Month: May 2020

The Future Of Beauty: “Genomics and artificial intelligence should bring us to know things that…

The Future Of Beauty: “Genomics and artificial intelligence should bring us to know things that were never possible before” With Mark Greenspan

The advancement in Genomics and artificial intelligence should bring us to know things that were never possible before. This will allow for exponential improvements that most people cannot fathom. A better understanding of one’s unique genetic variations will allow for the personalization of skincare products and precise pharmaceuticals that will fit each person’s genetic information.

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 Mark Greenspan.

Mark Greenspan combines being a serial entrepreneur, avid anti-aging enthusiast, and futurist into all his beauty and wellness ventures. He has been managing, consulting, and marketing for elite Board-Certified Plastic surgeons and aesthetic physicians for over 15 years.

In 2014 he founded Beauty Fix Med Spa concept in NYC that has catered to an array of celebrities like Cardi B, Becky G, MS. USA, and a host of Instafamous models. He founded BeautyFix Med Spa with the philosophy of combining cutting edge science and technology and merging it with highly skilled clinicians. He is continuously working with medical advisers, and mentors around to the world to hunt down the most innovative and safest aesthetic treatments Additionally, he is launching Genlyft, the only patented face-lift with Yale physician Dr. William K. Boss, to address the needs for minimally invasive surgical procedures with dramatic results. Beauty Fix Plastic Surgery will launch in tandem with Genlyft bringing together a multitude of board-certified plastic surgeons led by Dr. Steve Fallek. This allows for the pairing of each patient with an expert in a specific area of plastic surgery. He is also a Co-founder of Sparq Life, the world’s First Lab tested eco-friendly vitamin inhalation device that replaces nicotine and harmful chemicals with Vitamins, Amino Acids, and Botanicals.

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 think the idea for working for anyone else was just not something that had ever appealed to me.

My only job was being a personal trainer at 19 years old, and that was very flexible. It turned into what’s known now as a side hustle while pursuing a degree in nutrition. I think those early life decisions and passions led me into the world’s beauty, wellness, and anti-aging pursuits.

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

I think we are all living in that time currently. The current challenges that COVID-19 is bringing will challenge every entrepreneurs’ resiliency and resourcefulness. It is only with those two workings in a synergy that can we find ways to get through and even to flourish.

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 can’t identify an exact typing point, but I think it is an everlasting quest that continues to acquire more knowledge and the game of connecting the dots from all of them. I believe the more insights you can analyze and use, the better the results will be.

None of us can 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 cannot point to one individual, but instead, I think it’s just the culmination of ingesting knowledge from an array of brilliant minds of our time through their books, videos, and seminars.

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?

We have recently begun to work with a new device called CoolTone. It has been developed by pharma giant Allergan that is known for manufacturing Botox and Coolsculpting. CoolTone received FDA clearance for strengthening and toning muscles. It accomplishes this with (MMS) which uses electromagnetic energy to cause involuntary muscle contractions.

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?

An unintended consequence of using magnetic muscle stimulation is that the device could work too well, and some individuals may become overly reliant on technology. This could lead to a neglect of traditional exercise routines, which have even a more extensive array of benefits than just creating muscle.

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

I am personally very excited to see what happens in the next decade, not only in the field of lasers and novel compounds that will improve upon the facial fillers of today, but more so with artificial intelligence, genomics, and anti-aging medications. I think anything that can help slow down or reverse biological aging, to some degree, will have a significant impact on aesthetics.

The advancement in Genomics and artificial intelligence should bring us to know things that were never possible before. This will allow for exponential improvements that most people cannot fathom. A better understanding of one’s unique genetic variations will allow for the personalization of skincare products and precise pharmaceuticals that will fit each person’s genetic information.
The emerging breakthroughs that will be discovered in the realm of stem cells should have wide-reaching benefits in regenerating organs. Biologists are beginning to in Japan to grow retinas and cornea from a small sample of skin. I can only imagine what will be learned on how to treat our aging skin.
Augmented reality will help to keep propelling the surge of online shopping for makeup and skincare. Improvements in facial recognition try on apps that will change the online experience.

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

1)The advancement of smart skincare tools and virtual try-on apps could help fuel insecurities when they result in negative feedback to the users. People may not be able to grasp the proper meanings and put them into perspective. It can also lead to people to have less human interaction with beauty consultants and rely just on computers for advice. Although intended to be personalized recommendations, they may be way off the mark until the technology continues to improve.

Solution

Is to have many trusted resources to keep a close eye and give as much realistic, unbiased information to the public

2) The advancement in technology has been occurring since the beginning of time, but now technology is growing exponentially at a rate never known before. I think there are a tiny fraction of the 8 billion people that even have a clue as to what’s to come in the next 20 years. Futurist and well-respected genius Ray Kurzweil, who is also the director of engineering at Google, explains the law of accelerating returns. Our growth is not linear but exponential and that we will see 20,000 years of progress in the 21 st century, not 100. I think technology is impressive when used for improving mankind, but there are always have been unintended consequences that are hard to predict.

This is another area that just needs more coverage regularly to get more people ready for changes, so they don’t seem as abrupt as they will if we stay on the current course. As of now, you need to follow select people and companies like Singularity University, Ray Kurzweil, or Aubrey de Grey to stay on the cutting edge. These names, unfortunately, are not familiar with the masses like our Hollywood celebrities or Instafamous models

3)The explosion of online platforms like Amazon and other ones that use 3rd party sellers may increase the amount of counterfeit skincare products on the market. Aside from just being ripped off, the more significant concern is to what is in these products that we are putting into our skin.

Solution

There needs to be more oversight by these platforms to rid themselves of counterfeit products, and there should also be an agency that just dedicated to monitoring the skincare industry. The ingredients that are used in many bestselling products have a very suspect component, to say the least, that we all have 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.)

I think being aware of one’s posture is an essential component of confidence and beauty. I think we all can remember a time when we didn’t feel up to par and noticed our body language change negatively.
Another one would be not to allow yourself to have negative thoughts for too long and to break the pattern as soon as you recognize you are spiraling down. This is something we all have experienced at one time or the other and always need to keep an eye on it
One of the old tried and true ones are just to stay active physically. I think many of us can relate to feeling more beautiful and confident after consistent work at the gym
I think staying up to date on beauty treatments and working with experts in the field is vital as well. It’s empowering and can enhance one outer beauty as well as make you feel better psychologically. I had been injected with some Hyaluronic Acid-based filler under my eyes a few months ago because I’m noticing some hollowing out in the under-eye area. I felt better with my appearance in 10 minutes.
I think the last one I would say is to surround yourself with people who make you feel beautiful and who are your biggest advocates. I think everyone can relate to the feeling different about one’s self around different people.

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 have already begun to do just that as a Co-founder at sparqlife, where we are bringing alternative products to create a movement away from nicotine addiction in any form. This could be in the form of nicotine vapes that our youth is addicted to or traditional cigarettes. This can have a substantial empowering impact on the mental and physical well being of vast quantities of people. The other movement I wish had begun would create the most significant impact on society though in my opinion.

The revolution against aging and dying has already begun, Calico funded by Google with 1.5 Billion dollars behind it and the Sens Research Foundation headed by Aubrey de grey is at the forefront of tackling this issue. They are approaching aging as a treatable disease rather than just the inevitable and have already made significant progress. I think the more awareness and money that is poured into this, the faster we will see things that will benefit our lives. I can’t think of a bigger problem than aging.

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

I think the quote by famous stoic and former emperor Marcus Aurelius has had a significant impact on me.

He said you could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

The fact that the whole future lies in uncertainty I try to live in the immediate present.

How can our readers follow you online?

Instagram Markgreenspan_ and on linked in

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

The Future Of Beauty: “Genomics and artificial intelligence should bring us to know things that… 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: “Infrared light can be used to dissolve fat cells” With Dr. Thomas Trevisani

Another very important element of the face is skin. We all want to have a more youthful, more glowing skin. In professional offices we have professional devices that can address a lot of skin conditions and issues. Led light therapy-completely non invasive and easy — helps regenerate skin from aging, and other skin conditions, such as acne.

As a part of our series about how technology will be changing the beauty industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Board Certified Plastic Surgeon Dr. Thomas Trevisani.

Dr. Thomas Trevisani, often referred to as Dr. Tom, is a Board Certified Plastic Surgeon who specializes in Rhinoplasty, Primary and Revision, as well as Body Contouring after weight loss including post-bariatric reconstruction. His body contouring procedures are precise and transformative. His Rhinoplasties are elegant and refined. Practicing for over 30 years, Dr. Tom has become widely known for performing Closed Rhinoplasty, also referred to as Endonasal Rhinoplasty, nasal surgery performed by making all main incisions hidden inside.

Based in Orlando, Florida, Dr. Tom is one of the most experienced and trusted cosmetic surgeons in the country. He has been featured in a wide range of top tier media outlets including The Doctors, and won “Best Bets” by Orlando Sentinel for five consecutive years. He was named “Top Physician” by Orlando Family Magazine, “Top 100 Doctors” by Real Self from 2012 to 2019.

In addition to being certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery, Dr. Tom is a member of the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, and was previously on the Board of Directors for the Orlando Chapter of the American Cancer Society. In response to his lectures and publications, Dr. Tom has been the recipient of the Physician’s Recognition Award for Continuing Medical Education by the American Medical Association. Dr. Thomas P. Trevisani’s private practice has been successfully performing plastic and reconstructive surgery in the Orlando area since 1981.

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?

What brought me to this specific career path of plastic surgery goes back to my preteen years.

I’m part of a large Italian family and I’m a second-generation Italian American. We have a family grocery store and working there as a teenager taught me the benefit of serving the customer. Weekends at the grocery store were very busy, noisy and educational.

My father and grandfather were very specific and demanding with respect to the details of customer service.

One day I sustained a very deep cut on my right hand. My grandfather quickly applied pressure, wrapped it up and off I went to the emergency room. I was accompanied by my father’s younger brother, who was a medical student at the time. He actually supervised the repair of the cut. That was my first exposure to the power and efficiency of the field of medicine.

As a senior in high school, I started to develop abdominal pain, which was followed by two or three days of observation by my uncle, who now was a practicing family doctor. He ended up taking me to the emergency room, where I ultimately received the diagnosis of a perforated appendix. I was immediately rushed to surgery. At that time, we were lacking certain antibiotics and I spent one full month or more in the hospital, being tended to by nursing students, registered nurses, and my uncle. That experience solidified the path of medicine for me.

I made my way through college graduate school medical school but it wasn’t until my first job in the emergency room that I felt the calling for plastic surgery. The more I demonstrated my skills and proved my worthiness, the two plastic surgeons on staff both separately approached me with a direct order that I needed to return to residency training and focus on plastic surgery. They said I had the gift. That was a first I had heard of any specific kind of gift but I took them seriously and the more I pursued it the greater knowledge of how true it was.

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

From the time I graduated high school at age 18, it took over 15 years of schooling and training in preparation for private practice.

My last and final year as a resident was very exciting and full of responsibility and fulfillment. But that first year of private practice was profoundly challenging in a much different way. Creating an office with all of its equipment and furniture is a daunting task. I had significant help in organizing this new and exciting venture and the practice became successful from day one.

The tipping point of my success occurred when I was one of the younger plastic surgeons in the community and therefore all the older doctors gave me their call; meaning I was on call for all of the city and local hospitals. Within a matter of weeks, my waiting room was full of trauma patients, as well as patients with automobile accidents, and reconstructive cancer patients. I no longer had a professor watching over me since I had completed all of the required training and had passed all of the required testing. Within a matter of months I knew had made the right decision and the practice was off and running, serving the community.

The only thing different was that I was now completely and totally responsible for all aspects of the practice — — clinically, administratively, and financially.

The primary lesson that I learned was that preparation is everything; and oddly enough it was the customer service in respect for the patient’s that I had learned in the family business that gave me the greatest degree of advantage and fulfillment.

Clinically and surgically I was very competent from the beginning, but the relationships I made with my patients were just as important — and that is not taught in medical school.

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?

My gratitude is spread over several individuals. My parents encouraged me to seek a path that I could find exciting, exhilarating and make a full commitment to.

The family business was an option, but I had different aspirations. My parents were understanding and helped encourage my exploration of career. My uncle, the physician, served as a role model and I tried to emulate his style and personality. He was very successful and loved by his patients.

My pivot to plastic surgery is definitely attributable to my relationship with the plastic surgeons in the community Hospital where I worked in the emergency room. They saw in me what needed to be seen in order for me to realistically achieve stature as a board-certified plastic surgeon. Without their acknowledgment of my performance in the emergency room and with their specific recommendations to residencies and training programs I may not have achieved what I was meant to do.

Technology certainly has a very identifiable role in the delivery of products and services in all aspects of life, especially the beauty industry.

However we must keep in mind that from a medical standpoint the beauty industry is divided into surgical and nonsurgical services.

The technological advances have been more profoundly identifiable in the non-surgical arena; Laser skin resurfacing, radio frequency applications, micro needling and many other noninvasive techniques have been found to be extremely helpful with respect to beautification and anti-aging of the skin.

One particularly interesting technological achievement is the UV sense device by L’Oreal. It is a nail appliqué that measures the UV light that you are exposed to at any given moment. It can sync with your smartphone to give your reading. I’ve used infra red light at a medium to low wavelength in order to facilitate dissolution of fat cells allowing greater amounts of fat removed would like a suction.

As a surgeon focused on rhinoplasty and revision, I have found the use of ocular magnification devices with built-in illumination abilities have helped to achieve greater, more refined results.

Body contouring can now be assisted with technologies like tissue glue; in the right hands and when used properly, this can help eliminate the need for postoperative drains after large abdominoplasty’s.

All of these technological advances for the most part can help achieve better results with lower complication rates — — greatly benefiting the public in general.

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?

Charlie Brooker, the creator of black mirror presents some very interesting dilemmas with respect to technology and humanity as portrayed in his TV series “Black Mirror”. I can think of one element with respect to surgical robotics — — that is the performance of surgery using robotic assistance.

Today, the robots are controlled by a surgeon from a distance. However it could be envisioned that these robots could develop artificial intelligence and begin to challenge the surgeons next move or decision-making process. This could create a very challenging environment for the future of robotic surgery.

Plastic surgery would be very difficult to transform itself into robotic surgery because the performance of our procedures are so specific and dependent upon the creative capabilities of the surgeon. In essence, plastic surgery is creative anatomy. Each and every operation is designed specifically for that particular patient by that particular surgeon.

Body dysmorphia can be very detrimental to the patient if that patient finds a surgeon willing to help materialize the images that sufferers of this entity create in their mind. We’ve all seen noses that are overdone, lips that are overdone, facelifts that have been overdone and pulled too tightly, as well as laser resurfacing carried to the extreme. Like most all things in life, balance and judicial use must be respected and sought. It takes a human conscious to make these types of judgement calls; you can’t replace that kind human emotion with a computer.

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

The beauty tech industry is fascinating! There are products now available on the market that have never existed before. Some of them work, some of them don’t, some devices are not for everyone. But overall, the variety of existing products is fascinating.

In my opinion, one of the most important elements of attractiveness is smile — and teeth.

I have always advised my patients to address their teeth prior to undergoing any facial surgery. One of the tools I always recommend is Electric toothbrush, such as Braun Oral B. I can’t wait to try the new Oral B iO Toothbrush — it will be a fun, multitasked brush!

Another very important element of the face is skin. We all want to have a more youthful, more glowing skin. In professional offices we have professional devices that can address a lot of skin conditions and issues. Led light therapy-completely non invasive and easy — helps regenerate skin from aging, and other skin conditions, such as acne. Of course Professional grade devices are always better , but you can always have a mini device at home as a maintenance in between office visits.

Lastly, we want our bodies to look the part. I always encourage patients to live a healthy lifestyle. In addition to it, there’re great devices to assist them with creating toned bodies, such Emsculpt or CoolTone. It is not a substitute for healthy diet and exercise but definitely a great machine to help tone the body.

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?

One aspect of the plastic surgery profession that concerns me is how do we address the concept of body dysmorphia. This is a condition that is essentially a mental illness characterized by an obsessive focus on a perceived flaw in one’s appearance. This can be very difficult to diagnose. These individuals may spend countless hours in front of a mirror evaluating and analyzing a perceived flaw and what can be done to improve it. They constantly compare their appearance with others and avoid social interactions and photos. There are no blood tests x-rays or other methods to make the diagnosis. The patient must recognize that they have this problem and seek psychiatric evaluation and assistance. More often than not however, they shop for a Plastic Surgeon that will agree with their perceived deformity and offer some surgical or nonsurgical treatment. There are charlatans and unethical surgeons out there who will take advantage of and abuse these individuals.

One way to address this is to require Plastic Surgeons to attend training programs given by psychiatrists to help identify these individuals prior to accepting them as a surgical candidate. Furthermore, it would be helpful if each State throughout the country requires very specific credentials for plastic surgeons to elevate our professions level of performance. Unfortunately, state laws allow many individuals, who are not qualified plastic surgeons, to operate and treat patients. Currently the profession to a great degree is self policed and unfortunately charlatans and unscrupulous and untrained individuals are often only held accountable after they do damage.

A second aspect or element of my professional Plastic Surgery is the concept of internal or closed versus open rhinoplasty. For many years beginning in the late 19th century the internal approach to creating an improved nasal appearance was the standard. The open approach gained popularity in the 90s and is the primary method of teaching new residents who perform rhinoplasty. I support that many primary rhinoplasties should not be done open as they have inherent risks, complications including a visible scar and prolonged swelling of the all-important tip area.

My solution to this would be to require all training programs whether they be plastic surgery training programs or ENT residencies — — be taught how to perform closed rhinoplasty.The new surgeon, armed with these two techniques can then be better suited to make the right decision to serve the patient. I am a proponent of closed or internal incision rhinoplasty whether it be primary or revision.

A third aspect of health and beauty as it pertains to my profession of plastic surgery is obesity. The relationship between a person’s height and weight will determine clinically whether or not they are obese. Charts are available online to evaluate one’s BMI and therefore their level of obesity. Being overweight is more than marginally appealing. Obesity has a direct link to diabetes, heart disease, and other potentially fatal conditions that can be minimized and in some cases eliminated by having an appropriate weight for one’s height. Improving the situation is very challenging. Because we have a nation predicated upon liberty and freedom, it’s challenging to mandate diet exercise and an overall healthy lifestyle. This must be a patient’s choice based on knowledge, experience and training.

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.)

The word beauty is as old as man himself.

Generally speaking the word beauty is a positive word, with roots in balance, harmony and overall general visual appearance. Although spiritually and philosophically we know that beauty is more than skin deep. However, for the purposes of our profession, we focus on anatomic or visual appearance as the gold standard for beauty. In today’s culture, the concept of beauty is clear — it’s all about how something or someone looks. This may sound superficial, but over the decades I’ve learned that one’s appearance is deeply rooted and intimately connected to their personal well-being. Body weight, BMI, muscle mass, cardiovascular conditioning, as well as drinking and smoking can all have very direct and profound influence on one’s appearance. In my particular profession, I focus on the nose and the overall body as it relates to excess skin and sagging. If a person chooses to be overweight, then that’s their choice. If a person would feel better having a more attractive nose, then it’s their choice to pursue surgical intervention. You’d be surprised to hear how something as simple as improving a person’s nose can help them feel better and more beautiful.

One of the most rewarding elements of my practice is when I have the privilege of assisting a person who’s made a lifestyle change and has lost over 100 pounds. Shedding unwanted pounds, especially in the 100 or more range, is cause for celebration in and of itself. Though, it normally welcomes unwanted excess skin. So, we discuss our surgical goals. I usually prefer to address the breasts and abdomen first, as this gives the best and quickest result for a person who’s lost significant weight. Redesigning and re-contouring the patient’s body after massive weight loss is a challenge, requiring great creativity and vision.

More often than not when we remove the splint off a rhinoplasty patient, whether primary or revision in, the patient and the family break down in tears. It is a very rewarding and emotional time. Similarly, with the body contouring patients the first set of procedures — breast and abdomen produce a profound improvement in their appearance and in their body image that they also are very emotionally impacted. This profession, plastic surgery is so rewarding and fulfilling that I am as motivated today as ever. I feel totally blessed to have found the profession that fits me perfectly.

If I could inspire a movement that would benefit the most people with the most amount of good it would be a commitment by all humans to be the best. This may sound trite, but it is essentially a commitment by each and every one of us to a life of knowledge, experience, skill and training.

It takes great commitment and work to be our best both physically, morally, ethically, spiritually and financially. Ancient civilizations for example Greeks and Romans embraced these concepts very seriously. Much of the beliefs we have today have roots in antiquity. The great philosophers of the past focused on these attributes. I firmly believe that each human being has at least one gift and at least one passion. Many humans have multiple passions and multiple gifts — — these individuals stand out among us. However when a passion meets a person’s gifts that creates a life — I urge all my patients and everyone willing to listen to search their soul for what they truly find important and pursue it.

In the meantime, let’s stay healthy, check our blood pressure, modulate our blood chemistry and make a commitment to longevity. It’s not enough to just live longer, we have an obligation to live longer, live better, and look our best. My personal opinion is that this is God’s will for us.

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

“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — — think about such things.”

Of great influence on me were my parents. My father died young in his early 50s from cancer, but he was a hard-working, noble man full of generosity and very inquisitive. My mother had a very clear sense of right and wrong and she portrayed it to all of her six children on a daily basis. She was stern but not mean and had very high expectations for her six sons to live honorable lives.

How can our readers follow you online?

For more information about Dr. Thomas Trevisani, and to book a consultation, you can go to https://drtomtrevisani.com/

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

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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/drtomtrevisani

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

The Future Of Beauty: “Infrared light can be used to dissolve fat cells” With Dr. Thomas Trevisani was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dr. Hector Salazar-Reyes: I would like to start a movement to promote, support, and communicate…

Dr. Hector Salazar-Reyes: I would like to start a movement to promote, support, and communicate about safety in the beauty industry

The true movement that I would like to start is to promote, support, and communicate about safety, whether it’s plastic surgery, cosmetic surgery or the beauty industry. I would like to be able to protect consumers and have them achieve the outcomes that they seek, safely.

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 Dr. Hector Salazar-Reyes. Passionate about cosmetic surgery and patient care, Dr. Salazar loves nothing more than seeing a patient’s confidence transform after a procedure. Having dedicated 17 years of his life to achieve the best medical training, his philosophy is centered around providing beautiful results safely and ensuring each and every patient feels well cared for from their first appointment to their last. In addition to being an American Board Certified Plastic Surgeon, Dr. Salazar is a member of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), a prestigious organization that is highly selective with its membership. Only plastic surgeons who demonstrate a high lever of skill, experience, and expertise in aesthetic plastic surgery and cosmetic medicine are inducted in ASAPS. Dr. Salazar is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and an active member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Dr. Salazar is also committed to giving back, and he has worked with the Cronin/Christus Foundation to provide much-needed reconstructive care to those in need in Chihuahua, Mexico.

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

I’ve known I wanted to be a plastic surgeon since I was 10 years old. I planned my entire life for this path which I love. Plastic surgery is a combination of art and science. What brought me to plastic surgery is that as a plastic surgeon, I can impact a patient’s life in a very positive way. As a plastic surgeon. I can make tangible changes which can be seen in a relatively short period of time. Through these physical changes, my patients enjoy the changes in their physical appearance but I also see them benefit from a boost their confidence as well as their general wellbeing.

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

I vividly remember this 58 year old male patient who actually underwent a strict exercise regimen as well as a radical change in his diet and he was able to lose about a 125 pounds without any other further help. We examined him in the office and established a step-by-step surgical plan to get rid of all the excessive and loose skin that he developed. We performed a total body transformation that involved 3 surgeries. He obtained a very natural result. We started with a body lift in addition to a chest wall or breast reduction. On his 2nd operation we performed a face and neck lift together with liposuction on very small specific areas. And on a 3rd procedure we perform hair restoration for him which boosted his overall image. At the end he was still himself but looking much more healthy and with better possibilities of enjoying life without all the excessive tissue that was the result of his well desired weight loss. And this patient’s natural and gradual transformation really remained in my mind as well as in my heart as proof of what well performed step-by-step plastic surgery can achieve on a patient that has taken the appropriate steps for a better healthier life.

I want to share 3 important moments in my professional development. The first moment was when I completed my plastic surgery training after 17 years of medical education. The second moment is when I became part of La Jolla Cosmetic Surgery Centre, which I consider to be the best practice in plastic surgery. My addition created a synergy between a very respected and well-established practice with the youth and new techniques of a young plastic surgeon. The third point was the establishment of two new programs which I am bringing to our practice. These are high definition liposuction, which basically provides muscle etching to our patients, and a comprehensive hair restoration program which runs the gamut from nutritional supplements to full hair transplantation.

I’m very fortunate as my life has been touched by multiple mentors. Just to give you an example, I was trained in plastic surgery where the silicone implant was invented. Throughout this journey, I have operated side-by-side with some of the world experts in plastic surgery. I spent several months with Alfonso Barrera, MD, FACS, who is among the most respected plastic surgeons in hair transplantation and a pioneer in enhancing the natural appearance of this technique.

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

The world of cosmetic surgery and the beauty industry as you’re calling it is very, very vast. Many improvements and advancements are taking place each day.

I would like to concentrate on one topic that I feel really passionate about and that is the area of hair restoration which, it may surprise you to know, impacts women as well as men. Recently, multiple advancements are being introduced since traditional hair transplantation is mostly for men.

First, we are using a newer hair transplantation technique. Incisions are not necessary. This technique is called FUE, which stands for Follicular Unit Extraction. This basically means that every single hair that is going to be transplanted is harvested one by one without the need to place an incision. As incisions can cause visible scars, this is an important advance.

Secondly, we’re obtaining great hair restoration results by injecting of plasma rich platelets or PRP into the patient’s scalp. I have many female patients who are overjoyed to have healthier, thicker and more dense hair relatively quickly from this outpatient procedure.

Lastly, we recently added the Keravive scalp treatment which is a very powerful “facial” which is performed on your scalp, not on your face. Stimulating and nourishing the scalp is something that has never done before.

I’m very excited about the comprehensive holistic options that we have for hair restoration and those 3 things could be the considered noninvasive treatments that actually work and provide fabulous results for patients.

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?

All treatments have their own intrinsic risk and benefits, but we are very cautious with all the services that we provide. If we offer a treatment at La Jolla Cosmetic Surgery Centre, you can be assured that it has been clinically proven and can be offered safely. Patients can rest assured that we are not experimenting with these new advancements in technology and that our number one priority is their satisfaction with the treatments that we’re providing.

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 ranges from simple skin care product to complex surgeries to improve appearance. Along the continuum, new technologies and treatments are being introduced.

My main concern is the consumer’s ability to evaluate these new offerings and the qualifications of the providers. Our website, ljcsc.com, contains a treasure trove of information to help patients. We characterize our practice as, The Smart, Safe Place to Get Glam®. There is a lot of philosophy concentrated in those few words. Consumers need to be “smart shoppers” and choose practices that adhere to the highest U.S. safety standards.

Secondly, there is a great deal of misinformation that endangers patients. As consumers consider different procedures and providers, they will encounter much non-regulated content on websites and in social media. There is a lot of laxity or gaps in legislation that enables doctors and providers from other specialties to provide treatments or perform procedures that they may well not be properly trained or qualified to do. What someone can do in one state, they cannot do in another.

Lastly, it is important that patients are properly prepared for treatment and recovery regardless of how small or involved the treatment is. Our practice is known internationally for its patient education and informed consent process. We educate our patients and we make sure that we every opportunity to make them a partner in their rejuvenation journey.

You are an expert about beauty. Can you share 5 ideas that anyone can use “to feel beautiful”?

I think my response will surprise you. I think the most important things that people can do to feel good about themselves are pretty basic.

Maintain good health, which includes eating properly and monitoring your weight.
Exercise regularly and vary what you do so you can be consistent and enjoy this time.
Both men and women should have a good skin care regimen and avoid excessive sun exposure.
Nurture your mind by learning new things and interacting with positive people and activities
Do things that are fun, including non-surgical or surgical procedures that will reflect your spirit and enjoyment of life.

The true movement that I would like to start is to promote, support, and communicate is about safety, whether it’s plastic surgery, cosmetic surgery or the beauty industry. I would like to be able to protect consumers and have them achieve the outcomes that they seek, safely.

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

So even though this quote may sound obvious, it’s very important and not every health care provider or physician or specialist follows it, “Listen to your patient.” It is really important that the treating physician can listen carefully in order to translate their words into a surgical vision. The patient comes in with a concern, knows exactly what bothers him about a certain condition. The patient has an idea of the way she wants to look or the goals that she would like to achieve. Communication is crucial. Ultimately, the patient becomes part of the treating team.

How can our readers follow you online?

I invite your readers to follow La Jolla Cosmetic Surgery Centre Instagram account (@ljcsc) as well as my Instagram account which is @dr_salazar_la_jolla_cosmetic and to visit our website at www.ljcsc.com. They’ll find many stories of people like them finding ways to better enjoy their lives. They can also email, give us a call, or send a text to establish contact. If there’s any area of their body that they have a concern about or simply want to improve or enhance, we will listen to their concerns, present different options for treatment, and think about their satisfaction and safety at all times. Thank you.

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

Dr. Hector Salazar-Reyes: I would like to start a movement to promote, support, and communicate… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Brock Blake of Lendio: “They told me it was impossible and I did it anyway”

You’re going to experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows and you’ve got to just enjoy the journey and put one step in front of the other to fight to live another day. Just insert all of the clichés here, but that is who I am and what I know. I don’t think entrepreneurs are these amazing people, they just keep fighting every single day and keep going.

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 Brock Blake.

Brock Blake is the CEO and founder of Lendio, the largest online marketplace of small business loans in the U.S.

Brock believes that access to capital should be simpler and quicker for small business owners, and he’s built a successful company around solving this problem. Brock leads the team that has helped business owners get access to more than $1B in funding. An Inc. 500 CEO, national keynote speaker, Forbes columnist, and Utah’s Emerging Executive of the Year, Brock’s dedication extends far beyond the boardroom. He has shaped a superior company culture with a humble and hungry team that is passionate about driving results and giving back. For every loan facilitated on Lendio’s marketplace platform, Lendio Gives, an employee contribution and employer matching program, donates a percentage of funds to low-income entrepreneurs around the world through Kiva.org. Brock’s most important accomplishments come from being a husband and a father of four.

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

I am passionate about entrepreneurship and passionate about businesses. I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life. My entrepreneurial spirit began to blossom when I took on a paper route as a young boy. From there, I moved into larger ventures like starting my own soccer camp business and purchasing scooters from China and selling them locally.

While studying at Brigham Young University, I found out about an entrepreneurial competition similar to the TV show The Apprentice (minus the cameras, drama and celebrity host). The competition, called Junto, challenged young, wannabe entrepreneurs to compete to win $50,000 to start a company. There were 100 applicants, 20 were selected to compete, and ultimately 5 winners were chosen. Fortunately, I was one of the 5!

With $50,000 in hand, I had the freedom to start any business venture I wanted. After considering a number of different business ideas, I kept coming back to a common pain point for entrepreneurs: access to capital. Every business owner I talked to needed capital to grow and expand their business, and it wasn’t easy to come by.

My co-founder and I took our $50,000 winnings to create FundingUniverse. It was a platform that connected small business owners to angel investors. After realizing that most of our customers didn’t need venture funding, we started working on a spinoff, Lendio, that provides small business owners with much-needed loans. Now after 8 years in business, Lendio has helped more than 70,000 small businesses get access to over $1.7B in loans to start and grow their businesses.

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

Yes we are. At Lendio, our main purpose is to help business owners get loans, and we’ve built this whole marketplace around it. Currently, what we do is we get the application data from the business owner and then we send it off to the lender. Now we’re to the point where we think we can be influential in changing the way people actually get loans. So, instead of the way it is today where you go, you fill out a 30-question application and you have to upload all these documents, we believe that we could streamline that application process to be a different experience.

For example, we recently launched our new cash-flow tool. It pulls the business owner’s bank data every single day and it monitors the cash trends as it goes up and down, as it inflows and outflows, when they get paid, when they need money, and things of that nature. By looking at that data on a regular basis, our system can be smart enough to determine when they qualify for a loan or when they will need a loan. It further streamlines the loan experience from needing a loan and filling out a bunch of big applications and instead proactively alerts business owners when they qualify. That’s a brief description of our most exciting project, but what we’re really trying to do is simplify our customers’ experiences so business owners can focus on running their businesses day-to-day rather than spend time filling out loan applications.

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

I mean, this is cliché to say, but it all starts with our team members and our people. We have a team that’s passionate about helping small business owners, that has this ‘humble-hungry’ attitude of rolling up their sleeves and getting things done. Every hire truly puts their best foot forward each day and recognizes each other’s’ high-five moments. The energy and the culture here amazes me, just the people that we have that are bought into the mission and are driven. In fact, Glassdoor recently named Lendio’s company culture as one of the top 50 cultures in the world for small businesses, and that’s based on anonymous employee reviews and ratings.That’s one of the things that really sets us apart. The culture here is just extremely unique, and we have a lot of fun with it. I believe if your team members are happy, then they will take care of your customers. It’s infectious. If you take care of your team, they’ll take care of you customers, your customers will be happy and it’s just this virtuous cycle. I really that sets us apart from the crowd.

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?

You know, there have been a lot of those moments from the very beginning. My whole career of being an entrepreneur — and at each pivotal stage of this company — I have had to persevere and ignore naysayers’ doubts. We got into this business intent on helping business owners get financing, and from day one people told us that it wasn’t going to work, that we would fail and we shouldn’t move forward. We didn’t listen and we quickly built a profitable company.

Early on, we were connecting entrepreneurs to investors, and we grew that business to $10 million in revenue even when people said it wasn’t going to work. Then when we got to $10 million in revenue, I noticed some flaws in our business model and decided to pivot and focus instead on helping business owners get loans. I saw an opportunity there, I knew that businesses needed capital. We started going out and having conversations with people and they told us we wouldn’t be able to get banks on board to lend to businesses. They said that banks are slow, we won’t be able to get lenders on board, don’t change your business model. People told us that wasn’t going to work, so instead of listening and stopping there, we went to work and started figuring out how to make it work. We ended up getting both banks and lenders on board. Then people said, “Okay, well I guess that worked for you, but there’s no way you’ll get repeat customers. They’ll come to you, get a one-time loan and then they’ll be off.” We didn’t listen, and now 50% of our customers are repeats.

So, all along the way people have offered their doubts and concerns, and at every turn I had to decide whether to let those doubts pull me back or pursue my vision. Don’t get me wrong, this is a very challenging business and there have been tons of growing pains and highs and lows along the way, in fact the deeper you get inside of the business, the more you realize how challenging it is. However, I believe that if you have persistence and you just keep working at it, that challenge will create value in the end.

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

From that initial $50,000 in won in a college entrepreneurial competition, Lendio has grown into the nation’s largest marketplace for small business loans. To date, Lendio has facilitated over $1.7 in business loans. From a macroeconomics viewpoint, that represents over $11 billion of economic impact across the United States. The best part is listening to the first-hand experiences of our customers. Each week my funding managers share their experiences with me. They say, “I worked with a business owner in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and here was their challenge, and this is what I needed to help them accomplish their goal.” We talk about how getting that loan affected their lives, and I realize the company I helped build made an impact today. If I hadn’t ignored the naysayers, none of this would have been possible, so it just shows how you need to trust your own gut and ignore the naysayers along the 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 about that?

The person that I immediately think of is my business partner Trent Miskin. Trent is absolutely brilliant. He is not afraid of any challenge, he knows how to roll up his sleeves and solve problems, and he’s extremely loyal and honest. He’d definitely put himself in the nerd category, but he is wickedly smart and has been a great leader and loyal business partner from day one. We certainly wouldn’t be where we are without what Trent has contributed to this business.

A while ago as we were growing our business, we faced a huge marketing dilemma. One of the most challenging aspects of this business is acquiring customers and doing it at scale. It’s both expensive and challenging because business owners need financing, but they don’t need it all the time, so you have to catch them with marketing messages when they actually need financing. We can’t target just any business owner either, we have certain criteria they have to meet. We have to find a business owner that has both revenue and a couple of years in business and some other things like that. Anyway, we had gone out and hired this VP of marketing from Florida who moved here with this incredibly successful resume. He spent 6–12 months trying to figure out how to acquire customers at scale and with the right cost. We experienced a lot of turnover in that team and he just couldn’t crack the code, so it became clear it wasn’t the right fit. He moved on and suddenly we had a missing marketing piece. Trent who had never stepped into marketing before — he was our CTO and computer science engineer — just said, “I’ll take over marketing.” With absolutely no marketing experience, no background, zero expertise in this sphere, he learned everything he could about it and reverse-engineered our marketing like an engineer would. He started looking at what types of customers we needed, where they came from, which channels worked and which channels didn’t work. He figured this out and put money and people into the ones that worked, and suddenly he completely overhauled the marketing department and helped our customer acquisition marketing team really perform. It’s a great story.

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?

So, I’m the youngest of six. There are five boys and one girl. As you can imagine, growing up, we would just compete like no other. Whether it was soccer or football or basketball or chess or anything you could possibly think of, we would compete hard. I, being the youngest, was always trying to live up to my older siblings and tried to beat them. So I think it’s just been ingrained in me this persistence, this people telling me I can’t and just trying to prove them wrong, from being the youngest and my natural competitive nature.

I also think a lot of that comes from my mom. My grandmother was a single mother and she basically worked 24 hours a day, minimum-wage just to pay the rent. They were so poor and literally had nothing. My mom had to be extremely self-sufficient. She had to get herself to school, get herself ready, do everything by herself. When she was a teenager, she wanted to go to prom, but she didn’t have a prom dress, so she caught a bus to downtown Portland — which was 20 miles away — went window shopping, found a dress that she really liked, and then went and bought fabric and on her own learned how to make a dress so she could have a prom dress. It probably wasn’t the most amazing dress out there, but did it all on her own. In the end, she was student body officer and a cheerleader and super successful. She went to college and paid for it all on her own and is self-made and she just had this amazing story that’s kind of embedded into us and who we are. So, a combination of those two things — being the youngest boy and competitive, and my mom’s example.

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. Do you homework, study it out. These aren’t just fly-by-night ideas. When I jump into anything, any new thing that people are going to say it’s not going to work, I spend a ton of time doing research and figuring out who the players are and what’s not working and what is.

I shared a little bit about the process of changing our business model above, but what I didn’t share was the extreme pressure we were under. While our revenues were increasing, they hadn’t caught up with expenses yet, and we eventually realized our business model wasn’t scalable. Two weeks before Christmas, we had no cash in the bank and no way to make payroll, we had a choice to make: continue down this path, knowing it was a dead end, or re-invent the business and start over. We had plenty of naysayers in both directions, so we had to rely on our research. We saw more risk, but also more potential for growth by reinventing our business model, so it seemed like the better choice.

2. Once you’ve done your homework, you need to trust your gut. If you believe you’ve done all that data and research and you think there’s an opportunity over there, you’ve got to trust it and you’ve got to go with it.

Continuing with the example above, although the data told us that we could scale our business by changing our business model, we still had to trust our own guts. Our new plan would require buy-in from a team we couldn’t pay. There was no guarantee of success, and as I mentioned, legions of people telling us it wouldn’t work. We talked to our team, and in the end they all agreed to stick with us. Right after Christmas, we shut down FundingUniverse — going from $10 million in revenue to zero overnight, and launched Lendio.

3. Focus on customers and product-market fit. Revenue cures all ills and the best way to validate and overcome naysayers is to say, will this customer buy it? Will they use it? Will they pay me for it? Figuring out how to focus on customers and product-market fit is central to success.

4. Be persistent. You’re going to experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows and you’ve got to just enjoy the journey and put one step in front of the other to fight to live another day. Just insert all of the clichés here, but that is who I am and what I know. I don’t think entrepreneurs are these amazing people, they just keep fighting every single day and keep going.

5. Learn from your mistakes and celebrate your wins. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Laugh when you make mistakes, fail fast, and when you fail, learn from it. Don’t beat yourself up, just do it again and again. Celebrate the high-five moments, and then you make progress, recognize that and celebrate that, but don’t get too high either.

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

I love that quote, there’s a quote out there and I don’t even remember who said it that says, ‘There’s the boxing ring. Those who are the critics are on the outside of the boxing ring and saying that you can’t do it. Then there are those who are actually inside of the ring that are doing it and don’t listen to the people outside the ring, just get in and go for it.’

It could also be “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

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 don’t know exactly how to articulate this, but I really believe in paying it forward. At Christmas, we gave each of our team members two $100 bills — one to have an experience with loved ones, and another $100 to go find someone in need that needs it more than you do. Then we asked them to come back and share those experiences. The experiences that have been written from that have been so awesome. And we do this Kiva thing where employees volunteer a portion of their salaries to donate to small business owners in struggling countries. We ask, can you sacrifice one lunch a month and give that to someone that needs that in a third-world country? We’ve seen $100 change lives and enable people to get a business off the ground and provide an income for their families. But it’s so small for us to give that. I just really believe in getting outside of ourselves. When you focus on people and on doing good for them, I believe one — you’ll be happier, and two — it comes back.

Can our readers follow you on social media?

Absolutely!

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brockblake/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrockBlake?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Website Link: https://www.lendio.com/

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

Brock Blake of Lendio: “They told me it was impossible and I did it anyway” 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: “Skin Wellness VS. Quick Fixes” With Elina Fedotova of Elina Organics

Beauty starts from within. The first step to feel more beautiful about yourself is to try and eliminate negative emotions like anger, fear, envy, and self-doubt. If you are focused on replacing those emotions with peace, love, and gratitude, you will immediately look more attractive. It will move you into higher vibrations and frequencies which naturally bring your life more beauty.

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 Elina Fedotova.

Elina is the formulator and CEO of Elina Organics, an award-winning cosmetic chemist and celebrity esthetician. She hand makes her professional skin care line in her laboratory using holistic principles and organic ingredients from around the world. In 2007, she founded the Association of Holistic Skin Care Practitioners (AHSCP); a nonprofit organization that provides ongoing training and education for professionals. The Elina Organics product line is available in professional skin care salons and spas across the country. She continues to offer her unique, holistic skin care treatments to clients who come to her spas in Chicago and Kalamazoo, MI.

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?

Growing up in Russia, I struggled with an oily and acne prone complexion. It was difficult to find solutions while avoiding antibiotics or oral antibiotics or other topical medications. Probiotics and compresses from herbal extracts of calendula, burdock root, and chamomile helped me to achieve the level of skin balance that I was satisfied with. Being able to improve my skin holistically was an incredible relief and gave me inspiration to learn more about herbs and Phytotherapy. At the age of 16, I had received a few facials from one of the salons in Moscow. The facials only consisted of steaming, extractions, massage, and applications of masks and lotions. A few years later, I ended up receiving a teaching degree and worked at a school and publishing house. At the same time, I was continuously studying chemistry, herbalism, and esthetics, learning how to make natural creams and homeopathic ointments. In 1991, I arrived in the United States with my husband Igor and our baby boy, Yuri. It took me several years to improve my English and receive my licensing in the United States. In 1998, I opened my first spa and I finally launched my own skin care line.

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

I have many stories during my two decades of work but today I would like to share one. I don’t know if it is interesting but it deeply touched me. Fifteen years ago, I was giving a facial to a client on the second floor of my spa. It was in the evening, all employees already left and we were alone in the building. Suddenly, we heard a very scary crashing glass noise. We both realized that someone broke in. I wanted to go downstairs to see what happened, but my client grabbed my hand, jumped from her treatment table barefoot in only a robe and said, “You can’t go alone. It is too dangerous and I am going with you.”

She refused to stay in the room and followed me barefoot downstairs. When we came to the lobby, we saw the large front window was broken. The criminals stole my purse and some money from the front desk. It was a cold Michigan day in January and freezing wind and snowflakes were floating into the spa. I asked my client to go home and she refused again. She stayed with me until the police arrived. It was too late to catch the criminals when the two policemen came to the spa. After completing their investigative report, they did not want to leave me alone with my problems. Instead, they went to the police station, brought plywood, hammers, and nails and covered my broken front window themselves. All of this time, I was in shock. And at that late of hours, it was not possible to get a professional technician to repair the window. The policemen comforted me with their kind words and made sure my spa would be warm and protected overnight. They did this out of the kindness of their hearts. My client could have asked for her money back and just went home but she didn’t. Because of people like this who are kind and loving, I think there is still good in this world. It was a deep and meaningful story for me which I am grateful for. The most interesting part about my career is learning about people and to be able to help them, not only on a skin level, but also on a soul connection level. This is part of the holistic approach to health and beauty.

My business started to grow pretty quickly thanks to my clients. I did not try to market my products to other salons but estheticians were knocking on my door, asking to learn more about herbal facials. They wanted to start working with my products because they heard about my business from their clients and friends. I realized I needed to create a retail channel but also wholesale prices for my products so that salon professionals could start to work with my line. In 2007, I formulated one of my best-selling products, the Elina Organics Ambra Lift Elixir, and could finally afford to do independent genomic studies on it.

In a 48-hour period, Ambra Lift Elixir is scientifically proven to increase the expression of Sirtuin-1, a key anti-aging gene, promote anti-wrinkle effects, and activate the anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory genes involved in protective cellular mechanisms, in a statistically significant way. It was quite shocking for people that a completely all natural and organic product could produce serious, clinical results.

In 2019, the same Ambra Lift Elixir won the Aestheticians’ Choice Awards through DERMASCOPE Magazine — our oldest trade show magazine for skincare professionals. When I started to distribute my products to other salons, I realized the need for holistic skin care education. I wanted to draw the line between conventional beauty treatments and clean beauty services, which benefit not only the skin, but also the entire body. This is why in 2007, I organized the Association of Holistic Skin Care Practitioners and this allowed me to be able to share this approach with other estheticians. Many holistically-minded people can feel isolated and I felt they needed a network to connect with likeminded estheticians. We believe a healthy body requires mental clarity, positive emotions, whole food and a clean environment. It is hard to achieve this alone. We need each other to make better choices individually and on a global scale. By taking a “whole-istic” approach to our health and lives, I feel we can deliver more peace to ourselves, care more about our resources, and help create a more harmonious life for all — practicing holistic skin care is a large part of making this happen. My tipping point happened around this time when I started to share my knowledge with other professionals and now my products are available in spas all around the country.

I do not have one particular person. But, to be able to be successful, you constantly have to do research. If you are only attending professional trade shows and conferences, that is not enough to be an industry leader. Instead of learning about what other people invent, I had to think out of the box and invent formulas myself. I was always guided by my intuition and gut feelings which led me to certain ingredients to study further. I would come up with new ideas and then brainstorm with my friends who are scientists, chemists, biologists, and progressively minded doctors to clarify some information. This helped me to create my formulas. Also, why I still do facials several times a month is because I get inspired to create new formulas by working with people directly. I can’t imagine creating new formulas without working with the skin and understanding a client’s needs. Working directly with my clients and understanding who I am exactly formulating for helps me incredibly.

I was doing liposome encapsulated skin care products since 1998. I never purchased liposomes and literally developed my own using phospholipids from organically grown botanicals. I introduced peptides in my products over 10 years ago as well. I was really fascinated with the research done by the scientist, Dr. Khavinison from Saint Petersburg, Russia.

If we are talking about technology, I did a genomic study on my Ambra Lift Elixir which was very cutting edge and helped me to understand the performance of my product.

Being a spa owner, my goal was to create holistic and clinical spa services. This vs. a med spa which is sometimes associated with beauty treatments that are not necessarily healthy. I wanted to deliver the same results but by using holistic therapies. I have a medical doctor on staff because we perform serious clinical procedures like fat graphing which is injectables made with your own fat instead of synthetic, artificial substances. We also do PRP which uses your own blood to grow more collagen. Our latest procedure we do is systemic ozone therapy. This helps to detoxify the body, clean the blood, and oxygenate the blood. It will benefit inflamed and problem complexions. Ozone therapy can achieve skin improvement from the inside out. A lot of skin conditions can only be approached topically and in a med spa, they will be treated with a lot of medications which could have a lot of side effects. All of our procedures require a doctor but are still holistic alternatives to conventional med spa procedures.

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?

In 2007, I organized the Association of Holistic Skin Care Practitioners which I am a President of. I did this to collaborate with scientists and doctors, analyzing technology and choosing the best, safest and most effective ones from a holistic point of view. In other words, if some technologies may be able to really beautify some areas of the face or body, but it still has a potential of negative side effects, we will not recommend someone to use that machine. In my world, I have an advisory board of experts who can advise and analyze equipment or ingredients from many different perspectives. I love technology. I just want to make sure that it is the safest and most beneficial. I can see how a holistic practice can work with technology — holistic does not mean historical. I would like to offer the most benefits to my clients without side effects and risks — this is my understanding of holistic.

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

Being an organic spa owner and formulator, very often people ask me about all of my beauty machines. They are surprised by how much equipment I have being a holistic practitioner and organic formulator. My answer to those people is that when it comes to pathogens, I do not want to use toxic chemicals on their skin. I prefer to sanitize their skin with ozone therapy using the D’arsonval High Frequency Machine.

We all know that toxins can get into your blood stream through the skin. Beneficial vitamins and herbal extracts end up staying on the surface. Technology, which offers electrophoresis, helps to penetrate botanicals into the live skin cells and I think this is essential to achieve corrective results. If we are talking about botanical extracts or vitamins, our skin’s protective barrier may not allow them to go through and they need to be pushed in which can happen with the use of electrophoresis. Those practitioners who do not believe in equipment are technically just nourishing the dead surface of the skin. I absolutely love the combination of vacuum and tissue manipulation which is used on the new icoone® LASER machine. It literally works on so many levels to improve circulation. And, it helps to release excessive fluid and reduce cellulite — and at the same time is very pleasant and effective. It is also completely safe for people who cannot use electrical equipment. It is a very effective substitute for manual massage which gives you very intense results on the body and face.

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. Level of education among skincare professionals — I wish licensed estheticians would have deeper knowledge of the ingredients they use on the skin of their clients and of the products they sell. Very often, estheticians only learn the key ingredients but do not know what base they are dissolved into. Sometimes, I notice when I teach classes, certain estheticians have less knowledge than many of our clients and that is very concerning. Some estheticians and business owners make the decision of choosing a product line for their spa without even understanding how to analyze the labels. Today, it is easier because you can research every ingredient online but many people don’t even consider doing that.

2. Every year cosmetic chemists have to introduce products with the latest fashionable ingredients. Because of that, some very beneficial and safe ingredients sometimes get forgotten about because everyone is racing for novelty. Sometimes, formulators do not have enough time to research and deeply understand what they are using. I think instead of trying to amuse consumers with new trends, we need to stay balanced and look for the most beneficial and clean formulas.

3. Quick fixes. Of course, we can inject people and paralyze their muscles to prevent wrinkles but is it necessarily the healthiest choice? I deeply believe that healthy skin is a part of a healthy body, mind and spirit as well. I do not think the quick fixes necessarily bring health to the skin as well as a long-term effect. I think people should focus on skin wellness vs. quick fixes. A surgical facelift leaves scars which do not allow proper blood, lymph, and energy flow through those areas. That is why after a while after surgery, the skin may not look lively.

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. Beauty starts from within. The first step to feel more beautiful about yourself is to try and eliminate negative emotions like anger, fear, envy, and self-doubt. If you are focused on replacing those emotions with peace, love, and gratitude, you will immediately look more attractive. It will move you into higher vibrations and frequencies which naturally bring your life more beauty.

2. Clean. No matter how many cosmetic products we use, if what we eat and apply on our face is toxic then it will lead to degradation of our look and entire health. This is why I encourage people to only use products on their skin that they can eat.

3. Try to analyze people you are spending time with. Identify those who bring you a positive energy vs. those who could be draining and negative. All of this can affect how you feel about yourself. If you have some people who never say anything kind and always criticize you and others, just try and spend less time with them and surround yourself with more positive people.

4. If you wake up in the morning and it is a rough morning, then definitely my suggestion is to wash your hair. When you go in the shower, you have to imagine all that you do not like — maybe aches and pains, exhaustion or disappointments, self-doubts and insecurity, maybe excessive weight or pimples. Imagine all of that going down the drain and energetically it will help to feel much better. After you take that cleansing, purifying shower, you can dry your body with towels and imagine yourself in a universal light that gives you beauty, health, success, and love. After that, come to the mirror and smile at yourself and tell yourself you are beautiful, happy, and talented. And then, proceed with your day.

5. I do not encourage people to go into denial thinking that they are absolutely gorgeous and movie-star-like when they are not — but at the same time beauty comes in all forms and shapes. Historically, in every century, beauty has been perceived differently. Understanding this perspective, you can maybe connect with a certain image where you can recognize yourself. Sometimes it is helpful to think of the positives in the body parts or areas you do not like. You may not like your short legs but these legs are the reason you can walk and run. Try and think of the people with disabilities who would do anything for your legs and it should make you feel grateful. As beauty professionals, we can make sure those legs look their best by offering you all kinds of body services which should make you feel completely confident!

6. I think we attract people with similar vibes as ourselves and if we stay positive then the people we attract will make us feel more beautiful. The key point is to stay positive, grateful, and loving.

I already inspired a movement in 2007 by organizing the Association of Holistic Skin Care Practitioners to draw the line between conventional beauty treatments and clean beauty. I started to formulate organic products a long time before they became trendy. I was not taken seriously by other cosmetic chemists during the professional meetings because I talked about sourcing clean, natural ingredients. I am very happy that it is a big movement and I played my part in making it happen.

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

Treat people exactly how you would like to be treated.

How can our readers follow you online?

https://elinaorganics.com/

https://www.instagram.com/elinaorganics/

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

The Future Of Beauty: “Skin Wellness VS. Quick Fixes” With Elina Fedotova of Elina Organics was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Crystal Frehner of Hottie Hair Salon: “They Told Me it Was Impossible And I Did It Anyway”

Be Humble! Your pride will blind you. Your pride will make dumb choices and poor investments. You must always ground yourself and be humble

As part of our series about “dreamers who ignored the naysayers and did what others said was impossible”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Crystal Frehner — Creator of Hottie Hair Salon & Extensions.

A powerful force in the industry, Crystal Frehner, has over 17 years of experience. Alongside husband, Mike, Crystal founded Hottie Hair Salon + Extensions in 2010 with the grand opening of their Summerlin (Las Vegas suburb) location. Just recently in 2017, due to high demand, Hottie Hair opened its second location, in Las Vegas, right outside of Henderson, NV. The dedicated duo’s vision for the brand has always been to provide clients with the hair they’ve always dreamed of. Crystal’s training includes Paul Mitchell Advanced Color and Cutting Pravana Color, Swarzkopf Color, Redken Color, Keratin Permanent Retexturizing System and Semi-Permanent Smoothing System. Crystal is often credited with creating TV personality, Farrah Abraham’s fiery-red “break up hair” which “broke the internet” in 2016 — following her highly publicized split with her ex-boyfriend. Her other celebrity clients include “Jersey Shore” star, Jenn Harley and model, Carmen Ortega.

Crystal Frehner and Hottie Hair are proud to offer high-quality hair extensions available in a variety of textures, lengths, grades, methods and colors so you can find a look that’s perfect for you!

When Crystal’s not hard at work she enjoys spending time with her husband and three precious children (twin boys and daughter), shopping, all things glitzy and glamorous, traveling and reading.

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 grew up on the east side of Las Vegas in a very regular household. My dad worked a job with the county and my mother mostly stayed home. I wanted to go to school to be a Politician , my plan was to go to law school first. I always had a natural ability for all things beauty, especially hair. In 9th grade, I did my science fair project on the effects of different solutions on hair, whether for good or bad . My mom suggested I go to a vocational high school for Cosmetology. I could use my new career as a hair stylist to help pay for college. After 2 years of struggling to work full time and full time school I was burnt out . I made the scary decision to drop out of college and keep doing what worked for me, which was hair. After 10 years of working behind the chair and unable to accept new clientele I opened my first hair salon, Hottie Hair. Since 2010 I have opened a second location and now have my own line of hair extensions that are sold in stores and online.

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

Currently we have a full human hair extension line and some basic hair tools such as brushes, hair clips, hair ties and combs. Currently I am designing more products that I want to keep top secret. I am super excited to grow the Hottie Hair line, I will give you a hint , you may see some items that aren’t used for hair. I believe this expansion will create more jobs both in and out of the salon.

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

Ive been told Hottie Hair is the most diverse group of beautiful people you will see in a company. I believe the world is a symphony and you need all the instruments to make music! The word “Hottie” applies to everyone regardless of gender, age, nationality or sexuality. We are all gorgeous creations of God. I love all people and I find unique , beautiful, talented, and intelligent individuals to represent Hottie Hair. Clients feel very welcome and comfortable because we love and accept all . Our goal is to welcome our customers into our family and make them feel sexy and confident.

Being a stylist is usually publicly considered a labor of love. Not too many individuals have built an empire around this industry but those who do have passion for it . We all have big dreams but competition is tough. Becoming a lawyer is the less risky career choice . Choosing to follow my heart had many doubting my choices. Dropping out of college is always frowned upon. Long ago I made the decision to keep the naysayers out of my circles. If someone is not positive and supportive they are not part of my life. So I pursued my dreams of making a wonderful career out of making others feel beautiful. I can honestly say I made the right choice!

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

Well as fate would have it , I met my forever partner my husband. Together we reached for the stars. We made the impossible possible. At the end of the day it takes a team to make the dream. Hottie Hair was born, and it grew. First came my online portfolio with 12 hours days and double booked with an assistant. Then our first salon baby was born in Summerlin in Las Vegas. Next we began our hair extension journey with a full line of options including tape ins, weft hair, itips, keratin bonded, clip ins, halo style, and my own invention the Clipo. Once our first salon was exploding at the seams we opened a second location in Green Valley. Currently I am growing our Hottie Hair line into different types of products to help all “Hotties” keep it sexy on the daily.

When I first met my husband we only dated 3 and a half months, before getting married in Hawaii. The first time I cut his hair he said it was the best haircut he had ever had in his entire life. He said “you’re actually really good at this!” He believed that if other individuals knew my talent and ability they would want me to be their stylist. Using his tech background we created my first online portfolio, hottiehair.com . This website is still used to this day for our salons and extension lines. My husband is the most important person in my life and I attribute our collaboration to the success of Hottie Hair.

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?

Growing up I always had large aspirations . I wanted to be in leadership positions naturally . I ran for Student Council every grade year until I finally got in my Sophomore year of high school. My mom would make buttons and handouts for me every year lol. My sophomore year I also ran for class Vice President and won!! I couldn’t believe all my life and I finally won. I ran for Student Body president the next year and barely lost. Another dream of mine was to be a cheerleader . I also tried out for cheerleading every year starting in Junior High and never made it. After losing Student Body President I decided to try out for Cheerleading one last time. And guess what? I made varsity cheerleading for my senior year. I loved being a cheerleader so much .What I learned from these experiences is the key to success and overcoming naysayers is to NEVER GIVE UP!

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)

Never Give Up! As stated above, I was able to accomplish every dream of mine with enough time. If you’re in it for the long haul you will eventually succeed.
Trust your gut! You know what is best for your business and life if you are in tune. Be open to outside opinion and critique , however always put your instinct first. The worst feeling is failing and knowing it was gonna happen because you didn’t do what you knew was best .
Be Humble! Your pride will blind you. Your pride will make dumb choices and poor investments. You must always ground yourself and be humble
Do not allow the opinions of others to phase you! You don’t always know motives of others. Unfortunately they tend to be self serving. If you spend energy and time concerned over what everyone thinks of you , you will be miserable . Trust me I know!! I have spent years perfecting the art of “not caring.” If you can master this you will be so happy!! And success will come easier to you.
Be yourself !!! Please, please, please be the best version of you! No one likes a cheap knock off!! You are the only you! If you love yourself and work on being the best version of yourself , you will attract positive vibes, people, etc. Positive energy equals success. Stay away from the naysayers and the negative vibes.

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

“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” Margaret Thatcher This has been my experience. Life is about learning, therefore it’s almost impossible to get things perfect the first time. Enjoy the battles of life, they create your demeanor, your personality, your level of compassion and understanding . A great leader understands the hearts of their soldiers. You must taste the bitter to know the sweet.

“Love the one you’re with”

This actually doesn’t mean be crazy in love with your partner, although this is very helpful in life as well. It means whoever you are with at any given point love them! Love is the greatest power in the galaxy. Your love will spread like a wild fire. You can buy the car behind you free Starbucks in line. You can hold the door for a stranger. You can let someone go in front of you in line. Smile and have a heart filled with love wherever you go. As simple as this concept is, it is the most powerful thing you can do. I hope all of you take a moment to ponder how you can love the one you are with.

Can our readers follow you on social media?

Yes my company is @hottieextensions
And personal @crystyle_frehner

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

Crystal Frehner of Hottie Hair Salon: “They Told Me it Was Impossible And I Did It Anyway” was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Angela Ardolino: “They told me It was impossible and I did it anyway”

Prepare yourself for a LOT of “NO”. People are going to say no. There is no way around that. I wish I could tell you that when you have a dream, the world just opens up to make a way for you to succeed — and to some extent, it might — but for the most part, you have to be prepared for a lot of that big, fat, two-letter word: NO. And you have to take that no and figure out how to work harder than everyone else to turn it into a yes.

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 Angela Ardolino.

Tampa-based entrepreneur Angela Ardolino is the founder and CEO of House of Alchemy, LLC d/b/a CBD Dog Health, makers of all-natural, full spectrum hemp extract products for pets. Ardolino is a medical cannabis expert and is a graduate of the inaugural program offering a certificate in the therapeutic uses of medical cannabis from the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine. She is a member of The Society of Cannabis Clinicians, United for Care, CannaMoms, and Women Grow. Additionally, she was the host of the 2016 Canna Conference in Tampa and worked on the front lines of cannabis legalization, advocating for Floridians to pass the constitutional amendment legalizing medical cannabis. In 2016, Ardolino launched CBD Dog Health and began providing full-spectrum hemp extract (CBD) tinctures, treats, and salves designed specifically for pets. She is a sought-after speaker and is the host of It’s a Dog’s Life, a podcast on Cannabis Radio, where she interviews the nation’s top holistic veterinarians and natural-minded pet professionals. Ardolino continually demonstrates her dedication and commitment to helping animals as the owner and operator of Fire Flake Farm, an animal rescue based in Lutz, FL and has cared for animals for over 20 years. Her commitment to pets doesn’t stop there, as she is also the owner and operator of natural grooming and boarding business Beautify the Beast, with two locations in the Tampa area.

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’?

From the time I was a little kid, I always loved animals. I was the kid who came home with injured birds and stray bunnies or dogs and nursed them to health. I was also an extremely driven child, and I knew I wanted to be my own boss. For example, when I was 9, I opened my first business making balloon animals and doing face painting for birthday parties in my hometown of Miami. As I grew up, I continually felt driven to help animals and children, and after attending the University of Colorado in Boulder majoring in broadcast journalism, I moved back to Miami and opened the Miami Children’s Theater. The theater was a success and was the launching point for so many wonderful Broadway performers and other creative professionals, and I felt so fortunate to be part of their journey and help them find their gifts. Then, in 2008, I moved to Tampa and found that there was no resource for families in the area who were looking for things to do or local advice, so I founded Tampa Bay Parenting Magazine. Meanwhile, I was also running a rescue farm called Fire Flake Farm, which is where I felt most at peace healing and fostering a variety of animals.

Despite all of the past success, however, I still felt that I could be doing more for animals. Around 2015, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and was forced to slow down and find alternative treatment to the toxic medications I was being prescribed — which is when I found cannabis. It changed my life and I threw myself into learning all I could about the healing power of cannabis. I also learned that dogs, cats, horses, and other animals could benefit from this miraculous plant and from the cannabidiol (CBD) it produces. At that point I knew that I had to make it my life’s mission to get this important medicine into the hands of as many pet owners as possible. That is what lead me to open CBD Dog Health, where I am currently the CEO and work tirelessly to educate the public all about natural medicine and holistic pet care.

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

Right now, I am kicking off a West Coast tour with my education team hosting free events throughout California to teach pet parents about homeopathic healing for their pets. I am hoping that it shows people that homeopathy and better diet for pets are not “hippy” or “crunchy” but are actually part of a movement to improve their lives and the lives of their pets.

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

My company stands out because our goals and focus are not on profit — rather, we are focused on making sure that all pets have access to natural healing when they need it. And, unlike other CBD companies that have popped up, we are run by a medical cannabis expert (me) and animal advocates and are not just producers of a human product with a pawprint slapped on the label. We are also the ONLY product on the market that has essential oils in our formulas.

When I decided to follow my dream and launch myself into working in the cannabis world, there were so many naysayers. Everyone from my ex-business partners to people who worked with a parenting organization my late mother was a member of had something to say about it — and what they were saying was not good. I also had people who were shocked because they thought I was a June Cleaver instead of a current day, Snoop-Dogg loving, ex-con Martha Stewart.

One particular story that comes to mind was when I decided to host Canna Conference in Tampa in 2016. Medical cannabis was not yet legal, so many doctors were afraid to attend. But I was determined to put on the event and educate and provide resources to as many people who wanted to learn about cannabis as possible — be they doctors, veterinarians, medical professionals, or just the average person. Still, there was this fear that if you came to a conference about cannabis, you’d be one of “those” doctors. It took serious convincing for some of them. Thankfully, I stayed the course and kept my determination, because in October 2016 we were able to host the conference and it was a success. So many people came to me afterward and thanked me for being brave enough to do something like this, and it felt so good knowing that we could help humans and animals have access to this medication, could educate people about medical cannabis, and help them know that their vote YES to legalize medical cannabis in Florida was the right choice.

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

I am still proving the naysayers wrong every day. Some of the people who didn’t believe I could do it have reached out to me now asking for products for their pets.

I have an incredible team who has supported my dream, and shared in it, for years. But I think the person I am most grateful to is my business partner and best friend, Hernando Umana. Hernando is a Broadway performer who found relief in CBD the same way that I do, and his passion for not only educating pet parents and making our products great, but also for his other career on Broadway, is seriously inspiring. He started in an industry where your dreams are everything and everyone says no all the time, but his positive attitude continually inspires both me and my team.

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?

Absolutely, from the time I was a child I have had to ignore naysayers because at first, it was that nobody could fathom a child wanting to be an entrepreneur, and then it became an issue of people not understanding my dream of helping animals holistically. But, in order to become resilient, you must be confident in yourself. I believe that my experience building businesses as a child, and my experience in theater and performing arts helped me become a very confident person and I learned to trust in myself and be confident enough to go out there and be the first to do something

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)

The five strategies I would recommend are:

Trust your gut. If you know you are supposed to do something a certain way — be it following your dream or just creating your own way of doing something — listen to what you gut is telling you and ignore the rest. People told me there was no way I could find the quality of hemp or essential oils that I wanted for my products, but I trusted my gut and now I know I am making the best products available.
Prepare yourself for a LOT of “NO”. People are going to say no. There is no way around that. I wish I could tell you that when you have a dream, the world just opens up to make a way for you to succeed — and to some extent, it might — but for the most part, you have to be prepared for a lot of that big, fat, two-letter word: NO. And you have to take that no and figure out how to work harder than everyone else to turn it into a yes. When I wanted to get into the medical cannabis industry, I was met with so many nos. Our payment gateway dumped us because we are a CBD company, our previous bank left us out to dry, people who I thought I could count on for support met me with opposition. Thankfully, I had mentally prepared for all of the naysayers and it helped keep me from feeling beaten down in those moments.
Get creative. We have established that people will say no, that is a given when you are chasing your dream. So, when they do say no, you have to get creative. In my case, when social media denied me the ability to advertise (because we are a CBD company), I had to get creative and learn about SEO and find the best SEO people out there. Getting creative is the only way to make sure you can chase your dream and be a pioneer in your industry. After all, if everything was cut and dried, clear and easy, everyone would do it.
Find people who have the same (or similar) dreams and collaborate. You know how they say it takes a village to raise a child? It also takes a village to follow a dream. Fill your village with people who have similar goals or dreams and find ways to work together to make your dreams come true. My business partner and best friend, Hernando, had the same dream that I have: to help animals and to share the healing power of cannabis with as many people as possible. In fact, every member of my team, from my COO to my assistant, content editor, and education director have the same dream: to help animals and share cannabis medicine with the world. I filled my village with people who chase their dreams relentlessly and as a result, we can all succeed together.
Give yourself space to change. It is okay if your dream changes through the course of your growth and development. I started with a dream of helping animals, and then it changed to sharing cannabis medicine, and finally I ended up realizing both dreams could co-exist, which is what led me to start my company. But, if I had been obsessed with just chasing that one singular dream, I would have stopped when I bought my grooming and boarding business. Instead, I gave myself the space to grow and change and adapt, and as a result, as my dream changed so did I, and now I feel more fulfilled than I ever have before and I know I am making a difference in the lives of so many animals and people.

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

I always say, “I am just a regular person with nothing to lose.” When you take away the fear of failure, or this idea that if you fail you will lose everything, everything changes. When you realize that you have nothing to lose, you can gain everything.

My biggest goal is to inspire people to de-stigmatize cannabis for all mammals, pets included, and to change the mentality of what a cannabis user looks like. Businesspeople can be users, moms, dads, teachers, friends, dogs, cats, horses — completely upstanding members of society can all be cannabis users. When we change the idea of who uses cannabis, we can change the idea of cannabis altogether. Hand-in-hand with this, I want to inspire a movement to clear the names of those who are incarcerated for cannabis-related arrests.

Can our readers follow you on social media?

Please do! You can follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/angelaardolino and I interact with all of our members of my Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/HolisticPetAdvice/. You can also follow me on Instagram @AngieArdolino.

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

Angela Ardolino: “They told me It was impossible and I did it anyway” 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: “Scalp Treatments For Improved Hair” With Tabitha Fredrichs

Smiling makes you feel beautiful and confident. Science says it gives you happy powers because it triggers happy endorphins. I love that we have happy powers, don’t you? Receiving a compliment make you feel beautiful but did you know that giving one makes you feel even better? Treat yourself — Whatever makes you feel more beautiful. From a new hair color and cut to a pedicure or work out. Stand tall and walk like you have heals on. You trigger confidence when you walk and stand with confidence. Be yourself and feel good about it, because when you are yourself… you are the most beautiful person in the room.

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 Tabitha Fredrichs. Tabitha is an award winning fine hair specialist and Trichologist (the study of scalp & hair) that is certified through the American Medical Association. Her sassy humor and calm, caring approach, makes her clients feel relaxed and confident in her knowledge. Her goal is to educate all stylists on the importance of scalp and hair health.

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?

Hairstylists have an amazing job. How would you like to have a job where you are complemented on your work all day long? Clients telling you “I Love it”, “This is just what I wanted”, “You are a magician.” We earn their trust in that first visit because we care. We care that they feel and look their best. We are also the first ones they share with. We are the first ones to hear about hair loss, pregnancy, weddings, divorce and cancer. Our job is more than just cutting hair. It is about caring and being a great listener because Caring is a gift of Beauty!

At the beginning of my career, if a client was having concerns about hair loss, I would send my client to the Dr. Or another salon for wigs and toppers. My clients would always come back with no answer as to why they were having hair loss or the people at the wig salon were selling them the wrong topper or poorly made wigs. I knew that there was more that could be done for them. This is when I enrolled in Trichology classes and talked to the leading experts in hair loss at Colombia University medical center. There are many things that can help, from scalp health to gut health, topicals, growth factors, vitamins and lasers.

It usually takes 3–9 months to see new hair growth after finding the underlining cause. If something is happening to our skin and hair than something is out of whack in the body. Before and After pictures are the best. The client notices a difference in not only scalp health but in their hair being fuller and shinier.

I met an amazing woman that pushed me to follow my path. Britt Seva is a coach for hair stylist, and without her and the wonderful hairstylists in this Thrivers Society group, I would not be where I am today.

Scalp misting machines to help pull build up out of the scalp work wonders for the scalp and hydrate the hair as well. Low level light lasers are working for thousands of people world wide. By stimulating the blood supply to the hair follicle we are flushing nutrients and oxygen to the hair, making the hair stronger, thicker and shinier. The use of topical growth factors for the hair follicles are having amazing results as well as Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) treatments for the scalp. For those who cannot get back their hair, the technology for hair replacement is way less painful than is was a few years ago and very soon we will have donor hair from 3D machines. Also scalp micropigmentation, hair pieces and extensions are a great alternative.

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?

Just like counterfeit hair products and cosmetics, there are already people trying to take advantage of people. People are already making laser caps that have fake lasers in them. These lasers will do nothing to grow your hair and it is terrible that people are taking advantage.

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

The results are better and faster. There are less painful procedures. There are less chemicals in products today.

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?

We see clients every 4–8 weeks. We notice changes in their scalp and hair sometimes before they do. Educating Hairstylists in the industry and clients on things to look for that might be serious health concerns on the type of hair loss that clients are having. There are several organizations like ‘Eyes on Cancer’ that have free education for hairstylist to know what to look for when it comes to seeing something on the scalp or neck that is new or is changing. We just need to all spread the word.

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.)

Smiling makes you feel beautiful and confident. Science says it gives you happy powers because it triggers happy endorphins. I love that we have happy powers, don’t you? Receiving a compliment make you feel beautiful but did you know that giving one makes you feel even better? Treat yourself — Whatever makes you feel more beautiful. From a new hair color and cut to a pedicure or work out. Stand tall and walk like you have heals on. You trigger confidence when you walk and stand with confidence. Be yourself and feel good about it, because when you are yourself… you are the most beautiful person in the room.

Accept people for who they are. We all have a weirdness about us and that is OK because that is what makes us who we are. There is no accident in who we are. You have to accept the good and the bad and love them both.

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

She took the leap and built her wings on the way down. Don’t wait to do something you are dreaming of. The time to start your dream is today.

How can our readers follow you online?

TabithaFhair.com and on IG @tabithahairstylist Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

The Future Of Beauty: “Scalp Treatments For Improved Hair” With Tabitha Fredrichs was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Gia Storms: How I Was Able To Succeed Despite First Experiencing Impostor Syndrome

Almost everyone will experience the impostor syndrome at some point. When I lead workshops on it, the simple act of sharing about these feeling creates vulnerability, connection and they become a universally shared experience. When we remember that these feelings are universal we can start to connect to others and ourselves with compassion, remembering that at any moment someone else in the room has at one point felt like a fraud.

As a part of our series about how very accomplished leaders were able to succeed despite experiencing Impostor Syndrome, I had the pleasure of interviewing Gia Storms, PCC, Executive Coach.

Gia Storms is a professional coach and leadership expert specializing in developing employees and catalyzing change. She brings to her work more than 15 years of strategic communications and marketing in the corporate and non-profit worlds, inspiring teams and individuals to overcome their fears and step forth with courage. Gia previously served as the Chief Communications Officer at the Hammer Museum at UCLA, one of Los Angeles’ leading contemporary art Museums and cultural centers. She led the museum in understanding communications styles and facilitated trainings across the museum to help improve outcomes in internal communications, employee engagement and departmental collaboration.

As coach and leadership facilitator, Gia brings strategic communication and storytelling to all her clients working to develop their organizations and futures. Presenting in front of groups and one-on-one, she helps individuals to realize their future path and pave the way for transformation in business and careers, with particular focus on mindfulness and co-active coaching.

A native of Seattle, Gia is a graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University, with a bachelor’s degree in Women’s Studies. She graduated from the Coaching Training Institute, one of the world’s oldest coaching universities, with a certification in professional coaching, and has been trained with Coro’s Leadership New York, and certified in Interpersonal Leadership Styles, leading workshops with teams across dozens of organizations. She currently lives in Los Angeles where she runs coaching workshops and is a graduate of the University of Santa Monica’s Spiritual Psychology Program.

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

Nine years ago, when I was first introduced to coaching, I was rocked by a deep and instant calling to help individuals and teams connect to a new form of leadership. After spending a more than a decade and a half working in strategic and crisis communications in New York City and Los Angeles’ most competitive environments, I was ready to help leaders and teams find a new way to inspire, engage and achieve better workplace outcomes. Today, I support my executive coaching clients by helping them to make strategic shifts towards their best professional life. I work with leaders and organizations facilitating workshops that bring clarity, connection and improved communication to the workplace. I love living in Los Angeles, where I’m surrounded by dreamers, and regularly scheme new ways to push myself out of my own comfort zone (this year: travel to Algeria, motorcycle school, book in progress). My dream is for every person in the world to have a coach who helps hold space for deep connection, self-awareness and lasting personal and professional transformation.

Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

I have recently come to understand that my life purpose is to walk the invisible bridge to make it safe for others to follow. To walk the invisible bridge means to go forward, even if you would rather hang back and blend into the crowd. To walk into the unknown, trusting that the net will appear; to speak out and step forth, even when the path looks uncertain and the territory hostile.

This has not always been my story. My own journey into courageously stepping forth was marked by small, early acts of resistance: Shaving my head in college to better understand gender norms, initiating private, courageous conversations in and out of the workplace when I saw bad behavior from coworkers, and finally leaving the full-time job and pension behind to enter the vast unknown of solo-preneurship.

Now that I have been on the invisible bridge of this new path — examining and embracing it from all sides — I have been able to call back over my shoulder in a clear, strong voice: “You guys! It’s real! It’ll hold! Come on out!” Today, I call clients forth with the certainty of one who has walked this path.

In careers today, most people I talk to wrestle with this feeling of disempowerment; shackled by the external circumstances — underpaying jobs, tyrannical bosses, financial burdens of dependents — that keep them from pursuing the scary dream or taking full charge of the journey.

Others I speak with cannot imagine what might lie beyond the ridge of the known, and so the safer choice becomes to stay on solid footing, inching our way forward and crossing our fingers that we will one day be rescued, recognized and rewarded.

But the cost of waiting is too high. As the stakes get higher in an increasingly complex world, as old institutions and old ways of being crumble, as more and more of us begin to answer a deeper call, it gets harder to ignore the thing inside of you that is yearning for freedom.

A new era of courage is dawning.

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

My coaching inspires clients to imagine their best lives and courageously take the action needed to make it happen. For example, when a client comes to me stuck, or paralyzed by procrastination, or longing for more meaning and purpose in their life, I push them to shorten the distance between dreaming and doing, and arm them with the tools and techniques to create meaningful, swift change in all areas of their lives.

In general, my clients are leaders craving balance and meaning, creatives looking to take their careers to the next level, managers seeking tools to overcome resistance and make change happen now. Together, we dare to dream up the fullest expression of that best life — then take solid, direct steps to make it a reality.

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 had early champions who saw my full potential and relentlessly advocated for journey as a coach — my parents, as well as some of my first teachers and bosses were all my main cheerleaders. When I was first introduced to coaching, I found a dear mentor and friend who had built her own vibrant coaching practice that was transforming the lives of leaders. Christie Mann became an inspiring friend and role model on this path, pointing me to a way of walking forward with courage and vulnerability to effecting tremendous change.

Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. We would like to explore and flesh out the experience of Impostor Syndrome. How would you define Impostor Syndrome? What do people with Impostor Syndrome feel?

Impostor syndrome is a reoccurring sense of inadequacy or self-doubt that negatively impacts the way we show up to perform. Impostor syndrome typically shows up as a doubt that you will be found unworthy or exposed as a fraud, that you don’t belong, despite external evidence like credentials, experience and personal or professional qualifications. When I think of this syndrome, I visualize it as an inner critic that constantly tells us we are faking it, and making us feel like pretenders at whatever task we are attempting.

What are the downsides of Impostor Syndrome? How can it limit people?

Impostor syndrome is not always a bad thing. It typically shows up when we are attempting to change, or moving out of our comfort zone, which can signal you’re on the right track. According to some leadership experts, if you are not experiencing the impostor syndrome regularly, you are not taking big enough risks in your life. However, it needs to be managed correctly when it does show up. When it is not dealt with consciously, it can sabotage our ability to create the impact we want at work and in our personal lives.

Generally, when the impostor syndrome shows up, our thoughts of “I don’t belong here” quickly transform into physical fear, anxiety, and self-doubt and move us into a parasympathetic response of fight, flight or freeze. When we’re in this kind of response, our ability to respond creatively and impactfully to a situation decreases. If we are interested in making powerful and impactful choices, we need to begin to recognize how this process works inside of us and find new patterns of behavior to interrupt these thought patterns and move into action.

How can the experience of Impostor Syndrome impact how one treats others?

When we are in the grips of the inner critic, we are focused on ourselves, paralyzed by fear and inclined to either shut down to self-protect or overextend ourselves by boasting and getting defensive. Typically this kind of response produces disastrous results in the workplace.

Almost everyone will experience the impostor syndrome at some point. When I lead workshops on it, the simple act of sharing about these feeling creates vulnerability, connection and they become a universally shared experience. When we remember that these feelings are universal we can start to connect to others and ourselves with compassion, remembering that at any moment someone else in the room has at one point felt like a fraud.

We would love to hear your story about your experience with Impostor Syndrome. Would you be able to share that with us?

Starting my own business was nothing if not an exercise in overcoming impostor syndrome. For months at a time in the early days of venturing out, I I could hear my inner critic on repeat, complaining: Who do you think you are, you don’t belong here, this will never work.

In reality, of course, not only was the business thriving, but I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing, and could point to half a dozen well-earned credentials that would serve as measures of my expertise in the field. So why wouldn’t the voice let me off the hook?

At different points, all of the leaders I work with must identify and move past their own feelings of impostor syndrome. It may show up as a nagging feeling of inadequacy, or a persistent fear that you will be discovered as a fraud or a failure. For most of us, the impostor syndrome shows up as a vicious inner critic that keeps us from truly owning our power and our weaknesses, from taking up space and from doing the brave thing in the face of old patterns that would have us seek safety over risk, familiarity over discomfort.

I have been a hyper-achiever my whole life. Let me re-frame: I have had a hyper-achieving inner critic my whole life. This particularly insidious, relentless critic in my head has claimed energy and space in my life for as long as I can remember. The activity, achievement, success, accolades or action I have done in given period of time is never. ever. enough.

Inner critics at their most basic are coping mechanisms, developed when we were young to ensure we survived childhood and adolescence, assisting us in critical moments to attract the right kind of attention or navigate potential threats to keep us safe. However, at a certain point, we outgrow our need for these basic protection mechanisms and are able to navigate our complex and largely non-threatening adult lives with some degree of psychological maturity.

And yet, the voices persist long past their usefulness — getting in the way of our effectiveness as leaders in our professional and personal lives. As adults, the inner critics are persistent, annoying, and sneaky and they rob us consistently of the joy of being in the moment. What’s more is they can rob us of taking needed, essential action steps to move into change.

Inner critics are fear personified. They can be harbingers of the exciting and constructive change that is on the horizon; a sign that you are moving out of your comfort zone. Yet, the fear-based thinking only ever serves to keep us in paralysis and negativity.

Did you ever shake the feeling off? If yes, what have you done to mitigate it or eliminate it?

If you are up to big change — if you have just accepted a promotion, or are managing a team for the first time, or are about to stand on stage to give a speech — it is time to get familiar with how your impostor syndrome operates and reduce the amount of time you spend listening to your inner critic.

At the end of the day, the inner critic driving the impostor syndrome cannot prevent us from making change if we learn to identify it and work with it, instead of against it. We are moving forward, and we get to decide who we want to listen to and put in the drivers seat. Over time, we will find ourselves increasingly free from self-doubt, leading from a place of confidence and courage, acknowledging the voices that pop up with patience and curiosity.

In your opinion, what are 5 steps that someone who is experiencing Impostor Syndrome can take to move forward despite feeling like an “Impostor”? Please share a story or an example for each.

1. Start by identifying your inner critic. This process begins by identifying when you are in fear, and getting clear about the critical part of yourself operating in those moments. When you get a good picture of your inner critic, start to approach them with curiosity: What’s the 2% of the information coming forward that’s actually useful? Is there a new way the fear can be instructive? If you can be gentle but firm with this part of yourself, it will ultimately dissipate the energy and allow you to get back to the important work of making change happen, with the critical rap on low volume.

2. Get creative about managing your fear. After you’ve identified the core critic and the way that it operates, you can playfully and creatively approach different ways to shift away from it. I’ve had clients imagine muting the volume of their inner critic, putting them on an imaginary bench, shrinking them down to three inches high, writing out a dialogue with them, or drawing an exaggerated cartoon sketch to add humor and definition to the irrational, insatiable energy and learn to laugh at it when it appears.

3. Call forth your confident inner leader. It is important that you work to identify your confident inner leader — the part of you that emerges when you are at your most confident, powerful and impactful. Create a clear vision of your confident inner leader and think about how they would react to any given situation. For example, if Michelle Obama is your confident inner leader, how would she handle a challenging work conflict? How would she stand? What would she say to prepare?

4. Take one small step of action. When the inner critic pops up — and they will until the end of time, if we are living into our full potential — you can use it as a moment to propel one step of action that would help you feel more solid inside yourself. Is there more education, experience or practice needed? For example, you might enroll in a course, recruit a friend to practice with you, or make a plan to get more experience to inspire more graceful confidence.

5. Tell on yourself to others. There is no tonic to bust the impostor syndrome wide open like telling on yourself. Have the courage to confide in someone you admire or trust. Share what is going on with you and you likely will find that they not only reassure you of your own abilities but that they will share with you their own similar experience. Dare to share and you will find that it gives you the ability to own your areas for growth as well as your strengths with confidence and wisdom.

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

My vision is for every person in the world to have the inner tools they need to make confident, compassionate, courageous choices in the face of fear and the great unknown. When we can connect with our full potential even at challenging moments we can effect radical transformation of our external world.

We are blessed that some very prominent leaders 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, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them 🙂

My heroes are creating radical transformation in the world working from the inside out: Byron Katie, Martha Beck, Robert Holden, Ekart Tole, Oprah, Michelle Obama, adrienne marie brown, Brene Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert. They exhibit courage, vulnerability, integrity, and messy, loving commitment to change in our world.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

You can find Gia Storms on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, & Twitter!

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

Thank you!

Gia Storms: How I Was Able To Succeed Despite First Experiencing Impostor Syndrome was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Margie Traxler of Grain Free Mama’s: They Told Me It Was Impossible But I Did It Anyway

Pursue your dream with no plan of retreat. Building in a ‘back door’ or ‘what if’ plan is just giving yourself permission to quit. Taking actions that ultimately don’t work out quite the way you wanted them to may be seen as failure by others, but getting back up and tweaking your approach will one day get you there.

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 Margie Traxler.

Margie Traxler is the Founder and President of Grain Free Mama’s, a food manufacturing company dedicated to the production of Gluten Free, Grain Free and Grasses-Genus Free baking mixes and baked goods. The passion that she has to help people to improve and maintain great health through healthy eating is enormous. As she says, “All foods can either help us or hurt us. So eat well, and live life to the fullest.”

She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Portland State University in 1987. Additionally, she has 22 years of ownership experience in the Restaurant/Lounge Industry. She currently lives and operates her business in Henderson, Nevada.

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’?

In 2004, my then 6 year old daughter bent over one evening screaming and clutching her stomach. I rushed her to the Emergency Room at the nearest hospital, convinced that her appendix had burst. Hours later, after all the tests came back negative, the doctor’s offered to ‘remove’ her appendix anyway. I absolutely refused, and we went home with no answers.

My sister, who was studying to become a Natural Nutritionist, told me she thought it could be food. I had no idea where to start with that, so I searched for the best Natural and Conventional doctor in the United States…and we headed off to Florida (we live in Las Vegas, Nevada) for a visit.

Sitting in the doctor’s office with my daughter, we received the following news … “When Anna Mae eats wheat and sugar, it makes a toxic little punch in her that is burning little holes in her intestines.” THAT certainly explained the screaming!

That single sentence birthed a passion in me that changed my life. We went to the local health food store after our appointment to get something to eat, and as we walked down the aisles and looked at foods, all I could think was ‘Can’t eat that, can’t eat that.’ The grocery store had suddenly changed from a fun, warm environment to a potentially dangerous place. Wow!

After purchasing our gluten free items, we headed outside to give them a taste. One bite and the food literally exploded like sawdust in our mouths! I looked over at Anna Mae and I could see her eyes watering and her little chin quivering…it woke up something really big in me and I said, “Mommy is a scientist, Anna Mae. I can fix this. Pinky promise — one day we will offer the products and resources that we wish would have been available for us today.”

I got online and discovered that doctor’s just accept that people who have digestive problems will develop 2–5 autoimmune disorders during the course of their lifetimes. This was totally unacceptable to me and so I made two very important decisions;

I refused to accept that we had to just get sicker until we died. (We had found out that we carry both the genes for celiac and gluten sensitivity in our family, so myself and all of my children carry at least one, if not both, of these genes.)
I refused to accept that my children, and myself, had to go through life envying everyone else’s food. Peer pressure works both ways — I decided that everyone else was going to envy our food!

Educated as a Biologist, with a specialization in microbiology, I began the process of training myself to become what I now call a Natural Food Scientist, to be able to not only create foods with innovative natural ingredients, but also create the formulas for these foods. My kitchen became my laboratory. I began to study different foods, cultures from around the world, and incidence of diseases in those cultures. I began cooking with many different flours and ingredients.

Within a relatively short period of time, Anna Mae began asking for more and more food in her school lunch. One day I asked if she was really that hungry and her response made my day; “No Mommy. My friends all want to eat my food because it makes them feel better.”

I knew I was on to something. We started out just gluten free, and that helped but we were just better than before, not totally healthy. My middle son started to get really bad acne, and I challenged him to try gluten free (no wheat, no rye and no barley) for 3 weeks after the school year ended. Within a week, the acne disappeared, and he became a believer as well. Then my oldest son thought he had developed an ulcer, so off we went again to the doctor in Florida. The conclusion; the combination of corn and sugar was causing his biggest problems.

Next step, we decided to go grain free. This means eating none of the following: wheat, rye, barley, oat, spelt, millet, sorghum, teff, corn and rice. We were a bit better than before, but, again, not totally healthy. The last, and most important shift we made was to become grain and sugarcane free. Bingo! All the bloating, etc. stopped. Our mind fog cleared and we naturally began to shed the puffiness associated with the inflammation! Our seasonal allergies decreased exponentially…so I started to think about that.

My ‘aha’ moment came when I realized that the grasses-genus includes all the grains, and sugarcane. We originally moved to Las Vegas because of our allergies to mold, weeds, trees and grasses. If we couldn’t breathe them, we couldn’t eat them either! Today we are healthy, happy and have not developed any autoimmune disease. Having the genetic disposition does not mean you are destined to develop that particular disease.

What began as this mama’s fight for my children’s life and health has grown into the founding of Grain Free Mama’s in 2018. It was time. I was becoming inundated with people who desperately needed help, just like we did all those years ago. Our company vision statement is ‘Inspiring health and quality of life by connecting real people with real foods that are easily digested by the human body.’

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

Yes, this year we are expecting our baking mix products (Crepe Mixes, Pizza Crust Mix, Cookie Mixes and Muffin Mixes) to hit the shelves in retail stores. The Crepe and Pizza Crust Mixes are currently available through our website, Amazon and Walmart e-commerce. We are so excited about this as they are naturally low carb, low calorie, tree nut free, dairy free and soy free as well. They are safe for people who are diabetic, as well as consumers who are struggling with weight or autoimmune disease.

We are also going to be launching our Food Breakthrough (Book and Cookbook) Education resources this year. The slogan is ‘Change Your Diet…Change Your Life.’ These resources are consumer-friendly materials designed to educate people so that they can confidently take back control of their diets and their health. I believe in the saying ‘Feed a person and they are good for a day, but teach a person how to feed themself and they are good for a lifetime.’

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

We are a people-first company. We believe in providing excellent, quick and easy to make products because the customer’s time is valuable. We believe that easy to understand and implement educational resources should be available for everyone. But most importantly, we believe that life is a gift to be lived to the fullest…for everyone. Our mission to connect people with the resources to make this possible is what separates us from the crowd.

Our products are Certified Gluten Free, OK Kosher, and all but the Muffin Mixes are 100% USDA Organic. (The Muffin Mixes will be 100% Organic as soon as we are able to source a quality Organic Plantain Flour Grower or Supplier. Contact me if you know of one please.). There are simply not enough clean-label, excellent tasting and textured grain free and sugar free baking products available on the market. Organic matters, because the standards for farming are much higher and clean. When you read our ingredients list, you will see no artificial preservatives, colors, or flavors. Just real food ingredients for real people.

Yes. One particular story from my youth stands out the clearest to me right now, as it did a lot to shape the person I am today.

What was your idea? What was the reaction of the naysayers? And how did you overcome that?

I told my dad, and others, that I wanted to grow up and get a full-ride scholarship to college to play basketball. His response was to tell me that they didn’t give scholarships to play basketball to girls. (It was 1967 and I was 4 years old.). My response …. “Well then I’ll get the first one!” My dad nodded and gave me a pat on the head.

I remembered snickers, and someone saying how ‘cute’ that was, and it only made me more determined as I grew older. Time and time again, people would tell me I couldn’t do it, but I listened to only one voice…mine.

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

I signed my letter of intent spring of my senior year, after being courted by quite a few Division 1 Universities. I wasn’t the first girl to receive a scholarship by a long shot, but I did achieve what I set out to achieve long, long before when I was just a young child.

So many people, for sure. My high school basketball coach, Brad Smith, absolutely stands out in my mind. He became the coach the year I went to high school. The two years previous the team has won a mere one game. Brad changed all that. We worked so hard, year round, to create a winning atmosphere and winning mindset. I greatly benefitted from being a part of that.

Additionally, he would play me one-on-one, any time I wanted to. He didn’t take it easy on me, beating me continually, and it took me three years to beat him. The day I won was the last time we ever played one-on-one, but I will never forget knowing that I was finally good enough to get a full-ride scholarship in that moment. And I did.

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?

Growing up is tough, because there will always be naysayers for those who dare to be different or who dare to do what others deem impossible. Another very impactful experience for me, also a sports related story, occurred at the summer basketball camp that I attended and then worked at for 15 years, Northwest Basketball Camps. The camp was set up with 4 Master Teachers who led the various ‘leagues’ of campers, who were separated by age and ability. The year I graduated from High School, Fred Crowell, the owner and leader of the camp made me one of the Master Teachers. Well, this didn’t sit well with the other coaches, or with the boys who were almost my age (I didn’t say my age to anyone.).

One of the best and most outspoken high school boy players the first week said to me, ‘I don’t have to do what you say.” I then challenged him to a game of one-on-one in front of the other campers. If he won, he didn’t have to listen to me. If I won, he not only had to respect and listen to me, but to work hard to do all that I instructed him to do. Well, I won that game, 7–5. It instilled in me the resiliency to believe in myself in the face of challenges.

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)

Check yourself. Make sure that you truly believe that your impossible dream is achievable. You cannot out-perform your subconscious belief system. Before I could take the steps to form my company and develop the products from the baked goods I made at home to monetizable formulas, I had to be able to see and believe it as a profitable company that I was going to create. The beginning of tenacity is your absolute passion and determination to seeing your dream become reality that everyone can see.
Write it down. A dream not written down is merely a wish for a better life. You have to plan it in writing to get your dream out of your mind and into reality. Writing it down is a way to speak it into existence and hold yourself accountable. I have personally had quite a few great ideas that came to nothing because I wasn’t actually passionate enough to speak them out and write a plan to succeed. It wasn’t ever that way with Grain Free Mama’s, instead I have had a burning passion to share these great products and resources with all the people who will benefit from them just like I have from the very beginning.
Pursue your dream with no plan of retreat. Building in a ‘back door’ or ‘what if’ plan is just giving yourself permission to quit. Taking actions that ultimately don’t work out quite the way you wanted them to may be seen as failure by others, but getting back up and tweaking your approach will one day get you there. When we were just getting started in 2018 we thought we would be starting as a Farmer’s Market Stand. We bought our trailer, got a trailer hitch put on my car, purchased our tables, portable sink, branded pop-up tent, our health license, etc., etc. — basically we put a lot of time and money into getting ready. Well, what we soon realized was that people in Las Vegas want already prepared products to buy at the Farmer’s Market, and the heat is ferocious. Consumers want to buy baking mixes in the store or online. Separately from the Farmer’s Markets, we were also contacted by two very large Retail Grocery Stores who were interested in our products and we were not ready to produce the amount they would need. Fail? Maybe, if you see fail as standing for First Attempt In Learning. We chose to adjust the plan and keep progressing.
When opportunity knocks, open the door. I have had a plan all along. During the course of building and growing our company (which we are still very much doing) I have put a lot of effort out there and then kept my eyes open for the opportunities that open up. Sometimes they have come in totally different ways than I planned for, like the example in #3, but as I have remained flexible I am able to use what others may call impossible or failure as opportunities to move closer to my dream.
Lastly, and most importantly, human nature is to root for the underdog. When I was first beginning to build my company, I had many cheerleaders applauding my ‘cute little idea’. As we have made progress, the naysaying has begun more in earnest. This is music to my ears! Do you know why? Because human nature is to root for the underdog…hence, when you are moving from underdog to achiever, you will experience the cheering turn to criticism. More than anything else, THESE STATEMENTS STOKE MY FIRES OF PASSION. Use the naysayers as evidence that you are making it, because you are!

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

“Only he(she) who sees the invisible can do the impossible.” (Frank L Gaines)

I would love to revolutionize the way we look at baked goods and baking products. I absolutely know and believe that our health in this world and the way we think is firstly affected by our eating choices. Toxic guts produce toxic minds. Healthy guts produce quality of life. In order to speak life, we have to be full of life. My Revolution: Change Your Diet…Change Your Life! And in so doing make a healthy contribution to this fabulous world we live in.

Can our readers follow you on social media?

Yes, absolutely. Here they are…

Facebook — @gfmamas1

Twitter — @gfmamas

Instagram — gfmamas

LinkedIn — gfmamas

YouTube — gfmama’s

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

Margie Traxler of Grain Free Mama’s: They Told Me It Was Impossible But I Did It Anyway was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.