BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — If you live in Kern County, you’ve probably seen Myah Salinas pop up on your social media feed.

The 25 year-old content creator taking over the Bakersfield bubble. She first joined the workforce as a 9-to-5 marketing employee, but the more she worked with local restaurants, the more she wanted to cook up a different career.

“I had a lot of people thinking that I was crazy in my family, outside my family, friends being like, ‘What are you doing? You have a full time job!’” Salinas said. “But something inside of me, I really just trusted that gut feeling that this isn’t right. I’m supposed to be doing something else and something bigger.

Her advice to anyone with that feeling? Just start. That’s exactly what Salinas did.

“I was scrolling through my page, and I saw this girl that was talking about things that were interesting on social media,” Heather Laganelli, a local restaurant owner, said. “The first thought for me is like, oh, I want to see that person again. I don’t want that to end.”

Along with creating content, Myah started her own podcast to have a more candid, longform media space with her audience. She’s become quite the busy bee, or in her own words, Bizzy Bean.

“I’m developing canned, dairy free lattes that are organic, no seed oils, no natural flavors, no gums,” Salinas said. “This really is just the simplest of ingredients. “

Over the past year and a half, Myah’s had some help from the Golden Empire getting her business off the ground. With training from the Bakersfield College Launchpad program, she won the 2025 Bakersfield Women’s Business Conference’s Power Pitch competition.

However, one of her biggest helpers through the process ended up being her own intuition.

“It wasn’t until I changed my email name to a male name that I started getting responses,” she said. “That just blew my mind, because I was like, how are we in 2026 and this is still happening? That was the biggest struggle for me, and it was really eye opening too.”

Jokes on those companies though, because ‘Justin’ would use their recommendations with companies that responded to ‘Myah’.

The go-getter wants to pay back the community that helped her get where she is now.

“I want to have my own co-manufacturing and co-packing space in Bakersfield to provide more jobs,” Salinas said.

From a home-schooled childhood to a self-employed adulthood, Myah credits much of her success to the women in her family who paved the way for her to #thrive.

“I’m just really grateful that there’s somebody in our space that’s showing up in big ways for Bakersfield,” Laganelli said. “I feel like Bakersfield deserves that, and it’s amazing to have a little testimony of our community.”

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