How one woman turned getting fired into a six-figure business!

Rachel Mansfield was laid off unexpectedly two years ago from her role at a food and beverage company.

Today, Mansfield, 27, is more popularly known as “Rachl Mansfield” on her food blog and Instagram account. But long before her mouth-watering recipe posts garnered thousands of likes, that layoff hit her like a ton of bricks.

Just before being fired, she had begun posting recipes on her Instagram account while maintaining her role at the food and beverage brand. Mansfield says the company felt this was a conflict of interest, and let her go, without any warning.

A few weeks later, she found herself unemployed, considering her options,her parents and husband looked at her and said, Rachel, if you are passionate about your own brand, just give it a try and see what happens,” says Mansfield.

So she started with a deadline.

“I gave myself six months,” says Mansfield. “I said, ‘if I grow a successful brand in the next six months, I will continue to do this and if I don’t, then corporate America isn’t going anywhere.’”

She began building her brand, post by post. She started pitching herself to different products and companies to see if they would want to collaborate, and focused her Instagram account on consistency, posting her hand-crafted creations two to three times throughout the day.

At first, it was slow going. It took time to build up a following and brands often said no to collaborations because her account was so small. But patience is required in building a brand from the ground up.

Luckily, Mansfield’s prior experience gave her an advantage on navigating the ins and outs of product collaboration. Slowly but surely, she began collaborative relationships in which brands would pay her to create recipes using their products.

“It wasn’t easy; it took time,” She says. “But within six months it got to the point where she was able to be paid by different brands.”

She was lucky that she had saved, for if she had not, she wouldn’t have been able to do it.”

When she was fired, she was making $50,000 per year and now she is making over six-figures.

She admits the world of food bloggers and Instagram accounts is much more saturated today than two years ago. Timing, she says, might have been a factor in her success in the digital space. Timing, and a lot of elbow grease.

Here are a few of her tips for success:

- Keep it focused: It’s much easier to stand out when you narrow your competitors by entering a focused environment.

-Set deadlines and plan: Mansfield plans her recipes for the next month several weeks in advance, and says planning and prepping is critical in a space that never shuts off. Staying on track doesn’t have to be complicated. Keeping everything right in front of her helps ensures that she stays organized and meets deadlines, which can be especially hard when you have no hire-up to answer to.

-But be willing to go with the flow: You wear many hats in your business. Her advice? Follow your gut and stay true to yourself, but try to go with the flow as the space is always changing and you can’t plan for everything.

-Get on the work from home hustle: While running your own brand might seem like a chance to stay in your pajamas all day, Mansfield advises getting up and going. “Yes, I work from home and I work for myself, but you’ll never find me on the couch in the middle of the day.” Mansfield says she recommends doing something every day to further your business and brand. For her, this means keeping up with research in the space, relationship building, or working on collaborations.

-Stay in your lane: In the digital sphere, it seems there are an infinite number of food, fitness and fashion bloggers. Mansfield makes it a point to not compare herself to others and stay in her lane. “If I took a picture of a bacon cheeseburger, no one is going to want that from me, they want healthy recipes, and I think that staying in your own lane and following what you are known for is the best thing you can do,” says Mansfield. Staying true to you too, is important.

-Know when to disconnect and set boundaries: If you’ve ever caught yourself scrolling through social media or answering an email well past your bedtime you know it’s difficult, sometimes seemingly impossible to turn off. Mansfield set a rule to try and turn off her phone at 9:30 p.m. every night. “You have to be able to shut off,” says Mansfield. “Working for yourself really takes a toll on you mentally and physically because you need to learn how to delete your email from your phone and shut off on weekends, especially if you’re making a living from technology it’s really hard to separate from your phone and be in the moment.”

-Embrace the unconventional: The idea of making money through social media and blogging manifests far differently than clocking in and out and receiving a bi-monthly paycheck. Mansfield’s advice? Embrace the new space and ability to call your own shots. “It’s so unconventional and I love that about what I do, I like that it’s not something that everyone does,” says Mansfield.

Culled from NBC News