What’s REALLY in Your Skincare?

Speaker 1: [Music] your skin and your face specifically is the first thing people see. And if your skin is hydrated and glowing and you're healthy inside and you can show that outward, you gain this confidence that you might not have previously had. So for me and Sarah just to uplift women to give them that confidence to take on the world to face their fears to take on that meeting to make that speech to hire that new person to help them whatever it is to do it with confidence and it's our responsibility to share that and give the next generations that ability to have the confidence that I had. I'm Melanie Bar. Welcome back to the Sheila Tip podcast, your go-to place to empower you to live the life and business that you crave. I'm here to talk about everything from having the courage to make life and career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively, create successful teams, implement strategies for growth, and infuse tech 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 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 us joy. So, turn up the audio, open your favorite notes app, grab your favorite drink, and here we go. Welcome to the Shiva podcast. Thank you for joining us. Michelle, how did your personal journeys lead you to co-ound

Speaker 2: Naturally Serious? The idea started about 17 years into my journey. I've been in the beauty industry for 26 years now. I was really raised in the beauty industry. My grandmother was from Iran and I used to watch her crush all kinds of teas and berries and everything into her pond's cold cream. I kid you not, she would mix it all in there, a little chemist, and that's what I saw growing up. And that led my mother on her journey to back in the early 2000s to launch the June Jacobs collection. And that was my first really from letterhead to launch type of experience. And that was all the formulas increased in in efficacy that my grandmother did, stable and well preserved. But my mother was really a pioneer in the industry, June Jacobs. And she created at the time, if you think back to the late '9s when this was being developed to the time it launched in the early 2000s, there was no real natural skin care. And she has a beautiful collection, the June Jacobs collection, and it's sold in spas around the world and online. And the formulas are just unbelievably beautiful, luxe, and they have her proprietary blend of red, white, and green tea. goji berry, pomegranate, and grape seed extract. That was my grandmother's specialty. So, we were able to take what my grandmother taught us and infuse it into the collection. And that was a 20-year

Speaker 1: patent we got on that. And for anyone who has an experience with trying to get a patent, they're nearly impossible to get. I always like to say that having antioxidants in products is always great. It just boosts the efficacy of the products. And I call it like a suit of armor because it really helps protect against the environmental toxins. So, not just the sun, but all the environmental toxins. And I realized, I used to say, as soon as you open the front door, it would all hit you in the face. But then I realized during CO, oh my god, it's indoors. That's where you really need it because during CO, we didn't leave. I was in an apartment at the time and we didn't leave the apartment for 6 weeks or so. And the grease and the oils from the cooking and all the other things going on. And so I was like extra less skincare. But anyway, where I'm going with that is really loved the journey of working with my mother on that collection. In 1999 when I first joined from a finance background into my mother's world of beauty, we opened our own manufacturing facility and I didn't understand why anyone would ever do that. But that was interesting and fun and a real learning experience for me on literally day one. like it was September 99 and that was what I did my first year boarding was understand what a manufacturing facility was like research and development chemist labs raw ingredients and everything that goes along with that but what happened is everything's a little bit of a foreshadow in my life so that experience and the fact that we owned and operated our own manufacturing facility gave me a very unique ability not only to see how a product is created from start to launch but really to understand the competitive advantage of owning and operating your own manufacturing facility. And it's not just the inventory control, which obviously is always an important aspect of any business, but for us, it was really the quality control and the innovation control that we as a smaller brand, as a niche brand, you always take a backseat to bigger brands when you're a contract manufacturer. and that was something that wasn't going to be tolerated by my uh very persistent mother. So, she doesn't like to hear no. She doesn't like to wait. She's not particularly patient. All of those things when you have that control and you have this beautiful facility, which by the way has grown leaps and bounds since 1999, I basically just asked my mother and her business partner. I said, I think now is the time where my co-founder Sarah Magnamer and I really had this dream to launch a clean beauty brand. She has decades of experience in big companies and even created her own company that she later sold and so she understood the whole process and she's really a marketing genius. I just had a passion for skincare and simplicity and together our core competencies marry each other so well and we're always aligned in our thinking. It was a natural thing where we just asked is this something we're allowed to do? We have the facility. We have this beautiful patented blend that I thought was really important to put into our collection as well. When we launched in late 2018, really 2019, we were one of the first clean beauty brands. And when we had our original pitch deck, I remember every time I would talk about it, I would say, "Yes, we are a clean beauty brand. We have no bad ingredients." And I say that in quotes because in our world, BAD is actually an acronym for banned, ambiguous, or debatable. So there's nothing controversial that everything is approved. They meet all the retailer standards, etc. There's no bad ingredients in our products. But we wanted a very simple collection for people who were either overwhelmed by all the skinincare products out there and wanted just we have a couple of cleansers, we have a couple of serums. It was just a very clean easy line to use. But my point is it's one of the first clean beauty brands. But I hope that's not what I'm saying down the line. All my friends that are in the industry, everyone's striving to be clean. And I think as an industry, it's something that we're really working hard towards. And that's what I wanted to see, which is more important than our own personal success, was seeing the industry go in the direction that was so beautiful for us after years of having all of those quote bad ingredients and products. Not because we wanted to harm anybody or anyone wanted to harm anybody, but because the technologies didn't exist for a natural preservative system. There wasn't the efficacy out there. And there was this bad perception in people's minds that if it was clean it wasn't effective. And the goal was to figure out how to get over that hurdle from saying just because it's clean doesn't mean it's efficacious. And I think over the last five or so years especially during co we really had that opportunity. People were super engaged to everyone telling that story. So I love that.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And you mentioned your grandmother going back. So many things start from just mixing them on your own and what great experience you had in actually running the business and having the facility with the flexibility to do whatever you wanted to do as far as the creation of your products. When you go to a Persian function, and I say that in a function doesn't mean it has to be a 700 person wedding, which it often is, but even a dinner everything is very elaborate. As soon as you sit down, someone's giving you tea. They're passing around dates and other dried fruit. But the second she was clearing the table, first thing she was doing was taking the tea leaves and crushing, packing them out for her skincare creation that night or something. I don't even know. I always thought it was so strange. Clean ingredients. You're going back to basically what she created. Oh my god, her skin, her skin, her it's like they were all like Cleopatra beautiful skin. And when did you realize that clean beauty wasn't just a luxury but a necessity? I think it was more from when you looked at ingredient lists and given that I am really a finance person with a passion for beauty and I am not an actual chemist but when you start having to Google and copy and paste the ingredients that you couldn't spell they said I don't understand this is not what my grandmother was doing and it just triggered like why do you have to have an alcohol in a product? It was just little things here and there that early on when I was even before I was in the industry that just always I didn't understand. It didn't compute in my brain as to why things you were putting on your face were so complicated in their understanding. That sounds stupid. It's actually really how I figured out. And one of the things my girlfriend said to me probably about 20 years ago, I was still pretty fresh in the industry, is if you put a piece of garlic, a small little sliver of garlic on the bottom of your foot, within a minute, you can taste it. And to me, that really was the impetus for everything I do with my life because anything you're putting on your skin is being ingested. And you can if you can taste a sliver of garlic in your mouth that is on the bottom of your foot like that. Imagine what the other products are. And that's the beauty of beauty is you can actually create gorgeous like luxurious hydrated dewy or matte if you prefer skin without doing anything that will actually harm you.

Speaker 1: That's so interesting how it affects you so quickly. Yeah. When you mix together the six antioxidants for your anti-polution blend, what unexpected discovery shifted your viewpoint of product development?

Speaker 2: It just lifts all the efficacy and whatever it is that I couldn't believe because of my finance background, I'm very datadriven. So when the clinical testing and all the testing started doing and the hydration levels were going up, steroids a bad word in general, but it's like injecting a steroid into something where it just improves the efficacy and you're like, "Oh my god." And then having that barrier from everyone who knows anything about antioxidant knows that how good they are for you. But understanding that it actually can create a barrier to your skin is really amazing.

Speaker 1: So interesting. As mothers juggling career and family, how do you share your brand story? So it speaks to other parents facing similar challenges.

Speaker 2: Sarah and I are both in our 50s and we've been working together for almost a decade now. And ironically, we both have two boys. Ironically, they both just graduated from the same college in May. And our second boys are one grade apart or one year apart, but they had a lot of the same friends. And all of a sudden, we're realizing that while she might be from New Zealand and have a much better accent than I do and has beautiful porcelain white skin versus my very Middle Eastern, darker complexion, but everything in our lives is parallel, even if we're living on different sides

Speaker 1: of the world. It was just more of a lifestyle idea where when you and I think and again for those who are juggling their careers I took a class once and one of the it was a case study. It was a big female CEO and she said everyone asks about the work life balance. That's what I had I thought mastered right when I heard when I was reading this case study and then she said and I almost want to thank her. followed her and I listened to her speak a couple of times because this changed my whole thought process of my life which is it is not a balance. It is a shift of power on a daytoday and sometimes an hourby hour momentum. So it's not about I'm going to get everything done and this is my little perfect formula and I am a super mom and I am a super worker and I am this and I am that. That doesn't work. It's if you're at your child's school play, you are at your child's school play. If you are on a conference call, you're on a conference call. It's really just figuring out how to structure your day where it's not a balance, but it's a shift of power throughout the day or throughout the week. And sometimes it's throughout the year. You might have a personal situation that's really taking over a lot of time and you have your partner who can help take on the load at that time or vice versa. You have a huge thing going on at work and you have someone at home that can help you with that. And it does take a village. So, you do need to lean on people. You can't be too shy to ask for help. And I never am. I get help everywhere. And I don't know if a joke is the right word, but it's like a running a little bit of a running joke in my life. Like where is Michelle? She's camel jockeying somewhere because one time I had no Wi-Fi and I was in Marrakesh on a global wellness summit which was an amazing experience, but there was very limited Wi-Fi because there was 250 people trying to access this Wi-Fi in Marrakesh, which didn't really work too well. So, I was all of a sudden out of Wi-Fi and then next thing they know they see a picture of me on Instagram on a camel. So, the camel jock, where is Michelle camel jockeying? Because I take time out for myself and I know I'm not going to perform well at work if I don't take time out for myself. And I know I'm not going to be patient at home if I don't take time out for myself. So, I am an expert on self-care. And I do it less now. It was much more when my kids were little because now they're 21 and 23. But when they were little, I did my self-care Sundays. And when I put them to sleep, I took my bath. I did my mask. I did a hair mask. I would get a massage. I do all of that. I make time for yoga. I make time to go swimming. And I always think if I don't do that for myself, I'm a miserable person to be around.

Speaker 2: Smart. Cuz if you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of your family, your business, and your Yes. And thank you for that reminder for being present in the day because it's

Speaker 1: exhausting to think, "Oh, I have to be good at everything and doing everything all the time." If Naturally Serious had a mantra, what would it be? And how does that guiding phrase help you make the tough decisions in the day? Sarah and I

Speaker 2: are all about uplifting women. And to us, it's building confidence. I was very lucky because I was born with confidence and it's been there my whole life. And I probably have my grandmothers to thank for that. I've seen people who if I were to judge them, they are better than me across the board, but I am more successful because of my confidence. And to me, I feel like your skin and your face specifically is the first thing people see. And if your skin is hydrated and glowing and you're healthy inside and you can show that outward, you gain this confidence that you might not have previously had. So for me and Sarah, just to uplift women, to give them that confidence, to take on the world, to base their fears, to take on that meeting, to make that speech, to hire that new person, to help them, whatever it is, to do it with confidence. And it's our responsibility to share that and give the next generations that ability to have the confidence that I had. And maybe it's because I've always had great skin. I don't know. But it's something that I really feel to us is super important. And when we created the brand, it was really a lifestyle brand because we wanted it to be something like the products and by the way the products are all phenomenal. Unbelievable. Sarah is as I said a marketing genius. the names of the products, they go into your lifestyle. Like an eye product is called zero baggage because you don't want that baggage. And they're they it's trying to really they're a little bit kitschy, but they're also serious. My favorite product in the whole line is our vitamin C face oil. It's called C, like the letter C, your glow. And I'm obsessed with it. And anyone who's ever tried it is, "Oh my god, now I know why your skin looks so good." Because it's just it brings I love dewy skin and I love feeling hydrated all the time. So, I think when you can get the products and you can incorporate them into your lifestyle, which is hopefully a healthy lifestyle, and you're making conscious choices and conscious decisions to do better for the environment, for the world, for yourself, and on a continuous basis, and that's where we feel like we fit in as a brand. We're really helping her get there and whatever little baby steps we can do. When you look in the mirror and your face is glowing and your skin feels good, you walk into rooms feeling better about yourself. And I love using products with vitamin C in it because you're right, it has a glow when you use the vitamin C products. Those are some of my favorite products.

Speaker 1: Magic happens when we focus on the part of our business and oursel that brings us joy. We've talked a lot about business today. What is one thing that you do for you to make sure that you're finding and living your joy?

Speaker 2: Some type of physical activity and

Speaker 1: generally in nature. I love swimming. I swim whenever the weather allows it outdoors in the winter. If I'm in New York, I'll swim indoors, which I don't prefer, but it's still very meditative for me to be underwater and hear the soothing water sound. It's incredible. It's the only time I'm ever super calm. I do yoga anywhere I can. I love doing it outside. I love hot yoga. And I bike ride and I walk. I walk everywhere my little legs will take me. And the why are you walking? Because I can. And I've seen with older people, it's the lack of mobility that ages them. And it's their fear of falling. And I feel like if you can keep your body strong and your mind strong, then you can continue doing what you want to do until your 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, maybe even in your hundreds.

Speaker 2: So true. And there's something to be said about the water, too. I can be in my car thinking about work or life and I come over the hill and see the ocean and it's something about water that's so visually and the sound of it and when I go to sleep at night I go to sleep too Alexa it's going to go on right now ocean waves

Speaker 1: me too I do too and sometimes I hear even though it says ocean waves a rainstorm will come on but it's beautiful

Speaker 2: thank you so much for joining us today you've given us so many reminders of how we can care for our skin and have confidence in our lives lives. Please share with us how and where we can find you

Speaker 1: on Instagram and I guess Facebook naturally serious skin and our website is the same.

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