Marissa Lee

I definitely attribute my success to my supporters and my people, my friends, and my family around me. I'm commission-based, so starting this journey out was a big leap financially. When you start this career, you're not given clients. You have to find them yourself and build up your book of business. Making that leap of going from a set salary to commission-based and not knowing when your next paycheck's gonna come in when you have no clients was scary. But I was financially stable enough to make the leap, and it was one of those moments where I was like, now or never. Having the support of my family, and my parents especially, telling me I can do this was huge. Also my company is fantastic. They're really great to work for, and everyone wants everyone to succeed. When you join, you join a team, and everyone's there to help you succeed. If you're running into issues or you're down and frustrated because you can't find a new client, you have your friends within the company that can be like, you can do this, I've been there, it gets better. I kind of attribute a lot of that to the company, too, of just taking care of their people and having that support system.

Follow your passion. I originally went to school for sports broadcast because I wanted to be the next Pam Oliver or Erin Andrews. But I was told, because I was a woman, it was gonna be very hard to get into the industry. I unfortunately couldn't play collegiate sports because I tore my ACL a couple times, so I wasn't able to play soccer in college. They said it would be really hard for me not playing collegiate sports to get into the industry, and it's also leaning to be more ex-pro athletes that are doing commentary, which if you look at it now, is true. They suggested I could do normal broadcast, like news, and I was like, absolutely not. That's depressing every single day. So I had to go back to the drawing board of what was my passion and what did I enjoy. I really loved planning events, and I loved travel. My dad was a pilot for Delta, so I grew up traveling all over the world, and that was a passion of mine. I was like, how can I make this a career? I got into meetings and events, and I have my dream job. I love what I do every single day. The perks are obviously great, and I enjoy what I do. It's my passion.

AI could very much potentially down the line take over my job. It could be one of those things where people just go on AI and say, hey, we have an in-person meeting for 500 attendees in Chicago, help us find a hotel, and it does it for them. But there's also not the negotiating and contracting portion. AI doesn't really know how to do that or what to look for. You can't invite AI to your hotel and show it all of its perks, and AI doesn't know what is the best. That relationship building and that human contact are gonna forever be key and important. That's a big selling point that we try to sell to people. Also, being willing to adapt is important. A lot of people older than me in this industry are so set in their ways, and they're not willing to change, especially with AI and everything. You kind of have to roll with the punches.