everyone does to start with! Lizie recounts a cautionary tale of one business owner who immediately registered for VAT only to discover that they didn’t have to and could earn up to £85k before doing so! Unfortunately they then still had to submit monthly nil VAT returns because they’d registered from the start and had to go through the time consuming and costly process of de-registration.

Another complex area is HR legislation and one that small businesses often don’t adhere to. For example submitting evidence that your employees can work in this country, creating legal contracts of employment, setting up mandatory pensions, health & safety and processes for grievance, disciplinary, sickness and dismissal are all minimum legal requirements, the list goes
on. You have a duty of care even if your employee is working in their own home.

When it comes to marketing, many new business owners naively see it as a luxury, or have no idea what it really entails. Most people are happy to invest in a website but don’t continually optimise and promote it, then wonder why it isn’t doing its job! To put it into perspective you would never print 10k flyers, hand out 100 and leave the other 9,900 in a cupboard, would you? But it equates to exactly the same thing. As a bare minimum, a domain name with a secure website and SEO (search engine optimisation) is crucial if you want your business to be visible to your customers.

Admin Made Easy’s rapid success story is even more impressive when you consider that, shortly after Lizie made the leap to leave her full time job and focus on the business full time, the world turned on its axis in January 2020 as Covid 19 hit and the result was the worst economic depression in 300 years. So, with thousands of firms going to the wall, the economy only just sprouting green shoots of recovery, how on earth did Lizie do it?

Well, this charismatic entrepreneur understands what it takes to build a business - as a new member of the Hull and Humber Chamber of Commerce, she’s incredibly hardworking and relentlessly ambitious with an unshakeable drive to achieve her future goals. More importantly she oozes positivity and is all about finding ways to get things done, rather than looking at why it won’t work. She’s also intuitive: she understands how business is evolving and working ‘smarter’. Maybe she had second sight but, way before the pandemic hit, she recognised that the way we work is changing dramatically, more and more businesses would start to operate remotely and outsource many of the activities that traditionally were once fulfilled in the office.

Lizie has a clear vision on how small businesses can operate in the future, as we no longer need to have office-based 9-5 admins in the traditional sense. Times are changing and as Lizie predicted, the pandemic has now proved beyond a doubt that we can work from home just as effectively - if not more so - than in the office. As our lifestyles become more about multi-tasking and juggling a non-stop hamster wheel, remote working brings a much needed flexibility that increases productivity levels in far less time. Administrative and marketing work can be performed outside traditional office hours leaving employers with the opportunity to use services like those offered by Admin Made Easy at the fraction of the cost of employing office-based staff.

Lizie is keen to point out that to some degree (and depending on the nature of the business) there will always be a need for staff in the office, but the point is that businesses now have more options. Staff can be expensive so a way of keeping better control on your cash flow could be to outsource some of the admin tasks to a remote service and simply pay for the work that’s delivered without the surplus extras. It’s a smarter way of working and helps small businesses and sole traders thrive in today’s aggressive marketplace.

Commerce, like nature, goes in cycles and today, this has never been more true. As we navigate our way out of the pandemic, we’re seeing a business renaissance: firms that have been able to adapt are thriving, while others have sprung up to take advantages of new opportunities that simply weren’t there before.

Lizie isn’t resting on her laurels either. Not content just to provide a secure future for herself and her family, she heard about the DWP Kickstart Scheme, immediately applied for a grant and was quickly accepted. The programme provides funding to create new jobs for 16 to 24 year olds on Universal Credit, who are at risk of long term unemployment.

The response is typical Lizie: “I’m proud to participate in the DWP Kickstart scheme and delighted to accept the grant funding” she says. “It’s not just important to me to be successful, as a business person I feel we all have a role to play in helping young people - they are our future after all. To think that I may play a part in changing someone’s life for the better is extremely humbling but also very exciting” Seems like the future is bright for Admin Made Easy with Lizie
Lacy in charge!

Don’t let your business get left behind - contact Lizie today to find out how she can help it grow.
Admin Made Easy’s Business Start Up package and full list of services are available at: https://adminmadeeasy.co.uk
Customer contacts and media enquiries to: Lizie Lacy, Director, Admin Made Easy.
Tel: 07749 094859 / 01482 658183. Email: lizie@adminmadeeasy.co.uk