Testimonials

Kurina is wonderful, so wonderful I almost don’t want to share her! But truly, Kurina has become an extension of my brain, often anticipating questions I’ll ask or things I’m worried about before I’ve had a chance to articulate them.

As a busy professional with a full plate, Kurina proactively and thoughtfully looks for ways in which she can minimize that plate so that I only need to focus on the important things. She remembers details – a casual preference you didn’t even know you had made, an offhand comment about something suddenly appears as an ongoing formatting change. If I mention just as a venting that I’m struggling with a project (big or small) that I haven’t even thought to delegate to Kurina, over the next few days she starts to send over resources or has asked team members for information or has put time on the calendar for a meeting, whatever is required to get that thing accomplished.

This is a gift, and working with Kurina is a gift for yourself and your organization. Highly recommend!

Stephanie Harris

Founder & CEO, PartnerCentric

Stephanie Harris

Founder & CEO, PartnerCentric

Stephanie runs one of the US’ leading affiliate marketing agencies and is an absolute powerhouse.

Not only is she a great leader, she’s also a busy mom of four young children and was remarkably doing it all without any support — step in Agent Knowles!

My role is to catch any of the many spinning plates before they drop. Alongside the usual inbox and diary management, I also run their executive partner programme and support the tracking of team KPIs.

Anticipating needs before they’re spoken, bringing structure to the chaos, and making sure Stephanie’s focus stays where it matters most is all part of the service.

Tom Dewhurst

Founder, Growth Division

Tom and his co-founder help startups scale at pace through tracked and targeted marketing channels.

Initially, I was brought on to support one of their client’s and then later down the line, I began supporting them in their business.

Having had little prior experience of the tools that were used within the business (Airtable, mini-extensions to mention a few), meant there was a steep learning curve for me – who doesn’t love a challenge! 

I love being able to give client’s peace of mind when handing over work, especially when it means I can learn new skills along the way!

Kurina is amazing. I’ve been working with her for over 5 years and she’s been instrumental to our business growth. 

I needed someone I could trust to handle a large part of the operations of Growth Division, setting up clients and making sure reporting runs smoothly. 

Anything I pass Kurina’s way gets handled efficiently and professionally. I can highly recommend her to other business owners looking to grow on a solid operational platform.

Testimonial

Tom Dewhurst

Founder, Growth Division

Kurina has been really invaluable in helping us to bring our large-scale internal events to life.

She’s organised, diligent, pragmatic and creative – and, as far as we’re concerned, a must-have member of the event management team. 

Would thoroughly recommend!

Testimonial

Stuart Sheppard

Head of Content, Seccl

Stuart Sheppard

Head of Content, Seccl

Seccl, an Investment Technology provider, needed some event management expertise to  support the delivery of their internal team conference.  

We delivered two great events in Bristol during 2022 and are already on the hunt for the next event’s venue.

Jaime Blakeley-Glover

Founder, Most Sustainable Workplace

Thanks so much for your support over the last few years with the business!

You have been an absolute superstar in helping to run and grow the business. To anyone else reading, I can’t recommend working with Kurina highly enough. She really takes the time to understand the business, is flexible, delivers everything quickly and to a high standard and is great to work with all round!

Jaime, a passionate sustainability consultant, was struggling to keep on top of his inbox and follow up with leads in a timely way.

I built a bespoke CRM in HubSpot, flagged incoming inbox actions, and refreshed some presentation decks, freeing him to focus on helping organizations work more sustainably.

 

Jaime Blakeley-Glover

Founder, Most Sustainable Workplace

Kurina has provided a safe extra pair of hands when we’ve needed additional resource.

She’s supported us with organising our internal events, managing our accounts Inbox, ensuring our CRM is well maintained…and many other admin tasks.

Her reliability and versatility made her an invaluable asset to our team.

Testimonial

Dominic Saunders

Co-Founder, Brightmile

Dominic Saunders

Co-Founder, Brightmile

Brightmile, a driver safety and sustainability platform, were looking for some admin support to help their busy sales team.

A little bit of HubSpot maintainence here, event management support there and a sprinkle of account management – this was a busy role with a great team.

Roanna Lynch

Founder, Scribe Writing

Roanna, an awesome content writer and LinkedIn Ghostwriter was getting bogged down managing deadlines.

With a little help from Trello and their power ups, time management quickly became a thing of the past!

Kurina has been an amazing support in running my business.

What I love about working with her is the breadth of tasks I can give to her and the intuition and skill she delivers them with.

It has freed up headspace that’s enabled me to focus on other things and take on more.

Testimonial

Roanna Lynch

Founder, Scribe Writing

Kurina is a key member of my team (a busy tech agency) in a business manager role.  She is calm under pressure and super organised – effectively co-ordinating communications between my developer team and our clients.

She works across all areas of the business is continually integrating best practices to improve our results.

She is a great support to me personally and her sense of humour is a bonus!

Testimonial

Alison Rothwell

Founder, WP Fiddly Bits

Alison Rothwell

Founder, WP Fiddly Bits

Alison leads a team of website developers who create and host fab websites for small businesses.  

With a growing client-base, she needed an experienced pair of hands to manage the incoming work, acting as the intermediary between the clients and developers.

As with any project work, ensuring all work is delivered on time and to the client’s satisfaction, is key.  Since my arrival, we’ve migrated from logging work on a spreadsheet to a project management tool – now it’s the fun game of embedding it within the team.

As a creative, Alison is continually thrashing new business ideas/ventures about and needed a starter/finisher mindset to collate, co-ordinate and action her creativity.

Stand up Agent Knowles!!


Dave Barton

Founder, tbc.wtf

Dave heads up an agency with a team of bad-ass copywriters that curate and create content for Challenger and Tech brands.

As with many creative brains, the administrative side of running a business wasn’t a key strength of his so he        enlisted my operational expertise.

We quickly whipped up some internal processes for managing the workflow, created templates for new/existing business comms and proposals. 

What started off as an ad hoc role, I now not only manage the admin side of things but act as a regular sounding board for the day-to-day decision making.

 

 

“Kurina  Knowles….what can I say? Equal parts ‘Operations Queen’ and ‘Process Empress’ – fused with business savvy, sound advice and superb support at every turn.

She’s great at getting the big and the small stuff done (and the small stuff that make the big stuff happen).  And on the rare occasion that she doesn’t know how to do something then, by Jove, she’ll make sure she does.  

I would heartily recommend her to any small business owner who needs help navigating the turbulent skies of entrepreneurship (in all of its various forms).

Plus, she’s a jolly decent human being; which is very important.”

Testimonial

Dave Barton

Founder, tbc.wtf

“Kurina has been instrumental to our growth journey.

A reliable, super-capable pair of hands, Kurina has helped us run events, project manage various initiatives and has ensure we operate efficiently.

It’s a pleasure working with her and look forward to continuing to find ways to do so in the future.

Testimonial

Lauren Stewart

Founder, Invigorate

Lauren Stewart

Founder, Invigorate

Lauren primarily engaged me to support Invigorate’s online events programme, which due to Covid slowed down.

As with all startups, the business continually evolves and I’m always on hand to evolve with the needs of the business.

With the title of Operations Manager, my role spanned the width of the business – from ensuring the efficiency of internal processes, QA’ing any development updates prior to going live, to maintaining the website.

After over a year of working together, Lauren had built a fantastic team, which meant my services no were no longer needed – the lifecycle of this VA was complete!

 

 

 

Kate Lloyd

Founder, Fitzwalls

Kate, an experienced photographer, was in need of a replacement VA to take over her social media channels.

It didn’t take long for Kate to note the improvement in service since I came on board, which is always great to hear!

Shortly after working together, Kate branched out into the world of abstract photography and decided to rebrand. 

With the rebrand, came the launch of a new website, which required my meticulous eye to ensure all products were loaded and listed consistently.

We now have additional brands to take to market and look I forward to building both new and existing brands.

 

“I have been working with Kurina for a short time, but her approach is so efficient and positive that I have made significant progress with the business since she joined.

Not just a social media expert, she serves as a sounding board when I need a fresh pair of eyes, and keeps me on track with the targets we have set ourselves.

She is also a pleasure to work with.

I used to regard myself as fairly competent in using technology, but this too has been enhanced with her influence.

I can completely recommend her as a virtual assistant, my only reservation being that I need her time too and hope not too many other people seize her as she is a real gem.”

Testimonial

Kate Lloyd

Founder, Fitzwalls

“Kurina provided critical support to our team as we were standing up a new sales process for a new product in a new industry.

Her experience was invaluable in ensuring that we got the set-up right and then her organisation and executional abilities were essential as our funnel grew.

I would highly recommend Kurina to any time-poor organisation in need of organisational and execution support.”

Testimonial

Scott Erwin

Founder and CEO, Hirehand

Scott Erwin

Founder and CEO, Hirehand

Like many in 2020, Scott needed to pivot his business in response to the ever-changing marketplace.

He needed support from someone with a customer-centric background to create and maintain their new sales process, as well as researching potential prospects.

In addition to this, I also used my eye for detail in proof-reading new sales collateral, as well as monitoring social media platforms. 

 

Franco de la Croix-Vaubois

Founder, Event Organisers Network (EON)

Franco, a highly successful Event Organiser in the South West needed to pivot his business as his events went from in-person to virtual.  

Over the previous few months, his workload had increased quite significantly and he needed support for an upcoming event, the Bristol Business Festival.  This was the first of it’s kind and we had to create, launch and deliver this in just 4 weeks.

With no processes in place, I quickly created templates for sponsorship and promotional use, promoted the event through newly created social channels and even made an appearance on the schedule as a presenter!

This was no mean feat even for any professional but it gave Franco the space he needed to create a great line-up of sponsors and presenters to wow the audience!!

“I needed someone that I could trust, understood events and was able to deliver work quickly, efficiently and professionally.

Kurina came recommended by 2 trusted colleagues of mine and she got stuck in, hitting the ground running, enabling me to deliver the festival to huge success.

Not being a big fan of process, copy writing or social media, Kurina took full charge of these 3 areas, freeing me up to drive the project, sales, partnerships and keep an eye on the BIG picture while Kurina and my team made things happen. 

I would highly recommend Kurina if you are planning large, complex events and the sooner you can involve her, the better all round. Fantastic work, great to work with and putting the hours needed to make it happen.

Kurina is a superstar.”

Testimonial

Franco de la Croix-Vaubois

Founder, Event Organisers Network (EON)