As we move towards the future, social media becomes a part of people’s lives more and more — but for this mother-daughter duo, it’s a crucial part of their job.
Lori Conway and her daughter, Ella, both have careers that are built on the internet, their multiple accounts combined reaching over 2.1M followers. Lori's internet story starts from her passion of sharing her life.
“I've always loved to be able to share with people, like person to person,” says Lori. “When I started doing online marketing back in 2011, social media was a baby, and I decided to start sharing it on a very small scale on social media, and I realized it was such a growing community that I leaned into that.”
Lori’s small bits of her life grew to sharing everything she could during the pandemic, where the only way she could share with others was the internet.
“When Covid came around, and [I] shared those quick recipes that sort of helped other people learn to cook, it really started making a difference in people's lives,” says Lori.
While slowly growing, Lori looked for what the videos bringing the most traction had in common. But when she started thinking about it, she realised it wasn’t what she thought it would be.
“I can remember being really frustrated during the early era of TikTok because I was doing a lot of different types of content on TikTok, and the ones that were seemingly taking off or going viral were the cooking videos, which were the most difficult videos to do,” says Lori.
With her growing popularity, Lori had to balance real life with her work online, especially to preserve her belief in having solid family time.
“When you have a drive and a passion and you're an entrepreneur, it's really hard to tell someone not to work, because at the end of the day, when you are on fire for what you do, it doesn't really feel like work.”
Lori had to set boundaries for her work and personal life.
“I just have to discipline myself to say, here's the things that I'm going to finish today, and once that's done, I'm going to make sure to make time for the priorities of my life, and it's about inking things in your life and penciling in other things,” Lori says. “So I can change my content around all day long, but at 5:30, it’s dinner time, and that's inked in. That's something someone's not gonna take away from me, so if I'm going to make a content video surrounding dinner that night, then I'm gonna make it a little bit earlier.”
Spending intentional family time became even more important after the sudden loss of Lori’s husband, Quintin, last year.
“Now I fast forward to our lives today, after losing my husband unexpectedly — how important that really is for a foundation of a family to have the time together,” says Lori. “Spend it together while you have it.”
Lori’s husband Quintin Conway tragically and unexpectedly passed away April 9th, 2024. Lori is very open online about her grief and how the loss has impacted the family. Other than just losing a husband, Lori lost the patriarch of her family and her right-hand man who helped her behind the scenes. Quintin was always there to help with financial issues, last-second opinions over videos, and any other help Lori needed.
While Lori sometimes steps back from the online world to navigate this new chapter, her oldest daughter, 19-year-old Ella, has been stepping forward in her own way. She also lost her dad, and while she and her family navigated their grief, Ella also moved toward her own creative path. Known as Ellavated Productions, Ella recently launched her online career — not in lifestyle content like her mom, but in photography, the passion she chose to pursue straight out of high school.
“I decided to pursue photography after high school because, every day in high school, I was working towards something very entrepreneurial,” says Ella. “When I was thinking about going to college, I had the grades, I had everything for it, but I was like, ‘I can't spend the amount of money it takes to go to college to do something I've already figured out how to do.’”
To start getting clients fast, Ella started telling the community she was doing photo sessions, such as senior portraits and family photos.
Being fresh out of high school and starting up her business, Ella quickly ran into many challenges, like cost and the skills she needed to learn to take her hobby to a professional level.
“Some of the challenges were the cost,” says Ella. “The cost of an actual camera is insane. Another challenge is definitely that I learned it all on my own. I had a friend that knew a ton of things, but he had graduated before me, and so I was just kind of figuring it out.”
Even if Ella is different from her mom, they share the same blood. Ella might have found photography on her own, but she always knew what entrepreneurship looked like.
“Another push was both of my parents were entrepreneurs, and I think it's just in my blood,” Ella said. “So I love it.”
You can read Lori’s blog, crazybusymama.com, or you can find her on Facebook at @loriwillisconway. Find Ella is on Instagram @ellavated_productions, or you can view her photography at ellavatedproductions.com.
This story was produced as part of our annual partnership with the Northland Center for Advanced Professional Studies, a program that partners local businesses with high school juniors and seniors to give them real-world experience. The story was written and photographed by Lawson High student Brooks Blair and edited by Oak Park High student Grace Ramirez.
“I’ve always loved to be able to share with people."
“When you have a drive and a passion and you’re an entrepreneur, it’s really hard to tell someone not to work, because at the end of the day… it doesn’t really feel like work.”