(WGHP) — After growing up in Randleman, Kenzi Reddick thought she had her life’s plan set out early.

“Fresh out of college, (I wanted) to find a good company I could stay with and landed a great job at Wrangler, which is based in Greensboro,” Kenzi said. “And I used to tell people, ‘I’m going to retire here. I’m going to stay here forever.’ And there are so many pros and cons about working in corporate…there came to be a point where I was like ‘I’m working for the man. I’m working for someone else.’ And I think it’s just this lifelong American dream: you always want to work for yourself…everyone would want to do that. I made it to management level there at Wrangler and a recruiter from another local company had a senior management position, and I wasn’t searching.”

But things didn’t work out as planned.

“It was COVID. I think that changed my perspective on life and what I wanted to give my time to,” Kenzi said. “I’ve worked for two different companies. Most recently, I was marketing director for a furniture company in L.A., and it was 100% remote, so I was home 24/7. I wasn’t making anything with the kids, and it was this level of freedom I had never had before and…due to business changes and structure and finances, I was let go in June.”

Even with her resume, things haven’t been easy.

“I’ve applied for 50-plus jobs. Had a couple of interviews. A couple of promising things that really didn’t end up leading anywhere…I always wanted to do interior design,” Kenzi said. “I’ve always had a passion for it. I didn’t go to school for it. I feel like I have a knack. I feel like I have a good eye. I’m constantly looking at DIY, and my husband will tell you that I’m flipping a room in our house every month or so…I was like ‘well, now’s the time.'”

That stemmed from a friend who contacted her through social media and asked her to remake their old camper. Kenzi has more than 185,000 followers on TikTok and another 40,000 plus on Instagram.

For Kenzi, it was the right time to start her own new business: REvival Interiors, LLC.

“It was right in the middle of COVID, and I was burned out, and I was home with my kids, and my mental health was not in a good place, and I felt like I was giving so much of my time to my job. There were moments when I felt like I was missing out on my kids’ lives, and the travel was just a lot,” Kenzi said.

She also uses her social media presence to make some money collaborating with companies she already believes in and uses like Bojangles and Sheetz.

“As a marketing professional, I’ve always used social media on the back end of things. We were the ones hiring individuals, and we were the ones working on the content coming out on Instagram and Facebook and now TikTok,” she said.

But the true blessing of social media in Kenzi’s life isn’t the money it’s helped her make. It’s how it helped her expand her family.

“Social media is actually how both our son and our daughter’s birth moms found us,” she said. “I knew our son’s birth mom since childhood, and our daughter’s birth mom just found us on Instagram.”

See why adoption was so important for Kenzi and her husband and what her most viral post was. It may surprise you. Both are in this Social Media Stars edition of the Buckley Report.