I FINALLY FIGURED IT OUT! What Is Next For My Business & Why I'm In London

I'm not sure why this took so long to come through but clarity has brought me SO MUCH JOY. I am so excited to finally share this with you!

You guys!!! I finally figured it out!!!!!!

I could cry.

I have cried, actually.

‘How is this only just hitting you NOW?’ is something I have thought so often over the last six months.

Hopefully you’ll understand what I mean by that when I tell you because, honestly, it’s crazy how obvious this shift would have been for me to take years ago!

But, alas … we can’t think that way. At least I really try not to. “It all is the way it should be” is something I’ve often thought. Everyone’s path is unique. Everyone’s life unfolds at different paces. Sometimes, we’re meant to make wide turns that look random. And we might not figure out why that turn was necessary until years later but, we almost always realize at some point that it was a necessary turn. So, I really try to believe that our paths aren’t always meant to be linear and that, sometimes, as annoying as it is, you’re meant to tug at and work on untying a knot for awhile.

And that’s surely what I feel like I’ve been doing the last few years.

Many of you know my story but, in case you’re somewhat new, here’s the long and short of it —

I grew up with a Mom who was always on a serious budget but who loved to shop. Most weekends were spent perusing the mall and I was that girl in 5th grade who was adding new beauty items to her Caboodle, loved the movie Clueless and all things pink. I’ve always been a girly-girl so, in 2011, when I started sharing little snippets of my outfits on Instagram — which often involved bright colored skinny jeans, bubble necklaces, leopard flats, and peplum tops — it might have been a little ‘weird’ [because the influencer industry was basically non-existent] but it came as no surprise to anyone who knew me.

Eventually, I was asked to put outfit details on a blog so it was easier for me to provide links for people to buy the things I was wearing. I had actually had a secret LiveJournal in 2004 [when I was in high school, which was basically an online diary] so, while I didn’t know how to create a blog at the time … it didn’t take me long to figure it out. I had always found sharing myself through writing to be my most comfortable means of self-expression with styling outfits being a close second. At the time, I was working as a registered nurse on a neurosurgical unit and, while I was proud of being a nurse, I wouldn’t say I was necessarily ‘lit up’ by it. I loved coming home to work on my creative outlet and also loved that I had entire days to devote to it since I worked three shifts a week.

People who didn’t know me started following me on Instagram, always liking and inquiring about the outfits I was posting and leaving the nicest comments, and it was really helping me overcome a season of feeling really lonely and rejected by a group of friends. Feeling celebrated and liked for the ways in which I showed up in this new online space and on Instagram was a really nice and welcome change.

I honestly was so naive to what I was building. I went to school to be a nurse after all so, I didn’t really understand PR, marketing, and what I was essentially doing for the brands I was wearing. When I got an email from one of my favorite leather goods companies, Hobo International, offering me a free handbag in exchange for a feature on my blog … I nearly fell out of my chair! They wanted to GIFT ME a handbag of my choice, up to $300, and a Lauren wallet, which was literally my favorite wallet in college that everyone had. I was like ‘ummm yesss, absolutely!’

And then it hit me.

Ohhhh, this is a value exchange. I have something they want … the girls who follow me love my style, trust my recommendations, and they want their eyes and attention, as well as my organic backing of their brand, which could lead to an increase in sales. Riiight, got it. Got it.

Again, this was back in the Stone Age of blogging / influencing, before the term ‘influencer’ was even a term. So, I knew nothing about how much value I held with my audience. It was difficult to do market research at the time, ha. Not that I even really knew what that was, either. This was all just fun and games to me. I loved styling and sharing my outfits. I loved writing and sharing myself with people in that way. And I loved it so much more than being a nurse so I did start to have to think … okay, well, if I want to keep doing this, I need to figure out how I can make some money out of it … even though money isn’t really what’s driving me to do this in the first place.

So, I eventually became familiar with affiliate marketing and, with the use of those affiliate links, I was able to [over time] start to generate a pretty consistent flow of income through my blog posts. Eventually, I was able to start working with brands through agencies who would manage campaigns that brands wanted to hire me for, which was when I started to feel more comfortable leaving behind my stable career as an RN. I still pinch myself when I think of some of the brands who wanted to work with me like Anthropologie, Nordstrom, Lululemon, Pottery Barn and … I even had a hair accessories line with Scunci that was available in most Walgreens locations across the U.S.! Like, what???

I couldn’t quite believe that I had somehow made a career out of something I had so much fun doing. It never felt like work and it connected me with the loveliest community that I loved and felt so lucky to have behind me.

*THANK YOU … I still feel this way*

It baffled me almost as much as it blessed me. Looking back, it still amazes me what it afforded me the ability to do. My life would look so different had I not just followed this thing that I enjoyed doing, even though a lot of people thought it was really f**king weird at the time.

One of the most valuable things it afforded me, though, was the freedom and flexibility to work from anywhere and travel which has, in turn, completely changed my life.

Travel kind of does that.

It’s an expander.

It opens your eyes to things — realities, perspectives, nuances — that you would never see otherwise.

And, travel made me realize that you actually get back so much more from the investment you make in these experiences than you ever will get from the investment you make in the things you buy.

So, since it was giving me back so much and bringing me so much joy, I wanted to inspire you all to do the same. Buy clothes, fine! But, more than you buy clothes, consider investing in travel.

“Travel is not reward for working. It’s education for living.” - Anthony Bourdain

So, from 2015 to 2020, I traveled a lot and, outside of style content, it was the only other ‘vertical’ that felt natural, exciting, and fun for me to share on my platform. I would travel to see the places I had always dreamed of. I’d invest in and gain incredible experiences. I’d shoot style content there — because, personally, it’s more fun than shooting in front of my garage at home — then I’d write out as much as I could in blog posts with the hopes that it’d make you feel more confident and competent about getting out and seeing the world. Like … the length of the 36 hours in Budapest post and the fact that I wrote three blog posts all about Cartageña, Colombia still shocks me to this day, hah! But …

… I guess that’s how you can tell when someone’s really passionate about something and … I’ve said this before but, with anything I do, I only ever want it to be helpful. So I loved that I felt like I was getting to enjoy these incredible experiences but then turn it into something that could be helpful to you.

So, where does London come in?

Again, many of you know this but, for anyone who doesn’t, I want to make sure they have context. [More HERE]

In 2016, I connected with a guy on Bumble who lived in London. Because I had that freedom and flexibility, I decided to live in London to see if it’d work out. I had been to London once before, in 2004, and absolutely loved it. So, I was really excited for this small stint back in this amazing place. Little did I know that .. the experience in 2016 would probably be one of the most transformative experiences of my life … and not because of that guy.

While living there, I had never felt more connected to a place, more at home in a place, and more like this was MY place before ever in my life.

The long and short of it is I went back to the States wanting to figure out how to move back but also, scared because I knew continuing my business there would be quite challenging. US and UK brands often cross over but their PR and marketing departments aren’t connected. My audience is pretty much entirely American, which was great when I was consistently sharing style content in the US, but sharing style content as a US influencer in the UK … I just knew it’d likely get messy and well … it did.

I got my visa to move to the UK in 2020, a year after I met my now fiancé, John, who is British. We had done long-distance for a year then, when I got my visa, I moved over and in with him. Oh, and did I mention this was March of 2020?

Oh yeah, I really nailed the timing on making this dream a reality.. hahah!

I’m kidding. I’m kidding! :)

I would definitely have preferred to have been with John than be apart so it was a good thing. But, it was a weird time for everyone and certainly a weird time to kind of leave the solid foundation [professionally and financially] that you once so firmly stood on, ya know?

Not to mention, three months later we found out that we were expecting and welcomed our son, Louie, into the world exactly one year after I arrived. Ha! Again, SUCH a blessing but, if you’re a momma, you know … that transition is hard even when you DO have a firm foundation to stand on.

Glennon Doyle has created a word for these types of situations … it’s ‘brutiful’. It was both beautiful and brutal. He is perfect in every way including when he came into our lives. It all is / was the way it should be.

And it is / was / has been brutal.

Postpartum hit me really hard. And not just for a few months after. My struggles have lasted years. Anxiety, depression, feeling frozen, a loss of interest in things that once lit me up, constant overwhelm … the list goes on.

Thankfully, the part I didn’t struggle with was being able to show and be present and provide endless love to Louie. I know I have done that part really well.

But, overall, I’ve just felt foggy and have really struggled with feeling aimless and disoriented as it pertains to work, which has been strange considering I had been doing something that lit me up for long. I noticed a lack of interest in creating the style content I once did. I would have small resurgences of interest in it but, I mostly just felt like I couldn’t figure out how to get going and ‘just do it’. Was it because I felt blocked due to the US/UK market challenges? Was it because I have ADHD and it’s so much harder for me to manage so many things that require so much of my time and focus, which I have so much less of as a Mom but I need as someone who is neurodivergent? Was it because my hormones were fluctuating in massively crazy ways because I was [potentially] entering perimenopause? I mean who freaking knows!

I honestly think it’ was multi-factoral. It was so many things. I think it was partly due to all the shifts my body and mind went through after having Louie but … I have to be honest about something that I know is absolutely 100% true:

I feel like there has been a value shift in me as it pertains to style influencing.

I started noticing it subtly pop up before moving. And then it really hit me as I was packing up my townhouse just ahead of my move to the UK in February of 2020. The amount of stuff I combed through, as I was decided what to bring and what to sell at a moving sale [which ended up never happening] … really grossed me out. I had something like 50+ pairs of jeans. WHO NEEDS FIFTY PAIRS OF JEANS. I mean, I have historically been a jeans girl but what the hell? Fifty? And … so many of them were so similar to each other!

What’s sad, too, is that I was already someone in the style influencing space who was struggling with what it was becoming.

[There was a constant promotion of STUFF just for the sake of linking and promoting STUFF and making money. And, you were encouraged to be on stories and create more video content. Brands were investing less of their marketing budgets in blog posts and more on ‘quick consumption’ content. As a long-form content lover, I was less than thrilled to see this shift]

And yet, even though I wasn’t opting to promote Amazon all the time and do try-on’s every day on stories, I had still fallen victim to overconsumption. But it’s easy to do, to be honest. As an influencer, you feel sometimes like you constantly have to have ‘new’ stuff to link so you end up basically being a buyer for your business in the same way that brands have buyers for theirs. But then you have to manage all of that inventory and store it in your home … which, I also realize might sound like a ‘first world problem’ but, I can assure you the appeal of being able to buy new stuff all the time wears off really fast. At least it did for me, obviously I can’t speak for every influencer. We think we need more than we actually do. We don’t need more stuff. We need more experiences that connect us. Again, experiences over things.

Baby Haley in 2016 at an M&S press event

[And, a quick side note … as I mentioned not being able to speaking for other influencers … I hope you all know. I say all of this as absolutely no shade to influencers who do what I am saying I don’t want to do or doesn’t feel aligned for me! And this is also no shade to you if you're a lover of that type of content from other influencers! I’m just sharing through the lens of how things have shifted for me personally with no judgement as to how other people live their life, operate their business, etc. I truly am a ‘live and let live’ kind of person.]

Moving to the UK made it easy for me to really lean into that desire for less that I talked about at the beginning of 2020 when this was really starting to convict me. It was so much easier to want less when you have less space for stuff to go. And, when you have kids, too — at least this is the case for me — I felt less of a desire to also manage more ‘things’ or more ‘stuff’. Life feels chaotic enough as it is.

But, this movement to ‘less’ meant that I was essentially turning off the power switch of my business … maybe not completely but, considerably. The combination of less, sharing outfits less, and showing up less on social media [partly due to this value shift and partly due to mental health struggles due to postpartum and trying desperately to make sense of all of this] meant … less engagement with my audience, less affiliate links being distributed, less clicks on said links and, thus, less commissions coming through. Brands could also see less posts and wondered whether their marketing dollars were worth the investment not to mention … I had ‘living in the UK’ as a strike against me, as well.. So, ultimately, this led to more difficulty providing for myself and my family being that style influencing was what had afforded me the life I had created for myself in the first place … and allowed me to travel the way I had during my ‘hay day’.

So, with the heavy fog refusing to lift, our family decided that it might be best to move back to the U.S. [Florida, where I’m from; I explain a little bit of the why behind the move in this post] to reset, if you will.

Moving back was meant to afford me the spaciousness to explore that question on a deeper level without as much financial stress as we were experiencing in the U.K.

And here’s what is crazy …

We had just moved back to Florida and I was awake in the middle of the night in September. I was missing London and thinking like ‘I can’t believe I’m back here. How could this all be happening? I’m grateful for the ease that being back will potentially provide but also, I don’t just want to do the thing I did before because … the reason why that worked before was because I was lit up by what I was doing. And, if I’m honest with myself, I know that it doesn’t do that for me in the way that it did.’

And this line of thinking made me immediately ask myself this question …

When was the last time you felt like you were living in alignment with that thing that brought you the greatest joy and what was that thing?

And, without hesitation, I thought ‘in 2019 when I was traveling and sharing my love for and experiences in these incredible places I was exploring’.

THAT’S WHEN THE CLARITY THAT HAD BEEN ALLUDING ME FOR SO LONG FINALLY CAME THROUGH.

It was like this download just landed in my brain …

‘You’re meant to do more with this passion for travel, particularly your love of London and England as a whole, your desire to help people travel more confidently and competently, as well as helping people invest in and create memories through life-giving and life-altering experiences.’

YOU GUYS!!! I couldn’t believe it. It was such a clear message.

And it finally made everything make sense. I was sad because the business I had created was no longer aligned with my current values and how they had shifted … and I was no longer sharing the thing that brought me the most joy. So, the solution is to shift the business to where the focus is more on those things I love and feel really about passionate about helping people with. Like I’ve said, I only ever want to be helpful.

And, do you know something that has always really pained me … literally ever since living in London in 2016? My inability to respond to the degree that I personally would want to when you all would ask me questions about London — mainly on Instagram in my DM’s.

London is such a massive city. It literally has something for everyone and I am so lucky to have spent so much time here. But, I also feel like my experience, paired with my desire to want to be as helpful as possible, has made it difficult for me to answer those questions appropriately.

Every traveler is different so a question like …

+ ‘how should I spend my three days in London?’
+ ‘what are some of the best restaurants?’
+ ‘what area should i stay in?’
+ ‘can you tell me the top 3 things there are to see? i only have one day’

literally paralyzes me because I don’t know you, your budget, how you like to pace yourself when you travel, what you biggest interests are, what you absolutely do not want to spend your time doing, what your dietary preferences are, whether you’ve been to London before, how many people you’re traveling with, etc etc.

How can I possibly answer these so generally when every traveler is so different?

So, then I would just not answer which always made me feel terrible because I actually would always love to talk London and hash out what would make the most sense for you based on you.

And, I think because I’ve been a content creator for over 10 years … I never really allowed myself to think about how I could actually provide a helpful service to people who need and / or wanted that insight from me. I always thought ‘maybe I’ll create a London guide one day’ and charge a small fee for it … but, again … London is just too big for that. And, truthfully, I’d rather connect with you one-on-one so I just never felt 100% about that.

Okay, so, what does this mean?

So, I certainly hope that this doesn’t make it seems like I don’t want to share my style chronicles at all.

I absolutely still want to share style content.

I just don’t have the desire to do it in the way that I once did nor do I want it to be all I talk about. So, moving forward, we will go back to my content being a blend of both style and travel. The side side will focus on promoting mindful consumption, the careful curation of a wardrobe you love and feel good in, and making smart investments in classic pieces that will stand the test of time.

I’ll share content like …

+ my personal style picks
+ great sales worthy of taking advantage of
+ seasonal capsule wardrobes [likely to launch later this year after we settle into having two kids for a while and get the travel side of things running smoothly, too … but this has been on my ‘dream content’ list for a while so just know it’s coming]
+ packing lists for different travel destinations based on where you’re traveling to
+ a handful of outfit posts on the blog each month [these might be slow to roll out until after postpartum, ya know? but they will return hah]

but, I’ll also be …

launching travel consulting and planning services to you, too!

Do I have all the details around the specific services I’ll be offering ready to share with you? Sure don’t but … it’s alllll coming together! Slowly but surely. You guys know … with pregnancy and a puppy, lately … I’ve just had my hands full but we are chipping away at all the details and hope to get some more info out before baby boy comes!

I’m thinking that travel consulting will launch first, and quite soon! And, then the travel planning services will likely launch in a month or two — there’s more that needs to be organized on that side of things like terms & conditions, legalities, insurance, things like that … so, hang tight but know that’s what we’re working on!

Oh yeah, that’s the other thing I meant to tell you …

I am doing this all … with John!

Ha, surprise!

In the Summer before we moved, John and I went to a restaurant for his birthday and it was kindly a gifted experience through a PR company. Maybe you remember when I shared it HERE? Well, at that lunch, John was just buzzing. He was on such a high. He loves foodie experiences as well as a hotel with lovely decor and amenities so he just thought it was the best thing ever to be hosted to try out this lovely menu of delicious food! [It was really incredible to be fair!]

So, when I had my realization … I was like if I’m going to have someone work alongside me to help me plan experiences for people [because I’ll need help if I’m also going to keep the style side of the business going … it’s a lot of work, ha!] … I want it to be with the person who I love enjoying all of my experiences with and who gets excited about experiences as much as I do. He’s such a fun person to talk to and really caters the conversations he has with people around them and what they need out of it so, I just know he’ll be the perfect person to have working alongside me to help ensure our clients get what they need out of us and their travels.

So, what are you doing in London?

This trip to London is essentially what’s called a ‘scouting trip’ which, is basically what I would go on between 2016-2019 when I would travel here. I used it to enjoy my time but I also used it to build out my personal experience and knowledge base of the city. At the time, obviously as I’ve shared, it never generated any income for my business. It was mainly for pleasure but it was also because I wanted that knowledge and experience out of a love for the city.

This particular ‘scouting trip’ which is my first ‘official’ one as a newbie in the travel consulting and planning space is to gain a greater understanding of the boutique and luxury hotel market here in London.

Oh, because that’s the other thing …

… for now, we’ll be helping people who are traveling to London, as well as England as a whole. Over time, we will be widening our services to include consulting and planning for other destinations.

We are starting small, with the destination we know the best, as we are obviously about to have another little one so, we just want to be mindful about how much we’re taking on being that this is something brand new to both of us.

Okay, back to the hotel topic …

I know what a lot of the greatest hotels in the city are and have had various experiences in some of them over the last ten years but, as a consultant and an advisor, I need to know more so I can best match them to my clients’ needs and preferences.

So, this week, I am booked and busy meeting with the leading sales teams in some of London’s most beautiful hotels. I am so excited to learn as much as I can and make some fabulous connections in the hotel space! So many of you shared where you stayed here over the last year and it blew me away just how great it was to see that I already had meetings with the ones you had great experiences in so I can’t wait to get started and see them all!

In conclusion..

Obviously I have dabbled in a lot of different things over the last few years and those were all really fun. But, they never felt like they were 100% my thing. I found them all to be super interesting but they were more of what I was leaning on to try and make sense of my reality. So, all of that learning and all of that time and experimentation wasn’t for nothing … it was helpful and I loved it but, this just feels so much more like me. The ‘me’ that has felt like she hasn’t had a place to shine … so, it’s time to change that!

I cannot wait to share more updates as I have them but now …

… it’s your turn to talk! What do you think? I can’t wait to chat with you in the comments!

Thanks so much for being here. It means more than you know! xo.