EXCITING NEWS FROM TLC: WE'RE BAAACK!
To the Crew,
So, I know we've been here before and honestly, I've received all the DMs, emails, and smoke signals from you guys about where TLC has been and why haven't we capitalized on so many of these very "TLC" moments in the past few years…
15 years ago - I was a newly graduated college student who entered the workforce in the middle of one of the worst (so we thought, ha!) recessions the United States had ever experienced. It was a really scary time, but for me, a time that was filled with great opportunity.
During that time, I did what any young and dumb 20-year-old would do – I packed up everything and moved to New York City from a small town in Virginia in search of finding hope and success on my own terms.
Picture it, the early 2000’s, iPods were still a thing, people used sidekicks and Nextel walkie-talkies as a form of communication, you needed a college email address to get on Facebook, and Instagram wasn’t even a thing.
The early stages of my career were filled with trial and error; I remember going door to door to companies with a printed resume and portfolio book of case studies in hopes that somebody would take me seriously. I worked three minimum wage jobs just to be able to pay the rent on the room I rented in my 2-bedroom apartment with my THREE other roommates. I searched for guidance anywhere I could get it because at times the journey I was on seemed very hopeless. I’ll never forget the first time I received a yes on a job opportunity, it was the most exciting moment of my life.
I got a new outfit and showed up an hour and a half early only for the hiring manager to look at me in shock and tell me, she accidentally sent the hiring email to the wrong person and I was not hired.
Can you imagine?!
I literally melted into dust at the time lol and was ready to give up. Until one day I received a phone call for an unpaid internship at MTV that changed my life.
This time was the exact moment I knew I wanted to create The Life Currency; something that was real, something that didn't just tell everyone that they needed to work hard and good things will come. A place that creates some form of community.
Your 20s are so hard. You’re trying to figure out who you want to be while cosplaying an adult all at the same time. You go from raising your hand to use the bathroom one day to being in meetings with people that look like your parents the next. And nobody tells you what to do in the middle. Everything gets WEIRD.
Your friends get weird, your parents get weird, your bank account gets real weird, your body starts to change and it's almost like you’re fighting to get air while also making sure you still enjoy everything while you’re young.
When I started The Life Currency, I was filled with passion and the uncertainties of what it looks like when you’re constantly fighting for a dream. It kept me up at night and it is what drove me to create this space so many years ago.
Since then though, so much of my life has changed. I went from being a struggling intern to a young executive to a young founder and CEO, going from literally almost being homeless to experiencing the death of my first love on my 30th birthday, to accruing over 6 figures in business debt, to paying that all off and growing a 7 figure + business with close to 20 employees, to sharing a 2 bedroom with 4 people to getting my own dream high rise apartment, to falling in love and packing up all my things to move once again to becoming married, buying a home, looking at life insurance plans!?
It took me a minute to realize my heart wasn't in it because I was so deep in transition. The whole purpose of why I started TLC in the first place was lost in that transition as well. The world around us was being flipped inside out -- shit got crazy y'all! From gender norms and social justice to pandemics and public health, the conversation across the country got deep (in a good way).
And it finally hit me one day - we had to shift everything for the brand to make sense like it once did. We have all changed and the generations behind us are experiencing the aftermath. Fuck all that millennial pink and boss bitch vibes - we are starting revolutions, shifting cultural norms, flipping the entire script - we have truly ascended into the next level of bad bitchdom, and the world needed to feel it. What's a purpose-driven brand without purpose? Nothing.
So I'm excited to announce that after literal years of trying to psyche myself back up to do what we once did before x10 -- The Life Currency is back and here to stay. I have so much more to share with you all about the journey and the team that continues to push ME to shut up and just do it as well.
The culture that we're doing this for is being editorialized and redefined by the second. We're here to make sure you stay 10 steps ahead at all times because we're taking our reparations however we can get them.
Whitney