Welcome to Second Life, a podcast spotlighting successful people who’ve made major career changes—and fearlessly mastered the pivot. Hosted by Hillary Kerr, co-founder and chief content officer at Who What Wear, each episode gives you a direct line to people who are game changers in their fields. Subscribe to Second Life on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts to stay tuned.
Before Jenee Naylor founded her eyewear brand 12PM Studios, she created luxury fashion blog HighLowLuxxe as a hobby. It was a side project she began while working as an operations manager at Target, where she quickly excelled at training, recruiting, and promoting employees. She worked tirelessly to cultivate a community among workers at the corporation, and eventually, she quit to pursue her blog full-time and keep building her own fashion community.
Spoiler alert: Betting on herself turned out to be the best decision she ever made. As her own manager, hundreds of thousands of followers came in across her platforms, she attended fashion weeks, and interviewed industry titans like Law Roach.
A full-circle moment came in the form of a Target collaboration years later, when she launched a clothing line through the chain’s Future Collective partnership. After years of cultivating a loyal fanbase and building impactful relationships with brands, in July 2025, Naylor started one of her own. The concept? An eyewear brand called 12PM Studios.
Each frame is priced under $150 and inspired by cities that have shaped her creativity, like London, Milan, New York, and Toronto. “I wanted it to feel elevated but never out of reach,” she explains. Though the frames did become out of reach because they sold out in mere days. (Luckily, an October restock is coming soon for fans who missed out on the initial launch.)
Though Naylor’s retail background gave her a good grasp of launching her own business, it was her constant drive, authenticity, and intentional mindset that shaped her success—and it’s only up from here.
Listen to the latest episode of Second Life to hear more from Jenee Naylor about making the leap from corporate job to full-time content creator, starting her own eyewear business, and how she finds balance through it all.
Next: Meet Gregg Renfrew, Beauty Founder of Counter
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