Starting a Virtual Assistant Business | 5 Tips to Start as a VA

What is a Virtual Assistant?

Often abbreviated as VA, a Virtual Assistant provides remote administrative, technical, or creative assistance to clients or businesses with personalised services tailored to the needs of their clients and their own career desires.

The ‘virtual’ in Virtual Assistant means that VA’s can work remotely from anywhere (with good WiFi!), and can balance clients in different countries and industries. A Virtual Assistant can have as many clients as they can efficiently and effectively service - whether they want to work full time hours or set up a profitable, and fun side-hustle!

Virtual assistant services are becoming increasingly popular, particularly with small business owners. And getting started requires no previous experience (just a proactive and enthusiastic mindset), making it a great fit for those just starting their careers as well as others who want to pivot to something new - from nursing and medical professions to bank managers or waiters.

What services can I offer as a Virtual Assistant?

One of the biggest benefits of starting a virtual assistant business, besides the remote working lifestyle, is the ability to customise your role. Virtual assistants can offer a variety of services, and it really is up to the individual to decide if they’d like to specialise/niche down or offer more general services. Becoming a virtual assistant enables you to create the business you wish - it should feel freeing, fun and flexible!

General Administrative Services

These are great services to have knowledge in and offer, especially as a new VA:

• Email / inbox management
• Calendar management and scheduling
• Customer service support
• Client management
• Basic invoicing / payment management

Business Marketing Services

• Social media management
• Social media graphics / content creation
• SEO / keyword research
• Blog content creation
• Podcast services
• Email marketing and newsletters
• Copywriting
• Events management / support
• Website updates / landing page support

Specialised Services

As a virtual assistant grows and learns, or if they have previous experience, these are some areas that are desirable for specialist support. These tasks often require more time, client trust, and continued learning:

• Website design
• Graphic Design
• Industry specific tasks
• Data input
• Client avatar research
• Lead generation
• Transcription and larger editing projects
• Brand growth 

Starting your Virtual Assistant Business in 5 easy steps

If you’re exploring the world of virtual assisting, it couldn’t be easier to get started! Here’s 5 super simple steps to get you going in order to begin your virtual assistant career.

1. Qualities of a great VA

As mentioned, there are no necessary prerequisites to becoming a virtual assistant. Whether this is a first career, or a change from a 15-year career in nursing, this field is open to everyone! There’s a few qualities that all great virtual assistants have:

• Organization and time management
• Professionalism and friendly outlook
• Knowledgeable and willing to learn
• Self-motivated and disciplined
• Computer literate and good writing skills

Think of this as becoming your future client’s wing-man or wing-woman! Yes, you’re there to support in daily/weekly tasks, but also to support your client - give them a boost when needed, encourage them, just generally be a kind human being who gets stuff done!

2. Services to offer

Deciding on what services you’d like to offer is a key step in getting your business off the ground. Most virtual assistants begin with general offerings because this gives them a wider client base to support. They may go on to specialise and niche down, or decide they like being able to offer a wide variety of services - it really is a personal choice and should be based on what lights you up!

Now, if you have no previous experience, and you’re unsure what skills you’d like to offer - that’s okay! Taking a training course can be really beneficial. Just like our Spring 2022 Alumni, Whitney, did [you can check out her experience at the top!]. This can give you the confidence to set up your own business knowing the latest technology and VA tools. You can learn as you go, upskill quickly and be on your way!

Once you’ve decided your services, you can prep these into a business proposal template. This is a great document to have so you can tailor your proposal and offerings to your client’s needs.

3. Decide your Brand Kit

Okay, this is the really fun part, especially for you creatives out there! Carve out some time to really sit down and decide the color palette, logos, fonts, and business name for your virtual assistant business. 

A business name should reflect your business identity. It could start simply with your name or something personal to you, but it should be easy to pronounce and read (fonts matter!).

Remember, logos are just a piece of the brand kit. Similar to a business name in terms of clarity, your logo needs to be clear to read and understand, paying special attention to fonts and color to ensure readability. Hint: yellow on white is really tricky!

Once you’ve decided on your business name and brand kit, you can choose to buy a website domain, create social media profiles, and begin to build your presence online. 

4. Invest in your setup

One appealing factor in becoming a virtual assistant is the low overhead cost. Because of the nature of remote working, there are a couple of non-negotiables we recommend investing in. The first is a reliable laptop. Think good storage, quick processing speeds, software capabilities, and user-friendly interfaces. Most laptops are lightweight and portable now, making them easy to take on the go. 

The second is a reliable smartphone. Similar to your laptop, a phone with enough storage, a great camera, and access to business related apps. It’s not necessary to have a separate business phone, but it is worth considering in order to keep your business and personal matters separate. 

The third is reliable WiFi. Picture this, you’re on a Zoom onboarding call and your potential client can only catch every other word because your connection is so poor. Or Google Drive shows you 1,285,361,208 hours to upload your client’s latest training video. Not the one. So whether it’s paying a little more for faster seeds or investing in a WiFi booster - don’t skimp on this one.

Our fourth non-negotiable is business insurance. Just do it. Don’t wait. Get yourself covered as soon as you are set up. Virtual assistants handle sensitive information, lots of data, etc. We hope nothing ever goes wrong with GDPR breaches or client dissatisfaction, but you never know. Find a plan that covers you internationally if you will be traveling, and just have the peace of mind that you can conduct your business as needed. 

Now, let’s talk about tools of the trade. Starting a VA business can be a bit like shopping for a new baby - there’s loads of options, more than you actually need, but the basics will be just fine to start with! It would take the rest of the blog to go over everything, but we have a few tools to get you started (all with free versions!)

Our top VA tools:

• Mailchimp | email marketing, landing pages, templates 
• Toggl  | time keeping and reporting
• Google Drive | document creation, storage and sharing
• Slack | dedicated workspace communication
• Zoom | meeting hosting (limited free version or upgrade from $14.99/£12.99 per month)
• Loom | create tutorials for your client for easy explanations and how-to’s (limited free version or upgrade from $12.50 per month)
• Holded | client invoicing (limited free version or upgrade from €7.50 per month)
• LastPass | secure password  storage and sharing

• Canva Pro free version available but we recommend buying Pro from $120/£99 per year | great for design, brand kit and content creation

5. Pricing and Finding Clients

Costs to begin and how to find clients are two of the most frequently asked questions we get. Before you begin your ideal client search, it is important to confidently set your rates. We can’t stress this highly enough, you are worthy to charge a fair rate! 

To give an example, we recommend our ROCKET VA™ Academy graduates begin at a starting rate of $30/£25 per hour. We know they are well equipped to begin work, and have the necessary tools and continued learning to support clients well. Depending on your country, or currency you are working in, do look at VA average hourly rates as this will give a good indication of where you can situate yourself within the market based on your experience/skill-level. 

Once you’ve decided on a starting hourly rate, you can begin to build your ideal client avatar. Think about the industries you’re interested in, the services you want to offer, and your capacity - then get networking! 

LinkedIn, Facebook groups, in-person networking events, and word of mouth are all great ways to begin finding clients. Begin to ask where business owners need support. Chances are you know a few small business owners already! When you’ve secured your first client, you can onboard and get a contract signed, and you’re on your way!

Remember, if you’re unsure where to begin, the ROCKET VA™ Academy is a great place to get some confidence, grow your skills, and learn about the latest industry trends as a virtual assistant.