'Huma Live 2020' - With Soledad Villafuerte

By: Samantha Jijón Gagliardo.

In 2020, we hosted three seasons of Huma en Vivo, our coffee broadcasts hosted by our founders Juan Begué and Mario Idrovo on our Instagram account. During these broadcasts, we were able to share stories with great professionals from different fields who inspired us.

There's very little left until the end of this year, and we want to somehow remember the pleasant experience we had with each guest and with the loyal audience of coffee lovers who joined us on every live stream.

There's no better way to close out Huma en Vivo 2020 than with that interesting conversation we had with Out of the Box founder Soledad Villafuerte. The entrepreneur told us how her innovative training program came to be and, of course, she also told us which character from history she'd be having coffee with.

It all began after her academic and business training. Surrounding herself with risk-taking and entrepreneurial people was essential to embarking on her entrepreneurial journey. Soledad's first project was a brand of handbags, which eventually evolved into other leather goods and accessories for men and women. But her specialty and passion for human resources led her to develop other skills while working in the training department of a consulting firm. Laughing, she told us that her first training experience was on how to recognize counterfeit bills. "That's how I started, in a movie theater, training on counterfeit bills."

Soledad increasingly discovered her passion and decided to take a risk. Although she was doing well at the company she worked for, something inside her told her she no longer wanted to work for anyone. " There came a day when I said, 'I'm tired! What I'm doing, I could do perfectly well for myself... if I'm fulfilling someone else's dreams, I could fulfill them for myself .'" Although at first, Soledad didn't know exactly what she was going to do, her desire to build something of her own made her quit her job. After acquiring her coaching certification, she began providing vocational training to young people who had just graduated from high school, providing them with guidance so they could make the right decision about what career to pursue.

The idea for Out of the Box was born when, upon completing her certification, Soledad felt something was missing. "I felt like I was missing a toolbox." With this idea in mind, Soledad would later begin creating disruptive and innovative tools to help empower human talent. Currently, Out of the Box offers personalized training programs with high-impact methodologies for building successful teams.

Sometimes opportunities present themselves, and you have to be prepared to take them. The call Soledad received one day to train a large team of doctors motivated her to build her brand faster and gain the experience to lay the solid foundation for what her business is today. "One thing I've learned in my life is: never say I can't."

Soledad continues to constantly train herself to create new products with new methodologies adapted to the global situation and continues to contribute to other businesses from a different perspective.

We come to the inevitable question that every Huma en Vivo guest answered this year. Which character from history would Soledad Villafuerte have a coffee with? "I would have a coffee with friends who are entrepreneurs, not necessarily so they could talk to me about entrepreneurship, but so they could tell me about their passion... That gives me a boost ."

“As entrepreneurs, we must learn to be generous. Sometimes we're afraid when we're starting something. But if you're generous, your universe of references and your universe of people who will be interested in helping you will expand a thousandfold.” Soledad Villafuerte.

A very valuable conversation and words from Soledad that inspire us to start the new year with the fullest enthusiasm.

All of Huma Live's broadcasts in 2020 were incredibly enriching. We hope to surprise you in 2021 with new projects and content where we can all continue learning about coffee from different perspectives.