EP38. What is Skin Microbiome Skincare?

Hello, and welcome to the Formula Botanica Green Beauty Conversations podcast. My name is Gemma. I'm the relationship manager of Formula Botanica and the host of this podcast. If you want to find out a little bit more about who we are and what we do, then head over to formulabatanica.com and check out our free sample class. This podcast. I am so thrilled to be interviewing the fabulous Yasmina Egonovic from Mother Dirt, a brand that I've long admired and long been fascinated by. And I think before I even got the chance to interview her, I had a list of questions that I was ready to ask her. So I was thrilled when she reached out and said that she wanted to come on Green Beauty Conversations. I hope that you enjoy this podcast as much as I do. So hello and welcome to the podcast. Yasmina, Hi.

Thank you so much for having me.

I've been looking forward to this interview for quite a long time, so I was thrilled when you guys reached out to us and said we'd love to be guests. Mother Dirt has been a brand that I've watched quite closely for the past couple of years.

I'm so excited to be here. I mean, we reached out for obvious reasons, but even just the first prep phone call that you and I had, I got an immediate sense that you and I could just keep on talking and talking and talking. And I so appreciate the angle that you come into the industry at which it's very easy, I think, to talk about what everyone sees. But I always, as more of an operational person, I'm so fascinated by what takes place behind the scenes to make what everyone sees possible. So, yeah, I'm very excited to be here.

That's music to my ears. I love the operational nitty gritty, the unsexy, but critical.

Yeah, yeah.

So I obviously know who you are and what you do, but for the benefit of our listeners, if you could talk about your background, introduce yourself and just introduce us to Mother Dirt.

Sure, sure. Happy to. All right. My background is in chemical and biological engineering. I got my degree from mit, but coming up close to graduation, as I was trying to think of what industry to work in, I very quickly realized that chemical engineering aligns very well, believe it or not, with the cosmetics industry. And so I ended up taking my career in that direction. Initially, it was more on the R and D side. I was very interested in the naturals movement that starting to take place around that time. But essentially my career ended up developing in the direction of what I realized my passion and my interest was which is around taking highly technical messages and figuring out how to translate them in a way that inspires and brings in more people to the brand. So that solving that puzzle of how to build a brand around a concept, particularly challenging concepts, was something that I was always fascinated by. So a couple of the companies that I've worked at include Fresh and also Living Proof, that was founded by one of the professors that I did research under while I was at mit. But continuing on in that same vein, I was connected with the early team at a biotech company here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, called aobiome. And their core technology happened to be a live bacteria. A bacteria that comes from the dirt and from an anthropological perspective, likely existed on humans skin until we cleaned it away. And I joined the team to build out a brand around this as a discussion for public health. So we have a product that does contain that live bacteria, which we'll talk about later. But essentially we built out this brand called Mother Dirt, that is really about using our products as a vehicle to have a conversation around bacteria, around what it means to be clean and challenging some of the existing notions of personal care.

Well, it's such an exciting concept and they're such exciting products. So obviously they're appealing to the idea of the skin microbiome and how it functions and how you could potentially have a healthy one. So why microbiome? How did you get interested in this?

I wouldn't say that I woke up one morning and said the microbiome is really fascinating, is happenstance that I kind of ended up where I did really and truly. So in Boston, I developed a bit of a reputation for being the scientist, the MIT person that is interested in personal care and cosmetic products. And so one thing led to another and the team at aobiome was like, hey, we need to take this concept and we want to bring it to consumers. Can you help us figure out how to do that? And as I dove into the science and as I dove into what the company and the research was trying to understand, it struck me as incredibly compelling. As challenging as it was, it was a concept that made a lot of sense at the same time. So if we back out a little bit from a historical standpoint, much of our relationship with the microbial world is based off of a really small data set of information. The bacteria that we knew about were pathogenic bacteria. And so we extrapolated that knowledge onto all of these other microbes that we didn't even know existed, but were actually either benign or beneficial to us. And so we adopted parts of our manufacturing process in the personal care industry to eradicate bacteria. We built out public hygiene routines around this idea of sterilizing and removing bacteria. So this concept of the fact that not all bacteria are bad is one that a. Is a challenging concept, but once you contextualize it with what's going on, you see that it expands, explains maybe why previous approaches for personal care and skin care weren't working. And it also presents an entirely new approach.

Yeah, absolutely. Because I guess there's been a fair amount of science and a fair amount of investment in the gut microbiome. That's the big one that's been, that's been talked about for a while and now obviously it's moving into, yeah, the skin microbiome. And I've heard people talking about the sculpt microbiome and the vaginal microbiome. And so, you know, there's all of these areas like you say that we've said, you know, they have to be a germ free, a clean. And I'm using my little fingers to do little marks. No one can see this clean kind of space which has. I know there's a lot of people who have had problems using certain products that have been designed to clean, you know, those areas and it hasn't worked and it's disrupted something. So, I mean, I think it's a fascinating area. I read as much as I can about it, but I wondered if you could just talk a little bit about the development of the product line and just talk us through your products because I have some follow on questions that we talked about because I really want people to understand what you guys have developed here. And I know that the questions that I'm going to ask you is the questions that they're going to be thinking about when you tell us about these products. So. Yeah. So let's start with the first one you developed.

Sure. That product is called the AO plus Mist. And the genesis of this product is thanks to a person by the name of David Whitlock, who is the founder of aobiome. He was the one that connected the dots between this bacteria coming from dirt and mammalian skin. So he was the one that really triggered all of this research into this class of bacteria as it applies to humans. His research in this started well over 15 years ago. Aobiome wasn't formed until 2013. So mother dirt is separate now from Aobiome and really just focuses on the cosmetic side. But David Whitlock very much so needs to be credited with this connection between this class of bacteria and human skin. So this class of bacteria is cultured from the soil. The strain is ammonia oxidizing bacteria. The strain name specifically is nitrous Ammonas eutropha. And what this bacteria does is it basically consumes ammonia and it converts it into beneficial byproducts. We are producing ammonia constantly in our sweat and ammonia drives the PH of the skin up. And so this bacteria removes the ammonia and keeps the ph at a normal level. And then what it's also doing on the tail end is it's producing beneficial byproducts that have a balancing effect on the skin is how it can be summarized. The live culture of this bacteria is what's in that AO plus mist. And we have to manufacture it under a specific set of conditions to make sure that the bacteria are alive within the right concentration and so on and so forth. But that's very much so the hero product of the line. And then we've created supporting products which we can get to a little bit later.

Yeah. So I was looking at the AO mist and I think that obviously the thing that I asked you about was obviously the ingredients and the shelf life. So it's an unpreserved product, it contains a live culture of bacteria. And you were saying, well, I mean, you know how you advertise it is that it's best used within six months in your fridge and four weeks out on your shelf or countertop. So when I first looked at this, I was like, how have they done this? Because obviously it's sold here in the uk, so you would have had to have gone through all of the cosmetics regulations, all of the EU cosmetics regulations. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about the kind of. Because obviously you would have thought about that when you were developing these products. Obviously, you know, so I wanted to talk about some of the. Well, a, how you do it, obviously not revealing all your secrets, but B, some of the challenges that you had to think about and account for in your kind of business model when you were developing the AO mist.

Sure, sure. Well, manufacturing is the biggest piece. We were not able to partner with a third party contract manufacturer for the mist because cosmetic manufacturers are not made to manufacture products with live bacteria. They do the exact opposite. So not only could we not find a partner, but people were not willing to. Companies, manufacturers were not willing to take this into their facility. So we needed to do it on our own, which was a blessing and a curse. It was extremely difficult because we had no pre existing model to follow. Right. It's never been done before. So we needed to figure that out ourselves. And we had a very different set of QA and QC that we needed to follow. Typically, cosmetic products, at least in the United States States, are not regularly tested for the concentration of their active ingredients. And that's something that we need to be able to verify.

So we were talking about the challenges that you faced, and we got to the part where you said you couldn't partner with a third party, you had to do it by yourself, which was a blessing and a curse. And that's where you kind of froze.

Okay, all right. So it was a blessing and a curse. It took us about a year to figure out all of the different pieces of our manufacturing process, including the QA and the qc. At the end, what that meant was that we needed to have a process that controlled for the concentration of the bacteria, the activity of the bacteria, and also purity. Right. So we need to manufacture, we jokingly call it in a monoseptic way. So you just want to. One type of bacteria in there, but you don't want any other bacteria in there. And so the process that we've developed is to be able to ensure that that is what takes place. So that was how we did it from a manufacturing standpoint. The other part, that. And by the way, that's greatly oversimplifying. Right. So it took a year for us to develop all of that. But in essence, those were some of the key considerations that we needed to take into account and that cosmetic companies don't have to with their typical active ingredients. So the other part that you were talking about, though, was the shelf life aspect. So as you noted, all of our products are unpreserved and they have no preservatives because preservatives are inherently antimicrobial. So that means that we cannot put a preservative in our AO plus mist, because then our active ingredient, whose benefits come from the fact that it is alive and has an actual metabolism that produces these benefits that would all cease to exist. What that meant was that we needed to demonstrate activity levels over the course of the shelf life of usage, and we needed to spend a significant amount of time studying this, and these studies are actually still ongoing so that we can continue to update the shelf life of our products, which we hope that we can do at some point in the near future. But essentially, when we talk about it from a biological standpoint, here's what's taking place. You have this bacterial cell that is active, and it has a metabolism. When you put it in the refrigerator, the Temperature drops and this slows down the metabolism so the bacteria is, in essence, not as hungry. Okay. So it goes into a bit of a hibernation mode in the fridge, because in that bottle, it has no food source. Its food source is on your skin. Skin. So your sweat is its food source. There's none of that in the bottle. So by putting it in the fridge, it slows its metabolism so that it isn't as hungry. But eventually, when that expiration date hits, it's not because the bacteria go bad or could cause harm. It's simply because they've starved to death at room temperature.

The.

It's very strange to talk about it this way.

It's pretty funny, putting it nicely.

Yeah.

Starve to death.

Yeah. At room temperature, the temperature is higher and their metabolism seems speeds up, so they are hungrier and they can starve to death faster, basically. But when you put it on your skin, they have their food source, they're happy, and they can live theoretically forever on your skin unless you clean it away. So there were studies that went into understanding how we can set up the shelf life of those products in a way that delivered a consistent, consistent experience for consumers.

That's incredibly interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think, you know, you've paved the way for other people that were thinking about how to incorporate these sorts of things into products. Yeah. So if anyone's listening, that's more or less what they did. Obviously a grossly simplified version.

Yeah. Well, one thing that I will add as just food for thought is one of the things that has been most challenging to us is when there are companies, organizations, sometimes there's certification agencies that just have blanket statements like, you know, all products should contain X amount of preservatives, or all products should pass a standard challenge test, or, you know, no bacteria in the product whatsoever. And they're. We have encountered, for sure, companies, organizations, certification agencies that just blanket statement aren't even willing to engage or have a discussion. Right. And that I believe will change over. Over time. But it is really interesting to look at the rules that are written for some of these companies and to really understand the times that they were written in and to see how that's all going to evolve with time, especially as our understanding for the microbiome changes and grows.

Yeah. I mean, I guess, you know, when you've worked within a rigid set of rules for so long, when someone else comes along and says, hey, there's a way that we could do it differently, you know, people struggle to let go of ideas that they've so concretely held. And, you know, we've seen that a lot within the natural and organic sector as well. Yeah. Especially questions around efficacy.

Yep.

And functionality.

Yeah. And what I will add is that rules exist for a reason. So when we entered into this, we never, you know, at least it's been our best intention to really not enter, you know, the industry or the category with like a sense of arrogance, of like, the rules are silly. Right. I think we very much so want to make sure that we can work with people, partner with people, to be like a good steward, if you will, to kind of start to shift and change things. Because the moment we start disrespecting the rules that are in the place in place, you can start to create a very counterproductive environment. And candidly, everyone loses at that point. So it's about the, you know, someone I once spoke to had this really fantastic phrase. It's about a recalibration and not a reversal. Right.

In it.

And, you know, we don't want to ever assume that we know everything. Right. We want to be very transparent about what we have been doing and what our approach is.

I think that's really interesting because I guess for me it's. You have to have context as to why the rules are there in the first place. So I completely agree with you. It's very easy to be very dismissive of things and say, oh, people have, you know, they're not up with the times or whatever. But if we can have an understanding of the history of the cosmetics industry and how it evolved and why the rules are like they are, you can understand how someone's thinking is in this space that it is. And the issues that people might have had with bacteria or, you know, contaminants or why you might need preservation or etc. Etc. And once you have that context, I think it can take away that feeling of superiority or arrogance or feeling that you know better. Because the context is giving you the understanding of how things arrived at the point that they have. Because it doesn't just happen instantly. You know, history is a curve. You know, it's an up and down thing and it evolves over time. And the different rules and regulations and spaces that we work in have all evolved. So if you can understand that evolution, you can understand the market that you're in and the thinking that you're in, and it means that you can carve your message in a more succinct. And the word acceptable is probably wrong.

But, you know, collaborative, inviting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of way.

Yeah.

And that is the way that you shift people's thinking.

Yeah, well, we certainly hope so. I think that there's a ways to go and, you know, we're doing our best, but there's a lot that will be determined in the future that we can't yet foresee. So, yeah, we will have to see how it goes.

So let's have a look at the other products that you developed alongside of the Mist. If you could just talk us through those.

Absolutely. We have a set of supporting products that we have developed using what we refer to as our Biome4Friendly product development platform. And how this all came to be and what it means, I'll kind of take you through now. We really and truly never had the intention of creating a cosmetic business. That wasn't really what we intended to do. But there were a few interesting things that took place. We had a small private beta for people to use the Mist. In the very early days when we were still hand filling bottles, we had just a small private beta that we actually sold through very quickly. And what we noticed was that people were very excited about the results that they were seeing. In a very fascinating way. They started to anthropomorphize the bacteria. So they would say things like, oh, I just want those little guys to be happy and I don't want to hurt them. You know, what do you recommend? What else can I use on my skin that won't hurt them? And so they started to get very protective of them and they wanted to nurture them. And what they were asking us was, can you recommend any products that I can use that would not remove them? And our initial thought was, sure, we're going to find whatever we can find on the market that is the most gentle, simplistic formula. And we're going to see how our bacteria responds to it. And then we're just going to certify other products and recommend them to people. But what we found was that preservatives are so ubiquitous and that preservatives, even in the smallest concentrations, are still very toxic to our bacteria. Plus, we found that modern chemistry is extremely complex and that that complexity is very difficult to untangle in terms of understanding what exactly impacts our bacteria adversely. And so we thought, wow, we can't recommend products to people because we don't even know. But based on what we've learned here, could we start to develop our own products that we would certify as being non toxic to this Peacekeeper bacteria that's found in the mist? We know that it's so fragile, this bacteria, that we could essentially treat it as a canary in the coal mine, where if ingredients and final formulas don't affect it adversely and in some cases even nurture it, we can say that that's a product that they can use in their routine and not adversely affect the routine that they have going with the mist. And that was the genesis of this product line, this line of supporting products. And what our aim with these products is, is to build out what we refer to as your basic daily essentials. It's not about putting people on a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 step routine. It's really about looking at what are the typical products that are going to be in anyone's bathroom and how can we create a bio alternative for that. So think about a basic cleanser, think about a basic shampoo, think about a basic moisturizer. Those were the starting products that we developed. And to go into a little bit more detail around how we develop them, part of it is the ingredient sourcing. Part of it is also the screening methodology that we use for the raw materials. Part of it is also packaging selection, part of it is also manufacturing. So this platform that we refer to is like a multi step process, including the way that we formulate products to ensure that they can still be unpreserved.

Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, are you finding that the type of consumers that you have have had skin conditions or issues, so they're looking for another solution?

That's a very interesting question. Even though we don't make any claims on skin issues, we definitely do have a large contingency of consumers that are very interested in our concept and what we're doing. I would say that maybe close to half of the people that purchase our product have some sort of issue that they're trying to resolve. In some cases it's very minor, like extreme dry skin. And in other cases, you know, we find out that people are using the product for more extreme things. And so that's really interesting to observe. But then we have this other half of our consumer consumers who just believe that this is a healthier lifestyle to have. They just generally want to cut down on their chemical exposure. They generally just want to simplify their routines. There are some people who are trying to wean themselves off of deodorant and they find that the mist is effective in helping them do that. So there are also lifestyle motivational factors. Even if there isn't some sort of like a skin sensitivity that they're trying to Resolve?

Yeah. I mean, did you think that all these different types of consumers from such different. Actually they have different motivations for using the products. Did you think that you would get such a wide variety of consumer.

Very interesting question. I'll start by answering at a different point. First of all, I think everyone can be and should be using our products. That sounds like such a crazy overt statement and I completely realize that. But you know, fundamentally, if we look at it from the perspective of we used to have this bacteria on our skin and we have lost it at a minimum, I really and truly believe that people should be using the mist for a variety of reasons. Right. I think that it can help people cut out other products that they're using. I think that we should have more simplified routines than what we've habitually conditioned ourselves to do. I think that from a like, preventability standpoint, our skin changes throughout the course of our lifetime. And you might have skin that is not dry now, but who knows, in 10 years you might end up having really dry skin because of all the cleaning and washing and rinsing and five step routines. So just from a, like, this is a better way to take care of your skin and do we really need everything that we've been told? I fundamentally believe that everyone should be using the mist. Now, putting that overt, extremely biased statement aside, what I was not expecting was, was the readiness of people to literally spray live bacteria back on their skin. I think I was very excited by it because I'm a scientist. I find the concept really provocative and interesting and I find the research and the science behind it really compelling. But are people ready for it?

Right.

That was the big question. And I think now is better than seven years ago, 10 years ago. There's definitely a shift that's taking place. And actually the gut microbiome is a huge impetus to this or a huge catalyst to it. So I think the thing that most surprised me was the readiness of people. I always believed that this was something that had so much like broad relevance, I didn't think that as many people were going to be ready for it. But when I look at the diversity of people that are using our product from a variety of different interest levels, that I think is really fascinating, but it makes the marketing and brand building that much more complicated. Right.

That's why I was asking that question, because I was like, you don't have a specific niche. Really? Yeah. So sorry, carry on, because I interrupted you there.

Yeah, well, I'll give a few really basic examples. Almost half of our Consumers are male and people are very surprised by this. And we knew this in the very early days. We knew, we saw, saw that the interest that was coming in was also heavily male. And we viewed this as absolutely consistent with what we believed when we look at the fact that everyone can and should be using this product. And we built the brand around being unisex for that reason. And we think that this is still one of our biggest advantages. But there's also a series of balancing acts that need to take place outside of just the gender balancing act. Right. You want to create a universal or unisex brand that doesn't have a specific gender tie. But you also need to build trust in your science, but not alienate people. So you need to be friendly, but not to the degree that people start to question your science and your validity. So there's a lot that like very natural tension there around what role the science plays. But then also at a very fundamental level of who our consumer Personas are, we've started to develop some hypotheses around this. But this is absolutely going to change with time because the category is changing so much as well. So do we lean into a very beauty centric consumer? Maybe the beauty centric consumer is only interested in the mist, or do we lean into a less progressive, more hesitant consumer that isn't ready for the mist? That but this whole idea of a biome friendly cleanser, they feel much more comfortable with that and that's their starting point in the brand. So what is the on ramp? Maybe it's different for a few different consumers. So that makes the puzzle more challenging for us. But we shouldn't be surprised because nothing has been easy for us. I'll put it that way.

No, I can imagine. Which brings me to my next question. When you conceived of the idea and obviously you had your trial and people were responding positive, how receptive were retailers at bringing you on board? Because obviously, you know, it's a business, you can have to sell things to stay afloat. And I guess the traditional kind of retail model hasn't been able to facilitate a kind of a wide array of products that might need something different. So I know that yours are stocked. The mist is stocked in the fridge, isn't it? Within a retail space. So how did you get people on board? How did you sell the concept? And then secondly, how do you manage your stock?

Oh yeah, all great questions. So I'll start off by saying that for these exact reasons, we chose not to engage with retailers in the very early part of our brand. We decided to focus online so that we could build a relationship directly with consumers and understand what was going on, how they were using the product and have a very direct dialogue around that. Also, the product is so atypical that we were not expecting that it could sit on the shelf and explain itself. Right. We knew that it needed education and support and we wanted to deliver that first. All right, about a year and a half after we launched. So we launched in 2015. You know, the first year was spent in building our operations and manufacturing in QA and QC and all of that. Mother dirt launched in the middle of 2015. About a year and a half afterwards, we started to say, okay, the long game for us. And I'm not talking even like a couple of years, I'm talking like 10 years from now. If we really believe that this concept is going to succeed, what do we need to learn to prepare for that? And so we thought, why don't we partner with a few progressive retailers where our objective isn't necessarily driving revenue growth. Our objective is understanding what it's going to take for a refrigerated product to succeed on store shelf. And so there were a handful that we partnered with. Some were very willing, ready, excited to take us on. So there's a progressive retailer here in Cambridge that's also very influential and like a staple of the naturals category. They are like a grocery store. They don't just sell food, but they sell supplements, some skin care, some personal care. But they're definitely kind of cross category in that no pushback at all. They just put our product right in the fridge next to their sauerkraut and kimchi and all of that stuff. And that's, that's been it, it's been very straightforward and easy with them and they've been one of our top retailers. Then on the opposite end you have a progressive beauty high end retailer that's more in the natural space. Their name is Credo and initially when we spoke to them, they said, can't do the refrigerated product, just not going to work for us. But through persistence and a lot of really great conversations, they became very excited about delivering this type of innovation to their consumer. And they saw that it fit really well with their brand values. And really and truly to their credit, they partnered and worked with us to come up with a merchandising option so that our hero product could still be in their stores and, and our whole brand story could come across. So what we did with Credo is different than what we did with Cambridge Naturals, this other. The first store that I told you about in Cambridge Naturals, they have a fridge already. So they just put it in the fridge, which is why we were interested in grocery, in beauty. You don't see fridges there, right?

So what they did.

Right, so what they did is they have a bottle of mist that just sits on the shelf next to our supporting products that don't need to be refrigerated. And basically there's a hang tag on the mist. They can try it there, see that? It basically smells and feels just like water. But the hang tag says, you know, pick me up at the front desk. And what happens when they go to check out is the worker, basically, whoever is checking them out, goes to the back, gets a fresh mist from their refrigerator and then sticks it in their bag and they can be on their way. So that way they don't have to worry about merchandising a fridge on their shelf on the floor. But the mist is still present with instructions on how they can get a fresh bottle. Now, I think our full vision is really having our whole brand story come to life by actually flaunting the fact that we have a fridge. We think that there's a way to be able to do that. We've had a series of conversations about it. I think that there's a really great way to be able to lean in and show how different we are because of that. It all just takes the right partner, right, to be able to make that happen.

Because I know that there's been a kind of a surge in the idea that you would have a beauty fridge and you can get these small fridges now at home. And I think it was Refinery 29 who did a whole article on beauty fridges. And I immediately thought of you guys and I was like, yes, because I think I've had what product I had. I think it was sort of mask that I had to have in the fridge. And the idea of having, like a dedicated little fridge for all your skincare needs is quite an appealing one. So, I mean, you're stocked kind of all over now. You're stocked in the uk.

How do you manage stock for retailers?

Yeah.

Yep. So all of our retailers right now are pretty small, so the amount of units that they're ordering, it's easy for them to manage over that period of time. What we have also done and we are getting better at, is building in more leeway into that shelf life. So our actual shelf life is not what we put on the label in a good way. Right. So our shelf life is actually much longer. But we want to give ourselves that buffer so that we can have that buffer in our warehouse. And we can also have that buffer for retailers where we know that that product is going to sit on the shelf. But we have had a few retailers where they either are not really carrying our full line or it isn't a good fit for us, where they don't move the mist quickly enough and it doesn't work out for them from an expiration period, from an expiration standpoint. And that's, you know, part of doing business. And we've needed to realize that. However, we've made progress. And one of the big steps forward that we needed to make over the last year was actually increasing the minimum order quantity so that we knew that the partners that were committing to us and our product were committed in essence. So we were really flexible in the beginning with like very low minimum order counts. But we essentially realized that what that was doing was it was allowing a lot of, you know, potentially partners that are either not a good fit despite their best intentions, or who are not really committed and they're like, this just seems cool, let's carry it. But don't fully realize what, that, you know, what comes along with it. And we were getting a lot more of those and we basically needed to filter out the ones that were not going to be a fit for us. So we increased our minimum order count so that we had less noise on that front. And then there have been a few other partners who we've needed to work with on storage for the mist. So we have another partner who ships, they're an online partner, and they were carrying our biome friendly products for. And then we talked to them for a year about carrying the mist. And their business grew and evolved and they started to carry some perishable goods. And so they were able to bring on our mist. And essentially what we did is we split the cost of a fridge in their warehouse with a few of their other partners. And then we needed to be very clear about SOPs and procedural things with their warehouses and their ops team so that we knew that the mist was being stored properly, we knew that it was going to be shipped properly, and there are constantly ideas of what we can continue to do to make that clearer, better, easier for our partners, and so on and so forth.

So one question, my last question, which we haven't got on our list of kind of agreed questions, but I thought I'd kind of surprise you slightly, is that I think what I Feel a large part of being in business and trying to kind of do kind of revolutionary things is being able to build relationships with the people around you. And it sounds like you've invested quite heavily in developing relationships with your partners. I can hear just the way you're talking about it. I mean, it haven't been quick, speedy, fast food conversations that I like to call them fast food conversations. That's funny, you know, where things where you're like, yes, yes, yes, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this. And it's very kind of fast foodie. I mean, I just wanted to get a perspective on how challenging that relationship building aspect has been for you guys.

I mean, sometimes it's challenging, but it's necessary. I mean, are there days where I feel like it's not like there are days where I see another company that's doing something, in my opinion, much easier than what we're doing, and they don't even have to be in the same space and they grow crazy fast. And I say that knowing that no business is as easy as it may look from the outside. And I definitely have my moments where I get frustrated and discouraged because there are definitely days, periods, times that just feel like they are so much harder than you want them to be. But there's the cliche saying of if it was easy, then everyone would do it. And there's also the very realistic point of view, which is that everything takes time. And particularly when it comes to a cultural bias and to changing or working around existing infrastructure for a trillion dollar industry, you have to have a little bit more patience than thinking it's going to go from 0 to 100 in three years. Right. So it's a balance for someone who is high achieving and ambitious to, you know, have the need to like, understand that it takes patience and it takes time. So I don't, I don't know. It's definitely challenging when you kind of go through those ruts and you just kind of wish that it was easier. But I mean, going into this, I knew that it was not going to be a quick hit or a quick win. I think that we're so fortunate that we have grown as quickly or as much as we have, which is far beyond what we expected when we first started. There's still a lot of work to do. There's still a lot of questions and challenges I think that are going to come up. But I don't know, maybe like the whole relationship building part is another extension of what we viewed as the education and the thought leadership that we knew was going to need to come along with our brand. But, yeah, I'm the. Well, you have picked up on this for sure from me, where I am. I'm not going to sugarcoat anything. And I actually think that there's such a disservice that's done in, like, the press and the press, you know, no knocks on them, but, like, the only stories that get covered are the outliers. And I understand why, but what ends up happening, and I wish that there was a way to kind of recalibrate this is it creates this distorted perception of what it takes to succeed and what that path actually looks like. And it can create a very warped view of, you know, what you're doing and whether or not you're succeeding and all of that. So I tend to be more. More on the, you know, not doing enough, not moving quickly enough type side. But also, you know, I try and reel it in and I try to be patient, which is not my strong suit.

I know. Mine neither. I know. I think you're absolutely right in that we get, you know, what we see in the press is people who have been interviewed as a successful entrepreneur or a successful business owner. And you look at the business now, you know, you're looking at it when it's all kind of been done and developed. And yet the journey of how someone got there, I feel like it gets. It can get glossed over or they interview people like, say, the outliers who have had. I use the word overnight success lightly because even people I've interviewed who have had incredible amounts of success with their business, it's never been overnight, even if it's. It's just been quicker than normal. I'd say.

Yeah. And you never know what's going to happen or what might be that next step in the business. But you have to keep going. Right. The only time you actually really lose is when you quit. Right.

So I was just saying I think it does create a distorted view of what it takes to build relationships and, you know, have conversations with people and have ongoing, like, challenging conversations and trying to work through, you know, problems. And I look at your. At Mother Dirt and I think, you know, when I first saw it, I thought, wow, I wonder what it took to convince people that this was a valuable and relevant concept, given how, you know, the industry can view microbes and all that sort of stuff, and how then, you know, you got retailers on board. Because it must have taken some level of grit and determination, I think, to get where you are.

Now, yeah. So a funny story of something that happened yesterday. You know, a few weeks ago, I was connected with a market researcher that just wanted to talk to me about the business. And, you know, I figured there would be no questions that are dissimilar to the types of conversations that I have with the press. And she said that she was writing up a report that would be circulated to basically their clients or their subscribers or whatever, and they look very, you know, legitimate. And so I had no problem with it. Anyways, I got her write up yesterday, and it was very odd and surreal reading it because basically it was a two pager that essentially summarized what we did, what we were doing, and then rated everything on a scale of 0 to 5 in terms of, like, how defensible it was and how good something was. So, like, zero meant that it was not very good, and five meant that it was very good. And so they talked about they rated everything from, like, the IP and the. How applicable the market size was and, like, what they thought of our management team. And it was very odd because I just remember thinking, like, this two pager does not do a service to really what it took to make this happen. And, like, yeah, I understand why you would, like, rate things on a scale of 1 to 5 or 0 to 5, but, man, is that oversimplifying. But okay, you know, it's just very odd when you see, you know, how things are translated. And like I said, it's so easy to look at even our products unless you're in the industry and understand what it takes to just say, oh, it's just product in a bottle and that's it. It's, like, shipped, and it magically shows up at people's doors, and that's not how it works. There's a lot more that needs to go into it, but that constant, you know, oversimplification is useful in some regards, but always very, like, surreal to me when I read it.

Absolutely. I completely agree. Yeah. Right. Okay. I think that's all we have time for. It's been such a great interview. Yasmina, thank you so much for coming and sharing so much of your journey. I know it'll be really inspirational to everyone who's listening to it.

Oh, thanks so much for having me. I really, really enjoyed what we discussed, and I at looked forward to staying in touch.

Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast, and I really hope that you enjoyed the conversation I had with Yasmina from Mother Dirt. And I highly encourage you to go and check out the products that they sell and give them a try. So if you are thinking of formulating your own cosmetic products, then head over to formulabotanica.com and check out our free sample class. You can also have a chat with us on Facebook, Twitter and InstagramULAP Botanica and join in on the global green beauty conversation by heading over to our free Facebook group, the Skincare Entrepreneur Mastermind. Once again, thank you so much for listening. Sa.