""It's almost magical the idea that you could go through a number of potential people to partner with and be able to find someone who really understood my needs and wanted to support me, and I think Kelly has been all of that and more.""
— Jessie Boucher, Residential Real Estate Broker
The Challenge
Jessie Boucher had built something to be proud of. A residential real estate broker with nearly six years in the industry and a background in corporate marketing — spanning branding, storytelling, and outreach — she had hit her goals in her first year as an independent agent. Business was good. But success had quietly become its own burden.
"I was in a place where I was feeling really overwhelmed. I had a lot of real estate transactions happening, and I was happy because I had achieved my goals for my first year as an independent agent."
Rather than feeling energized by her momentum, Jessie was beginning to buckle under it. The volume of work had grown to the point where she was contemplating turning away new clients rather than taking them on.
"I was getting to a place where I was starting to want to give away new opportunities rather than serve them myself."She needed a trusted partner who could absorb the operational weight — so she could stay focused on the work only she could do.
The Solution
BELAY matched Jessie with Virtual Assistant Kelly Osment in under a week — a turnaround that immediately set the tone for the partnership.
"I did one interview and within a week or less, they reached out with a match."
From the start, Kelly took initiative. She identified opportunities to save Jessie time, recommended a new task management platform better suited to her workflow, and began setting up foundational systems that would serve Jessie's business for the long term. She tackled gift order coordination and personal and professional inbox management, including filters that quieted the noise and freed up mental space.
One of Kelly's early priorities was getting Jessie established on Google Business. The two also evolved their working rhythm — moving from weekly check-ins to integrated work sessions — and built out a Trello-based system to help Jessie capture ideas and move projects forward.
"It's almost magical the idea that you could go through a number of potential people to partner with and be able to find someone who really understood my needs and wanted to support me, and I think Kelly has been all of that and more."
""Kelly created a gift guide based on all of my transactions from last year. We made a list of go-to gifts and different price points. Kelly pushed me — which I appreciated — to draft gift messages so that most of the thinking is done for us.""
— Jessie Boucher, Residential Real Estate BrokerThe Impact
The impact of Jessie and Kelly's partnership has been both measurable and meaningful. Getting Jessie onto Google Business alone resulted in a tripling of her online reviews — generating more leads and letting her work speak for itself in the marketplace.
Kelly also built Jessie a systematic approach to client gifting, pulling from the full transaction history of the previous year to create a curated gift guide with go-to options at multiple price points and pre-drafted messages.
"Kelly created a gift guide based on all of my transactions from last year. We made a list of go-to gifts and different price points. Kelly pushed me — which I appreciated — to draft gift messages so that most of the thinking is done for us. This way I can just tell Kelly which person, gift and message. And then she does the tracking of receipts on the back end."
Beyond the systems and the stats, the partnership gave Jessie something harder to quantify: clarity. The constant sense of being buried had begun to lift.
"I don't feel completely in the weeds all of the time. I still definitely have those moments, but I do have moments where I feel like the groundhog that is rising out of the hole and surveying the landscape versus frantically burrowing in the sand. That is a good feeling and something that I want to keep moving forward."