Guillermina Valdés: “Being a businesswoman is giving people work and trusting the country where you live”

“Sometimes raising awareness becomes uncomfortable. You tell someone that they have to have two garbage cans in the bathroom and it bothers them”, says Guillermino Valdés

“I have been questioning the role I took for a long time. Life is a role play, sometimes you take a role for your work, for example. I started in the world of fashion but I always felt like a weirdo in that environment. It happens to me from realizing that I have more to do with another world, with having been the daughter of a veterinarian, having been connected with things on earth, with being from the interior. And little by little I went back to things that were good for me in everyday areas, such as personal care and a lot of issues that I had left aside. “

Guillermina Valdes She is sitting in the patio of a bar in Palermo Chico, with a bag full of products from her personal care line on her shoulders, her face washed, without clothing or hair production, emanating an inner beauty that shines through in her angelic face, healthy and full of peace; somehow perfect.

She speaks of assuming roles, of facing new stages in her life, of taking charge of transmitting those ideas that have challenged her for a long time. This kind of militancy on the issues that summon her, always with gentle and respectful ways of other people’s beliefs, took her life completely in conjunction with her responsibilities as mother and businesswoman. She, he says, can with everything.

“As I am quite ‘obse’ and I do not do things by halves, I began to immerse myself in issues such as ecology, sustainability, pollution. And I’m trying to help as much as I can from the minimum place that I have as a communicator. “

– How arduous can be the path of awareness?

–Sometimes raising awareness becomes uncomfortable. You tell someone that they have to have two garbage cans in the bathroom and it bothers; it costs people the new because it puts their lifestyle in check, even in those little things.

– Could it have to do with not having access to the same resources?

–Yes, it is a responsibility to communicate and at the same time try that the other can access what you are communicating. You cannot tell people that something is not good if they do not have access to the other that you propose. So you have to try to find the balance.

– Were you always very enterprising?

-Not so much before, now more. I had a misconception of what it meant to be an entrepreneur; I felt that it was connected with the coldness, and it is not like that. Being a businesswoman is giving people work, trusting the country you live in, carrying out a project and making it grow, it’s a lot of things. With Guiv I started from day one choosing from the assets, testing the creams, selecting the packaging, seeing the art. I created a brand from scratch and it seemed divine to me, I realized that it was not just cold work of calculations and numbers, but something more comprehensive. Now I put “business” as occupation, because I have a company, I created it and I make sure it works day after day; it’s my job. I was always a fan of skin care; When I travel, what I see the most, I investigate and what I pay attention to is that market.

In an interview with El Planeta Urbano, she talks about assuming roles, facing new stages in her life, about taking charge of transmitting those ideas that have been questioning her for a long time. 

–Your brand was a pioneer in online sales. How was that process?

– When we started there was the possibility of setting up a physical store, but from the beginning I proposed to do only online sales, when here in the country that model was not yet so oiled. People had a hard time buying a product without seeing it live, without tasting it, without smelling it, without touching it. At first it cost us, but people were encouraged. And with the pandemic there was a huge change in online sales in many areas, people were encouraged to buy and this modality became quite massive. We started to reach the whole country and we achieved 40 percent buybacks, that is, people who tried the product and choose it again.

-In your role as an actress, you suffered the prejudice of being “the woman of”. How did that look affect this new stage of your life?

– With this project it happened to me that Marce did not participate as much in the promotion. There was no launch event, there was nothing in networks from his place, he was not named in his program.

“Marcelo’s Arian energy helps me boost all this that I have inside; in relationships you often nourish the other with things that you don’t have” 

“Was that your decision?”

-Yes. It was a project that started with a very low profile and grew little by little, it went well for us and we managed to gain loyalty from the public in that way. We always wanted the brand to detach itself from me, from my public image, and I think we succeeded.

–You also have a foundation, Cadenas, which donates a percentage of each product sold. Did you ever feel the responsibility to give to, in some way, give back something of everything you received?

– I do not like to speak well of myself, but I was always very generous, because for me life goes largely to share. It is not that because I received all this now is the time to give. It’s the other way around, I think I always gave so much that life never stops giving me double back. It is an unconscious game in which I am always thinking about what the other needs, but not from a place of submission or of ceasing to be me, but because it is good for me. The human essence is to give, it happens that later our ego, our self, prevails over everything.

–How does Marcelo enter this equation?

–Marcelo’s Arian energy helps me to promote all this that I have inside; In relationships many times you feed on the other with things that you do not have. With Marce we have very different vibrations, and there one finds the taste of the relationship, beyond love and all the beauty of life as a couple. We are both very balanced, but he always has a tendency to execute, to be on the outside, and I was always more closed, more on the inside.

“I don’t like to speak well of myself, but I was always very generous, because for me life passes largely by sharing” 

– Taking a tour of your life, I almost always find you as a couple. Never interested in experiencing singleness?

-I don’t know if so much of the place to experiment, but the times that I separated it had to do with the fact that I needed to see my own things. If you vibrate differently from your partner, it is necessary to stop, and then return or not. But I must admit that I am a person who has lived most of my life, if not all, as a couple.

– Don’t you feel comfortable alone?

–Yes, I can feel very comfortable, it is not that I cannot be alone, but it happens to me that I feel very well as a couple, even today I can tell you that I am very well.

–The same with Marcelo they are super-independent.

–Re, we don’t even live together all the time.

“I must admit that I am a person who has lived most of my life, if not all, as a couple” 

–And you are not dependent, in general, on men.

–No, and that adds value to any relationship you have, because if you are with someone because you choose them and not because you need them, they are much more valuable. It is choosing to share your life with someone not from weakness but from being strong, whole, well.

– How do you manage your ego being the partner of someone who for people is always on a pedestal?

–It is just as you say, for the people. But that doesn’t make you more of a person, it doesn’t make you more valuable. It does not make you more valuable to be better known, that is an issue that in any case those of us who are in the middle have. But you have to work on it day by day. I never competed with Marce, that never happened to me, zero.

– How much do you care about the opinion of others?

-If you are going to be a prisoner of what others think, you are in the oven. If your life is going to be based on the speculations of others and the projections that others have for you, the burden is very heavy. Once you get rid of that, you are free. And once you understand that the answer is in the present (being earthly, obviously, being aware of reality and responsibilities), you build what you want.

“If you are going to be a prisoner of what others think, you are in the oven” 

–How do you get along with the passage of time?

– I highly value maturity, I have no problem with continuing to fulfill years and learning, because it seems to me that you live life with another intensity.

– Being a person who takes care of himself so much, are you afraid of physical deterioration?

–I fear him from my health, which is what worries me the most. Losing my health is my biggest fear. And when you take care of yourself from the inside, for your health, that is reflected in the aesthetic. And then there is the naturalness of getting old, it is something obvious. I am not afraid of physical deterioration because I know that it will be gradual, and that I will be incorporating that gradualness day by day. So, in that accepting the day to day with things that one is working on, you accept everything that is happening to you internally, I think.

“I have children who freely choose their sexual inclination, for example. And I don’t know if I raised them freely, what I do know is that I respect them” 

–You have four children of different ages who seem to have grown up with everything at their disposal. How do you exercise limits with them?

-It’s difficult, because they were born in a very different place from mine. And no matter how hard you try to tell them: “I give you this, but I know that if you had to earn it alone you would have to do this, this and this”, it is impossible for that to be put into practice in reality. I often get angry and cut something off them, but deep down they know that they are going to have it again, because they have another story that is not mine, and that I cannot change. My story is not better than theirs, they will have to seek their strength from another place, and it is not bad. The transit that each one has on Earth is very personal, you can accompany, but the other will echo what they can or what they want.

–You raise your children with great freedom. How is this tension between freedom and rules managed?

– I have children who freely choose their sexual inclination, for example. And I don’t know if I raised them freely, what I do know is that I respect them. They came to me with questions about their sexuality, which for me was partly a surprise and partly not, because as a mother you are realizing it. Accepting it was a personal job. You accept it and it’s great because they are what they came to be: free. They had the possibility of having a mother who supports them one hundred percent, knowing that they are going to face a society that is going to support them in part and not in part, being afraid that they will suffer. There is always a different look that my children will feel, that I will feel, so freedom is having a mother who accepts them in whatever they choose. I always tell them: “When does sex life define people?” You are not what you do in bed, that’s why I tell my children that the important thing is what they build in the world, what they are going to do, what they are going to do, if they are happy, if they are constructive people , if they go forward. That sums it all up, that’s the freedom I give you.