This is a Virtual Assistant case study and interview with Charlotte Souber – known to her friends as Soubs. She lives in New Haw in Surrey with her young son and partner and set up her Virtual Assistant business Hour 25 in September 2016. Charlotte has recently taken on four employees and gone from a solo operation to a VA agency.

This is a Virtual Assistant case study and interview with Mum of three, Shirley Cottam. Based in Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, Shirley set up her business, Virtual Office Box after being made redundant whilst on maternity leave so she could spend more time with her ten-year-old daughter and seven-year-old twins.

This is a Virtual Assistant case study and interview with Sarah Liddle. Providing small businesses with tech and admin support, Sarah lives with her husband, a flock of sheep and a terrier called Henry on a smallholding on the Staffordshire / Derbyshire border and has been running her VA business The Lady in the Shed since April 2016.

After working for the same company for 13 years and then being overlooked for a well-deserved promotion, Jo Lewis decided she’d had enough. Working overtime with very little praise and appreciation, Jo had no time to spend with her friends or family, she was exhausted and her self esteem was really low. So she decided to change things.

After being made redundant, Laura Coyle didn’t want to go back to working for someone else and she wanted a working life that would reduce her stress levels and fit around her three young children. She didn’t want to waste her redundancy money so she decided to use it to set up her own Virtual Assistant business. 

Emma Conway-Hyde wanted more from her life. She had become disillusioned with working in an office environment, was finding the commute hard, office politics harder and had become very unhappy. Emma couldn’t bear the thought of being in the same situation in 30 years’ time so she decided to set up her own Virtual Assistant business instead.

Although Jan Baber loved her job, she wanted to find out what her full potential was and if she could actually reach it. Jan knew that she was never going to make the sort of money she wanted by working for somebody else, and because she also wanted more quality time at home as well as more money, Jan decided to set up her own Virtual Assistant business.

This is a Virtual Assistant case study and interview with Kathryn Hall. Kathryn runs My Virtual Sidekick, is based in Shoreham in Sussex and has been providing admin support and transcription services to creative women since 2011. This is the story of how she became a VA.