Meet Maxine - 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. It is limited to 25 participants. Reserve your spot now:
Maxine is the owner of the Inbox Chic, a virtual assistance agency that helps small business owners get out of their email by taking care of all administrative tasks required to run a business. She got laid off in 2020 the door opened to possibility to start her own project.
She is a wife to her husband and a mom to two girls 23 and 17.
Here is a summary of our conversation with Maxine.
What is a portrait of a confident woman for you?
Confident women can look at adversity and still move forward and not get stuck. Confident woman will never be defeated. There is always way out.
Can you give examples from your life when you had to overcome the adversity and find internal strength?
There has been many situation. Just even being married. When you first get married you have this image of how the marriage is supposed to be. Fairy tale, a princess… But in reality it's not a fairy tale. It's a hard work day in day out.
For us moving from NJ to here was a huge transition. We were so used to our lives in NJ and that’s all we knew. But I wanted something better for my family, for my children and we took that leap of faith. Was it easy? It was not. There were situations when I even thought that me and my husband would get divorced because I felt alone. I don’t have family here and I was raising the girls. But I think through those difficulties we were able to bond because we only had each other. And we had to work through it and that helped us. And helped me. It helped to build a strong character in me.
What was it like to start your own business?
It was very scary and lots of self doubt. Am I good enough? Scarcity mindset and comparing yourself to existing businesses didn’t help. But not giving up is so important. There is huge leap of faith that I had to take. I had support of my family but even with that there were many challenges.
What did help you to move on?
Remembering challenges of my parents. My dad was entrepreneurial, seeing my mom and what she went though made me believe that if they were able to do this then I could do this too.
I have support of my family. And I have support of the higher power, of God. In the moments of doubt this voice in my head was telling me “ you can do it”.
What would you advise to other women during the moments of self-doubt?
You need to think and feel yourself in the future and not give up. Negative mindset is natural thing but I think really training our mind to say “I can do this” and feeling these words is important.
When I started my business people thought I was crazy. They were telling all the bad things like “you are not going to have an insurance”, you are not going to have this or that and to me my mindset was ready. I didn’t want to listen.
And I love being a business owner. It is so empowering. There is no ceiling and this to me is freedom. When I was laid off I felt there was no security in the job. There is security in yourself and in your abilities. Being an entrepreneur I have more control.
Could you share what your photoshoot experience was like?
I felt fabulous, beautiful, worthy! I have never experienced a photoshoot before. I felt like if we stayed there for 24 hours you would stay for 24 hours. You are so dedicated. And seeing the pictures was Oh My God! I would love to have them all.
To be able to experience this was such an honor for me. I loved makeup artist, music, backgrounds, organization. I loved the experience!
