Meet Ashly Villamar

I grew up in a conservative but open-minded home. My parents divorced when I was young so being one of the only “broken home” few kids, you really can get the deck stacked against you. Growing up, I felt like a walking contradiction. I wanted to fit in but was taught that I was “called to be separate”. I didn’t understand it then but I knew it was preparing me for something bigger than I expected.

I had very typical issues that come with divorced parents and conservative principles. After a teen pregnancy, baby daddy runs off and miscarriage experience, you could say God had mercy on me and showed some grace. A true redemption story. I became fixated on living a life God called me to. I still made mistakes but much less reckless ones.

My friend of several years came back into my life and basically asked me to marry him so I could date him. Very Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds’ The Proposal sort of way. We dated, got engaged and married within ten months. 12 years and three children later, I’m more in love with him than I ever was.

I continue to work on growth and pass those lessons to the people around me. Seeing women succeed is probably one of my biggest passions. I’m the first one to praise God with you when you’ve got a win, first one to go to war in the prayer room when you’re unsure and the first one to find the silver lining when you lose.

It has not been a smooth road at all! I’ve grown up feeling like everything was an uphill battle. In retrospect, my life wasn’t all too different than the average American but I felt alone A LOT!

Throughout my marriage, my husband taught me to face my issues head-on and not be afraid of failure. I’ve learned through his love to embrace my body in the season it’s in, anxiety and depression are not things to be ashamed of and to be confident in the things I’m good at. Being humble doesn’t mean to downplay everything you do. I’m learning to love and accept people unconditionally while maintaining healthy boundaries.

After working as a legal assistant for seven years in various offices, I became a stay at home mom because I honestly couldn’t find someone I trusted to watch my kids. I’ve seen the positive effect it’s had on my children so I don’t think I would ever go back to a normal 9-5 job.

Currently, I’m a work from home mom. I am founder and co-owner of a business building company, Savvy Systems Co as well as co-owner of my husband’s landscaping company, Villamar Landscaping.

Working with incredible women like Niki from San Diego Moms Co and Sarah from Harvest Collective have truly changed my perspective. With Niki, I’m learning to really go after my vision and not be intimidated by the answer “no”. She’s all about creating a relationship than getting a sale. I’ve become friends with some amazing women entrepreneurs by adopting that mindset. With Sarah, I’m learning to be unafraid of sharing my faith and dreaming BIG! I like to think of her as my tag dream mate. We think of things that are totally off the wall and we just bounce off each other.

Not only have I had two incredible mentors, I’m so proud to connect and work with women-owned businesses throughout San Diego.

My favorite childhood memory has to be those bits of living faith I experienced as a kid. One thing that stands out the most is “the refrigerator story”.

I think I was about 12 years old and our refrigerator just shut down. We didn’t have a lot of money so that meant not only did we need to get a new refrigerator, we would have to replace all the groceries as well. We’re talking about spending money we didn’t have. My mom got us up and explained that our refrigerator broke and there was no money to repair it so we were going to pray for it. Total eye-roll moment. So guess who had to pray for the refrigerator after that? Me, queen of the eye rolls. I prayed a very simple and quick prayer but the moment we took our hands off it, that refrigerator turned back on. We didn’t do anything to it. There was no trick switch. Just a simple Monday morning miracle. It never broke down again.

There are tons of stories like that where we saw God’s hands move and I know to do the same with my kids -from parking spots at the WalMart to getting paid early.