We were lucky to catch up with Alexis Schomer recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alexis , appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

After co-founding multiple startups and countless side hustles, it took me about eight years to learn how to delegate effectively.

Before that, I thought I had a quality problem. I went through four different VAs to support social media and let each of them go within a few days. At the time, I blamed them.

What I realized was that I really had an onboarding problem; I had no training materials, no clear expectations, no onboarding plan, and no clear definition of what “good” looked like. I was assigning tasks and hoping they would be completed to my expectations.

During my first week working with Jenna at Your Startup Operations, I saw firsthand what virtual assistants (VAs) were actually capable of when they were properly trained.

A moment that stuck with me was watching a VA manage a complex knowledge base for a healthcare and technology company. It was detailed, high-stakes work that I wouldn’t have trusted someone else with before, and she executed it flawlessly. Not because she came in with that expertise, but because she was trained in it.

That completely changed my mindset… the problem was never the talent, it was the lack of systems. That’s what led us to build what we now call our 3-phase Delegation Engine.

Phase 1 is the Time Audit™, where we extract everything out of the founder’s head, map out current processes, and identify the tasks and workflows they are still too involved in, holding them back from growing the business.

Phase 2 is Out of Your Head™, where we clearly document processes, including step-by-step instructions, tutorials, and defined ownership, which creates a clear system.

And Phase 3 is Find Your Person™, where we custom recruit, train, and install a full-time operator into that system, with hands-on onboarding and oversight.

At the same time, I realized this wasn’t just my experience. Almost every founder I spoke with had the same story: bad hires, churn-and-burn agencies, and no real process for recruiting, onboarding, or training.

The first time I saw this work in practice was with a local electrical company with about 12 employees. They had tried VAs before, but the results were inconsistent.

We approached it differently. We documented their processes first, then recruited someone with relevant industry experience, and built a structured onboarding plan.

Within the first 30 days, their VA took over invoicing (freeing up 20 hours/week alone), vendor coordination, change orders, contract creation, and project tracking. In total, the owner gained back roughly 40 hours per week.

This not only saved time but also gave them the operational capacity to expand into a new state.

That’s when it clicked for me. The system we build does more than just place a VA; it actually removes the founder as the bottleneck.

What made this powerful was that it was repeatable. When you combine process mapping, custom recruiting, and structured onboarding in the right order, delegation actually works.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m Alexis Schomer, Partner at Your Startup Operations. I’ve been an entrepreneur for over a decade, having co-founded multiple businesses across marketing and operations, and I’ve spent the last several years focused on one core problem: helping founders get out of the day-to-day so they can actually scale.
I got into this space somewhat unintentionally. Early in my career, I was deeply involved in the execution side of business, including marketing, operations, and client work. Like many founders, I became the bottleneck in my own business because everything ran through me. I tried hiring support multiple times, but without the right systems in place, it created more work instead of saving me time. That experience is what led me to become obsessed with delegation and operational structure.
At Your Startup Operations, we help businesses install what we call a delegation engine. Instead of simply placing a virtual assistant, we build the systems that allow a dedicated operator to take over core business processes. This includes everything from process mapping and SOP development to recruiting, onboarding, and ongoing oversight.
The main problem we solve is the struggle with finding the right help and making that help effective. Without the right structure, delegation doesn’t work. Our approach is designed to make it work long-term.
What sets us apart is that we understand there are two sides to the equation: process and people. We not only focus on hiring the right people for the role, but also on setting up the right systems. This allows our clients to consistently gain back 10–40 hours per week and, more importantly, remove themselves as the bottleneck in their business.
What I’m most proud of is the consistency of those outcomes. When this is done right, it fundamentally changes how a business operates and grows.

Conversations about M&A are often focused on multibillion dollar transactions – but M&A can be an important part of a small or medium business owner’s journey. We’d love to hear about your experience with selling businesses.

I’ve sold my shares in two businesses I co-founded, both in the health tech space. In both cases, I exited by selling my shares to a co-founder rather than through an external acquisition.
The two experiences were very different, and I learned the most from the first one.
That exit turned into a nine-month legal battle. What I initially thought would be a straightforward separation became complex and drawn out, largely because of decisions that had been made much earlier in the business around a partnership structure we never properly aligned on.
At the time, I didn’t fully understand how much those early decisions would impact flexibility later on, especially when it came to exit terms.
The biggest lesson I took from that experience is that choosing the right partners is important, but you must align on your legal agreements and expectations from day one.
I also learned the importance of documenting everything. Not just formal contracts, but conversations, decisions, and changes over time. When things are going well, it feels unnecessary. When they’re not, it becomes critical.
In my second exit, I approached things very differently. There was much more clarity upfront, stronger documentation, and better alignment between founders. As a result, the process was significantly smoother.
For founders thinking about selling one day, the reality is that your exit isn’t determined at the moment you decide to leave; it’s shaped by how you build the business from the beginning. The agreements you put in place early on will either create options for you later or limit them.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

I met Jenna at a female entrepreneur dinner in December 2021. We were both invited by a mutual friend and happened to be seated next to each other.
We hit it off immediately. It was one of those rare conversations where you realize very quickly how much you have in common. Not just surface-level things, like both riding motorcycles or running our own agencies, but how we thought about business, finances, and decision-making.
We stayed in touch and built a genuine friendship from there.
About a year and a half later, I invited Jenna to join me as a judge for a startup competition. It was during that experience that we started talking more seriously about what we each wanted to build next. I shared my growing interest in shifting deeper into operations, and it turned out she was at a point where she was expanding on that side of her business as well.
That conversation was the first real moment where it became clear how complementary our skill sets were. Jenna had deep experience in recruiting and operations, while I was focused on systems, training, and execution.
From there, the idea of working together developed naturally. We already had a strong foundation of trust, and stepping into a business partnership felt like a continuation of that relationship.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://YourStartupOperations.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/schomeralexis
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yourstartupoperations
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexisschomer/
• Twitter: https://x.com/schomeralexis
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@YourStartupOperations
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/yourstartupoperations
  https://www.tiktok.com/@yourstartupoperations