Month: June 2020

The Future Of Beauty: “Energy devices that can stimulate muscles and reduce fat” With Dr. Bill G Kortesis

…Oh wow! Where to even begin? There are SO MANY incredible things happening in beauty tech right now.

Energy devices are ground breaking right now. Some of the tech is truly remarkable in its ability to stimulate muscles and reduce fat in ways we never thought possible outside of surgery.

I am also excited about the individualized fillers and neurotoxins becoming available. To have the ability to target certain body parts and achieve the desired results of that specific body part is game-changing.

And ergonomic breast implants that are cohesive (stable) but also malleable and feel like a natural breast. They can be truly life-changing on a reconstructive level.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Bill G. Kortesis, MD, FACS.

Dr. Kortesis is an award-winning, board-certified plastic surgeon specializing in both reconstructive and cosmetic surgery. Dr. Kortesis earned his Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and his graduate education at Wake Forest School of Medicine. In addition to being a co-owner and partner with HKB Cosmetic Surgery in Charlotte, North Carolina, Dr. Kortesis is active on fourteen medical advisory and/or tech advisory boards. He also travels globally as a speaker and educator regarding topics ranging from “Post Modern Ways of Reaching and Connecting with Patients” to “Trends in Fat Grafting to Optimize Aesthetic Outcomes”. To help foster the next generation of aesthetic medical breakthroughs and advancements, and massively improve the future of beauty for every human being, he’s partnered with stakeholders, entrepreneurs, and small business owners to help facilitate funding and investments for medical startups. By staying at the forefront of cutting-edge advancements and investing in med-tech startups, he believes we can modernize the standard of care, deliver an unparalleled patient experience, and usher in the next generation of aesthetic medical breakthroughs.

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’ve always known that I wanted to be a doctor. It was a dream of mine from watching all of the medical television shows as a child. Shout out to Neil Patrick Harris, aka, Doogie Howser, M.D!

I was raised by immigrant parents who instilled a strong work ethic in me and instilled the desire to do better for the family and help everyone back home in Greece.

Once I started medical school, I thought for sure I was going to be a surgeon and when I did my plastic surgery rotation, I fell in love. I realized that I wanted to improve people’s confidence and provide them with a greater sense of self in any way that I could. There are so many beautiful things about this specialty that allows the opportunity to do such a variety of surgical procedures on all ages and all types of people.

On top of being a surgeon, I felt I needed to do more. I realized that I still had more to give within my field and the business side to the aesthetic industry always intrigued me. One of the main reasons I started plastic surgery was its link to business acumen.

Growing the aesthetic industry as a whole has been my passion. I am obsessed with making it better for patients and society as a whole.

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

I went on a mission trip to Bolivia and helped a lot of burn victims, which were children. As the mission trip was coming to a close, the community celebrated us with a parade. The entire experience was very emotional and I will never ever forget it.

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?

The big thing for me was/is always striving to do better and answering the drive from within to always make success mandatory and not settle for less.

It’s funny, in a way, because I still don’t consider myself a success. Is success ever truly reached?

There is so much more to do and more to accomplish. So much more to grow, so many more people to help, and much more to impact. The journey truly never ends when the calling is so great.

Lessons: Always be the hardest worker in the room and always aim to make those around you better.

Lead by example.

Be humble and be hungry.

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 parents showed me the value of perseverance. Through their experiences and through mine, I can say for a fact that with hard work and the tools God gives, dreams can be reality.

Honestly, every person I have met along the way gave me a piece of themselves to help me shine. This isn’t lost on me and that is why I am so dedicated to giving back and paying it forward.

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?

Oh wow! Where to even begin? There are SO MANY incredible things happening in beauty tech right now.

Energy devices are ground breaking right now. Some of the tech is truly remarkable in its ability to stimulate muscles and reduce fat in ways we never thought possible outside of surgery.

I am also excited about the individualized fillers and neurotoxins becoming available. To have the ability to target certain body parts and achieve the desired results of that specific body part is game-changing.

And ergonomic breast implants that are cohesive (stable) but also malleable and feel like a natural breast. They can be truly life-changing on a reconstructive level.

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?

People should think about maintenance. For instance, say a patient gets amazing results with fat reduction in a certain area, if the patient starts fluctuating in weight rather than maintaining his or her weight, fat can be redistributed in certain areas and it can look very awkward.

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

1. Energy-based devices that are changing things at the cellular level
2. Longer acting neuromodulators
3. Ergonomic implants

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?

Accessibility concerns me. I want all patients to have access to the BEST treatments from reliable providers.

We need exponential growth of ways to avoid actual surgery. If every cosmetic procedure could have a nonsurgical variance that provides the same results as an actual invasive surgery, that would be considered a success of unparalleled proportion. (It would also lend itself to bettering the accessibility concern I mentioned before.)

I want more regenerative products available. The human body fixing itself with human-like products is always the best-case scenario.

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.)

Invest in things that give you confidence! Confidence is everything because if you feel good about yourself, it radiates to the world. If you have something that is keeping you from projecting your best self, you deserve the opportunity to change it.

Some things that can raise your confidence:

I know it sounds simple, and maybe even old-fashioned, but USE SUNSCREEN. If it doesn’t make you feel beautiful now, it will in about ten years.

Botox and fillers can tackle such big for such little effort. There is a reason these are “classic” cosmetic procedures . . . they work and are reliable. Classics are classics for a reason!

Microneedling with RF energy or with retinol. I have seen some dramatic results on deep lines and wrinkles with this procedure. Energy technology is here to stay and it’s only getting better. It’s truly incredible!

While beauty is definitely not just skin deep, use a medical-grade skincare. People who take care of their skin and protect it have better self-confidence because our skin is a big part of first impressions.

Mostly, surround yourself with people who make you FEEL beautiful. I have patients who, by society’s standards, are the perfect example of outward beauty, but they have very distorted perceptions of their beauty and value due to outside influences.

Be happy and always smiling! These two simple things really bring out one’s inner beauty.

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 wouldn’t say it is a movement but it is something I see our world lacking in right now and that is empathy. If empathizing doesn’t come naturally to someone, they should make a concerted effort to practice it. I genuinely believe that if people would wake up every day pledging to have empathy, we would see a world-wide positive shift.

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

“Obsession is not-optional.”

As Kobe Bryant once said, “If you want to be great in a particular area, you have to obsess over it. A lot of people say they want to be great, but they’re not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve greatness. They have other concerns, whether important or not, and they spread themselves out.”

It’s relevant in my life every single day. When you truly want something, and I mean TRULY want it, you have wake up every single day and work hard for it. Even on days you may not feel like it. Get up. Show up. Empathize. Love.

How can our readers follow you online?

You can visit my personal website www.drbillkortesis.com for everything I have going on outside of my office and you can visit www.hkbsurgery.com for everything inside the office. You can also find me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn & Twitter, just search for Bill Kortesis MD.

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

Thank you! It was my absolute pleasure.

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The Future Of Beauty: “Energy devices that can stimulate muscles and reduce fat” With Dr. 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: “Non-Invasive Procedures Are Now Providing Better Results” With Dr. Christopher Zoumalan

I’d like to be a good example for others in this world. There are so many people that are trying to find shortcuts for instant success or happiness. But in my opinion, hard work, motivation, and passion cannot be shortcutted. I want others to hear my story and become motivated to chase their passions, their dreams. Becoming one of a handful of surgeons that specializes in Oculoplastic Surgery takes nearly 15 years of training, from college, to medical school, to internship, residency, and then fellowship. Then once you’re done, you have to start your practice! It sounds daunting, but the joys from this journey are infinite. I confidently can say that my opportunities as an inventor and entrepreneur would not have been possible, nor would have been the success of Skinuva, if it wasn’t for my career as a doctor. From a happiness standpoint, happiness cannot be bought or achieved. It’s a state that we need to constantly remind ourselves that is defined by ourselves.

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. Christopher Zoumalan, MD FACS.

Christopher Zoumalan MD is a Stanford-trained Oculoplastic Surgeon that sees patients in his private practice in the heart of Beverly Hills. He specializes in cosmetic and reconstructive eyelid surgery. He is one of a handful of surgeons that have received subspecialty training within the Oculoplastic field, having trained at various institutions including Stanford University, NYU and Columbia University. He is a prolific researcher, having published over 75 research articles and book chapters within plastic surgery, scar research, novel topical formulation, and in the neurosciences. Dr. Zoumalan is also an inventor and entrepreneur. He has developed several medical instruments, some of which are now undergoing clinical trials, and has also clinically developed and tested Skinuva Scar cream, a growth factor-based scar cream, which is regarded as one of the most advanced scar creams available to patients. Dr. Zoumalan continues to develop other products within the Skinuva product line, and will be launching their next product out soon, called Skinuva Brite, a novel formulation to improve the appearance of hyperpigmentation in the first quarter of 2020. Dr. Zoumalan also continues to teach and volunteer as an Adjunct Clinical Professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

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 love the path that I have chosen and I look forward every day to waking up, doing what I do. I get to practice as both a plastic surgeon and helping my patients and also as an entrepreneur running my Skinuva line of products. Early on in my medical training, I chose to pursue Ophthalmology during medical school, but was torn between that field and Plastic Surgery. I ultimately decided on Ophthalmology but during my residency training at Stanford, I became exposed to Plastic Surgery again, and realized my passion was not just Ophthalmology, but also Plastic Surgery. My passion for plastic surgery took me to train as an Oculoplastic Surgeon at NYU and Columbia University. Upon finishing my fellowship at NYU, I really wanted to return back to Los Angeles. The job market was terrible, as the US was still in the midst of the recession at that time. Having no solid job offers, I knew that in order to thrive, I needed to start my own practice. Everyone I spoke with tried to turn me away from this concept of starting my own practice, i.e. that “it is impossible”, that “I wouldn’t make it,” that “it’s too risky and too competitive.” Hearing these comments made me even more determined. I realized that I was well-trained, driven, and loved my job, so ultimately, with hard work and my determination, patients would choose to come see me for their care. It wasn’t an easy process, and it took years of hard work, but worth every minute of it. Thankfully, with patience, doing good work on my patients, one patient at a time, I’m now a fully established Oculoplastic Surgeon and living my dream. A few years back, I also began to explore more about developing my own scar cream, which now has lead to be become the CEO and Founder of MD Medical Designs, a company that develops my Skinuva Scar and Skinuva Brite creams, both amazing products that I have created for my physician colleagues and patients. And that’s been an incredible journey as well and I can focus a bit more about the Skinuva story with you during the rest of our interview.

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

I remember I was a few years into having my own private practice in Beverly Hills, and I was about to make a scar cream re-order from my scar cream sales representative. Scar creams are important post-surgery care products that I provide to my patients in order to best allow my patients’ incisions to heal. But as I was making the order, I kept thinking to myself, is this the best that I can be buying and providing to my patients? From a cost standpoint and also from a technology standpoint, I felt that there was potential to develop a better scar cream on the market. Previously during my Stanford training years, I was taught to see the big picture, think outside the box, and to always ask how I can make this procedure that I’m performing better…better in terms of outcomes sake and better in terms of the patient’s recovery experience. There are various treatments on the market that can help allow a scar to heal well, and most involve the initial use of a scar cream. But I was wondering why there was a lack of advancements, i.e. why weren’t there any other pertinent formulations on the market besides silicone cream? That question got me thinking and thinking outside the box. I began to research other ingredients such as growth factors and others such as Centella Asiatica, Vitamin C, even Aloe Vera, that can be incorporated in a scar cream in addition to silicone cream. So, this inspiration of potential got me motivated to develop my own scar cream. Through several years of formulation trials, and teaming up with the right team of chemists and scientists, then creating and running clinical trials to test the product out, I realized that I had come up with something that worked and worked better than what I was dispensing to my patients prior to its creation. As a result, I decided to launch Skinuva Scar cream to my peers and patients. I launched Skinuva in March of 2018, and since then, the company has grown tremendously. We are now being carried in over 100 doctor’s offices, and have also launched on Amazon for consumers to purchase directly. It’s a great story, and I’m very thrilled to see its growth. We have a lean company but our team is hard-working, dedicated, and passionate. I now can confidently provide my own patients a scar cream that I’ve created and tell them that I have designed this them because I want their scars to heal as well as they possibly can after surgery.

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’d say that the tipping point for Skinuva’s success was about a year ago, when I got a call from my former medical school roommate, who is now a radiologist in the local LA area, telling me that he randomly saw a bottle of Skinuva at his friend’s house. He called me to let me know he was out a friend’s house for a holiday party, and he saw a Skinuva Scar cream bottle in their living room. He asked his friend how they heard about the product, and his friend started to rave about the product and that her dermatologist swears by Skinuva and has all her patients use it after they have any procedure with her. This was a moment that really drove home the fact that Skinuva is here for good and is a quality product line trusted by doctors for their patients.

The interesting thing is that my friend has known about Skinuva Scar cream for a few years now and how I was working on developing it, then clinically testing it, and then to finally moving forward with product manufacturing and launching it to the market. I actually gave his wife one to use after her surgery to remove her pre-cancerous lesion a couple years ago and they were very impressed with the results of the cream on her scar.

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?

Mentorships are key. I would say there are two of them in my life. One is my father. He is a true definition of one that works hard and is motivated. He came to this country with literally nothing but a PhD degree, a new wife (my mother), but a lot of motivation and passion. To this day, he continues to provide that same motivation and passion hard work in his career and as a father, husband, and now grandfather. The other mentor is not just one person, but a group of advisors, or friends, that I have always run my ideas by. I have several friends, now also my wife, that unconditionally want me to succeed. They are positive, honest, and have a lot of advice to give. If I need to run a branding question by someone, I know who to call. If I have a funding question to ask, I know who else to call. It’s important to develop a network of people that you can reach out to with one quick phone call to get their thoughts. If I have a question to run by regarding one of my patients, I know that one doctor colleague I can always rely on. I had to learn how to run a medical practice by myself; I had to learn how to develop Skinuva and launch the company on my own. It’s through such mentorships that I was able to successfully do so.

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?

I love seeing how plastic surgery continues to focus on advanced techniques and trending toward minimally invasive procedures and/or improving the outcomes and recovery from plastic surgery. There is also a trend where non-invasive procedures are providing better and better results for patients’ cosmetic needs. And what’s encouraging is that a lot of these advancements are backed by clinical trials and showing safe and effective outcomes.

We’re also seeing a lot more skin care products that are being released on the market for consumers. However, I’m not seeing this same level of clinical data and research to support the safety and efficacy of skin care products on the market. And that’s where our Skinuva pipeline of products excels. Our scar cream (Skinuva Scar) and our latest product on hyperpigmentation (Skinuva Brite) both use medical literature and clinical data to show that they are safe and effective. Each of our ingredients have been clinically shown to work through medical literature and our extensive clinical trials, and this is what makes our products so unique. Our products are developed and clinically tested by physicians using the highest clinical standards.

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?

One of the things that I worry about is the lack of, at least in my opinion, proper research and development of the products that we actually place on our skin. Take for instance, sunscreen. We now know that some of the chemicals found in many sunscreens on the market have been shown to be absorbed through our skin and actually present in our blood in trace levels! Now take that how you want to, but I certainly would not want anything that I apply onto my skin to be absorbed into my blood. When I developed Skinuva Scar, I wanted to make sure that every ingredient that I used was safe to be applied directly on the skin, and undergone extensive testing to make sure it would be OK for long term use. That same thinking went into the development of Skinuva Brite. There has been a recent consumer push to create safe and effective non-hydroquinone products to improve hyperpigmentation. Hydroquinone is an effective product when it comes to hyperpigmentation but its use is controversial due its side effects. It has been associated with cellular toxicity in animal studies, and has side effects that can create issues for patients such as dermatitis and redness. That is why it has been banned as a consumer product in the European Union. The whole reason I developed Skinuva Scar and now Brite to my doctors and community is because I wanted to provide products that have been extensively tested, clinically tested to the highest level, and that are safe and effective for long term use.

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

The consumer push for safer and effective products. Consumers want safer products and ones that are “clean.” That’s why we’re seeing a push for “cleaner” products, ones that are not animal tested and use organic ingredients, for instance. My push was to make a product that I would feel comfortable using daily for the rest of my life. We use the cleanest ingredients, and we also manufacture our products here in the US.

Clinical data driven product development. Although I’m a doctor at heart, I’m also a scientist and a researcher. The way I developed Skinuva Scar was through clinical data and research. I used my knowledge as a scientist, my experience with skin care as a physician, and my drive to deliver a product to physicians and their patients that’s backed by science.

Beauty-tech’s future is so exciting, and I’m grateful to play some role in it by bringing more awareness to growth factor technology when it comes to skin care. There is so much more that we are wanting to develop using our knowledge about growth factors, skin care, and skin conditions. We can’t wait to tell you what we have in store for future products within our Skinuva pipeline.

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

I caution those that soley rely on social media for their medical information. Whether you’re undergoing a medical procedure, purchasing a device, or purchasing even skin care, do your research outside the realms of social media. And even if there’s an instance the procedure or device is promoted by a physician, make sure you do your research to validate that procedure or device. There is so much out there now that is not validated, and that can really create a false sense of expectations to many consumers.

So many skin care products make claims that they do not support. It would be great if we had a panel that evaluates the products manufactured, and asks for clinical data to support the claims that skin care companies wish to make. Everyone can say their product can help, for instance, improve hyperpigmentation, but we need data to back up these statements. Otherwise, consumers falsely build their expectations up for a product that may not work the way it was promoted.

The beauty industry is exploding and growing on a year to year basis. If you ask a woman that uses skin care products and makeup how many skin care products they have and how many products they apply on to their face/lips/eyes daily, it can add up to a lot more than you can imagine. There was a recent study that came out of UC Berkeley which showed that the average teenage girl uses 14 personal products per day, many of which include chemicals that are under-studied. There isn’t much regulation on makeup and skin care products, which is alarming. We don’t have any regulation as to what ingredients should and should not be used. With Skinuva Brite, for instance, we do not use any parabens, silicone, or dyes. And, we’ve undergone extensive dermatologic testing and other laboratory testing (non-animal of course) to make sure our products are safe for long term use. We certainly need better regulation to make sure that our younger generation uses products that been adequately tested and shown to be safe for long term, daily use.

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.)

• Try to stay hydrated, it’s good for you.
• Use sunscreen, with SPF30, when you are outdoors.
• It’s OK to have some maintenance botox and fillers, when done in moderation. But make sure these procedures are performed by a skilled injector with adequate training and experience.
• It’s OK to treat yourself to looking beautiful.
• It’s OK to undergo a plastic surgery procedure when it’s indicated. Make sure you do your research and meet with a board-certified plastic surgeon, facial plastic surgeon, oculoplastic surgeon, or dermatologist, depending on what procedure you’re having.

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’d like to be a good example for others in this world. There are so many people that are trying to find shortcuts for instant success or happiness. But in my opinion, hard work, motivation, and passion cannot be shortcutted. I want others to hear my story and become motivated to chase their passions, their dreams. Becoming one of a handful of surgeons that specializes in Oculoplastic Surgery takes nearly 15 years of training, from college, to medical school, to internship, residency, and then fellowship. Then once you’re done, you have to start your practice! It sounds daunting, but the joys from this journey are infinite. I confidently can say that my opportunities as an inventor and entrepreneur would not have been possible, nor would have been the success of Skinuva, if it wasn’t for my career as a doctor. From a happiness standpoint, happiness cannot be bought or achieved. It’s a state that we need to constantly remind ourselves that is defined by ourselves.

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

“Short cuts make long delays.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien,

Do things right the first time.

How can our readers follow you online?

I’m on IG at @drchristopherzoumalan and you can follow my Skinuva product line at @skinuva

• Website: www.skinuva.com
• Website: www.drchristopherzoumalan.com
• Instagram: @skinuva and @drchristopherzoumalan
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skinuva/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DRCHRISTOPHERZOUMALAN/
• Twitter: @skinuvaMD and @chriszoumalanMD

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

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The Future of Beauty: “Non-Invasive Procedures Are Now Providing Better Results” With Dr Christophe 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: “Encapsulation & Microparticles” With Dr. Michele Koo

Be confident enough to let those you hire do their best work in their areas of expertise. Recognize your own weaknesses to fill the void with those smarter and more capable than you in those fields and be receptive to learning from them. Truly listen and learn, while being humble and confident enough to embrace new thoughts, ideas, and approaches to better yourself and your endeavors with continual iterations.

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. Michele Koo, MD, FACS, a Stanford University-educated, board-certified plastic surgeon with over 27 years of skin care clinical experience from her own ongoing private practice.

Throughout her career, Dr. Koo has transposed, excised, and nurtured skin from the inside out. Now, she has created a line of elegant and luxurious biochemically balanced, results-proven skin care products, Dr. Koo Skin Care.

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 having immigrated to the U.S, I embraced the opportunity of freedom and education. Without knowing any English, I always felt a step behind. I wanted to be accepted and confident in myself. As a plastic surgeon, through either reconstruction or aesthetic changes, I make small but truly impactful changes in individuals’ lives. For me, it’s all about the ripple-forward effect of helping my patients. I have a deep empathy for those who seek change to be comfortable in themselves.

The profession I chose requires meticulous attention to detail and combines raw smarts, science, design, and skillful execution. My skin care line (www.drkooskincare.com) resulted from my patients’ and my own frustration regarding how expensive skin care products are — and how those products ultimately did nothing. (Not to mention my disdain of the wastefulness of plastic containers and the impact on the environment!) I really wanted to provide everyone with plastic surgery results without having to go under the scalpel.

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

There were many times when I had to say no to young adults, who wanted plastic surgery to change their appearances — including my own teenagers. This was an excruciating battle with myself — how to deflect and delay their requests without seeming like a hypocrite. I answered their questions and safeguarded them, just like I would any teen or adult patient who comes in with minor appearance concerns. While the nature of my practice is to “make the good better,” it isn’t the complete story. It’s about creating real beauty that suits an individual’s personality, lifestyle, and persona. There’s importance in loving yourself first, understanding your wants, needs, and personality prior to changing yourself.

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?

My success is measured by the deep and profound gratitude and relief my patients give me when I alter their genetics. They no longer feel trapped in the bodies that they could not change. I have learned so much from my patients just by truly listening. I have been humbled by the human body’s ability to repair whatever incisions I have created. When I see my own growth and enlightenment through the eyes of my patients, I know that I am successful.

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?

We are a product of those who surround us. My mother, my three children Cameron, Alex, and Sydney, my husband Richard Lehman, who is a famous skilled orthopedic surgeon, my assistant Joanne, and all my patients. Even though we could not afford anything, my mother and father gave me everything and more. They gave me love, security, and the push to apply to Stanford University. My children have been strong and so helpful, with their brutal and honest words, to tell me when I was wrong. I became a better mother and person because of that. My husband of 32 years works so incredibly hard to support me and our children, and encourages me to forge ahead in my own career and passions. My selfless, tireless, smart, loyal assistant of 27 years, Joanne, takes care of our patients and me. Without her I would never have been able to build the practice, my skin care line, and have a family.

The best advice I could give anyone is to surround yourself with caring people who you trust and have your back, then effectively delegate. Be confident enough to let those you hire do their best work in their areas of expertise. Recognize your own weaknesses to fill the void with those smarter and more capable than you in those fields and be receptive to learning from them. Truly listen and learn, while being humble and confident enough to embrace new thoughts, ideas, and approaches to better yourself and your endeavors with continual iterations.

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?

The science of encapsulation and microparticles is a unique and effective means of maximizing the delivery of ingredients to the appropriate layers of skin without irritation. I have scientifically combined ancient ingredients with documented results and the newest of skin science and technology. This allows my products to be all inclusive of all genders, races, and skin types. Skin is skin and science is science, so there is no need to differentiate a man’s product from a woman’s product. I provide step-wise concentrations and ingredient differentiation for a ladder to success, the right product at the right time, in the right concentration.

I think you’ve hit upon two completely different types of “cutting edge” technology. One is the unbelievable advances of medicine and science technology, while the other is digital imaging and informational technology. I do not see true scientists or medical doctors interested in science and research creating and founding skin care beauty brands. Instead, I see a sea of entrepreneurs and fashion icons brilliantly using “cutting edge” social media, digital information dissemination, and marketing to create immense distribution and sales of their products.

However, with better information, technology, digital imaging, and instantaneous feedback capabilities, a greater accountability of claims for product results will be demanded. My product gives the industry a true science-based skin care line that works — and isn’t just “hype,” my lab supports and guides the use of my skin care products to achieve those results.

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?

Technology, particularly the kind that allows imaging to be conveyed over the internet, is immensely dangerous. So much private information can be hidden behind a photo and be virally disseminated. Mirrors programmed with digital imaging technology utilized to measure body fat can have profound negative self-image consequences. If digital imaging and telecommunications are utilized for medical access, and immediate feedback, it can revolutionize medicine. With greater access to informational technology comes more dangerous invasion of privacy, intentional as well as unintentional. Used properly, visual imaging can save lives and render access to quality university based health care to third world countries and rural regions of the United States.

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

1. Better access to the rapid diagnosis of dermatologic and plastic surgery concerns, faster response times to change skin care routines, and treatment plans for better outcomes. This also applies to diagnosis of skin cancers.

2. Improved biochemistry delivery systems for active ingredients to truly create change in the skin that will undo the past and protect it for the future. Creating micro- and then nano-actives to better achieve penetration into the cell for improved outcomes of skin change and protection.

3. Better distinction between true skin health and cosmetics. Cosmetic skin care is about optics and fast fixes. Quality medical skin care is about long-term skin health, followed by beauty.

4. (I had to add another one!) Improved virtual exercise devices and platforms to motivate those at home to start healthy routines. I have many patients who are too embarrassed to be seen in their gym clothes and won’t go to a class or train in a public venue. This will motivate and provide the platform for an unlimited number of in-home activities to stay healthy. This could be streamed and connected live with others doing the same routines to share the “misery” and experience!

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. Lack of transparency with the ingredients and why/how they work. I would ask for more transparency and education about the source, quality and concentrations of ingredients.

2. The emphasis on instant beauty changes with product use. I want to change consumers’ life-long skin care habits. Beauty and skin health does not come in a jar. I prefer to emphasize educating the consumer, peeling back the curtain to the wizard, and creating sustainable consistent skin care habits for not only skin health, but also holistic health as the skin is the gateway to so many diseases. Beauty and overall health will follow!

3. Improved labeling of products.

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

1. A minimum of a 15-minute daily walk, and then building up to 30 to 60 minutes of some form of activity two to three times a week. Don’t set your goals so high that you feel intimidated and don’t even take the first step. I’ve had so many patient success stories, but the one that comes to mind is a woman in her 50s. She was at least 80 pounds heavier than her ideal weight. She hated “exercising.” She started ballroom dancing to socialize and as a stress reliever. She loved it so much, she increased her participation from one session two hours a week to five sessions, two hours each, five days a week! She entered competitive tournaments and formed so many new friendships. She lost 100 pounds and never looked back. Find your passion, don’t look for “exercises.”

2. A fresh lipstick or cologne every few months to brighten how you feel and look. I’m the perfect example in this case. I love something small, cute, and inexpensive that adds a touch of color, brightness, and freshness for my hair, makeup, and home. It doesn’t need to be a big purchase, it needs to be something you love, that makes you feel special and fresh.

3. Treat yourself to a professional color or hair styling at least every six to 12 weeks. Again, I have many patients, and this one applies to men as well. Men rarely take time for grooming. A client of mine, male, was undergoing a divorce, wanted to change his appearance, and didn’t want the downtime or expense of “plastic surgery.” I started him on a simple skin care regimen and suggested changing his hairstyle. He took my suggestion, and you cannot believe the impact this had on his self-esteem and perception. He started to slowly take more care in his dress and overall self-care. You have to start small and continue to grow!

4. One cheat day every week or two to eat or drink guilt free (but not in excess). Patients of mine who live in constant guilt can never progress with weight loss, give up smoking, or change their eating habits. They are constantly depriving themselves and then uncontrollably binging. If you indulge guilt-free (within limits) on set days, your longevity of healthy habits will be greater. I have too many clients and friends that fall into a self-loathing frame of mind.

5. Start with small changes, tip the first domino. For example, my patients who lose tremendous amounts of weight (I’m talking hundreds of pounds!). They start with such simple habits of giving up soda, sugary drinks, and eating late at night. They add one small step at a time. This applies to any “habit” that you want to change. A patient of mine wanted to change the way she interacted with her teenage daughter. No matter what she said, their interaction ended in an argument. I finally offered the advice of, “Why say anything, they want you to listen more than they want to hear your opinion.” She started practicing the closed-mouth technique and only offers advice when there is a question and now actually has full conversations with her daughter.

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

I would inspire a movement of daily, basic motivational tasks — like washing your face every night. Start small but stay with it. Set a daily goal of very basic simple chores or activities of living. One chore a day that must be completed every week, expand from there. For example, on Mondays, don’t smoke any cigarettes if you’re a smoker. Tuesdays, balance your checkbook. Wednesdays, don’t eat sugar. Thursdays, walk for 15 minutes. Fridays, go to bed by 10 p.m.

Never give up and aspire to find you. It’s about iterating and re-iterating. It’s ok to fail but it’s not ok to give up.

It’s about letting your inner beauty come through, not cover-up and makeup. It’s the happiness we find in doing our best for ourselves first then for others. On an airplane, the flight attendants always tell you to put your own mask on FIRST, then on your child. You can’t help others if you don’t help yourself first. What do these tasks have to do with beauty? Beauty requires self-care, whether it’s your hair, skin, nails, clothes, or weight. It takes discipline and work. It takes consistency. It takes pride and love of oneself. Start small, stay consistent.

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

Steve Jobs said “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”

My corollary is “Stay humble, stay learning.”

How can our readers follow you online?

Plastic Surgery — Website: https://drmichelekoo.com/

Facebook: @DrMicheleKoo

Skin Care Products — Website: https://drkooskincare.com/

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram: @drkooskincare

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

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The Future Of Beauty: “Encapsulation & Microparticles” With Dr Michele Koo 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: “An App That Can Help You Find A Beauty Artist” With Courtney Summers of VaultBeauty

It seems that between social media, filters, and apps that make Photoshop so easy, women aren’t able to see the beauty in their own faces. Scrolling thru social media women start looking the same. It’s sad to see so many people ignore their own beauty. I can’t imagine how hard it makes it for young girls trying to figure out how to be comfortable and love who they are.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Courtney Summers, the Founder & CEO of the innovative VaultBeauty app available in the iTunes store. After 10 years working as a makeup artist, mostly in the pageantry and sports industries, Courtney sought to provide a solution to easily connect beauty professionals with clients (and vice versa!). When she was 8 months pregnant, unable to travel with a client, Courtney was tasked with finding another artist in the area — except she couldn’t. Shocked by how difficult it was to find beauty experts in a specific area, Courtney worked to create a new era of expert sourcing. Thus, VaultBeauty was born as the ultimate solution to finding local professionals across the cosmetics industry for all your beauty needs

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

As a makeup artist always traveling to various locations, it became difficult when I was 8 months pregnant. A valued client asked if could recommend a reliable artist in the area she would be going. I searched for days and couldn’t believe how hard it was to find an artist in a specific area. I could not find anyone for her. It made me realize how many clients I was missing because they were having the same issue. It was a problem I couldn’t ignore, so I started working on a solution.

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

Switching roles from freelance makeup artist to launching an app was very interesting to say the least — especially when you add in adjusting to being a new mom. Good times and hard times for certain. I was just in New York City for our first launch event. It was incredibly fulfilling to be able to talk to this group of women and hear their excitement regarding VaultBeauty! Even though I knew we had created something great, it was amazing to be able to finally introduce it to users and see their reaction.

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?

The first month VaultBeauty was live in the app store we didn’t want to do a big PR push. We wanted to just reach out to users, slowly get artists on the app so we could eliminate any “bugs”. We had to figure out the best way to connect with our users but once we did, we started getting amazing feedback. VaultBeauty is still VERY new, but that one moment just reminded me that if something isn’t working, to keep trying till you find what does.

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?

100% my parents. They started their own company when I was very young, so I grew up seeing their work ethic, how they never gave up, and how they treated their employees. At that time, I didn’t realize everything they sacrificed when I was younger and looking back, I have no clue how they did it. I’m am so incredibly grateful I have them to look up to and to go to when I’m stuck in a crossroads.

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?

I think people have become accustomed to being able to find out anything from the palm of their hand, and VaultBeauty takes that one step further for the beauty industry. With VaultBeauty, we have simplified finding an artist. We want to save clients time by helping them know exactly who they will be working with, while the artists will have confidence knowing through VaultBeauty, they are not lost in a sea of hashtags. Although we are still in beta phase, we have an ongoing list of features we will be adding in the upcoming months to make our platform better for both artists and clients.

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?

It seems that between social media, filters, and apps that make Photoshop so easy, women aren’t able to see the beauty in their own faces. Scrolling thru social media women start looking the same. It’s sad to see so many people ignore their own beauty. I can’t imagine how hard it makes it for young girls trying to figure out how to be comfortable and love who they are.

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

It’s exciting thinking about the future of beauty and how the tech industry will impact it.

• I have always loved skincare and can’t wait to try out 3D printed sheet masks! An app maps your face and takes skin diagnostics to find what you need, and the printer creates a mask that perfectly fits your face.
• L’Oréal is coming out with a system, Perso. It creates on-demand, personalized formulas for skincare, lipstick and foundation.
• I’ve also seen different apps/smart mirrors that do everything from trying on different makeup shades to telling you your hair type.

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

• I would love to see people stop photoshopping their photos — or at least overusing it!
• Don’t get me wrong, I love a good filter (especially if it works on my dogs) but there are so many filters that completely change your face.
• I wish more people would think about what they are promoting to their followers that put all their trust in them. There is a reason these brands pay certain people to post their products. Because their followers will buy without even thinking about it. But some of these products aren’t good for you.

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.)

• Appreciate your body and take care of it — Going thru a pregnancy has made me appreciate my body so much. It’s incredible what your body is capable of.
• Fall in love with yourself and your life — One of the most important things I’ve learned is how to love myself. It’s hard to allow someone else to love you if you can’t be happy with yourself.
• Embrace your originality, your quirks, imperfections, and talents. — I love seeing a person who has accepted themselves and is comfortable in their own skin. It’s so beautiful.
• Do at least one thing a day for yourself — Whether it’s a bubble bath and a mask, or taking 10 mins in the morning to stretch and mentally prepare for your day.
• Good brows and the right haircut — Bad brows and a bad haircut are two things that are really hard to cover up…. I’ve had both, and neither help you feel beautiful. Haha.

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 wish everyone could be just a little more empathetic. Everyone is going through their own struggles that you might never know about. A tiny bit of kindness has the ability to completely change someone’s day.

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

This is a pretty generic response but, “Treat others the way you want to be treated”. Growing up, I’ve never seen my parents treat someone poorly no matter what kind of a day they were having. That’s definitely something I try to do. It doesn’t matter how successful you are, or how much money you have. The way you treat people is everything.

How can our readers follow you online?

@courtneysummers_ @vault_beauty

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The Future Of Beauty: “An App That Can Help You Find A Beauty Artist” With Courtney Summers of… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There are people who refuse to post any image of themselves online without altering the image in some way. We really need to think about how it is affecting our mental health or self-confidence, if it is causing mental disorders that we’re not even aware of. There’s a fine line between using technology to make yourself look better and feel better about yourself, and then there’s the extreme of becoming obsessed with these technological aids and this obsession with beauty turning into a mental illness.

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. Mark Youssef.

Mark Youssef, MD is the Medical Director and Founder of YOUnique Cosmetic Surgery, located only steps from the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, California. As a Diplomate of the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery with more than sixteen years’ experience, he specializes in surgical enhancements of the face and body, as well as minimally invasive cosmetic procedures. Recognized by his peers in Plastic Surgery Practice Magazine as one of the most distinguished cosmetic surgeons in the country, Dr. Youssef has become the cosmetic surgeon many celebrities, entertainers, business executives and even fellow physicians rely on for precision cosmetic enhancements and natural-looking results. Dr. Youssef graduated with honors from the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. He completed his residency and training at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, where he went on to become a staff physician. Dr. Youssef is also an active member of the American Society of Laser Medicine and Surgery, the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, the American Society of Cosmetic Breast Surgery and the American Medical Association.

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

How did I become an expert in this Brazilian Butt Lift? The popularity of this procedure has been rising over the past two decades. And because we’re in Santa Monica, we’re in the mecca of Southern California, the mecca of cosmetic surgery. This is where people come to seek out experts in this field. After doing scores of these lifts, I decided to write about it in order to dispel the many myths that exist about the procedure as well as some of its risks and dangers. I think people need access to this information so that they can make well-informed decisions about their own body, about their own health. So that’s what led me to write the book, The Art of the Brazilian Butt Lift, and I must say that it’s really nice to be recognized by my colleagues as being an expert in this field. It’s a small niche, one that people like Kim Kardashian, Iggy Azalea, Jennifer Lopez, and others have helped make so popular, and in turn, the medical procedures to mimic these looks have become more popular. That’s really what dragged many of us into this field of cosmetic surgery.

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

In my book, I refer to one patient as Flat Booty Judy, but this same scenario has happened in many types of consultations, not just when it comes to the rear end, our caboose. When patients come in, many are often self-conscious about some part of their body they feel is disproportionate. It’s very nice to be able to tell a patient who’s nearly in tears because they don’t fit in jeans well, or their butt looks flat when they wear certain clothing, that you can move fat from where they genetically have too much and transfer it to the buttocks to accentuate what they want to accentuate and really boost their self-confidence. So Flat Booty Judy comes in and she’s a typical patient who’s self-conscious, maybe a little depressed and down, wearing baggy clothing because she doesn’t like how she looks in clothes. After the consultation, she decides to do the procedure. We picked areas of fat where she doesn’t want them and took that fat and transferred it during the surgery to make her buttocks more lifted, rounder, and give her a bit more of that hourglass shape. A few months after the surgery, she came in to the office and she’s almost unrecognizable! She’s walking taller, she’s more confident, she has a smile on her face, she’s wearing the type of clothes she’s always wanted to, and that’s what makes my job the most rewarding in seeing not only how people look after their surgery, but how they feel.

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 of lessons that others can learn from that?

It’s kind of weird because my career really started sixteen years ago, but this wave of the Brazilian Butt Lift’s popularity is more of a recent phenomenon. So it’s not necessarily about the popularity of my career, but the popularity of this procedure.

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?

There are several people, several great mentors I’ve been privileged to know along the way. One of the people who really inspired me, and was kind enough to write the introduction to my book, was Dr. Michael Salzhauer, also known as Dr. Miami. He has a wonderful and busy practice in Miami, Florida and he has been an inspiration to a lot of us. He’s probably done more of these procedures than anyone in the country and I really take my hat off to him. He’s been a very dear friend and colleague of mine throughout the years.

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?

This actually does have a particularly recent development in the Brazilian Butt Lift. Some of these developments are even more recent than the publication of the book. Over the last few months, there have been advances in technology that have helped doctors make this procedure safer. One of the criticisms of the BBL is that it has had a higher risk factor than other cosmetic surgeries. In fact, the risk of death in Brazilian Butt Lift is about one in 3,000, which is considered fairly high compared with other types of liposuction and other types of procedures. And the reason is that when you’re injecting the fat into the buttocks, there is a risk of introducing that fat into the venous system and you can get a pulmonary embolism, and that can be lethal. Over the last several months, there have been new ultrasound techniques that show how the fat is being injected, and new studies that show how certain regions of the buttocks are safer to inject than others, which areas we should avoid, and certain depths that we should avoid beneath the gluteal muscles. So there have been some recent technologies both in studies instructing doctors on how to do these procedures safer and better as well as new equipment that we can use that reduces the danger, especially ultrasound-guided injections.

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?

Yes, I believe the drawbacks pertain to all of these apps that are related to social media. Instagram has filters, Snapchat has filters, you can find filters that change your face, alter your body, make you thinner, make your hips wider, or whatever you want. There are people who refuse to post any image of themselves online without altering the image in some way. We really need to think about how it is affecting our mental health or self-confidence, if it is causing mental disorders that we’re not even aware of. There’s a fine line between using technology to make yourself look better and feel better about yourself, and then there’s the extreme of becoming obsessed with these technological aids and this obsession with beauty turning into a mental illness.

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

I think what’s exciting about our industry, particularly in cosmetic surgery, is that it’s always changing. There’s always new technology, there are always new procedures, always less invasive ways to get better results, new things that come out that help us reduce recovery time, accomplishing results that used to be surgical and making them non-surgical. New devices. It’s always a fun, exciting field. I never do the same thing day after day. I always get to do something different every day. And every year, I do things differently than I did them the year before. That, for me, is very exciting.

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 thing that concerns me is the sheer amount of misinformation that is being thrown out there for public consumption. Especially with social media. Almost anyone who is not credentialed can talk about any subject, give people advice, recommendations on cosmetic surgery and we even see some people who are not licensed physicians at all doing illegal procedures in their backyards. When a procedure becomes popular, when a certain celebrity makes something popular, we start to have a lot of black market stuff pop up related to that procedure. I think that’s what concerns people like us the most because this is what makes some of these procedures dangerous and even life-threatening. When misinformation is given online — and that’s where many people go first for information — and people go to someone who is not licensed in a particular procedure and may practice in an unsafe way, that’s one of the biggest concerns in this field.

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

1. Practice good posture — standing tall makes you feel more confident and conveys a better image to others.

2. Stop worrying about what others think of you — caring too much about what others think might negatively affect how good you feel about yourself.

3. Exercise and good diet — a balanced, healthy diet and regular exercise have been proven to make you feel better inside and out.

4. Hydrate — drinking water helps keep the skin looking vibrant and younger. Being dehydrated can make wrinkles more prominent.

5. Always wear a smile — studies show that people who smile more feel better about themselves.

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

I would love to make people feel good about themselves without necessarily changing their appearance. Yes, that could put me right out of business, but right now, a lot of people come to me for the wrong reasons. They come to me because they’ve caught their husbands cheating with younger women and now they want to look younger themselves. Or they are being bullied at school about their big nose and they want to change that nose. What I would love to see happen is a movement of people feeling great about themselves and having the self-confidence to come in for the right reasons, not because they feel as if they have to, but because they want to as sort of an add-on, even though they’re eternally happy to begin with. I think when people come to my office for the wrong reasons, they wind up not always being happy with the external change because the external change doesn’t always improve the internal image. So I’d love to start a movement of making people happy with themselves. I feel that especially with the younger generation, when they’re so focused on how they look and how they present themselves, and how many times they Photoshop or Facetune or filter their images, I feel that could lead to feeling a bit unhappy with yourself before you even do anything. Let’s try to be happy and self-confident first before we alter our appearance.

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

Personally, I like Abe Lincoln’s famous quote: “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Or, we could combine a number of other more recent philosophies and come up with this suggestion: “You don’t have to look perfect to feel perfect.” That’s really an important life lesson to learn, I think.

How can our readers follow you online?

They can go to www.youniquecosmeticsurgery.com

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

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The Future Of Beauty: “Ultrasound-Guided Lifts” With Dr. Mark Youssef of YOUnique Cosmetic Surgery was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One big concern for me is the excessive use of plastic in the beauty industry. Plastics have improved life for us in so many ways — from lifesaving pacemakers to increasing the longevity of many stored foods. But as is often the case, there’s been an abusive level of consumption without attention to balance. As an industry, we are already making strong moves to reduce the unnecessary use of plastics, but people still buy from companies that use tons of plastic, and until that changes, the industry won’t really change either. We only use plastics when there is no other viable option. For example, the pumping mechanisms that dispense our products are plastic, but the bottles themselves are made of glass and metal, and the vast majority of our packaging materials are made from FSC certified, sustainably sourced papers.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Agatha Luczo and Kim Walls of Furtuna Skin.

International model, author, speaker and Founder of Furtuna Skin and Bambini Furtuna, Agatha Relota Luczo has been immersed in the beauty industry her entire life. Starting her modeling career at age sixteen, she has had access to world-renowned celebrity makeup artists and skincare experts from a very young age.

The Manhattan-born head-turner has graced the pages of Vogue, W, L’Officiel, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar and the runways of Ralph Lauren, Chanel, YSL, Oscar de la Renta and Terry Muglier. She has been the face of numerous campaigns for Patek Phillippe, Chanel, YSL, Hermes, Nina Ricci and many more. Her poise, confidence and extensive knowledge of beauty and wellness have made her a sought-after expert for speaking engagements, editorial interviews and podcasts.

Agatha and her husband are landowners in Sicily, where they built an organic farm and co-founded Bona Furtuna, an organic olive oil brand produced on their Estate. When Agatha met Kim Walls, a clean beauty pioneer, the stars aligned and so did their like-minded dreams of creating an organic skincare line that was cleaner and higher performance than the rest. The wealth of wildly potent plants on Agatha’s private Estate in Sicily led to the creation of Furtuna Skin. Agatha has always gravitated towards an organic lifestyle believing that whatever you put on your skin is just as important as what you eat. When she became pregnant, she became increasingly aware of the products she applies topically.

As Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Furtuna Skin, Agatha oversees the creative aspects of the luxury natural Italian skincare brand and is involved in developing the products to create the ultimate aesthetic experience and performance. Additionally, Agatha’s natural beauty radiates as the face of Furtuna Skin showcasing the brand’s transformative effects on the skin.

Kim Walls is the CEO and Co-founder of Furtuna Skin and Bambini Furtuna and a clean beauty pioneer who lives with her family in Los Angeles, California. Born into beauty as the daughter of a renowned skincare founder, she grew up learning how to formulate topical healing remedies.

After graduating from the University of California Santa Barbara with honors, Kim joined a wellness tech startup as their skincare guru. She then pivoted to starting skincare companies of her own, carrying on the family legacy as a founder of natural brands that garnered international recognition. She expanded her beauty repertoire as the former General Manager of Lime Crime Makeup, working with the team to turn it into one of the most rapidly growing indie cosmetic companies.

Named one of New Hope Media’s “9 Wonder Women of the Natural Industry”, Kim has been at the forefront of the clean beauty movement, galvanizing brands to remove unsafe ingredients and create more eco-friendly standards. A skincare innovator with broad experience as an educator, esthetician, nutritionist and formulator, she has worked with doctors, nurses and lab chemists to research and develop breakthrough clean beauty products that lead the industry forward. She combines her commitment to wellness and organic living with expertise in clinical skincare and nutritional science to provide resources and guidance for men and women worldwide. In the non-profit sector, Kim has served as leader of the Retail Advisory Committee for the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

An industry advisor and authority on safe, natural ingredients, Kim has lent her voice to beauty and empowerment podcasts such as Gloss Angeles, American Made Beauty, Support is Sexy and countless others. Kim and her brands have appeared on numerous morning news programs including CBS Early Show and Good Morning America with interviews from major publications including Vogue, Allure, Refinery 29, Poosh, Maisonette and WWD. Kim has contributed to Real Simple, Skin Inc, Huffington Post, Kidsinthehouse.com, StrollerTraffic.com, Natural PregnancyPros.com, MomTrends.com and more.

An animated speaker, she educates and entertains audiences for events like Create & Cultivate, the Girl Cult Festival by Galore, and the Albright, an international women’s club. A member of the Female Founders Collective, CEW, Hey Mama in NYC and The Jane Club in Los Angeles, Kim mentors women on how to grow their business. Having been an early leader in international eCommerce and a business partner to such retailers as Whole Foods, Target, Ulta and Sephora, Kim has been tapped to speak on new trends at conferences like Shop.org and led the Retail Advisory Committee for the Environmental Working Group.

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?

Sometimes I feel like the luckiest person on earth when it comes to my career. I was born into the beauty business as my father founded a luxury skincare brand shortly after I was born. I was obsessed with helping him from as far back as I can remember. One of my favorite memories is sitting on the kitchen counter while he blended together novel ingredients that had never been used in skincare before. I hung on his every word about biochemistry and took his lead — eventually creating my own products. His library was always overflowing with original research about skincare ingredient performance and new methodologies. I could never get enough, and I still can’t. The opportunities to create new products, using wildly potent plants from La Furtuna Estate, combined with techniques like our trademarked Soundbath Extraction Method, has made me more appreciative of my career than ever before.

— Kim Walls, Co-Founder and CEO of Furtuna Skin

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

Before breaking into the beauty business I was an international supermodel. At the height of my modeling career when I was gracing the campaigns for Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Nina Ricci, to name just a few and was given the opportunity to be cast in a movie, and then tragically my lung collapsed 3 different times which led to 2 different emergency surgeries. One day during recovery, I turned to my mom and weakly scribbled on a paper that I thought I was going to die. I felt my life slipping away. While on the edge of consciousness I could hear the voices of the nurses calling me to stay with us. I went from CCU to ICU and by the grace of God and amazing health professionals, I made a full recovery. My career was interrupted on-and-off for a few years as a result and it was a long road back to the top of the fashion world. Because of this experience I always keep life in perspective and count each day as a blessing. Now, more than ever, I strive to seize every opportunity and make the best of every situation.

— Agatha Luczo, Founder and CCO of Furtuna Skin

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’ve always loved what I do, so in that way, I feel like I’ve been successful since the beginning.

By the same token, I’ve learned a lot the hard way — by making mistakes. I don’t know that

I make fewer mistakes now than before, but I do learn faster. The problem with loving what you do is that it doesn’t feel like work, so it is easy to go and go and go. One day I realized that money matters more than I realized, and that my time and experience have value and decided to stop working for free. I committed to myself that I would only donate about five hours per week of doing work for free, and that would be mostly donated to young entrepreneurs who are just finding their way. Once I made that decision I still did the work I love, but I started making more money doing the same thing. Go figure.

All that said, there was definitely a tipping point in my ability to conceive of and execute on creating products that performed far better than anything in my past. This all began when I met Agatha. She had a huge vision, enormous confidence in us as a team, and plants on her farm that were so powerful they seemed magical to me.

A great example of this is our Anchusa Azurea, which we debuted into the skincare world. The Anchusa Azurea is a wildflower that grows on the farm and has super high concentrations ofVitamins C and E, polyphenols, flavonoids, and fatty acids, which shield skin against environmental stress with the highest antioxidant activity of any wild edible Mediterranean plant. This powerful plant helps heal surface inflammation and blur imperfections as it restores skin, and it’s at the heart of our Splendore Anchusa™ complex, which is in many of our Furtuna Skin formulas.

Learning how to work as a true team member instead of a solo flyer completely changed my life, and was my biggest tipping point.

— Kim Walls, Co-Founder and CEO of Furtuna Skin

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?

When I was in high school, I was stopped on the street by a modeling scout and agent to become a model. My parents weren’t a hundred percent behind the idea and they had me go seek advice. When I shared my story with Sister Catherine, a nun and my high school guidance counselor, she told me, “Agatha, go, run and take the opportunity and never look back”. Her advice gave me the confidence to go and take a chance which brought me to where I am today.

I am forever grateful to her.

— Agatha Luczo, Founder and CCO of Furtuna Skin

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 use a trademarked Soundbath™ Extraction Method to extract wildly potent bioactives from the plants on our farm. This particular technology was adapted from the pharmaceutical industry because it delivers the most consistent and reliable results. In previous years, other companies couldn’t get reliable results from truly natural bases because the industry was using old fashioned methods like ethoxylation or leaving things in the heat or sun to extract too slowly over time. Now that we’ve incorporated higher-performance methods, we are able to reach new levels of benefits for skincare aficionados.

— Kim Walls, Co-Founder and CEO of Furtuna Skin

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

At Furtuna Skin, we have benefited from the law of unintended consequences because we have looked first to the land and not the labs for our greatest inspiration. The magic that happens in plant communities may someday be explained in plain scientific terms, but until then, we don’t need to wait until the wisdom of the ages yields meaningful results in our skincare routines. We’ve found divine combinations of plant components that are included in our products like the Splendore Anchusa Complex that are so powerful they can block 100% of free radical formation on the skin.

— Kim Walls, Co-Founder and CEO of Furtuna Skin

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

1. Personalization and the ability to best cater to our clientele.
2. Processing methods — cutting edge science.
3. Testing methodologies — how to identify the potential of any ingredient to benefit skin specifically. Historically the testing used in beauty was food and nutrient-based testing. Skin is different from the digestive system.

— Agatha Luczo, Founder and CCO of Furtuna Skin

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. One big concern for me is the excessive use of plastic in the beauty industry. Plastics have improved life for us in so many ways — from lifesaving pacemakers to increasing the longevity of many stored foods. But as is often the case, there’s been an abusive level of consumption without attention to balance. As an industry, we are already making strong moves to reduce the unnecessary use of plastics, but people still buy from companies that use tons of plastic, and until that changes, the industry won’t really change either. At Furtuna Skin we only use plastics when there is no other viable option. For example, the pumping mechanisms that dispense our products are plastic, but the bottles themselves are made of glass and metal, and the vast majority of our packaging materials are made from FSC certified, sustainably sourced papers.

2. Another concern is the use of new invasive procedures and new skincare ingredients without proper testing. Fundamentally, the skin has been viewed more like a cellophane wrapper than the dynamic body organ that it is. Historically, people didn’t approach skin procedures from the perspective of “How will this affect my overall health and body, not just my look?” In the early 2000s, I was so excited about laser hair removal and had it done myself to save time on shaving. Then, just a couple of years ago, I was doing a deep-dive on new stem cell technologies for skincare and learned that a great deal of our skin’s wound healing abilities come from stem cells that thrive in the base of the hair follicle. By engaging in laser hair removal, I damaged the stem cells in my hair follicles — the very cells that have the greatest healing potential for my skin. I undermined the potential of my body’s entire immune system for the convenience of not needing to shave. My personal experiences of seeing potentially dangerous new technologies come and go has made me, and our entire team at Furtuna Skin, deeply committed to doing the proper testing to prove that our products are helpful, and also not harmful.

3. My last concern is the industry standard for the definition of what “beauty” truly means. There are many factors that go into this concern, but we also need to look in the mirror as individuals and see that we make conscious choices in our purchasing habits, and that those choices have consequences. Marketers will continue to market what sells. So I challenge us all: let’s buy a vision of beauty that reflects the reality we want to see in the world. Vote with your wallet.

— Kim Walls, Co-Founder and CEO of Furtuna Skin

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 wake up each morning counting my blessings and remind myself how special life is and to cherish what you have. Having said that, I do have a ritual and use the below five things on a daily basis that make me feel beautiful in their own way.

1. Large Sunglasses
2. Borsalino Hat
3. Scarves
4. Mascara and Eyeliner
5. Furtuna Skin Porte Per La Vitalita Face and Eye Serum

— Agatha Luczo, Founder and CCO of Furtuna Skin

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 am honored to be where I am and think if I could inspire a movement I would wish to provide equal access to education to all the children around the world.

— Agatha Luczo, Founder and CCO of Furtuna Skin

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

I have two life lesson quotes that I follow and are my favorite: “Everything in life happens for a reason” and “Live life with no regrets.”

I believe you should always follow your instincts and your heart. You wouldn’t be where you are today if it wasn’t for the choices you made and the things that happened to you along the way.

— Agatha Luczo, Founder and CCO of Furtuna Skin

How can our readers follow you online? @agatharelotaluczo @kimwallsla @furtunaskin

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The Future Of Beauty: “Clean Beauty” With Agatha Luczo & Kim Walls of Furtuna Skin was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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.

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 Gia! 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!

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Gia Storms: “How One Can Thrive 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.

Personal growth is something I am extremely passionate about. After spending ten years doing interviews with people at the top of their fields — from the arts to science to sports- I noticed that these super achievers had many things in common from their ability to be self-aware of their potential to their daily habits and need to give back.

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 Gaby Natale.

Gaby Natale is a triple Daytime EMMY® winner, TV personality, bestselling author and motivational speaker. She is the executive producer and host of the nationally-syndicated TV show SuperLatina on PBS’ VME network.

One of the most prestigious media personalities in Spanish-language television, Natale is among a few women in the entertainment industry who owns not only the rights to her TV show but also a television studio. This unique situation has allowed her to combine her passion for media and her entrepreneurial spirit.

People magazine named Natale one of 2018’s “25 Most Powerful Latinas”, highlighting the inspirational story of how she went from a local TV show that started out of a carpet warehouse to becoming the only Latina in US history to win triple back-to-back Daytime EMMYs. Her popularity grew even further when her first book, “The Virtuous Circle” by HarperCollins, became an instant bestseller, topping Amazon’s New Releases charts in 3 different categories (Business, Inspiration and Self-Help).

Natale is also the founder of AGANARmedia, a marketing company with a focus on Hispanic audiences that serves Fortune 500 companies such as Hilton Worldwide, Sprint, AT&T, eBay and Amazon. In the digital world, she has a thriving fan base with over 52 million views on YouTube and 250K+ followers on Social Media.

In 2019, Natale launched Welcome All Beauty, her own hairpiece and extension line dedicated to women who need to be camera-ready on the go.

A tireless advocate of gender and diversity issues, Natale is a sought-after bilingual speaker and a frequent collaborator with nonprofits such as St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign and Voto Latino. She has keynoted conferences from the United Nations to tech shows and trade gatherings across the US and Latin America. Natale has been featured in Forbes, CNN, Buzzfeed, NBC News, Univision and Latino Leaders magazine. She is the recipient of NALIP’s Digital Trailblazer Award and of a GLAAD Media Award nomination for her portrayal of Latino LGBTQ youth in media.

Natale holds a bachelor’s in International Relations and a master’s degree in Journalism from the University of San Andres and Columbia University. Prior to starting her career in television, Natale taught Communication and Journalism courses at the University of Texas. Originally from Argentina, Natale holds triple citizenship from the United States, Argentina and Italy and has lived in London (UK), Mexico, Washington DC and Buenos Aires.

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

My name is Gaby Natale; I am a 3-time EMMY award-winning journalist, author, speaker, and entrepreneur. I am originally from Argentina, where I graduated in 2001 with a Master’s Degree in Journalism ready to take over the world but had to face the harsh reality of graduating in a country that had a record 20% unemployment rate, a severe economic crisis, and an unstable political landscape that led us to have five presidents in ten days.

I endured almost two years of unemployment without much hope of a better future. One day I volunteered to work pro bono as a helper at an international marketing conference. A few hours into that day, we learned that the translator had canceled last minute. I was bilingual and asked to replace her. To make a long story short, I translated for a delegation of professors from George Washington University that would eventually end up offering me telework -first- and a full-time position — many months later- in their PR agency. I went from unemployed in Buenos Aires to public relations executive in Washington DC in a matter of months. That’s why I believe you should always bring your ‘A’ game to work even if you are doing something pro bono. The truth is you never know when opportunity will knock on your door.

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

I am working on many exciting projects. I just launched my first product line. It is called Welcome All Beauty, and it’s the first hair extension line with a focus on women’s productivity. Every single style is carefully crafted to be done in five minutes or less without professional help or special hairstyling skills. 21st-century women are achieving incredible things, but they are also time deprived like no other generation before.

The idea came when I was doing a book tour and realized that I was spending a lot of time and money on getting my hair ready for keynotes, TV interviews, or meet and greets. I felt that there should be a better way than spending 40 plus minutes in front of hairstyling tools. I was a frustrated customer who could not find the product she needed. So, I decided to create it!

Our Welcome All Beauty clients are using our hair solutions all of the time to look great in just a few minutes…from business meetings to destination weddings to right after showering post workouts! They realize that our hair solutions give them back 3–4 extra hours per week. By streamlining their hair routines, they now have more time for what’s meaningful in their lives.

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

We truly care. We want our projects to be an authentic expression of what we want to put into the world, and we want to do it with excellence. We apply this principle to whatever we do, whether it is a TED talk or a hair extension line that will boost women’s productivity by allowing them to be ready-to-go in five minutes. I am convinced that a job done with love will never go unnoticed.

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?

Absolutely! I just finished a TED talk that was exactly about that. It is called “PIONEER: How to be what you can’t see,” and it’s all about believing in your vision even BEFORE you have the results to validate it.

As an immigrant Latina, I frequently encounter people who want to put me in a box. Accentism — the perception that certain accents are inferior to others — is very real in today’s world. Even to this day, I come across people who mistakenly assume that I am uneducated only because English happens to be my second language. That’s C-R-A-Z-Y! It makes no sense. But if I believed someone else’s low expectations about me, they would become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Let me give you a personal example of people trying to put you in a box.

I started my media career in local news when I was in my twenties. As an aspiring journalist, one of my greatest hopes was to share who I was with the audience authentically.

But it soon became very clear that as a young Latina working on camera the industry had only two types of media personas that I could embody: the sexy reporter or the formal news anchor. The first one was only expected to navigate shallow waters. The latter was expected to trade spontaneity and individuality for authenticity.

I soon realized that if I wanted to grow in the local news sector, I would need to erase part of who I was in order to fit into one of these two stereotypes. But I didn’t want to be a ‘wannabe,’ I wanted to be me!

So to make a long story short, I quit my job to start creating authentic content for multidimensional women. We started doing a show in a local market out of a carpet warehouse. We grew to become a regional show and eventually a nationally syndicated one. We now have three Daytime EMMY awards and were the first independent production to win in our categories (including Best Talent, twice!).

But it all started with the deliberate decision to recalibrate my belief system.

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

I don’t even remember them. I don’t believe in doing things to prove people wrong. My motivation is my own growth.

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?

There are many. Of course, my family and my parents played a crucial role in supporting me so I would have a good education and allowing me to grow in a loving environment during my childhood and formative years. My husband is very supportive and has been a champion for me since we met almost 20 years ago.

Also, I am a big fan of Dr. Wayne Dyer’s work. He is the friend and mentor I never had the chance to meet. He is also the person I never met in real life that I cried the most for when he died. His books have been by my side since I was 16 years old. I wholeheartedly recommend his work to anyone who wants to start the journey of personal growth and development.

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?

Starting from the bottom in a new country is a humbling experience that teaches you a lot about resilience. You don’t have the friends, family, or safety net you had back home. You can really feel that you are in a vulnerable position when you are a newcomer. Some people want to help you. Others take advantage of you.

When I first arrived in the United States, I was financially abused by my first employer. He took advantage of me, forcing me to pay for both my taxes as an employee AND his taxes as an employer. My already modest 37K gross salary shrank so fast I still don’t know how I managed to make ends meet in a city as expensive as Washington DC.

What he did was not only immoral but also illegal. But -at the time- I was in no position to demand what was fair. My job depended on an employment-based visa that his company had sponsored. And that visa allowed me to legally work and live in the United States ONLY if I was able to keep my job. Basically, I had to endure financial abuse so I would not become undocumented.

Time has passed and things have changed for the better for me. I am now a US citizen and an entrepreneur, and I have used my position to speak up for social justice in many stages from TEDx to the United Nations to the Daytime Emmys.

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)

Personal growth is something I am extremely passionate about. After spending ten years doing interviews with people at the top of their fields — from the arts to science to sports- I noticed that these super achievers had many things in common from their ability to be self-aware of their potential to their daily habits and need to give back.

I summarized these patterns in my upcoming book “The Virtuous Circle” which will launch in June in partnership with HarperCollins Leadership.

I am the first Latina to be signed by HarperCollins Leadership, so I am thrilled to open the doors to many more minority authors. I am joining a roster of bestselling authors such as John C. Maxwell and Rachel Hollis, so I am very happy.

Below there’s a summary of how people can use The Virtuous Circle in their own lives:

The Virtuous Circle is made up of seven archetypes that live within ourselves. Each one constitutes a phase and corresponds to a particular action. The seven archetypes and their respective actions are the dreamer (visualize), the architect (plan), the maker (execute), the apprentice (perfect), the warrior (persevere), the champion (achieve) and the leader (inspire).

1. The Dreamer: The dreamer’s stage is one of thought and visualization. It begins with the possibility of imagining something that is not yet present in reality. It represents the spark that starts The Virtuous Circle. This is the time to connect with the essence of our inner child, the one who danced happily and carelessly, without wondering how the dance steps came out or if their toddler companions had better rhythm than they did. It is an opportunity to begin to unlearn external conditioning and self-limiting thoughts in order to let our minds fly and see beyond the apparent.

2. The Architect: In this phase, an action map is created with the ideas and concepts that were born in the dreamer’s stage. It is time to make plans, evaluate options, and analyze what the best ways to bring our visions into action may be.

3. The Creator: This is where theory and reality meet. The architect’s plan is put into practice. It represents the moment in which the world returns to us a sometimes unexpected reflection: The challenges may be greater or different from those we anticipated, the skills we have may not be sufficient, or we may underestimate the time it takes to achieve our dream. We may realize that sometimes even the most “perfect” plans end up being “ferpect” and we need to reassess the next steps.

4. The Apprentice: It is time for improvement. The apprentice stage represents the moment of listening to the internal GPS that asks us to recalculate some aspect of our path to continue moving forward. Now that we’ve seen our ideas in action, it’s time to make adjustments. In the creator stage, we saw what happened when we began to put all of the plans and ideas of the architect and the dreamer into practice. Now, the apprentice has to undertake the search for excellence along the path that makes them a teacher. What talents need to continue being polished? What skills have to be learned to keep moving forward? What strategies worked, and what strategies need to be changed?

5. The Warrior: Here, our commitment to the dream is put to the test. In the apprentice stage, we improved our skills and adjusted the plan of action. Now is the time to strengthen our tenacity and resilience. We have the skills we need to achieve our goals, but the opportunity we dreamed of has not arrived yet. The frustration and the feelings of injustice for not having achieved it remain close by. The temptation to abandon our dreams is great. It’s the time for the brave, the bold, and those who keep going when others throw in the towel. We have reached the last mile of the dream, but we still don’t know it — and we constantly wonder if it’s worth so much effort. At this stage, we will learn that sustaining a dream over time requires a true warrior.

6. The Champion: The preparation and all of the work of the previous stages finally meet the opportunity we so longed for. It is time for laurels, achievements, and recognition. However, beware of success, because not all that glitters is gold. After achieving the dream, champions can lose their way, succumb to new temptations, and become a magnet for bad company.

7. The Leader: One who has become a champion and, at the same time, inspires us. The champion achieves their goal. The leader not only achieves it but goes one step further by making it something bigger than themselves. The leader not only obtains triumphs, but they also lead by example. Not all champions are leaders, but all leaders are champions.

And it is called The Virtuous Circle because with your next idea you go back to the first archetype “The Dreamer” and the process starts all over again. The Virtuous Circle is all about embracing life as an opportunity for constant learning and evolution.

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

“Don’t Jump to Permanent Conclusions Based on Temporary Circumstances” is one of the things I like to remind people the most. When we are feeling low or going through a bad phase, it is easy to underestimate our potential and possibilities.

When I was 23 and living in Argentina, a country with a 20% unemployment rate, I almost gave up prematurely on my dream of working in media. I almost gave up based on a circumstance that was only TEMPORARY. Time proved that the dream I almost gave up on was within my reach. That’s why we have to be very careful not to jump to permanent conclusions based on circumstances that will change.

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 want to invite everyone to embrace a PIONEER SPIRIT. How does it work? It is very simple. You look around, you see what everyone else LIKE YOU is doing and you open yourself up to the possibility of doing something no one LIKE YOU has ever done before. You open yourself up to the possibility of BELIEVING IN YOUR VISION even before you have the results to validate it. You open yourself up to the possibility of becoming a PIONEER.

Because there are moments in life when you must take a leap of faith, step into the unknown and DARE TO BE FIRST.

DARE TO BE FIRST in your family, DARE TO BE FIRST in your school, DARE TO BE FIRST in your community. Because it doesn’t matter how big or small the step you are taking is… EVERY TIME YOU CHOOSE TO PIONEER, YOU MOVE THE WORLD FORWARD.

And this is a concept that is important for everyone, but it is particularly relevant for communities who have been treated as outsiders because they look, sound, love, or pray differently. And if you are reading this and you have the privilege of not having to ask yourself whether or not to pioneer, use that privilege for good. Staying on the sidelines only perpetuates the problem. BE A PART OF THE SOLUTION. We could really use more allies!

Can our readers follow you on social media?

Of course. My verified social media accounts are @GabyNatale on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. My website is www.GabyNatale.com, my beauty line is www.WelcomeAllBeauty.com and my media company is www.AganarMedia.com

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

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Emmy Award Winner Gaby Natale: “They Told Me It Was Impossible & 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.