IAM1345 – Hairstylist Uses Chemical-Free Products on Her Salon

With a B.S. in Finance, JD/MA, and 12 years behind the chair as a hairstylist, hair salon owner, and educator focused on clean products, she is the expert on everything hair care and chemical-free. In 2018, Natalie was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease as well as another autoimmune disorder. Witnessing numerous clients and friends getting diagnosed with similar thyroid/endocrine issues, she set out to try to find out why so many women are experiencing this epidemic.

Her investigation pointed her to the thousands of toxic chemicals in household and beauty products. Being an expert in hair and noticing the lack of attention on chemicals in hair care products, she founded North Authentic, a conscious haircare-focused retailer that not only vets every product against their “Hair Crimes list,” but also tests them for performance.

• CEO Story: After changing careers, Natalie wanted to do with hair. She built her own salon. After being diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease, she found out that it was caused by the toxic chemicals in household and beauty products and so she founded a haircare-focused company.
• Business Service: Tested haircare products. Haircare consultations/prescriptions.
• Secret Sauce: Haircare focused. Haircare regimen that crosses multiple brands.
• CEO Hack: Meditation Listening to podcasts. Books mentioned: Untethered Soul and The Untethered Soul at Work by Michael Singer. Find a coach.
• CEO Nugget: Slow down. Make a more informed wiser decision and not be in a hurry.
• CEO Defined: More in control of leading your mark. The vessel for change. Influence others to make better decisions.

Website: www.shopnorthauthentic.com

Instagram: shopnorthauthentic

Facebook: northauthenticbeauty

Twitter: @northauthentic

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIco3Vgp0BVt881VwIZPV2Q

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Transcription

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00:16 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:43 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. And Natalie Palomino of North Authentic Natalie. Super excited to have you on the show.

00:55 – Natalie Palomino

Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to be here.

00:56 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, it should definitely And before we jump into to read a little bit more about Natalie you can hear a little bit of the awesome things that she's doing. With a BS in finance, JD in M&A, and 12 years behind the chair as a hairstylist, hair salon owner, and educator focused on clean products. She is the expert on everything haircare and chemical-free. In 2018, Natalie was diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease as well as another autoimmune disorder. Witnessing numerous clients and friends getting diagnosed with similar thyroid endocrine issues, She set out to find out why so many women are experiencing this epidemic.

Her investigation pointed her to the thousands of toxic chemicals in household and beauty products. Being an expert in hair and noticing the lack of attention on chemicals in hair care products, she founded North Authentic, a conscious hair care-focused retailer that not only vets every product against their hair crimes list but also tests them for performance. Natalie, super excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:59 – Natalie Palomino

I am. Thank you so much for that intro.

02:02 – Gresham Harkless

Well, thank you for doing all the hard work. Just reading it is the easy part, but you're doing all the hard work. So I appreciate you for the work that you do. And I guess before we get into some of that hard work and everything, I wanted to hear a little bit more about how you got started. Well, I like to buy your CEO story.

02:17 – Natalie Palomino

Yeah, of course. So as you mentioned, I have a JDMA. So I was an attorney at one point. And I think like many of us, we kind of end up having different chapters of our lives and changing careers. And so realizing that that wasn't for me in my early 30s, I went soul searching and figured out through many, many events that I wanted to do hair was never ever on my radar. So it was exciting, but scary when I realized I was gonna do something so different, change careers, built that up very quickly because I am a go-getter and I was older. So I'm like, I don't have time to mess around. I need to build this clientele. Did that fairly quickly, and opened my own salon.

And then I started to notice a few different things. I like to give people prescriptions kind of like we're the hair doctor, right? So telling people exactly what they should be using on their hair in order to achieve the types of hair goals, the color, the style, whatever they wanted to achieve. Because what I do in the salon is only part of the really, big picture. What they do at home is the other half. So I always approach my clients like we're a team. So I would give them a haircare prescription and they always, every new client was always like, I've never ever been given information like this.

Like I would ask my stylist, what should I be using on my hair? And they would say, oh, they're all the same, or they wouldn't really recommend anything. So that was a huge thing. And then I started to notice over time, my client's hair changing, you know, as they aged or as they had health issues. And then I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's an autoimmune disease, and I started to see major changes in my hair. And I realized, even if clients didn't know, I'd be like, something's going on. Like, you need to go check, you need to go see an endocrine specialist because something's going on because your hair and your skin will scream at you if something's going on internally.

So I could kind of identify that something was wrong even before and they'd be like, oh my gosh, I've noticed things happening. Thank you for saying something. I'm like, yeah, you need to go see a doctor because I'm not a doctor. I'm a hair doctor, but I'm not a medical doctor. So, yeah, once I was diagnosed as well, I started to deep dive because I had to lower my toxic load. I've come to realize how many toxins come into contact with our skin and affect our daily lives, from our hair care products to our cleaners and furniture, just like you mentioned. The clean beauty movement is gaining momentum, but it seems to be primarily focused on skin and cosmetics.

People tend to forget about their hair, not realizing that the scalp is one of the most absorbent areas of the body. So I was like, you know what? I really need to start focusing on bringing clean hair products to my clients. And then COVID happened, right? And I'm in a business where I have to physically touch people all day and I have a business and staff where we all are supposed to be doing this and we got shut down. So I didn't panic, you know, 'cause I'm like the whole world shut down. What is the thing I could do about it? So-called everybody said, hey, I'm not going to make payments this month. What can we do? Everybody was great.

Everybody put off paying anything for a couple of months. And so at the moment, I said, oh my gosh, I feel like a kid who gets to kind of live with their parents and explore their dreams right now. Like I don't have any responsibility. Like I didn't feel any pressure. I, you know, so I just try to stay calm. And after a couple of weeks, I'm like, okay, I don't know how long this is gonna be. I need to start, you know, I know the word pivot has been overused over COVID, but that really is, I think, what most CEOs had to do or business owners. And I realized, okay, if I can't touch my clients, I've always wanted to invent something. I've always thought, God, people who are super successful, find something that's missing in an industry.

And they know so much about the industry. They're able to open up and find that specific thing and then start a business and just make a ton of money. So I've always thought, god, I wish I would be in a position like that. And here, COVID actually put me in a position like that. So I'm like, okay, what is missing in the hair industry? One, people don't get haircare prescriptions. They don't have their own personal stylist to talk to and make sure they're buying the right things. Second, there's so much greenwashing in our industry, where companies are spending billions of dollars trying to advertise their products as clean because they know that's what's hot right now. However, the products are actually full of toxic chemicals, and there's no government agency that regulates hair care products as they are considered cosmetic.

So I'm like, okay, people need a trusted website or trusted place. They can go buy things where they don't feel like they have to read every label and research every funky-named ingredient that they have no idea how to pronounce. And also a place where they can have access to their own stylist that will help them pick out the right products. They don't keep trying to buy things that end up not working for them and then they keep putting them under the sink and they have this graveyard of products that they never use right so I realized like hey I can fill this void.

07:17 – Gresham Harkless

Love that So I know you touch a little bit upon North Authentic. I wanted to drill down a little bit more to find out how you're serving your clients and the products and services that you're providing there.

07:27 – Natalie Palomino

Yeah, for sure. So, we have something called a hair crimes list. So I hired some advisors who had worked for the World Health Organization and were biochemists to help me put together a list of there's a lot of toxic ingredients out there, but only so many of them are in hair products. There are many types of UV protection that are toxic, and they can be found in both skin and hair care products. However, hair care products typically contain oils and other safer ingredients.

Additionally, we have a hair quiz designed to recommend the best products based on a consultation, ensuring that the recommendations align with what I would personally suggest. So we also offer auto-ship. So you don't ever run out of your product. You can get it every 90, or 120 days, whatever you want. Just want to make it the easiest shopping experience. I say people have so many lives to worry about their families and their relationships. Let me take the time to clarify our goal.

08:27 – Gresham Harkless

So what you consider to be what I secret sauce? It could be or a combination of both. Feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

08:35 – Natalie Palomino

There's no other company out there that is hair care-focused. So there are some other companies out there that are like us that have, no ingredient lists, but they're hyper-focused on skin and cosmetics. As I mentioned, Clean Beauty is really focused there. They might have some hair products on their website, but it's, you know, like under 10, it's kind of a forgotten stepchild. So, you know, people just kind of forgot about hair. So the fact that we're so hair care-focused makes us completely stand out from our competitors.

And then there's no other place to get a haircare regimen that crosses multiple brands. Like if you go to, you know, any kind of company's website, like say one of our brands is Olaplex, you go to olaplex.com and take a hair course with them, they're going to give you what Olaplex products you should use for your hair care regimen. Well, we're like, we pick out the hero products from each of our 14 brands.

I'm like, I might want you to use Olaplex 3 to strengthen your hair, but I want you to use, you know, 100% pure shampoo and conditioner, but this leave-in conditioner, because you're dealing with hair loss, go ahead and try this, you know, leave in Colton King tonic for your scalp. And then I want you to use the serum for Intersense. So I've really like put together haircare regimens and made recommendations based on my favorite products across, I'm not committed to any line, I'm committed to you. So there's nothing else out there like that.

10:01 – Gresham Harkless

I absolutely appreciate that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I like to call a CEO hack. And I know you've already touched on one, but this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:15 – Natalie Palomino

I believe wholeheartedly in meditating. So it's just your brain's going 100 miles an hour. And I know it's like, people say it's hard to find time to do it, but you actually have more time in the day when you do it. And I don't do it every day. I don't do it as much as I should, but it's such a huge difference in my day when I do it. I also, you know, I work behind the computer all day, so I try to get up and move every day. I try to go for a walk, and I usually listen to podcasts, How I Built This is one of my favorite podcasts, in addition to this one, of course.

But yeah, I love it because it's these stories of CEOs. And I also love the book, how I built this book. But some of the books I've loved, there's Michael Singer wrote this book called Untethered Soul. And that is one of my favorite books in the world. I think everybody in the world should read it. But he wrote a second book called The Untethered Soul at Work. And that is a phenomenal book. That's another one. And then Tribe of Mentors by Timothy Ferris is another one of my favorite books. So I'm reading and looking at the computer all day.

So as much as I would love to hold and read a book, my eyes are dust. So I do everything, I listen to everything. So it's either like an audible book or a podcast. So, you know, or jumping into the clubhouse. I really enjoy the clubhouse, but you can go down the rabbit hole with the clubhouse. So I would say that's, those are some of my, top tips get up and move, walk away. And then, you know, recently I, I would say there's so many coaches out there. Like everybody's a coach nowadays. You do need to do some vetting, but finding a coach is extremely valuable.

11:55 – Gresham Harkless

I almost wonder if like going back in that time machine, if you would tell your younger business self that piece of like, you know, getting that information, that knowledge, because I think it helps out, even if you're not doing it from a hiring standpoint, being able to make sure that you are hiring the right people, make sure they're more knowledgeable and at least you're talking the language of the people that you're hiring, even if you are trying to hire people that are smarter than who we are.

12:17 – Natalie Palomino

100 percent of people would advise me to slow down and go back. I think when you're a new CEO, especially with something in tech, we're in such a hurry because I think we're hearing all these stories about how somebody built, they got investors and then They sold it for like $100 million within 5 years. And it's like, well, yeah, but you have to think of it the same way. We're all not going to sell our businesses for $100 million within 5 years. And that's great if that's what you're going for.

But that may not be the path that is best for you and your company. So you kind of need to sit back and slow down and make more informed, wiser decisions and not be in such a hurry because I totally wasn't in a hurry. I was like, oh my God, You know, and you just, there was no reason for me to fire, to hire all those people so quickly. I just needed to slow down. I was putting the cart before the horse, but that is part of my personality that I have to rein in sometimes. But I think that probably is a common, a common personality trait of a lot of CEOs.

13:16 – Gresham Harkless

I appreciate it. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We might've already touched on this, but we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Natalie, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:28 – Natalie Palomino

It is amazing to have the autonomy and ownership to really be in charge of your own destiny, right? And that's very different when you're working for someone else. And I think that there are positions where you maybe can have more, but I feel like at the end of the day, like waking up and sometimes you forget to stop. We're in such a hurry. We forgot to stop and be like, wow, I did that. Like I need to give myself props. Like we forget to give ourselves props. Right. And I think that being able to stop and go like, wow, I, I, we are in a good place. Maybe we're not where I want to be yet, but I'm, we're doing amazing.

And I think being able to fill that fulfillment, especially if you're like, you know, your, your business has, you know, a social cause, you know, we're, we're trying to make the world a better place, right? You feel like it's almost like your vessel for change. So I feel like as a CEO, you kind of feel like you're more in control of leaving your mark, I guess, or being that vessel for change. It's one way of being, you know, of, you know, pushing change in the world. So yeah, I guess that's, that's what I would be. I feel like it, it, it, it gives me the, it puts me in the most unique and amazing position so that I can influence others to make better decisions for themselves and for their kids and for the world, right? So.

14:56 – Gresham Harkless

Well, Natalie truly appreciates that. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people could get a hold of you, and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

15:10 – Natalie Palomino

Oh, perfect. Okay, great. Well, yeah, North Authentic, we're at www.shopnorthauthentic.com. Yeah, please go there, shop, take the hair quiz. I always tell people, and we email your results straight to you. So even if you're not ready to invest in products because you're still finishing the ones you have, at least you have that email that you can always refer back to and find those products when you're ready. So yeah, and you can find us on Instagram at Shop North Authentic. I'm at at Nat Natalie Palomino Beauty Pro and I've been doing a series on my reels of the best hairstyles, and haircuts for your face shape or your skin tone. And I give healthy hair care tips. So I try to give people all these tips that have nothing to do with our products.

15:58 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Absolutely. And we will have the links and information, the show notes as well too, so that everybody can get a hold of you and connect with all the awesome things you and your team have been able to build. Truly appreciate you again, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:09 – Natalie Palomino

You too. Thank you so much for your time. I loved it.

16:12 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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