Her Story
About Michelle
Michelle Ayala is a marketing and communications leader based in Las Vegas, Nevada. In this role, she partners with real estate professionals nationwide to help them operate at a higher level by strengthening communication, refining messaging, and building more effective systems around client relationships and transactions. Her expertise spans marketing strategy, CRM implementation, digital content development, and professional education. She is also a sought-after speaker, having presented for organizations including Anywhere Real Estate, and serves as a Continuing Education instructor in Nevada, where she teaches business planning, productivity, fair housing, and marketing.
Michelle’s professional path has been shaped by resilience, purpose, and what she describes as moments of divine intervention. As a teenager, she survived a malignant brain tumor, an experience that required her to rebuild her education from the ground up after losing much of her high school learning. She went on to earn her Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Michigan and initially pursued a pre-med track, conducting research in non-small cell lung cancer. During her clinical exposure, she experienced a profound ethical conflict after observing how insurance limitations could restrict access to life-saving treatment. Around this time, an unexpected encounter with a physician who revealed he had falsified diagnostic codes to help patients receive care further shaped her perspective on the healthcare system and ultimately redirected her career path.
After stepping away from medicine, Michelle transitioned into education, teaching biology, chemistry, research and physics at Myrtle Beach High School in South Carolina. Following a major life transition and relocation to Las Vegas, another serendipitous moment led her into the marketing field, an industry she has remained in ever since. Today, she is especially passionate about teaching real estate agents business planning, marketing and fair housing. CRM strategy is a passion, as she believes that long-term success in real estate is built on consistent relationship nurturing rather than short-term lead generation. She is currently compiling her training materials into a book to accompany her classes, continuing her mission to help professionals build sustainable, relationship-driven businesses grounded in clarity, consistency, and connection.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Michelle
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to God. That's the only reason I'm here! I am absolutely spared. I was diagnosed with a malignant astrocytoma left temporal lobe brain tumor at age 13, and i was told repeatedly by doctors that I was going to die. I has both grand mal and petite mal seizures regularly. At age 17 I had brain surgery, and by the grace of God, here I am. From age 17 until today the Long Term Childhood Cancer Research Study has followed me. I answer surveys from St. Jude with questions like "can you get out of bed, feed yourself, or drive a car" - yes, I can do all those things. It impacts me as to what could have been. It humbles me and makes me truly grateful. It also gives me resolve. I know I was spared for a reason.
All I can hope for is that I am changing lives for the better every day. That is the goal. I go where I am led. I am so grateful for the journey.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've ever received is to focus on gratitude and set your intention each day. Setting your intention could look like praying, writing in a journal, or anything to help you focus and hold yourself accountable. It makes all the difference in the world. We never set out to prove ourselves wrong, so mindset is super important. After all, gratitude is the key to happiness.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Marketing is about relationships, so keep it simple. Be authentic. Stand out and stand on your personal value. Most importantly, show up in and for your business. (And lead with kindness.)
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge in real estate right now is AI and how people are misusing it in their businesses. There's this really big push - if you don't get into AI, you're going to get left behind, and everybody is jumping in quickly, without hesitation or a second thought about the final product. The FOMO is real.
But here's the thing: I'm seeing leaders giving out information directly from AI that they haven't even read or edited. Just yesterday, I saw a presenter at a national real estate conference with his slide featuring jumbled words. AND he was speaking on the benefits of AI. I see poorly designed flyers. Instructional documents with instructions that do not work. Lists of links where over half do not work. All mass distributed. Made public. At the best you embarrass yourself. At the worst you lose the trust of clients and respect of colleagues.
Is it AI's fault? No. These individuals are not reading, not slowing down, not paying attention, and not caring enough to check what they're putting out there. If marketing's whole purpose is to increase relationships, and that know, like, and trust factor, they just lost that trust. And once you've damaged your reputation, it's hard to get trust and respect back.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Equality is one of my core values. When I was teaching, I would have on the board 'passionate about equality.' My students came from everywhere because Myrtle Beach is such a melting pot - we had children that spoke all different languages, and it was really beautiful. I carried my core values here to Las Vegas and found an organization that was active in getting fair housing laws passed back in the 60s - NAREB, the National Association of Real Estate Brokers. I became local secretary and marketing chair because that organization is near and dear to my heart. It's all about equality! Everybody has a right to be treated the same. Beyond work, I love to go out camping and hiking. I love film, and my best friend has a movie company. I do marketing for him- PR, connecting with reviewers, sending screeners, cutting trailers, and getting great content out there. I do marketing for a living, but then my hobby is also marketing, just in a different realm. I guess that means I'm doing what I love.
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