Meet Maria Stone, a Confident Woman Campaign participant
“The CONFIDENT WOMAN campaign” is a photography project aimed to boost confidence through self-acceptance and self-love, to create a platform to inspire and support women in achieving the life they want.
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“For me a confident woman is a mindset. It is taking the barriers away. It's understanding that you can do really whatever you set your mind to do”.
I would like to introduce Maria Stone, a Confident Woman Campaign participant.
In our interview Maria shares stories from her childhood that shaped her the person she is today. As well as her experience of being a business owner of ITEX a barter and trade organization in Charlotte.
Watch video recap and read full written interview below.
Can you please introduce yourself?
My name is Maria Stone. I'm a Greek American. I am a wife and a mother as well as a business owner. We own a business called ITEX in Charlotte, and I'm a wellness advocate with DoTTERA essential oils and supplements.
What is a confident woman for you?
For me a confident woman is a mindset. It is taking the barriers away. It's understanding that you can do really whatever you set your mind to do. Staying in your lane, having your goal, visualizing that is super important. I also think about being a confident woman has to do with strength. And it's not just physical strength. That's definitely part of it. But there's the mental strength. There's the relationship strength, whether that's for your family or for your business. So I think it's a lot of different things. But the biggest thing for me, I think, is understanding what your goal is, having a plan, getting a coach if you need to and making sure that you are staying on track and being accountable.
Can you share an experience in life that really helped you to build up your confidence?
So my parents, well, my dad was an immigrant and he came to this country when he was 21 and he had a fifth grade education. And he did the work that a lot of Americans didn't want to do. He did very risky paint jobs. My mom's parents were also immigrants. Her father died when she was two. So she was raised also by an immigrant. And they didn't have a lot. Everything was very, very humble.
We were raised in a very blue collar environment where everybody had their jobs to do. We were all given tasks and responsibilities and we were expected to do it, and we did. We were taught the importance of working hard. I worked, even as a younger child, probably 12, I started babysitting and then I started working as a waitress in a Greek diner and then other things.
But they explained to us the importance of saving. We would go to the bank, we would get the interest stamped, which I know doesn't happen anymore. But those are really good values and lessons. And we learned about money. We learned about respect. We learned about following through with what we needed to do. So those hard working, I guess, activities that we noticed about our parents were definitely brought through to us.
And I feel like that has shaped me and the person that I am today. And I feel it's super important to continue to give that to your kids and to other people around you.
Do you feel being a business owner helps you with the confidence or is it vice versa?
I think it really goes hand in hand. To have a business and to work with so many different personalities of people and to be able to do what you do you have to have confidence, you have to have that strength. But you also have to have diversity to be able to work with a lot of different people and understand what works for this person may not work for the other, but showing up strong and pouring into yourself first I think is really important because then that helps you to be good to other people, whether it's in business, whether it's family, you know, relationships, all of it also.
What advice can you give to other women about how they can build up their confidence if they are not there yet?
I feel like it is definitely a journey. It is definitely not a sprint. It's something that we keep going through year in and year out. The mindset has to be the number one, but there's also that importance of visualization.
So whether it's a sport or whether it's a personal goal to visualize you crossing the finish line or making that jump or whatever it is in business, you've got to see, you got to be able to see yourself doing that visually and then take the steps, you know, behind that to get to where you're going to. The world can be noisy. Stay in your own lane. Make sure that you are, you know, on track and being intentional really, about what you're looking to achieve. Don't get caught in the noise for sure.
You are a business owner. Can you tell more about it?
We own a professional trade and barter organization and we work with small business owners. We work to connect them and help them grow their business. And we do that through a trade environment. And the way that kind of came about was way, way back.
My husband and I, when we were dating in college, his mom worked for a radio station and part of the way she was paid was in gift cards. So when we would go home from college, she would give us gift cards for different places, whether it's restaurants, vacations, jewelry, whatever the case may be. So we understood trade. We loved the idea of it. When we moved to Charlotte, there really wasn't any organized way of doing this. We found out about Itex and there wasn't an Itex office here in Charlotte. So we opened up our business back in 2009, and it's going very well.
It's amazing to be able to have opportunities to help so many small business owners and to get to meet a lot of people and build relationships. It's really great.
Could you please share your feedback about the photoshoot experience with me?
I have thoroughly enjoyed looking at all of the confident women campaigns that you've done for others, and that's what got me excited about wanting to do it myself. Because at the end of the day, you have such a gift for what you do.
Taking things step by step from beginning to end and being able to let people see themselves in a different light. Because you might have one idea of how you are. And you know, at my age, it's not that it's good or it's bad, but with what you do in your creativity that brings maybe even a whole new light on how people see themselves.
So you're doing a good thing. Keep it up.
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