What a Mohs Surgeon Learned in the OR That Led Her to Build a Skincare Brand for Teens

Speaker 1: Sun damage is accumulated [music] over a lifetime and the large majority of that starts in the childhood and teenage years. I can't call myself a health care provider if I don't care enough to get out [music] there and make a difference. And that was the inspiration for Bright Girl Skincare [music] and creating a brand that spoke to and was tailored towards our youth and teaches them those important and consistent daily habits [music] while giving them ingredients and formulations that are appropriate for their [music] skin and an elevated experience with using them. I'm Melanie Bar. Welcome back to the Sheila [music] Tip podcast, your go-to place to empower you to live the life and business that you crave. I'm here to talk [music] about everything from having the courage to make life and career leaps to the details [music] of how to lead effectively, create successful teams, implement strategies for growth, and infuse tech [music] innovation. I'm here to celebrate your wins and navigate through your challenges. I live in the city now, but I grew up in a town of a thousand people. I've navigated major life leaps, a senior level corporate career, worked in professional sports, and now as [music] a successful entrepreneur who loves business, technology, family, and making meaningful connections with you and the She Built It Community. I also love a good workout and dose of self-care. Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings [music] us joy. So, turn up the audio, open your favorite notes app, grab your favorite drink, and here we go. Welcome to She Built It. I'm your host, Melanie Bar. Thank you for joining us today, [music] Dr. Casey. It's my

Speaker 2: pleasure to be here, Melanie. Thank you

Speaker 1: so much for the invitation. You operate on skin cancer everyday. What did you see in the O that made you decide to

Speaker 2: build a consumer brand? It wasn't what I was seeing, but it was also what I was hearing from my patients on a daily basis. And that common refrain from them was, "Dr. Casey, I wish I had known. I wish I could go back and get a doover on my skin care from my teens and my childhood years, but we just didn't know any better. We just didn't have sunscreen. We just weren't educated. So every day I'm hearing this and in my own life I am raising three teen and tween daughters with my amazing husband and I am seeing them struggle and the confusion on what skincare brands are appropriate for their skin seeking brands that they connect with and they're excited about. So there was this gap in mismatch. All of the damage that I am treating in my office today did not start one or two years ago. It started when those patients were young. So many decades ago. And I know that sun damage is accumulated over a lifetime and the large majority of that starts in the childhood and teenage years. I can't call myself a health care provider if I don't care enough to get out there and make a difference. And that was the

Speaker 1: inspiration for Bright Girl Skincare and creating a brand that spoke to and was tailored towards our youth and teaches them those important and consistent daily habits while giving them ingredients and formulations that are appropriate for their skin and an elevated experience with using them. I had a moment where I was seeing a dermatologist myself. My twins were three at the time. She said to me, "I have to go tell a teenager that they have skin cancer." And that comment stuck with me. And I live in California. I have twins. They play soccer and baseball. No basketball where it's indoors or volleyball. So, we're outside all the time. And so, I'm always thinking about that. And it's good to know about products that are healthy to put on their skin. It's definitely a pain point for parents to in that they go to beauty retailers and there are thousands of brands to choose from. They go on Amazon and then their children are watching social media and getting recommendations from influencers. We live in a day and age where we are bombarded with too many options. And when we can provide a solution as a brand for parents of products and formulations that are safe, that have been clinically tested in teenage skin, that are proven effective, and that we can make that brand really fun and exciting and such a luxurious experience for teens because they are a super fickle audience. If you do not exceed their expectations, they're not going to come back. So, you have to incorporate all of those things. But when you get them hooked on those good healthy habits, it's such a win for us as parents. We were just on vacation down at the beach in North Carolina, and the number of sunburns that I saw on the beach in individuals of all ages is heartbreaking. I'm sure you see it in California as well. We're still in an era where there are lots of individuals who are not taking these practices to heart and they are not taking that extra moment to put on their sunscreen or use sunprotective behaviors. So it is an opportunity to educate and do better for future generations. And I was about to put a message on the mirror of my kids' rooms that says, "Put on sunscreen." Because they're getting older and so now they're going to practice by themselves on their bike. And I'm thinking about that right now particularly, how do I instill that habit in them? And like you said, with a brand that that's fun, that makes them want to put it on. You have to deliver formulations that feel so good on their skin, make their skin look so healthy, that are easy to apply, and then you have to habit stack it. So, you have to make it very available to them. Maybe that is putting the sunscreen next to their toothbrush. Maybe it's putting it in their gym bag or their athletic bag, putting it by the door that they walk out of on their way out of the house every day. But when you make it very available and take a moment to talk about it with them, they never want to listen to what we tell them. But when we

Speaker 2: model that behavior ourselves, they're sponges. They take it in and they'll start to implement those behaviors. But we have to walk the walk also as parents and really make sure that we're carving out time for that quote unquote self-care, which is just implementing

Speaker 1: these healthy habits daily. You are a surgeon, a residency director, a clinical professor, and now a founder. Tell us more about who you are and what

Speaker 2: Brightgirl is. I am a double board certified dermatologist and micrographic dermatic surgeon. And as you alluded to earlier, Melanie, what that means is that in my practice, I am treating skin cancers surgically every day through a procedure called Moe's microraphic surgery. Patients come in the office with skin cancers typically on the head and neck area is where we're employing MO because of its superior cure rate and ability to spare as much healthy skin as possible which is very critical in areas like the nose, lips, eyelids etc. I surgically remove the skin cancer. I bring that piece of skin that I've removed to our lab where it's processed so I can look at it under the microscope. That allows me to map out all the cancer cells and it also gives me that perspective at looking at skin at the microscopic level every day, which is fascinating because it tells the story of that patient's life. What does the collagen look like? How much pigmentation is there, the elastic fibers, the blood vessels, all of these factors that present in appearance of our skin. Once the cancer is cleared, I then return to the patient and perform reconstructive surgery. And that's what I do in my practice every day. As part of that, I'm also teaching and training the next generation of dermatology residents through Ohio Health. And I love the privilege of being part of shaping future of our specialty. And I learn so much from them. They definitely keep me on my toes. and I hope that they're learning a lot from me as well. And then, as you mentioned, my other roles are being a mom to our three teen and tween daughters and also running Bright Girl Skincare. I could not do all of these things without a village of people because it truly takes a village. My husband, my nanny, a lot of other experts in the aspects that I am not good at. everybody that I work with, my nurses, admin team, etc. And that's what makes it possible to juggle all of these

Speaker 1: roles. I love seeing the passion behind what you do. Teen skincare is crowded and largely unregulated. How do you build trust with parents and teens in a market full of products that are not always backed by science? My

Speaker 2: role as a dermatologist and most surgeons certainly lends credibility. So that's the first point. Then my role as mom of three teen and tween daughters certainly gives me that mom perspective and allows other moms to connect with me on that level and then it is a matter of getting validation in the marketplace at large. What we did with brightgirl is we underwent three years of research and development before we even launched the brand. So that involved pulling white

Speaker 1: papers, clinical research, looking at ingredients, deep diving, really selecting benchmark products that are the best of the best that we use in dermatology and using those as our standards and incorporating all of that into creating this brand. Beyond that then we need to assemble a team of the best cosmetic chemists and brand designers and packaging experts, marketing PR. After we launched the brand following three years of research and development, so this was in 2022. We initially went direct to consumer which I would recommend for any of your audience members that are testing a concept wanting to launch a consumer product because that is going to give you the feedback and help shape the trajectory of your brand. After getting proof of concept and validation from that audience, we then went to the dermatologists themselves. And dermatologists are the most skeptical and discerning and pickiest audience when it comes to skin care. As one myself, I will tell you, we get pitched by skin care brands every week and we say no to most of them. But the dermatologists were really embracing this concept. They were loving the Bright Girl products. They were recommending them to their patients and to their own children. And they saw the difference in what we had created with these very elevated formulations, clean ingredient selection. So no parabens, sulfates, stales, none of the common allergens. And most importantly, they were seeing the adoption of this brand in the teen, tween, and college age patient population. And in dermatology, compliance is one of the biggest obstacles we face. Products do not work if you don't use them. and we struggle with compliance in our patients. When you give them a brand that they love to use every day, that's a win. And through those habits, they're going to reach their skin health goals. So, expert validation that then led to us launching into retail and now we're available at Nordstrom, Macy's, beauty space, which has put us into Walmart, Amazon, and Tik Tok shop to name a few. But what has worked in launching this brand, getting that traction that was needed and setting us apart from so many others on the market.

Speaker 2: Walk us through an early business decision that you made of how to build and fund Brightite Girl and a challenge that you were able to overcome.

Speaker 1: There were many challenges. The first of which is the fact that I have no formal business training. I was a molecular biology and mathematics major at Vanderbilt University. I then went straight to medical school, straight to residency and fellowship and into practice. So, at no point in my journey did I take anything other than the most basic accounting class that was required for graduation. I share that because if I can do it, anyone who's listening out there can do it. You do not need a business degree or formal business background to make something a go. In terms of funding, we actually bootstrapped this brand from the beginning. So, we have not taken any outside capital. We've been self-funded. So that meant taking a portion of our savings and committing it to this passion project as my husband and I like to call it, but with a real clarity of how we were going to allocate those funds, what that journey looked like. And the biggest challenge that we had that I didn't anticipate is that I always thought if we built a really beautiful brand and it was so far above and beyond others on the market that consumers would flock to us and want to buy this. And I went in very naively in with blind optimism with that mentality of if we build it they will come. And that was so far from the case. and you're nodding because I'm sure you've heard that many times. But I did not fully appreciate the amount of marketing, brand awareness, the social media, PR, all of those aspects that go into making a successful brand. I did not anticipate how costly that would be. and that the larger we became and we've seen our sales continue to rise year over year and we continue to see our expenses rise year over year as we're supporting this business. How did we overcome that with a lot of research, some trial and error and failing fast with the aspects of building the brand that did not work. So, it was like a quick let's cut ties. Let's not keep going for another 6 months or a year. And then latching on to those aspects that were successful like going into more dermatology practices, doortodoor sales, connecting with aestheticians and skin health experts, connecting with moms, influencers. Those were the things that were working and not nearly as costly as running meta ads or having a lot of PR opportunities.

Speaker 2: Yes. Smart that you went towards owned media and you did the toughest work which is building a product that you believe in and that you know will help people and the marketing and the sales now can come after that.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. And I can stand by that 100% because we ran full IRB approved clinical trials. So it's not just a nice story of a cute product that looks pretty in a package. We can fall back on the data which for us as physicians, as scientists, really propels us forward and legitimizes a brand. And you are so right, Melody, for any founders being so clear on the mission. To me, it's so obvious because in my practice, as I mentioned, I'm seeing damage that started decades ago. And I know that almost 90% of that damage could have been prevented with good habits from a young age. So to me, it's very obvious. The challenge is then educating the public at large that this is a problem we can solve and that we can have an impact on the skin cancer

Speaker 2: epidemic. You are a practicing surgeon, program director, professor and founder. What systems and boundaries has made it possible for you to lead at that level?

Speaker 1: A lot of help as I mentioned earlier and I know you had Georgia on recently who spoke about knowing our limits as founders. and when to delegate. And it is definitely a flaw that most of us founders have that we feel like we need to do everything. But from an early point in launching this business, I realized where my expertise lay and where I was limited in my knowledge, ability or bandwidth to complete certain tasks. So first and foremost is really being able to assemble the team that is going to lift all boats. So that rising tide that's going to lift all boats with the right people with the right expertise and having the humility as a founder to step back and say I can't do it all. So that's first and foremost. Secondly, I've had to learn to say no to obligations that don't fulfill my purpose as a mom, as a surgeon, or as a founder. Outsourcing a lot of that as much as I can. And that includes things like driving my kids to sports practice or picking them up for school, some of the household things. It does not fill my cup and I would rather hire somebody to fulfill those tasks to free me up to spend quality time with my family to dedicate time to my patients and to work on Bright Girl. I'm a big believer in self-care. So, I know you can relate with me on that and carving out time every day. I do it every day. I make time to work out or take a walk. I make time to read a book. Those are the things that really fill my cup and give me energy. And then time blocking. So, I will schedule things like organize closets from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. on Saturday afternoon or you pack for our upcoming trip from 1 to 2:00 p.m. on Sunday just to formalize it so it's there and then when the time comes it's oh yeah, this is my time to get it done

Speaker 2: and not procrastinate. I'm smiling because I can so relate to everything you just said and it's amazing. If you time block for 20 minutes and you do it for a week, you'll accomplish it by the end of the week. One important lesson I've learned, you don't have to tackle the whole thing. If you organize one drawer and that's all you get done, you've done something. You don't have to go through the whole desk or the whole closet. So satisfying. One little space to accomplish that one space. If you do one drawer a day, [laughter] I'm constantly telling myself that as a busy mom and founder myself. Such good advice. Thank you for joining us today. Please share with us how and where we can find Bright Girl and

Speaker 1: connect with you. Visit us on our website at brightgirl.com. Br i g ht g i r l. On social media, you can follow us at brightgirl beauty.

Speaker 2: Thank you for joining [music] us today. I'd love to hear from you. Reach out to me at hello@hebuiltit.com [music] on our shebiltit website or at shebuiltit on social. Thank you to my editor Rich Duffolino who always makes [music] us sound good. Until next time, let nothing stop you from experiencing effectively business that you crave.