How a Rodeo Girl Turned Grit into $17 Million with Leah Garcia of Nulastin
Season 1 Episode 9
How a Rodeo Girl Turned Grit into $17 Million with Leah Garcia of Nulastin
Click to listen here on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/63TB06L6iHGpQGTXixTPrp?si=1023c301159b4e2d
And here on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/founders-in-jeans/id1802430594?i=1000709869257
Summary
In this episode, Leah Garcia shares her journey from being a rodeo cowgirl to the founder of Nulastin, a science-backed beauty brand. She discusses the importance of identifying market gaps, building customer trust, and the role of mentorship in her entrepreneurial journey. Leah emphasizes the significance of focus in business and the exciting advancements in biotechnology within the beauty industry. She also shares valuable insights on personal growth and the importance of storytelling in branding.
You can follow Leah on Instagram @leahgarciatv and Nulastin on Instagram @nulastin. You can also visit their website here: https://nulastin.com.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Leah Garcia and New Lastin
06:08 The Journey from Rodeo to Beauty Entrepreneur
08:30 Lessons from the Rodeo: Responsibility and Competition
11:10 The Connection Between Nature and Entrepreneurship
13:48 Understanding Elastin: The Gap in the Beauty Industry
16:33 Building a Brand: Customer Trust and Community Engagement
25:23 Building a Strong Team Culture
27:57 The Importance of Female Leadership
29:44 Decision-Making and Problem-Solving
33:14 Learning Moments and Personal Growth
34:58 The Power of Looking Up
37:42 Idea Transference and Taking Action
41:28 The Balance of Speed and Preparedness
43:46 Research-Driven Formulations
48:23 Navigating the Beauty Industry's Marketing Landscape
51:12 The Role of Science in Beauty Products
54:04 Biotechnology: The Future of Skincare
57:24 The Journey of Learning and Mentorship
01:03:01 The Importance of Focus in Entrepreneurship
01:04:10 Personal Reflections and Self-Care Rituals
01:05:21 Impact and Reward in Building a Brand
01:07:32 Recommended Resources for Entrepreneurs
01:11:43 New Chapter
Takeaways
Leah's diverse background shapes her entrepreneurial journey.
Identifying gaps in the market is crucial for success.
Learning to fail with dignity is a valuable life lesson.
Building customer trust is essential for brand loyalty.
Science-backed products can set a brand apart in the beauty industry.
Mentorship plays a significant role in personal and professional growth.
Focus and clarity are vital for business success.
Navigating the beauty industry requires understanding market trends.
Biotechnology is revolutionizing the beauty sector.
Storytelling is key to connecting with customers.
Sound Bites
"I am a rodeo cowgirl ranch girl."
"I saw that gap in the market."
"We are a science-backed brand."
Keywords
Leah Garcia, Nulastin, beauty industry, entrepreneurship, rodeo, mentorship, customer trust, biotechnology, skincare, female founders
Transcript
Emily Jean (00:00)
to or welcome back to Founders in Jeans. I'm your host Emily Jean and today's episode is with the very special, very incredible Leah Garcia.
Just to give you guys a bit of the process behind the podcast. podcast coordinator, Rita Williams, who is incredible, finds the podcast guests that we want on and reaches out to them or people will reach out to us.
In this case, I had a vague sense of who Leah was. I knew that she was the founder and CEO of Nulastin which we're going to talk about, But I did not know that she actually has a home where I'm from and that she is a rodeo girl at heart. She's also like a pro mountain biker. She's amazing from top to bottom.
But it was such a nice surprise to meet somebody who has kind of a similar background to me. I was never in the rodeo, but I grew up very much surrounded by that life. And yeah, it was just so cool to chat with somebody who I really saw myself in. And I think that's kind of the beauty of being able to share all these stories with you guys is not every single one is going to resonate and
not all going to relate to the woman who's waking up at five in the morning and goes, goes, all day. me personally, I am unfortunately a little bit lazy and I don't wake up at five. I also can't always relate to founders who have children, even though I know that that's an incredible feat within itself.
But there are bits and pieces of every story that touch us and make us remember that every journey is different, every story is different. But one thing all of these founders have in common is that they had an idea, they had a belief, and they had the ability to do something about it. Outside of all that,
I think that Leah is such a great role model and so inspirational and she has just done so much with her life. I recently read The Art of Mastery by Robert Greene. and it was speaking a lot about focusing in on one thing and it's not necessarily something that comes very easily to me. I'm somebody who likes to do a lot of different things all at once.
Hence the podcast, hence my other businesses and also getting my masters. But Leah she has done so many different things and been very successful in each aspect and absolutely been the most successful so far in her beauty slash haircare line.
so yeah, I'm so excited for you guys to meet her and I'm so excited for you guys to listen to this episode. It was incredible. And I don't want to take up much more time, so let's get into it. But before I do, I always have to say, if you guys enjoy this episode, if you like me, which I hope you do,
You can leave a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts wherever you're listening to this. It helps us out so much. It just lets us know if you're enjoying the show. Also, you can leave a bad review. I'm not against it. I would love to hear what I can do better and make it more interesting and entertaining for everyone. You can also follow us on Instagram
can visit the website www.livegooddigital.com for more information on the podcast and what we do. I think that's all I have. So let's get into the episode. I know you guys are going to love it. And here is Leah Garcia.
Emily (03:32)
Okay, Leah, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited to have you. I'm so excited to talk about Nulastin
today and I yeah thank you so much for being here. I think this is going to be a really really great talk. First of all to start off with I was looking at the website a few days ago and it's so beautifully well done. I mean I think the branding materials just in terms of like the aesthetics and how everything has come together is very very well done and but anyways before we get into
all that, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself in your own words.
Leah Garcia (04:12)
Yay, hello Emily. Hello all of Emily's followers. This is so much fun. So I'm calling in from Boulder, Colorado. My name is Leah Garcia. I'm the founder and CEO of New Lastin. And my claim to fame these days is that I am a rodeo cowgirl ranch girl turned professional mountain bike racer turned television sideline reporter turned.
beauty brand entrepreneur and I was able to take all of my skills and build my business from zero to seventeen and a half million dollars before I hired my first employee.
And before you think I'm psychotic, we'll have that conversation later. But I was very passionate about this protein that we use, which is elastin. So we are a hair care brand that focuses on an innovative, science-backed formula with the base of it being elastin replenishment, which is what anchors your hair, helps it from shedding, and continues promoting that natural growth that we all crave. So for hair, eyelashes and brows,
Emily (04:50)
you
Leah Garcia (05:16)
And
we have a gorgeous skincare line too that is, well, it's the thing that's just kind of kept my career going. But it's a wonderful product line. was a niche in the market. And so I saw it and I took advantage of that opportunity being an athlete. I saw that gap, that gap in the race.
Emily (05:32)
What a good bio. This is why love having other people introduce themselves is because I could never do that justice. That is an amazing bio. love that.
Okay, so obviously your background is incredibly diverse and I know this is gonna be a big question, but you've done rodeo, mountain biking, television, now you're in the, you know, you're beauty entrepreneur. What, like, what's inspired, first of all, I have so many questions. I have a lot of questions.
Leah Garcia (05:59)
I'm my own person and I have so many questions. Okay, bring it
on. Listen, there is no question that will embarrass me. So whatever you want to ask, bring it on.
Emily (06:08)
Okay, well, I'm really drawn. I really want to hear about the rodeo first, actually. I'm from a small town in California. I grew up with ranch hands, cowboys in Templeton, California. Don't tell me you...
Leah Garcia (06:16)
where.
So I have a house in San Luis Obispo.
I am a Central Coast girl. I went to Cal Poly, Templeton, and all of my friends, and I'm probably now, we are one degree separation in terms of who we know, and we didn't know that about one another, Emily.
Emily (06:23)
my gosh.
You
That is the best. I can't even tell you how good that feels. I tell people what Templeton is all the time. No one's ever heard of it. Of course it's this big, but.
Leah Garcia (06:41)
right? Then you have to say, it's right
near Paso Robles and the wine tasting and all of the stuff that transpired there. But Templeton is really just an extension of Paso Robles. I can go into it Santa Margarita, Atascadero, San Luis Obispo.
Emily (06:45)
Exactly.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Very much so. my gosh. Okay. This is amazing. Okay. So let's talk about rodeo then. Did you get into that when you were younger or while you were in Cal Poly or?
Leah Garcia (07:05)
So yes,
my parents were both my mother and my father rodeo'd. And when my brother and I were being raised, it's almost a musician lifestyle where they'd throw the kids in the camper and off you'd go to various gigs. Same thing with the rodeo circuit. You...
throw your kids in camper, throw the horses in the trailer, and off you go to rodeos. And when I grew up, my mother was running barrels, my dad was team roping and steer wrestling, and my brother and I were just playing in the dirt 24-7 and making up our own rules. And we had...
thousands of parents because when you are that age you just get into an environment where you're very independent, right? You're creating things and you're having fun and if your mom says show back up here at whatever time you get there at whatever time and then off you go. So there's always you know feeding and watering the horses and responsibility and what's really interesting to me is that number one I just love kids who aren't just doing like take the trash out that's your chore.
Emily (08:08)
Hmm.
Leah Garcia (08:08)
But
really taking care of large animals, whether it's your cattle herd or your horses or whatever, goats, sheep, anything that's on the ranch, their life depends on you and your responsibility. And I'll confess, when I was little, I was a little naughty. And I remember one time my brother and I would have to go water the horses. It was hot, it was summertime. And...
Emily (08:20)
Yeah.
You
Leah Garcia (08:30)
I was always the one who had to turn the faucet, which bothered me because he got to hold the hose and that was more fun. And I remember one time we lied about watering the horses. And we came into the house and my dad said, did you get the horses watered? And both my brother and I looked at him and said, yeah, we did. And then he walked out and he put that hose in the bucket and those horses were like, they drank all the water. Well, that was my first whooping.
Emily (08:51)
Mm-hmm.
Leah Garcia (08:51)
And I was
very young. I was probably like four years old, right? But I remember it like it was yesterday. So it does not take very many times as a young person when you do something that has such an impact on another living creature. And poof, never did that again. Realized lying was not a good idea, especially to your father. But it was...
Emily (08:56)
Mm.
Leah Garcia (09:15)
Then I just, the weight of responsibility really was something that I absorbed from moments on the ranch. And then of course, the next part about things that you absorb that are great for business later in life is the fact that you put yourself in a competition.
On a weekend, for example, if you enter a roping, you're going to enter maybe three, four times per jackpot, depending on what it is. So you get in the box, you nod your head, things go. You win, you lose. Mostly you lose. You don't always, it's the perfection thing is just not there, even no matter how good you are. So you fail and you fail a lot and you fail fast. And then you have to face the repercussion of, I just beat myself up or do I just go back in and
Emily (09:53)
Mm-hmm.
Leah Garcia (09:59)
try again. So you learn to fail a lot with dignity and you you learn to analyze what you've done and then you go practice to make yourself better.
You don't just give up and you don't just lick your wounds. You go back and you practice and then you try to improve. And then the next time around, when you have a good moment, you visualize that. And then there's a lot of visualization. There's a lot of real positive things that you get as being an athlete. And then there's just that dance that you have with your horse, with the animal, with your body, with everything that goes along. But at the end of the day, know, the...
The thing is, is that it's just fun, right? You just wanna do something that you love and that's just fun. So no matter what the outcome is, the glory of doing it is what brings you back.
Emily (10:46)
Right.
It gives me a whole new level of respect for you because I, I, I actually, didn't grow up on a ranch by any means, but had a lot of friends that did. And, it is a nitty gritty lifestyle. mean, that's really what it is. And it's a long hours to wake it up early in the morning. and it totally makes sense to me when I see. cowboys for lack of a better word that are these like amazing entrepreneurs.
is because, yeah, that's been your entire life, is putting in the hard work and that grit and that determination. And on the spiritual side of things, I think that connection to nature actually goes so far in the way people don't really recognize.
Leah Garcia (11:25)
I always laugh when you wanna sorta talk about them in and the fact that first of all there's the no bullshit happening in that ranching world, but.
Men who may not be eloquent, you know, cowboy poets or some of the old time cowboys who really can't share their feelings. But yet when you watch them with their dogs and their horses and their livestock, it's just a love fest. And the way they respect their animals, they won't be able to say, I love you.
Emily (11:41)
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Leah Garcia (11:55)
But they show it. so
that, you know, we didn't grow up with a real touchy feely family, but you see love in so many ways and you see support. And my dad was, Jesus, this is like the third time I've talked about my dad. It's the first broadcast where I haven't been talking about my mother who was so influential, but my dad had.
Emily (12:04)
Mm-hmm.
You
Leah Garcia (12:15)
He really was my tough love and he really, you know, he wouldn't spank me until I lied that one time and I deserved it. And never had to pick up his hand to me again. Never ever had to raise his hand one more time. But it's how you sometimes you just can't, you know, nag.
Emily (12:17)
Mm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah.
Leah Garcia (12:33)
That's the other thing that you can't do in life. You just can't nag. You either reprimand and you'd be done with it and you don't hold a grudge and then you move on, but you can't nag. And I think those are other lessons that I've brought to my business sense is trying not to just be a nag.
Emily (12:49)
I love that. That's a good. That's something I need to remember too. I very much so. okay. please. Yes.
Leah Garcia (12:54)
Can I tell you one more thing about cowboys? They're very rarely bald.
You know why? I can actually
give you the reason why cowboys are very rarely bald. You know, they've got this gorgeous head of hair. It's because of elastin. So the protein that is in our formula is a protein that is anchoring the hair. So think of it as the roots of a tree that's really holding the hair follicle in place and the dermis of the skin. And it gets degraded when you see sunlight. So from sunlight, from
Emily (13:04)
Please tell me why.
Hmm.
Leah Garcia (13:25)
stress, from environmental factors, from aging, but a lot of sunlight will damage that elastin root system and it can cause hair to prematurely shed. And so one day it occurred to me that I looked at all these cowboys underneath their hats and I was like, you've got a full head of hair and they also wear ball caps. So right, they've got ball caps on. You're in Australia, right, Emily? So slip, slap.
something, what did you guys do for sunscreen that one year? It was slip it on, slap it on, and then put your hat on because it was a big push in Australia against skin cancer and they were encouraging everyone to A, wear sunscreen, but B, to protect their head. And that's why all the little kids in Australia wear their cute little hats around.
Emily (13:52)
You
hair. Interesting.
I've never heard that before. That's amazing. I had no idea. That's such a good fun fact. I love that.
Leah Garcia (14:18)
look up your campaign. It was a big national campaign.
Emily (14:22)
Yeah, please do. I'm gonna
start, every time I see a cowboy from now on, I'm gonna say, I know why you have so much hair. I know what, I know your secret. Yeah. Please. Yeah. That's true. That's certainly true. Or at least they...
Leah Garcia (14:29)
right? Yeah, well then Emily, he's gonna say, would you like to touch it? you're like, no, I was just complimenting you. They are Casanovas. Let's call a spade a spade.
Which is another good
lesson to hang out with cowboys because they're just, I always joke, I met Eva Langoria at an event and everybody was trying to impress her and they were talking about their big projects and what they were doing as female founders and they were doing great things. And then all of a sudden I just went completely rogue and I said, I'm a horse trader.
I trade horses, I barter for horses, because in a way that's how I grew up, right? You're gonna buy a new horse, you're gonna sell a horse, you're negotiating prices, you're doing contracts on the side, and everybody lit up and then the conversation completely turned to horses. And as I can say right now, you and I have spent quite a good time on this podcast talking about horses already and cowboys and my father. So now that we've had our therapy session, let's talk business.
Emily (15:08)
Mm-hmm.
You
Yeah, let's get it. Let's get
into it. Okay, great. Well, then let's go right into it actually. Was there a specific turning point that made you realize there was a gap in the beauty industry for elastin replenishment? Was there?
Leah Garcia (15:42)
That's a nicely asked question. Here's
the deal. I didn't go out looking for Elastin to be the gap, but I'd spent time in the infomercial world. So I really understand that product positioning in the marketplace could transform a lot of people's lives. And so that's what you see with a lot of infomercial products back in the day.
Emily (15:51)
Mm.
Leah Garcia (16:05)
What I kept looking for was something that would provide.
long-term residual income, a product that would be consumable, that would be something that they would have to buy more than one time. So the opposite is maybe the chamois or a snuggie blanket. You don't need very many snuggie blankets, but when it comes to subscription-based platforms, repetitive purchases, those are your personal care products that you're using on the daily.
the face care, the beauty products, the hair care, the nutritional supplements, the things for your pets that they're gonna need.
over and over and over. And that business model really appealed to me on so many levels because consistency over time is truly what delivers the best results for us in our performance and our beauty and the consistency over time. If you're fit, if you're training, if you're exercising, you can't just do it once and think, is this going to work for me for the rest of my life?
Emily (16:46)
Mm-mm.
Right.
Leah Garcia (17:05)
which is what makes me laugh when people do email us and say, if I use your lash serum, do I have to keep using it to get results? And the answer is yes, you also need to drink water every day to stay hydrated. So I was really intrigued with this business model. And then,
Emily (17:18)
Right.
Leah Garcia (17:23)
the universe really delivered in my lap a microbiologist and a business opportunity to bring this, well, I was introduced to it and I was the one who begged to bring it to market because once I heard that elastin would help with the elasticity of my skin.
it immediately transferred to my television career, which came after rodeo, but after mountain biking. And I was already an aging woman by the time I started my television career. And I hadn't really been.
taking great care of my skin. And I'd also suffered Bell's paralysis, which was facial paralysis from stress. That's a whole different story. So immediately my needs were going to get met with this elastin protein and I got it. And I just, I said, sign me up. If I need this other people and I went online and I looked and there really weren't any companies addressing elastin. People were talking about collagen day and night, collagen, collagen, collagen. And so a couple of
Emily (18:18)
Yeah.
Leah Garcia (18:20)
challenges I had to actually try to teach the consumer what elastin was and now it's gaining more traction so people are understanding what that protein does and
And so I had to first say, well, elastin is valuable for not just your skin and your elasticity to give skin that nice bounciness, but the stretch, right? Think of an elastic band. So if you stretch an elastic band and it recoils, or your sheets, if you had your sheets worn out, they don't tuck on the corners anymore because that elasticity has failed you. Same thing happens to your skin. In the point of the hair, it can break that elastin apart with the anchor and your hair can premature.
Emily (18:44)
Mm-hmm.
Leah Garcia (18:59)
So when I just started learning more about this protein, got really, really excited about what applications it could be used for. And then we put some other synergistic ingredients in there and made sure that we had a corner in the marketplace. And then I just bootstrapped and took it to market and tried to figure out how to put it in the hands of every single human being I met. Everybody.
Emily (19:21)
That's amazing.
Leah Garcia (19:22)
You could not walk by me, I would tackle you, Emily. I'd say, you're so beautiful. Let me put this product on you and then let me take a picture and let me take another picture. Because I wasn't shy and that's how I really bootstrapped this thing was I just kept putting products in people's hands, but not much because I didn't have a lot of money for freebies, right? So little by little.
Emily (19:25)
You
Hahaha
Right, right.
And correct me if I'm wrong, Nulastin offers 100 % performance guarantee, right?
Leah Garcia (19:49)
We do, and that was
my own invention too. Well, not, okay, not really my invention, but because I was traveling for a while, about 200 days a year, I used a Swiss Army bag. And I had this monopole bag. was probably the best design in the whole wide world. And I loved it. Had a swivel so that your hand was ergonomic when you walks. It was really fun. And then it was just, it made into a backpack.
Emily (20:08)
Cool.
Leah Garcia (20:11)
And that bag went hundreds of thousands of miles with me to Australia, across the United States, over to Europe, everywhere you can imagine. And I kept getting the zipper fixed and...
And Swiss Army kept replacing the parts whenever they would go bad and they would send it out and then ship it back. And I thought, this is the best company in the world. And someday when I have a company, I want a 100 % performance guarantee. And so no 90 day, 30 day, 60 day. I just wanted people to know I got your back and I want you to use the product for as long as it takes for you to get results. And I'm going to take care
care of you. I had to put some terms and conditions on it because not everybody is honest.
Emily (20:56)
Right, but how has that shaped, like, guess, kind of your customer trust and since you've implemented that? wow, I didn't realize that.
Leah Garcia (21:02)
It was from day one. hope it's,
I hope it's good. The only thing I've had to do is put terms and conditions apply. I actually wish I had the Facebook post because when I first put this out on Facebook, it was just my own personal account and I was announcing my
my performance guarantee and somebody is like, Leah, you're going to have some problems with that. And then you started thinking about it and it made sense. Somebody could literally order product for a whole year and then say, I want to return the whole year's worth of product. They used it all. Then they return it and they say, give me back my, however much money. And I'd say, Ooh, you're right. That does not seem like it's going to be a good idea. So it's,
Emily (21:25)
You
Leah Garcia (21:44)
But at the end of the day, I'm going to take care of the customers. If they're nice people, I will treat them nicely.
Emily (21:50)
Yeah.
Well, it seems like kind of customer trust obviously is an integral part of your brand. But beyond that, how have you kind of built this amazing community around you through the brand?
Leah Garcia (22:03)
The community are loyalists. in the beginning, I had the pleasure of really speaking to them one-on-one because I was doing all of my own customer service. The customer service team that we have now, are completely able to and empowered to take care of the customers. And we email them and we talk to them.
Emily (22:06)
Mm.
Leah Garcia (22:27)
And here's the side story. So we were just at an e-commerce conference in Miami this last weekend. And my customer service team said, you know, the platform that we use to respond to customers, they reward.
They reward brands for getting off the phone fast, right? So how many people can you take care of in a really short amount of time? And she and I looked at each other and she said, we don't want to get off the phone with them fast if they want to talk, if they want to tell us more about what's going on. And she said, so that always skews how we look on the analytics for that particular platform, only in that area, is that if somebody is calling us, we're going to listen.
Because there's brands that they will give you either a minute or whatever and then get to it, right? Like, let's get to it. But sometimes people find my number.
Emily (23:13)
Right. Right.
Leah Garcia (23:17)
and my landline forwards to my cell phone and I will pick up a phone call with a customer and then, whoo, they better watch out. Because at that point I will drop everything and I just want to talk to them. Who are you? Where did you come from? Why did you buy my product? What do you do? Why were you wanting to change or transform your lashes, your brows? And then we just have a grand old time.
Emily (23:28)
Ha ha.
Right.
Yeah.
I love that. think that's really rare in brands now. that kind of, I mean, it's not even so much that you're customer oriented. think that's too light of a term, but it's like, that's part of the essence of it. It really comes out. can tell. And I think that's where a lot of brands go missing or they're not so focused on the customer, but how can I get the next paycheck or how can I optimize this? Which is not necessarily inherently bad thing, but
But at a certain point, it all goes back to the customer. mean, what do you have without them, you know?
Leah Garcia (24:13)
need to be profitable in order to stay in business. And so you always walk that fine line of at the end of the day we are a business, we are a for-profit business that needs to be profitable to pay our overhead and to make sure that we can always put in the highest quality ingredients and
And so there is a tap dance between, yes, we need customer retention and we'd love to have our customers order from us for a whole year, two years, five years, stay with us like family. And we do know that the bigger you get, the harder to keep the heartbeat and the pulse with people who are in and out of the business. So I'm working right now on just some new
groups that I can put together so that our community can have a place to come in and communicate with us in a forum type of a format so that we can get more customer feedback and so that it gives them a voice with what we're doing.
Because we can't always do it one on one. And I think when you're saying that some brands don't do that, they're probably a lot bigger than us. We're just not that big yet. We act big in our advertising. We act big with our science, because our science is...
astronomically big, but who we are as a team internally, we're just a very small group of 18 of us. And the customer service team is all US based. They work from home moms and they're tight. We've got a couple of sisters and sister in laws and lovely human beings that are all.
Emily (25:25)
Right.
Leah Garcia (25:42)
running a tight ship, but at the end of the day, they respect one another and then that's how they in turn respect the customers. Plus they speak Leah. All of them speak Leah.
Emily (25:51)
Right.
Right. That's a good language to speak. Well, it's, mean, obviously a brand is very proudly female founded and women's owned. So it's primarily female run as well it sounds like at this point, right? Yeah.
Leah Garcia (25:55)
If you're working for me, yes.
Yes, yes, we have
a few of the opposite chromosome on the camp. However, the mindset really isn't about any type of gender for a new last name. As matter of fact, I've been really focused on being as gender neutral as I can be and a very inclusive brand. It's super, super important for me. But the thing that...
that is also something that I had to make a stand with is I am a woman and I am a female founded company and that does carry some cache and I should not be embarrassed to be a female founded company and I can still be inclusive while at the same time claiming my identity and claiming the direction that I'm going from a corporate perspective because when you look at the way that the
corporate hierarchy has been for many, many years. It was not on the level playing field. And so I just thought it was important. Plus, to be quite frank, our audience is a majority women. And so we speak to them and we need to continue speaking to them to make sure that they are not underserved. But hear me out very clearly. I make sure that we speak to everyone at the same time.
Emily (27:01)
Right.
Right. Yeah. I, I have a statistic on the website that says something along the lines of, you know, the, the online, like purchasers are primarily made up of women. It's like 73 % women, but
it's something like 99 % of marketing agencies or in-house marketing directors are like men, 99%. And that stat always blew my mind because it's not even so much that men are bad marketers by any means, but it's how could you not miss a market there if you are not of that gender? How could you speak to people the same way?
So anyways, every time I hear about like female run, female founded business, I'm like, yes, because not only is it, you know, an ethically correct decision, but also it just makes sense in terms of economically speaking.
Leah Garcia (28:10)
think we're
pretty good problem solvers if you had to gender stereotype women.
We are communicative, we do listen, we are problem solvers and we're solution based, not adversarially based. And so I can make a very, very, very fast decision. It's one of my super powers. I will see something and I like it and I say yes, no, yes, no in terms of whether it's a marketing, a color, whatever we're doing. I'm super opinionated and make super fast decisions.
But then on the other hand, if somebody comes to me and says, Leah, here's why I want to do it this way, I may initially be like, I don't know about that. But then I listen a little bit more and I will immediately be able to pivot without any problem. As a matter of fact, I rejoice when somebody gives me a great idea, even if I don't buy in initially. And then when I do buy in, it's so much fun because I like to be pleasantly surprised and I love it when other people bring these great ideas to me.
Emily (29:07)
You
Leah Garcia (29:07)
I think I'm fatigued.
I'm idea fatigued because I, you know the Queen's Gambit, that great series where the chess player and you know how there was just this way of looking at a chess board where you move the pieces and you think about all of these, these nerve.
pathways that are going on in the brain that are just connecting things up here in some other universe. That's kind how I feel my brain works a lot. Oftentimes my big challenge is putting something down on paper because everything to me is just happening in nano flashes in my mind and I see I connect dots so fast it's frightening. Frightening. And I have a photographic memory so that if I
Emily (29:31)
Wow.
Mm.
Leah Garcia (29:50)
know where something is in the house, on the table, in a file, I will be able to recall it equally as fast. It's weird and I don't try, it's just something that happens to me. But it's been a very good asset as I've built this business.
Emily (29:56)
That's amazing. I'm s-
Wow.
Right, I'm sure, I'm sure.
Geez, I wish I had that, that's amazing.
Leah Garcia (30:10)
Well, don't ask me to
remember names though, because the name is coming out me in this audio form and I just I don't see it. But I will remember names better if I spell them. And I think you and I when we first got on the phone or on this call, I said Jean Jean J.E.A.N. Is that correct?
Emily (30:27)
Right.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Leah Garcia (30:29)
And it's not written
on the screen, but if I spell the name, then I remember the name. So usually when I meet people and I'm trying to remember their name, I'll spell it so that it imprints better in that part of my brain that has that recollection.
Emily (30:43)
Right. You know, they say when it comes to language learning, if you're a speller, like a good speller, you have a much easier time learning languages because you can kind of piece things together quicker and to remove the pronunciation and the meaning.
Leah Garcia (30:56)
then I suck because I'm a horrible feller and I was kicked off my first spelling bee for spelling paper P A P P E R seriously. That was like when I was one what first grade I was mortified, mortified the last time I put myself in public in a spelling bee. Not gonna happen.
Emily (31:13)
You know what though, it was their
mistake. They should have seen your potential in that moment. Give me a second chance.
Leah Garcia (31:21)
know my multiplication tables either. But I do really good money math. My husband always teases me. He's like, don't try to conley out of a contract negotiation because she does money math math really, really well.
Emily (31:23)
does anyone?
Leah Garcia (31:34)
There's things that my
Emily (31:34)
I like that.
Leah Garcia (31:35)
brain needs to remember and other things that I don't need to remember. With a calculator, I can go and look that up. With my fingers, I can always count if I need to. I do get a little panicky sometimes when I'm leaving a tip. I wish we were in Australia where you don't leave tips, but we do here in America. And consequently, I get a little bit nervous when the bill comes. And if I'm really not clear on what kind of tip to leave, I pretend like I can't see because I don't have my glasses on. I was like, it's a little trick. I was like, I'm sorry. I can't see right now. If you could help me with that tip.
Emily (31:43)
Mm-hmm.
Leah Garcia (32:04)
And then they go, how about this? I go, oh yeah, that sounds great. That's my secret. But come on, this is about being real. And we are so real, so real at New Lastin. And if other women are...
Emily (32:07)
Hahahaha
that that's a great trick.
Okay.
Leah Garcia (32:20)
They want to look down at me because this is not how I'm built as a CEO. There are so many great things that I have brought to this role. And I always go into a meeting and I say to myself, remember where you came from. So now you've heard a couple of my confessions. Tell me one for you. That's your one of your confessions.
Emily (32:39)
Shoot. Ugh. Nobody ever asks me this. Now I'm on the spot.
Leah Garcia (32:42)
I know you probably don't get
interviewed much. Be careful, I'll turn this around on you.
Emily (32:46)
Great. I do like talking about myself. That's my confession.
Leah Garcia (32:49)
Do you brush your teeth
morning and night and floss?
Emily (32:52)
I do. did it when I was younger, but I do now. Yeah. Why do they? Do they ever lie to my parents? ⁓ gosh. Yeah. I I'll say this, though. I graduated from high school when I was 14. And so I I started attending college when I was 14. So I had a lot of responsibility very young. And my parents were.
Leah Garcia (32:55)
Okay. Did you remind your parents?
Yes.
Emily (33:14)
very open with that so I didn't have a lot to lie to them about. Like, they trusted me and so therefore like I was good, you know? Does that make sense?
I remember though, my dad spanked me once when I was younger because I lied about something that I did to my little sister. I remember it very clearly. I must have been like seven, right? He never did it. It was the only time, but that taught me.
Leah Garcia (33:25)
We.
Think of how that
has shaped our business trajectory, right? It's all those moments and it is the foundation, literally the foundation of who we are as adults. I'm 60 years old right now. I've gone through so many decades of life and yet I do recall the learning moments I call them, those learning moments. And right now I'm working on
a keynote speech where I'm really going to start talking about looking up. And the reason why lately I've been very focused on that is that the learning moments, but looking up is a big learning moment because now, especially with cell phones and people looking down and their neck, any anytime you're driving in a vehicle, I mean, until we've got self driving cars completely dialed, we're still going to be driving and you need to look up. You need to look way far ahead. You need to look down the road around the corner.
In business, we need to look up, we need to learn around corners. And I think to myself, the times that I have tripped, really is a good word for it, even though it's not a physical trip. But the times that I've tripped and stumbled and possibly failed is when I'm not looking up. You're too focused on what's right there in front of you. So you are talking about reading data from an analytics perspective. And if you're looking at data all day long, but you don't look up and talk to customers, you don't look up and see what's happening in
Emily (34:46)
Mm.
Leah Garcia (34:59)
world in real time, then you're missing out on an awful lot of information that is super useful to just either being a better person and making better choices and being able to see where you want to go. So there's that expression that I use a lot. If you don't know where you're going, how will you ever get there? And it's hard to find where you're going if you're looking down.
Emily (35:16)
Yeah.
I love that. I love that I think too even the concept of looking up to other people, like using people as your guide. I mean, that's how I feel like having this conversation with you.
Leah Garcia (35:29)
Absolutely. Thank you.
Emily (35:31)
Yeah, can not, I tell people all time, I'm so glad I had so many sisters. I have three older sisters, one little sister. And I feel incredibly blessed because they're incredibly successful young women. And I had that role model my entire life and got the ability to look up to them and, you know, want to do what they're doing. And yeah, it goes without saying, but it's, that's a very,
powerful concept. I've never heard that before too, I love it. You should write a book. Okay, we won't tell anyone else. If you're listening to this and you want to steal it...
Leah Garcia (35:59)
I'm inventing it right now.
It's all good, it's all good. You everyone's got their shtick and their pitch and whatever
they're doing, but it's part of who I am, that transparency. just because, you know, there was somebody that told me when I was first starting this business about trying to hide a bunch of trade secrets and hide the process that I was going through to build the brand. And you'd be surprised how many people want you to squelch that and hide it. And don't share your ideas, Leah.
Don't share your ideas. Someone else will steal them. And I think to myself, OK, well, if they want it that badly, they can steal it. And or they may need it more than I do. But they may not also do it as well as I can do it. And many people think they want to steal something, but then they half ass it. They just won't follow through, and they don't have the wherewithal to do the work and to have the resilience to get from point A to point B. So.
Emily (36:48)
Mm.
Leah Garcia (36:56)
There are people in marketing right now who, they're looking at my brand and it's so fun.
Emily (36:56)
Right.
⁓ yeah, I bet.
Leah Garcia (37:03)
They're watching how we're advertising. They're watching what we're
saying. They're kind of some of them are they're adopting our packaging. There's a particular brand I looked the other day and they're repackaging. I was like, my goodness, they've created a new trade name. It sounds an awful lot like Elastaplex technology. And I was like, good for you. We're doing something right. That what is it? The imitation is that form of flattery. It's not completely flattering.
Emily (37:29)
Right, highest form of lottery.
Leah Garcia (37:30)
but they still
Emily (37:31)
Right.
Leah Garcia (37:31)
are gonna have to do it better than I do and that we do over here at New Lastin.
Emily (37:33)
Hmm.
Yeah, of course. Have you heard of the concept of idea transference?
Leah Garcia (37:39)
No, is that? Wait, no, tell me more. I have ideas on what I think it is, but that's just me. usually try to make things up if I don't know, so tell me.
Emily (37:42)
⁓
Yeah,
no, I am it's I can't remember exactly It's in a book. I kept I'll have to cite the author later in the show notes but There's a this concept this author came up with of idea transference that if you have a great idea
and you don't act on it in a certain period of time, it'll transfer to someone else. And she was speaking about how if you like, it's kind of should be seen as a booster. Like we have so many great ideas that come up all the time in our heads, but we don't do anything about it. And then they just sit there and somebody else takes it later and they make, you know, millions of dollars off of it. And we're bummed out. She said you should use that as fuel as like energy. This is your opportunity. The idea landed in you right now.
So take it and run with it. and it was, think about that a lot as it applies to ideas and different innovations. I think it's very similar. Yeah.
Leah Garcia (38:39)
example. did a it's
It's posted on Facebook right now,
LinkedIn right now. So I just talked about this. I didn't have that fancy title for it. But for example, when I wanted to do in-room fitness programming, I was spending 200 days a year in hotel rooms. And this is before smartphones were as smart as they are now. And I thought, you know what we need? We need to be able to check into our hotel room, especially women. And we need to do a workout watching the in-room paid programming TV, do this workout.
Emily (38:54)
you
Leah Garcia (39:10)
your workout in your underwear, you don't need to go to a gym, you don't need to if you're doing a carry-on, you won't need to pack extra clothes, shoes, accessories or anything. So I had this great idea and it was interim fitness programming, Garcia Fitness.
And the day I launched, there was this go fitness from somebody across the globe who had started the same thing almost simultaneously. And so I, I have seen this happen in real life or you will conceptualize an idea and you think you're so bloody brilliant for it. And then you, you drag your feet or you don't do it. And then somebody else will, and then you sit around and you're one of those people that says,
Emily (39:43)
You
Leah Garcia (39:50)
hey that was my idea I should have done that. Do you want to hear another one that I actually didn't do? So the other one was I wanted to have people pick up their phone every day and do what I called the Fit Tip of the Day. So the Fit Tip of the Day would be when people opened up their phones they would get a quick 30 second video of side lunges, do as many as your age or whatever your Fit Tip was for daily motivation.
Emily (39:56)
I really do.
Leah Garcia (40:14)
also to keep things positive in the world because there's so much negative. And I put a pitch together and I sent it to Motorola. And I don't have this email, so now you're just going have to believe me. But Motorola responded back and they said, nobody's going to watch fitness on a phone.
Emily (40:30)
boy.
Leah Garcia (40:30)
That was a long pause on purpose. Motorola. Nobody's going to, now where's Motorola in the marketplace? Yeah, does that tell you everything you need to know about getting ahead in business? So they buried themselves before they even started, instead of being inquisitive, instead of saying, that's an interesting idea, let's play with that.
Emily (40:36)
Bye.
Leah Garcia (40:51)
But for me, I work fast. I want to buy a house, I'll buy a house as fast as humanly possible before somebody else puts an offer in. am...
There is one thing that I do not lack and that is that ability to look for the whole shot. And the whole shot is in racing, that first corner that you go around in moto racing or mountain bike racing or whatever it is, you look for that first gap and you chase that corner because the first person at that corner has the whole shot and then they're ahead of the rest of the pack. So if somebody crashes behind you or if somebody's slow, you're not caught behind them and you have a huge advantage in life, in business, in racing and in your career path. So always look for
Emily (41:29)
Right.
Leah Garcia (41:30)
that whole shot.
Emily (41:31)
How do you balance then, you know, kind of preparedness, I guess, with that amount of speed? Because I chat with a lot of, okay, I like that.
Leah Garcia (41:37)
You don't.
You don't. You don't have
the preparedness. You will never be prepared. The people who over-prepare are in that quagmire that we're gonna pick on Motorola. They're in the Motorola quagmire. They're not gonna get ahead. You're not gonna have it all perfect. Nothing's gonna be done to the standards that you probably want, but you've just gotta do it.
and make the mistakes and hope for the best. Because honestly, if you... Another example. Wonderful man, friend of mine, wanted to open a climbing gym. I think he spent two years, two years on paperwork and thinking and thinking and thinking and... my gosh, I...
I couldn't stand it. I was like, can't even talk to you anymore because you're just doing too much thinking or what I call paper shuffling. You know, when you've got papers on your desk, I'm old, so I still had papers. But papers on the desk and instead of actually doing the work, you're just kind of moving them around and shuffling them, but you're not really diving in and doing the work. And some people, you know, sometimes you need a day.
Emily (42:30)
Hmm.
You
Leah Garcia (42:45)
Walk away, take some time, but you've just got to take action. You've got to do, you've got to execute on those ideas and you've got to do it fast and you've got to do it with authority and you've got to do it come hell or high water.
Emily (42:59)
Right. I meet a lot of hell or high water. I assume the Bible, but it could be wrong. I don't know.
Leah Garcia (43:00)
Where did that expression come from, Emily? How are I?
that we will research that one as well.
Emily (43:08)
We'll research that.
If I was a better Bible guru. chat with a lot of young entrepreneurs who get caught up in the details of things, specifically, oddly enough, the name.
Leah Garcia (43:12)
I have no degree in theology, so I am no help there. I just have a lot of expressions. I think it's a cowboy term for me.
Emily (43:26)
I'll hear young autocrats who are like, I have this great idea. You know, I have all the work done for it, but they just can't come up with a name and they'll spend two, three months and then it fades. The whole idea fades as a concept. how did you approach Nulastin? And now I'm saying this and I'm like, maybe there was a very long thinking process behind it, but talk to me. What was, where did that come from?
Leah Garcia (43:47)
I inherited Nulastin because
the microbiologist whom I had originally met that had developed the first skincare formula of the prototype which I used that there was some working title called skin by Nulastin and it was a play on words new and elastic and so it when I launched in 2016 I
there was no reason to deviate because it spoke the truth, New Elastin. The only thing that I really did at that point was I get obsessed, and you wanna talk about moving quickly, I get obsessed with IP and with trade names and trademarks. And so immediately I went to GoDaddy and said, hello, newlastinavailable.com. Why no one had taken it was a mystery, so I jumped on that.
And that was probably even under my personal account. But even if I come up with a name...
I always go to the free USPTO, what the trademark looks like. I go to trademark, then I turn around and I go to GoDaddy and or a website hosting service to find out if the name, the .com is available. And then I immediately just start doing searches online, just generically to see if somebody else is using it. And then of course, all of the social media handles. So, and I do this in...
a moment's time. just dive in really fast. And I do the same thing when I'm creating Regenites, for example, which is a term that I conceptualized for our
our peptide that we own at New Lastin. And it was, you know, me late drinking wine with my husband going, regenerate, tez, tez in Spanish is complexion. And so I go in there and I just start riffing off of these names, found it in all of the areas that I wanted it and trademark that. So a lot of people do this much better than I do, but that's just my LEA process. We have 38 US and international patents right now with a handful of patent applications and patent
Emily (45:22)
Mm-hmm.
Leah Garcia (45:48)
We own tons of trade names, but we're not cyber squatting on any of them. They're all at use and we love them and use them and they all make sense for the brand. I used to have SpicedHoney.com because I thought my girlfriend and I were going to do something spicy. Like, ooh, that's fun. And I just let that go and I'm kind of a little bit torn because I thought I could have kept that domain name and done something with it someday. But I'll give it to you, Emily. You can be Spiced Honey.
Emily (46:13)
Okay, I'll take it. Thank you. Yeah, maybe I'll start a blog.
Leah Garcia (46:14)
Okay, you do have honey colored hair, it might work for you. There you go. I would love nothing more
for the than for you to take that, that lovely domain name.
Emily (46:27)
Take it off your hands. Okay, well, talk to me a little bit about some of the research behind your formulations, just given that we're talking about the patents. I'm really curious, what's the process like from beginning to end?
Leah Garcia (46:41)
Well, we are a science-backed brand and we definitely lean more on an aesthetic that skews towards the derm world. And I wanted it to be that way. are so few beauty brands that really brought science first while they talked about them.
There wasn't real science. There were a lot of perception studies and there were a lot of contract manufacturers throwing together formulas with scientific ingredients, but without final formula testing. And so coming from the athletic world, coming from a world of performance and integrity, I'll say, I was just...
focused on making sure that every one of our formulas could withstand scrutiny from any research that we've done. So we invest.
in research, not only just with our final formula, consumer studies, before and afters, but also we've got some behind the scenes biotechnology research that we're doing that would rival anything that you'd see in a pharmaceutical company without all of the big clinical studies. And we have no desire to go.
OTC right now and or to go FDA cleared or FDA approved product line. But I want to still treat our products as if they were going through that type of research study. And that way we've got proof and we can write publications, peer reviewed publications, and we can stand by what we're saying.
Emily (48:08)
Right.
Leah Garcia (48:15)
and really feel confident that we have a product that is true to form, that does what it says, that it delivers on the promise, and that we've got proof that it does.
Emily (48:24)
Okay.
Leah Garcia (48:25)
We'll have to teach
the viewers, the readers, the listeners. We really do need to, there needs to be a college course on teaching people how to look past slick marketing.
Emily (48:36)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right.
Leah Garcia (48:37)
And I was a
marketer in college, so I practiced slick marketing. But right now, my brand new Lastin is probably being out marketed by other slick marketers. Because we lead from science and we're not.
Emily (48:41)
Right.
Leah Garcia (48:50)
We're not really, we don't fluff things up too terribly much and other brands do. And I think that it's easy to be a little bit fancy free if you don't have science because no one could ever come back and say, you're affecting the structure and function of the human body. Where in my case, I have to really make sure that I'm not affecting the structure and the function of the human body.
because that then classifies a beauty product as a FDA cleared and or a drug. So if you want to just use the common terminology, it's a drug. And we are not a drug. We are a beauty brand, topical, topical, topical.
Emily (49:27)
Right. And the beauty business is extremely competitive right now. I mean, there's no way around that. Do you feel like that's one of like the biggest pillars that sets you apart from the competition or is there, you know, something else that stands out to you?
Leah Garcia (49:41)
If we could shout it loud and proud, it would be something that stood out. But everybody claims science. Everybody. Everybody. So it's diluted messaging at this point, because when I say everybody, you go on any skin care, hair care, lash, or brow product, and it will just inundate you with their special proprietary science. So.
I feel for the consumer, I don't even know how to tell them to like, other than I was one of the first companies, I only know of one other right now, who started posting all of my clinical studies and all of the past research studies on my website. And now there's a couple of others that do that. I'm sure they've listened to some podcasts like this, because again, I've been very, very vocal and free and transparent with what we've done calling that out. And there's a couple of reasons why is because
If you can't find the study that people are claiming, then really where is it? And there is a brand right now. Not going to mention it. Boy, do I want to. But they are, they might as well have just gone into a room and said, whatever New Lastin does, we will do.
Emily (50:41)
You have to tell me after.
Leah Garcia (50:51)
with the exception and then it's this we have studies based on studies and I have gone down that rabbit hole and I cannot find a study and I and they're like it's at the corporate office I've emailed I cannot find the study and I just I get so angry again they didn't learn a lesson from their daddy when they were five years old and they are lying
Let me just say it right there. Right? They need a spanking. They're lying. And you can't count on the government or the FDA and or the FTC to come in and really police all of the beauty brands out there right now. But there are new regulations, Mokra, the modernization of the Cosmetic Regulatory Act. I think that's the full acronym. And Mokra is level setting for those who are going to be compliant.
Emily (51:14)
Right. Right.
Right.
Mm.
Leah Garcia (51:38)
Bokra
is now level setting a lot of people who still use trade names in their ingredient deck who aren't following sort of a level playing field set of rules that has been now standardized and we've already standardized so we're already playing on the level field. So to respond to your question, to stand apart right now I'm actually going behind a little bit because by doing it sort of squeaky clean it's also boring boring.
Emily (52:03)
Hmm.
Leah Garcia (52:04)
Right, because before in an ingredient deck, you could say Regenites, and you could say, we've got this, know, elastoplex technology like in the ingredient deck, and now you can't do any of that. So it's not as much fun. There's not as many buzzwords to look at and get excited about.
Emily (52:19)
Right. Well, okay, in terms of then things to get excited about and some buzzwords, the beauty tech space obviously is very rapidly evolving. Is there any kind of upcoming advancements or things or trends you've seen in that kind of biotech driven skincare area that excites you at all?
Leah Garcia (52:35)
A couple years ago I had the privilege of sitting at a conference where L'Oreal chief
research scientist was really talking about their 2023 goals of biotechnology and sustainability. And I was so excited to hear that from mainstream L'Oreal and I know that Estee Lauder and many of the others have these big R &D budgets. We're talking billions. But the biotechnology is really the game changer. And you see it also in the food.
industry and dog food and pet care and
in many, places and a bio designed protein which can mimic the DNA sequence protein that is found in nature is so sustainable and it's perfection every single time. So even if you think about nature, whether you're using, I'll use the CBD world, right? If they're playing with cannabis and they've got different strains and different
different crops and different parts of whatever that they have used for their formula. There's always good, they'll have a standardization. What's their tolerance for little less, little bit more. When you get into beauty and biotechnology, it's precise every single time.
Emily (53:49)
Mm.
Leah Garcia (53:49)
So it's like baking a cake that can never go wrong, right? No matter what atmospheric pressure is changing everything. So number one, you're saving a lot on human resources and you're saving a lot on natural resources. There's less water, there's less...
carbon footprint that is needed for the biotechnology and the DNA. Back in the day, we called it recombinant DNA. When I first started, my formula was one of the few that had recombinant DNA. We called it a designer protein, and now they call it a bio designed protein. So a bio identical, bio designed, all of these proteins that are being used and being manufactured and commercialized for the beauty industry. And it's going to be so good.
There was a time where I would say most products are shit, but right now products are getting better because of this biotechnology the suppliers and the ingredient suppliers are bringing forth just this This new technology that really knows no limit With all sorts of goodness that we can just and it's So
Emily (54:52)
That's amazing.
Leah Garcia (54:54)
Isn't it? To me, that's
the most exciting, is how we're able to blend the peptides. The peptide world is growing, so blending these full proteins, these peptides, and all of the synergistic ingredients into all of these personal care products. And the other thing that you'll see now, every celebrity seems to have their own personal care brand, right? We don't need to name them, because we all know them.
And the reason why they can is because they don't have to formulate, they don't have to think about what their niche market is. They're going to a contract manufacturer and it's almost turnkey manufacturing for them. So it might be one of the big firms that says, Emily, you want to have your own?
Emily (55:25)
Mm.
Leah Garcia (55:34)
Skincare line, body butter line, whatever it is that you want. You just tell us what your vision is. I'm gonna find you the packaging. I'm gonna help you with your logo. I'm gonna help you with your color, your creation. I'm gonna get all your sourcing for you and we're gonna tell you how much you need to charge and we'll even build a website for you and we'll probably do all the marketing for you. And really right now if you've got the money to invest in one of these turnkey operations, you don't have to have any know-how to get into this beauty industry.
Emily (55:40)
Thanks.
Leah Garcia (56:02)
So that's changing and that's kind of frightening because where's your boutique feel and or where do you have
Emily (56:04)
Right.
Right.
Leah Garcia (56:12)
something that has that handcrafted, even though we don't handcraft of course, but that that handcrafted real like synergistic blend. I guess the thing that'll set us apart is that we're not just using every other contract manufacturer to do that. So what we do have is still very, very personal to us and proprietary.
Emily (56:27)
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. Can I ask, you know, a lot of these terms you're using, I won't lie, I'm not familiar. have no, no STEM background. So I want to like clarify it. I mean, is it so familiar to you because you've been doing the last and for so long, or did you have kind of a background in this beforehand? Or how did you get this? I mean, you're a wealth of knowledge. How did you get there?
Leah Garcia (56:57)
Is this the front video?
Emily (56:59)
You
Leah Garcia (56:59)
I've
been learning on the job. I just knew that I wake up in the morning and I was like, what can I have that nobody else can have? Right? I'm always looking around the corner. Look up, look around the corner. But no, I've had to teach myself a lot of these names and I still bumble and fumble. But I'll tell you what I don't grasp is acronyms. when it's anything to do with digital marketing between
and all of the silly stuff that we talk about with MC ROAS and ROAS and First Product This and all those. That's when I just get glazed over. But thank you for thinking that I have a big vocabulary in the science
Emily (57:32)
Great.
You definitely do, at least from somebody who doesn't have a big vocabulary in the science world.
Leah Garcia (57:42)
I'm just
so passionate about getting it right. And I just want to get it right. And I'm self-taught with how we've gotten it to this stage. And I'm very inquisitive, even though I'm the lion's share of the talker right now. I really want to learn. I want to learn as much as I can about what we're doing in our business and then focus on that.
Emily (57:47)
Yeah.
Leah Garcia (58:06)
I don't look at what many other people are doing unless I go to a conference. Unless somebody's coming after me, I very rarely go to other competitors' websites and look, because I don't want to know. I don't want to see what they're doing. I don't want to angry, depressed, sidetracked. I'm just doing my thing. Let them chase me.
Emily (58:17)
Right. Right.
Yeah, absolutely.
Leah Garcia (58:25)
Can I go back to what you said about some of the early founders who get stuck on a name? So I do some mentoring myself and one of my pet projects is this beautiful young lady from Ethiopia who was part of the Denver University and she was in their entrepreneurial program and she just won my heart. If you ever met her, you would know why.
Emily (58:29)
Of course. Yeah, of course, of course.
Leah Garcia (58:47)
and you just want her to succeed. And she hadn't done her homework on what she was naming her Luxe coffee, L-U-X-E. And she was using traditional Ethiopian coffee, had a fabulous story behind it. So her story, I mean, she had me at hello. She told this story and I was like, what can I do to help you and your brand? I'm gonna meet up with her tomorrow as a matter of fact. But she got stuck on her name and she also didn't...
do homework on her name to find out is it actually available? Am I infringing on someone else's trademark? So that's why I'm sort of, I first start with am I protected with this name? She's not the only one and women aren't the only ones because I've seen other people in the fitness world create new products from Contour, which was a belt but they didn't have the right trademark and we went to $220 million in an infomercial that was quite successful before they
got their hand slapped and was like yeah you don't really get that name. But let me tell you some old school, this is old school marketing. Old school marketing is you knew you were doing it wrong or you knew you were stepping on someone's toes.
But you did it anyway because you knew you were going to get up to a certain amount of money and then you could afford whatever was going to the wrath that was going to come after you. The flip side is other people that know that you've infringed on a name will also sit on the sideline and they will wait for you to make enough money so that they can maximize their payout when they do a
Emily (59:53)
Mm.
Leah Garcia (1:00:12)
and infringement, whatever it may be. it's, trademark infringements are a big deal. And I just want to say to your female founders and those who come on your show to...
Emily (1:00:18)
Right.
Leah Garcia (1:00:25)
Do a little prep before you start and the rule of thumb is anything that has to do with your own name and your own identity is always gonna be the most marketable and the most patentable, especially in the world that we live in where we are so craving a personal connection and storytelling.
Emily (1:00:41)
I think that's great advice. So in terms of your mentorship, mentorship, is that something that you do very often? You said the entrepreneurial Denver school, something along those lines? Sorry.
Leah Garcia (1:00:54)
It was rub bridges, but I'm both a mentor and a mentee. And so I've recently joined the Pinnacle Global Network, which is a CEO style mentorship program where I signed up so that I can continue learning and growing and being the visionary CEO that I want to be, that I believe I am. But we are all human and we all start.
Emily (1:00:58)
Hmm.
Leah Garcia (1:01:17)
telling stories from the past that aren't really the stories that are true to who and what we are. then the just getting me past where maybe my shortcomings or I've allowed my shortcomings to be. So I mentor and I am getting mentored. And I was fortunate enough to have been named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneurial Winning Women Award for 2004, 2024. And I've been now in
like included in a community of women, female founders who we have WhatsApp channels that'll blow your mind because of the support. But cautionary tale.
I don't think you should jump into every single one of them because now everyone's a mastermind. There are more masterminds coming at me right now. Join this mastermind, join this thing, join this thing, but you've got to be selective and you can't ping. So do what you do, do it well, stay focused, say no, learn to say no. Thank you very much. I love that mentorship or I really support that, but I don't have time to invest in it and it's not for me right now.
I hope that this comes across to anybody who is long-term business or short-term just starting out in business. This shiny object syndrome, it's real. You can get off track so easily. I watch it on my team. I'm guilty of it. My husband's guilty of it. We have to reel ourselves in all the time. And we have to put on those blinders. And we have to just say,
Emily (1:02:30)
Mm.
Leah Garcia (1:02:42)
You know, if you are so excited about something, doesn't mean you need to do it. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. So write that on your dream board somewhere else and just put it there, leave it, and then keep doing what you're doing that's paying the bills, that's making you the money, that's leading you closer to the vision that you've got in your mind of where you want to go.
because otherwise you're just gonna be scattered. And I've watched more so than the name, just people not putting together a plan and just saying, I'm gonna follow this plan. I'm gonna bury myself in that plan. Bury myself. You can pivot a little bit if it makes sense, but boom, boom, boom, this back and forth that so many people get.
lured into is really, really damaging. And it's probably a lot with social media because we've got a detention span that is non-existent and we're just pinging. So I'm an athlete. I still like to ride my bike. I like to go for a run. I don't wear headsets. I don't want to listen to outside noise. I just want my brain to just think. I just want to be able to think. So focus and think.
Emily (1:03:28)
Right.
Right.
Well, great. Okay, well, why don't we, I don't wanna take up too much of your time. I know we're already gone though for a little bit. I'll just do these last ones kind of rapid fire. yeah, okay. Favorite self-care ritual. And that's a big transition from what we were just discussing about, but I like it. We're lightening things up for the entire.
Leah Garcia (1:04:11)
Well, it's
always gonna involve a glass of wine, beautiful red big wine from the Central Coast of California. My self care ritual is literally just.
Emily (1:04:18)
You
Leah Garcia (1:04:22)
relaxing back in the day when I was traveling in hotel rooms, I would order room service in, watch a movie and drink wine by myself and you know, in beautiful hotel sheets that I didn't have to wash.
Emily (1:04:36)
I love that. Gosh, that sounds great. That's what I need right now. What's been the most rewarding moment in building Nulastin?
Leah Garcia (1:04:42)
fact that it's being built and it's continuing to be built. The most rewarding thing is that we've done it and that we have not weakened and that I've got a team of
beautiful human beings working with me, not just as team members, employees, but all of the lives that I touch with all of the contractors and vendors that we use. And then you amplify that over to the customers, the community, the people that are using the product. And the fact that I have, by starting this business, been able to impact so many humans on this planet positively.
actively.
Emily (1:05:23)
Right, that's amazing. I love that answer. All right, if you could have dinner with any scientist or innovator or entrepreneur, who would it be?
Leah Garcia (1:05:31)
Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Emily (1:05:32)
Ooh, yes!
Leah Garcia (1:05:34)
Because number
one, doesn't he seem like just a hoot? And I like the way that he takes science and just level sets it and brings it down to just a way to explain it. And he has fun with it. You know, he's probably not right all the time. You know that, right? You know he's probably flawed in his.
Emily (1:05:39)
he's a party, for sure.
Bye.
Yeah. Right.
Leah Garcia (1:05:59)
description from time to time, but I don't care. I just think that he would actually handle a challenge any way you're gonna put it. I just absolutely adore that man. If he's on the radio, if he's on TV, if he's on my Instagram feed, I'm hooked.
Emily (1:06:01)
Right?
I just finished Astrophysics for People on the Hurry. This is actually the second time I listened to it because the first time I was like, what is going on?
Leah Garcia (1:06:23)
Wait, what did you just you listen to astrophys... what?
Emily (1:06:27)
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. It's by Neil deGrasse Tyson. And it is a crazy good book. If you ever have, I mean, it's not really for people in a hurry, because I think it's like six hours or something like that. Okay, then no.
Leah Garcia (1:06:37)
Wait, I have, this is just one stack. I have so many books right now and I still do
hard copies. I need to read like for a week straight. And part of my mentoring is they keep saying, you need to read this book. You need to read this book. You need to read this book. And I'm just, there's a lot, but congratulations by being a beautiful, smart, talented, ambitious, doing this podcast and learning astrophysics.
Emily (1:06:47)
Hahahaha
Yeah, there's a lot.
Trying,
trying. Thank you though. Appreciate it.
Leah Garcia (1:07:05)
Learning. I believe that you
have accomplished bits and bobs of that learning. So your parents must be proud and you should be.
Emily (1:07:14)
Thank
you. Thank you. I hope so. But, well, that's perfect. That leads me to be into my next question though. What is one book or kind of resource that you would recommend to other entrepreneurs or female founders, people starting out in their journey?
Leah Garcia (1:07:33)
This book, it's the big leap and Gay Hendrix and I've got it marked. I've already read it once and I'm rereading it again. And this is the book that really starts talking about the unspoken stories that we tell ourselves and
the untapped limitations that we have. It's so, so easy to read. It'll make such an impact. He talks about this upper limit and how we limit our upper limit and why we're limiting our upper limit.
It touches me so much, not just as an individual, but in business. You can talk about dreams and you can go through all of the things. This just, I think, taps into first our mind and how we need to think about our success and our power and the upper limit that we all have. And I will tell you this.
There was a time in my life where I was single and I probably wasn't getting enough human touch. And I was a personal trainer, I was helping other people. And what's really weird is that I was involved in a head-on collision on the back of a motorcycle. I'd gone for a ride on a Harley Davidson and the guy that was in the front of the motorcycle came around a corner and we hit a motor home going 65 miles an hour.
And right before impact.
Right before impact, said, we're going to hit them. I flew through the air, somehow did a somersault, kind of landed in somersault form, alive. And what's interesting is that it was as if when I went to the hospital later, got through surgery, the clarity of what I needed, why that happened to me was so apparent. I got attention.
I got attention, I got hugs, I got love. And it was like, I needed to go through that to get what I was.
somewhere subliminally asking for. Now I try to head that stuff off at the pass. Now I try not to go through those big, but if you pay attention in your daily life, you'll notice things sometimes. And whether it's I'm stubbing my toe every day or there's something happening, I'm getting hit with this and this and this. This will unlock a bit of...
what you're manifesting in that moment, why you're manifesting that, why it's really happening, why we get sick before a big event.
we're usually nervous for that big event. There's a lot of things and you don't have to believe it, but I believe it to be very, very true. So the big leap is my new favorite.
Emily (1:10:00)
That's great. I just wrote it down. I'm gonna start reading it as soon as we're done with this podcast. Great. thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I mean, I know that there's so much more to talk about. That's why I'm like, we need to do another episode as soon as possible. But yeah, thank you so, so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your journey and such amazing advice. Like you really are.
a wealth of knowledge and it just kind of, it's so exciting to see founders who are obsessed with their product and their brands and have the knowledge and the results to back it up. Like it's really, it's an amazing experience for me to even just get to chat to you about it. So thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.
Leah Garcia (1:10:47)
gosh, I think we're sisters from another mother and I want to meet you on the central coast of California or I'll come and visit you in Sydney, Australia. So let's make this our first date and then let's please have another.
Emily (1:10:56)
anytime.
Yes, absolutely. It's our first date. And where can people find you and where can they find you, Nulastin
Leah Garcia (1:11:07)
Very
simple, it's nulastin.com N-U-L-A-S-T-I-N.com. Please join our subscription mailing list so that you can be the first to know about all the specials that we're running and take advantage of this product line that will really, truly make a difference in your life in so many ways. And remember.
it's easier to keep the hair that you have than to grow new hair. So let's protect what we have, including our beautiful faces, so that we don't have to try to catch up to the wrinkles later on in life.
Emily (1:11:38)
Okay, great. I love that. That's a perfect note to wrap up on. Well, thank you, Leah. And yeah, and that's it.
