So, you’ve decided to take the leap and start your virtual assistant business, congrats! When I decided to take the leap and start my own Creative Virtual Assistant business (VA), whilst I knew it wasn’t going to be all fun and creative like designing logos and websites, I knew there would be some actual official things I would need to do…Professional adulting if you will.

Luckily my husband had set up his business, so I had his guidance. But it made me think, what if there was a nice, easy and simple to follow tick-list of what you needed to do, including in what order things needed to be done? This led me to kick off my blog with just that, a 7 step list of the things you need to set-up your virtual assistant business.

Small Disclaimer: This is all the steps I took to setup my private limited business, it may vary by business type on what you need to do, but this will hopefully give you a starting guide. I would recommend looking into anything additional if setting up anything other than a virtual assistant business.

Step 1 – Land on your VA name.

It sounds simple but this is an important step in the process. This name will form everything you do in the following steps, and it won’t be easy to change it. Make sure you’re 100% happy with your name before committing to any more steps!

Step 2 – Check online for name availability.

Now that you’ve chosen a name, it’s a good sense check to make sure that the name you want is available in the areas listed below. If it’s not then you might want to alter your name slightly so it’s available or be open to your online name not being exact. For example, ‘betruecreative’ wasn’t available on Instagram, I didn’t want to change my name so I was happy with an alternative (betruecreative_) which was available.

• Social media platforms (Instagram, TikTok etc…)
• Companies House – Check that the company name hasn’t already been used. Here is a useful link – https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company-name-availability
• Domains – See step 4.

Step 3 – Register your company with HMRC & Companies House.

It’s time to make your business official. To do this I used a company called ‘Rapid Formations‘. They have a few packages for company registration ranging from £2.99 up to £49.99. All of which require an additional fee of £50 on top for Companies House registration. I went for the privacy package which was £14.99 plus the £50 Companies House fee. I chose this as it included a London registered address which any official government mail etc. can be sent to. This makes your personal address more private. The first year of the address was included, after the first year this becomes chargeable.

Step 4 – Get your domain/s.

This is essentially what you want your website address to be. As you can imagine there are a lot of websites out there so your preferred name may not be available. That doesn’t mean to say it never will be, domains are renewed annually, so if that particular one isn’t renewed it might eventually become available, but you might have to wait a while.

Otherwise, perhaps see if an alternative is available. If you search for your preferred address, each website will show you the closest one available. For me I wanted .com and .co.uk with .com as the main address, but .co.uk as an alternative domain so if anyone was to go to that address it would automatically re-direct them to my primary .com. I bought my domains through cloudflare.com and to give you an idea on price, .com was $10.44 and .co.uk was $5.22, both of which are an annual price.

Step 5 – Set-up your Email.

There are a couple of options for email, for my sins I went with Microsoft as this meant I was able to get the whole Microsoft 365 suite. If you choose Microsoft see if they are offering a free trial as I managed to snag one for 30 days. After the free trial it costs me about £6 a month. This depends on how many users you have, the more you have the more it will cost. Once you’ve decided on your email provider you can then link your domain so your email address includes your business name e.g. steve@betruecreative.com.

Step 6 – Build your website.

Now the fun can begin! It’s time to start building your brand, and a big part of that is a website. You’re quite spoilt for choice on how/where to build your website. For me I narrowed my choices between Squarespace and Showit. I’d used Squarespace before so this was my go to, but I’d heard great things about Showit. To test both out I got free trials of both and started playing around with them. I found Showit gave me much more creative freedom…sold! If you also want to try out Showit, use this link and we both get a FREE month! 🥳

Step 7 – Bank account.

Sorry, one more bit of admin, and I’ve done it this way round on purpose. The reason I did this after I built my website was because the bank I wanted to use needed proof of business, of which they wanted a link to my website. Of course, if you have paying clients already then I’d bump this step up a bit. I chose to use Mettle by NatWest which is a business bank for sole traders and limited companies with up to 2 owners. The biggest selling point for Mettle was that (at the time of writing this) they offer a fully free account as well as free accountancy software through FreeAgent, and as someone who is not an accountant, this sounded great.

Whoo, you’ve got yourself a virtual assistant business!!

And that’s it, you’re ready to go! A few other things to consider for virtual assistants is ICO registration. This is if you’re going to be handling personal data. The other is indemnity insurance, which protects businesses and professionals from claims made by clients or third parties. (Last dull bit I promise)

You might also want to consider what other software you might need if you’re going into the more creative virtual assistant world. For example, I have the Adobe Creative Suite. I know I know you’re thinking that’s really expensive, and it’s not cheap, but keep an eye out for offers! I got a great offer on Black Friday and they often do other offers throughout the year so keep an eye out.

Hopefully this has helped is some way, and I wish you all the luck in starting your virtual assistant journey!

If you yourself, or know of anyone else who is after some VA help, or even if you need a hand in setting up your business, get in contact with me and we can see how I can support you. All my services can be found here.

Thanks for reading,
Steve @ Be True Creative.

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