Interview with Jill Seiman of Glamamom

It would be unfair to wedge Jill Seiman into any one category. The founder of High Line Media, a media strategy and special events production company, Jill maintains a successful blog called Glamamom, and contributes to publications such as Cosmopolitan. She began her professional career on Wall Street, had stints at Coach and The Estée Lauder Companies, and served as a director of The Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group for 7 years.

We were fortunate enough to catch up with Jill as she hurried from a lunch meeting to her apartment to meet her toddler son, in the manner of any wildly successful New York woman.

You started your career in the financial industry. I wonder how you came to work in media?

I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999 with a degree in liberal arts. At the time, investment bankers were looking for well-rounded analyst candidates. I followed good advice that I had received early on—you should study what you love because you can always hone your skills with work experience and/or a graduate degree—and took a job at Credit Suisse, because I thought it would be a great opportunity to learn finance and accounting.

After working for two years as an analyst, I started leaning more towards the real estate side of financial services. After I got my master’s from New York University, I worked for 7 years marketing and financing real estate deals.

When my son was born in 2009, I very organically decided to start a blog about the unique experiences I was having as a working mom in New York—even though I wanted to be at home with him, I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel on my ambitions. If anything, having so much responsibility as a mother just made my aspirations grow even further, and I found that I couldn’t turn them off.

Were you always interested in being a writer?

Well, I did a lot of writing in college, and I always had to write to market deals in finance. But writing has always been a challenge for me, which is actually great, because it forces me to sit down and exercise my mind. I consider myself to be more of a voice than a writer.

Where did the blog lead you?

More and more people started asking me about starting a website and marketing yourself to build an audience. The blogging world is so vast, and it’s difficult to figure out how to monetize it. Before long, I was advising clients, which lead to me pursue my own business.

You were recently asked to be part of Cosmopolitan’s exclusive blogger network. How did they approach you?

They chose me, along with nine other bloggers, to be part of the network. We work with the advertorial side of the magazine to create creative and engaging promotional content, and “star” in the campaigns within the magazine.

With a 2-year old son at home, how do you balance being a mother and a businesswoman?

There is some inherent flexibility in running your own business as opposed to working for someone else. But when you’re trying to establish yourself—as I am now—you have to really put time into meeting your client’s needs. But I’m also very up front with them about my schedule—I meet my son when he comes home for lunch, and when he’s back from school. Everything is very constant and fluid. My schedule blends from work to life constantly throughout the day.

Do you find you’re more productive working from home?

I think you can accomplish so much when you just sit down and do it, whether you’re in an office or at home. At my last job before I started my own business, I started working from home at the end, because I found that going to the office was less productive—there were just too many distractions. It’s more about your motivation than it is about being physically in any location.

Has financial literacy always been a priority for you?

It was definitely something I learned over time. When I first graduated from college, it was hard to make ends meet. I had student loans, and even though my salary was decent, I had just enough money to cover my basic living expenses, with a little left over for going out and having fun. In my first few years in New York, I definitely learned how to budget.

I also learned a lot from my mother, who always told me to put the maximum amount in my 401K. At my first job, my employer was matching up to 10%, which was a lucky thing. Every month, I would have them automatically withdraw it pre-tax so that I couldn’t spend it. If it’s just not in your paycheck, you don’t miss it as much.

How have your spending patterns changed after you got married?

When I was single, it was much, much harder to save because I wasn’t making as much money and there were a million things I wanted to buy. When I got married and we started sharing expenses, it was easier, because we were in it together and I wasn’t making decisions unilaterally.

You mentioned that you have student loans. What kind of advice would you give to young people who are finding themselves burdened with a lot of debt, and very little information about how to alleviate it?

I paid for graduate school fully with student loans and had a few from undergrad as well. Even though it was expensive, for me it was worth it. I think of it as an investment in my life. It advanced my career and I continue to pay them off little by little. But you need to evaluate loans very carefully because they don’t go away, even in a bankruptcy.

After grad school I consolidated all my loans through Sally Mae with one low interest rate, which allows me to make one payment a month. I definitely recommend looking into a federal consolidation program. Student Loan Borrower Assistance is a great resource.

Do you have any advice for young women coming into the workforce?

“Do what you love” is a great motto, but you need to understand the limitations. When I graduated from college, I needed to make money and learn a skill set, and I appreciated having the flexibility to dabble in a few different fields. I would definitely recommend that women take advantage of their flexibility when they aren’t yet married or don’t yet have children because that’s when you typically have the most flexibility to move around and work late hours. Once you learn a skill set, even in a field that isn’t necessarily your passion, you set yourself up with options for the future.

I also recommend creating a network of contacts and mentors. You may be on Linkedin but are you actively using it? I can tell you where almost everyone in my analyst class from Credit Suisse is now and it’s been well over 10 years. One of my clients is a high school classmate that I reconnected with on Facebook, another is a former real estate client that is also pursuing other things and saw my updated profile on Linkedin. Keep in touch and let people know what you’re doing or what you want to do.

Finally, I want to remind and reinforce to young women that the work you do in your 20s is such a small percentage of the work you’ll do during the course of your career. You don’t need to have it all figured out immediately. In fact, taking some time to build different skill sets and meeting new people will allow you explore the world of possibilities that exists between becoming a doctor or lawyer. Your first job is not the end-all be-all. It’s just a beginning.