How Losing All Her Friends Led Blogger Maxine Sharf to an Incredible Career in Food (Exclusive)

Sharf, who goes by Maxi's Kitchen on TikTok, has garnered almost 3 million followers on social media from sharing simple recipe tutorials: "This is what I was meant to be doing"

One morning in December 2022, recipe developer Maxine Sharf was “completely shocked” to find out that she was laid off from her tech sales job. She was in the industry for 10 years, and at that company for four.

“I was very dedicated, very dialed in. It's not like I was slacking off or anything,” she tells PEOPLE.

Sharf, who considered food blogging a ”fun little hobby” at the time, says she spent "most of the day crying."

“But then I had this little internal pull of like, ‘Wait, maybe this is my chance to chase my dream and focus on the cooking stuff full time,’” she adds.

With the support of her husband Doug, Sharf, 32, says she's been “running as fast as I can chasing that dream” ever since. Nearly two years later, the culinary creator, who goes by Maxi’s Kitchen on TikTok and Instagram, has almost 3 million followers across the plaforms.

“Ever since I got laid off, very quickly after I started to have videos go viral,” she says. “I really started to see the momentum pick up.”

Among those followers are some seriously impressive A-listers. Jessica Alba, Mindy Kaling and Giada De Laurentiis have all shared fun cooking videos of themselves making Sharf’s popular rice paper dumplings.

“I feel like it's such a pinch-me moment whenever I see something like that happen," Sharf says.

After Sharf and her mom, Ann, posted their own video making De Laurentiis’ sheet-pan lasagna, the Giadzy founder reached out and asked Sharf to meet.

“This is so crazy to me because we've been watching her for years, and it really puts it into perspective of like, ‘Wow, I can't believe that I'm somebody that Giada is interested/willing to meet for coffee,’” she says.

The Los Angeles-based content creator has always been motivated by adversity. Before there was the lay-off, there were some rough middle school years.

“In seventh grade I had this year where all my friends ditched me. I think they were trying to partake in more rebellious activities, and I was not ready for that yet,” says Sharf.

Related: Ina Garten's Assistant Once 'Dismissed' a Letter from Jennifer Garner Asking to Be on Ina's Show (Exclusive)

It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. “That year, I spent a lot of time at home and my mom kind of took me under her wing that year. She's like, ‘Well, if you're going to spend a lot of time at home, I'm going to teach you all of our family recipes.’”

“Looking back, it's like, at the time, I was really upset to have that drama with my friends, but now I'm like, ‘Oh, maybe it was meant to be because that was a really critical step on my path towards now obviously having this be my career,'" she says.

Sharf, who says that she also struggled with her weight as a child, is passionate about sharing “balanced, healthy” recipes that are still “really fun things to eat.”

Her ultimate goal, though, is what she calls "the education piece."

“I have a vision board in my room, and at the center of it just says, ‘Inspire you to cook.' That's the thing that's most important to me is to inspire people to try new recipes, to bring their family together through home cooked food," she says. "I feel like I have so many family memories that I cherish that take place around the dinner table.”

When it comes to future career goals, Sharf is focused on putting out her first cookbook, and producing more on her YouTube page to zero in on longer-form cooking tutorials.

“Although it sounds cheesy," she says, "I really feel like this is what I was meant to be doing on this earth."

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People.