From YouTube to Beauty Empire, How Ydelays Rodriguez is Revolutionizing the Industry
For someone to feel truly beautiful, they need to think beyond the surface. You need to focus on beauty that looks as good as it feels on the inside. This is the core value of Latina-owned Golden Dream Beauty. This beauty brand focuses on helping people look and feel their best by offering conscious, cruelty-free, high-end products that bring out your most confident, uniquely beautiful you.
As founder and CEO Ydelays Rodriguez says on her brand website, “If you’ve ever dared to dream the impossible, Golden Dream Beauty is a love letter to you.”
Ydelays Rodriguez was born and raised in Venezuela and moved to the United States in 2012. As a way to connect and stay in touch with her loved ones back home, Ydelays started a YouTube channel. That platform soon became a way for her to share beauty tips to inspire and empower women worldwide with advice and insider tricks for beauty lovers.
With nearly 900,000 YouTube subscribers and more than 64 million views to date, plus over 300,000 Instagram followers, it’s clear that whatever she is sharing is really resonating with her fans.
“Sharing my beauty tips and inspiring women became my favorite thing to do. In 10 years, I built a community of over 1 million followers across my social media channels,” she told mitú. That was a catalyst to make Ydelays realize it was time to chase her dreams.
Authenticity always mattered to Ydelays Rodriguez
“I wanted to create a Latina-owned brand full of values and with a mission to inspire immigrant women with stories like mine to feel seen,” she explained. “I saw the need in the beauty industry to create a space for our community while also creating an elevated beauty brand for everyone.”
The fact is, Ydelays Rodriguez always had a passion for beauty. While this sentiment was always there, her professional journey in the beauty arena began when she worked the floor at Macy’s running beauty counters.
Rodriguez learned endlessly valuable information and gained life-changing experience about how beauty brands work and how to serve her customers. More importantly, she knew how she hoped to make an even bigger and more meaningful impact on the beauty industry and beyond.
So, in 2019, she put all her savings into her lifelong dream and launched Golden Dream Beauty
At the time of her launch, Golden Dream Beauty sold four styles of vegan false lashes to further Rodriguez’s mission of empowering women through beauty and community.
But her mission extends beyond helping others look and feel their best. It also wants to benefit the environment by offering non-toxic products that generate less harm to the planet and animals because beauty is not just about how someone looks but how they feel and bring beauty into the world around them.
All of these elements of Golden Dream Beauty were a part of Rodriguez’s vision from when she was little. She always wanted to help others feel beautiful and honor their inner beauty. A portion of that beauty is celebrating where you come from, cherishing your roots, and celebrating your Latino pride with authenticity.
That is genuinely what Golden Dream Beauty is all about.
Furthermore, Ydelays Rodriguez truly believes that “in life, whatever is meant for you, will be for you. There is room for all of us to shine beautifully.”
However, this Latina encountered her fair share of doubt along the way
“People always wanted to see who was behind the brand. And for some reason, they were surprised or found it hard to believe and accept that Golden Dream Beauty was built from scratch by me, an immigrant Latina,” she told mitú.
“I built Golden Dream Beauty with my own savings and no investors or corporate people behind it. Some people are not used to seeing us in these roles, but I love to be able to educate people about our culture, traditions, and diversity,” she said proudly.
Her lifelong passion for beauty is truly infused into every product, every brand message, every social media video, and every ounce of empowerment behind Golden Dream Beauty. As Rodriguez says, “Golden Dream Beauty is my American dream.”
It’s an American Dream that took a lot of persistence and patience, qualities she traces back to her Latina roots. She notes that some of the most important qualities she’s learned from her Latino culture is “to be persistent and humble at the same time.”
And don’t take no for an answer, both from others and yourself
If you’re experiencing doubt, don’t convince yourself that you don’t know how, but instead ask yourself, “How do I do it?”
Ydelays Rodriguez thinks of her company not only as a brand but as a family — a part of her upbringing that has become a part of her business. “We are building a community; we are building a familia,” she notes.
She was patient, and her best advice to other aspiring Latina entrepreneurs is just that — be patient.
“Wonderful things don’t happen overnight,” she reminds others. “When someone says no to you, turn that into a positive and use it to learn and improve so that you can redirect yourself and open the next door.”
Finally, she wants other Latinas to remember they have what it takes to make their dreams come true.
“You are capable. Don’t be afraid. Follow your passion. Listen to your heart. Educate yourself. Take advantage of all the resources that are available on the internet and start now!”