I am currently sitting on a plane, on my way to Denver Colorado to a friend's trip for a long weekend away. Writing my first ever blog post.
It truly feels surreal that this is my life. Has the last year been easy? Absolutely not. But that doesn't take away from all of the absolutely incredible things DaSilva Life has brought into our lives.
As my first ever blog post, I wanted to just tell our story. How DaSilva Life came to be, who we are, and what our mission is — for this to be your life, too.
In case you're new here, I'm Kristi DaSilva. I own DaSilva Life alongside my husband, Jefferson, who is the COO.
Most people don't know this, but DaSilva Life was originally going to be a home organization company. My old boss and friend came up with the name because I used to be her personal assistant. Along with organizing her life, I organized her entire home from top to bottom. She told me that when I started my company I should name it DaSilva Life — like "the silver life," because that's what my organization made her feel in her own life.
Fast forward a few years and Covid 19 hits. It is June 2020, I was still working as a personal assistant, but the whole world shut down so I paused going into work for a bit. While my husband was working from home and I wasn't going to work, we decided to go stay with his family in South Florida.
While we were in Florida, I was hanging out with my amazing sister-in-law, Thais, and we started talking business. I have always had an entrepreneurial spirit, side-hustling through high school and college. So Thais mentioned a program that her friend from college started. It was called The Virtual Savvy. She didn't know what a VA even was, and I didn't, either. But she told me I should check it out and I did.
After researching what a virtual assistant was, I was like, "Wait a second. I am a personal assistant in NYC, I can totally be a virtual assistant." I remember being in the car with my husband and, after thinking about it and researching for about a week, I asked him if he thought I should do it. He looked at me and said, "Do you really think you can do it and make this thing work"? I said, "I really do." So he said, "Okay let's go for it".
I decided to make the investment in the course and start my VA business on June 11th, 2020. One year ago exactly from when this blog post is published. And that was just the beginning.
At the time when I started my VA business, I was still employed by my boss. I started this business with the intention of it being a side hustle — and we can all see how that went. While I was not working, I was able to go through The Virtual Savvy course and start to actually build my VA business.
I ended up working through it, started doing everything the program said, and for the first few weeks I saw nothing from it. It wasn't until June 24th, that I finally landed my first client — I had felt like I won the lottery. Seriously. I was SO excited until I thought... "Okay, now what?"
I continued to follow the course, implement what they said, and I started to get more and more traction. But it was only July and I had one client, and I get "the call" from my boss.
She told me that the dynamics of the job are changing due to COVID and that she understood if I couldn't do it anymore. It wasn't something that I could fulfill and, at that time, we decided to part ways peacefully. So now it is the middle of a pandemic, I live in NYC, and I now have no job aside from my baby VA business.
So what did I do? I started to search for other personal assistant jobs while also continuing to try and get DaSilva Life off the ground. It was not easy. The business was still super small and it wasn't like clients were knocking down my door. So Jefferson and I prayed about it and asked God that, if this is of His will, that it would work out.
I spent the next 60 days hustling, and I booked myself out. Yup. That means within 90 days of me starting my VA business, I actually replaced my NYC salary. God opened the doors, I walked through them scared as heck. Everything The Virtual Savvy promised me it would do, it did.
Don't get me wrong — those 90 days were tough. Full of long nights and lots of tears, but my "side hustle" quickly turned into a "full-time gotta make this work hustle." By the grace of God, I made it!
Once I was booked out, I thought, "Well, now what?" I thought that, based on what it looks like in the online business world (which I did not know existed, by the way), I should either become an OBM or build a VA Agency. But neither of them really stuck out to me.
Instead, I decided to hire a business coach. We worked through everything I loved and hated about being a VA and I came down to the conclusion that I wanted to niche down into systems strategy. That means I organize and systematize people's businesses. And I love it.
So here we are, full-circle moment: I am organizing people's business and lives, doing what I was born to do!
This also meant after 90 days of being totally uncomfortable with all of this newness, I flipped my business upside down and started from scratch again. Yikes. But I knew this was what I wanted to do and my sister-in-law Thais just kept telling me "Do it scared."
So after niching down, I started offering ClickUp and HoneyBook setups. I loved both these platforms, the work was (and still is!) amazing, and people started to really love my content. I started to be known for it. Of course, there was definitely a dip — it was not all uphill.
In 2021, Jefferson decided to start looking for other jobs. During his search, nothing was really coming up and it was in the exact season that DaSilva Life really started to take off. We hit this moment in our business and our life where we asked God, "Is this your path for us"? It was then when truly amazing opportunities starting knocking on our door and we knew that it was our sign.
We prayed about it, thought about it, and decided that Jefferson was going to join DL full-time as COO. With his background in analytics and consulting, it was a perfect addition to the company.
In between all of this — niching down, building this business from the ground up, and experiencing different losses — we added multiple services, created courses, and partnered with amazing companies. It is actually mind-blowing to see how God has moved in our business and our lives.
We took some very unexpected losses and were able to turn them into the opportunity of a lifetime.
So what does DaSilva Life look like now? We are starting to grow this business. We are hiring a team, starting to put actual funnels and scalable systems in place, deciding where we want to actually take it.
The growth is amazing, but the coolest part is that we get to help small business owners just like us increase their quality of life through systems and organization.
We discovered what we are passionate about, we found a need in the industry, and we are here to change lives. I want every small business owner we reach to be able to take trips. Spend time with their family. Not worry about work when they're supposed to be off.
It is talked about so much in the online space: We've all heard so much about hustle culture, burnout, scaling to 10k+ months... and the end result is that we end up hating our businesses and don't get to live our lives.
It doesn't have to be that way. That's not how it is for us. Are there crazy seasons? Absolutely. But there is a balance in between being able to actually enjoy the life you've built.
So that is our story, and we're so happy you're along for the ride! It's been a long year, but it was worth all of it. It is wild to think we now have the rest of our lives ahead of us and I can't even wait to see where it takes us. If you're along on this ride with us, we'd love it if you joined our weekly newsletter.
We share business organization tips, systems, and insights plus some more personal, behind-the-scenes moments of what the DaSilva Life looks like for us (and for you).
