The Piñata Maker: A Day in the Life of a Student Business Owner
Meet Mayra De La Rosa. She is an 18-year old Latina entrepreneur at Citrus College. She is a freshman majoring in nursing; her goal is to be a certified nurse midwife. “I’ve always loved helping people, so that’s something I aspire to be.”
Not only is she a full-time college student, Mayra is the owner of her own business, named after her: “Mayra’s Piñatas,” which she launched during the heart of the pandemic in December 2020. Her love of making piñatas started shortly before her younger brother, Andres De La Rosa’s, fourth birthday. She realized because of the pandemic, her family wasn’t able to do anything special for Andres’s birthday, so she began building a piñata from scratch, just for him. She says, “It was something that I found super calming and it was very therapeutic for me, sitting there decorating and creating something.” Soon after, she decided to officially run her very own piñata business.
A typical day for De la Rosa starts at six in the morning to get ready for her classes. After school, she comes home and enjoys breakfast while catching up with her mom, Elsa Cervantes-De La Rosa, 40, while checking calls, messages, and emails from her clients. As the day goes on, De La Rosa is either posting content to her social media, or drawing out, building, and decorating the piñatas. At one point, she mentioned how she was flooded with five orders all in one weekend:“I’ve never had so many orders in one weekend. I just want to give out my best work to my clients.” Every week you most likely will catch Mayra at Hobby Lobby buying her piñata supplies. Once the day is coming to an end, she always manages to squeeze in a few hours for homework and most importantly some quality time with her family at dinner.
Mayra opened up about the stress that comes along with being a full-time student, business owner, and working part time at a restaurant. “It can be very overwhelming, but there’s times where I am super stressed out and then there’s times where you know, I have free time.” When things get hard she always reminds herself, “If I keep pushing, I’m going to get where I want to be in life.” She encourages anyone who is trying to start a business to keep the three main concepts in mind. To never rush anything because everything will come on its own time, to be patient, and most importantly, to be authentic. “Always be true to what you want to do, whom you aspire to be, and be true to your business as a whole,” De La Rosa says.
Will she continue her business in the future? Or will it be too much to juggle with Nursing? “As much as I would love to, I know that nursing is a very time consuming job, so I understand that there might not be time for my business anymore, however this will always be my hobby”. Don’t worry, Mayras Piñata’s are still available for order on her Instagram.
