Month: April 2020

It is extremely important for young consumers to not get “over-influenced” by trends and fads posted by influencers and celebrities. It is actually dangerous to replicate some “DIY” tips on injecting “fillers” to lips or other cosmetic procedures at home. I am also wary about the trend of morphing beauty standards into a single mold. Not everyone should look like the Kardashians. And all skin colors, eye shapes, lips should be celebrated and embraced.

As a part of our series about how technology will be changing the beauty industry over the next five years, I had the pleasure of interviewing Shasa Hu, MD, FAAD.

Shasa is a board-certified dermatologist, full-time Associate Professor of Dermatology and Cutaneous Surgery at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Dr. Hu has a very active clinical practice of general and cosmetic dermatology, where she treats patients with a variety of skin colors and skin/ beauty concerns. Dr. Hu strongly believes that true transformation is achievable for everyone when the knowledge of what’s scientific and authentic in skin health is taught and incorporated into daily living. She also infuses her passion for teaching into her research on early detection of skin cancer and melanoma prevention.

Dr. Hu earned her undergraduate degree at Stanford University and her medical degree with Alpha Omega Alpha award from Washington University School of Medicine. She completed her dermatology residency at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital. She has received awards and grants from the American Academy of Dermatology, the American Society of Dermatologic Surgery and the Dermatology Foundation. She has lectured both nationally and internationally on skin cancer and aesthetic advances. When off duty, she loves traveling with her two boys and staying active and mindful of yoga and meditation.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I have always been a very visual and tactile person, even since I was a little kid. While in medical school, I loved my rotations in Ob/Gyn, Surgery, Medicine, but it is really my experience in Dermatology that gave me that “aaahaaa” moment, where I just instantly connected with the ability of how dermatologists can diagnosis, treat, and monitor a person’s skin concerns/ diseases with just visual examination. I also love the fact that we can improve and change a person’s outlook on life and emotional wellbeing by improving their skin because the skin is such an emotional aspect of our physical body. Really my path to choose dermatology was “love at first sight”, and it was not just one case or one patient that led me on this path, it was every aspect of dermatology — that we get to see the skin, feel the skin, diagnose conditions, remove skin cancers, heal wounds, clear acne, improve skin quality. Everything about dermatology is fascinating. And dermatology is among the fastest growing fields with new research and discoveries constantly updating our knowledge base and helping us to be better physicians.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I wouldn’t call this story “most interesting” but it is one of the most memorable stories in my career as a cosmetic dermatologist. One of my patients who had undergone breast cancer treatment was seeing me for just routine skin cancer screenings. After a few years of focusing on skin cancer and skin health, she approached me about getting something to feel “fresher”. After a thorough discussion of options, risks, and expectations, we did a conservative dermal filler treatment to soften her smile lines, rejuvenate her lips and relax her forehead lines. She cried with a happy tear after seeing her transformation. Her words etched in my mind to this day. She said, “I was just focusing on surviving, now I can feel good living again” when she felt so much more confident with her fresher look. That was a very powerful moment for me as I realized how transforming other’s physical appearance can have such a positive impact on their emotional well-being.

Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?

I would say sharing my “before and after” photos of cosmetic procedures and sharing tips on skincare through my professional account was really the catalyst for me to get to where I am today. I definitely noticed a significant increase in my cosmetic practice with patients requesting to see me because they had seen my posts or their friends have shared with them my posts. And that was 4 years ago. I do think it is becoming harder to engage an audience on social media because the platform is now inundated with fake accounts and accounts with false or misleading information. Still though, as a board-certified dermatologist, we do have a social responsibility to speak up and educate the public on the right way to take care of our skin, the safety aspects of various cosmetic procedures and the myths/ false information out there. Collectively as a group we need to continue to engage our patients, the pubic and our professional colleagues to elevate the field and improve outcome.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I have many mentors/ colleagues who have supported and mentored me one way or another. Some have given me guidance on a specific issue or during a specific time frame, others have mentored me formally as a career or life mentor. I would say Dr. Robert Kirsner, the chairman of our Department of Dermatology, has been one of the most instrumental mentors in my life so far. He has always encouraged me to think outside of the box, and not get discouraged by roadblocks or closed doors. When I first met him, I was a fourth-year medical student trying to match in dermatology residency after not getting in the first time. We were walking down the hallway of the VA Medical Center, and he said to me “persistence pays off, if you don’t match into dermatology the first time, then try again, and keep trying.” He then shared the story of how he didn’t match the first round. Listening to this successful, widely respected dermatology professor talking about his own failure and giving me encouragement really inspired me to keep going. To this day, I still remember that hallway conversation.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. The beauty industry today has access to technology that was inconceivable only a short time ago. Can you tell us about the “cutting edge” (pardon the pun) technologies that you are working with or introducing? How do you think that will help people?

With my co-founder, Dr. Janelle Vega, we created an online platform www.bialife.com, where anyone, from anywhere, can reach us to get personalized skincare routine curated with medical-grade skincare products. BIALife was inspired by our years of experience as dermatologists and beauty consumers ourselves. After years of working in dermatology and participating in the social media space, we saw a lot of confusion from patients and followers when it came to skincare — they had anxiety from seeing a flood of product offerings and didn’t know how to properly use a given product or even whether they could trust that product. And oftentimes, in-office dermatology visits focus more on medical aspects of dermatology, and the time constraints of office visits make it difficult to carry out a thorough skincare assessment.

We wanted to help people sort through the noise, avoid the hassle of making office visits and make proper skincare approachable and meaningful. But there was no online platform available to us to take a person’s budget, age, location, specific issues (pregnancy, for example) into consideration, or to evaluate their bare skin…so we created one!

In a broader sense, we wanted to make a positive impact on our clients and the skincare community by fundamentally shifting the focus from trying to make clients’ skin look “perfect” to help them create healthy skin. We know that biologically healthier skin is more functional and will, therefore, look better!

In addition, we wanted to help people create a mindful space around their skincare and make it a ritual to reconnect with themselves and with their skin. We believe that this mind-body-skin connection is vital in creating healthier skin and a healthier, happier person who is fostering self-love through this act of self-care.

A lot of feedback that we have gotten from our current members really validated our purpose of using online technology to transform and improve skincare. Our members love how with just a few clicks, they answer questions, submit selfies, and are able to communicate with us virtually on what the best products fit their skin needs. We also monitor their progress through the portal. A lot of feedback that we have received are how BIAlife has simplified their life, improved their skin with lower cost, and helped them feel better about their skin.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

As with any beauty technology, there may be an inherent concern of focusing on the superficiality of skin/ beauty. However we are biased about BIA Life in that we actually think through our philosophy of embracing “Beauty in All”, by educating consumers that pores are normal, blemishes are not diseases and that our skin naturally fluctuates with our environment and lifestyle, we hope to promote realistic beauty and self-acceptance in our members. Our goal is to change the “selfie” culture and refocus on how good we feel in our own skin.

Can you share 3 things that most excite you about the “beauty-tech” industry?

The beauty space is constantly shifting reflecting changes in consumer demographics, preferences, technology and innovation. I would say that I’m most excited about the improved accessibility of skincare with the latest innovations. Better products with effective ingredients are being put on the market. Ultimately beauty/ skincare should be affordable, targeted and tailored to one person’s budget, lifestyle and skin type. “Designer” peptide and growth factors are also gaining traction as more data are supporting the safety and effectiveness of these ingredients in topical skin care products. Lastly I am also very excited about the integrated dermatology / skin and beauty aspects of the “beauty-tech” industry — more and more research findings are supporting the link between gut health and skin health, and how our skin can be “thermometer” for internal health. It would be a reality soon where consumers can use digital monitors to get their skin scanned and a fully personalized nutrition/ beauty guide will be made based on scanning results.

Can you share 3 things that most concern you about the industry? If you had the ability to implement 3 ways to reform or improve the industry, what would you suggest?

It is extremely important for young consumers to not get “over-influenced” by trends and fads posted by influencers and celebrities. It is actually dangerous to replicate some “DIY” tips on injecting “fillers” to lips or other cosmetic procedures at home. I am also wary about the trend of morphing beauty standards into a single mold. Not everyone should look like the Kardashians. And all skin colors, eye shapes, lips should be celebrated and embraced. Lastly the hyper-focus on instant gratification is also dangerous and unrealistic. Our skin naturally takes at least 4–6 weeks to change one cycle, and it takes even longer for our skin to equilibrate with our inner health/ hormonal/ nutritional status, therefore, patience and realistic expectations are very important.

I think ideally there should be stricter quality control shared on mass media platforms, however that is very difficult to implement, and it may even negatively impact the fluidity and the accessibility of beauty-tech through social media. There are also very few regulatory bodies to validate and call out false labeling/ advertising. Many adverse reactions or wasted money are results of misleading labeling or using products with bad or adulterated ingredients. Lastly the beauty industry has a responsibility to maintain the environment and protect the future of the earth. I would love to see more sustainability and responsible production/packaging/recycling of beauty products.

You are an expert about beauty. Can you share 5 ideas that anyone can use “to feel beautiful”? (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. Throw away the magnifying mirror. We all have pores, facial hair, and spots on our faces. No one has flawless, glass-like skin in real life. Do not let how your pores look under a magnifying lens affect how you feel in your skin.
2. Take a few minutes to appreciate yourself. For example, say an affirmation mantra daily for a couple minutes a day, especially when you’re on the go, will help you to recenter your perceptive. I like to say “I am grateful for my skin, my health, and my ability to heal.”
3. When you’re in a rut, turn off all electronics or put on “Do Not Disturb” mode, take a bath, put on a face mask, and light a candle. Taking a few minutes for yourself can help you to lower your cortisol level, and that is really good for your skin!
4. Do something nice or kind for other people. A lot of times, our self-worth/ how we feel about ourselves reflect the way we impact others. This is why we feel good and “beautiful” when we act kindly to others.
5. Lastly, eat something healthy. I am sure a lot of us can relate — when we eat a healthy meal, we feel good afterwards, and when we binge on chips or ice cream we are often left with guilt and that gross feeling, this is why eating a healthy meal and treating our body with respect can help us to “feel beautiful”.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

Thank you! Honestly, I really hope our message of “Beauty In All” can become a movement — find beauty in all, embrace our own beauty, and accept unique beauty.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Be thankful for closed doors” — a lot of times we get frustrated by not getting what we wanted or expected, and usually those are times when our lives take a turn, and our paths change direction, for the better!!! Closed doors just mean that the universe has other plans for you, and guess what maybe you avoided disasters or other heartbreaks by getting rejected or turned away. Instead of always having expectations of how things should be, embrace the dynamic nature of life. As long as we stay true to our dreams and passion and be kind, we will be fine.

How can our readers follow you online?

Please follow @drshasahu and @mybialife

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

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The Future Of Beauty: “Personalized skincare routines” With Dr. Shasa Hu was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Look for opportunities. — Feeling stuck can make you feel unmotivated, so look for opportunities around you. Each opportunity has another opportunity embedded within it. As long as you see the potential for new growth and for trying new things, you can keep your energy. Losing tenacity usually comes when you lose sight of the possibility of change.

As a part of our series about “dreamers who ignored the naysayers and did what others said was impossible”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jolina Li.

Jolina Li is the founder of BuzzyBooth, a selfie marketing kiosk that supports brick-and-mortar businesses with the marketing benefits of digital strategies. She started her first business in college while she attended the University of Connecticut. Li self-funded her company BuzzyBooth. She now runs one of the country’s top 20 fastest growing female-founded companies.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to ‘get to know you’ a bit better. Can you tell us your ‘backstory’?

As a kid, I grew up in a Chinese restaurant. It was in a tough, cold city in Connecticut, but I was surrounded by warm hearts and warm food. When you’re working for your parents, sometimes they don’t pay you and helping out around the family business isn’t really a job — it’s just family.

My lack of a paycheck sparked my interest in entrepreneurship, specifically in residual income businesses like gumball machines in stores and photo booths at the mall. These simple ideas made money, and you didn’t have to be present. So in college, I convinced my parents to help me buy three photo booths — they were clunky and no one wanted to install them permanently. However, pivoting to renting the photo booths on weekends eventually became a pretty smart business that made me a lot more money than my college friends.

After college, I swapped my photo booths for a restaurant of my own. This time as a business owner, I saw really quickly how brick-and-mortar businesses don’t have the same advantages as eCommerce. Getting customers to come back or following up for reviews was 10 times harder for businesses, and although these mom-and-pop shops had plenty of foot traffic, they couldn’t make a simple retargeting ad for their one-time customers. Staff were usually annoyed and didn’t want to remind customers to sign up for loyalty programs either, so there had to be a better way to encourage customers to willingly choose to provide their contact information without feeling pressured.

I combined my life experiences with my passions and started BuzzyBooth — a sleek, selfie marketing kiosk where customers can take photos of themselves while they wait. They receive their photo with the business’s branding and address to share with their friends on social media, and the business can share it, too! Then we follow up with text and email promotions, and we even send requests for customer reviews so that the business performs better on Google and Yelp. We continue to add new features that add value to our customers.

Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We’re always adding new features to our product to support our clients. We’re currently working on a referral feature to track word-of-mouth referrals in the next four months and a scheduler for user-generated content. This year, we’re also launching a new photo booth that doubles as an interactive billboard. (It’s quite beautiful.)

In your opinion, what do you think makes your company or organization stand out from the crowd?

Most photo booths act exclusively as photo booths. Most marketing options for local businesses require a lot of effort and manpower on behalf of the business. By combining the incentive of a photo booth with modern marketing tactics, BuzzyBooth helps local businesses get their customers to willingly opt into a series of messages that help the local businesses retain their customers and convert them into evangelists.

Ok, thank you for that. I’d like to jump to the main focus of this interview. Has there ever been a time that someone told you something was impossible, but you did it anyway? Can you share the story with us? What was your idea? What was the reaction of the naysayers? And how did you overcome that?

I had friends who didn’t think that BuzzyBooth would go very far. I had entrepreneur friends in my inner circle who didn’t expect me to make it. I had friends who pulled me aside a few years in and said, “Wow, for a moment there, I didn’t think you would make it past a year, but you’re still going.”

In the end, how were all the naysayers proven wrong? 🙂

We’ve come a long way in just three and a half short years. We were recently ranked #106 in Inc 5000’s fastest-growing companies. We have BuzzyBooths in almost every state in the U.S., including Hawaii and Alaska. There are even BuzzyBooths in Germany, Mexico, and Japan! It’s exciting to see where humble beginnings and a little creativity can take you, and we’re just getting started.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I guess I would say, my parents and my fiancé. My parents owned a restaurant, and I helped out with their business growing up. That definitely had a huge impact on my journey as an entrepreneur. They also helped me pay for my first photo booth business in college which partially gave me the idea for BuzzyBooth. My fiancé is also an entrepreneur and huge support. We’re able to learn through each other’s experiences.

It must not have been easy to ignore all the naysayers. Did you have any experiences growing up that have contributed to building your resiliency? Can you share the story with us?

I had a photo booth business in college, and I started a restaurant business shortly after. You learn a lot when things don’t go to plan. I bought this huge, bulky photo booth as a college kid. I was so certain that it was going to make lots of money, but no one wanted to install it permanently in their spaces. That made me think outside the box about how to use it. I ended up focusing on events. I think starting my entrepreneurial journey at an early age helped create that resilience. In fact, learning that my bulky booth was less than ideal was the inspiration for a more sleek design for BuzzyBooth. Also, I learned a lot from watching my parents manage the ups and downs of their own business. You have to keep looking for a way to make it work.

Based on your experience, can you share 5 strategies that people can use to harness the sense of tenacity and do what naysayers think is impossible? (Please share a story or an example for each)

1. Look for opportunities. — Feeling stuck can make you feel unmotivated, so look for opportunities around you. Each opportunity has another opportunity embedded within it. As long as you see the potential for new growth and for trying new things, you can keep your energy. Losing tenacity usually comes when you lose sight of the possibility of change. When customers told me that my college photo booth was too large, I was better prepared to design BuzzyBooth.
2. Keep going. — Things are going to get tough. The key is to never stop. Keep going; it will come back around. I submitted BuzzyBooth to Shark Tank, and they originally rejected the idea. I decided to create a YouTube video, and my team tweeted the producers. That made the producer reach out to me and offer me the chance to appear on Shark Tank.
3. Stay focused on the goal. — You have to remember why you’re doing it and who you’re doing it for. That is what will motivate you to stay tenacious.
4. Ignore anything that isn’t constructive. — Naysayers may say you’ll never make it, but unless they provide specific, measurable reasons, just ignore what they say. Constructive criticism should always be considered because you may learn something. However, there’s no use in entertaining naysayers who aren’t bringing anything useful to the table.
5. Dive into knowledge. — The more you know, the more empowered you’ll feel. In the beginning, I didn’t know everything I needed to run a successful tech business, but there were resources all around to help me learn. Don’t get discouraged. No one knows everything about everything. In tech, things change all the time, so it’s crucial to never stop learning.

What is your favorite quote or personal philosophy that relates to the concept of resilience?

Try many things. Learn from failures quickly. Then, try something new, but don’t repeat the same mistakes twice. Startups are all about iterations.

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” –Walt Disney

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

BuzzyBooth was created to help brick-and-mortar businesses compete in a modern, more technologically advanced culture. Since many brick-and-mortar businesses have closed due to large online businesses like Amazon, I’d like to see a movement among communities to support more local businesses. It is so important to reignite local economies.

Can our readers follow you on social media?

Follow us on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/buzzybooth_media/

Follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/BuzzyBooth/

Thank you for these great stories. We wish you only continued success!

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Dreamers: “They told me It was impossible and I did it anyway” With Jolina Li of BuzzyBooth was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Future Of Travel: “Unforgettable personalized experiences” With Alison Hickey of Kensington Tours

Through our combination of amazing people, innovative technology and our ability to customize, we’re able to deliver unforgettable experiences for our clients. People have so little time today — it’s the most precious resource for all of us — they want to make sure they get the most out of their travel.

As a part of my series about “exciting developments in the travel industry over the next five years”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Alison Hickey. With a background in engineering and quality assurance, Alison Hickey, President of Kensington Tours, leads a team of intrepid professionals with a shared passion for service excellence. Previously, she held leadership roles at the Bank of Montreal, United Way of Greater Portland, Acklands-Grainger, Maple Leaf Foods, and Procter and Gamble. She holds Master’s degrees in both Applied Science and Industrial Engineering from Dalhousie University. Over the course of five years, Alison has cultivated a culture of anticipating client needs and exceeding expectations at every touchpoint throughout the customer journey.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to the travel industry?

I was introduced to Jeff Willner, the founder of Kensington Tours, and I was really intrigued by his vision for the company. There are so few opportunities in one’s career to build something really big, and it was immediately clear that Kensington was one of those opportunities.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Above all, it’s about our people. We hire and nurture the best people out there, people who will go above and beyond to create one-of-a-kind experiences because they’re passionate about the power of travel to connect people with something unique. They’re good communicators who are able to really listen to clients and understand not just what they’re saying but what they mean. They’re central to how we create custom-tailored travel with private local guides — experiences that are truly personal, that are unforgettable, and that allows our clients to see the world in a different way.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I have been fortunate throughout my career to have had many mentors along the way. When I was at Maple Leaf Foods, I worked with a woman named Maryanne Chantler who taught me so much. She was a master of change management at a very senior level. We had just merged with another company, and she really championed the integration process. She was really thoughtful at managing up, and at the same time, she empowered her team to get things done. Seeing a woman who was smart, funny, charming and really good at what she did early in my career had an incredible impact on me.

Let’s jump to the core of our discussion. Can you share with our readers about the innovations that you are bringing to the travel and hospitality industries?

Our innovation starts with the technology platform we’ve built in house. I think we’re pretty unique in that. It houses our data in one place, so it’s the heart of our relationships with our clients, and it also connects us with our teams on the ground around the world. This allows us to respond to our clients’ needs and build customized itineraries for them really quickly. We can spend more time and focus on adding value, looking for ways that we can serve our clients better. There’s a great quote from Issy Sharp, the founder of the Four Seasons, that I take to heart: “Systematize the predictable. Humanize the exceptional.” That’s what we’re trying to do.

Which “pain point” are you trying to address by introducing this innovation?

Through our combination of amazing people, innovative technology and our ability to customize, we’re able to deliver unforgettable experiences for our clients. People have so little time today — it’s the most precious resource for all of us — they want to make sure they get the most out of their travel. With Kensington, we can help clients see destinations in a way that others can’t. They feel that they’ve been listened to, that they’re seeing the authentic place, and they’re also getting unique access so they’re maximizing their time. That goes a long way to helping tailor once-in-a-lifetime travel experiences for them.

How do you envision that this might disrupt the status quo?

When you’re able to create unforgettable personalized experiences for consumers, you’ve demonstrated your relevance in a memorable way. In these days when people’s time is limited and attention is short, travel brands that aren’t able to deliver personalized experiences are going to find it increasingly difficult to differentiate themselves in such a cluttered marketplace. Sticking to the status quo means you’re going to have to fight harder for the consumer’s attention and to continually prove your relevance.

You are a “travel insider”. How would you describe your “perfect vacation experience”?

For me personally, the perfect travel experience is about the people I’m with, family or friends, and we’re definitely walking. Ideally, we’re in someplace with history, with a local guide, and we’re exploring small alleyways and uncovering history, and enjoying small bookstores and coffee shops. A place where there are stories, and where I feel like I’m a part of it all.

Can you share with our readers how have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

I’m really proud of our team and our shared commitment to giving back. Part of what makes them so good at what they do is that they feel a deep connection to our world and to the people who make it home. That connection really is one of our founding principles. So since our founding, we’ve been helping to build schools and other education projects in East Africa. And we’re supporting Nekton, which is an amazing not-for-profit foundation that does research into how and why the oceans are changing and is working to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

People can follow us at @KensingtonTours on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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The Future Of Travel: “Unforgettable personalized experiences” With Alison Hickey of Kensington… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Future Of Beauty: “Hyperbaric oxygen therapy in the beauty space” With Alex Williams of Holistic Hyperbarics

My dad used to say, “If you make your bed hard, you’re going to have to lay in it.” To me, that meant always having an active choice in every situation. That translates to the work I do because either you choose to be a good steward of your body and to take the time to support it, or eventually you deal with the consequences of a long-term lack of care. In my practice, I see people making active decisions about their bodies now in order to have longer, better, healthier lives.

As a part of our series about how technology will be changing the beauty industry over the next five years, I had the pleasure of interviewing Alex Williams.

Alex Williams is the founder and owner of Holistic Hyperbarics, a first-of-its-kind hyperbaric oxygen therapy spa that offers a once exclusive procedure as an affordable, accessible treatment option for the general public. Having spent her professional life focused on health and wellness, Alex brings a unique combination of medical skills and exceptional customer service to Holistic Hyperbarics. A Bay Area native, her career began when she launched her first business as a certified massage therapist, using her specialized training in surgical recovery and Kinesio taping to serve and support a diverse range of clients. Inspired to heighten her expertise and abilities to provide effective patient outcomes, Alex pursued concurrent work as an EMT. Hundreds of hours of transporting and treating under-served patients ignited Alex’s passion and commitment to providing exemplary care in an industry that lacks personalized attention to a patient’s well-being.

In addition to her years of experience in healthcare, Alex immersed herself in the lifestyle of triathlons, ultimately becoming an Ironman in 2012. She became attuned to the nutritional, physical, and psychological challenges facing athletes. In a field where small tweaks in training or recovery can significantly impact outcomes, Alex noticed that the high cost of elite training and recovery practices were prohibitive to many amateur competitors. Alex became determined to seek out accessible treatments and upon discovering mild hyperbaric oxygen therapy and its wide-ranging benefits, Holistic Hyperbarics was launched.

Understanding that time, care, and curated space for people to relax can expedite rehabilitation, Alex prides herself in turning a once exclusive procedure into an affordable, accessible treatment option for the general public. Paying equal attention to the power of emotional and physical support that facilitate and accelerate healing, Alex offers clients the proven medical benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in a relaxing spa-like setting.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I tore my shoulder while wrestling and was prescribed Vicodin. As an EMT, I was familiar with hyperbaric oxygen therapy and thought it could heal me better than something that would just mask my pain. So I bought a chamber, brought it home, and over the next few months, used it to heal my shoulder. I started talking about the experience on social media, and people started asking to use it. Then it occurred to me that this could help a larger group of people.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

Many times it’s the patients that come to me with peer-reviewed studies about how hyperbaric oxygen therapy helps certain conditions. The most surprising one I hadn’t considered before was using hyperbaric oxygen therapy to help with fertility. I read the study and consulted with our doctor, then we followed the peer-review protocol and a woman in her 40s, who had already gone through three rounds of failed IVF, became pregnant and had a beautiful son. Since then, we’ve successfully helped nine women conceive. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy has been shown to thicken the uterine lining and increase vasculature, creating the best environment for fertilization and implantation.

Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?

Never have I ever been in a career where the single thing that I offer someone changes the trajectory of their life. I define my success through human data and the difference we are making in people’s lives through hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

The two women who helped me found my business. These are two women who listened to a crazy idea around changing the face of health care with space-age looking machines and believed in the vision so much that they put their own money into it.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. The beauty industry today has access to technology that was inconceivable only a short time ago. Can you tell us about the “cutting edge” (pardon the pun) technologies that you are working with or introducing? How do you think that will help people?

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy isn’t new or cutting edge, but the way we’re applying it to the beauty arena definitely is. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy has been a medical tool for decades, but using it outside of emergency medical intervention — and bringing its host of health and anti-aging benefits to people in a spa-inspired environment — that’s very new.

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy used to be a reactive treatment; something you used only after something bad happened to your body. Now, we’re using it as a more proactive approach to aging. For instance, because hyperbaric oxygen therapy promotes collagen activation, it has this amazing ability to reduce excessive skin damage, maintain skin elasticity, and reduce scar formation. It’s also going deep to the cellular level to promote circulation, stem-cell growth, reduce inflammation, and support the immune system.

Another big thing for me is how much it helps with neural elasticity, staying sharp for longer, which is such a huge part of aging well. It’s also used to foster better gut biology, to support digestion and boost energy. By approaching beauty from the cellular level outward, hyperbaric oxygen therapy reinvents the idea of aging gracefully.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

With any new technology comes to access and disparity issues. If we as an industry don’t continue to make hyperbaric oxygen therapy available to as many people as possible, there will be some who will have a real advantage over those who have less access. That can affect big things like national healthcare costs and what living a longer and fuller life looks like for different demographics.

Can you share 3 things that most excite you about the “beauty-tech” industry?

The thing that excites me most, by far, is that the focus is less about outside-in and increasingly more about inside-out beauty. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a beauty-tech example of wellness on the cellular level, which provides a foundation for both short-term beauty benefits and the anti-aging long game.

I also appreciate that beauty-tech is driven by peer-reviewed studies and science. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a science-driven beauty. And that means it’s not just about what something is doing for someone’s skin or appearance in the short term, it’s really about that longer-term vitality and quality of life.

It’s now more accessible to more people. Historically, it was primarily affluent people who were able to take care of themselves this way, but there’s been a shift so that more people have access to wellness, and by extension, better aging. How we age is in our hands, and so I’m excited to see so many more people able to take charge of their life and longevity, to not just live longer lives, but to live those years well.

Can you share 3 things that most concern you about the industry? If you had the ability to implement 3 ways to reform or improve the industry, what would you suggest?

The beauty industry’s focus is still predominantly based on physical appearance as status and not physical appearance as an indicator of how you treat your body overall.

Today’s view on beauty tech is still predominately female-focused and less about how anyone and everyone can benefit from it.

We need to be in a place in society where we focus on fewer gimmicks and more on what concretely makes a body function in a clean and efficient manner.

You are an expert about beauty. Can you share 5 ideas that anyone can use “to feel beautiful”? (Please share a story or example for each.)

Spend your time and your resources on yourself first, and now, not later.

Create the perfect environment for the sleep that you need. For me, that’s a noise machine, darkness, and earplugs. Because sleep, like oxygen, is your cellular cache.

When you take time off, take it completely off. We, as a society, take a lot of half vacations. Half breaks don’t lend to the recovery you need to be a vibrant and beautiful person. Whatever makes you happy, dive into it fully.

Be sure to have a skin self-care routine before bed, because your skin regenerates most while you sleep. I mix face cream and rosehip oil and slather it on my face before bed.

Sing every day. It fIlls you with natural endorphins, hyper-oxygenates your body, and is just really fun. My personal favorite is singing loud to Stevie Wonder songs.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

I would love to see a movement around people treating their bodies proactively instead of reactively. If we were as proactive with our bodies as we are about other things in our lives — like getting a job or having hobbies — we would have a much healthier populace.

Our bodies take a back seat to so many other things, and that is the opposite of what it should be. Through my practice, I teach people how to use hyperbaric oxygen therapy as a proactive health tool. Most people find me because they’re being reactive to a condition that they have, but they continue to use hyperbaric oxygen therapy as a proactive health treatment.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My dad used to say, “If you make your bed hard, you’re going to have to lay in it.” To me, that meant always having an active choice in every situation. That translates to the work I do because either you choose to be a good steward of your body and to take the time to support it, or eventually you deal with the consequences of a long-term lack of care. In my practice, I see people making active decisions about their bodies now in order to have longer, better, healthier lives.

How can our readers follow you online?

Website: https://www.hh-bayarea.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/holistic_hyperbarics/

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

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The Future Of Beauty: “Hyperbaric oxygen therapy in the beauty space” With Alex Williams of… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’re on a mission to change the culture of gifting, this is our essence and our purpose. Our motto is ‘give stories, not stuff’. We genuinely believe experiences are much better gifts than things, they create memories that last forever and stories to share and relive with friends and family.

As a part of our series about “dreamers who ignored the naysayers and did what others said was impossible”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Linas Ceikus.

Linas Ceikus is a serial entrepreneur and adventure traveler, and the Co-Founder and Chief Experience Officer at Tinggly, the world’s first and only global experience gifting company. Linas started Tinggly in 2014 as a result of his experiences as an entrepreneur of over 20 years in the travel industry. An avid traveler and adventurer himself, Linas strongly believes experiences are the best gift people can give each other, as the memories they create are longer lasting and more meaningful than any material objects.

Linas was born and bred in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. At the age of 14, he already began his entrepreneurial journey manufacturing disco lights and organizing disco events for schools. The first major enterprise Linas built was Autorenta, a car hire company with transfers and tours for tourists and business travelers to the Baltics. Linas also started the first activity service company in Lithuania, ActiveHolidays, which provided adventure experiences such as supercars driving, a vertical wind tunnel and various ‘dinner in the dark’ restaurants. After expanding to the rest of the Baltic countries, he sold the business.

In 2006 Linas founded Laisvalaikio Dovanos, Lithuania’s first online experience gift company.

Following its success, he expanded the business into Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland, creating daughter companies for each market, later bringing them together under the umbrella of the Tinggly Group. With Tinggly, the latest addition to the group, Linas wanted to create a company that could make a global impact from the start, and that enabled the buyer of the gift, the recipient of the gift, and the experience itself to all be in different countries. For him, it was also important for Tinggly to make it easy to combine experiences with travel in order to enhance those trips.

Linas is proud to have sold over 1.5 million experiences and spread happiness to customers from 103 countries with his companies. Linas is a fan of traveling and has been to over 62 countries. He believes in growth through physical and spiritual activities. He particularly enjoys motorsports such as quad driving, 4×4 off-roading as well as yoga and meditation on the spiritual side. Although quite the challenge at this stage, he still looks out for new experiences to try out and add to the Tinggly repertoire. His next dream experience is participating in the Morocco Desert Challenge rally, Africa’s biggest cross- country rally raid.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to ‘get to know you’ a bit better. Can you tell us your ‘backstory’?

I’ve never had a ‘normal’ job. As far as I can remember, I have always wanted to build something of my own. So, straight out of university, I set up a car rental business. But that was only my first step in an industry that I wanted to get into. I had more exciting things in mind than renting cars.

As a student, I had an interesting stay in Florida. I spent time there thanks to the Work and Travel program. I lived out a number of amazing experiences that shaped my life when I returned to Lithuania. Even the unintended ones, like being stopped by the police for returning my moped slightly late.

So I decided to start working with foreign tourists visiting Lithuania to provide them with fun and unique experiences. Joined by friends from the UK, we kick-started the bachelor party market in the Baltics and saw it boom.

It’s a British tradition. Fly to a European destination with a number of friends for a few days and make an entire trip out of your bachelor party. Far more than just nightlife, destinations are chosen based on the value of the overall experience.

Our job was to make Lithuania an attractive destination, and to do so we offered truly unique experiences, including flying fighter jets, shooting kalashnikov machine guns and going on some seriously insane rally drives.

I often participated in my experiences. Mostly to make sure they run smoothly but found myself really enjoying them, sharing the joy with the others. Obviously this love of experiences as part of the journey towards creating what would become an experience gift businesses.

One of the key triggers for me to get in the experience gifting industry was the dependency on the UK bachelor party market and wanting to diversify away from depending on that. The big question was whether the local markets had enough purchasing power to support my dreams.

But what motivated me the most was the opportunity to showcase experiences that are not normally known to everyone that could make a difference, bring a new moment of happiness to anyone, and a memory to cherish. I thought I had been lucky to live so many experiences and wanted to share it with others. Although at the time I had only a vague notion, I knew experiences were something people were craving for and which could bring more to the table than the usual physical gifts.

Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We’re constantly working to improve how the company works while contributing to the environment and social good. I’m really proud of our shift last year to become a game-changer and leader in the sustainability space. We’ve blown away the competitors and become real trailblazers by offsetting 200% of carbon emissions from all experiences and becoming a zero plastic company. In fact, we even remove 30lbs of trash for each gift bought, we’re carbon positive as a company, meaning that we also offset 200% from all operations, not only experiences.

We’ve also developed an idea that every customer of ours should be an activist for the environment by proxy, thereby our concept of the Tinggly Activist was born. It encompasses our sustainability initiatives and more, giving customers both information and ownership of their impact, however small, to help the environment. We’re really excited to see so many people engaging with us over this.

We are also very active in trying to innovate when it comes to marketing. We’re still developing our Blogger House concept, which launched last year in Vilnius, Lithuania. We’ve seen loads of interest from bloggers and vloggers around the world who want to stay with us. The deal is the following: we created a dedicated space where bloggers, vloggers, and others active in speaking to audiences in travel can stay in Vilnius. It’s an incredible loft with professional photography backgrounds, an electric scooter available, and more. Plus, we offer to go on experiences around Vilnius. We will have a mobile experience vlogger vehicle coming soon so that we can take the concept internationally.

We’re constantly searching for ways in which we can do more. We’re open to innovate and try new things.

In your opinion, what do you think makes your company or organization stand out from the crowd?

We’re on a mission to change the culture of gifting, this is our essence and our purpose. Our motto is ‘give stories, not stuff’. We genuinely believe experiences are much better gifts than things, they create memories that last forever and stories to share and relive with friends and family.

The way we’re doing this is with sustainability at our core, we’re simplifying the way that people can gift happiness and inspiring others to make a positive change for the world. We want every gift to have an impact for good.

From a logistical point of view, we are also unique. Tinggly is the first and only global experience gifting company in the world in which the buyer, the gift recipient and the experience chosen can all be in different countries. We want to provide the coolest gift solution for everyone everywhere when they need a gift.

Ok, thank you for that. I’d like to jump to the main focus of this interview. Has there ever been a time that someone told you something was impossible, but you did it anyway? Can you share the story with us? What was your idea? What was the reaction of the naysayers? And how did you overcome that?

It happens all the time. A natural part of starting a new business is sharing the idea with friends and family before eventually embarking on the journey. I’ve started a number of businesses, and I always faced strong skepticism. But this is especially true of my two most important projects, Lasvalaikio Dovanos and Tinggly.

Laisvalaikio Dovanos, which stands for leisure gifts in Lithuanian, eventually became the largest experience gifting company in the Baltics, with presence also in Poland and Finland. But when I started my first experiences company, loads of people claimed it would not be possible to create an experience gift business that could be built with clients from the Baltics. Experiences such as hot air balloon rides or supercar driving were seen as unnecessary luxuries.

At the time the economies in Eastern Europe were transitioning, incomes were still low. But they were growing. With that growth, I sensed an opportunity. I could feel that, like with myself, people would want to use their additional income to enrich their lives with experiences, and not just things.

My first hire laughed at me during the interview. He said it would never work. Imagine that, during the interview, the guy said the idea was stupid. Despite his skepticism, and perhaps taking it as a personal challenge, I took a chance on him and hired him. I also challenged him to believe in me, and in the end, he helped grow the company for several years. It was fun to remind him of his thoughts at the interview with every year that we grew.

Then came Tinggly, which constituted a much more global approach. By starting in the Baltics I was able to expand, grow, learn and evolve. Building Tinggly from scratch was also a big challenge. And, again, most I talked to said that to build an international business from Lithuania was nigh on impossible. But I knew it was worth a shot.

It’s funny how if I’d listened to this initial resistance I would never have started out with my first project in the Baltics. Later, I would not have started Tinggly.

I think there’s a lesson there for all of us when people tell us our ideas are crazy.

In the end, how were all the naysayers proven wrong? 🙂

It didn’t take long for the naysayers to see the results. The most obvious example is my first, skeptical employee. He started working and as the sales started to roll in, he began to believe. We also had plenty of partners who either didn’t understand the concept or didn’t believe in us. In both cases, we kept pushing forward and in the end, they couldn’t ignore us.

For example, when we started out our suppliers just didn’t understand the concept. No one had done it before. So when we said that we wanted to sell their experiences as gifts they were puzzled. They didn’t get how it worked or if anyone would buy the gifts. So this meant an extra struggle for us — all payments needed to be upfront. Naturally, as we grew, they got used to the idea of a client turning up with a voucher, excited and looking forward to the experiences.

I think that’s a natural part of some new businesses. If people or the market in general haven’t seen the concept before it will take time to educate them. I can happily look back and say that the education process has been frustrating at times but ultimately rewarding.

It does take resilience to prove naysayers wrong. It also takes a whole lot of guts to keep pushing when others don’t believe it. But at the same time, that is a sign that you are onto something special, something new, something others haven’t dared to yet.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I have a short story from a few years ago that I would like to share. It’s not the mind-blowing adrenaline-inducing experience you might imagine, but one about family.

Apart from the support my family gives me on a daily basis, there was a moment that perfectly represented how they give me the confidence to continue on the quest of sharing experiences.

A few years back I was in Mexico with my wife and baby daughter. We were spending some time in the sunshine and, naturally, trying some new experiences. Under blue skies in Cancun, we sat in a six-seater light aircraft. Big planes were buzzing all around. We felt the hot dry heat around us. After taking off, we soaked up the sights of the swamps, lagoons, forests and beautiful sunshine. The friendly pilot made us feel good, at ease and comfortable.

The pilot suddenly remembered he hadn’t turned on any music. He turned on the radio and on came a tune. I don’t remember what it was but it triggered something inside me. The experience was complete. I was holding my daughter, I felt the rumble of the plane, the power of the music. I welled up with emotion and began to cry. I realized something about life. That this was the life worth living and sharing. This was a moment when I felt truly fulfilled in life.

The moment was precious for me. I also realized the value of family, and the support and love I was receiving. I would be nowhere near where I am now without them.

It must not have been easy to ignore all the naysayers. Did you have any experiences growing up that have contributed to building your resiliency? Can you share the story with us?

One particular story from my childhood was especially formative for me. My grandfather lived close by and I enjoyed spending time with him. He had a workshop in our garden and I spent a lot of time one summer helping him out — for which I earned some money. In fact, back in the day, it was a lot of money. I had worked hard and deserved it. Anyway, I had this stack of cash in my pocket and went to buy ice-cream and chewing gum. It felt great to spend this hard-earned cash. Along the way to this little kiosk, I lost the cash. I was devastated. I went home and cried. I talked to my Dad about it, how upset I felt and how angry I was with myself.

I made a decision there and then that I would go back, work twice as hard and earn even more all over again. I was a little kid, but I’ve stuck to this thought ever since.

Resilience is something that has to be nurtured beyond childhood, and frequently. Some key moments over the last few years have been journeys to South America with a Shaman, breathing meditation and ice-baths with Wim Hof, biking in the Himalayas. I also did a Master’s degree with Steve Neale, a British philosopher specializing in cognitive science and linguistics, a few years back to explore happiness and how experience gifting positively affects this. All of the above have helped me to understand myself better and make myself stronger.

I’m constantly trying to build resilience by challenging my comfort zone. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t care what others think of me. I’m happy to do my own thing. Over the last few years that has helped me to grow as an individual, partner, husband, father, CEO, leader, and push my physical and spiritual boundaries.

Based on your experience, can you share 5 strategies that people can use to harness the sense of tenacity and do what naysayers think is impossible? (Please share a story or an example for each)

How would a person X do it?

How would Richard Branson do it? How would Elon Musk do it? Sometimes it’s useful to step out of your own shoes and reflect. Think of others that triumphed in the face of adversity. Before Ford, nobody thought they needed cars. How did he create something people didn’t know they wanted? How are others doing it today?

Trust your gut. Trust your feelings more than your logic. Don’t overthink.

We are trying to build a brand that is genuine, which is environmentally friendly and that resonates with people. You will not always identify a number ROI, and that is OK. But if you know that it will work, it’s worth a try. This is how we decided to open Blogger House and start Tinggly Activists.

Has the naysayer tried it him or herself?

Don’t confuse theory or opinion with experience. Random example. I’ve heard a number of people say it’s very dangerous to drive in Pakistan or India. But how many drove there themselves or have been to the country?

I am travelling to Pakistan and everyone is advising me against it, but I will be driving a motorcycle.

The majority of people think within boundaries.

Standard thinking is inside the box. Therefore, if your ideas are outside the box it’s common to see resistance and negativity. Accept that and go even further — expect it to be so.

The ideas for my two most important companies faced skepticism. But I didn’t let that stop me. On the contrary, I knew in my gut it would work, and I took it as a challenge to prove the naysayers wrong.

Ask yourself — if no one dares, who will do some of the crazy things that need to be tried?

When I came to the team with an idea about building river trash traps in Bali to stop plastic entering the ocean, and the initial reaction was that the idea was crazy, complicated and that we should let others do it. But sometimes you are the only one that can. In the end, we went to Bali and built a number of trash traps that are stopping large amounts of plastic in the rivers.

What is your favorite quote or personal philosophy that relates to the concept of resilience?

In an article, Branson once mentioned a quote that I find extremely relevant and memorable: “Just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.”

It’s super important to learn from mistakes. It’s obvious and natural to make mistakes, and it’s great to do them as long as we approach them as lessons, they are the most valuable growth guidance.

Interestingly, in the times of the Roman Empire, Publilius Syrus coined the proverb “a rolling stone gathers no moss”. Over the centuries, its meaning has substantially changed from the original intention because the words so strongly convey how those that remain active and undertake different projects and initiatives are less likely to face stagnation.

You need to be constantly moving, pushing boundaries, testing the limits of your comfort zone. That’s when growth will occur. From one mistake, a lesson and many opportunities emerge. With each failure you become stronger.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I love the idea of helping people to raise consciousness. So many people are out of touch with their own selves. I’ve personally benefited from this and would love to help others do the same. I’m looking to support the many people who want to do this globally and be a part of making a global change towards achieving greater awareness and connection with the world.

To expand on my journey with this a little, I’ve grown a lot over time and tried to reflect and learn from this as much as possible. I learned to look inside myself and gain a much greater understanding of who I am.

Later, as I travelled, had adventures and went on journeys I found myself creating time and space for myself to think, reflect and make decisions about my future. I’ve enjoyed this process of learning and growing enormously.

I’d love to help more and more people to experience this. It’s hard to create the connection with yourself quickly. It takes time to nurture and develop. It’s not as easy as downloading a meditation app. But it’s an investment in yourself that’s worth making. I believe that humanity as a whole would benefit from this higher level of consciousness.

Can our readers follow you on social media?

Yes, check us out on:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TingglyExperiences/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tinggly/?hl=en

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TingglyTeam

Linas’ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linasceikus/

Thank you for these great stories. We wish you only continued success!

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Dreamers: “They told me It was impossible and I did it anyway” With Linas Ceikus of Tinggly was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When I first moved here, I was made fun of for looking different. And whenever I put lashes on, I immediately felt beautiful and confident. It kind of became the conduit for me to find my inner confidence. It’s the basis of our slogan for Glamnetic.

“Be Magnetic, Be Glamnetic” means that when you feel beautiful on the outside, it ripples inward to affect your confidence. Nothing boosts confidence more than lashes because of how it gives you an extra eye lift and an illusion of bigger eyes. However, most people can’t apply them so hence you need Glamnetic!

As a part of our series about how technology will be changing the beauty industry over the next five years, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ann McFerran.

Ann McFerran was born in Bangkok, Thailand and immigrated with her single mother to America when she was 7 years old. After growing up in Manteca, CA, she gained admission to UCLA and moved to Los Angeles where she graduated with a B.S. in Psychobiology. However, post-grad, she pursued her artistic passion and became a full-time fine artist for several years where she sold various abstract and pop art commissions worldwide. While she enjoyed the creativity that art provided, she was feeling isolated as a full-time artist. During these years, she knew that she had a passion for making her vision come to life and building a community around it. When she saw a gap in the beauty market for magnetic lashes that actually worked, she sought out to develop magnetic lashes in the styles that she would personally wear. One year later, in July 2019, after teaching herself everything from product development to marketing, Glamnetic was born. Six months since launch, Glamnetic is now doing 7 figures per month in revenue.

Thank you for joining us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I grew up in a poor area of Bangkok, Thailand and moved to a little town in Northern California called Manteca when my mom remarried. I gained admission to UCLA for pre-med and graduated with a psychobiology degree. When I graduated I was in a dilemma because I was in debt but had no desire to pursue a medical career further. It didn’t feel right to me. So now I was stuck in debt and needed to find a way to pay it off fast. I had actually been doing art my entire life and had a natural talent for it so when I got my first commission for $5k right out of college, I had the courage to go after it. Fast forward 3 years and I had sold my art around the world and at big conventions such as the LA Art Show but I didn’t feel as fulfilled as I thought I would because I felt lonely in my practice. I needed something where I could work with people but still use my creative skills. I always had a business mindset and was lucky to have met a lot of successful eCommerce entrepreneurs that inspired me to start my own brand as I saw it as a giant art project. I had always been obsessed with lashes not only because of their transformative power externally, but it was sort of my tool to feel like I fit in. When I first moved here, I was made fun of for looking different. And whenever I put lashes on, I immediately felt beautiful and confident. It kind of became the conduit for me to find my inner confidence. It’s the basis of our slogan for Glamnetic is be magnetic, be glamnetic. Because if you feel beautiful, you radiate beautiful, magnetic energy. At the time, I saw a gap in the market for lashes that were easy to apply yet still looked beautiful. Magnetic lashes had already come out but they were thin, plastic-y, and fake-looking and had max 3 magnets. I thought “Why can’t you have both an easy to apply lash that’s beautiful and full?” One year later after teaching myself product development and hundreds of samples, Glamnetic was born. We now have the world’s first 6-magnet lash, the world’s first colored magnetic lashes, and they all attach via a magnetic liner that has the hold almost as strong as glue!

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

During our first Black Friday last year, we had to rush ship 5k eyeliners from our manufacturer since we did not expect the demand we got and had to ship orders as soon as possible. I had to hire whoever was available, one of them being my best friend from UCLA, along with an intern and her friends. Together with my roommates, we got 5 thousand labels and boxes printed and sat there for 11 hours straight stickering, forming the outer box for the eyeliner and assembling all of the orders until 4 am. We formed a huge assembly line in my living room and everyone became an expert at the task they were assigned. This was month 5 of the business and I was still working out of my small apartment in Koreatown with what seemed to be an endless sea of eyeliner, boxes, and stickers. It was a complete mess! Afterward, I had to drive everything to my shipping facility because I didn’t want to lose a single day due to shipping. Needless to say, I have a newfound appreciation of the work that goes into just assembling a product. I’m just so glad we can forecast our demand at least a few months out now.

Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?

For Glamnetic, it was a gradual build-up of events and necessary actions that happened at the right time that made us successful. Before launch, I had several friends try the liner and lashes and made modifications accordingly. I was excited about the concept but what solidified it for me was other people’s feedback about how amazed they were and the many “I am finally able to apply lashes because of Glamnetic”. Out of the gate, we did $1K a day in sales for having only my small audience of followers on Instagram. I DMed every single customer who followed us to sell them on the product and was able to get $20K in sales the first month, then the next month Dolls Kill reached out and asked to sell on their website which gave us more credibility and exposure. Since we are self-funded, we funneled all profits towards paid marketing and influencers and was able to drive more traffic to our site and double our growth every month. In today’s climate, you need to be incredible at the content and creative. That was my strong point so we were able to spend very little to obtain high-quality content since I shot everything myself. If you’re not great at it, I highly recommend teaching yourself design enough to be able to give accurate instructions for someone on Upwork to complete. It’s all about the ideas you have and how you can catch people’s attention with your product. If you can do that well, you can scale to any size.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Yes! I had no prior experience in running a business. In fact, I never had a real 9–5 job! My business partner Kevin Gould has been a huge help in all things related to infrastructure. He has an extensive beauty, business, and entertainment background so he is great with bringing in key relationships to help the business grow and also takes care of operations like inventory management, finances, taxes, insurance, etc for Glamnetic. He also invested capital along with me and his business sense has helped me organize my thoughts better! He’s also my moral support! You need someone that is always in your corner.

The beauty industry today has access to technology that was inconceivable only a short time ago. Can you tell us about the “cutting edge” (pardon the pun) technologies that you are working with or introducing? How do you think that will help people?

We took a common ingredient, iron oxide, which is commonly found in all colored cosmetics and FDA approved, and added it into an eyeliner to make it magnetic and magnetized to eyelashes. This new methodology of the lash application completely takes out messy lash glue from the equation. What’s even more exciting is we were able to make the liners hold almost as strong as glue, yet be gentle on the eyelashes and easy to remove, as well as paraben-free and prop 65 compliant. It glides on super smooth, ultra-black, with minimal waiting time before magnetizing lashes, and you can even take your magnetic lashes off and remagnetize them again for a hold as strong as the first application! The eyeliner took a long time to perfect but it’s something I’m extremely proud of now. For the lashes, I developed the world’s first 6 magnet lash and first colored magnetic lashes for magnetic liner. The 6 magnets allow for maximum trimmability and hold so users can trim the band down to fit any eye width. Historically, this lack of trimmability has been a huge issue with magnetic lashes. I was able to develop full, fluffy styles and am able to match any style that traditional lash falsies have which opens up an entirely new world of possibilities for someone that is normally unskilled at applying lash glue. As a result of this, we are shifting many girls who don’t know how to wear lashes and girls who wear glue typically, into our products and many customers literally buy every single style we have!

Can you share 3 things that most excite you about the “beauty-tech” industry?

The ability to have customers try on beauty products virtually. We have taken advantage of this and built a custom filter that will soon launch on the Instagram page (and will be implemented on our site) that lets customers try our 9 most popular lash styles along with a cute optional heart halo! Secondly, the data technology tools that Continually allow customized experiences for our users. Thirdly, due to personalization, it allows us to have a greater connection with our audience and make their needs feel understood.

Can you share 3 things that most concern you about the industry? If you had the ability to implement 3 ways to reform or improve the industry, what would you suggest?

I think the speed in which everything is happening doesn’t allow time for consumers or other brands to catch up. It’s a constant process of finding out about something, and not digesting it fully until something else comes out. This is counterproductive and actually can disengage consumers, especially the older audience. Secondly, I think the beauty of beauty is its simplicity and personal experience with it. You have an emotional experience with your product. Too much tech can lead one to disengage with the reason they wanted to pick up the product in the first place. Thirdly, since the technology is new, it can often be wrong. You can’t program in emotion and taste unfortunately or perfectly get the foundation shade to accurately represent the product if you’re in the wrong lighting. When we become too dependent on our experience through technology, our actual experience with the product as compared to in-person could be ruined. I think to fix these issues, we need to focus on key technologies that have for sure been tested and developed thoroughly and will for sure lead to a direct positive experience for the user. Poll users often get feedback in making sure the technology is enhanced instead of hindered their experiences.

You are an expert about beauty. Can you share 5 ideas that anyone can use “to feel beautiful”? (Please share a story or example for each.)

Our slogan Be Magnetic, Be Glamnetic means that when you feel beautiful on the outside, it ripples inward to affect your confidence. Nothing boosts confidence more than lashes because of how it gives you an extra eye lift and an illusion of bigger eyes. However, most people can’t apply them so hence you need Glamnetic! 😉

Beauty also starts from the inside but first, you have to feel good about yourself. Start with exercising at least 2–3 times a week whether it’s yoga or strength training, you’ll have the serotonin to feel beautiful!

Eat healthily. Again if you feel healthy, you’ll feel beautiful. Drink green juices and salads!

Do something good for someone else. Whether it’s giving advice, a compliment, or a favor, when you help someone feel good, you’ll feel good and beautiful from within.

Feed your brain by learning! When you know you’re smart, you feel more confident, and therefore more beautiful. Keep learning and gaining knowledge by being curious and consuming astute content.

If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

To inspire people to put their excuses aside and just do it. Learn to do everything yourself instead of asking others to do it. It’s the only way I grew as a person and I save a tremendous amount of money by relying only on myself. It’s tempting to outsource every little thing, even raising money, but you’ll thank yourself in the long run if you take the time to just do the homework yourself. If you want it enough, you will put your excuses aside, sit down, and take the time to do it.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

When I lost my excuses, I found my results. Many people don’t make things happen due to all the excuses they tell themselves. I was one of those people before, but when I changed my mind from overthinking mode to “do mode” which translated itself in the form actionable items and to-do lists that I had to complete as fast as possible (ZERO procrastinating), my life changed.

How can our readers follow you online?

You can follow our Instagram or Facebook @Glamnetic or me on Instagram @themodernartista. FYI I have a lot of artwork from my artist days on my personal!

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The Future Of Beauty: “Magnetized Eyelashes” With Ann McFerran of Glamnetic was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dreamers: “They told me It was impossible and I did it anyway” With Anahita Dalmia of Alterea

I was very quiet when I was younger and heavily bullied for it in middle-school. That allowed me to separate my self-worth from the naysayer’s perception of me. I placed a lot more importance on my opinion of myself and gave a lot more value to people who liked me and supported me while learning to ignore those who didn’t — especially if they couldn’t offer constructive feedback, only unsolicited and unreasonable hatred. I am in no way an advocate for bullying, but that experience made me who I am and I’m happy where I am. I wouldn’t change a thing.

As a part of our series about “dreamers who ignored the naysayers and did what others said was impossible”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Anahita Dalmia.

Anahita Dalmia is a Narrative Studies major at the University of Southern California, a two-time published author and co-founder of the company Alterea (Yes, it’s a play on an Alternate Reality.) Alterea creates large scale experiences at the intersection of immersive theatre and interactive gaming that allows participants to enter a different world in which the can have agency and impact within an unfolding story. (www.altereainc.com) In her ‘free’ time, you are equally likely to find Anahita at a Forbes conference or exploring some secret underground tunnels.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to ‘get to know you’ a bit better. Can you tell us your ‘backstory’?

That’s a difficult question to answer, but I suppose I can start with the basics. I was born and raised in New Delhi, India with both my parents and two younger siblings who I adore. I moved to the States at 18 for college and I’ve been at the University of Southern California as a Narrative Studies Major (I literally study stories!) since. I have to admit, I’ve always been a little pre-occupied with fantasy. I was the kind of child who would read a book a day; I was glued to the television or some kind of gaming device; and later, I took theatre for 4 years in high school. My favorite pastime was imagining how things would play out if I was in those incredible situations myself, and I think that has been a large factor in how I live my life. I mean, firstly my business is all about removing that “what if” and putting people in the middle of an unfolding story. And secondly, I told my teacher when I was 12 years old that I wanted my life to be a “story worth telling” and I still find myself committing to that. I want anybody who opens the metaphorical “book” of my life to find value no matter what page they turn to. Whether it is because of a short but entertaining story like the time I crashed a wedding in my pajamas (It was a social experiment on bystanderism! I wanted to see if someone would have the guts to kick me out. They didn’t.) or the overarching journey of my life, which is an upward trajectory of establishing a new form of a story and building a company.

Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?

I’m working on several new and exciting projects right now! Unfortunately, Non-Disclosure Agreements are what we live and die by in this industry. So I can’t say much, as much as that pains me as a storyteller. However, I am really excited about the way that they will help people. Each experience we design really digs into the history, background, and values of our partners. Every one of them wants to make some kind of change to their guests and I’m really thrilled about the variety of issues we can tackle through different experiences: sustainability, inclusivity and eradicating world hunger are just some of the themes our partners are passionate about. And we get to design an experience in which hopefully all the participants will come out with new insight on these issues and the role they play in solving them, enabling them to act.

In your opinion, what do you think makes your company or organization stand out from the crowd?

I think there are two things that really make our company stand out. One is obviously our services. We create site-specific largescale experiences that combine immersive theatre and interactive gaming in a way that each participant can have a unique journey, the agency in an unfolding story and an impact on the conclusion. It takes a very special skill set to create personalized live experiences for large audiences that are different every time you participate based on your decisions. Furthermore, we customize the narrative and experience goals to align with the takeaways our partners want.

Two I would say is the company culture. We’re a very young company, with the majority of our teammates still in college or recent grads. We’re very willing to take risks, be open and clearly understand what a younger generation wants. We’re also a very collaborative and positive work-space that emphasizes communication and mutual benefit. We actually have included clauses like “respond within 48hrs” and “let people know when you appreciate them or their work.” in our behavioral handbook. We encourage our teammates to wear multiple hats and contribute to the best of their ability to make the entire project the best it can be despite their official roles and responsibilities. We emphasize that we collectively fail and succeed with the project. As we all started out unpaid college students, we stayed in this for the vision and the people so our culture reflects that. This is also true as we work with our clients — it is not “us” and “them” — they become a part of the team as we’re working on something together and we like to believe we’re a pleasure to work with.

Ok, thank you for that. I’d like to jump to the main focus of this interview. Has there ever been a time that someone told you something was impossible, but you did it anyway? Can you share the story with us? What was your idea? What was the reaction of the naysayers? And how did you overcome that?

One of the most formative experiences was a time that many people told me something was impossible and I did it anyway. Inspired by a cartoon, a dream and my recent exploration of immersive theatre (Augusto Boal specifically) I came up with an idea of having an immersive, themed Halloween Maze with characters hosting games that participants needed to win to “advance in the story.” We had never celebrated Halloween in India and the idea was that we can enter a different world where our friends, skillsets, knowledge, and interest determined how we would fare. My mom was an architect and told me how to accomplish that logistically, and told me to propose it to the school as a fundraising carnival. The school told us that we needed to have a proposal with all the logistics figured out — from the prices of the cloth to the people playing the actors. I then embarked on an adventure that very much felt like starting a company… when I was 16. I needed to figure out all the people I would need to accomplish the task, set up an organizational structure, recruit for very specific positions such as costume design and engineering even though we had no experience in high school and then figure out the logistics and plan of action to accomplish our goal. The month we spent putting that together was incredibly intense but despite our efforts and plan, the school rejected our idea by saying that we wouldn’t be able to implement it.

After going home and crying for two days, my mother encouraged me to submit the proposal to the Rotary that she was a part of. Considering the amount of work we had put in already, I was willing to try. And then began an even longer journey of calling up the President every two days to get an audience while working simultaneously to meet our timeline, even though we didn’t even have a guarantee that our work would be approved. The Halloween Maze turned into a Winter Maze which on the Rotary’s request finally turned into a full-fledged carnival with stalls, competitions, music performances, even art auctions. Finally, we had “Bizarre: Where The Impossible Happens.” This was the place where you could get your dream internship, your favorite actor’s autograph and show off your unique talents no matter what they were. There was something and someplace for everybody. We incentivized 200 students from across the city to work with us on this by convincing them it would look good on college applications even though we had no budget and even no venue confirmed. Finally, by being very, very resourceful we convinced the owner of the biggest mall in town who happened to be a Rotarian to give us the venue for free and finally, after a year’s work, blood, sweat, and tears, we had our event.

At the end, how we’re all the naysayers proven wrong? 🙂

We did it even though they said we couldn’t. In fact, our event became a lot bigger because they said we couldn’t. And then they celebrated our victory and took credit for it by posting about it on their website. Once success is achieved, everyone wants to ride on it despite how little they contributed to it — or even actively came in the way of it.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Obviously, I’m very grateful to my mother who actively made efforts to remove any roadblocks we encountered. But I would also like to call out to my friend and teammate Lillianne John. I had spoken to her only once before when she encountered me sitting on the field and trying to draw a maze by eyeballing dimensions of the venue. She then helped me draw the space and sent me 3 computer-generated plans that evening with the games marked.

Lillianne took full ownership of the project even when it seemed like it was on the brink of failure — and she played an enormous part in making it happen. She took control of operations, staying with me till 3 am to make pitch decks for the Rotary, figuring out how to make a website, sending emails, and even writing affidavits. If I was the heart of Bizarre, she was the brain. I absolutely could not have done it without her. She taught me so much about operations which have allowed me to accomplish every single project I have after Bizarre. And her investment in the project held me accountable for delivering what I had initially attempted to — it was her involvement that made the matter bigger than me. Made it worth fighting for. And she armored me, supported me and accompanied me for every battle.

It must not have been easy to ignore all the naysayers. Did you have any experiences growing up that have contributed to building your resiliency? Can you share the story with us?

As hard as it is to believe, I was very quiet when I was younger and heavily bullied for it in middle-school. That allowed me to separate my self-worth from the naysayer’s perception of me. I placed a lot more importance on my opinion of myself and gave a lot more value to people who liked me and supported me while learning to ignore those who didn’t — especially if they couldn’t offer constructive feedback, only unsolicited and unreasonable hatred. I am in no way an advocate for bullying, but that experience made me who I am and I’m happy where I am. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Based on your experience, can you share 5 strategies that people can use to harness the sense of tenacity and do what naysayers think is impossible? (Please share a story or an example for each)

• Log great successes — If you’ve overcome a hard situation, make note of it. Put in a list, a journal entry, a letter. Whatever. Just have something to refer to when you remember feeling hopeless and save the proof that you overcame it. I always look back upon Bizarre and no matter how difficult a situation gets, I remind myself I have a lot more now. I have my experience. A team. Typically, even a budget. I think about the most difficult decision I have had to make — when we got offered the mall as a venue the only available dates were right after my trip to New York and in the middle of my teammate’s exams. I had to choose whether I would take the venue and risk losing half the team or refuse it with the risk that we wouldn’t get another venue. I chose to take that mall, it wasn’t easy but the event happened. Nobody can take my past successes away from me, they didn’t come easy and neither will the future successes. But I’ve made it this far, and it’s an uphill journey from here.
• “The War Isn’t Over Until I’ve Won” philosophy — No matter what, I find if you broaden your goal then your failure doesn’t seem like a full stop. The Halloween Maze turned into Bizarre, but we needed to reconsider what was important to us and reevaluate how to achieve that with a different approach. Even as we approach clients and teammates now when things don’t work out, we just shift our goal which makes the defeat softer.
• Find people to be accountable to — At least I personally find it really, really hard to be accountable to just myself. Having the team there keeps me on track. Suddenly, I am not responsible for my own success and failure but also to those who believe in me and trust me. This increases the stakes substantially and pushes me a lot further despite what anybody else might say.
• Chart the map — Make a plan of action. This is incredibly intimidating when you don’t know the ocean, but start sailing and building the map as you do. You can only see the next flight of stairs once you start climbing, so don’t be intimidated if the end is not in sight. But as long as you see the beginning and hopefully the step after that, it’s a great point to start building. Please also don’t be afraid of how long things will take — that time will pass anyway. The only difference will be what you have to show for it at the end. I might not have had the courage to start Bizarre if I thought it was a yearlong endeavor, but I only saw the beginning and I’m so glad I did it. I learned so much on the way.
• Capitalize on failures -every time you fail you have time that you intended to spend on something. Spend it on something else. Also, ask yourself what you learned, why you fell short and if it was a shortcoming of your own then fix it for the next time. One of the times I felt like I “failed” was when I received the position of “Assistant Director of Special Events” instead of “Director.” However, that free time allowed me to take an internship that I learned a lot more from and focus on the one event I was doing instead of spreading myself too thin.

What is your favorite quote or personal philosophy that relates to the concept of resilience?

One quote I find particularly motivating is “The War Isn’t Over Until I’ve Won — everything lost is just a battle.” It sounds slightly harsh and arrogant, but it really does represent the idea of broadening your goal. It also ties into the idea that it is giving up that makes defeat permanent, but that quote does not capture the idea of changing goals as well. It makes it sound like you’re trying the same thing over and over — you shouldn’t be. You should be re-strategizing and re-prioritizing and re-evaluating your goals at every step in order to achieve them.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Sounds super cheesy, but please pursue what calls to you and pursue it relentlessly. Each person truly is unique with values, skills, interests, and personalities. There is a place that they will be useful and I would encourage people not to compromise on doing things in which they find value.

Can our readers follow you on social media?

If they want to. The company social media is as follows:

@alterea_inc

And my personal social media:

@anahitadalmia

Thank you for these great stories. We wish you only continued success!

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Dreamers: “They told me It was impossible and I did it anyway” With Anahita Dalmia was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dr. Doug Nemecek of Cigna Behavioral Health: “Here are 5 things each of us can do to help solve the Loneliness Epidemic”

Possibly the biggest barrier to people getting the support and care they need for loneliness and all mental health and wellness conditions is the stigma surrounding these conditions. We are too often afraid to ask for help, and afraid to talk about the issues facing us, our families and friends. We need to do more to address the stigma surrounding loneliness, mental health and substance use disorders. We need to make it okay to talk about these things just as we talk about cancer or heart disease.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Doug Nemecek, Chief Medical Officer, Cigna Behavioral Health

Dr. Doug Nemecek is the Chief Medical Officer for behavioral health at Cigna. Dr. Nemecek also leads Cigna’s national Coverage Policy team, responsible for developing policies and tools that are used to interpret standard medical, behavioral, and pharmacy benefit plan provisions. Additionally, he helps to coordinate Cigna’s national medical cost trend analysis and initiatives to address major medical cost drivers for our clients.

Prior to joining Cigna, Dr. Nemecek served as Executive Medical Director for Allina Behavioral Health Services in Minneapolis, overseeing five outpatient clinics and four inpatient mental health units with over 80 mental health providers. He also has 10 years of clinical experience with an inpatient and outpatient psychiatric practice in Minneapolis.

Dr. Nemecek received his M.D. and completed his psychiatric residency at Washington University in St. Louis in 1993. He is recognized as a Distinguished Fellow with the American Psychiatric Association, is board certified by the America Board of Quality Assurance and Utilization Review Physicians and holds an M.B.A. from the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis. Dr. Nemecek is currently the Chair-elect for the Board of the Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness. He also serves on the Scientific Board for Shatterproof, a national non-profit organization dedicated to ending the devastation that addiction causes families.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share your “backstory” with us? What was it that led you to your eventual career choice?

I was a 3rd-year medical student when I fell in love with psychiatry. I recognized the incredibly positive impact that mental health and substance use care had on individuals and their families, and I knew that I wanted to help provide psychiatric care to people in need. After 10 years with a successful psychiatric practice, I saw that I could have an even bigger impact by improving mental health and substance use care for people across the United States, and I joined Cigna, where our mission is to improve the health, well-being, and peace of mind for those we serve. And we do that by valuing the “whole person,” treating mental and emotional health is just as important as physical health.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

Since joining Cigna, I’ve had the privilege to engage in discussions about mental health and substance use disorder care with people from all across the United States, including employers large and small, health care providers, and policymakers at the local, state and national level. This has allowed me to see and learn about the various issues and ideas about mental health and substance use disorders, and to find partnerships to drive change and improve people’s lives.

Can you share a story about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson or takeaway you learned from that?

I look back to the start of my career at Cigna, and the first job I initially applied for was the role of Chief Medical Officer for behavioral health. I applied even though I had no experience in managed care or insurance at the time. I figured I could learn about managed care on the job. I did not get that job, but did build relationships and was then offered my entry role as a Medical Director with Cigna. I’ve learned so much about health care at Cigna that if I went back to my practice management role again, I know that I’d be so much better at that job now.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

At Cigna, we are focused on making high-quality mental health and substance use disorder care more accessible and affordable for our customers. This includes identifying centers of excellence to help customers pinpoint the best place to receive care, developing innovative value-based reimbursement models for care, and rapidly expanding the availability of telehealth and virtual care options to make care more convenient and accessible. All of this will help our customers attain optimal outcomes and allow them to be healthier and more productive at home, at work, and in their communities.

Can you share with our readers a bit why you are an authority about the topic of the Loneliness Epidemic?

Cigna is deeply committed to addressing societal issues that impact not only our customers and employees but the general public. In 2018, we released our first Loneliness Index, which found 54% of Americans classify as lonely. As part of our efforts to combat the rise of loneliness and improve mental wellness across America, we released the results of our second survey on loneliness in America in January 2020. We found that three in five Americans (61%) now report feeling lonely. This is a 7-percentage point increase from our 2018 survey. Additionally, we concluded that loneliness and the workplace have a clear connection.

With more than 170 million customer relationships globally, as well as a deep understanding of the mental health crisis impacting a quarter of American adults, we believe we have an opportunity, a unique perspective and a moral obligation to use our scale, resources and solutions to help people improve their lives. Whether we’re engaging with our customers, our employees, veterans or the general population, we address people’s mental and physical health and the connection between them, a whole-person approach that supports mind and body for the greatest benefit. The data and insights we’ve gained through this research will help us innovate new health and well-being solutions that can improve people’s lives.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the main focus of our interview. According to this story in Forbes, loneliness is becoming an increasing health threat not just in the US , but across the world. Can you articulate for our readers 3 reasons why being lonely and isolated can harm one’s health?

Feelings of loneliness can affect your mental and physical health? For example, chronic loneliness can drive up cortisol levels in the body. Cortisol is a hormone that your body creates when under stress. Over time, higher cortisol levels can lead to inflammation, excess weight gain, insulin resistance, problems concentrating, and more.

If left unchecked, chronic loneliness symptoms can put you at greater risk for more serious medical and emotional problems, including:

• Depression
• Sleep disorders
• Type 2 diabetes
• Heart disease
• High blood pressure
• Anxiety
• Substance use

We also know that chronic loneliness has the same mortality risk as smoking 15 cigarettes per day. Loneliness ls literally killing us.

On a broader societal level, in which way is loneliness harming our communities and society?

Loneliness is an epidemic exacerbating a mental health crisis across America that contributes to societal ills including drug use, overdose, gun violence, and suicide. Our study also shows the significant impact that loneliness is having on our businesses and workplaces. We saw that people who are lonely say that they are less productive on the job. They also miss twice as many days of work due to illness, and 5 times as many days of work due to stress. People who are lonely are twice as likely to think about quitting their job in the next 12 months. All of this impacts the workplace and adds significant costs to the business. At Cigna, we believe if we can reduce loneliness, we may be able to make a significant positive difference in the lives of millions of people, at home and at work.

The irony of having a loneliness epidemic is glaring. We are living in a time where more people are connected to each other than ever before in history. Our technology has the power to connect billions of people in one network, in a way that was never possible. Yet despite this, so many people are lonely. Why is this? Can you share 3 of the main reasons why we are facing a loneliness epidemic today? Please give a personal story or an example for each.

Our study revealed that America’s loneliness epidemic is getting worse and it is an issue felt broadly across all demographics of Americans. Of note, our survey found that Generation Z feels lonelier than older generations, with 80% of Gen Z saying they feel lonely. We also learned that people who identify as heavy social media users say they are lonelier than those who are not heavy users. When we lack balance in our lives, in our daily activities and do too much or too little of any given thing (e.g., sleep, work, time with family), it exacerbates loneliness. And this need for balance extends to our use of social media. If we use technology and social media in a way that allows us to make more in-person, meaningful connections with others, that is helpful. But just having a thousand friends or followers on social media doesn’t really help us feel connected to others.

Technology also allows us to work from home, from airplanes, and from hotels. It allows us to have just about anything we need to be delivered to us at home, so we don’t have to leave home. While this flexibility can be helpful with managing all of our daily needs, it also can lead us to a life of isolation and severe loneliness.

Ok. it is not enough to talk about problems without offering possible solutions. In your experience, what are the 5 things each of us can do to help solve the Loneliness Epidemic? Please give a personal story or an example for each.

While the solution to loneliness is unique to each individual, we do know that there are steps each of us can take to begin to address loneliness, including:

• Learn to recognize loneliness in ourselves and others.
• Reach out to your families, friends, and colleagues when you suspect they are lonely. People are not likely to reach out to you if they feel lonely, but they are just waiting for you to ask and offer support.
• Be open to others reaching out to you. Accept offers to connect, meet and have a conversation.
• Get to know your coworkers better. Don’t simply walk past everyone at work as you walk to your desk. Stop and say ‘hello.’ Share a cup of coffee with someone. And don’t eat lunch alone.
• Take advantage of your employer’s health and wellness offerings.
• Find the work-life balance that’s right for you. And work on balance for all areas of your life, including sleep, exercise, etc.
• Use technology to stay connected but don’t forget that face to face communication is important too. In the end, it is the face to face, meaningful interactions that help us build connections and eliminate loneliness.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

• Possibly the biggest barrier to people getting the support and care they need for loneliness and all mental health and wellness conditions is the stigma surrounding these conditions. We are too often afraid to ask for help, and afraid to talk about the issues facing us, our families and friends. We need to do more to address the stigma surrounding loneliness, mental health, and substance use disorders. We need to make it okay to talk about these things just as we talk about cancer or heart disease. When we do this, we will open the door for everyone who is struggling today and help them to get the help and support they need.

We are blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

• As loneliness and mental health concerns reach epidemic levels across the United States, we recognize that these are issues that impact people around the entire world. In that light, I’d love to connect with Prince Harry. He’s been vocal about his own emotional struggles and has raised awareness of mental health concerns around the globe. I’d want to talk about the opportunities we have to truly address stigma and take steps to improve mental wellness for everyone. None of us can do this alone, but together we can make an impact.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

Your readers can follow me on LinkedIn. Additionally, for the full survey report, as well as some additional documents on Cigna’s 2020 loneliness findings, visit Cigna.com/CombattingLoneliness and follow Cigna on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

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Dr. Doug Nemecek of Cigna Behavioral Health: “Here are 5 things each of us can do to help solve the was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Skyler Stein Of Gladskin USA: “We need to create a system of preventive health care using safe science that addresses the root cause of issues”

…The existing healthcare system is reactive. I want to bring wellness, self care and preventive care to people using safe science that works at the root cause of health issues.

As a part of our series about how technology will be changing the beauty industry over the next five years, I had the pleasure of interviewing Skyler Stein.

Skyler Stein leads Gladskin USA, a biotechnology-driven skincare brand. Gladskin is a leader in global endolysin technology using science to improve inflammatory skin conditions by rebalancing the skin microbiome.

Throughout his career, Skyler has advised, invested in and developed businesses across technology-driven sectors. Before Gladskin, Skyler worked at Obvious Ventures, a venture capital firm dedicated to startups that combine profit and purpose; his focus was on companies commercializing microbiome science to improve human health. Previously, Skyler was a Principal at Bregal Investments, a global private equity firm where he was on the board of various high growth portfolio companies. Skyler has served as an Advisor to Clarity Genomics, which develops computational platforms to elucidate mechanisms of action for human — microbiome interactions.

Skyler holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A. from Duke University.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I spent the first seven years of my career investing in clean energy, working in private equity and venture capital. I then pursued my MBA at Harvard Business School. Three weeks into my first semester, a Lyme diagnosis caused me to take a two-year medical leave. Along with following my doctor’s orders, I researched nutrition, supplements, exercise regimes, and other healing modalities.

My experience with Lyme disease, and my path to recovery, sparked my curiosity about what and how we consume affect the composition of the types of bacteria in our guts,(our microbiome) and in turn, how this composition in turn affects our health. On a weekly basis, I tracked the correlation of different diets, medicines, and supplements against changes to my microbiome for a year. This experience transformed my health, and changed the trajectory of my career path. I decided to say goodbye to clean energy finance and focus the next chapter of my career on health, with a special interest in the microbiome.

Once healed, I finished my MBA program at Harvard and joined Obvious Ventures, a Venture Capital firm that invested in “World Positive ‘’ companies. Focused on finding companies in the microbiome space, I met the European-based Gladskin team. Gladskin’s endolysin technology was an impressive application of the science, with real results supporting their approach. Their traction, science and purpose inspired me to join the team to bring the products and technology to the tens of millions of Americans with inflammatory skin conditions.

Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?

My tipping point was when I followed my gut (literally) to pursue a path that aligned my health, personal interests, and professional ambitions, deciding to join Gladskin full-time. After my personal experience with the collateral damage of antibiotic treatment on my microbiome, I wanted to pursue a career in using microbiome technology to help people improve the quality of their lives.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

John Heffner, the CEO of DryBar, has been a mentor and inspiration to me for many years. Among many other lessons, he has instilled in me the most simple but powerful principles to live by: be positive, be nice, and presume positive intent.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. The beauty industry today has access to technology that was inconceivable only a short time ago. Can you tell us about the “cutting edge” (pardon the pun) technologies that you are working with or introducing? How do you think that will help people?

Gladskin is a new category of non-prescription eczema treatment that works differently than most OTC products. We like to say that Gladskin Eczema Cream is “smarter, not stronger” because it uses breakthrough endolysin science to relieve eczema.

Healthy skin needs a healthy balance of bacteria, just like your gut does. Scientists are just realizing that an imbalance in the good and bad bacteria that naturally live on your skin (a.ka. the microbiome) causes eczema flares in 4 out of 5 eczema-prone people.

Gladskin’s patented endolysin science was developed by Swiss researchers at ETH Zurich University. Endolysins are proteins present everywhere in nature, including on our skin. Endolysins can rebalance bacteria that are known to be at the root of most eczema flares, while at the same time, protecting the good bacteria that we now know are essential for healthy skin. Also, based on lab research we’ve conducted, we don’t see any bacterial resistance developing with the use of endolysins.

It’s a true game changer for people with eczema and Gladskin is a global technology leader spearheading this exciting new science. The Gladskin launch in January, represented the first time endolysin science became available to consumers in the United States.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

The Gladskin technology is specifically targeted, so it will only work if a specific type of bacteria is at the root of the problem. This is well suited for our product, because we know that one specific bacteria is at the root of 80% of eczema flares. However, if a different type of bacteria is at the root of the problem, then our product will not be as effective.

Can you share 3 things that most excite you about the “beauty-tech” industry?

1. I’m excited about the trend of product development becoming increasingly focused on working with the nature of skin, respecting the fact that our skin is an ecologically diverse environment.
2. As a society, we are feeling the consequences of the overuse of antibiotics over the past 50 years — like superbugs, record high gut health issues. In skincare, we have always been taught that we need to disinfect and scrub our skin clean all the time. We know now, like antibiotics, this can work in the short term, but can cause problems over the long term.
3. Beauty is often a window into what’s going on inside of us — from our mind to our microbiome. I’m excited that beauty and skincare can spark curiosity into deeper health and wellness pursuits.

Can you share 3 things that most concern you about the industry? If you had the ability to implement 3 ways to reform or improve the industry, what would you suggest?

1. Safety — Right now, any company can create their own new cosmetic formulation, and with no testing, they can launch the product into the market. All new products are considered safe until proven dangerous. A level of safety testing should be required to protect consumers.
2. Efficacy — With all of the activity in the “natural” healthcare space, it is important to note that there is a difference between products that are ‘all-natural’ and products that are proven safe and effective. Consumers need to be properly educated on the difference.
3. Transparency — Consumers should have the right to understand the quality of the ingredients used in their products, and the quality of the manufacturing processes and facilities used.

You are an expert about beauty. Can you share 5 ideas that anyone can use “to feel beautiful”? (Please share a story or example for each.)

To me, it’s all about feeling good, and that feeling is created by a healthy lifestyle. By focusing on health, you’re playing the long game, and the rest takes care of itself. The importance of being conscious of managing the following aspects of health is indisputable in research:

1. Diet
2. Sleep
3. Exercise
4. Mindfulness

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

The existing healthcare system is reactive. I want to bring wellness, self care and preventive care to people using safe science that works at the root cause of health issues.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My family has had a statistically impossible number of off-chance medical scares. These have enforced the idea of being modest in desire and appreciative of the moment. We’re all on this crazy journey together, let’s treat each other right and make the most of it.

How can our readers follow you online?

LinkedIn

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

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Skyler Stein Of Gladskin USA: “We need to create a system of preventive health care using safe… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

…Add a short meditation into your daily routine. I have worked with so many brilliant experts in this field and there is proof that it positively affects your overall health, your mind and mood, your daily performance and so much more. I used to think meditation was such a woo-woo practice until I was shown the proof! There are new technology aids like the Muse that have helped a novice mediator like me gain confidence in the daily practice.

As a part of our series about how technology will be changing the beauty industry over the next five years, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jill Gilbert of Wicked Awesome You and Beauty Tech Expert.

Jill Gilbert is a catalyzer of people, events, and ideas. Her experience ranges from speaker, publisher, and Silicon Valley entrepreneur to Hollywood producer to breakthrough industry conference curator. Over the last decade Jill has produced the wildly successful and touted Digital Health Summit at CES, as well as the booming Sleep Tech, Baby Tech and Beauty Tech Summits. Jill’s newest personal venture, Wicked Awesome You harnesses the power of information, technology and community to create breakthroughs in the personal health and wellness of women over 40. When she’s not mixing people and ideas, Jill enjoys a divine glass of wine, a loud USC Trojans football game and snuggles from her adorable son, Brody.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Thank you for inviting me to participate. My career path has been quite the eclectic one, to say the least. And I can safely say I had no foresight to aspire to do what I do now…somehow the path kept changing and I jumped on board for the ride.

I began an internship during my senior year of college at Walt Disney/Touchstone Pictures and then immediately after graduation I got my first ‘paying’ job in their Feature Film department working entry-level for an amazing producer, Mario Iscovich, who really set the foundation for my work ethic and for how I work with others―still to this day. Working for a film’s producer puts you right at the center of everything and also allows you to follow the making of a film from greenlight to being released in theaters. He said that our office always needed to be the “nerve center” and we had to be the ones that anyone involved with the film (cast, studio, director, crew, etc.) could turn to.

I learned such an important practice from him that I use almost daily. “You don’t have to know how to do everything; You just need to know how to ask the right questions.” That is the best advice I’ve ever received―because there is no way I’d ever be able to do everyone’s job, but it was critical we understand the parameters, needs, etc. This applied to every single job I had from there on out.

I worked with Mario for 7 years on such films as The Rocketeer, Sister Act, Mulholland Falls, and What’s Love Got to Do With It? And during that time, I had the good fortune to meet a very smart young actress while producing Sister Ave 2. Years later, I was asked to run her production company at Sony Pictures where we developed a number of projects and produced a beautiful little film in London.

The burnout set-in right after that and I realized I didn’t want to live in Los Angeles anymore. I was so consumed with my work that I didn’t really have a life of my own and that situation wasn’t going to change anytime soon. I ended up moving to San Francisco and founded a company called Gilbert Guide. You see, my father was an oncologist and he said so many of his patients couldn’t find resources on where they can turn for help in the home, in an assisted living facility, respite care. They were lost. And while senior care wasn’t my ‘thing,’ I scoured far and wide where they could turn to find what they needed. This soon turned into a family business―the first national online senior care directory with robust content that helped define how families get answers to the maze that is caregiving. My brother had joined the company and we were acquired six years later. The transition to the new company didn’t go as I had hoped, and I left feeling pretty defeated. But when one door closes, another opens. The day after I left, I received an invitation to help build and produce the Digital Health Summit at CES, and later to also produce Beauty Tech Summit. Little did I know, this was the job I had been preparing for all those years.

I loved this work. My role had a strong sales element which was quite new to me, but my favorite part was building new relationships and telling the stories that could hugely impact the healthcare industry. Ironically, no one in healthcare or health tech wanted to come to CES that first year so I had a major uphill battle. I used every skill I had ever learned to shape a great show, convene brilliant minds and pivotal companies, all while remaining a strong advocate for the stories we were telling. After finding my groove in building the first year’s Summit, we grew tremendously over the next decade while always striving to up our game.

During the past two years of producing the Summit, I let my own health needs fall by the wayside. I had a son, who is now 5, and I threw 100% of my energies into caring for him and my job. Then, to add fuel to the fire, all those unfortunate things that happen to us as we get older started to rear their ugly heads! You know, when our metabolism abandons ship and we are too “busy” to exert ourselves anymore. I became complacent and was no longer taking proper care of myself. It was just easier not to do the work and things fell into a death spiral. I knew I wasn’t alone.

So many companies, products and services target a younger demographic and I was tired of being lumped in and spoken to like I was still in my 20s and 30s. What was happening with my body during this stage of my life wasn’t happening to theirs. That led me on the long journey to building what today is Wicked Awesome You. WAY helps women over 40 who’ve done big things in their lives and given so much to so many, discover how to take back some of that healthy goodness for themselves and embark on these next amazing years with the strength, solutions, and kick-ass community they not only want but deserve.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

Well, I have a ton of them―some hilarious stories, setbacks as well as big wins so it’s hard to pick. I’ll go with one that definitely taught me a big lesson. For most of my working life, I have supported others to shine in the spotlight. During my earlier working years I used to stay late — sometimes into the middle of the night to get all things done that were expected of me. I wanted them to be able to rely on me for anything and everything. While we were in pre-production for Sister Act, I asked my boss if I could attend meetings with him. There was this one meeting that was happening on the weekend with all the key players in the movie: Director, Music Supervisor, Other Producers, Director of Photography, you get the picture. We were working on the Disney lot and had reserved a meeting room in the old Animation building (where Michael Eisener’s office was and the rest of the C-suites). It was a Saturday so the lot was quiet. Now to set this story up, everyone in this meeting was male, including the young assistant to the director. Someone yelled out that we needed coffee. Well, within seconds the entire room turned to me. Even the assistant to the director. No one even said a word…they just looked and inferred what my marching orders were. Needless to say, no one was in the building and there wasn’t Postmates in 1991. I scoured the building (practically breaking into office kitchens to find coffee). I was sweating and stressing big time, while quietly cursing that I was missing this meeting. And by the time I found somewhere to make it and returned with the goods, the meeting was almost over. I went home so bummed out. Not because they naturally turned to me because I was female, but because I hadn’t prepared for this. I learned my lesson… there was never another meeting I was in charge of that didn’t have the necessary refreshments, office supplies, etc. I also quickly learned and adopted that no matter what job you have or what level you are at, you have to be willing to get your hands dirty. No excuses.

Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?

Every job had tipping points and moved me up (not necessarily vertically in job title, but in building my capacity for greater things. I think as I grew older, I grew stronger and more confidant. I remember someone said to me when I was working in the film industry that ‘I could one day be a good producer if I grew thicker skin.’ They were right. And at that time I wasn’t as strong. I was learning and had insecurities that held me back. And yet I often postured that I knew it all. It just doesn’t work. It’s the process of going through different careers and working with a lot of different personalities that strengthen your core.

So I attribute so much of how strong I feel today to my age. I needed to be a sponge when I was younger. I constantly put myself in direct proximity to learn from the best and wasn’t only trying to work my way up the ladder. Now I have the confidence built from real experience. I learned that being a know-it-all and self-serving gets us nowhere. It’s serving others that make us shine every time.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

The film producer I worked with for 7 years after college was pivotal in modeling something so critical for success. I bet he doesn’t know this, but in an industry of insanely strong personalities (from big-name actors and producers to the incredible demands from the studios), he taught me the importance of being kind. Not a push-over, but kind. You see, we interacted with so many people that weren’t always the nicest (or easiest) to work with. I’m convinced that someone told them that they needed to act that way to get what they wanted. Thankfully I learned otherwise early-on, and while I’m definitely not always perfect and have my moments, I always hold that true to my core which has enabled me to build great relationships with the people I work with and come in contact with. I believe this virtue has enabled me more success than I ever could’ve imagined.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. The beauty industry today has access to technology that was inconceivable only a short time ago. Can you tell us about the “cutting edge” (pardon the pun) technologies that you are working with or introducing? How do you think that will help people?

There are multiple categories of beauty innovation currently flourishing right now.

The first category I call Smart DIY Beauty. These are the tools and treatments you used to only receive from a professional like a dermatologist, plastic surgeon or trained esthetician. We’re seeing loads of new devices being released like laser hair removal, sonic micro planing, LED teeth whitening tools, smart toothbrushes, and skin lasers for wrinkles, texture, and discoloration. The door has been opened for women to create big changes from the comforts of their own home.

This category also includes innovative products like La Roche-Posay’s new wearable UV sensors that measure and track your personal UV exposure as well as new smart sunscreens in development which turn colors to let you know it’s no longer protecting you.

The second category is what I call Personalized Beauty: Diagnostics, Tracking, and Recommendation. These are the products and tools that utilize some combination of augmented reality, artificial intelligence and sophisticated sensors to diagnose skin conditions such as hyperpigmentation, dark circles, moisture levels, pore size, and wrinkles. Then many will recommend appropriate products to treat whatever was “diagnosed.” And to complete the circle, some will actually track the progress to see how well the products are working. It’s definitely the era of smart beauty.

The progress side of this category are the tools that are allowing us to track how products are working. If a smart mirror is taking images of your skin, and continues to do so as you implement a new treatment routine, over time, you can see the progress, or lack of progress, the treatment has on achieving the results you want.

Also part of this category are sophisticated AR- and AI-enabled app companies working directly with many of the biggest beauty brands to enable you to “try before you buy.” So picture a phone “selfie” app that uses facial mapping which allows you to try on multiple lipstick colors and makeup shades or give yourself a total makeover. Then when you find the one you want, you can purchase the products directly from the app. Not only is this convenient, it allows the brands to create better relationships with their customers.

And lastly is just an Emerging Beauty Tech Catch-All category which includes things like a DIY home soap making machine, websites that are using AI to assess beauty products to inform consumers of a product’s clean beauty score, new skin scanning camouflage devices and 3d printing at-home makeup machines.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

Well if we draw the parallel with what’s happening within the digital health industry, the privacy of our data is an issue of paramount proportions. The consumer needs to be able to trust their data is not only secure but being used ethically. Now our “beauty data” might not feel as sensitive to consumers but we are moving into an age where so much of beauty tech is falling under the umbrella of self-care or personal care.

Some of the real powers of collecting all this data across a vast array of people is that it will help us see important trends as well as make the diagnostics and recommendations much more accurate and efficacious.

I personally don’t immediately see the downside of physically using these technologies (sans improper use), but I think just like in health, consumers need to be made aware of how their data is being used.

Can you share 3 things that most excite you about the “beauty-tech” industry?

Oh my! Where do I begin? Everything excites me. As I enter my self-declared personal age of transformation, beauty tech will be right by my side. I work a lot and don’t always take the time to get facials and other “self-improvement” treatments. Now I don’t have to! I can perform diagnostics and treat from my own bathroom! Hell, I could do it from my bed if I wanted to 😉 I have no doubt these tech tools will just continue to improve year after year.

One “not quite ready for primetime” concept that gets me the most excited is the connected bathroom which I’ve had the opportunity to see demos of. I love the idea of a fully integrated build-in smart mirror that speaks to my personal care devices and tracks my routine as well as reminds me when I missed keeping up with necessary treatments. No doubt we are this close to seeing this come to fruition.

Something I haven’t mentioned much is the oral care industry that grew tremendously this past January at CES 2020. Connected toothbrushes were everywhere and loads of new smart ones! How often do we rush through our brushing routines not knowing if we covered all the basis? What we are seeing now are game-changers for a rushed brusher like me (and my son!). There are sensors built-in that communicate directly with an app to show you in realtime where you brushed and where you missed! No more guessing. This is brilliant for the little ones since their interface lives in a fun game. I’ve been using Philips DiamondClean for the past two years and am itching for one of these new smart ones.

In addition, Philips launched an app for teledentistry which connects you directly to a

Licensed dentist to assess your oral care needs remotely.

Can you share 3 things that most concern you about the industry? If you had the ability to implement 3 ways to reform or improve the industry, what would you suggest?

There aren’t many things I’m concerned about except for misinformation provided to the consumer or product claims that don’t fulfill. I’m still not convinced about how skincare recommendations can be derived from a DNA test. I do have more to learn on this, so I don’t want to speak out of turn. And the FDA has yet to weigh in.

However, over the past decade, more and more specialized DNA testing products have hit the market. Things like buying a customized knitted scarf to match your DNA traits or tests to let you know how your skin will age based on your DNA.

I am a big fan of diagnostic tests, but these feel like they don’t have a valuable purpose. We have so much power to affect our bodies, skin and overall health with diet, fitness, lifestyle and the use of quality products that relying on what our DNA says around our beauty routines seems unnecessary.

You are an expert about beauty. Can you share 5 ideas that anyone can use “to feel beautiful”? (Please share a story or example for each.) feel in control…control to say no, structure

1. Build a morning and evening routine. Consistency is the key to see improvement and building these routines will not only help you accomplish this but will help you gain the freedom of struggling to figure. I wrote an entire eBook about just this thing that just got released and is available free to download. Wicked Wellness: Your Blueprint for Building Rituals & Routines That Lead to Big Breakthroughs
2. Add a short meditation into your daily routine. I have worked with so many brilliant experts in this field and there is proof that it positively affects your overall health, your mind and mood, your daily performance and so much more. I used to think meditation was such a woo-woo practice until I was shown the proof! There are new technology aids like the Muse that have helped a novice mediator like me gain confidence in the daily practice.
3. Find skincare products that work for your skin and use them consistently. I lived with skin that was dry on top and oily underneath for years. When my skin broke out, I used harsh products to dry it out. Let’s just say, my skin kinda sucked. Ironically, for the past two years, I was invited to produce a beauty tech panel at Cosmoprof Bologna, one of the biggest beauty shows in the world. While I was there I visited the Korea pavilion where so much beauty innovation is happening and took home a kit of products that kicked off my interest in improving my skin. When I returned home, I was introduced to a night oil by Sunday Reilly. I couldn’t’ believe that sleeping with oil on my face wouldn’t cause breakouts but it didn’t. In fact, it did quite the opposite. I woke up and my skin was plump and beautiful. I then purchased a few more of their “cult favorites” and my skin has transformed. Every morning I touch it and love how healthy it feels.
4. Integrate fitness into your daily routine. Even if only for 20 minutes. Last year, as I struggled to develop a healthier self, I decided to bring my Peloton out from retirement and committed to getting on the bike for just 5 minutes a day. Yep, only 5 minutes to start. I built that up to 20–30 minutes and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself. What I quickly learned was that even when I had a rough day or felt like I didn’t accomplish enough, I DID THAT! I treated my heart, body, and mind to something so special and important. This is immensely fulfilling and you can safely go to bed high-fiving yourself for what you achieved. And there is nothing more beautiful and empowering than taking pride in ourselves.
5. Revive your makeup routine! There are so many amazing products on the market and I recently did an overhaul of most of my products. I cleaned up my makeup space and organized it in a way that I could see everything clearly. Makeup had become such a chore and I lost the play and the joy of putting it on. And while this revival is still new for me, I’m finding that some of the newer product brands go on so much better. And after taking such great care of my skin, the makeup goes on and really do feel beautiful!

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

I founded Wicked Awesome You to build a movement of incredible women in their 40’s and 50s+ on a forever quest to grow, learn, transform and live vibrantly despite the fact that our bodies are working against us. It’s in our nature to keep striving for more, and just because we have hit a certain age does not mean we have lost our craving to be beautiful, to feel sexy, to be strong and in control. Life happens to everyone, but WAY and its community of impassioned women will be here to help lift each other up every step of the way.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

I got reacquainted with this quote and it hit home for so many reasons. “You had the power all along my dear.” Glenda the Good Witch from Wizard of Oz.

I think this is so powerful and resonates so much with me. I wish I knew that all my insecurities and growing pains were just part of the process. Sometimes we think we’re the only ones struggling, but alas it’s just a rite of passage.

How can our readers follow you online?

Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/WickedAwesomeYou

Private Facebook Circle+ Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2107236349402724/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/wickedawesomeyouxx/

Website https://www.wickedawesomeyou.com/

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

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The Future Of Beauty, With Beauty Tech Expert Jill Gilbert was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.