What Do You Need to Start a Virtual Assistant Business? (Must-Haves vs. What Can Wait)

What you need (Must-haves)

• A laptop

• One person who says yes

• Something in writing

• A way to get paid

• An email address

• A way to track time and money

• A rate

What you might want (Nice-to-haves)

• A separate bank account

• Invoicing software

• An e-signature tool

• An EIN

• A formal service agreement

What you don't need

• An LLC (not at the start)

• A website

• A logo or brand colors

• A course or a coach

• Ads

This is a really important question. If you are starting out, DO NOT make the same mistakes that I did! I didn't have a mentor or a coach. I was determined to make money from home so I could stay home with my son, and I was super committed to figuring this out. That doesn’t mean that I took the best route right at the beginning.

I truly believe that you can start a Virtual Assistant business that startup costs that can be so low that you can earn them back very quickly. This business opportunity is amazing fo rmultiple reasons, but one of them is that there are such little entry costs! I started with almost nothing.

Must-haves

You do need a laptop. I used a laptop that was definitely on its last leg… for a while. For the first twelve months of my business. I was sooo excited to buy my fancy new Macbook on the anniversary of launching my business, and I felt very proud of that. That was a big milestone for me!

You need one person who will say yes, one person you can provide one service for. (Don’t try to solve future problems, okay? Don’t get overwhelmed with thinking that you need a full blown strategy for attracting clients so you’ll have 10 by next year. Just take it one step at a time, friend).

You need something in writing. You do not have to have an extremely formal contract agreement if you do not want one. You just need something like an email saying, "Here are the services I'm going to provide. You're going to pay this much. Do you agree to this? " And they write back, "Yes, I agree to these terms.." I actually started with a formal contract, so I don't have an email version to show you. But if you go the email route, make sure it includes exactly what your services are, the total cost to the client, and when they need to pay you by.

You need a way to get paid. Venmo probably isn’t the best idea, so reserach your options. A personal Venmo account isn't meant for business. If you want to use Venmo, set up a business profile. I landed with Zoho, because for only a few licenses/clients, its’ free and it allows you to use Stripe payments. Check out my blog post on that here.

You need an email address. It does not have to be your own domain name. At this point in my business, I really care about having my own domain name. It legitamizes my business, makes me feel like a real professional. My email now is ashley@sunnydayvirtual.com, and that feels really fancy to me. But I started out with just my name + VA: ashleyyapva@gmail.com. It was completely free.

You need some sort of way to track time and money. I still track everything on a Google Sheet. Easy peasy, and it doesn’t cost anything, y’all!

Last, you need whatever rate you’re going charge. I have more info for you on that, so just click here to give that a read.

Nice-to-haves

It might be wise to have some of these other things I am about to list for you, but you don't absolutely have to have them to start your Virtual Assistant business.

You can open a separate bank account, so you have a separate place for your money and some set aside for taxes. It is just so much easier this way. It’ll be way less work for you, especially if you get audited at some point. (And if you have an LLC, keeping business and personal money separate also helps protect the liability shield.) Make sure to set aside at least 25% of what you make for taxes. Oh and by the way, "what you make" means your income minus your expenses. It's not all the money that you bring in; it's what's left over after your expenses. (That’s seriously ALL of the tax advice you’re going to get form me. Go hire a professional for any more insights into legal and taxes!) And speaking of expenses: Maybe you sing up for a Canva Pro account, because you think is absolutely necessary for you to provide services for your clients. But sign up for that and hand over yoru credit card ONLY AFTER you have talked with your client and asked if they can add you to theri Canva team. (Always ask to be added to their team instead of using their password. It protects you both, because most platforms won’t allowed shared logins) Exhaust all the free options, friend. WEr’e starting businesses that are profitable. We’re not jsut spending money for fun, okay!

You also might want to use invoicing software to look fancier, to have that formal "look at me, I'm really professional" feel. But again, that's a nice-to-have. You really can just make a Google Doc that says, "Here's your invoice," and send it their way.

If you want to be more formal, you’ll need some sort of e-signature tool. That's a nice-to-have. You don't need it to get started.

You can just start as a sole proprietor. You might want to go ahead and get a tax number, an Employer Identification Number (EIN). An EIN is free from the IRS, and you can apply online yourself. And similar to the invoice, if you want a formal service agreement to make things look really formal, that's also a nice-to-have, but you don't need it.

A word on the contract

Here's the scoop on how I made my service agreement contract. In month one, I paid money to a fancy online platform that helps people manage legal business entities like LLCs and corporations. I paid them to file my business for me and I paid for a contract template, which now I regret. But I can be gentle with myself, and remember that I was really nervous at the beginning that I was going to do something wrong. I knew I didn’t want to spend more than I needed, but I was woried! So instead of just going online and filling out the government form for the EIN myself, I paid the fancy people.

I tweaked their contract after a friend of a friend shared what a virtual assistant contract looked like from a VA she had hired before. But here’s the best thign I did: I had my friend who is an attorney look at my contract. The conversation went like this.

He looked at me confused (and concerned) and said, "Ashley, why do you have this contract? Why did you make this? I don't understand!"

And I said, "Well, because I need a formal agreement with my clients. That's just what you need to do when you have a business."

He pushed back: "But an email is binding. You don't need all of this legal language. Just use an email."

Being the stubborn person I can be, I stuck to my guns: "No, I really feel like having this contract sets the bar way up here, so my clients will act professionally. I want them to sign something using Docusign."

And he said, "Okay fine.” And he reviewed it fo rme.

After my attorney friend (sweet man, thank you!) reviewd it, he said “Okay please, make this so much shorter. Take these out. And change these parts I highlighted. If it's important to you, use it. But I'm telling you, you don't need it."

Don't-needs

You do not have to start an LLC right from the beginning. What an LLC does, compared to being a sole proprietor, is give you extra legal protections. I signed up from the beginning because, again, I didn't know what I was doing, and I was extremely aware of how much I didn’t know, so I wanted all the protections. I had this nightmare scenario that someone was going to get angry and sue me. (which honestly, simply having an LLC wouldn’t keep that from still being a terrible experience). If you want an LLC, here’s what you do instead: Start with just your tax number and start doing work for someone. Then, three or four months in, once you have some cash, go ahead and fill out hte forms and pay the fee to get a formal LLC established. There's nothing wrong with that!

Please don't pay for a website. You know waht I wanted to spend all my time and energy on at teh beginnig fo the school year in those teacher workdays, when I actually got 2 hours to myself between 19 professional devleompent meetings? (Maybe this was just me, or maybe it's just the younger elementary teachers in the room?) I wanted to decorate my classroom. I wanted to make it beautiful and make my hands feel productive and see something visible that I oculd look at as proof and say “yes, it’s going to be a great year.” But you know what was the ACTUAL work I needed to do? Getting into the curriculum and planning my first week of lessons. So hear me clearly: Pikcing bardn colors and Designing your logo and creatg a website is just like this. Don't decorate the classroom before you meet the kids.

Here’s a funny one, because I hope to sell a course someday. But hear me out: You don't need to take a course. You don't need any formal coaching. And you definitely don't need to pay for advertisements. Those are things that would just be a waste of money!

You can do this. You don't need as much as you might have imagined. You're so close to having everything you need to start, maybe even next month!

Here’s your next step: Take my free quiz to figure out which services fit you best.