 So during the pandemic, probably one of the biggest things and issues for us was product development. Holy cow, things were like out of standstill. And so with that, we had a cleanser that went out of stock. So we're like, really excited to get this going. We have it out of stock for so long. And we kept giving them previews like, oh my God guys, we can't wait to make this announcement. And both sell soft shit. That only works for so long. Yeah. Guys, we're so excited. They're just waiting for the ship. When would the ship dock? This is Startup to Storefront, the podcast where we inspire entrepreneurship through truth. Returning to the show today are Victoria Fu and Gloria Lu, co-founders of Chemist Confessions and authors of the new book, Skincare Decoded, the Practical Guide to Beautiful Skin. When we last spoke with Victoria and Gloria, they were busy running an online skincare platform and developing new skin care products. Somehow in the middle of all that, they managed to squeeze in writing a book as well. And if you ask them, they initially thought it wouldn't be much more than repackaging everything they'd already written on their blog. They couldn't have been more wrong. But that same effort and care they've put into their blog went into their book, and as a result, sales are spiking. So listen in as we cover everything from having to navigate the launch of the book on their own. Why Gloria's excitement about what Gloria's excitement about finding her book at her local bookstore was not shared by the cashier and what humans have in common with guinea pigs when it comes to skincare. Now, back to the episode. Welcome to the podcast. We're back with Chemist Confessions. Thank you guys for coming. Welcome back. New space. We all survived COVID together. Yes. It feels really good to see humans and give hugs. Oh, that was really awkward. I was like, is this how you see work? It's been a long time. So what have you guys been up to? What have you guys been working on? We have this beautiful book on the table. Yes. It's just a book there. Yeah, just a book. So the book is our COVID baby. It came out end of March. The editor gave us six months to write it. It took us a whole year. Okay. What made you guys decide to write a book? Oh, so yeah, we did not decide to write a book. And the publisher approached us. They emailed us and we thought it was like a spam email. Okay. It was just so surprising. Yeah, exactly. We really did not believe that this was a legitimate email. Joy, a secret model wants to meet you. It's like kind of that kind of email. I get those emails every day. So we decided we responded. We met them. And we thought it actually would be a great partnership because they do a lot of wonderful, like visual books. So they do recipe books. They do movie, like movie spreads. And so we're like, oh, that's perfect because skincare can get really dense and boring skincare science. So we're like, we would need help to like spruce it up, have some fun diagrams, things like that. And lo and behold, that happened before pandemic and it was only supposed to be a six month project. And then it doubled the time. I remember because the manuscript was due like Memorial Day, 2020? Yeah. Like May. And then we started writing in like end of February, right around time of pandemic. And we're like, this is not going to be done in May. No. Yeah. Did they give you any like coaching or any resources in terms of visuals or... I'm getting a no. Maybe even a ghost writer. So when we met with them, part of the thing that we stressed on was we have a company and we've never written a book before. We don't even think of ourselves very highly as writers. So we need a lot of help, a lot of hand holding. We don't, we know nothing about laying books out, like having any sort of design background. And they really, they reassured us that they had the team for it and they told us that for writing, they can even help us fill in the blanks. It just turned out that with something so specific, like skincare science, it's just so hard for other people to really fill in. So we wound up doing a lot, very hands on. Jokes on us. Yeah. That we still, a lot of it was us and figuring out structure. So it's broken up into three parts. I think the hardest thing was when we did the Instagram was skincare science is like really dense. No one gets any professional training on it. So how can we get a beginner to like, where would be their starting point to like start learning? And that's why we're like, okay, the book has to be that because in Instagram, you're just, it's instant, right? You're just swiping and it's like, you've only got 30 seconds to make an impression, have them take away one singular thing. But then with the book, oh my God, I don't know how many times we redesigned it. Oh, well you have to really think their design team. Yeah. Because we started out writing just like a doc, right? Like all the manuscript and then they place it into your little chunks and whatnot. And then for us, when we saw it, we're like, oh my God, this doesn't make sense. So I felt really bad for a designer too because we kept moving things around on her. And then they were so patient with us. I think we had, or maybe not because we had three different designers one morning. And they were so patient working with us and like changing the layout like four different times just to make sure it makes sense. And then were they trying to release it or time the launch with like a certain event? Because that's always the hard part, right? When it comes to publishing is you have to release the book typically on the heels of like, I mean, I don't really know the beauty market, but when... That's a great question. So originally the idea was... No, it's funny because... I love people say great questions. I'm like, what about the previous questions? Those were correct. Those weren't me. Those were wrong. This is a good one. This one we like way to go. Yeah, so the goal was it would come out during Christmas. Okay. And then they realized that no one gives a skincare book during Christmas because that's a little awkward. It's insulting. I know I only see you once a year, but you could do better. Whoa, you used to be like, you need help. I would have thought maybe like summer, like because... So to me, again, I know nothing about this, but in terms of skincare, at least the way I think about skincare is like sunscreen. Yeah. That seems to be like the most approachable door for me. Or like back to school. Right. I was thinking you show more of your skin during summer, so you would want... I don't. Crazy. So the Christmas deadline was it, okay. That was kind of... Well, Laura had mentioned in Memorial Day that was to make the Christmas timeline. Yeah, to make the Christmas timeline. Wow. That was a five or six month lead time? You need to test print and then catch any bugs and then it needs to circulate within the marketing because then you promote to different vendors and stuff. Right. And then the actual production and needs to come out in October to kind of make the Christmas promotion. Wow. Okay. We missed out by a launch. Yeah, I was going to say, so like at what point did you realize you were just going to blow past that deadline what was the discussion like with your publisher? I think when we were nearing Memorial Day weekend. Yeah. And then we were still editing. The moisturizer. We're still editing. Which is chapter four, by the way. Chapter four. It was pretty early. Okay. So we had our editor was like kind of, her personality was very much like a cheerleader. So she definitely was one that's like, we got this. It's going to be fine. And then by May we're like, it's not going to be fine. In terms of like, how are these deals structured? Do they pay you in advance for this? Or is it something like you get a percentage of sales? We get a peanut for every book that's sold. You get like a penny? Like a couple of... Yeah, we get a royalty with every copy sold. And then during the time of writing there is like a writer stipend. Right. So... Two groups of people. I figured one group would be like so ecstatic that someone reached out to them to write a book. We were. You guys are like, never again. Because well, it felt right because we did so much writing for Instagram and the blog. And like Victoria said, there's no structure very whimsical with what subject we write about. So we felt like putting this book together is good for our followers. It's also good for us to kind of organize everything and like knock it off in the chaos of everyday life or just running a company. But when we started writing in the beginning we really thought like we've written so much it's going to be about pulling what we've already written. Just like a dump, yeah. It's going to be nice. Well, we rewrote everything. Like nothing in there is a copy and paste or anything. So what led you to that? Like I would have thought the exact same thing. You know, you've already done what I would consider the body of the research needed for a book like this. But were you discovering new things in the process that made you rethink what you had already published? I mean, for me, Victoria can make a mental dream but for me it's discovering that in 2017 I was a terrible writer. Yeah, I think for me it was the organization of it was the discovery. You know, like finally putting everything together and thinking about like who we always left. Who is she? Who is the person reading the book? And you know, is the person going to sit there and read from page one to the end or are they looking for like specific help at that specific time in their routine? So how do you cater to both? Gotcha. That's where I think a lot of the pain and the struggles were but the way it turned out like I think we couldn't be happier because from what we know it's like there are people that are definitely looking for specific topics but most who like really are just like trying to figure out skincare. They actually do sit there and read from page one to the end which is shocking to me. I would never have predicted that it's not a novel. No. It's not something that you need to follow linearly. I would think like okay I have this problem let me jump ahead to this chapter and then maybe on like if I am curious or whatever I go back to like chapter four or seven and you bounce around but like how did you find out that people are actually like reading these things cover to cover? So one of my favorite, our favorite feedbacks about the book is someone reached out to us and told us that she's been following our Instagram for a long time and she's like oh to be honest I don't really understand a lot of your posts and she's absolutely right because our Instagram community draws a lot of experts and people who are a lot more advanced in skincare science and they ask such deep questions that we respond to in our content so we use a lot of terminology that maybe most people don't understand so for her she said I was really worried that the book will be really hard for me to understand too but it was so easy to just follow through the journey I read the whole thing in one go And it was easier now for her to like read our posts and understand like where we're coming from Interesting, okay So it's almost like in a very backwards way the super educated posts came first and then the explanatory post or explanatory book came second Exactly And I think the other challenge for us is we don't have any specific product examples in there and not being able to provide those examples we're like okay is that Yeah, does that make them a little bit removed from actual application but we just couldn't handle the red tape that comes with dealing with brands so we are like alright as long as we give them the fundamental like concepts you know and stick to what we know which is ingredients they actually have a starting point and then now we have like follow ups with like product guidelines like that go along with the book Have you seen it help the business in a significant way? Yeah, actually we it's been a slow trickle because we were so busy around the time the book came out came out end of March and to be honest we didn't do all that much for the book launch we kind of We didn't even have a launch party Did they help you like set up events or get you guys some interviews? Not really, okay Another great question If you do say so yourself Our silence keeps volumes Next Right here aren't we? That's how it goes Did you guys think about bringing on like is there like a celebrity or someone who's Instagram famous or something that's like very cognizant or like does this and then they could become like a launch partner Well not so much a launch partner but we definitely reached out to some of our Instagram friends big influencers and honestly the community was really kind I didn't think that they would be so open but they did and I mean it was warmly received and I think that's where a lot of it came from Honestly I'm really happy with how everything turned out despite COVID and all of the hiccups Sure, where do you guys sell the book? Everywhere, Amazon Yeah, Amazon, Target Barnes and Nobles It's really funny because one of the weirdest moments that I have after the book launch was I was walking around just downtown Pasadena where I live now and we went past this bookstore it's not Chang, just like a local store and went in and almost like kind of as a joke I'm like ooh I wonder if I can find our book there and I totally found it on the shelves and it's like really, it's a weird moment to see your name and your book on a bookshelf and I totally rearranged it and put it up top I was just about to ask that That's awesome, featured a little bit more prominently All the S's were on the bottom and I was like well, why don't we just... You could have put up a chair, grabbed a Sharpie started doing signings, yes You could have made it an event It was really funny though because I went up to the they have a help desk and I was like do you guys do events? I have a book out right now and they're like I don't know, I'll reach out to this person I'm so unimpressed, an author they're like whatever dude, figure it out yourself You're the fifth one today Yeah exactly, everyone has a book I'm sorry I did, I think there was a moment where I did sort of feel like a fraud because when you publish a book you actually have to register with the Library of Congress Oh yeah and that moment I was like wait a second I don't think I'm fit for this You get like a number right? Yeah, that's what Eric told us about But is that the kind of thing where it's like I mean it sounds so official the Library of Congress Is it a trivial thing to register? Like what do you mean? The process No one's vetting you Oh no, I mean You don't have like a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting to verify that everything in this book I mean yes But who knows I mean the publisher that's on there and so a lot of that is taken up with them Any follow up from the book? So the way I look at it is like this is some sort of medium right? Yeah, I actually like it I looked at one of the pages and it was like so I'm a big fan of debunking and you guys have that right? So it's like you give information on the last quarter sleeve there's like a mits debunked which is what helps me a tremendous amount But have you guys thought about making video or like making these things like NFTs on the extreme but like making them like I hate to say you reading this on camera because in some way each chapter could be a video We are driving a lot of our content strategy around what we've written in the book especially given such great reception we realize that this is definitely the style that will help us reach a broader audience so they're definitely plans in fact we have a launch party in early June and Victoria has been promoting it like Gloria is going to do a reading in the voice of Morgan Freeman So that's the starting point You want to give us a little Do your best Morgan information Make sure that microphone is really close to you I don't have enough champagne Even by the end of the episode That would be incredible I love a good book with photos and it's actually really helpful I would think that for most people like myself this is really helpful to really break down some more complicated topics like you I just saw a page with the T zone on the forehead and the U zone It's interesting I never thought of my face having two different zones Yeah, it's just my face You're right That is your favorite It's all there I'm also a very visual learner Everything in here is like super geared towards that as you would expect but it's super helpful I mean it's always the core of what we wanted is just like being able to just bridge that gaps and make honestly just science more approachable and I think visuals is the thing that just really lacks especially in the debunking circles It's a shopping red flag Yeah, I'm reading the Red Null Packaging Matters section So what is the red flag as it relates to shopping? It depends on what category you're shopping in Yeah In the book towards the very end we have a chapter on some practical guides like Victoria mentioned We don't have specific product references depending on which channel you're shopping in so say if you're going to say on Amazon you can buy anything on Amazon and that's actually really scary so you can buy chemical peels on Amazon we kind of gave a percentage where let's say 30% glycolic you can probably use at home and it's reasonably safe but on Amazon you can find things up to 70% glycolic acid and that's just don't do it And the regulation on Amazon isn't great but sometimes you'll find products that just don't really follow proper guidelines for even proper manufacturing so those are all red flags of like hey maybe this brand doesn't quite know what it's doing and that's not a great sign One of the classic examples we give is sometimes you'll find products and on their ingredient list they'll write vitamin C but that's not the proper ingredient labeling So what is the proper? It depends on the molecule so it's either ascorbic acid, magnesium ascorbic phosphate, so on and so forth that's the actual ingredient name Have you found the pendulum swinging like since you first started the company where people are like like at least for me we had someone on the podcast who they're developing a sunscreen and really it's just mineral sunscreen and I was excited but her whole challenge is she has to get people to understand that there's a difference between mineral sunscreen and what everyone else puts on in the grocery store and then the other issues like SPF and that whole basically marketing scheme I guess is the best way of putting it and so it's the problem with the podcast is like we talk to people like you guys and so in my head it's always like I have this feeling of like oh the whole market's getting educated but do you guys see that in real time like obviously you guys are the feedback loop in some way Yeah no I think I mean since we started to now like some of the changes in the industry have to credit us for example percentages of actives are just like required like you know you'll see that now they'll use that in the labeling and marketing which we think is great that means like things are now more ingredient centric right but now we have an issue of people diluting what that percentage might mean or like getting too crazy with the percentages because now people realize like oh I need to make sure I actually have enough of this so I need to go overboard on percentages so you know like but seeing that we understand that hey the consumer is starting to become more and more aware they're starting to realize like hey there are ways I can look for a better insurance policy that this skincare will work for me so things like that where we're like it's honestly great to see but I think that makes it harder for someone who doesn't know anything about skincare to try to step into it dip their toes in you know because now it's like changed so much so yeah an example you gave we definitely see that like nowadays I assume if you're not a complete skincare newbie most people you meet will know the difference between mineral and chemicals on screen like that's something that's much more common place now yeah and the other thing is that the industry realizes that labels are very important so now you hear things like clean beauty you hear a reef safe you hear like there's all these stickers now that follow every product you know the idea is oh I make it easier for the consumer to be like I've ticked off all my boxes but then it's kind of dilutes certain like values and like the way things are formulated it can like kind of skew that that judgment so it's good and bad I don't know how how else to say it yeah yeah it's hard but from a business perspective you guys are also selling a product which is helpful and then price point is a big thing right so you guys you try to keep it approachable your price points yeah most of our products are around everything's under $42 and we're going to keep it around that neighborhood it's a challenge keeping formula cost low because we use so much active ingredients but just like our bug the idea is like high-end products that use clinical levels of active ingredients should be approachable for most people I think the goal is just to keep that mission so for example we had our cleanser so during the pandemic probably one of the biggest things and issues for us was product development holy cow things were like at a standstill I don't know if you guys had anything sea shipped from a different country but that was supply chain was destroyed yeah it still is backed up in many sectors I don't know for you guys for candles it is we learned that candles yeah so like the glass cases that the candles come in apparently like one ship in particular one ship sunk all of the candle products coming from Asia to the US all under water oh my god so every single candle manufacturer is just on hold oh my god when we had our products get in and as you guys would know everything stuck at the harbor for forever and we can get products that come in and at least our ship is still floating that's all we are asking for it is fine yeah and so with that we had a cleanser that went out of stock and then we were trying to basically do a next gen of the cleanser where we wanted to offer more bang for your buck and so it would be 100 ml the original was 100 ml right and then we went to 150 ml but the price point would be the same so we're like really trying to get this going we had it out of stock for so long and we kept giving previews like oh my god guys we can't wait to make this announcement and both still suck shit that only works for so long guys we're so excited guys we're so excited and we're just waiting for the ship when will the ship dock so I think it's just insane did you ever consider going to the actual dock and just with a pair of binoculars oh we joke about this all the time that we would rent a raft and we're like just throw the boxes down toss it over the floor just one it's a great way to be mistaken for Somali pirates get me my cleanser yep pandemic stories so what happened we waited that's it but I mean it was good when we were able to offer that bigger volume a cleanser is actually I would say probably one of the more difficult things to make a profit on because of weight, strictly because of weight and price point so with that it's everyone's like entry level it's the thing that hooks you to the brand exactly so you have to do it but Duffin is like yeah this is why it's the wall this is like turkeys during Thanksgiving do you know turkeys are the cheapest throughout the year during Thanksgiving even though they should be the highest price is that because of the volume? no no no they're the cheapest because every grocery store knows you're going to buy a turkey also it's competition and so they want to hook you with a cheap turkey because they know you're going to buy everything else by other things yeah this is the cleanser that's like the Costco chicken rotisserie chicken five dollars for a whole chicken the CEO is it good? it's delicious you cannot ever foresee the price changing it's the chicken and the hot dog because it will get you in the door and then you're going to have either one of these the hot dog is a dollar fifty and at first you're thinking what am I really getting for a dollar fifty hot dog but it's actually really it's one of my favorite hot dogs this is hot dog I haven't been to New York in a while or got an LA street dog in a while but I think that's on the cheaper side I would imagine paying like four bucks three or four bucks for a hot dog maybe like a street dog but this is like really not to push Costco too hard and I'm obviously a big fan of Costco but yeah gold star member it's a good one hang on if you're not subscribed can you go ahead and do that right now before we get on with the video helps us out tremendously that's all we ask what's the change in your guys lives personally during the pandemic I got a dog I adopted a dog she's an Australian cattle dog the blue healer I moved to LA yeah it's been a long time coming because the company moved during the pandemic best news ever we are officially based out of Pasadena and I finally made it out here because I was really waiting for my fiancé to be able to swing a transition so for a while I was like flying from Cali to East Coast back to Taiwan back to East Coast I was a lot what was it like finding the real estate in Pasadena did you guys have trouble finding like commercial space no I think a lot of people were moving out because we're just moving into town so like finding a rental at the time wasn't too hard we don't know the area very well so we're definitely seeing a couple of like a couple of places where it looks really nice in the picture when you drive up to you're like those photographers should pay them a lot they do their job well you throw a wide-angle lens into a small room and it looks massive where in Pasadena are you really close to Caltech one of the things I wanted to bring up from your book I wanted to do like a pop quiz and see how well you actually know your book how well do you know your book oh no we filed that way page 42 so on page 140 Diego's going to verify that this is accurate what do humans and guinea pigs have in common vitamin C do you guys want to explain that for everyone like a little bit more depth a lot of mammals can produce their own vitamin C and guinea pigs are two exceptions so that's why vitamin C is an essential nutrient for both humans and guinea pigs why guinea pigs like what about them is required yeah like f humans and f guinea pigs y'all gotta eat your oranges yeah that's so fascinating I would have never guessed that there's vitamin C again how much do you guys sell your book for 25 I know this might be like premature any plans to release a soft cover version no idea I doubt it you have the hardcover editions but then yeah I doubt it we do have an ebook there's a kindle edition how have you guys been seeing the ebook versus hardcover how have those been selling when compared to each other like what's doing better so I think the hard copy is still doing better there's so many graphics there's a challenge with ebook so it doesn't have all the capabilities of an ebook it's hard to change the font the translation function doesn't work it's actually really hard to translate skincare terms like through languages what we're learning is like it's very or I guess relations like very foreign so there is no translation available for the ebook version but a lot of our you know followers they're international so having the ebook is really nice for them since the hardcover is only sold in the states is that because other languages just they don't have the terms or it's too scientific to I don't even know what like the process would be we should use Chinese as an example yeah I think they do have all the terms but it just doesn't link up very well and we try to be funny in the book jokes are really hard to translate the other languages I only speak one language but I understand that I speak Chinese fluently so even if you were to tell me to translate one of the passages with a joke into Chinese I don't know how to do it I did write in our contract I did mention that if there were to be a Chinese version then I will have to review it like if it's too cringy you've got to add in all your jokes again yeah exactly it is currently being translated to German as far as we know so I think one of the chapters is cleansers I was struggling so hard trying to think of like an analogy of like what this cleanser was I have actually never gotten to talk to Gloria about this but basically the analogy was that the cleanser is like your Scotty Pippin in that doesn't get all the fame but is so crucial to your routine I think about this a lot because I didn't are you an avid basketball fan? well I wouldn't say I'm like religious but I mean yeah I grew up in that era I do appreciate basketball I watch I really hate where the rockets are right now but I have to hear about this but yeah so it's moments like that where I'm like how does this get translated but I don't know how else to like make that connection you know and try to like just help like bridge the gap a quick aside on Victoria Sportwatching she's from Houston so recently Houston sport is just ooh I just like see them they implode it firmly close this page let's not talk to Victoria about this yeah yeah one of the astros everyone knows about that yeah yeah it's not in a dark time recently also seeing all of the rockets players right now in the playoffs like or the ex-rockets and where they are right now even Daryl Maury like it's insane they're rebuilding they're just rebuilding they're starting over starting from scratch every franchise goes through it at least once a day creating cap space so the cleansers of Scotty Pippen is there a Michael Jordan is that the moisturizer we don't have a sign on Michael Jordan but I just I think that we always talk about how underrated it is and no one realizes that just by cleaning your face daily one time a day it's really helpful for your like overall like skin health I used to know a girl that removed her eyeliner once a month I showed just patch it up and just keep going she never won so we used to have a house in the Hollywood Hills and we would Airbnb it and we had like white sheets and I would realize that people would come to LA for the weekend and they would rent out our house and every time there was so much makeup on the sheet like what so gross and then I was reading like this is a common Airbnb issue actually and so some Airbnbs what they'll do is they'll they still use white sheets because they can bleach them but they would leave makeup in the bathroom do you guys have any remover pipes no we don't when we develop the cleanser one of the tasks we did is we want to make sure that it can be a one and done double cleansing is kind of a big topic in skincare we want to make sure that it's gentle but enough that you can remove daily makeup maybe not so much like full on clubbing makeup but on your day to day during Graham should be oh in our own podcast last time we did episode where like what's the first thing we're going to do we want to go clubbing I just want to be surrounded by hundreds of sweaty people are you guys introducing any new products yes we sounds like you're introducing some new products yeah we are there's been one specific product that we've been working on for probably going on two years now so we're going to be putting it through a clinical test so that we can actually get some nice results to share it's going to be a retinol face and eye product it was really hard to stabilize well we wanted to stabilize and then we put it through a safety test with a term to make sure that it's safe around the eye area we did all of that we want to refine the texture and then you we don't want to release it during summer so it's like ready to go right around summertime what is a retinol just to you were to make it it's not the Scotty Pippin Michael Jordan yeah aggressive but effective yeah so we should we should preface that retinol is it's a vitamin A derivative basically it's tried and true to help fight pigmentation and wrinkles it's cousin Tretinoin is actually prescription based and retinol is the one that you can actually use within skincare that's like not OTC but has really great benefits and so we wanted to create a face and eye because eye creams are kind of a pain point for us because if you think about the jar it's like 0.5 small right yeah it's like a little lip balm thing exactly and then it's charged at more than the actual anti aging cream so you can find ones of upwards to $150 for half the amount of like an anti aging cream and the issues with eye cream well in general eye creams are very difficult because there's a lot of factors involved with bags dark circles and the crows feet and so because of that the results of an eye cream aren't great the price point isn't great and you only get a very little amount so what we wanted to do was create a product that could be for both face and eye and just utilize because ultimately the ingredients that you're using for eye can also work for face and that was the goal and I guess we're announcing it on this podcast but the we're going to be called double play okay when's it going to come out wrinkles is there a jingle that you'd like to share with us isn't a jingle yet double play it's going to come out in September you're going to need a baseball metaphor then because you don't want to use the Michael Jordan baseball metaphor we don't want baseball MJ this is the Tim Tebow baseball also not good you can do anything so anyways that's actually one of our launches double play coming out how much are you selling it for great question we haven't talked about this it'll probably be around the $50 mark this one is very approachable this plays into a question that is right there on the back of your book is a $600 product better than a $50 one and I would say it's slightly good we use the cutoff like if you can buy a playstation then it's probably not worth it but also with the playstation money you can get Botox Botox good for you yeah do you recommend Botox it can be helpful and like you know what's interesting they're starting to do microdose Botox and see long term how does that affect actual aging so I mean I think there's helpful because I think at least in my mindset and I'm sure a lot of other people the image that comes to mind immediately when you say Botox is the plastic face no emotion just like completely solidified over and I will mention it's come a long way since then it definitely comes with the right provider I personally never had injections in Botox but I've seen there's certain doctors that just have an eye for how to do it right both fillers and Botox to take away wrinkles in a very subtle way so you still look like you and your aging gracefully so you don't get the I hate to say it I just watched a friend's reunion the Ross look wait what's the Ross look I've been seeing I thought he looked pretty good for compared to Matthew Perry Matthew Perry did not look good although I heard he had emergency dental surgery like right beforehand so that's kind of why he was he looked like he had a stroke I think I live under a rock like of course you know they are all in their 50s or like getting are they close to their 60s but I feel like of course you know they're gonna look aged but at the same time it's like a series that you grow up watching and maybe you rewatch so for them in your head they're always in their early 30s and to see them it's been 20 years I will say I had dinner next to Courtney Cox I am and she looks great she looks great the women have definitely aged a lot better than the men in that show that's a general statement I think women tend to curl I mean I think it goes both ways women plus me my whole routine because you guys know I got a cleanser I got the vitamin E that one of you recommended our work here is done I use sunscreen all the time I use sunscreen all the time I do my vitamin E and sunscreen and I make a little thing and then I put it on my face every morning and then when I play tennis I got mineral sunscreen that I see you're getting great feedback right now it's the best thing about the podcast is like I just trust the professionals so at least you've inspired me oh good with alcohol in hand I want to get this from my sister I know she'd be a big fan of it she'd totally read it the feedback we've gotten is pretty cool there's people that tell us we're taking esthetician I'm in esthetician school and I really need this book and I'm like really that's great and that's a goal is for anyone to take something away from it even professionals maybe we wanted to be a good reference point for everyone I'm not kidding when we say we almost killed each other because it depends on the chapter I think for her it was moisturizers I wrote the first pass of moisturizers and she was just like but who cares and who is in four and I was like alright okay we arrange it and for me it was sunscreen because sunscreen was scientifically very dense and we took it extra extra seriously because with skin cancer everything's not subject we take lightly yet we want it to be fun so it was just really dry we were trying to spruce it up but is this enough? I think when I was writing that chapter Gloria I think the commentary was always like it's very dense I'll look at it tomorrow it wasn't until we had so we went to our publisher in the middle of all this and we got a full big spread print out because sometimes having it in your hand is just different than looking at a PDF so we got the physical print out and we were like crazy people trying to solve a murder mystery just like paper all over our boyfriend's apartment at the time and we're just like this doesn't belong here it's so bad it was like a good COVID project for you guys yeah it was our COVID baby would you do it again? would you any lessons learned? like either on the contract side or what would you restructure? I think lesson learned is like know our value I think for us when we went into the project we were like we're not authors we don't know how much we can actually bring by writing a book and then seeing the finished product we're like no we totally know and we should have understood our value and not saying that Weldon Owen took advantage or anything like that but it's like I think at least for me I didn't have the confidence that we could write a book like this in the way and turn out like this and that was I think that's my overall takeaway we enter things very humbly and we should give ourselves you come out very confidently we try do you know how many you've sold do they give you like any sales numbers? we're waiting for a report because it's just in our first month our first two months of launch but I mean hearing that they're gonna translate it things like that it's all good signs they're decoded by the Library of Congress vetted authors it's a far core vetting profit it's beautiful skin well thank you guys tell everyone where they can buy it just to last you said Amazon Barnes & Noble you can see Gloria in the Pasadena store rearranging books she'll be there signing copies Monday through Friday her own Sharpie don't get me banned from Bournemouth well thank you guys thanks for having us