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How would you describe your career? Incredible? Alright? Boring? When you wake up in the morning, are you pumped up and ready to hit the office – or ready to go back to sleep? When people ask you about your job, do your eyes light up? Or do you say, ‘Oh, I’m just a PA’?
I am definitely one of the lucky few who is on a high every time I go to work. My job? I’m the founder and MD of a PA training company.
Oddly enough, my career didn’t get off to a flying start. As a child I grew up in a religion that frowned upon education. Naturally this limited my career options. So, at the age of 15½ I was headhunted to be a cashier at my local Sainsbury’s. The job turned out to be a great training ground. I learned how to talk to customers, how to get on with managers and colleagues, and how to work as a team. After Sainsbury’s, there were numerous other jobs, some interesting, some less so, but each time I was steadily gaining more and more work experience. Eventually I gained enough office experience to become a PA. And it was only years later that I undertook a post-graduate degree in Business Studies.
After taking such a circuitous route to becoming an “accidental PA”, I somehow became an “accidental PA Trainer”! How did that happen? In short, I researched everything I could find on how to be a successful Personal Assistant – the technology, systems and processes, the behaviour and the mindset. If it related to being a PA, I read it.
Over the past 14 years, I’ve had the honour and the privilege of training PAs from over 4000 companies, and our graduates now work in more than 80 countries around the world. Although reading and research helped me to succeed in my career, what gave me that push to start my own business was actually a quote from a book. It said, ‘You are responsible for your career’. That was it. Within 3 months, I had resigned from my job, and my training company was born.
But I’ve never stopped learning. A few years ago, the world’s second largest hotel chain asked me to develop an Excel training course for their PAs. Due to my lack of Excel knowledge and my fear of spreadsheets, I brought in my IT trainer to conduct the session. I admit I felt disappointed in myself. I’d not even tried to learn the program or thought about running the course on my own. So I decided to get to grips with Excel – by watching over a 100 YouTube videos, and reading over 2300 pages from a huge number of “how to” books. The result? Not only have I now trained countless companies in Excel (as well as in Word and Outlook) but I’m also a certified Microsoft Expert!
Learning new skills is essential in keeping us engaged and moving forward in our career. But we can also learn to become more productive and efficient in our roles. We all need time away from work, but it can be increasingly difficult to take proper lunch breaks, or to leave the office on time each evening. These days, there are so many places to discover new time-saving ideas or different work strategies, and even find the help and support you need to create (and maintain) a good life/work balance.
Here are just a few suggestions:
Your learning curve and the progress you make in your career is all down to just one person: you. It’s a philosophy that was acknowledged when my company, Today’s PA, was named as the UK’s “Best PA Training Provider” four years running (having been voted for by thousands of PAs in the pa-assist.com Member’s Voice Awards).
Proof, if proof were needed, that you should never ever stop learning!
PAul Pennant,
MD and Principal Trainer
Today’s PA
