my story

At 33 I decided to change my life while standing on a street corner.

I was grieving the loss of my mother, I had a new baby and I was tired of being dependent on outside resources for my survival. It was 2012 and I thought it would be a good idea to learn how to build an online community and be a storyteller on the internet.

How hard could it be right?

It wasn't exactly hard but it definitely wasn’t easy. It took about 4 years to make any real money and there were a lot of learning curves I needed to move through coupled with falling flat on my face a few times.

I grew up as a theater kid and sold dry cleaning coupon books door-to-door in my teens for my parent’s marketing company in the Chicago suburbs. I didn’t know it then, but this laid for me the foundation of storytelling (content) marketing.

In my mid 20s I worked as a commercial actor and model for brands like Walmart, Google and Clorox. I dabbled in small indie films and had a moderately successful career in the San Francisco Bay Area acting industry playing mostly young moms.

There was a shift in the winds around 2011 and I could tell there was something coming that would completely disrupt traditional advertising. This was the rise of social media and I knew I needed to learn how to do it. I also knew I never wanted to rely on a casting director or the color of my eyes to be the deciding factor as to whether I could feed my family.

I was standing waiting for the 1 California bus in San Francisco and I decided right then I was going to shift gears.

So I started a parenting blog.

My husband wasn’t too sure spending hours on the internet writing a blog was worth the investment until one day I brought home a gifted grill after attending a blogging convention. From then on he was (mostly) fine with it.

Parenting blogging led to learning social media which led to small brand partnerships. I didn’t make a lot of money but my community from those early days are very special to me, many of whom I am still connected to.

In 2015 I began working with a professional skateboarder and together with our team scaled his online presence to over 5M followers. I monetized his social platforms and negotiated his brand deals. I worked with him for 5 years and it was an invaluable experience in community building, passion driven storytelling and content monetization.

2020 rolled around and I decided to quit my job and start my own company. My husband was also very concerned about this but he had learned to trust my wild instincts because they usually paid off. I mean, what’s better than getting a grill right?

I founded Latch Creative Inc. We are a creative agency that helps brands, celebrities and entrepreneurs establish their brand identity and tell their story online. I had a lot of success, but also some huge failures. I have learned to value the failures more than the wins because they taught me so much about where I went wrong and how to do it better.

By 2023 I had worked so long telling other people’s stories I began to feel like maybe I was a fraud. I had somewhat abandoned my own storytelling which in hindsight was a grave mistake. I decided to test myself to begin showing up on my own pages and platforms to see what would happen. Did I really know anything about this industry? Could my voice make a difference? Would I be able to build a community?

Following the death of my mother and while moving through my 30s and early 40s, I had dived deep into understanding how my body and mind worked. Of course I was scared my mother’s fate would be mine, so I did everything I could to understand what happened to her and how I could possibly create a different outcome for myself.

By the time I turned 43 I got to a place where I believed that aging was in fact cool. While acknowledging the past or things about myself or the world I wanted to improve, I learned could still have a sense of optimism concerning my future. I also learned it is possible to have a present that is filled with joy while building that future. I wanted you to experience that too.

This was the story I wanted to tell on the internet.

Over the next 3 years I went on to build a community of over 750,000 people, worked with legendary brands on social media campaigns, started a newsletter and unexpectedly landed a book deal with DK Publishing. I recently founded a lifestyle brand and tech startup called Dewe.life which is going to help my community turn their goals into reality.

What is happening is really beyond anything I thought my life could be and for that I am very grateful to YOU, the person who is reading this right now. Without you, none of this is possible.

I think my favorite part about how this life journey has gone so far is being able to connect with so many different people from all different corners of the globe who share this idea that the future can be better. That we never really stop growing and that aging IS cool.

L Jen

ps. My husband still talks about that grill and he is an integral part of my business now along with his own ventures so it all worked out.