Welcome to The Holistic Skin Guru, where what's on the surface is just as important as what's underneath.

I'm your host, Aamena.

Let's dive deep into the world of holistic skincare.

Hey guys, welcome to the first episode of our podcast.

My name is Aamena.

Today I'm going to take you through my journey in the skincare industry.

So I started roughly about nine years ago when I opened my beautiful business right here in New Farm.

And I have to say it has been an interesting journey for sure.

So we started out with a big name franchise and that taught me a lot about ingredients.

It taught me a lot about skincare products.

It taught me a lot about you, the person that is looking for treatments and looking for outcomes for your skin.

So as a result, you know, lots of things happened in the last nine years.

We've progressed through the business and we've seen a lot of changes happen.

Mainly what we've seen is that people are looking for results.

and they're looking for treatments that are going to complement their lifestyle.

So one of the things that really resonates with me is a clean lifestyle, looking at an organic and holistic outlook when it comes to not just skin, but also the food that we eat and the way we live our lives from A to Z.

Now, when we rebranded and turned ourselves into an independent clinic, one of the overarching values that resonated with me is that I was going to make

skincare for my clients simple.

So one of the things that really resonated with me when it came to building the business and setting up a list of treatments that was going to compliment our ethos around organic, clean skincare, was to think about how we were going to deliver this message to our clients in such a way that they would benefit the most.

At the end of the day, when you come in for a treatment, we are the experts and we're able to guide you and give you the information to make informed decisions.

I wanted to go away from the model where clients were expected to self-diagnose and pick a treatment from a menu of services that they thought might be good for their skin.

So, no, we're not a restaurant.

You don't come in and choose a main, an entree, a dessert.

You actually come in and give us the opportunity to look at your skin and give you the recommendation of what's going to work for you.

That's the first thing.

So that's what makes us different.

The second thing is we are not expecting you to keep adding on elements of a treatment to be able to give you the result.

And this is very, very beautiful because most people have the experience where they walk into a salon, they're booked in for a treatment, they get into the bed and then they're told,

Actually, you need this on top of it, or you need that on top of it.

And it's going to cost you an extra $20 or an extra $30.

And before you know it, your $150 facial is now a $250 facial.

So what happens is you feel like you've been upsold.

you feel like you've been ripped off.

And the therapist hasn't got the opportunity to give you the best treatment because every time they think they need to add something to the treatment that's going to benefit your skin, they need to sell it to you.

So with us, you won't get any of that.

You'll come in for your treatment.

And our therapists have an array of modalities within the framework of that particular treatment.

to give you what's going to give you the best result for your skin.

And that's the beauty of SkinFit.

So the reason why I rebranded as an organic salon is because I grew up with a mom who really drilled into me what clean living meant.

We didn't have Panadol in our cupboard at home when we had a headache.

We used alternate methods to make ourselves feel better and they worked.

So my kids have grown up understanding all about organic living and they have taken that into their lives as well.

So it was very natural for me to bring that into my professional life as well.

But working with a lot of brands, working with a lot of ingredients, you come to understand what these different ingredients mean to your skin and what they mean to the pricing of the product on the shelf and what that means to the client and delivering results for you and your skin.

So for example, I am very much about eliminating toxins and toxicity from our treatments and also from our skincare.

But I'd like you to think about a step further, you know, what does that mean for you in your daily life?

Are you thinking about the foods that you're consuming and you know, how

processed are those foods and what sort of toxicity levels you're putting into your body, as well as what you're putting on top of your body.

So things like sulfates and parabens and silicons, you probably would have seen a lot of products in supermarkets and in chemists starting to show marketing pushing people into the direction of sulfate-free

paraben-free, and you're probably wondering what this is all about.

Well, I'm here to tell you that sulfates are not the best thing for your skin, mainly because they are what is used to create a foamy lather in products.

So you generally will find them in cleansers, dishwashing liquids, in laundry detergents, even in toothpaste.

What we want to do is we want to eliminate these sulfates because they are actually causing a lot of toxicity in our systems.

They don't present straight away because they are in very minute amounts.

But if you're using a product over the over years, like, you know, two years, five years, 10 years, 15 years, what is that sulfate doing?

on a broader level to your overall health.

So start thinking about that.

There'll be a lot of fact checkers out there that will say what I'm saying is rubbish, but there is equally as many people within the global community that are waking up

to how bad sulfates are for you.

They're also bad for our environment.

So we end up washing these things down the drain and they affect our marine life.

So start thinking about what you're putting on your bodies and how that's affecting your overall health.

This is very exciting because now what I want you to do is actually go into your bathroom, grab one of your products off the shelf and have a look at the ingredient base.

If you see the word sodium lauryl sulfate or sodium lauryl sulfate, it always starts with sodium and ends with sulfate, you're going to be able to understand that that product

is not good for you.

You're also going to see it listed as one of the first three ingredients on a bottle and that is an indicator that it contains, there's a very large proportion of that ingredient in that product.

So these are the things you need to start thinking about, eliminating that toxicity from your daily life so that you can have a much healthier life moving forward.

So the reason why I'm so passionate about clean living and organic skincare, it's because I feel like there is a big void in this space in our industry.

And when you go out there and you're visiting beauty salons, you don't have to come to our salon, but when you're going into another space, you need to be able to ask the right questions for you.

And this is my passion.

This is what's driving me in.

I am so tired of people in our industry pulling the wool over clients' eyes and making them believe that they need things that they don't need and forcing them or convincing them to do treatments that they may not need.

By bringing clarity in this space, I am giving you the opportunity to become knowledgeable in this

subject and take that knowledge with you and challenge the people in the industry and ask why?

Why do I need this?

What is it doing for me?

What is it going to do for my skin?

When will I see a result?

And just try to ask as many questions as you can because at the end of the day it's your hard-earned money and it's your time and you want someone to give you truthful information that can help you moving forward.

We also have a duty of care as salon owners to ensure that we are disseminating the correct information.

And there will be plenty of people within our industry that will disagree with me at times, and that's fine.

That creates healthy discussion about certain topics.

We can't all be clones of one another.

That would be very boring, wouldn't it?

So I'm so excited moving forward with this podcast because this is going to give you the opportunity to make some really, really good decisions for yourself.

And it's also going to open you up to more treatments, new technology and understanding what is coming in the industry moving forward in a very natural way.

So I'm very excited for all of us.

If you would like to support us, please give us a five-star review on Apple Podcast and Spotify, and that will really help us let other people know how much information is packed into this podcast.

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The links are below and I'll see you on the next podcast.