If This Busy Entrepreneur Can Find Balance So Can You
Hickies co-founder Mariquel Weingarten reveals how she balances work, motherhood and taking care of herself.
If you think running your own business sounds stressful, then imagine trying to do it alongside your husband. While raising a one and a half year old. And being eight months pregnant. That's the case for Hickies co-founder and chief marketing officer Mariquel Waingarten. She and husband Gaston Frydlweski created the line of innovative and practical tie-free "laces," which are now sold in 45 countries and have been spotted on trendsetting celebs including Jessica Alba, Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid.
Waingarten is involved in everything from distribution to communications to design, and says her days are filled with meetings – lots of meetings. Yet somehow, she still manages to take her son to school in the morning, plus spend almost every evening with him, while also finding time for herself. Her secret: Make your life easy.
Sounds simple enough, right? Keep reading to find out what her philosophy looks like in practice.
Keep Your Work Close, and Your Kid’s School Closer
Waingarten says it was a "conscious decision" to send her son to a school that's a 15-minute walk from her Williamsburg home, and to choose an office space just four short blocks away.
"I arrange things so they're comfortable," she says. "Everything is nearby —everything is walking distance." Which means the expectant mom never has to fight for a cab or squeeze into a packed subway car, plus she gets a daily dose of exercise.
If she ever needs a reprieve from walking (as sometimes happens when you're eight months pregnant), she tells us that she can always take the waterfront ferry to her son's school and back. "It's beautiful and relaxing," she says of the commute.
A Holistic Approach to Health
For the past four years, Waingarten has been going to acupuncture once a week. "It's as important as my most important meeting," she says. She describes the 90-minute sessions as "a mixture of traditional Chinese medicine with a kind of life or health coach."
She and her acupuncturist talk about what she's dealing with that week and then use acupuncture to address some of those issues. It's a combination that works for her. "It's about how can I be better, feel better, be a better person," says the native Argentinian, who adds that in her home country, everybody goes to a therapist.
"It doesn't matter – you don't have to have a problem," she goes on to say. "We like to talk about our lives." (Fun fact: Argentina actually has the highest number of psychologists per capita in the world, with around 198 psychologists per 100,000 inhabitants, according to researchers' estimates.)
Listening to Your Body
When it comes to getting through her long days, "diet is everything," says Waingarten, who was diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease after her first pregnancy. To help her manage the condition, an autoimmune disorder affecting the thyroid, she says she asked herself, "What's my body asking me to change?"
After doing some research, she began a diet based in Chinese medicine to help support her immune system. "I don't eat wheat, dairy, sugar, basically nothing that's processed," she says. But she hasn't given up meat: "I'm Argentinian. I can eat a steak for breakfast," she jokes.
Her current diet consists of protein, whole grain, vegetables, and fruits (like strawberries) that don't elevate her sugar. Asked what she might snack on if she starts to feel low energy, she tells us, "Well, I'm eight months pregnant, so if I feel low energy, I rest — I take a nap."
We can't argue with that.