By: Natalie Johnson
Just a few years ago, Katie Mares sent out 150 job applications. Not one person called back.
She had nothing. No money. No career. No idea what came next. She was a single mother of three staring at the beginning of her own life with no map and no runway.
What she had was twenty years of expertise, an advanced credential in her field, a track record inside well-established organizations across North America, and the quiet, unshakeable conviction that she was not done.
That is the version of Katie Mares most people never hear about. What they see is the TEDx speaker, the published author, the executive coach who works with leaders on the internal patterns shaping the decisions they make.
Both versions are true. And the second one would not exist without the first.
What She Built Before the Fall
Before the rebuild, there was the career.
Mares spent two decades inside demanding organizations. She was part of the team that brought the Forbes five-star rating system to the cruise industry. She built an online dental education platform in Canada. She left a senior corporate role to start her own practice and built a client roster that eventually included major North American automotive brands.
Her first book, CustomHER Experience, made an argument the industry had not heard. The female consumer is not a niche. She is the most important buyer in the room and most organizations are still treating her like an afterthought. Her follow-up, Five Steps to a Five-Star Experience, distilled decades of guest experience work into something any leader could use immediately.
“Nobody was talking about what I was talking about,” Mares says. “I was the only one.”
She built a keynote career alongside the consulting practice. She joined the board of a TEDx chapter. She coached executives one-on-one across automotive groups spanning dozens of rooftops and through industries that had never thought to ask the questions she was asking.
Then her personal life fell apart in a way that took everything with it.
The Gap Nobody Talks About
Mares walked away from a significant financial stake because keeping her voice mattered more than keeping the money.
She started over with nothing and a pile of debt.
“There was a version of me who knew exactly what to do,” Mares says. “And I would constantly lean on reasons not to execute. I had the knowledge. I had the strategy. What I did not have was the internal state to believe any of it could work.”
That gap, between knowing and doing, is the thing she now makes her life’s work closing.
She calls it the state and story gap. What you think, how you feel, and the actions you take make up your state. Your state drives the story you tell yourself. The story drives every decision, every behavior, and every result that follows. Mares points to the repetitive, largely negative nature of everyday thinking as the reason strategy alone does not move people. Until someone changes what is running underneath, the strategy stays on the page.
She changed what was running underneath. And then everything else changed with it.
What She Built on the Other Side
In the past two and a half years, Mares has written two books, rebuilt her consulting practice, expanded her coaching work across multiple industries, and spoken on stages across North America.
She has done it as a single mother of three, without a hustle-culture mentality and without waiting for the conditions to feel ready.
“You know what shifted?” Mares says. “I stopped saying I have to and started saying I get to. That is not a motivational phrase. It is a mechanical one. When you move from obligation to ownership, from I am too tired to I am capable, the same day looks different. Not because anything outside you changed. Because something inside you did.”
That shift is the foundation of NOW is NonNegotiable and the NOW Planning Method. The premise is simple: the only moment you can ever impact your future from is this one. It is a daily practice built on thought into emotion into action. Most productivity systems start at action. Mares starts three steps earlier.
She also built NOW Rising, a community for women designed to be accessible where most coaching platforms are not. Its nonprofit arm has a specific goal: to place five domestic abuse survivors in stable housing by the end of 2026. Women connected to the nonprofit get access to the community before they are ready to leave, because Mares knows from experience how long that decision takes and how much difference it makes to not make it alone.
In September, she is co-founding DriveHer, extending the same conviction into new territory.
“I want to be known for helping women find the courage to do hard things,” she says. “And helping leaders and organizations stop negotiating with the results they know they are capable of. Those are not two different missions. They are the same one.”
The Stand
NOW is NonNegotiable is not a brand name for Mares. It is a decision she makes every morning.
“You have a choice, every single moment, to see through the lens of love or fear,” she says. “That choice produces your state. Your state produces your thoughts. Your thoughts lead to your emotions, your emotions lead to your behaviors, and those behaviors lead to your choices. Your choices produce your results. The loop runs whether you are paying attention to it or not. The only question is whether you are the one choosing what goes into it.”
She chose. On the hardest days, she chose again.
That is not a story about resilience. It is not a story about hustle. It is a story about what becomes possible when one person decides to stop negotiating with her future self.
And then actually does it.
Katie Mares is an executive coach, customer experience strategist, and TEDx speaker. She holds an advanced credential in adult training and development and is the author of CustomHER Experience and Five Steps to a Five-Star Experience. She is the creator of The NOW Planning Method and the founder of NOW Rising. More information is available at katiemares.com.
