Happy 4 years, Simply Stine! It's time to celebrate!

Today I woke up and realized that it’s been four years since I hit publish on my first blog post for Simply Stine. Four years!!!  I wanted to take a moment today to just reflect on that for a little bit and to say thank you for those of you who have supported me throughout this journey.  To be able to do what I love every single day is an amazing feeling, but without your support, I wouldn’t be here. 

When I started this blog I honestly had no idea where it would go or what I’d be able to do with it.  In fairness, I was quite naive when I first started.  I remember building up to the moment where I was trying to tell my husband what I wanted to do. I had this whole plan and vision in my head. Talking about it out loud was scary, because that was the moment that it was real for me! 

ME: “I want to start a blog, look at these bloggers, I can do that!” 

ROB: “So what exactly will you talk about?”

ME: “I don’t know, a whole bunch of stuff. You know I love Beauty! It can’t be that hard”

ROB: “Ok.”

I thought my blog was amazing even in the beginning!  I thought that as soon as I hit publish, that people would flock to Simply Stine.  I figured my friends and family would comment and share my posts every single day.  I thought I’d instantly have all of these blogger friends and we’d go to events together all of the time. I thought every single PR person would be crazy to not want to work with my brand.  I was that confident in myself and Simply Stine.  I had a lot of learning to do!

I worked hard.  Sure my photography might not have been amazing in the beginning and my posts might have been less than stellar, but I kept up with it and I continued to improve and learn.  That’s the one piece of advice I would give anyone, with any job, never stop learning! I asked a lot of questions from bloggers I looked up to, I joined blogger groups, I took classes and webinars and I kept reaching out to more brands hoping that they’d see the potential I had.  #Hustle  For the first time in my life, I was not going to give up on myself and this dream I had!

I remember one of my first events I was invited to was about one year after I started Simply Stine.  It was a major moment for me personally and for my blog.  The event was held at Sak’s Fifth Avenue and I can remember sitting in my car, shaking before I went inside.  This was a proud moment for me.  Here I was, a girl from a small town in Ohio who had big dreams that I wasn’t even sure I could achieve.   I went inside to that event and was wow’d from the moment I walked in the doors.  It was and still is to this day a very important moment for me and my career.  You see, the old me would have never thought anything like this could happen to me and that I wasn’t good enough so being there, with other bloggers I looked up to and admired, and having a brand like Sak’s personally reach out to me was a defining moment. 

Thank you for everyone who has supported me along this journey.  There’s nothing I love more than reading comments, emails and messages from my readers.  I’m still amazed every day when I see new people (from all around the world) reading my posts and sharing them.  I had this dream of creating this little space on the internet and I had no idea what would happen when I first hit publish on my blog post. Here we are four years later and I couldn’t be happier and more proud of what Simply Stine has become.