A Chemist and A Performer Build Sweat-Proof, Skin-Safe Color for Artists

The lights hit, the sweat starts, and your makeup decides whether it’s your ally or your saboteur. We sat down with a lifelong pair of collaborators—a performing artist with big-picture vision and a chemist with relentless follow-through—who turned a backstage headache into a performer-first cosmetic line that actually holds up under heat, movement, and time.

The spark came from lived experience: cruise-ship circus shows with paint-by-number palettes that failed darker skin, frantic touch-ups between sets, and DIY fixes that irritated faces. Together, we map the journey from a pandemic phone call to a fully manufactured palette designed like a concealer—high coverage, flexible texture, and colors that stay put. Savannah breaks down the chemistry in plain terms: water-soluble dyes migrate into sweat and streak, while carefully selected pigments anchor color. We get into sourcing and safety too, including why some neon options are light-reactive and off-limits, and how ethical supply choices shape performance as much as any brush.

You’ll also hear how community feedback sharpened the product: a white “quick change” that shifts brights to matte pastels, blues and greens that read from the balcony without harshness, and wipes that take everything off in one pass without burning skin. Dancers turned testers into touring pros, tutorials made bold colors friendly for daily wear, and surprising use cases emerged—green plus white to mute redness, orange under eyes to cancel shadows. Along the way, we talk trust, identity, and why specificity matters: this isn’t generic makeup pressed into stage duty; it’s stage makeup built from the molecule up.

If you care about STEAM, this story is your blueprint. Art needs science to scale; science needs art to matter. Hit play to learn how to turn a real-world problem into a product that respects bodies, budgets, and bright lights—and how communication and consistency make big ideas stick. If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe, share it with a performer or scientist in your life, and leave a quick review so more creators can find us.

Transcript

Opening: Science Meets Performing Arts

SPEAKER_01 0:13

So welcome back to Steam Spark Think Steam Career Podcast. This is Dr. Ayolo Fade. Today we are talking about career path. We are talking about collision of worlds. So the title of today's podcast is Beyond Beakers. Ladies and gentlemen, we have Savannah Saldana Shoemaker. She is a powerhouse chemist and an educator in Steam. She's a science communicator, an entrepreneur, and also our co-founder of ItCount Cosmetic, Michael Jacento Bov. He's a professional from the world of performing arts. So when I say a clash, a collision of two worlds, I really mean it in a very exciting way. How many times have you seen a scientist and someone from the art world collaborating? This is exactly what we are going to talk about today. We are going to see how a chemist and a performer reclaim the A in STEAM. Many times when people talk about STEAM, they forget to include the A. One of the things we want to do in this episode is to encourage all of you to think outside the box. There has to be a paradigm shift from STEM to what is TEAM. What is STEM without the A? I think that the A kind of makes it very exciting. Don't you think? Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to be talking to the founder of Account Cosmetic. We are so fortunate. Savannah and Michael, welcome to both of you. How are you guys doing? We're doing great. Thank you for having us on. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we appreciate you. Not only are you a business partner, co-founder of Account Cosmetic, the two of you are childhood friends. I'm excited about your product, about your company. And I'm also really excited to see the collaboration between science and the art world, the integration of A into STEM. Many people are childhood friends. This energy a lot of time doesn't really work. So I'm curious. Before this project, before this company, before lab and before the stage, what was the first creative product you two ever walked on together as kids?

SPEAKER_00 3:15

So I would say the first project we worked on together was communication, really. So we met at Walnut Hill Performing Arts. I was a theater major and uh Savannah was a dance major. And by the end of the summer, we became really good friends. But she lived in Milwaukee, uh, Massachusetts. So we just figured out, hey, like, why not be penthouse? And that's where it started.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

Yeah, that was the beginning of it all because everyone RA's, this was in 2007. So we were between, I believe, our freshman and sophomore year of high school. Everyone was getting really into MySpace and Facebook. But every single Friday we would call each other on the landline in our parents' house. We would write letters and print out photos at Walgreens of our different events and performances and life accomplishments and mail them to each other. So the consistent communication in what was considered like the old school form at the time, and even more so now, that helped us get on a schedule of doing things together and documenting and still being artistic in a way.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

I know you guys were both in performing art. So, Michael, did you see at that stage in your life her potential in being a scientist someday?

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Savannah's the smartest person I know. And she's been the smartest person I know since I was 15. So I would have had no doubt in my mind if you would have told me that she was gonna be a scientist right now, I'd be like, Oh, yeah, absolutely. You kidding me? Yeah, I've always seen that. She's always had a lot of attention to detail, she's also always had a lot of follow-through. Savannah's the type of person that if she wants to do something, it doesn't matter who's gonna stand in their way, she's gonna knock them down, she's gonna do it.

SPEAKER_03 4:53

You have to have the courage and your convictions, if you will. Know what you need to do. It's still many times for your friends along the way, but you need to be committed to it, just like in the performing arts. There's a lot of adversity in anyone's career journey, but you have to really know what you want to accomplish and have a consistent plan. And that's where our old school communication came into play down the road.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

So over the years, you guys stay in touch with each other. Did you see entrepreneurship in each other, even back then?

SPEAKER_03 5:27

I think yes and no, because in the arts it's very project-based, and you have to promote whatever show you're in at the time or whatever creative project. I think when you're younger, science is a little bit more of the long haul. So, again, maybe if it was just one or the other, we wouldn't have seen it. But because we've had both sides of the fence, we could then take team it later and push forward with entrepreneurship. But back at the time, I don't know that we necessarily even knew what entrepreneurship was. We just knew how to have an idea and then follow through with it.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Well, what's like really important for us is the communication from the start.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Learning how to communicate with somebody that you're in business with and you're in a partnership with, regardless of what type of partnership with, is the absolute most important thing.

unknown 6:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Well, we discovered that early, so that's great. That is very good. So you have been friends since childhood. Now you have it count cosmetic, Michael. When you were a kid, who was more likely to be the CEO? Who was more likely to be the researcher?

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Looking back, I would say, I mean, I'm still like this now, but I've always had like really big ideas. I feel like that kind of takes on the traits of a CEO, always like thinking big picture, what the company's gonna look like, gonna feel like. Savannah, like I said earlier, she's so good at like attention to detail. So I would give Savannah all these big ideas. Oh, hey, maybe we can do this, maybe we can do that, and she'd like actually try to make it work. Wow, I'm saying step by step. Okay, so for us to do this, we need to do this and this. There's always a big idea, and there's also a big list of things that you need to do to get to that big idea. So that's what she was good at. And what about you, Savannah?

SPEAKER_03 7:14

Yeah, I would definitely agree. There's one time in particular that I'm thinking of. I went out to Stoughton, Massachusetts to stay with Michael for about a week. I think it was maybe our late tea, possibly still high school, and it was raining. There was nothing for us to do, but as parents are like, go do something else, stop messing around in the house. And so I found empty studio space at a local YMCA and just booked a dance class that I made up for us to do. Just totally out of the and within like less than an hour, I like made it happen for us. Wow.

Early Entrepreneurship And Roles

SPEAKER_01 7:44

I asked this question because I really wanted to emphasize and maybe reinforce this idea of communication, and that communication can also be based on knowing each other.

SPEAKER_03 7:58

We met, like I said, in 2007. So we were 15 at the time, and this year we turned 34. So we've now known each other longer than we haven't and gone through every single phase of life from high school to undergrad to our master's degree, into our professional careers, and now into entrepreneurship. So growing with someone in a relationship helps in that way through friendship. You can also work with people that you weren't friends with before, people do it all of the time. But if you want to take on these big ideas and flex who does what responsibility, it's easier when you already know how that person's mind works.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Michael, this next question is actually for you. So you were the one that had the initial vision for it count, correct? Yeah. Okay. And this happened during the pandemic, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, sir. Wow. So while Savannah, why not anyone? And then I have a question for Savannah too.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

It came out like really like serendipitously. We fell out of contact for a couple years because we were both like doing our grad school and all that stuff. Once like COVID happened and everything dropped, and we didn't really have a lot to do, we reconnected, and ACO just came out of a bunch of conversations that we had, and we were just like thinking big picture ideas. So why can't we? Why don't we do this? Why don't we do that? And then just I just blurted out hey, why don't we do a makeup line for dancers? I don't think there is one out right now. What do you think of that? And she was like, That's something I can do, and here we are, literally, that's what happened.

SPEAKER_03 9:32

So we were just spitballing back and forth. Like Michael said, we hadn't been communicating as regularly just because of being in school and then starting out our careers. And Michael had done his master's degree and undergrad abroad, so it was just a little bit more difficult. But we finally had time to just have like multi-hour conversations and FaceTimes. I think we were still using Skype at the time and just catch up and talk about creative ideas. And he had several other things that he was thinking about. One was a clothing line and a couple of other things. But then he was talking about makeup for performing artists and issues with the current options on the market. And to answer your question right away, I'm like, oh, I know what's wrong with what's out there now. And I think I have an idea about what we could do to fix it, but I hadn't necessarily touched cosmetic products outside of the classroom in my chemical product development master's degree. So I was a little bit nervous to take it on, but I knew theoretically what I wanted to do to correct the issue in the market.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

So when he called on you, Savannah, when he came with that idea, you were apprehensive because of what? What were you apprehensive of? To take up the idea or to come up with the formula or to solve the problem? I asked you this question because you're a chemist. And a lot of times scientists don't think in terms of business or entrepreneurship. What was it?

Pandemic Spark: The Dancers’ Makeup Gap

SPEAKER_03 10:58

Yeah, so I was really lucky in that my chemical product development program at Concordia University Wisconsin School of Pharmacy. We also had certain MBA classes that we had to take. So again, in theory, I understood how to go from the bench to the shelf with the product, but I hadn't done it on my own before and not with an idea from scratch. So I actually spent some time and I ordered from Amazon cosmetic formulation textbooks just to ensure that I was understanding the chemistry and I had the right ideas. But then also to take it to the next step. Sure, you could maybe do something in your kitchen to start it out. But then if you want to make it into a more commercial product or scale it up later, it can be really difficult to go from that sort of whole operation into a traditional manufacturing setup. So we had to make a choice together. Are we going to do it? What can we do now? And then scale it up later, or treat it almost more like a biotech project where we are going to do funding. How are we going to get the funding? Where's the RD gonna happen? Where are we gonna manufacture it? Is it gonna be at home? Is it gonna be in a facility? So making those decisions early on was what made me a little bit more apprehensive. And I did have the training to know what to do and who to ask and where to look. And I think a lot of chemists or other scientists necessarily don't have that background. So I see why people would be very apprehensive because it is a big undertaking.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

So, Michael, so can you walk us through the challenge of the cosmetic? You're a performing art, you're a performer. Can you build a scenario for us so that we can imagine it within our mind? Because you guys mentioned the smear, right? And the sweat and all that. So, can you build it up for us so that we can see we can picture it within our mind? I know you're going to do some demo for us later on. Please, can you go ahead, Michael? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

So one major example, like in my life, that I experienced firsthand was I used to work for celebrity cruises, and on celebrity cruises, there was a circus show. The circus show was like a Cirque du Soleil style show. I'm not sure if you are familiar, but if you see Circuit du Soleil shows, they have all their faces painted and all these different colors and stuff like that. So there were two issues with that. First of all, I'm a person of color, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

The tableaus that they gave us for the coloring, we did paint by numbers. So let's say I'm gonna have yellow on the lips, I'm gonna have red on the cheeks. It didn't really work for my skin tone at all. Uh, the color didn't work for my skin tone, and I learned this from the one other black singer who had to do the same face paint. He said, Hey, this tableau that they're giving us for the face paint and all the colors that they want us to put on our face does not work. So you have to put the orange on your lips, you have to put the yellow on your cheeks, you have to, and so on and so forth. So this makeup's gonna look better on you because what they're giving you now is not working. Color-wise, it's not working, and where to highlight the skin, our skin tone is not working. All right, so that's the first thing. There's a lot of the times very few people of color and cast, so they're not gonna make tableaus, but like face paint tableaus for us, they're gonna make it for everybody, correct? So we have to take it upon ourselves to make sure the makeup look good looks good on us. So that was like the first issue. Um, second issue is that by the time the show would be done, my face looked like what would it look like? It looked like a marble counter. You know what I'm saying? In terms of everything was swirled, everything was streaking, all the sweat was all I had all this, I had a whole costume, like my head was covered, everything. So I would sweat. And it took me so long to retouch. Basically, my whole break between the first and the second show was retouching my face. Who wants to do that? I don't want to do that. So that was another major issue. Like the makeup was not built for multiple shows because it just because it wasn't built for that. I wouldn't say I don't know if it was cheap makeup, I don't really recall the brand, but if I could look, this was almost 10 years ago. If I can still think about it today, then yeah, the quality was not good.

SPEAKER_03 15:01

During COVID is when makeup tutorials online were really popular and it just got us talking because, like on paper, we should look the same. We're both considered biracial, we're both considered Hispanic, we clearly look nothing alike, and there's many other people that look different from us, also. And it's okay if you're supposed to wear a costume on stage that goes on top of you and it looks the same across the board, makeup should be the same.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Savannah, when Michael approached you with this problem, did you get it? Did you see the problem and participate the solution because of your experience as a performing artist? Or was it just because you love solving problems, you love taking up challenges? So which one was it?

Color, Skin Tone, And Sweat Problems

SPEAKER_03 15:49

I would say it was a combination of both because I did perform all the way from age four until 17 in ballet, and then from age 15 to 23, I was involved with Mexican ballet folklore gone acte dancing, and then from age 17 to 28, I was involved in Ukrainian folk dancing, and then two years in a row, I was in cats the musical. So I used every type of makeup, some was professional for stage, like literally face painting cats, some was just over-the-counter drugstore makeup, like with my folk dance companies, and just seeing it from all angles and what worked, what didn't work, and seeing the lengths that people would go to make what was readily available work for them, even though it wasn't made for them as performers. Like we've seen people use literally acrylic paint that goes on the walls on their face in order to get the right color. We've seen people use spray hairspray on their face in order to get certain letters to stick or to be able to layer. I think people put super glue to literally make layers on your face, like all kinds of things.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

People really do that.

SPEAKER_03 16:50

So as soon as we started having a conversation about not only skin tones, skin textures, color quality of the makeup, then tying into what I was then doing at the current time, which was being a chemist. I think I had finished my master's degree less than a year before we had this conversation. So I was like peak ideas and thinking about things and sort of project focus. So it was like all of the ideas came together and it just the light bulb went off.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Wow, it's a separate. So, Savannah, so let's talk about proof of concept. So both you and Michael, you're from the same world of performing acts. You have the similar experience. Actually, before I forget, Savannah, can you explain? Can you please describe your own experience? I know your skin tone is a little different from Michael. So do you have similar experience when you put on that makeup when you perform?

SPEAKER_03 17:47

I've always had issues with skin tone in terms of redness. I have endometriosis and it wasn't diagnosed for a very long time, which is my adulthood. So I've had to deal with acne and skin redness because I am super, super pale, like depending on how pale I am and what time of the year, like you can see my veins through my skin. So if I'm having a really intense like cystic acne breakout, there's just like red lumps on my face. And I would have to go through steps of putting different products on and again doing the layering, spraying things, patting things down and applying product over and over, which then the more you're touching that affected area, it makes it more red. And I think that's what makes our product stand out is you can put it on and the pigment covers everything up. So no matter what's happening underneath, all you're seeing is the color or like the costume in terms of makeup, however, your character is supposed to be on stage, and not all of the steps that you have to do to cover up you know what's happening underneath.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Now, if I'm in a performant act, I think, wow, I'll be thanking you forever. Let's talk about a proof of concept. So you have moved from lab research to formulating your original palette. I call it OG. Is it the OG? Is that what you have? It's the OG palette.

SPEAKER_03 19:02

It's the original OG palette or first one.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Wow, I love it. Oh, it sounds like the name of a band. The OGs, right? And you have spoken about prioritizing pigment over dye, right, to prevent stricken under hot stage. And this is based on both of your experience. For the science students listening, this question is for Savannah. For the science students listening, what is the chemical secret to making a product that stays vibrant through sweat and movement without being harsh on the skin? And this follow-up question is why does a dancer need a chemist? I feel like this question is really important for our students who are still they're just beginning their career, right? They need to see the connection. Please, can you go ahead, please?

Chemistry 101: Pigments Over Dyes

SPEAKER_03 20:02

Yeah, to circle back to what Michael was talking about with the shrieking and the sweat, this is pretty basic solubility chemistry. So a lot of makeup has dyes in it, and dyes are water soluble. So that means that they dissolve and go into solution and spread out when they come into contact with water. So if you have a makeup that let's say is oil-based or has oils in it, which most makeups do, that's how you're able to spread it. If there's a dye in it, as soon as you start sweating, that dye is going to leach into the water that your body is just naturally producing from sweating. And then the rest of the makeup's going to stay behind, but the color is now in the sweat and it starts streaking. And that's why athletic performers and performing artists like Michael experience the streaking issue. So if you switch over to pigments, that's not going to be the case. So as soon as we started um talking back and forth during COVID, like we mentioned, he was talking about the sweating, not only the quality of the color pigmentation, but also the staying power. I was like, oh, this is just a solubility issue. But then that kind of leads into supply chain and you need to ethically source products because that's what we believe in. I think what the right thing to do as a new entrepreneur, but then also it needs to be cost effective with your business and all of that. So tying back to the other question, it can be daunting if someone's interested in just the chemistry. There's a lot of other things that you need to think about if you're trying to bring a product to market, but just start with the chemistry, start with the molecular formula. What are you trying to doing chemically?

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Another question that I have is do dancers, the performing act, need chemists or scientists? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Again, how are we gonna make things better if we can't do it right? You like I said, like we can have all these ideas. Hey, I want to make a better makeup, but I want to make sure it doesn't streak. There's a way to do that, and that's science. Makeup is science. That's what I learned. I had no clue about any of that stuff until we started working on this project. It's all ingredients. We got to make sure we know exactly what's in it. And every single ingredient in the products has a function. Every ingredient has a particular function. Everything has a job to do. And you have one thing in it.

SPEAKER_03 22:15

I think it's a as you're talking. I was thinking it's like the performance. Like if the whole cast sums together for the final production, the audience doesn't come in and see the whole rehearsal, all the people freaking out or trying to design or recore graph or parts where you messed up because you weren't sure what's going on. That's like making iterations of a formula. Like the first version we made was not good. It was really streaky, it was greasy, did not last. The initial idea is not what made it to the stage or to the market. So all of the ingredients come together to create the cast and the final product. It's the same thing with performing arts. You pull all of the costume people and the performers and musicians, and then it you come together and you present the final product to the public when you're ready and when it's perfected.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Since you guys are always under the light, does the light affect the molecular structure of your cosmetic? I mean, of uh dye, if I may say, or the ingredients that you put on the makeup?

SPEAKER_03 23:16

So for context, we started working on it in 2020. We launched our website and started selling to the public online in 2024. We were doing all this early morning, late nights, weekends outside of our regular jobs, if you will. And as we started doing our ingredient sourcing, we learned that certain pigments that are classified as neon, which is what we originally wanted, you can only have on the skin for certain hours at a time just because they're irritating to the skin, but also because they are light reactive. And when we started scouting manufacturing facilities, when we decided that we wanted to go that route rather than trying to start it out in our home small batch or something like that, we found that some facilities wouldn't even allow certain pigments to touch their equipment. So if a pigment's not even allowed to touch like an industrial equipment, it definitely shouldn't be going on someone's face. And that led to us evolving what's going to be in it, where the pigment's coming from, what are the colors that we want, what type of color do we want? And we went on that whole journey together. Excellent.

Safety, Sourcing, And Light Reactivity

SPEAKER_01 24:18

So, Michael, this question is for you. You are a performing art artist. You know a lot about makeup. You have said makeup is your armor, performance. The makeup is your armor. How does having a product that is scientifically engineered change the way an artist will feel when they step onto the stage? How does it count cosmetic change the performing artist perception once they step on the stage?

SPEAKER_00 24:55

I think it adds an element of trust to the product, knowing that every ingredient is thought about and it has a use, knowing that it's made just for performers. It's not a makeup that is made for everybody that performers use. The element of specificity in the marketing, I feel like a lot of our customers can see themselves in our marketing, thus seeing themselves in our products. You can trust the brand that you know is made just for you. And that's what it counts out.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

That's good. And what about you, Savana?

SPEAKER_03 25:33

Yeah, I would agree. Knowing that an artist and a chemist teamed up together to fill a gap in the market. It's not like we're just trying to rebrand something else that already is out there based on like current trends, or oh, we heard some dancers need some makeup, so let's put a bunch of dancers in our ads. Like it's product forward. Like we don't, we're very rarely on our page. We like to put our customers on our Instagram as much as possible. And so we're really showcasing how it's being used in the real world rather than trying to convince people that it's a legitimate product. It's like we worked on it behind the scenes, and then now other people are using it. So it's that sort of more like face-to-face testimonials rather than us just convincing like why we're super cool and you should use our product. We're like, we put time and effort into this for you, like servant line product development.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

So you talked about testimonials. So can you share some of the testimonials with us, please?

SPEAKER_03 26:28

Yeah, we've had a whole bunch of different people using it. Initially, we led with a professional photo shoot and video shoot that we self-produced. That is all of the material on our website in the early posts on our social media content. And the two girls that you can see in those photos and videos are now performing in Chicago, the Music Bowl Tour and Moulin Rouge Tour. And their testimonials can be seen on our social media pages. We're now also more recently getting photos and videos submitted into us of customers and people that are using the product in their real life and in their career, and we're trying to showcase more of that.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

I went to your website. Wow, look at that. Can you walk us through this, please?

SPEAKER_03 27:15

Yeah, so this is a shoot that we did in, I believe, May of 2024. It was at a studio called Mula Studios in Brooklyn. Yep. And Michael put an ad-out online and said, Hey, we're looking for some dancers for the day. We just want to put together some clips of choreography, some different footage of you using the product. And the two girls then ended up getting their big break after that, which is awesome. And we stayed in communication with them. And they actually are the ones that recommended us to some makeup artists that we have since worked with and put together the first tutorials that can be seen on our Instagram page. So the idea of keeping things closed, keeping it within the eight count community. You can pay anyone a whole bunch of money to give you a positive review. But the fact that people, we give them time to work with the product, time to adjust it, time to create their own opinion, and then get back to us, I think is the difference between us and other brands. Yeah, we have a whole bunch of content on our we're on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, but the most of our action and interactions are on Instagram. It's at eight count cosmetics.

Trust, Identity, And Brand Specificity

SPEAKER_01 28:24

Okay, wow. Can you see? I I've clicked on a different page. Yeah. Okay, very good. This is later on, you're going to demo this for us. This is the original palette. OG, I love it. I really do. So this is where people can go to place the order. And then you have a section for how to use. This is beautiful. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 28:49

Yeah, and we've really made edits throughout the feedback that we've gotten from people because I apply almost all of my makeup with my fingers and then one brush, and other people started getting back to us about using different types of brushes for like eyeshadows, blushes, eyeliner. And so we really use that feedback. We take everything that people tell us to heart and then put it back out there for our customers to use. So it's not just our opinions and our vision per se.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

Check out their website. This is beautiful. This is awesome.

SPEAKER_03 29:22

That is me. Like a line picture.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

And the people that are your colleagues, they seem very well. She's she looks happy, relaxed, right? It's like she's really looking forward to using this, and she trusts you. This is good.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Yeah, like a one that's a really big thing for us. Like the people who work for us, we want to make sure they're taken care of, and they feel like there's a trust between like us as an employee, employer, and them as an employee. Like uh Serena said, we really try to keep it in the family. A lot of the people who work for us stay with us, like we're still in contact with Serena and uh Carmel. I've been able to get Serena other jobs outside of ACOUT too. Yeah, we've been like in communication for still two years, and that was the only photo shoot they did for us. They're always talking with us, they're always liking our photos, they're always giving us suggestions. Same thing with Evan, and that's Serena's friend.

SPEAKER_03 30:21

Yeah, we saw their page through Serena and just people who were liking and following our posts. And we said, Hey, your friend that's a makeup artist. Can we get in touch with them? We'd like them to do some work, and you can see a variety of tutorials and looks that Evan put together on our Instagram.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

Why didn't we go to demo? I'm interested to see a demo. Let's let's go to the demo. Serena, please, if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_03 30:46

Yeah, so I can start by showing you this is our original palette or the OG palette, all the way down to the names. It is like a day in the life of a performing artist going on an audition. So it starts with warm-up, which is the orange-ish tone, just like every day it starts with orange sunrise. Then the pink is called freestyle. Pink is a really universal makeup shade, and anyone can make it their own and freestyle it for performing artists. If you're told to freestyle, you take a known piece of music or a piece of choreography you're given or a certain style, and you can freestyle it. Green light is the original color that we did most of our formulation on because it was really tricky and going back to making things neon and bright. We had to spend the most time on that. And once we had that perfected, we could give it the green light and apply the formula to the rest of the shades. The purple is called no marking. If you're in the performing arts, that means don't do it half out. You're going to do the choreography, the combination as it's given. And then full out is this blue shade, and that kind of the name speaks for itself. I'll show you in a second. It's a really bright pigment, it looks beautiful. Everyone loves it. It's probably one of the most favorite in the palette. And then in the middle, we have quick change, and the performing arts quick change is a very literal turbo. You can use that white shade with any of these colors to create a secondary palette of pastels. So if we take it off, this is what it looks like up close. I don't know how well you can see the shimmer.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 32:16

With the sunlight coming in.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:18

But all of those colors look like that. I'm going to open up one that I've already dipped into a bit.

unknown 32:23

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 32:23

So I'm going to pull out because, like I'd said, that's probably the color that we get the most compliments on. And I'm going to put some on my wrist and show you what that looks like.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

Okay.

Demo: The OG Palette In Action

SPEAKER_03 32:34

So totally full pigment, really shimmery. I don't know if you can see, but like my veins are green and you can see them through my skin. The area where the makeup is, you don't see that at all. Then if I wanted to transform it using quick change, I'm going to put some white on there, mix it up, and then it's going to become a pastel. So when you add quick change in, it covers up the shimmer. So if you want to make a more opaque color, you can that doesn't have the shimmer to it. But now it's a sky blue color. And I'll wipe it off and show you the pink and the orange. Some people are using it as a blush. We originally were thinking more the circuit type looks with the dramatic like lines and designs on the face, but you can really use this for other things too. So if I were to take, let's say, freestyle the pink, what I would do is take it out. You always want to warm it up. These are formulated like a concealer, so it's really full coverage, but instead of a skin tone color, it is a bright pigment. Okay. You want to just warm it up on the skin. And you could use that with your finger too. And then you could use a stiff brush, pick up a little bit of the color. Okay. And then build it up however you want it. And then it's a little bit more of a natural look.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Got it.

SPEAKER_03 33:53

Or I could take this really bright shade and blend it out for more of an 80s type of blush. Something more dramatic if I'm not necessarily going for like a natural look. So this is it. I'm literally just tapping back and forth. Like this.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

Oh, this is nice. Look at that. Yep. This is nice. That's a scale.

SPEAKER_03 34:18

But yeah, another thing you could do too at the time of filming this morning, I posted a tutorial of using green light. Okay. And if you use just like a skinny brush like this, okay, tap it right into the palette rather than warming it up first. How I would do that look is just tap little lines and make an eyeliner that way.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

I got it.

SPEAKER_03 34:39

I think in the video I did it underneath my eyes.

SPEAKER_01 34:41

This is beautiful. That's really nice.

SPEAKER_03 34:44

But yeah, we have a whole bunch of stuff. If you go to our page, I over the holidays invested in a new phone so we'd have like better quality for that stuff. And then one of my friends got me a whole big ring like setup so the tutorial they feel you can really see the full pigment. And then to wrap it all up, our eight eight count cooldown wipes.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

Yeah, I was gonna ask Michael to do that.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

Uh so after all this beautiful work, you can just take the eight-count cooldown wipes and just wow.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

How long does it take to kind of wipe up?

SPEAKER_03 35:23

Usually you can get all of it off in one wipe. So what I recommend is we say get get your Mondays worth, keep folding it so that you can use the full surface area. When he folded it in half and is wiping, you can do the whole thing that way.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 35:37

There's a couple of videos with Carmela and Serena where they just did a full schmear of the purple and the blue because that's the one that tends to show up the most. Did a full schmear of it and then took one wipe and wiped it all off, wiped their foundation off with it. And you can see that you just need the one wipe to take it off. You don't have to keep doing a bunch of extra things. And with the avocado and cucumber, it's not going to irritate your skin like a normal makeup wipe might.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

This is really awesome. I love it. I love it. I know, Savannah, that you do give a weekly demo, like you've been talking about. What has been the most requested demo from your community from your community so far?

SPEAKER_03 36:17

Yeah, so every Monday I'm trying to post a tutorial. So far, I'm working my way through all of the colors. I started with quick change and then I did warm-up freestyle. Like I said, as of the morning when we're recording this, I did green light, and then I'm going to finish it off. And then go into maybe some other type of looks. And really the concept of doing tutorials was what was requested because performing artists might know what type of look that they want to use, but they want to ensure that they're using the palette appropriately. They want to get the most out of it. But also, some people that aren't necessarily performing artists and haven't worked with these types of products before are interested in using it for their day-to-day life. So for the pink and the orange, I believe, I showed how to make the blush because it could seem a little bit intimidating with this bright color. You don't have to use it as the bright full coverage version. You could strap it down and make it a little bit more sheer. So you want to showcase how it looks if you use it straight out of the palette. If you make it sheer out of the palette, if you mix it with quick change to make a pastel, and then give examples of all of the different ways, whether it's blush, lipstick, eyeliner, eyeshadow, or face paint, kind of making awareness of how to use the palette so you can get the most out of it.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Which groups are you marketing this product to performing art artists everywhere or just people in your particular niche?

SPEAKER_00 37:41

I think the great thing about our palette is that at first we're like, this is just gonna be for performers. We're gonna formula, we're gonna use the formula and like really hone it in on what performers need and what. But as we started involving more people, we really discovered that it's not only for performers, but it is for everybody. Like Savannah said, you can use it as a blush, you can use it as an eyeliner, you can use it as color corrector. So there's like a lot of different ways that you can use that. So not only does it help dancers with the bright colors that they may need, but it also can help the regular person with, hey, I feel like I have a lot of what was it, green? What's the green for color correctness?

Tutorials, Use Cases, And Community Feedback

SPEAKER_03 38:23

Yeah, for color corrector. So if you mix our green shade with the quick change, then it becomes matte and you can use that to cover up redness under your foundation. You can mix the orange with quick change to make a matte orange, put it under your eyes, and put your foundation over it and it covers up dark circles. So as we expand who we are targeting and reaching out to, we're finding even more uses than we imagined. Because when you get started out in business, they're like, you can't target everyone, you need to start a little bit smaller, but because we perfected who we were wanting to target and then expanded outwards from there rather than starting really wide, I think that's allowed us to have a bit more organic growth.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

So go ahead. The best thing that we did learn was from our customers, the people who did our trials, the people who tried it out and made tutorials for us for the first time. Like I said, the first time I saw the orange being used as a blush, I was like, oh, I've never thought that the orange could be a blush.

SPEAKER_03 39:19

We weren't necessarily even thinking of the more sort of ready-to-wear and ways to use it.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

So it's actually really that flexible, which we were surprised about. And that was a learning curve for us too.

SPEAKER_03 39:29

They're really happy about like the off-target applications.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

I'm really happy to hear that your customers, your target group are really receptive. This is really good. That tells you a lot about the longevity of your product. So it's very exciting. So I know that next in March there is what you call is it the New York City pop-up?

SPEAKER_00 39:53

Yeah, we're gonna do a couple of pop-up events in New York City on the 7th and the 8th. We're basically gonna be setting up a table and some we don't know yet. We're gonna know by the end of today. We're gonna set up a table and we're just basically gonna show our product. We're gonna invite some of our friends. Hopefully, anybody who's out there and has people in New York, they can come on through too. But we're just gonna show our product, start planting seeds, and hopefully thinks something, something's stick and they like us.

SPEAKER_01 40:21

Yeah, please share that date with me so that when I post this on LinkedIn and YouTube, I can make sure that I do mention those dates.

SPEAKER_03 40:31

The tentative timeline, we have a pretty good idea of where it's gonna be. We're just waiting on the final contract. Tentatively, as of now, Saturday, March 7th from 7 to 10 p.m. And Sunday, March 8th from 2 to 5 p.m. We're gonna have two different pop-ups in New York City. Michael said, we're hoping that some of the collaborators we worked with can pop by and say hi, that it may be potential new customers who have seen us online will pop by, as well as people who are just out to eat, out to have a good time. We'll see what we're up to and want to stop by, try it out and spread the word.

SPEAKER_01 41:04

You're in the right place. New York City is the largest, is the biggest stage. So you can never miss. I don't think you're gonna miss anything. So you have been in business for one and a half years now. What has been the hardest formula to get right? Is it let's say the business model or is it the lab? What has been the hardest for you guys in your experience?

SPEAKER_03 41:30

Yeah, I think it's a combination of knowing when to move things to the next stage. I think for both performing artists and chemists, you want to keep things as close to your chest as long as possible. But if you want to start a business, part of it is letting it go, like we could have tried to grow it out of our kitchen and done everything by hand or tried to seek out a lot of funding from other people. But we decided to do full manufacturing, that whole aspect of it, as well as self-funding the majority of it. We had some funding the first year, but then after that, we have been totally self-funded since like 2021, early 2022. And so saying we can keep it small in certain areas or we can expand it in certain areas, and we decided to go the whole way and do professional manufacturing, work with a professional RD lab rather than try to do it all by cutting corners or doing a smaller version. We really invested in making a full professional makeup line, even if it meant from start to finish, I wasn't the one in the lab, and Michael was the one dancing in the ads. We decided to really go all in and make it as professional as possible.

Beyond Performers: Everyday Applications

SPEAKER_01 42:42

So Michael is a performing artist, and and so are you, but you're also a scientist, a chemist. So Michael, do you ever have an artistic vision clash with with Savannah? And then let's reverse the questions too for Savannah. Savannah, is there some time that Michael may want to go in one direction, but you're looking from the scientific perspective, and is there some like friction that takes place? And how do you guys resolve that?

SPEAKER_00 43:25

You know what? We have been communicating in a very good way since we were 15. Okay. So I think we know each other well enough to iron things out like that quickly. You know what I'm saying? We can check each other. She checks me all the time. And we don't take it personal. Like we have our business page that we land on when we need to talk about business. We have our personal friendship page when we want to talk about friend stuff, family, uh, everything. As long as we stay in our lane and we know what our conversation is for that time, we're gonna talk about business. Let's talk about business. We're business partners. Yeah. If you think I'm doing don't like an idea, you're gonna say, Hey, I don't like an idea. Let's pivot to this. And I'd be like, Yeah, you're right. Basically, as long as we are on the same page and we're communicating with each other on that page, we're easily okay.

unknown 44:15

Excellent.

SPEAKER_03 44:16

Yeah, I agree. We've been friends for 19 years, we've been communicating regularly for 19 years. We know when to collaborate, when to listen to one versus the other. And we ironed that out before coming into it because we did know each other rather than going into a business with someone that you don't necessarily know at all. Just because they have the money or the facilities, it was because they wanted to work together because we had that good relationship.

SPEAKER_01 44:42

This is good. So you both represent based on my own perspective. You both you're a member of underrepresented community, and then there's two worlds now that uh that is basically maybe the word crashing is not the right word, but maybe the better word is collaborating, right? Now you have the science and the arts, and with that also it's other discipline that it's integrated with that. So I think that is really powerful, and this is why I want to say that you guys represent the new god of Steam, as far as I'm concerned. And Steam, I love it because it's integrated, right? And with integrated Steam, you can solve a lot of problems. And you guys are the proof of concept. You identify a problem, which is as a performing artist, the makeup that you guys used to use, there is a problem with it. The smearing and all that stuff that you guys go through. But you both work together to design a solution to it. So I think that is really powerful. And you own it. But there are new generations that are coming behind you guys. And now you hear of research articles that are saying that young men are no longer interested in college. But let me focus on Michael for a second. Michael, you're a male. Right. What do you want young men in the arts to know about the power of owning the science of their industry?

SPEAKER_00 46:39

I think not only in the industry but in life in general, okay. Young men need to think about follow-through. That's a very important thing I learned from my dad. Do what if you have an idea and you want to make it happen? Hold people that are around you that can help you like we did, and make it happen. Nothing can stop you. But don't go around saying, hey, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, and then not do it. Because for me as a man, all you have is your word at the end of the day. So make your work count. That's what I gotta say.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

Okay, good. And Savannah, how are you using a count to prove that chemist career doesn't have to end at the lab bench?

Pop-Up Plans And Grassroots Marketing

SPEAKER_03 47:24

Yeah, I think a lot of chemists get caught up in the artistry of being a chemist, if you will, or the identity of being a chemist and lose sight on the chemistry and what their chemistry is intended to do, who is the end user, whether that's making a medicine or making a cosmetic product. So if you think about the work that you're doing is to support someone else and improve their quality of life and keep that as the end goal rather than hyping yourself up, I think that will really help. Now you really need to elevate your work and what you're doing along the way, but all of that serves a purpose of then helping the next person who's coming up. And so don't just live your life as a chemist in a vacuum. Think about the other people that your work impacts.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

And what about for women? Let's stay with Savannah for a second. Now, in life science, the gap between the males and the females is closing. But in the physical science, that is a different conversation. So, Savannah, if you were to speak to young women that are coming along, we know that their representation is very low in physical sciences. What advice will you give? You're a proof of concept that a woman can go from the lab bench, right, to owning a company and developing a product that uh millions and billions of people are going to be using someday.

SPEAKER_03 48:52

I would say anytime you have an accomplishment, it's important to follow through. Like Michael said, your word needs to count something. So if you are a chemist or some sort of other scientist in the life scientist, the quality of work that you're doing should be able to speak for itself. It needs to be good work, you need to be doing it with integrity, and it needs to be technically correct. Then you need to be consistent about it because even with us, we've been working on this brand and promoting it since 2020. We posted every week for a long time, up until I started doing the tutorials now and doing it twice a week. And there's still people that are just seeing it for the first time. So you just need to be really consistent in sharing what you're doing, but then ensuring that what you're doing is quality. Michael said, a lot of people say that they're doing things, but then they're either not doing it or it's not really legit. So you need to have legitimate work, but then you need to be consistent about promoting it so that everyone can learn about it and learn from you as an example, hopefully.

SPEAKER_01 49:50

So we've come to the end of our conversation about your product, your company. I'm really excited to have the privilege of talking to both of you. You're both co-owners of 8Count. Closing, I want to ask you: is there something that you want to share with the audience that you know you didn't have the opportunity to share or to talk about until now?

SPEAKER_00 50:18

I'll just say one little thing of this for the students out there. Don't let anything stop you, don't let any negative self-talk stop you, okay? Because that's just all things that are just gonna hinder you from being great and whatever you want to do. Greatness is I think something that we all need to at least have in our head. At least, and not even greatness, okay, let's be Lady Gaga or anything, but being a great friend, you know what I'm saying? Yes, being a great father, being a great sister. I think at least from what I learned about owning a business, it really starts um with being a good human and treating people right from that. And if you have that foundation, you can go far. So that's what I got. And Savannah and the last one.

Scaling, Funding, And Manufacturing Choices

SPEAKER_03 51:10

It's okay to say, hey, this isn't my best. I'm gonna try again. Don't give up. Like we had two different social media pages that we deleted like totally before our current account page in its current form was up. Like we were talking about earlier, the initial version of the formula. It was not how we wanted, it wasn't working out. We pretty much had to scrap it and change the whole thing. Moving forward means learning from your mistakes and taking it all in, taking it to heart, and then picking yourself up. Michael said, anything that you do, you need to do it well.

SPEAKER_01 51:44

Thank you so much to both of you, Savannah and Michael, the co-founder of ItCount Cosmetic. I'm on their website right now. As you can see, this is their vision. Our vision at ItCount Cosmetic, our vision is to empower performance with makeup that celebrate diversity, creativity, and self-expression. We strive to create an innovative product that enhance the beauty and the confidence of every artist while fostering a supportive community that inspires and uplift. I would like to encourage everyone to please check out their product, check out their website. If you're in New York, please go to their table, check out what they have to offer, support this young entrepreneur. I hope today we were able to inspire you that anything and everything is possible when you put your heart onto it. Find a way in which you can collaborate with someone, especially in the arts and the performing field. The A in STEM is very important, as you can see. Savannah and Michael are proof of concept. It does work. So let's find a way in which we can collaborate and innovate within our community. Again, Michael, Savannah, thank you for being my guest today on Steens Park. Until next time, everyone, have a wonderful day. Bye everyone.