In this exclusive interview with LIFESTYLE.INQ, the clinical herbalist and beauty entrepreneur shares her insights on business, wellness, and finding balance amidst it all
In life, it’s very rare to come across people who wholeheartedly welcome failure. For most people, they usually despise it. They dread the idea of not succeeding in something, or they sometimes even struggle to submit to defeat during times of adversity. I am sometimes one of them. Maybe you are too?
René Rosario Rodrigo, however, is not like most people.
For her interview with LIFESTYLE.INQ, Rodrigo is seated in a comfortable corner of her home. It’s the evening of what I would imagine had been a long day for the clinical herbalist and beauty-slash-wellness entrepreneur. Beyond her career, Rodrigo is also a wife and a mother to three children. Arguably, these are the roles she treasures the most.
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On her roots to holistic wellness
A native of New Jersey, Rodrigo grew up in the East Coast suburbs with her big family. In her childhood home, she describes to me how they had a huge garden and how having four seasons allowed her mother to grow an abundance of plants, fruits, and vegetables. “My mom would always try to remedy us naturally. That was her thing. She home birthed all seven of her children. She’s the OG, all-natural type of person in our family.” Apart from this, Rodrigo shared how her perspective on healing and wellness was balanced out by more traditional approaches through her birth father’s side of the family where she had relatives who were traditional medical practitioners and scientists. Additionally, her sister also later pursued a career in science. “I was kind of caught in between. I was like ‘You know what, I’m really interested in herbal medicine and natural modalities of healing, but how do I approach it so it doesn’t sound quackery?’”
Driven by her desire to learn more about holistic wellness, Rodrigo initially pursued a degree in nutrition before an opportunity for her to finally explore the realm of herbalism presented itself. “I had been following this school in the UK for the longest time and they didn’t do online schooling at all, but during the pandemic, they finally opened online admissions for their bachelor’s program in clinical herbal medicine. I knew that that was my chance.”
“I always tell people that when you’re on a journey of healing yourself, it should feel like a journey. It should feel like a holiday. It shouldn’t feel like a burden or anything like that.”
During her four-year degree, Rodrigo juggled everything from home birthing a baby and managing her businesses, to even picking up additional coursework at the Ateneo de Manila University for Chinese Medicine. A superhuman effort, Rodrigo credits her family’s support through it all as her greatest driving force.
On ‘Oh Holiday!’ and finding balance in your life
When I ask her about how being a clinical herbalist has affected her daily life, Rodrigo shares: “You know, when I became an herbalist, I didn’t realize that I would also be healing myself. It’s so strange to say because like, you don’t hear doctors saying they want to become doctors because they think they’re going to heal themselves, you know what I mean?”
For over 10 years, Rodrigo suffered from endometriosis and infertility. Having gone to several traditional medicine doctors, she was told early on that she would need to live with this condition for the rest of her life and take birth control pills as regular medication. In addition to this, Rodrigo also dealt with other autoimmune conditions such as alopecia and hemochromatosis. “When I went into herbal medicine, it was because I thought it was interesting. I wanted to learn about it because I wanted to help heal other people. But what happened was, as I was practicing learning herbal medicine, I accidentally healed myself from endometriosis while I was testing out hormonal herbs.” After one of her regular ob gyne appointments, Rodrigo was shocked to hear from her doctor that the condition she had lived with for over a decade was suddenly gone. “I had a blocked fallopian tube that my doctors said wouldn’t ever be able to reopen. And then all of a sudden, I got pregnant two more times through that fallopian tube that was blocked.”
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It was through this personal breakthrough that Rodrigo knew she was on to something, leading her to specialize in hormonal remedies, and working with countless women and men who suffer from similar ailments. “I have colleagues who are also in alternative medicine and anytime they have patients with hormonal issues, they send them my way. I feel like herbs are the most effective drug, remedy, or medicine you can use to try to rebalance.”
Empowered by her personal experiences, Rodrigo’s passion for holistic healing has helped pioneer the natural wellness industry in the Philippines. In fact, she is the only UK-registered clinical herbalist in the country. Through her apothecary, ‘Oh Holiday!’, Rodrigo works towards helping hundreds of people around the country through her practice. “The name of my business came from my daughter. Her name is Holiday. When we first started, she was still a toddler and she’d be running around while we were working so my staff were just like: ‘Why don’t we just call it ‘Oh holiday!’?” Additionally, Rodrigo also notes how the name ‘Oh Holiday!’ is reflective of the brand’s overall ethos. “I always tell people that when you’re on a journey of healing yourself, it should feel like a journey. It should feel like a holiday. It shouldn’t feel like a burden or anything like that. So yeah, it was perfect.”
“I think to have order in your life, it’s a mix of time management, discipline, and confidence. The will, the motivation, it comes and goes. I never rely on motivation.”
When asked about how this business of hers began, she fondly recounts how it was a “mistake business” in the sense that it wasn’t a business she had planned on putting up at all. “When I was doing my bachelor’s degree, I was blending all kinds of teas and testing out tinctures…I was always posting them on my Instagram story and surprisingly enough, people were like: ‘Oh my god, can I order one of those from you?’ and I was like, oh that’s weird. But sure!” After asking her professor if it would be okay and double-checking the dosages, Rodrigo began selling her herbal tea blends at cost. Motivated by the positive feedback she’d receive from people who would test them out, she didn’t care about making a profit. It wasn’t long until Rodrigo’s followers started asking if she could blend teas for all sorts of their concerns. Acid reflux, GERD, you name it. She tells me mid-laugh: “There was one week where I had like, 70 orders. By that point, I was just like, I don’t think I should be doing this for free anymore! That’s how we started Oh Holiday!”
As someone who wears many hats, it’s no surprise that Rodrigo is often asked how she manages to dedicate equal time and effort into all of her endeavors. Aside from being a clinical herbalist, she is also the founder of Beré, an herbal spa that opened in 2014. Rodrigo also helms two Ayumi lash studios in Manila and will be launching one in New York City soon. Most recently, Rodrigo launched FaceSculpt–the very first lymphatic drainage and body sculpting clinic in the Philippines. “I feel like people think there’s some secret to it. But you know, there’s this quote by Benjamin Franklin that I always tell everybody: ‘Order–let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.’ This quote is written down in my notes. I see it every day.”
“I believe in karma. I always tell my staff, with every person who comes into our shop, you need to be able to help them in some way somehow. We need to be able to make their life better. At the end of the day, I just want to elevate the lives of people.”
By maintaining order throughout all aspects of her life, Rodrigo shares that this has created a huge impact on the way she navigates her day-to-day responsibilities. “I think to have order in your life, it’s a mix of time management, discipline, and confidence. The will, the motivation, it comes and goes. I never rely on motivation.”
On her business ethics and learning to flourish through failure
Throughout each of Rodrigo’s entrepreneurial endeavors, she emphasizes the role her values play in each of their formation, and how they serve as her compass when she navigates the sometimes tricky industry of beauty and wellness. “In all of my businesses, my values–my morals, they have to resonate with my partners. I do not partner with people who I feel will take shortcuts just to make a buck.”
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The longer we spoke, the more I slowly began to understand the line of work Rodrigo had built her career on. At face value, Rodrigo is in the business of beauty and wellness. However, pay close attention and you will realize that she is actually in the business of nurturing. Whether it be through her apothecary, her herbal spa, or her lash studios, René Rosario Rodrigo has carefully built her career around a single mission: to uplift, empower, and care for other women. “I feel like in the Philippines, doing this work… it’s just pioneering. I like that. I like to be the first because I like to be the one who might fail. I love failure.” While Rodrigo’s statement might sound strange to some people, she clarifies her sentiments by highlighting how failing is the only way for someone to figure out what truly works.
With every success and failure, Rodrigo has consistently made it out the other end with more wisdom and knowledge than her last experience. Her driving force? Independence and the desire to create a better life for herself and her family. “My mom worked so many jobs. She was a single mother and we didn’t have a lot of money, so I started working at 11 years old. By the time I was in high school, I was working two jobs at a time, 60 hours a week while being a student. The first thing that motivated me to become an entrepreneur was honestly the money so that we could get out of that situation.”
Through sheer grit and an innate altruistic desire, Rodrigo has triumphantly filled a gap within the beauty and wellness market in the Philippines by simply championing authenticity in every aspect of her work. “I believe in karma. I always tell my staff, with every person who comes into our shop, you need to be able to help them in some way somehow. We need to be able to make their life better. At the end of the day, I just want to elevate the lives of people.”
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Photography by JT Fernandez
Produced by Angela Manuel Go
