Alexis Schomer on How Their UGC Management Company and VA Service is Second To None

In this podcast, Alexis Schomer discusses how she co-founded Your Startup Operations with Jenna after they met at a women's entrepreneurship event and bonded over their shared love of motorcycles. 

Their business provides virtual assistant services with a focus on creating comprehensive SOPs for small businesses, particularly in the home services, entertainment, and financial sectors. They also offer influencer marketing services that specialize in product trade collaborations, differentiating themselves through their hands-on approach to training, quality assurance, and building direct relationships between brands and creators.

How Alexis and Jenna Met

• Connected at a women's entrepreneurship dinner event called "Empower Her" hosted by mutual friend Melissa
• Instant connection due to similar personalities and interests
• Both entrepreneurs with separate businesses initially (Alexis ran a marketing agency, Jenna had an ops agency)
• Bonded over shared interests including motorcycle riding in LA
• Maintained friendship for several years before business partnership

Business Evolution

• Met again while judging a startup competition at CSUN
• Alexis wanted to transition into operations; Jenna was looking for an ops manager
• Alexis began shadowing Jenna, eventually taking over completely during Jenna's pregnancy
• Doubled revenue in her first year, leading to formal partnership
• Despite outside advice, both felt the partnership was the right move

YSO Services

1. Virtual Assistant (VA) Services:
   • Administrative and operational support for small businesses
   • Focus on process development and SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures)
   • VA management, training, and quality assurance
   • Client niches include home services businesses, entertainment industry, and financial services
2. Influencer/UGC Management:
   • Product trade collaborations for direct-to-consumer brands
   • Alternative to traditional influencer agencies
   • Direct relationship building between brands and creators
   • Specializes in finding influencers willing to create content for free products

Unique Value Proposition

• Business built almost entirely through referrals and word-of-mouth
• Creation of comprehensive SOPs as part of VA services
• Evolution of SOP approach: from documents with screenshots to task management systems
• Three-month onboarding process for new VA relationships
• US-based founders with entrepreneurial experience
• Consider themselves partners to small businesses, not just service providers
• Building community with clients

Business Growth Plans

• 2025 designated as "year of growth"
• Plans to develop more intentional "power partner" relationships
• Looking to increase PR and marketing efforts
• Exploring VA services for marketing agencies
• Testing AI tools while training team to use AI for efficiency

Contact Information

• Website: yourstartupoperations.com
• Can also connect with Alexis on LinkedIn

Transcript

Rob Pene (00:01.451)

Alrighty, welcome everyone. I'm Rob and this is Alexis and she's cool. Alexis Schomer is one of the founders for your startup operations and mutual friend Jenna. Jenna is the other founder. Jenna's super awesome. I remember back in the day when she was starting her entrepreneur journey.

Alexis (00:08.492)

Sure.

Rob Pene (00:30.367)

with a beatbox. So it was an actual physical thing, the whole China, all that stuff. to see her go from there all the way to here has been really, really cool to witness, but also to hear her talk about having a really solid partner in yourself that helps her to feel good about this business and where you guys are going. So.

Thank you for joining. I'm excited to hear a little bit more about how the business started, how you guys met and what you guys are actually doing. Cool. Appreciate you.

Alexis (01:04.44)

Excited to share. really appreciate you having me on the podcast and love how much you already know about Jenna and the business. And yeah, I'm excited to dive, dive a little bit deeper.

Rob Pene (01:13.993)

Yeah, so how did you guys meet?

Alexis (01:16.334)

So we met through a women's entrepreneurship event. Our mutual friend of ours, Melissa, she was hosting an Empower Her event. So it was actually a small dinner with I think 10 or 12 female entrepreneurs. and I happened to sit next to each other and we really hit it off. We had an instant connection, very similar personalities. We were both kind of starting our own businesses. We both love talking about.

We were very open talking about finances and profit and money. and we both ride motorcycles and live in LA. So immediately became friends for a few years and just, yeah, we hung out as friends. We went riding. We kind of were alongside each other's journeys doing our own agencies. So I was running my own marketing agency. Jenna had just started your, your thrive operations and ops agency. And, yeah, that's, that's kind of like the initial story of how we met.

And I can go further into like how it turned into what it is today. Should I just keep sharing?

Rob Pene (02:16.517)

Yeah, I'm really curious about the motorcycle thing. You guys bonded over motorcycles. That's awesome.

Alexis (02:26.882)

Well, I have not met another female, especially an entrepreneur that rides. we, so yeah, we went for some rides while we both lived in LA and it was awesome.

Rob Pene (02:37.547)

Did you, was that a high school thing or like, did it happen after or was it before? That's really interesting.

Alexis (02:44.922)

I got my license when I turned 21. So it was after high school, but I grew up kind of always, you know, riding little pocket rockets, motor scooters. so I was always in that realm of adventure and then I just wanted to get a motorcycle and I made it happen.

Rob Pene (03:05.182)

You know, I think that that should be part of your story that gets marketed. I really do. yeah, because what that does is it speaks about the resilience. It speaks about there's a certain aggression, know, like boldness, bravery that comes with riding a motorcycle and then the independence, the freedom. I think there's something there that will help to really position you guys. But

Alexis (03:08.958)

That's funny. Yeah.

Rob Pene (03:33.995)

It's a memorable story that when people think operations or something, and they'll think of the two girls. Yeah.

Alexis (03:42.901)

I like that. I mean, it is our story. We just haven't really talked about that professionally.

Rob Pene (03:48.841)

Yeah, I think it should. mean, because I'm reading your website and it's like, okay, cool. Administrative support, expertise, forms, solid form, blah, blah, blah. That's the same, like nothing different, but the motorcycle? man. With the imagery, dude, that could skyrocket the brand to a whole nother level. think so.

Alexis (03:54.424)

Yeah.

Alexis (04:11.436)

Okay, looks like we need another photo shoot with our motorcycles this time.

Rob Pene (04:14.857)

Yeah, because really, it describes you. So not only did you bond over that, you guys had similar interests and personalities per se on how you approach business. it sounds like you guys were open, were bold enough to share the finances, the numbers, profit, loss, all that stuff, which is uncommon. A lot of people, try to hold back a little bit. So dude, that bike,

Alexis (04:24.419)

Yeah.

Alexis (04:35.17)

Yeah.

Rob Pene (04:44.263)

I don't know, there's something to it. I really think so. Okay, now with that being said, how would you differentiate yourself from your competitors? First of all, what is it that you guys do? know Jenna's the ops queen and then you've got the marketing, but your business is slightly different.

Alexis (05:00.398)

Yeah. So I'll continue the story after we met and became friends. We both were judging a startup competition at CSUN. And at this point in time, I was really looking to get more into operations. was kind of a little bit over the marketing and wanted just a different career path. So I expressed this to Jenna. And at the same time, she's like, oh my gosh, I am looking to hire an ops manager and you'd be perfect. So we...

You know, we danced around this idea for a few months. I slowly started to shadow her, get a feel for her business. And it really was like the perfect role for me. Ops, especially in the virtual assistant world is the intersection of two of my favorite things, teaching and business. So with the virtual assistants, there's a lot of teaching required in terms of like managing a team, managing onboarding training. So I love, I love teaching and I love operations and business. So it was really like a great.

entry point for me to get into this world. But because of my 10 years in marketing, that side of my business followed. So now we kind of combined the businesses slightly. We do, we focus mainly on virtual assistants that do administrative and operational work. And then we also have the marketing arm. We do have a full in-house marketing team and we do kind of like full service agency, but what we're really, the service that makes us very unique and that we're looking to grow.

is really our influencer and UGC management service for direct to consumer brands. So if I was just going to talk about two things that make us different, one would be the virtual assistant piece, and we can probably focus most of the combo on that. And then also product trade collaborations for brands to get really great content without having to pay high influencer fees or influencer agencies to manage transactional contracts.

Rob Pene (06:51.115)

I know with e-comm, obviously, and UGC just exploding, it gets harder and harder to manage your creators. So you guys help with that process on identifying and managing them and...

Alexis (06:59.758)

Mm-hmm.

Alexis (07:04.652)

Yeah.

Yep. And, and I like to consider myself like an anti-agency because I come from the brand side. I was the marketing manager for a direct consumer brand and I never found the right agency that was like on it. They're just too expensive. Everything's transactional. There's no really relationship building unless you go direct to the creators. So that's what we offer. We don't work with, any type of like AI to like source and

these, you know, all of these systems, they have to pay thousands of dollars to tap into their creator networks. We go direct, like manually through the brand's Instagram accounts, through direct emails to the brand. So that we want to build a relationship between the brand and the influencer, not some agency in the middle. So that's how we're really different. And we also specialize in product trades, meaning you don't have to pay the creators. Like we find the ones that are either maybe willing, like they love the product enough, they're willing to do it for free.

or maybe they're a little bit smaller, micro influencers are looking to build their creator portfolio. It does take a lot more work to find influencers willing to create content for free, but that's our specialty. It's been working and we have multiple clients now on this service.

Rob Pene (08:15.519)

And then once you have them there, you identify other parts of their business that could be optimized with the virtual assistant.

Alexis (08:23.89)

we've, I feel like the clientele is a little bit different from the VA client and the influencer client. So on the VA client side, a lot of our, a lot of our clients are small businesses, mostly service based businesses where either they're providing like a home service, like electrician or landscaping. we also have clients in the entertainment business.

Rob Pene (08:28.555)

Okay.

Alexis (08:46.06)

like corporate DJs, wedding planners, event, like any type of event that needs someone like a virtual assistant that will do their invoicing, calendar management, like helping prep for the event. And then the third category that we're seeing a few repeat clients in is finance. in life insurance agents, financial planners, you know, they need a virtual assistant to help with their calendar management and their annual reviews and things like that. So.

That side of the business is a little bit smaller where, I mean, like the client is a little bit smaller and not necessarily a direct consumer brand. And their virtual assistant is really like back office admin helping like run their business behind the scenes.

Rob Pene (09:27.531)

How do people find you guys on the VA side and then also on the UGC side?

Alexis (09:33.592)

Well, to date, our business has been referral slash word of mouth. Yeah, it's been, we've built it to where it is just from our networks, our clients referring other clients. We are starting to want to look at other methods of getting, putting ourselves out there. So this is actually the first podcast that I've ever done that the, know, on behalf of the company or even in a lot, like just individually and in many years.

Rob Pene (09:37.707)

That's good.

Alexis (09:56.706)

So we're looking to put ourselves out there a little bit more, get out there on social media, start writing some more blogs, newsletters, things like that. But we're just in the early stages because yeah, we've been so busy with our referrals that it's kept us busy the whole time.

Rob Pene (10:11.339)

Yeah, you know, I know a lot of people talk about scalability and how referrals and word of mouth is non-scalable. So I'm on the flip side. I totally disagree. You can scale with referrals and word of mouth if you have a system and a process around that that's repeatable, that you can cycle through every 30 days. So it sounds like you guys are doing great and you might just wanna add more fuel to that fire, man. That's cool.

Alexis (10:27.15)

Yeah.

Alexis (10:35.692)

Yeah, and that's something we've talked about also. We're like, you know, this works really well. People like referring. So why don't we just double down and figure out like better referral systems and, and like, like you said, a repeatable process. We haven't done that yet. Everything just kind of an organic and just come our way naturally. but we are looking to build also some more intentional relationships. I like to call them power partners with other, other professionals that have a same client, but they're not competitive. So for example,

Rob Pene (10:55.957)

Yep.

Alexis (11:05.234)

One of the other services we offer kind of on the virtual assistant side is bookkeeping. So we have a really great CPA power partner where share clientele. We don't compete because he's a CPA that doesn't offer bookkeeping and we're a bookkeeper that doesn't offer tax services. So relationships like that we're looking to develop with strategic partners that we also want to refer them business to.

Rob Pene (11:27.445)

Nice, nice, nice.

Back to you and Jenna. When did you guys decide that, you're great, but I really need your help to be like a co-founder, like my partner partner? How did that conversation happen?

Alexis (11:44.408)

Yeah.

So from the beginning, think we, you know, because of my personality, we're both entrepreneurs. Like I've started in multiple businesses. So it's just in my nature to be a co-founder. So from day one, even though I was starting as just ops manager, we both had the long-term vision that I would become partner. So we, you know, we started with like, okay, let's start, let's start here and see where it goes. But halfway through my first year, Jenna became pregnant.

Rob Pene (12:06.795)

Mmm.

Alexis (12:17.67)

And I had to completely take over the business by myself. So this kind of like really pushed, like I would say it really tested our, our ability to work together and trust each other. And also my ability to run the entire business alone. So we then went into like, okay, well, let's get Alexis to a point where she can operate the business. And I think what really differentiates like just being an ops manager versus a partner is also the growth and bringing in new business. So.

When in my first year working with YSO, I doubled the revenue essentially from what I was able to bring in like my sales and marketing. So after Jenna came back, we just discussed like, you know, is this something we both want? Are we, are we happy with the partnership? And we spent a lot of, a lot of time figuring out how to make it work for us and talking through all the scenarios. But yeah, I think it was, it was just a no brainer and you know, I felt it in my gut the whole time. And so did Jenna.

Rob Pene (13:15.199)

Hmm.

Alexis (13:16.246)

And regardless of sometimes outside voices and advice that we've gotten, we knew that it was the right thing for us to do and it's been going really well. yeah, I mean, I'm really like grateful and happy to be where I am with her in this business.

Rob Pene (13:30.941)

Yeah. Now do you guys use your own VAs for your business too?

Alexis (13:35.086)

That's what we're a priority we're setting for ourselves for this year. Um, know, we have like almost 20 on the team and we're like, wait, how many of these are our work for us? So we've been so focused on servicing the client accounts and we really haven't utilized like a lot of our team for internal work. But now that we're looking to grow like 2025 is our year of growth. So we are prioritizing having more support as internal YSO to help grow the business.

Rob Pene (13:44.041)

Yeah.

Rob Pene (14:03.305)

Nice. Which one do you prefer better in terms of a fun work environment, the VA clients or the UGC Creator clients?

Alexis (14:14.06)

I guess it depends on your definition of know, it's, it's funny because usually people that are really ops minded are not creatives and vice versa. I feel like I'm just for some reason like both. So I love the structure of the ops side and I love, you know, working with a business owner, figuring out their processes, like process mapping, creating an SOP training. I love the structure of that and how it's kind of like repeatable.

Rob Pene (14:15.753)

You say,

Rob Pene (14:30.377)

Hmm.

Alexis (14:41.772)

And then I also love the creative side of UGC where, you know, there's not a one size fits all. And it really is like every creator will have a different style and a different approach. So I would say, yeah, it depends on my mood of the day. You know, sometimes I'm more in the mood for the creative side. Sometimes I'm more in the mood for structure and process. But yeah, it just depends on your definition of fun.

Rob Pene (15:03.049)

Yeah, the question I had, man, I just lost it. gosh, it had something to do with the UGC creators. It'll come back to me. It'll come back to me. For VAs, here it is. No, SOPs. So are your SOPs like drawn out documents with screenshots of images or are they loom videos and a series of loom videos?

Or are they checklists with the shortest? Like how does an SOP help outside of, okay, you've got a operating procedure, but more than that, how does it help your VA clients?

Alexis (15:45.964)

Yeah, we really evolved this process. to answer your question, all of the above, we started with long documents that have everything in it. So it's, can go in there and search whatever you're looking for, and it should give you a step by step. If it's done properly, it should also have a video tutorial and screenshots. So it should have all of that within the document we've now evolved. And we found that the phase two of a really good SOP is having like a checklist to-do list kind of process. So.

We now build our SOPs on ClickUp or on client systems. So for example, for a virtual assistant, let's say they have a weekly task of reviewing a calendar and creating any invoices that need to be made from projects that were done that week. We will build this out in ClickUp now where it's a recurring weekly task every Friday that has all the subtasks. And when you click into each task, it has all of the instructions in there.

So it's like the best of both worlds. It's more automated. It has everything in one place. And it reminds you of what you have to do with the step-by-step of how to do it. This system is so important, especially for growing businesses because there's going to be client turnover, there's going to be VA turnover. As you grow, you might need more people in the role. You might need three VAs for the same job as you have, as your business triples. So having this kind of system where you can just

you know, duplicate it and assign it to someone else rather than having to like fully retrain because everything's already on place. So we've evolved through all of the options that you like that you stated, like an SOP, videos, looms, checklists. And now we've kind of put it all together in like the best of both worlds kind of system.

Rob Pene (17:31.231)

Wow, wow, think that's just that service in and of itself could be extremely valuable. Yeah.

Alexis (17:36.79)

Yeah, I mean, we're finding that this is like really the missing piece of what businesses don't have. And a lot of time business owners, especially like smaller entrepreneurs, they don't understand that they need the processes first and the systems first and the people second. So we actually include this in our service, like free of charge, where the first three months we work really closely with the business owner to understand their processes.

We work really closely with the VA to train them and we actually build these SOPs and systems for them that are scalable and repeatable. So it is like something that we just include in our service and that's a huge differentiator from other VA agencies, especially having like the ops expertise that Jenna and I have and being able to come into any business, work with the business owner, understand it and then train on it. Like that is what makes us so different from everyone else.

Rob Pene (18:28.181)

From your experience, what types of businesses lack really strong SOPs that you guys could actually come in and, man, it's easy, we got this, we could do this.

Alexis (18:37.998)

Mm hmm. Yeah. A lot of, like I said, solopreneurs, smaller businesses, like once you get, you know, once you grow and you have hundreds of employees, having those SOPs is kind of like part of that growth. But the gap is really like the entrepreneur that is, you know, finally making a decent revenue. So I would say businesses that are making like between 500 K to like three to five million in revenue, they might have a team size between like one to 10.

and they probably don't have clear documentation or they have something that's like good enough for them to remember their steps, but probably not good enough to use as training material for others. like types of businesses, the trends are, know, in home services, we're finding a lot of similarities of the type of work that they need help with. So whether that's construction, electrician, like plumbing, like any type of home service where

Rob Pene (19:15.082)

Thank you.

Hmm.

Alexis (19:35.35)

You go and do job walks, need invoices, you have projects to manage. They take photos on site. Like there's customer followups. A lot of these types of things are operationally similar and these, you know, they can be like, that's where we're finding a lot of need is, is home service businesses that need like office slash admin support.

Rob Pene (19:56.715)

Wow, so, and you can speak to that niche because you've done a lot in it and okay, you've got some case studies. that's good. That's good. Okay. So, wow. So you should be on all these home services podcasts and stuff then.

Alexis (20:04.706)

Yeah.

Alexis (20:13.388)

I know. mean, yeah, like I said, we haven't really done any PR or like out, like any type of marketing like that, but we, this niche kind of actually found us funny enough. And, I think we're, we're like, okay, like we're seeing this work really well. There's trends. have multiple clients in this space. Like maybe we should go after this niche a little bit more.

Rob Pene (20:33.333)

So it's not necessarily VA, it's actually your company building the SOPs, using VAs.

Alexis (20:38.742)

Yeah, Yep, and we we haven't even like marketed that as a service. We just consider that part of the VA service because it's necessary for success. Yeah.

Rob Pene (20:47.753)

Right. Now, are the SOPs for the VA or are the SOPs for the business in general? Like, I guess you did mention it's for job walks, estimators.

Alexis (20:58.486)

Yeah, it's based on what the VA will be doing. So we're not really, we're not creating SOPs beyond that. Like, I'm not going to go tell the electrician how to do his job walk. But I will have an SOP like once a job walk is done, this is your responsibility. You have to create an estimate, read the notes, get the photos, like, there's a lot of steps, you know, after that. So it's based on what the VA tasks will be. But it's the business's SOP, because they're going to need that process, whether they're like

Rob Pene (21:02.955)

Oh, I gotcha.

Rob Pene (21:21.813)

Okay.

Alexis (21:27.575)

they want to review the process and say, hey, the VA is missing a step or we want to add a new step. It's the business's process, but it's for someone's specific job.

Rob Pene (21:36.811)

Yeah, for the VA. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm seeing it. I'm seeing it. Yeah. Cause I do see the value in going in and just cleaning house and building the businesses, SOPs, based on what they do using your skillset and your structures and stuff. Your skills. Yeah.

Alexis (21:40.343)

Mm-hmm.

Alexis (21:53.646)

Yeah, I mean, we're learning like where the gaps are. And another big gap typically is businesses like that don't really have a CRM. So we've also set up CRMs that has made everyone's lives easier in terms of tracking management, that kind of stuff. But the other, like I would say the last big piece that's really important for virtual assistants is the management, is the onboarding and management. So, you you can have the best SOP in the world. You can find a good VA.

But you also need to quality assure them, you know, everyone in a new job needs training time. It needs an onboarding period. So business owners are typically like too busy or don't have the time or don't have the patience to want to quality assure, you know, train and any, like I said, it doesn't matter what role it is. Like most people need some type of training and feedback. So that's the other piece that we provide in that, in the three month onboarding is we're quality assuring the work. We are making sure that the VA like

is learning as they go and that the outcome is exactly what the client wanted, if not exceeding their expectations.

Rob Pene (22:57.833)

Yeah, that's good. It's exciting. It's exciting to hear. Yeah.

Alexis (23:01.742)

Yeah, and that's, you know, that's the fun part about our business is that we get to work with so many other businesses and other entrepreneurs and learn their processes and systems and also help them improve them and make them more efficient.

Rob Pene (23:13.161)

Yeah. Yeah. Is there one particular niche that you guys have a goal to kind of infiltrate that you don't have as a client yet, or you're going to try to stick to who you guys have already and then go deeper?

Alexis (23:26.88)

Well, that's a great question. We've mostly been focusing on what we've already done, have the experience in and the skill sets for. I would say one that I would love to explore because of my background would be VAs for marketing agencies. because I've built my own in-house team, I know how to train people. I would love to explore that, like other agencies that need virtual assistants for SEO work or social media or email marketing.

Rob Pene (23:41.299)

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Alexis (23:54.542)

I'm uniquely qualified to help train that kind of VA as well. yeah, so that would be, I guess, a niche or area that would be nice to explore.

Rob Pene (23:58.655)

Mm-hmm.

Rob Pene (24:04.339)

Yeah. Last question. I'm curious. What are your thoughts on AI and taking over and running tasks with with agents and bots and stuff?

Alexis (24:12.864)

AI is fascinating. We have made it a company wide goal for everyone to be learning and utilizing AI. We're testing out like almost like we're testing out any new tool we can find that's supposed to VAs and do the job. It's still we haven't found one that's like good enough to replace a person yet. And you know AI like chat, GPT operator and all these, you know, even the expensive ones. We're testing them all out and some of them are cool, but

There's still gaps there and they can't, yeah, they can't, they still can't replace humans, but we're training all of our BAs to be able to use AI to be more efficient to, you know, like simple things like spell check, but even bigger things like double checking research or like even graphic design work that we can put a newsletter through an AI tool and say, and see what it recommends in terms of design edits or inconsistencies or just minor things. So yeah, AI is fascinating.

All of our team is being trained on how to implement it to be more efficient, but so far it can't replace anyone fully yet.

Rob Pene (25:19.037)

Nice. So if anybody had any questions for you or wanted to find out more about what you guys do and ask them, availabilities for cause and stuff, where would they go?

Alexis (25:29.56)

So you can go to yourstartupoperations.com or find me on LinkedIn or Instagram, send me a message and I'd be happy to hop on a call.

Rob Pene (25:37.451)

Yourstartupoperations.com. There you go. Yourstartupoperations.com. That's pretty straightforward. Appreciate it. Any last words? Anything memorable, like the girls who connected on motorcycles to leave them with? I like the SLPs. I think that's a cool thing. Yeah.

Alexis (25:44.578)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Yeah.

Alexis (26:03.264)

Yeah. SOPs, training. And then, just, I don't know, guess being a really like a real partner to small businesses also, and, you know, us being US based, having entrepreneurial experience ourselves and being like a go-to partner where some of our clients will reach out and just want to ask a question about something or run an idea by us and we're, you know,

Rob Pene (26:15.659)

Bye.

Rob Pene (26:24.319)

Okay.

Alexis (26:32.29)

We're founders, we're entrepreneurs, we get it. So we love like the community that we're building with our clients.

Rob Pene (26:37.545)

Yep, awesome. Perfect. All right, well, thank you. I appreciate you. And I think this was a great conversation. And say what's up to Jenna for me.

Alexis (26:45.454)

I will let her know and I'll let her know your idea of integrating our motorcycle marketing.

Rob Pene (26:51.237)

man, you have to. man, I can see it explode from there. Yeah, cool.

Alexis (26:57.25)

Yeah. Well, yeah. Thanks so much for having me on Rob. This was great. And if there's anything else I can do to help you with your podcast or just, anything like that, let me know.

Rob Pene (27:06.023)

Appreciate it. All right later