The James Granstrom Podcast - Super Soul Model series
Have you been questioning how to live your dreams and enjoy greater happiness, health, and wellbeing? I'm James Granstrom, male model turned international speaker and wellbeing teacher. Join me every other week for new lessons, tips, and conversations on personal growth, health, healing and spirituality with my inspiring guests or straight talk from myself. I'm here to guide you to become your best self and enrich your life, so you can tune and tap into your own natural state of wellbeing.
The James Granstrom Podcast - Super Soul Model series
Rooted Leadership: Cultivating Conscious Dining, Intuition and Sustainability with Aguilene Benicio
What if you could create a dining experience that not only tantalizes taste buds but also nurtures the planet? Join us as Aguilene Benicio, the visionary and CEO behind 'Breathe' in Marbella, shares how she transformed her passion for hospitality and nature into a pioneering restaurant that seamlessly blends elegance and sustainability. Aguilene reveals her innovative approach emphasizing how meaningful business drives success and sparks industry-wide change.
Embark on a journey with us as we explore the impact of Breathe's partnership with Lightspeed's carbon-free dining initiative, led by Marvin Baker. Discover the extraordinary milestone of planting 80,000 trees in countries like Tanzania and Senegal, fueled by patrons' generosity. Through Aguliene's reflections, you'll feel the personal fulfillment of contributing to environmental conservation and nurturing a sustainable future, one tree at a time.
Balancing leadership with personal wellness is an art, and Aguilene shows us how she manage's life. Tune in to hear Aguilene's empowering and the inspiring message as this episode's honoured guest.
Inspired by this episode?
Plant a tree here
In this episode, I'm speaking to CEO and founder of Breathe. Breathe is one of Marbella's top leading restaurants, and behind it is a CEO who's making change, and her leadership style is truly inspiring.
Speaker 2:Everything, when it becomes meaningful, becomes powerful. Having a meaning for the business is what I believe is the key of the success.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to the James Granstrom podcast Super Soul Model Series. In this episode, I'm speaking to CEO and founder of Breathe, one of Marbella's top dining restaurants. Ceo and founder of Breathe, one of Marbella's top dining restaurants, and with its sister company, soul, I'm speaking to the CEO and founder, agaline Benicio, and what makes this episode so inspiring is because Agaline's mission is one of conscious leadership and the way she's also changing the face of the restaurant industry. So welcome to the Super Soul Model Series.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you, thank you for inviting me for this. It's always nice to express a bit. You know what we are doing relating to business and for me personally, the base of the business has been my intuition from day one. Yeah, I believe the success is be able to somehow help living beings in nature and I always been very lucky to have this player, good player of communication with people yeah.
Speaker 1:So tell us a little bit about your background, tell us a little bit about. Tell us a little bit about your background, tell us a little bit about how your journey began, because before you create these beautiful restaurants that you have in Marbella and if you don't know, marbella is a beautiful little town in southern Spain and it's not tropical, but it sure feels like paradise here and what Aguilina has created is this beautiful few restaurants in this area, particularly this one that we're in today, which is Breathe, thank you, and it's got this lovely blend of nature, mixed with modern chic, mixed with elegance, and it's renowned for its great service. But what started you on this journey?
Speaker 2:Well before Breathe. I did work for the hospitality industry in Marbella, starting from the very bottom and ever since the beginning I always have this natural flair and very easy way of communicating with people Basically this natural thing about public relations and marketing. I always loved marketing. It was my passion.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And in the beginning just being in the right place. And then I got to know the investor and I had my other business partner involved. So I had the right people and the right moment to start something. And it's funny because everything got synchronized from the beginning, like a sort of movement universal flow, where things start to come together. In the beginning the idea wouldn't be to open such a big place, but eventually so how many square meters is this restaurant?
Speaker 1:Because it is very big and, for the guys on YouTube, I'm going to show you the size of the restaurant we're dealing with.
Speaker 2:The whole building is about close to 5,000.
Speaker 2:Wow Because we have parking for 111 cars. We also have a large machinery room downstairs where we have our sustainable machinery, where we heat the building the cold months and we can cool it for the hot months. Yeah, so we have geothermal systems. We also do our water purification, so every water that you drink at Breeze, we have those moses systems that we clean the water. Here we also have a storage where we store the water from the rain and also what's left, the wastage, from those moses. It's about 11,000 liters and with this water we then use for the irrigation system of our 8,000 plants that we have here.
Speaker 2:So with 8,000 plants in the restaurant yes, we plant between small and large trees and we have a massive vertical garden here, another one in air, another one on the street yeah so we have a lot of meters of vertical garden that we we have our own source of water for watering those plants as well so amazing hearing all of these sort of things that you're doing, like with the water and and and not wasting anything.
Speaker 1:But what I wanted to know is what, what actually led you to on this journey of leadership, because before you actually, you know, set this place up, there had to be something within you that was driving you. So just tell us a little about, about your background, so we can understand, like the audience can understand, what drives a person to want to create something that's successful, but also with a bit of heart, because that's what you created here.
Speaker 2:Well, coming from Brazil, you know, I've always been very attached to nature and then coming to Spain, in the beginning I did work for the hospitality industry and I remember when I got into the realization of Breathe, I had the venue have we have the investor, and I was thinking, it was something inside of me saying, oh, something connected with the four natural elements, something connected with nature, because you have a large venue and you, you know. Obviously the idea was to have a large and busy venue and and from my heart I said, oh, it must be something to do with nature. I mean, people love nature. At the time I wasn't really, I didn't really have the idea of the tree planting yet, but little by little I started getting sort of impulses oh, nature, all the four natural elements the, the water, the fire, the air, the earth and then came into the actual execution of the project.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And then somehow the whole circumstance started putting people in front of me, like one of the main builders said, oh, maybe the geothermal systems can be good, and then we went to visit geothermal system constructions in barcelona and we start learning about the geothermal and then uh, and then said, okay, maybe we should try it. In the beginning was a bit, a bit challenging, but because a lot of people they don't understand this concept in marbella, you know.
Speaker 1:But what are you talking about? The concept of like, using energy? Yes, and sort of cultivating and recycling energy yes, exactly so recycling energy.
Speaker 1:Whilst there's a good recycling system in like taking out the trash and the basura here in spain, it's different, necessarily, within business, within industry, particularly in the restaurant industry. This is why I find you really interesting to speak with, because what is your reason why that you wanted to do this? Because I can tell straight away that you love the creativity, coming up with the ideas, creating the architecture, thinking how it's going to look.
Speaker 1:I can tell when, if you sit here with Aglini, you can just tell it's radiating that. But there has to be a real reason underneath. Why did you want to do it?
Speaker 2:I believe success is being able to help community, support community living beings in general, obviously including nature, and somehow, as we started the business, something that in the beginning, I have a very strong intuition inside of me, but I didn't realize where we're going in regards on the size of the sustainable approaches, and even the venue started to, the answers started to come on the path and then you do something, you feel good and then you implement that system and the team appreciates it, and I think it was a combination of a synchronization of a lot of people together going to the same direction. I believe the whole sustainable approach of BREEZE was obviously the intention from day one, but we started to learn a lot on our path and we're still learning. We're still learning a lot and it's not something that okay, we do the tree planting, we do the geothermal systems, we do all the sustainable approaches, but that is something that is constantly improving. You can do more and more and more every day. But, just to answer your question, I believe from day one, the idea of creating a very successful venue, a very large venue, was somehow have much more than a restaurant, you know, a message where people can then become better and better and they can get inspired, they know, starting from the clients, from the staff, and all of this creates a sort of synchronization of energy where somehow people feel it, the staff feel it, they they work happier, the clients they feel when they come, as soon as they come in, they feel something about this place, you know, because having a meaning for the business is what I believe is the key of the success.
Speaker 1:I love that there has to be some sort of meaning. So many times I've looked at what drives people the people that I interview or the people that I work with. It's so fun and interesting to see the reason why they want to do it. I want to do it for bigger than just making profit. It's got to have meaning, it's got to affect the people.
Speaker 2:This thing comes down to everything in life. Even when you have a relationship or a friendship or whatever you do, you know everything when becomes meaningful, becomes powerful, yeah and um. And then, I believe, is this, having a meaningful, a very meaningful concept, you know, a strong concept and an identity. Yeah, I believe that was the idea from day one to create something meaningful and with a very strong identity. That then from that basis, from that core, it's much easier to be successful for sure.
Speaker 1:So how would you say that your style of leadership has evolved? You know how is it. You know how long has the restaurant been open for?
Speaker 1:uh, about six years now, okay, and how would you say agaline has evolved in her leadership style? Because you are kind of a bit of a matriarch to the restaurant and to the community to a certain extent, which is great. But how do you feel like you've evolved as a human being? Because there's one thing to be, you know an identity. Where you're the, you know the leader or the ceo of the business but there's, there's another thing where you're like I'm actually, people are looking up to me yeah yeah, so you, you've got to hold your own level of yeah of integrity and and all the other values.
Speaker 2:For me nowadays, with the experience I have today, I would say two words Okay, authenticity being true with yourself, express who you are because, and then you create a real thing and the people they get inspired by it thing and the people they get inspired by it, and it's much easier to then influence the team or the clientele when you are being yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so do you ever feel like you haven't been yourself when you walked in? Maybe the beginning?
Speaker 2:was very hard. I wouldn't say I haven't been myself, but it gets so busy and you get so lost in so much work, starting from the construction, and then it was a very stressful period during the construction.
Speaker 1:How long did it take to build this building About?
Speaker 2:two years.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, it's a massive building.
Speaker 2:And when you're creating something innovative, the hardest part is to try to drag that synchronicity of people that you need all the people to help you to put them in the same direction, with the same vision as you, especially in Marbella. Marbella is still a small place, a village. When you're dealing with administration, they don't really understand where you're going with your mind and now creating something innovative oh my god, a sustainable building in Marbella. So something that was a bit challenging then, so that obviously takes a lot of energy from you. And then, after two years of construction, we opened our doors. We had hundreds of staff working for us. You know people learning where everything is, learning their way around, and then you have to be on top of everything the quality of the service and the food.
Speaker 1:Because there are three floors.
Speaker 2:Well, we started here first yeah, and then the second one was ground, and then the third one air so the ground is the restaurant or the coffee, the cafe, yes.
Speaker 1:And then the air is the the sky bar.
Speaker 2:It's like an open, open nightclub amazing amazing, um, so yeah, so that was uh very challenging. But yes, answering your question, I believe authenticity is very important and also being human, you know, because it doesn't matter how much we invest in a business, the key players here, the most important part of the business, are the human beings and I guess I feel very lucky that I started from from the bottom, so I completely understand. You know workers that starting or learning or you know it's very it's much easier for me to understand, understand they need do you mean you feel like you can put yourself in the shoes of like each level, or?
Speaker 1:perhaps perhaps of you know the people that work 100 percent.
Speaker 2:You know when you and you understand, because you've been there yeah it's not the same when you learn something, when you know something that you you saw, but when you have been there, it's much easier to to understand. Um. So, yeah, I think it's important to be able to inspire people but, at the same time, understand their needs.
Speaker 1:Sure, because when we meet other people's needs, it's kind of like your needs get met as well, don't you? Because happy staff no doubt creates a happy product or a happy service, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:So yeah, absolutely, because you're going invest with, you're gonna invest in marketing, you're gonna, you know, improve, you're gonna, you're gonna have an amazing dish or a beautiful selection of wine, but the connection, the final connection with your client is your stuff yeah you know.
Speaker 1:So they are the the most important thing, most important part of the business now there's another part of your business that I'm fascinated by, because I met actually a alien in in a breathwork session looking to help ourselves by doing some breathwork.
Speaker 1:And I had a previous get someone I interviewed a while back and he was our teacher and what I found fascinating was, at the end of that breath work, said I, I leant over and I and I was looking at the people in the room and I just felt like, well, I must speak to this lady. And we ended up having a conversation and this leads me to why we're sitting here today actually, and it's your passion for how you're giving back in your business and this finds I find really inspiring and it just shows me like the cycle of how we can really contribute and give back when we're succeeding, and it's just this beautiful cycle yeah and it's about your passion, yeah, uh, for being able to to give back by planting trees.
Speaker 1:Tell us a little bit about that and how that works with your business and how you even came into that in the first place yeah, well, when we started, because of the philosophy of the business and the concepts, uh, with a name like Bree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah so somehow everything was already orchestrated by the universe, but I started to learn day by day.
Speaker 1:A little bit Sure.
Speaker 2:In the beginning, with our concept, this identity, we started to work with our EPOS system. It's basically the system that you use for sales.
Speaker 1:What's it called?
Speaker 2:EPOS.
Speaker 1:EPOS, the one from Australia and New Zealand originally.
Speaker 2:Well, not that, but it's a type of EPPOS. What we do is the cell systems called Lightspeed, okay, lightspeed, and somehow Lightspeed said oh, we're doing this project carbon-free dining.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Would you like to participate? And we start to investigate about it and learning about it. I got to know Marvin Baker, which is the founder okay, and then from is he?
Speaker 1:what nationality is Marvin Baker? He's British.
Speaker 2:Oh, he's British, okay so we started from day one support this project, okay and yeah, and I was still still doing six years later and we just reached the milestone of planting 80,000 trees last week.
Speaker 1:Last week.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And whereabouts are you planting those trees for the audience, so that they have?
Speaker 2:We have in developing countries. Okay. We've done in Tanzania. We're still doing some in Tanzania, but now we're starting a very large project, support a very large project in Senegal. So that's very exciting because for me it's like that intuition, that thing telling me that, oh, you're only starting If you tell me where I want to go. I want to look back one day and be responsible for the planting of millions of trees.
Speaker 1:Lovely.
Speaker 2:That's where I'm going.
Speaker 1:So there's certain proceeds of your business that goes to planting trees. That's how it's going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what we do. When the clients they order the bill, we add one euro and 25 cents in the bill, optional, and the clients can can then plant a tree with that donation. Some clients they ask to plant more and we also have an independent site where people can access and donate more trees, which is BreezeGiftedTreecom. People can access and they can choose the amount of trees, the type of trees and they can donate. They can go, they can find in the Google Map where the trees are and you can see that your tree is actually being planted.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:You can actually get on the flight and fly and go and see. So what I will?
Speaker 1:do on this episode. I'll just make sure that we have the link in there so that if you are inspired, as I am, to plant some trees, and then you can see that your tree is actually being done, because that's actually quite an important part, because there's one thing to have this goodwill to say I want to plant it, but it's also quite nice to see the evidence that it's actually being done.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and follow up yeah, and you've contributed to that.
Speaker 1:There's something quite beautiful about that.
Speaker 2:It's amazing. It's the same thing when, for example, I have a little small avocado tree in my garden.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I planted about two years ago. It's a baby tree. It's going to be a few years. You know how it is. The soil here in Spain is very dry. It takes a bit of time. The other day I was sitting in the garden about a month ago and I look at the tree and I look at the tree and I saw four avocados hanging the tree. Oh, my god, I've got my source of avocados now. You know, like the trees, your baby, but I know in one or two years time I'm gonna have that source of avocados. Yeah, and I don't know. It's just because we are part of it. No, like a lot of times, the humans, they don't realize, they disconnect themselves with everything in this, but in reality we are a part of all this force and we are integrated to it.
Speaker 1:That's why when we do something like this, when we plant a tree, instantly we feel better. So, basically, have you actually felt that feeling? Because this is really important for the audience when you do something good you can actually feel that feeling inside of you.
Speaker 2:For me, for example, I think, as I mentioned in the beginning, I keep persisting on this like the success of being able to help humans which I include in the living beings and nature, be able to support that. That is what success is for me. And just to answer to your question for me, wake up in the morning and think, okay, I've got this beautiful business. I've got over 200 people working for this company. We receive close to 300,000 visitors every year. Okay, this is great, but it became an institution, became a toll for something much bigger.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And that, for me, is what inspires me, and and it makes my my heart jump, so do you think that some of the guests that come for the most amazing food here, by the way, do you think that some of the guests actually know the philosophy?
Speaker 2:well, I think a lot of them, because that's come from you, right?
Speaker 1:so the philosophy came, come, comes from you, your idea. But then you're like right? Do the people that actually come and enjoy the exquisite food here and it is exquisite do they know what they're contributing to?
Speaker 2:I think a lot of. We are very, very fortunate because we do have a very strong local clientele.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So people who've been here for 20 times or, you know, like local, local professionals, people that live in Marbella, but of course we also have the tourists, people who don't know Marbella. They came, they came here and obviously we are in a good location.
Speaker 1:Because in the summer it's absolutely packed all the time, non-stop.
Speaker 2:So I guess a lot of people they don't have the time to have that education, yeah, but I believe more and more and more, more people are getting to know our philosophy and as the time passes, with my ambition of planting more and more and more and more trees, I'm sure we're going to always make more and more and more noise about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know you all make some noise about it, yeah, so what do you think the the future of the business is? I know you'd like the trees are important, but what would you think the future is of what you know? What would you like your legacy to be? More of now, because it's quite I guess I want to reframe the question a little bit. Being a leader, you're also a mom. How do you manage all of this? How do you manage sort of the 200 people? How do you manage, you know, being a mom at the same time? How do you manage to take care of yourself, because you do have to take care of your wellness?
Speaker 2:100. Balance. I think that's the words. I mean. Obviously, we are a boss here. You will now have the actual make things happen. Yeah, also, I feel very, very privileged to have an incredible team. That is this is the future of the business. I believe the team because we have people with extreme potential here, people who demonstrate that they can do a lot more than initially we thought they could. I mean, we give them the opportunity and people always surprise you. The balance I mean you have to have the action and be the boss here, of course, but then I'm still a woman. I still have my vulnerability.
Speaker 1:For sure I have my partner.
Speaker 2:I have my daughter. So, at home, I want my partner to put the fire on and pour me a glass of wine or a cup of tea. I want to keep that vulnerability as well at home. I want to be a mom. I want to spend time with my daughter. I want to keep that vulnerability as well at home. I want to be a mom. I want to spend time with my daughter. I want to read bad stories with her, you know. So you have to have that balance and understand that. Okay, now is the time for this, now is the time for that. Now is the time for me to turn off my phone. I want to go to my pilates session. You know, I think it's important to make a plan and understand where and how you're gonna devote your energy. People call this time management.
Speaker 1:I would call energy management that's a good one, yeah, because managing your energy is essential to your well-being, isn't it? And if you're low on it, so when you have a low energy day, how do you come back from that? Because this is great for leaders, right? So people aspiring to be leaders, maybe even women.
Speaker 2:Meditation. Meditation is very important. Once you have that noise and you're not feeling well, you stop. Okay, I'm going to stop now for I don't know 20 minutes and I'm gonna have this moment for me. I'm gonna take my shoes off, I'm gonna walk on the grass, I'm gonna connect a little bit with myself. As nature, let's reset, because if you are having that bad day and you're confused and if you keep going without reboot, normally it only gets worse.
Speaker 1:For sure so did you realize that early in the business or did it take you some challenges?
Speaker 2:No, no no, no, we've been to challenges, you know, not only business challenges. We all go through life challenges as well, we all go through life challenges as well. But that's the beauty of taking that opportunity of having challenges and get those little pieces of you and put it together and come back and rebuild yourself again.
Speaker 1:Can I just say I really love the way that you've used the word challenge with opportunity, because sometimes we look at them and just go oh no, but you actually see it as like an opportunity to rebuild, to recreate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100 percent. I mean I think like anything really, you know, like sometimes you need that little push to get out of your comfort zone and I believe challenges in life is, at the moment you don't see it why me and why I'm living this.
Speaker 2:And why, is this happening and after a while, you realize that without the circumstances, you wouldn't direct your journey into a much more successful and much more powerful path. It's a very strong sentence from Oprah saying turn your wounds into wisdom. And it's important because without knowing the dark, how can you appreciate the light? You know. So this is uh. This is important because the fact that you, you, everything's okay and you're going, not going to any, any, any challenges or anything's going wrong, doesn't mean it's not going wrong. You know, I think it's important to see the challenges as an opportunity. You know, and we all go, and when I don't, I don't believe that any, any human being that doesn't go through challenges.
Speaker 2:You 100% get there because one way or the other yeah so what do you would you like your legacy to be?
Speaker 1:what are you working on creating a legacy for yourself? Well, I.
Speaker 2:I want to plant as much trees as I can and I want to help as many human beings as I can. Um, like when you ask about the future of the business, I'm not sure exactly where we're going or what I can say. I know we're going all what I can say. I know we're going in an incredible direction because we have this synchronicity of incredible human beings working together with us, who a lot of them. I can see them becoming very successful in life and I'm very grateful they are here, because I know that I'm going to witness a lot of them doing extremely well, hopefully with us, but are they going to do well anyway? So I guess this is our future, our team, and I can see us going very far because of this powerful energy we get from them.
Speaker 1:Lovely Well, aglène. It's been amazing speaking with you today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, and.
Speaker 1:I just wanted to say have you got any last words that you'd like to share? You know, with the people tuning in today, is there something that you think that you know, a message that you could share with the audience that would? Perhaps I'm leaving in a more optimistic, inspired place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, being a woman and being a leader, I've learned that my most powerful tool is my intuition. So a lot of times you think, oh, this is right, I should do that. And then maybe you have you know, somebody said no, no, you should do this, especially when you're dealing with so many people. Sure, and eventually you always realize that intuition was the truth, because I believe the intuition is a toll that the universal forces give to you for you to use to lead you to the right direction. So all I can say is like your intuition is powerful, so make sure you're always there for it.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Thank you for joining me today. You're this week's super soul.
Speaker 2:Thank you, that's very nice. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:If you enjoyed this episode, please consider liking, subscribing and sharing, because it really does help reach more people. Thank you.