What happens when a VA helps build the company right alongside you? Ask Alexis Krisay.

Alexis owns two businesses. Serendipit Consulting, a branding and PR agency, and Vamped Training and Coaching, which trains and coaches virtual assistants for executive, personal support, and marketing roles. She's also a mom of three boys, which means her days were already full before Jackie ever joined her team.

Jackie came on to help manage Alexis's calendar, email, and schedule. She took to it so quickly that she started helping with client work too. That momentum is part of what led Alexis to build Vamped in the first place, and Jackie has been central to it from the start.

What did the partnership look like at the very beginning?

Alexis admits most of the early bumps were on her end. She started Jackie at 30 hours a week, thinking that would be enough. It took a week and a half for her to realize she couldn't function without Jackie at 40. Communication was another early hurdle. Alexis wasn't always available in those first weeks, and Jackie had to be persistent about pushing the relationship forward and taking charge on the back end without waiting to be asked.

What made Jackie's transition into this role feel different from her past VA work?

Her prior experience was supporting a single founder at an early-stage startup. Moving into Serendipit Consulting, working with someone who'd been running businesses for more than two decades, felt exciting and nerve-wracking at once. She felt a heightened sense of responsibility to meet that standard from day one. What helped was how patient and generous Alexis and the team were, not just with training, but with real mentorship, clarity, and direction.

How did Alexis and Jackie figure out how to actually work together?

Through trial and error across tools: email, Slack, WhatsApp, until they landed on what worked. They built in consistent morning and afternoon check-ins, even when Alexis was driving or handling something with her kids. Alexis gave Jackie an iPhone so they could communicate seamlessly over iMessage. Jackie credits the partnership's strength to transparency, honesty, and mutual respect, sorting out friction directly instead of letting it sit.

When did this stop feeling like help and start feeling like a real partnership?

When Alexis realized she was being just as transparent with Jackie as she is with everyone close to her. Her kids know Jackie by name and jump on video calls to say hi. She's planning a trip to visit Jackie in the Philippines. Alexis says that's simply the kind of leader she wants to be: open, honest, and unwilling to hold things back from someone who's in every piece of her life. When she drops the ball, she knows Jackie's there to catch it.

How has this partnership changed the way Alexis leads?

Delegation used to feel scary. Handing off even small tasks felt like an imposition. Now she and Jackie have built out real systems and SOPs together, largely through the work they've done on Vamped. Jackie prepares Alexis a PDF before her kids' soccer tournaments with everything she needs, sunscreen reminder included. Alexis says that level of support has pushed her to grow further into delegating, not less.

How does Jackie approach supporting someone with a schedule as full as Alexis's?

She puts herself in Alexis's position, partly because she's a mother of three herself. She thinks of it less as managing a boss and more as working side by side with someone, anticipating what's needed before being asked. She doesn't see herself as inferior in the relationship. Every time she's able to help, she treats it as a small win, something that leaves her feeling genuinely fulfilled.

What is Jackie most proud of?

Continuous growth, and the chance to influence other VAs. She's been trusted to contribute well beyond the traditional scope of the role, which has pushed her to do extra research and stretch further than she expected of herself. She says the most rewarding part is being listened to, corrected, guided, and given real feedback, room to grow not just as an assistant but as a leader. Her definition of success now includes helping other VAs and fellow Filipinos grow the way she has.

What role did Jackie play in building Vamped?

A bigger one than she gives herself credit for, according to Alexis. Vamped started from Jackie's own ideas, and Alexis says she's been a genuine contributor to the company's growth ever since, through weekly calls, training decks, and new touch points for Jackie to coach other VAs. Alexis calls her a partner in that business, not just an employee of the first one.

What does Alexis want other business owners to understand about this kind of partnership?

That a VA shouldn't be treated as passed-off delegation. She wants owners to see the role the way she sees Jackie's: as a real seat at the table. Before Jackie, Alexis says she could barely keep up with her own calendar and inbox. Watching Jackie take Vamped and help build it changed how Alexis thinks about what a VA relationship can become, and it's part of why she wants other owners to raise their own expectations of what's possible.

What does Jackie want Alexis to know?

That she's deeply grateful, professionally and personally. She jokes that Alexis sometimes seems to read her mind, though she suspects it's simply because they're both working mothers who understand each other. What's meant the most is being pushed to perform beyond what she thought she was capable of, and being seen as someone with real potential rather than just someone who executes tasks. That belief, she says, changed how she shows up every single day.