Having a consistent income source while living your life in an RV might be difficult, and you might be wondering whether you can run a business from your motorhome to support yourself while you travel. A virtual assistant business might be the perfect solution for your needs, and here I’ll show you how to make an RV life virtual assistant business plan.
A virtual assistant is a self-employed worker who provides a number of services to businesses on demand from a remote location. This business, being location independent it might be the perfect income source for you while you are living the RV life, and by following some simple rules you can make a business plan that will succeed.
Making a successful business plan to start a virtual assistant business is not a complex process. It would be best if you kept a few very simple things in mind when planning everything, and you’ll be set. Here I’ll give you a step by step explanation to make it all easy for you.
What Do You Need to Run A Virtual Assistant Business from An RV?
In terms of your workspace, you cannot have too much office equipment or inventory in your motorhome as it is already very cramped. The beauty of a virtual assistant business is that you need very little in terms of equipment.
You will need a computer for you to work on, make sure to get one as powerful as you can so that you can fulfill the needs of your clients more efficiently. Next, you will need a fast and reliable internet connection wherever you go, so investing in a satellite internet system is a good idea. You will also need to have the necessary software to provide your services.
Why Do You Need A Business Plan?
A business plan put simply, is a document that describes the plans for a business. A business plan of some sort is almost necessary for a startup to function properly.
It might seem like you do not need a business plan, and you should just start the business and then see where it goes. But that is not an approach you should take. There are many bits and pieces to string together before you start a business if you want to be successful.
Stringing together all these bits and pieces while also keeping your primary goal in focus is what a business plan helps you to do. Without a business plan, it is very easy to lose track of the things you need to get done and lose focus on the target you want to achieve with your virtual assistant business.
How Should Your Virtual Assistant Business Plan Be?
You do not need to create the most complex and elaborate business plan. Do not try to make business plans that are impractical and hard to follow and are just made to look impressive as a business plan. A good business plan needs to be easy to follow, concise, and straight to the point. Simplicity is the best choice in this case.
Before you start laying out your business plan on paper, let me tell you what your business plan needs to be.
Your business plan needs to be logical and as objective as possible. It would be best if you tried to get a clear idea of what your business might be able to achieve in a given amount of time realistically. If you do not set your goals practically, then you might as well not make a business plan at all.
Next, your business plan should serve as a guideline for your startup. You need to set goals and define how your work process would be among these pages so that later on when you are working through all of it, you know exactly what you are doing and exactly how far you have progressed.
Your plan is to start up a virtual assistant business in an RV. You might hire new employees in the future, or you might not. Whether you hire more employees or not, it is vital that your business plan communicates the purpose and vision of your business.
Your business plan needs to communicate the vision and purpose of the company for various reasons. It will keep you on a set path, it will help future possible employees in understanding what they do in the company, and it might even attract potential investors.
You need to keep all of these things in check if you want to create a virtual assistant business plan that will lead you towards success.
What to Do Before Starting to Make A Business Plan?
Before you start putting together a documented business plan you need to get a few things done. You need a bit more than a written plan to get your business started.
You need to get a few prerequisites in check before getting started with a written business plan. These include deciding on a name for your business, choosing your services and rates, figuring out the legalities, and developing your process of working.
I will guide you step by step on what to do and how to go about doing them to get started on your virtual assistant business.
Decide A Name
This is an obvious one, you want to start a virtual assistant business you need to decide on what it should be called.
The name of your virtual assistant business needs to be a simple and welcoming one. It needs to easily get across what you and your business is all about. Do not make it a complex.
But, do not get stuck on deciding a name and spend a bunch of time there either. Most of the time the first simple idea you have is enough to get you started.
What you need to do after deciding on the name is to try to secure a domain and social media usernames in that name. Your business is completely online and your online presence needs to be always up to date. A domain with your business name and social media accounts will help you connect more effectively with potential clients.
Choose Your Services and Rates
The most important thing to decide when starting a virtual assistant business is what you want to do and what your rates should be.
You can rely on the skills you already have to get started. Any skills you might want to acquire later on you can decide later on. To get started, stick with what you know and do not attempt to add services to your list that you won’t be able to reliably provide just yet.
After that, you need to decide on what your rates will be. It is an industry standard that virtual assistants charge by the hour. You should ideally decide on packages too for clients that might take your services frequently. By creating package plans you both help the client save money and ensure long-term income for yourself.
Virtual assistants usually make anywhere from 20 to 40 USD usually. Although some experienced virtual assistants charge upwards of 50 to 100 USD even. Practically speaking, your pricing should be low and competitive when you are just getting started so you get more clients easily.
Figure Out the Legalities
It is absolutely vital that what you do is done 100% legally and done with due process. You cannot leave anything for later that might you get in legal trouble. Clients will also be appealed if your paperwork is proper.
You need to register your business and fill up the necessary paperwork so your business is recognized by the government. You also need to get accounts in your business’ name, you cannot in any situation, use your personal accounts for company transactions. You also need to get a trademark so other people can not infringe on your brand.
Decide on Your Work Process
You have already decided on what you are going to do and what you are going to charge for it. What comes next is deciding how you want to do it.
You need to develop a streamlined process to help you manage various workloads from multiple clients easily. You need to decide on a schedule for both dealing with the clients and doing the work. It depends on your comfort in how you choose to divide your calendar and manage schedules.
Meeting with your clients and tracking how much time you’ve spent doing work for each client are going to be two major parts of your scheduling. You need to keep a clear track of the hours so your clients can know how much service time they have left whenever they ask.
If you end up having multiple employees you will also need to figure out how you will divide work among all your workers. You cannot afford to lose hours figuring it out when the work starts to come pouring in so sorting these things out beforehand is necessary.
If you have a process set up for yourself then you are ready. You can even use different scheduling, calendar, and workforce management applications to streamline these things.
Creating A Virtual Assistant Business Plan
Now that you have fulfilled the necessities you can get to creating a written business plan. A business plan is divided into multiple dedicated sections that explain the various parts of the company’s structure.
A traditionally structured virtual assistant business plan might have the following parts:
- Executive Summary
- Overview and Objective
- List of Services
- Market Analysis
- Sales and Marketing
- Personnel Plan
- Financial Plan
- Reach Out to Clients
I will explain the different parts that might be in your business plan. It is not set in stone that you need to keep these exact parts in your business plan but you can use this structure to create a business plan that works best for you.
Executive Summary
First of all your business plan will need an executive summary. An executive summary is a concise outline that communicates what the company’s purpose and goals are. An executive summary determines how the rest of the business plan will function.
A good executive summary needs to communicate certain elements effectively in a short length. It needs to describe what the company is supposed to be, what its potential and viability, does the market have an opportunity for the company or not, and what might the financial needs of the startup be.
Your executive summary needs to tighten the concept of your virtual assistant business. It needs to make sure that you know what the priorities of your company are. Finally, it needs to make the rest of the process of carving out a business plan easy.
Overview and Objective
In this step, you will plan out the details of your entire operation. The services you will be providing, the ways you will interact with your clients, what problems are you trying to address, and how your company will solve them for your customers; you will need to describe all of them in this section.
For this portion of the business plan, you can start by gathering all the details of all the parts of your virtual assistant business and start from there. In any other company or startup, this would also include office space, location details, inventory, and much else. But, in the case of a virtual assistant business, you do not have too much to sort out so it’s much easier here.
Once you have all the details of your business piled together you can start by condensing and summarizing the key points to create an elaborate Overview and Objective section.
List of Services
This section is exactly what it sounds like. This is in fact, the section of your business plan where you describe what services you will be providing to your clients.
As a virtual assistant business, the umbrella term for the services you will be providing is virtual assistance. Your company will be providing your customers with certain professional services. If you have been following along then you have already decided what these services will be and how much you will be charging for them.
What you need to do is explain those services in this section of your business plan, and then you need to explain why your company is unique in providing these services and why your clients might choose you over your competition. Competitive pricing, package plan, long term expertise, etc. anything can be a reason that makes your company unique.
Once you have the overview section done you can rest assured that you have the fundamentals of your business plan nailed down and you can move on to more technical parts of your virtual assistant business plan.
Market Analysis
Now that you have the basics of the business plans in order, you need to turn towards the market. No good business venture becomes successful without analyzing the market.
You are here because you want your business to be a virtual assistant business. This is important because you have figured out a part of the problem already, you know what goal you are targeting. You now need to figure out how the market is for this specific service.
The most important questions you need to ask yourself and try to answer in this section are, what demographics do you plan to target with your business? And who might your potential clients be?
You need to look at how the market for the specific services you provide as a virtual assistant business is. You need to figure out what sort of organizations and businesses might be in need of what you are providing, and then plan according to that.
The analysis part also needs to try to answer the question of how you would attract your target demographic. What might interest your potential clients to choose your services over other virtual assistant businesses providing the same or similar services? You are meant to figure out the answers to these questions in this portion of the business plan.
Sales And Marketing
You have analyzed the market, and now it is time to approach the market. The most obvious step to take in this regard is advertising. But, advertising is not all there is to sales and marketing, things like promotional materials and public relations also fall under this banner.
You need to make the necessary plans to do all of this in the sales and marketing section of your business plan. An elaborate marketing strategy can boost your business forward rapidly. You need to focus on putting a detailed marketing plan in this portion of the business plan.
In making a marketing strategy you need to always make your target demographic your primary focus and tailor your marketing towards their preferences. Consider what this group of people prefer and look for in a virtual assistant service.
Any market in the modern world is a competitive market, and because of that, you need to make sure your business can present a unique image of itself so that you can differentiate yourself.
Your sales and marketing section also needs to put together an evaluation of the competition. If you do not evaluate what your competitors are offering, you cannot begin to plan to get ahead of them. So, it is vital that you put the evaluation of your competitors in this section too.
Personnel Plan
You can begin your virtual assistant business with just yourself as the sole member and employee of your company. You might end up adding more employees in the future or you might not.
The plans you need to keep employees is what you will put in this section. What everyone’s role in the company will be, what their designations and work processes will be, and what amount they will get paid. All of these things you need to keep in this section of your business plan
Financial Plan
The last section of your business plan will include the assessment of the cost and profit of your virtual assistant business. A virtual assistant business has the advantage of not needing much startup cost at all so your financial plan does not need to be complex.
You can go ahead and calculate how much profit you will make in the next set period of time. This projection of cost and profit will help keep your business progress properly and let you know when you fall behind.
Reach Out to Clients
Your business plan is done and now you are ready to start your business. Go ahead and do that. You need to reach out to your clients and potential clients and start working. The more people you reach out to the better your chances of reaching your goals become.
Why A Virtual Assistant Business Might Be Perfect for Your RV Life?
A virtual assistant provides services to a client. It is an independent business. If you decide to become a virtual assistant and start a virtual assistant business you will not be employed by anyone rather be your own boss.
The most appealing part of a virtual assistant business is the location independent nature of it all. As you will be traveling everywhere in your RV and live like a modern age nomad, you will not need to go to a traditional office and do regular office hours. You can work from your motorhome and have a flexible work schedule that would fit in perfectly with your lifestyle.
A virtual assistant business does not require much startup cost at all. Additionally, you would not need to learn skills specific to a job but will rather be able to start a business with the skills you already have at your disposal.
Your traveling home can be your traveling office. The virtual assistant business is an appealing option for RVers everywhere because of the flexibility, independence along with a consistent income stream. If these factors seem like something that seems lucrative to you too then a virtual assistant business might be exactly what you are looking for.
What Are the Requirements for Being A Virtual Assistant?
First things first, let’s clear up what skills you might need to become a virtual assistant so that you understand how you would need to prepare yourself for your business.
A virtual assistant provides services to a business or an organization from a remote location. So, what services does a virtual assistant provide? They range anywhere from office management to data entry, from graphic design to social media management. Basically, any skill you already have you can offer as a service in your virtual assistant business.
So, that should ease your mind in the fact that you don’t need to go out and learn a bunch of things to start. You can start with what you know and later on learn more skills as you go. You can even earn while learning if your clients ask you to provide you a service you don’t have the skills for just yet.
However, you do need some technical proficiency in office applications such as those from the Google suite or Microsoft suite. You also need to be able to communicate well and write with accurate grammatical knowledge. Cloud storage platforms and communication applications are vital skills as these will be what connects you to your client.
You need to be able to multitask and manage your schedule properly. If you cannot handle all the requests your clients have for you while maintaining clear communication with all of them you will not be able to do well in your business.
What Issues Might You Face While Running A Virtual Assistant Business from an RV?
Even though a virtual assistant business is very suitable for someone living the RV life, it does not come without some caveats. Issues you need to keep in mind so you can be prepared for what is to come.
Power and connectivity will be among your primary issues. As you will be on the road almost all the time there will be no guarantee on power sources. If you run your devices with solar power you would need to make the most of daylight and start working at sunrise, which would make your schedule not as flexible as you would like it to be.
You can manage power by running a generator to work at night but if you are staying at RV campsites it will cause a problem for the other campers with the sound and you won’t be able to use that option regularly.
A fast and reliable internet connection is a must for running a virtual assistant business. If you do not have a good mobile satellite internet system you will not be able to manage. Public networks are just not reliable and available enough for your needs. So you need to keep that in mind
If you are ready to tackle these issues and move forward with starting your virtual assistant business plan then follow along to get started.
Conclusion
Thanks for sticking till the ending and reading our full guide on how to make an RV life virtual assistant business plan. Hope you succeed in this business venture from your lovely motorhome.