From Beaumont to ERLY (The Long Way Around)

If you’re new here, I thought I’d start with a little context. Who I am, how I got here, and how I somehow ended up building a skincare brand.

The short version: I grew up in Beaumont, Texas, went to the University of Texas (Hook ’em forever), and have always had a bit of an entrepreneurial itch.

The longer version is a little more winding.

I’m from Beaumont, which someone once told me is the kind of place where all roads eventually lead back. I’m not sure if that’s technically true, but I do know some of the best people I know come from Beaumont, so I’ll take it.

I was also a cheerleader at UT, and honestly I still feel like one today. I root hard for my friends, my people, and the women around me. I’m a girl’s girl through and through.

After college, I moved into the tech world and eventually landed at Facebook during a time when everything was growing incredibly fast. I focused on the fashion and beauty verticals and had a front-row seat to how brands built communities and scaled online. In many ways, it was a masterclass in modern brand building.

But before a lot of the life I have now came one of the hardest chapters of my life.

Two days after my 26th birthday, I was diagnosed with stage IV Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It was the kind of moment that completely stops you in your tracks. One day you are building your career and making plans, and the next you are sitting in a doctor’s office trying to understand how your life just changed so dramatically.

Treatment meant months at MD Anderson in Houston. I lost my hair and, for a while, my sense of normalcy. There were days that were incredibly hard and uncertain.

MD Anderson saved my life. The doctors, nurses, and researchers there gave me the chance to have the life I have today, and that is something I will never take for granted.

A fellow survivor once told me something during treatment that has stayed with me ever since: you can be scared and brave at the same time. I truly feel like I went through hell and came out the other side with a deep gratitude for the life I get to live now.

Eventually life brought me my husband, Blake, who is quite literally an angel on earth. He is my biggest cheerleader, my rock, and the person who believes in me even on the days when things feel impossible. Our family is everything to me. We have three kids, Spencer, Emmy, and Max, who keep life loud, fun, and very real.

Somewhere along the way I realized that I really love building things. The messy, scrappy, figure-it-out-as-you-go kind of building.

Before ERLY, I spent many years building Rank & Style alongside two incredible partners. What started as a small business eventually grew into a platform used by millions of shoppers trying to figure out what was actually worth buying online. The company was eventually acquired, and it remains one of the chapters of my career that I’m most proud of.

Even after that chapter closed, I still had the itch to build again.

That’s where ERLY comes in.

My co founder Hallie is a board certified dermatologist and someone I trust deeply when it comes to skin health. Through her practice she was seeing more and more patients with irritated, overwhelmed skin from complicated routines and trend driven products. At the same time, I was watching the beauty industry get louder and more complicated by the day. More steps. More actives. More products. Ane more influence on my 10 year old daughter.

Somewhere along the way, simple got lost. So we decided to bring it back.

ERLY is named after our daughters, Emerson and Lyle, but it is also a reminder to start early with what actually works. Wash your face. Wear SPF. Stay consistent.

Building a brand from the ground up is incredibly hard. We are not celebrity founded, and there is no giant marketing machine behind us. Every single customer, every single follower, every single mention of ERLY has come from real work. Hallie and I read the DMs, celebrate every order, and feel every bump in the road.

There are moments that feel glamorous, but a lot of the time it looks more like answering customer emails, packing boxes, refreshing Shopify, and trying to convince the algorithm to be nice to us that day.

One of the most rewarding parts, though, is that my kids get to see it happen in real time. They get to see the grit, the patience, and the work that goes into building something meaningful.

These days life is mostly Austin, with trips to New York as often as I can manage. When I do unplug, you’ll usually find me wake surfing on Lake Austin, eating chips and queso, squeezing in a tennis match, or going to bed VERY early before jumping back into the ERLY grind.

If you’re here, whether you’ve been following ERLY since day one or just discovered us yesterday, I’m really glad you’re along for the ride.

x

Jamie