Jessica is the founder and CEO of Jessica Lawlor & Company (JL&Co), a writer, personal branding expert and speaker. She has been blogging since 2008 and, since 2012, has consistently documented her business journey.

Many business owners have deleted posts relating to previous blog brands. Jessica didn’t, and readers are able to learn a lot from her blog archive. This profile is a fascinating case study of pivots, taking chances and working hard.

Jessica Lawlor & Company

Jessica has documented her journey turning her side hustle into a business.

She has provided regular overviews of the her business year.

She has also been incredibly open about the changes and struggles she has faced as her business has grown.

Becoming CEO

In February, 2016, Jessica resigned from her full-time job working in public relations to take her business, blog, brand and teaching full time.

She shared more about the process in her Becoming CEO series. You can learn more about her intentions with the series at Why I’m So Transparent About How I Make Money, Starting a Business and Becoming CEO.

From Side Hustle To CEO series

In her second year, she changed the series title and posted quarterly updates.

Website redesign

Her blog has undergone redesigns in both 2012 and 2019.

Earlier Brands

She shared more about her early experiences at A Blogging Evolution: Looking Back at 7 Years of Sharing My Life on The Internet.

Cover to Cover

Jessica launched her book blog, Cover to Cover, in August 2009. The blog was described as a one-stop shop for book reviews, book chat, author interviews, anecdotes from her novel writing journey, writing and publishing news and much more. She wrote more about the ‘why’ behind the blog at Top 10 Reasons I Love Book Blogging. She later shared what she learned from this blog at 10 Things I’ve Learned From 2 Years of Book Blogging.

She celebrated her first Blogoversary in 2010.

She started to experiment with separate PR work during this period. She helped Kristin Walker with PR for her debut novel. She wrote a follow up to the case study one year later. In 2010, she started experimenting with personal branding by launching a separate website at JessicaLawlor.com. 6 months later, she moved the content over from Blogger to the JessicaLawlor.com brand.

Getting Gutsy

In 2012, Jessica rebranded and launched the new JessicaLawlor.com. The first post she wrote for the site was Life Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone. She used the ‘Get Gutsy’ phrase a couple of times in that and incorporated it into her website branding. The phrase took off within her community and become associated with her personal brand.

She wrote a number of posts about the brand evolution.

She also wrote annual ‘Get Gusty’ reviews:

In 2019, she decided to say goodbye to any remnants of the Get Gusty brand as it no longer served her.

Clients

The Write Life

In 2016, Jessica became The Write Life’s new managing editor.

In 2017, she wrote a Behind-The-Scenes of the Launch of The Writer’s Bundle

Muck Rack

Jessica is the features editor at Muck Rack. She was discovered by the founder of Muck Rack after sharing one of his articles on her weekly roundup post. Jessica tagged Greg on Twitter and he reached out to ask if she would be interested in writing a guest post.

She shared more at How I Landed My First Freelance Client + The Exact Strategy I Use To Find New Business

Fitness

Teaching Yoga

In 2015, made the decision to become a yoga teacher. She had written about her personal yoga experience at 100 Lessons From 100 Yoga Classes,

She shared more about her journey in a blog series.

In June, 2015, she taught her first yoga class. She shared her experiences at 25 Lessons From Teaching Her First 25 Yoga Classes and One Year of Teaching Yoga: Milestones, Gifts, Lessons and Gratitude

Running

It took two years for Jessica to start referring to herself as a runner. Fortunately for other newbies, she shared her running experiences on her blog.

Philadelphia Half Marathon

Broad Street Run

In 2012, Jessica participated in the Broad Street Run race for the first time. She ran it again in 2013. She shared her advice in Broad Street Run: 10 Tips For Runners

More About Jessica

Features

Jessica was featured in the Penny Hoarder post She Quit a $50K Day Job to Follow Her Dreams — And Earned More by Month 3. This post ended up attracting some criticism. She wrote To The “Haters”: You Never See The Full Picture, So Please Stop Judging in response.

Day In The Life

Connections:

She works for Alexis Grant as the managing editor of The Write Life.

Jessica lawlor