Dear friends, family, and members of the Pretty Southern squad:
Y’all, it has been a tiiime. Since we first launched this baby blog more than 12 years ago, so much has changed in the world. AI may very well one day take over Pretty Southern. But that day is not today.
Today, we are still here, writing, living, and maybe even making dreams come true.
Because once upon a time, in May of 2011 to be exact, your girl found herself unemployed with severance and dreams of becoming a blogger. Thanks to my “helluva engineer” husband, we brought this blog to life. He bought the domain, set up our WordPress instance, and we were live.
Then thanks to our community (and some very savvy PR ladies, y’all know who you are!) we were off to the races with media opportunities as soon as we launched. In the early years of Pretty Southern, we got to go behind the scenes with VIP passes, serve as a judge at food festivals, attend some swanky parties, and were treated to some pretty epic tasting menus.
It was also thanks to learning WordPress, PR, and social media that I was ready to ride the content marketing wave. In the last decade, I’ve had full-time employment at several venture-backed tech startups, served as an advisor to countless other growth-stage companies, and mentored fellow entrepreneurs and proteges who I’m now thankful to call friends,
Welp, fast forward to October of 2023, and here I am again, back at the beginning. I was recently impacted in a company-wide layoff; but this time, I have a little bit of money in the bank and still have this dream of making it on my own as a writer.
So now let’s do this thing!
Over the last decade, I’ve made too many excuses for putting Pretty Southern on the back burner: working full-time in marketing, my family, our geriatric dog going downhill, you name it. But the other night, I decided that I didn’t want to just be someone that bad things happen to — I want to make good things happen.
And reviving this blog, telling stories that might bring about a bit of hope, well, I just want it to be a place for good things. So if you have a story you want to tell, whether you’re launching a business here in Atlanta, you’re a Southerner who wrote a song, or a Southern writer who published a book, we’re here to help.
Please send me an email: editor(at)prettysouthern(dot)com or message me on LinkedIn to talk about how we can help make your own dreams come true.
We’re on a mission here to build a better world. Let’s do it together, y’all.
For the love of this world, and #LoveTheSouth, your pal, LP