Meet Mari Rubio

We were lucky to catch up with Mari Rubio recently and have shared our conversation below.

Mari , we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
By making a conscious decision to work on this every day. It is something that is built with time, intention, patience and discipline.

I struggled with this for a long time, and honestly, I still do. I just got better at handling it.

Few things have helped: working on becoming the best version of myself. Not just professionally, but personally too. Every day I strive to be one step closer to the person I want to become. For me, one cannot exist without the other if you’re really aligned. If you’re not happy with the person you are – or with the person you’re becoming- then it’s all a facade.

Also, by looking back and reflecting on how much I have grown and overcome in the last 10 years. I look back objectively -not romantically, but with facts – on the things I have been able to deal with and it makes me proud. If someone else came up to me and told me my exact same story, but it was them instead of me, I’d be very inspired and proud of them. So why not feel the same for me?

However, that being said, one must also be very cautious with working on confidence and self-esteem. Because if it’s coming from a place of filling voids, it can backfire and turn into arrogance which completely defeats the purpose.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I co-own Casa Gioia, a “bake-to-order” business that specializes in desserts and cakes. Our small business is family-owned and women operated.

We’ve been on the market for 10 years and we are so grateful for how far we’ve come! We started in 2013 in our home bakery selling pecan pies and a handful of other products, and fast forward to 2023 where we recently moved into our own 2,000 sq ft. warehouse/cake studio space!

We are so thrilled to be starting this new chapter because it will certainly allow us to better serve our existing customers, and welcome new ones. Since we are quickly growing in the cake design department, we are working on creating a little tasting room at our new place where we can offer a new experience to our clients. They will soon be able to schedule appointments with us and come over for a tasting experience and discuss their needs for their special day.

We are absolutely loving this new phase of weddings, private events and big celebrations- there’s so much room for creativity!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I’d say that a quality from early, early on was creativity. As I grew and evolved personally and professionally I developed many skills, but the ones that I feel are most important are critical thinking and problem solving.

I believe that creativity is something that can either come naturally to you, or you can work on it and develop it. Of course, this is very unique to everyone and there’s no one-way to be creative, but I think you can nurture it. I’m also a firm believer that necessity is the mother of creativity (invention) and when you find yourself in situations that seem like there’s no way out, I can guarantee you 100% that you will rely on creativity to figure it out.

Also critical thinking and problem solving are imperative in life, not just business. I think it’s admirable when you can become the observer and look at things objectively to base your decisions on facts and what really is. This goes hand in hand with problem solving because I believe it will make it so much easier.

Life throws so many curves at you that you must work on yourself so when it does, you’re at least somewhat prepared. You will never be fully prepared, I can tell you that much, but if you’ve been working on creating a solid foundation, you’ll more than likely dodge that curve or at least see it as a something that is “happening for you” rather than “to you”.

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
I struggle with this daily because I have so much on my plate right now, but I am working on it. One of my coaches taught me to every day write down a list of the things that must get done, set them in order of importance and see what can only be done by me, and what are the things that can be delegated to others.

This is extremely simple and obvious but when she presented this to me, it was liberating.

Also, take it one task at a time. Don’t sabotage yourself by adding extra pressure to get it all done in one day.

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