While we are in high school, we all wonder where life will take us. Where will all your classmates end up? Where do you see the class athlete in a few years? Will they be successful athletes? Will they have become someone else? The truth is that most of us lose contact with our high school classmates and do not really know what becomes of their lives after graduation.
But Red Mountain High School students in Mesa, Arizona, can say they know what became of their violin player, yearbook editor, and member of the 3-time state championship softball team Marisa Mayes — the athlete turned businesswoman who successfully left the corporate world to become an entrepreneur.
Marisa Mayes was a star-athlete her entire high school career, part of a state championship-winning softball team and the school orchestra. In 2012, she graduated and went on to get her Business Management degree from Mount St. Mary’s University. Throughout the four years she spent there, Mayes continued to pursue her softball career as part of the Division I team.
Until 2016, she was the starting 2nd basewoman, then became Team Captain during her senior year. After graduating top of her team, she enrolled in her graduate studies and graduated with a Masters of Business Administration and an Organization Development certificate.
Her athletic and academic achievements led her to work with a top-tier medical company. For two years, Mayes worked as Team Lead of her division, overviewing the installation of medical devices in hospitals all over the country. She moved on — within the same company — to join the sales team, selling cardiac surgery equipment to the leading heart institutes in the country.
However, towards the end of 2020, she decided it was time to leave the corporate world behind and follow her dreams. She wanted to become an entrepreneur, and that is what she did.
Mayes had experience with video content, so she realized TikTok would be the best platform to begin her journey. She had 50K followers at the time, and uploaded a video of her experience quitting her job, and it got over three million views. Months later, she gained more views and more followers with every new post, gathering over 115K followers.
Soon she realized she had the ability to grow her personal brand and help others like her reach their personal goals as well. That is why she shares several tips — all centered around short-form video creation and how to grow an audience — with her viewers.
Her career as a TikToker has led her to become the co-host of a podcast and the founder of her own business. Her brand is focused on empowering and educating impact-driven coaches and creative entrepreneurs to grow an authentic and intuitive presence on TikTok in order to attract dream clients. This is precisely what she has been doing since she took the leap of faith.
Marisa Mayes has a long list of achievements to be proud of, but when asked about it, she said what she is most proud of is her courage to jump into the entrepreneurial waters and chart her own path. She knew what was right for her and was not afraid to go for it.
As she explains it, “I grew up very high-achieving, was very successful in my softball career, and had a corporate job that most people drool over.” Still, in just five months, she has been able to accomplish what she always dreamed of.
High school does not define where a person will end up. Marisa Mayes’s classmates probably believed she would continue to become a college softball coach or a magazine editor. But she followed a different path. From sports to the corporate world, only to end up as a very successful TikTok entrepreneur. The truth is we create our own path, and that is what Mayes has done.
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