College wasn't a fit for Hannah Maruyama. She dipped her toes in early, taking classes at Georgia Southern while still in high school at the encouragement of one of her teachers, but it wasn't engaging for her.
"He could tell I was bored in high school, but I didn't find college much more stimulating, either," Maruyama, now 29, tells CNBC Make It. "I remember thinking, 'I'm going to go into debt for this?'" She left Georgia Southern after a couple of semesters. Ms Maruyama worried that without a college degree, her career prospects would be limited.
Fast forward to her late 20s, she worked as a lifeguard, bartender and even a deckhand on a dolphin-watching boat, never earning more than $30,000 a year.
Now, the 29-year-old has broken the $100,000 salary barrier in the field of AI, all without a bachelor's degree. She even helps young adults (16-20-year-olds) plan their successful careers outside of the traditional college route.
In 2018, Ms Maruyama and her husband Ryan moved from Savannah to Honolulu, Hawaii to pursue their childhood dream jobs of becoming a cosmetic tattoo artist and a firefighter.
"I saw a documentary in school about a woman in Saudi Arabia that did cosmetic tattoos for women who had been acid burned and I always thought it was the most amazing thing," she recalls.
Ms Maruyama got her cosmetic tattoo artist license in 20018 while living in Savannah. The couple opened their tattoo studio, Yama Studios, in Honolulu at the end of 2018, taking turns running the shop outside their day jobs.
"I loved it, but it was a grind," Maruyama recalls. "I'd curl up under my desk at the call centre if I had time before my shift and take a quick nap because I was that tired."
After covid-19 pandemic disrupted business across the globe, Ms Maruyama had to shut down her tattoo studios. She was furloughed from her job at the call centre, with no definite timeline as to when the job would return, CNBC Make It reported.
"At that point, I knew it was time to look for a new job," she says. "We had two rents to pay, on our house and the studio, and Hawaii isn't cheap."
She aggressively started looking for a job which did not require a bachelor's degree.
"Even if I didn't meet the educational requirements, I applied and would note in my application or during the interview that I'll learn anything I need to as quickly as I can," she says. "I think the exact phrase I used was, 'I'm a shiny new penny!'"
At the same time, she started sharing her experience looking for and landing a job without a college degree on TikTok and her videos received around 500,000 views each.
"People loved the content, it just took off," she says. "I remember staring at my phone, watching the likes and comments roll in and thinking, 'There's something here.'"
In October 2021, she launched Degree Free, an online platform offering career coaching and free educational resources to young people interested in careers that don't require a college degree.
She now has certifications in data analytics and project management, among others.
In 2023, Degree Free generated about $128,000 in profit from its coaching services and brand partnerships, which the Maruyamas share evenly, according to financial documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
"Growing up, I was often told that college was the end-all-be-all, that you couldn't be successful without it," she says. "But that's just not the world we live in anymore. There are a million different degree-free paths you can explore and I count myself lucky to have found one that makes me happy."
