Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Samantha March. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Samantha thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

My brand, By Samantha March, came to fruition at an extremely low season in my life. In 2019 I was in fertility treatments, my marriage was struggling, my career in content creation felt stalled, and to put it lightly, my mental health was not stable. One day laying in bed feeling sorry for myself stretched into two days, then four, and kept progressing. When 2020 rolled around and suddenly we were self-isolating and afraid to step outside our front doors, it all became too much. I knew I needed to rely on myself to turn things around because my future was looking alarmingly dark . I decided if I could have just one thing to focus on each day, I could pour my energy into that one small thing, that one small healthy habit, and then the next day would come and I could do it again. My emotions and thoughts were so scrambled that I did not feel I could find these reasons to focus myself, so I took to searching online for anything that could help me. While I found a few things like angel cards, it wasn’t exactly what I needed. And that’s what sparked the idea to start By Samantha March. My brand launched in July 2021 – by this time, I had stopped IVF treatments, filed for divorce, and moved from my home state of Iowa to my dream city of Las Vegas. One of the first products we launched with in addition to daily planners and notepads was the Deck of Healthy Habits. A card deck that features one healthy habit on each card – from decluttering, to elevating your skincare routine, to checking in with friends and family. This was the card deck that I relied on during my darkest moments, and it sold out almost immediately after our website went live. This showed me how many others – especially women – need a little extra help some days, when our to-do lists feel too long, our scheduled too overcrowded, and the pressure to do it all and look good while doing it becomes too much.
The mission behind By Samantha March is to empower women to live inspired, no matter how that looks to each of them. By building a community through zoom calls and challenges, to creating monthly healthy habit calendars, to offering products like goals trackers and 90 day planners, By Samantha March is a personal brand that was built in hopes of turning my own life around, and in turn, others who need that extra dose of motivation.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I started my career in social media as a WordPress blogger in 2009. I wrote blog posts on books I had read, makeup I tried, and workouts I was doing. I turned to blogging because I didn’t have a lot of friends IRL with the same interests as me, and thought I could find a friend or two online. I was also hoping to form some sort of connection with people in the publishing industry, as I being an author was my dream career. I launched Chick Lit Plus in October 2009, after saving valiantly to pay a website designer $300 to build the site for me and give me a crash course on coding. By early 2010 I was interviewing authors like Jackie Collins and Emily Giffin, and had agents and publishing houses reaching out to me for book review requests and author interviews. In April 2011 I published my debut novel, Destined To Fail, and have traveled to New York, Canada and Vegas for book signings. By summer 2014 I was working full time in social media and book publishing. I continually kept up with the internet changes – slowly cutting back on my blog, starting a Youtube channel and building an Instagram presence. Now, I also run a podcast, share short form content on Tiktok, launched my own brand in 2021, and have recently delved more into travel blogging and host group travel trips with my community in addition to starting an event planning company focused on retreats for content creators. I will be publishing my 10th novel in 2024 and I love that I wake up excited to do my job every single day.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Working as an entrepreneur feels like you always need to be at the ready to pivot. Especially in today’s age of technology, things seem to change so fast. Add in working full-time in social media, it feels you never know when a platform will fizzle out or a new one will be introduced. The speed at trying to grab your username on a new platform that will probably not take off is wild. My first big pivot came after realizing the landscape of social media was changing from the written word in the form of blog posts, to photo and video content on Instagram and Youtube. Writing is my first love – I’m an author of nine and loved creating blog posts – so I was hesitant to shift platforms. I believe I waited too long to move my community to the newer platforms and think that really hurt my transition from a part-time blogger to a full-time social media influencer. Nowadays, I’m much quicker to pivot when it looks like a new platform or a new way to presenting content online is introduced.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me, it’s the creativity and freedom. Choosing my own schedule each day, getting to decide what projects I want to bring to life, and seeing something that I only visualized – like characters in my books or products I’ve launched with my brand – become real, tangible items is the greatest feeling.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bysamanthamarch.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marchbeautyword/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/samanthamarchauthor
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDnb5YAcjk7pnu25YckVL6g
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@bysamanthamarch