We were lucky to catch up with Dercyni Ruiz recently and have shared our conversation below.
Dercyni, appreciate you joining us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?
The journey from then to now has definitely been a huge rollercoaster. When I first began my entrepreneurship journey, the company was actually a Virtual Assistant company. At the same time I was working at a coffee shop full time to make ends meet. As I started to continue in the journey… I had to find another way to make more money. So I decided to add another service to my list that would be more appealing to the crowd. BOOM! Social media management. Did I know everything I needed to know about social media? No… But I put in the time to do my research, learn the ins and outs, tips and tricks, and really studied a variety of strategies that people were practicing in their socials. What I found that best suited me was the organic route. And that is when we transformed from DVirtual assistances to DVirtual Organic Social Media. We did everything from creating your content, to posting your content, and even engaging with your community. Our community loved it and there was definitely a market for social media managers so I was finally able to work full time in my business and leave my part time job at Brass Tacks. I grew to love making all the content and invested in learning more about the videography and content creating part of the social media world. After a while of doing social media and preaching the “organic” and “authentic” way, one day it hit me… If we are engaging and managing our clients accounts, are they really practicing organic and authentic practices? The answer was no. That is when our next milestone came in to play. I decided to cut the social media management out of our services and was dedicated to elevating our clients content via the creation part and in return have them post and engage themselves so they can talking to their community. At the beginning of the process we lost a couple of our clients but I would have not done it any other way because it lead us to our new ideal clients. A couple of lessons I take out of those moments is you can not be picky with the types of projects you take in the beginning, never be scared to make shifts in your company and never fear losing clients in risk of not doing what you love.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
We are a Houston Media Agency who helps entrepreneurs spread their brand awareness with affordable high quality videos. We started off as a VA company for Realtors and ended up helping a wide range of clients with social media. After a while of doing social media, I realized I enjoyed creating the content rather than the management side of things. I invested time into learning more about content creating and videography with iPhone. Today what I am most proud of is that we stand as an iPhone media agency with 7 brands in the agency and have been able to work with people we could not even imagine. Not only that, but we help brands gain that confidence with guidance and marketing strategies for their content. We feel like if everyone had a chance to be able to have the confidence and skills to produce content that will allow them to share their brand then we all could have a slice of the pie. All we want to do is provide that to all entrepreneurs so they can have a chance in growing their brand. Some of the problems we want to solve is allowing entrepreneurs to be able to show up on social media consistently, have quality videos for all platforms, event support for their events, brand awareness, and service awareness.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Building a community and social media presence has gotten so crucial now a days and can really take a toll on your mental health. I know when I first started my journey in growing my community, it definitely was hard not to compare myself to others and be discouraged if my photo or video got 3 likes. But after a while, I knew this was not the only way to “do” social media. There had to be a better way. And I don’t mean a better way in the sense of going viral or gaining a million followers. Better in the sense of you know you are sharing your truth and don’t fear what others will think. Better in the sense of being able to build an actual engaging community and not just followers who don’t care about your services. I practiced speaking my truth and practiced being more comfortable with the camera but that was not the only thing I had to practice. The first thing I had to do was change my perspective. Focusing on impact, community and value rather than likes, views and followers. If there is any advice I could give someone starting off with their social media journey is ALWAYS speak your truth, be consistent, and never be afraid to change the strategy.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
It is always great to have goals for your business but there is always that one main goal that drives you to work until 3a.m. editing videos. That goal for me is to be able to have a media head quarters and share the space with other creatives so they can be able to practice and learn from others. As I start this journey, I realize that the videography community/industry is so supportive and I have been helped/ have been supported by many Houston creators. I just want to continue that energy and be able to help other new creatives with a space. Until then, you will see us creating, teaching and learning to make that goal happen.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/dvirtual
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dvirtual_media/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dercyni.ruiz
- Other: EMAIL: [email protected] PHONE: 832-643-4245