Olivia Jeanette

Happy Monday everyone! Excited to share the first week as oliviajeanette.com. Wow! It’s hard to believe I’ve been blogging for five years (I just realized that yesterday was my five year birthday. Happy Birthday Blog!). When I first began my journey as a blogger, I used it as a creative outlet from my corporate job. Hint: the reason it was called Corporate Catwalk. At the beginning, I put together a five year plan on how to grow the blog to be able to have the option to leave my corporate job, to either be home with my family or pursue the blogging business full time. Well, fast forward five years later and that’s exactly what happened. There is so much work that goes in blogging and so much of it is behind the scenes. The work that comes before the final image, post, video, etc. It’s been a wild ride to see all the changes in advertising, social media, and blogging in general.

I know change is a part of any industry. As time goes on you have to adapt to survive. Blogging is no different. It really is crazy to think just how much it has changed over the course of just five years. We moved to New York City, got married, started a new job, had a baby and most recently started blogging full-time. Amazing! This past year I’ve experienced the most life changing events. We had our sweet Sebastian, but I also left the corporate world to dedicate full time to my blog. When I left my corporate job, almost a year ago, I planned on taking a small break for a few months to work on my blog. Well, a week after I left my job, we found out that I was expecting! At the same time, my blog was starting to see some growth, so I decided to wait till after the baby and figure out the next steps. So I did.

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A week after Sebastian was born, my previous company (which I LOVED) offered me my “dream job”. I accepted the position and started counting the days till I had to leave Sebastian and my business. The same time I decided to take job, we also got accepted into the daycare. If you live in NYC, you know how difficult it is to get into a good daycare. It just seemed like everything was falling into place perfectly. Matt and I would both be back in our corporate lives, Sebastian’s in daycare, and we’d work on the blog off-hours. You can read more about it here.

The more and more I thought about everything, I wasn’t convinced and my own business continued to grow. After several conversations with Matt, family and friends, I decided not to take my corporate job. Telling my future boss was extremely difficult. I have a lot of respect for him and the unknown is frightening. The phrase, What if? went through my mind a million different times. The corporate world was safe. All my connections were in corporate tech sales. But I knew I had to make the leap. All I remember from that call was being excited to move on with the next phase in life.

The irony of this post, today was suppose to be my first day at my job. Instead I’m sharing my new site with all my wonderful readers. Some other exciting news, at the beginning of April, I hired my first employee. You can meet her on Instagram Stories. I’m also planning on sending out weekly newsletters (sign up here!) and kicking off my YouTube channel.

As nice it is to be home with Sebastian, work on my blog full time, and create my own schedule, but it’s also exhausting. Keeping up has been difficult. Don’t ever ask to see my kitchen. I’m working on balancing my work schedule and spending more time with family and friends. I’m especially thankful for Matt, who helps me with everything from taking photos to changing diapers.

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That brings me to the next point. Since I’m no longer working in Corporate America, I thought it made sense to change the name of my blog to reflect the content you’ll be seeing on a daily basis. Although “corporate” will always be a part of my style, my life encompasses so many other elements – like family, beauty and other lifestyle elements. Please continue to leave comments, write emails and leave me direct message on Instagram (if you’re not following me yet, you’re missing out!). I’m so excited to share this new site with you. I truly believe you’ll find more value in the content being provided, along with an amazing SHOP page.

Again, thank you so much to all of my wonderful readers. Happy 5 Years to you! You are the reason I’m able to have this opportunity! Look forward to sharing more of this adventure with you in 2017! #somanyexclamationmarks

xo, Olivia

Photos by Paige Campbell Linden