My entrepreneurial story didn't start in high school. It started in 6th grade, with candles. When the world shut down during the pandemic, my friend and I turned lockdown into something creative. While everyone was stuck inside with nowhere to go, we were building. We spent that time designing, creating, and pouring our little hearts into our little candle business…and I mean that literally. I fell in love with the design side of it, everything from the labels and branding to the way everything came together visually to tell a story. There was something magical about taking an idea and making it look and feel like something real.
We poured our energy into that business the way only two kids with big dreams and zero fear could. It wasn't perfect, and eventually that chapter came to an end, but that something it sparked in me never did. I always knew, even then, that I wanted to create something of my own. I just hadn't found out exactly what yet. That answer came my freshman year of high school, when I discovered my passion for media and design. Something changed; I wasn't just interested in it, I loved it. And when you find something you genuinely love, ambition follows naturally.
So I built MM Media, a freelance marketing business, from the ground up. No business degree, not yet anyway. No mentor handing me a roadmap. Just the lesson from a 6th-grade candle business that starting is never wasted, a work ethic I'd been sharpening for years, and the audacity to try again and again, even when I was scared. At first, my goal was to improve my skills and just prove to myself that I could do it. That felt big enough. That felt like enough. But ambition has a funny way of finding you once you stop being afraid of it.
The more I worked, the more I realized that what I was building wasn't just a hobby. It was a real business with real potential. Every client I landed, every result I delivered pushed me to think larger. What if this wasn't just freelance work? What if MM Media became something that outlasted high school? What if I weren't just a teenager with a hustle, but a founder with a company…a start to my journey? That shift in thinking truly changed everything.
I stopped shrinking my goals to fit what people expected of someone my age. I started treating MM Media the way I'd want any serious agency to be treated, with strategy, intention, and a long-term vision. My business didn't grow because I had everything figured out. It grew because I refused to stopwhat it could become and who I could become.
There's something both powerful and painful about being young and ambitious. One of the hardest parts of building MM Media has been simply being taken seriously. There are moments when people hear your age and their expectations shift. Doors that might open for someone older, or with a higher degree stay closed a little longer. You have to work twice as hard just to be seen as credible before you've even had a chance to show what you can do. However, I've learned that being underestimated is only a disadvantage if you let it stop you. Every project I take on, every client I work with has become my living proof. Not my age. My work.
There's something powerful about being young and ambitious in a world that sometimes tells you to slow down, wait your turn, or to be realistic, dream smaller. I learned that ambition isn't about being reckless or rushing your journey, but starting it and letting it drive you. It's about waking up every day and choosing to keep going, even when it's hard, even when it's unclear, even when no one else around you fully understands what you're doing yet. What comes next for me, not even I know because it is still being written, and that's the part I'm most excited about.
