Alexis Schomer on UGC Management and Virtual Assistant Services

Rob Pene: 
Alrighty, welcome everyone. I’m Rob, and this is Alexis. She’s cool. Alexis Schomer is one of the founders of Your Startup Operations, and our mutual friend Jenna is the other founder. Jenna is super awesome. I remember back in the day when she was starting her entrepreneurial journey with b.box, when it was an actual physical product, dealing with China and all that stuff.

So to see her go from there all the way to here has been really cool to witness, and also to hear her talk about having a really solid partner in you, and how that helps her feel good about the business and where you guys are going. Thank you for joining. I’m excited to hear more about how the business started, how you guys met, and what you’re actually doing.

Alexis Schomer: 
Appreciate you. I’m excited to share. I really appreciate you having me on the podcast, and I love how much you already know about Jenna and the business. I’m excited to dive a little bit deeper.

Rob Pene: 
So how did you guys meet?

Alexis Schomer: 
We met through a women’s entrepreneurship event. A mutual friend of ours, Melissa, was hosting an Empower Her event. It was a small dinner with about ten or twelve female entrepreneurs. Jenna and I happened to sit next to each other, and we really hit it off. We had an instant connection and very similar personalities.

We were both starting our own businesses, and we were very open talking about finances, profit, and money. We both ride motorcycles and lived in LA, so we immediately became friends. For a few years, we just hung out as friends and were alongside each other’s journeys doing our own agencies.

I was running my own marketing agency, and Jenna had just started Your Startup Operations as an ops agency. That’s the initial story of how we met, and I can go further into how it turned into what it is today if you want me to keep sharing.

​Rob Pene: 
I’m really curious about the motorcycle thing. You guys bonded over motorcycles. That’s awesome. I have not met another female entrepreneur that rides.

​Alexis Schomer: 
Yeah, we went for some rides while we both lived in LA, and it was awesome.

 Rob Pene: 
Was that a high school thing or did it happen later?

Alexis Schomer: 
I got my license when I turned twenty one, so it was after high school. I grew up riding pocket rockets and motor scooters, so I was always in that realm of adventure. Eventually, I wanted to get a motorcycle and made it happen.

​Rob Pene: 
That should be part of your story that gets marketed. It speaks to resilience, boldness, bravery, independence, and freedom. When people think operations, they’ll remember the two girls who ride motorcycles.

​Alexis Schomer: 
I like that. It is our story, we just haven’t really talked about it professionally.

​Rob Pene: 
I think you should. It’s memorable.

​Alexis Schomer: 
Looks like we need another photoshoot with our motorcycles.

​Rob Pene:
With that being said, how would you differentiate yourselves from your competitors? First of all, what is it that you guys do?

​Alexis Schomer:
After we met and became friends, we were both judging a startup competition at CSUN. At that point, I was looking to get more into operations. I was a little over marketing and wanted a different career path. I expressed this to Jenna, and at the same time she was looking to hire an ops manager.

We danced around the idea for a few months, and I slowly started shadowing her and learning the business. Ops, especially in the virtual assistant world, is the intersection of two of my favorite things: teaching and business. There’s a lot of onboarding, training, and managing involved, which I really love.

Because of my ten years in marketing, that side of my business followed me. We combined the businesses slightly. We focus mainly on virtual assistants doing administrative and operational work, and we also have a marketing arm with an in house team.

What really makes us unique and what we’re growing is our influencer and UGC management service for direct to consumer brands. If I had to pick two differentiators, it would be the VA services and the product trade collaborations that allow brands to get great content without paying high influencer fees or working with transactional agencies.

​Rob Pene: 
With ecommerce and UGC exploding, managing creators is getting harder.

​Alexis Schomer: 
Exactly. I consider us an anti agency. I come from the brand side and never found an agency that truly worked for me. Everything felt expensive and transactional. We go direct through brand Instagram accounts and emails to build relationships between brands and creators, not agencies in the middle.

We specialize in product trades, meaning brands don’t have to pay creators. We find creators who genuinely love the product or micro influencers building their portfolio. It takes more work, but that’s our specialty.

​Rob Pene: 
What types of businesses do you work with on the VA side?

​Alexis Schomer:
Most of our VA clients are small service based businesses. Home services like electricians and landscapers, entertainment businesses like corporate DJs, wedding planners, and event professionals, and also finance clients like life insurance agents and financial planners.

These businesses need back office support like invoicing, calendar management, event prep, and admin tasks that keep the business running behind the scenes.

​Rob Pene:
How do people find you?

​Alexis Schomer: 
To date, our business has been built almost entirely through referrals and word of mouth. This is actually the first podcast I’ve done on behalf of the company in many years. We’re starting to explore PR, social media, blogs, and newsletters now.

​Rob Pene: 
When did you decide to officially become partners?

​Alexis Schomer: 
From the beginning, we both knew partnership was the long term vision. Halfway through my first year, Jenna became pregnant and I had to take over the business entirely. That really tested our trust and ability to work together.

During that year, I doubled the company’s revenue through sales and marketing. When Jenna came back, we talked through everything and decided partnership was the right move. It felt right in our gut, despite outside advice, and it’s been going really well.

​Rob Pene:
Do you use your own VAs internally?

​Alexis Schomer: 
That’s a big priority for us now. Funny enough, we have almost twenty VAs on the team, but we’ve been so focused on client work that we haven’t fully utilized them internally. As we focus on growth in 2025, we’re prioritizing internal support.

​Rob Pene: 
Tell me about SOPs. What do they look like?

​Alexis Schomer: 
We’ve evolved our SOPs over time. We started with long documents with step by step instructions, screenshots, and video tutorials. Now we build SOPs inside ClickUp or client systems with recurring tasks, subtasks, and embedded instructions.

This makes scaling easier because you can duplicate the process instead of retraining from scratch. It’s essential for growing businesses with turnover or expanding teams.

​Rob Pene: 
That alone is extremely valuable.

​Alexis Schomer: 
It’s often the missing piece. We include SOP creation, onboarding, training, and quality assurance as part of our service at no extra charge. That’s a huge differentiator.

​Rob Pene: 
What businesses benefit most from this?

​Alexis Schomer: 
Businesses doing roughly five hundred thousand to three to five million in revenue with small teams. They often have processes in their head but not documented well enough to train others. Home services in particular have very similar operational needs.

​Rob Pene: 
What are your thoughts on AI?

​Alexis Schomer: 
AI is fascinating. We’re training our entire team to use it as a support tool. We test everything, but we haven’t found anything that can fully replace a human yet. AI helps with efficiency, research, spell check, and design feedback, but people are still essential.

​Rob Pene: 
Where can people find you?

​Alexis Schomer: 
They can visit yourstartupoperations.com or find me on LinkedIn or Instagram and send me a message.

Rob Pene: 
Any last words?

Alexis Schomer: 
We see ourselves as real partners to small businesses. We’re founders, entrepreneurs, and US based, and we love building community with our clients.

​Rob Pene: 
Perfect. Thanks again.

​Alexis Schomer: 
Thanks so much for having me, Rob. This was great.