Apocalypse Plans & Shampoo Scandals

 The girls kick things off planning their dream bunker (complete with slides and millionaire budgets), but quickly derail into a passionate—and hilarious—rant about hair products, buildup, and why mixing cheap shampoo with the good stuff is basically a crime. Come for the doomsday prep, stay for the unexpected masterclass in reading ingredient labels. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Hey, hey, hey, gorgeous people. Welcome to the Hair at First Podcast where Great Hair meets real life. We're your host, Tessa, Monica, have a job. Freestylus, moms, besties. We're keeping it real about beauty, business, and the chaos of motherhood.

SPEAKER_04 0:19

We're here to share stories, left way too loud, and maybe spoke a little shampoo along the way. Just a quick heads up. We're not making any medical claims or giving professional advice here. Just sharing our own thoughts, opinions, and experiences.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

So grab your coffee, your favorite blanket, and let's hair it first.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Good morning and welcome back to Hair It First. Hi, girlies. Hi. How are we? Doing good. Look at the drill. Oh, I love that. Uh sorry if you hear my dog barking right now. His name is Kevin, and which is the funniest thing ever. He just hasn't been dead egg as anything and everything. So he didn't bark at the bear this morning. That was a cattle bear this morning. Yeah. Well, yeah. Definitely not a bear. It's yeah, you guys are lucky I'm alive. But um, if you listeners are back from uh and you guys have been listening to us thus far, thank you for coming back. If you are new here, hold on tight, it's always an adventure. Uh, we had a few things from last week's podcast that we just feel like we didn't get to talk about. So we're gonna talk about them this week. I think we ended with mentioning them. So I think we're gonna go into that this morning. I I do believe we we were talking about bunkers called Paradise.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Michelle wants to do a bunker, but you have to understand, I don't hate this idea because I too have watched the show Paradise. Have you ever seen it, Tasa?

SPEAKER_01 2:02

So what is it on? Um here though. Okay, I have not watched it. I'm writing it down. Gonna have to watch it. Is this about bunkers? Is this about this topic? No. No, okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

But copy. I know the dolphin thing. Yeah. Oh, I love that. So the gist of the story without giving away anything. Um, you know the guy. Oh, I can't think of his name. He's in the show with Mandy Moore, where she's got the three kids, the three twins. Oh my gosh, what is it called?

SPEAKER_04 2:38

I'm gonna look up the paradise cast.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

First of all, where the hell do you find three twins? I mean she had triplets, one of her babies dies. Okay, James Mariston. What's him?

SPEAKER_02 2:51

I'm gonna have to look him up. I James Mariston. He's phenomenal. He's phenomenal. Um, so essentially the world is gonna come to an end via asteroid or nuclear something or other. Yeah, volcano erupts and freezes everything, and then the world has to default, but all of civilization is gonna die. So these multi-billionaires all come together and create this city in a mountain in Colorado.

SPEAKER_04 3:30

But they don't so yeah, it's it's very interesting. And and before I even watched that show, I mean, I my brother thinks I'm nuts, whatever. But I told him, I'm like, I want to build a bunker. He's like, Michelle, just get to my house, I will take care of you. Like he lives by his brother-in-law, they have like this little compound, and you know, we're country people, so you can imagine we're armed. And uh he's like, just get to my house, you'll be fine. I'm like, I want an underground bunker, like seriously.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

I couldn't agree more. I would like to also have an underground bunker because look at all these movies that have really have it been coming out for years, but let's face it, the last two years, all these shows and movies are about. You're gonna need a bunker.

SPEAKER_04 4:20

We're gonna need something. And have you guys seen on TikTok where like you move your island and it goes down into a bunker, your kitchen island?

SPEAKER_02 4:29

Yes, yeah, or like the ones where there's like yeah, there's like a door on the side. You could just slide slide down, and there's stairs and it goes where bunker. It goes to a bunker. So it looks just like it looks just like your kitchen island, except some of them you can slide the island top over, like there's a latch and you slide the island top over and open the side of the thing and just like walk down. Some of them you just pull the door, like a faux door, and open it and slide. There's a slide that takes you down.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

So nobody even knows you're in there. I love that. But here's the problem now, guys. You can't do it in your island now because it's already out there. They're gonna be looking in the island. It's on TikTok all over the place. Yeah, these it don't you think these terrorists are watching TikToks? We know, we've seen some on our live. I'm sure there's a panic button that just seems like you really need to go. I mean, put it somewhere other than in your island now. Find somewhere else in the bath or like in the bathroom cabinet. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 5:33

I found I saw one. They put those sea containers, they had four sea containers, and they buried them in underground and then had their pool lined around, and they had cut holes, and there was glass, so you could see inside of the people swimming in the pool. And I was like, that would be really cool. It was underground, and they had like bedrooms and like a little kitchen, it was adorable. It was probably a couple million dollars, which is thinking of my head. We need to make more money, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

We need we need to make more money so we can build these extravagant bunkers and slides. But I'm gonna tell you guys right now that Adam is probably gonna go down by way of whatever is happening in the world because he's not gonna get in that bunker. He is too claustrophobic and he's gonna ruin it for all of us. We can't put him down there because he's just gonna scream and trying to get out when they're you know, they're looking for us and he's gonna be like, we'll have to we'll have to kill him, you know. So he just can't come in the bunker. Uh-huh. He's just gonna have to either I don't know where he's going, but he's not coming in my bunker. I love you, honey, but you will ruin it for the rest of us.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

Isn't it crazy how like the big bearded men are the ones that are the most petrified of things? Yes, like Adam is a big dude, beard, burly, Craig, big dude. Am I gonna get him on a plane? Hell no, hell no. I was like, so when I um make my first million with Fermaglow and like we have this big party, like, are you gonna come? And he was like, Yeah, you're just gonna have to let me know where it's at so I can drive to you. And I'm like, well, what if what if I decide to do it like in Puerto Rico? Or and he was like, I suggest if you want me there, you pick a place that is not an island. He can take a boat, he could drive to a port, take a boat. He won't get on a cruise, he would have to be able to like drive his boat out of the same way. You'll be able to afford it. He can get a speedboat. You're right.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Hey, I'll give him a ride on my shark boat. Yes, you guys just show my shark boat. You guys have seen my shark bart Carol. Yeah, we'll pick people up, take them. They can ride Carol all the way to the islands where where you guys are at, and we'll meet together. We'll definitely pick a mountain somewhere. I'd love to do like Montana. Oh, I love mountains. Same okay, we're all bunking together. We're all going to the same places. Yeah, I love and our hair is gonna look so good.

SPEAKER_02 8:09

So look, I shampooed my hair this morning, and I was like, all right, I just want to see how long it is. So I like kept my head really, really straight and like turned and looked in the bathroom. It is almost to my beauty. That is awesome.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Oh my gosh. I can't wait to see you guys at GlowCon. Look how long it is. Run a pony. That's crazy, Monica. Good products. It is in the shiny.

SPEAKER_04 8:39

I had a client come in yesterday, and she she's had a lot of surgeries. Um, so she's been under anesthesia a lot, you know. It's just a sad situation, and her hair was fine anyway. She's a she's probably late 70s, and um she wouldn't buy any products from me ever. And I've done her hair for probably 20, 25 years, and she did buy the furlough, and um I I can't even wash her hair because of where they had to do surgery, she can't lean back. Yeah, she had cancer, but it's just so sad, and she's a wonderful person. Um, but she said to me, My husband, because she's shorter, obviously he's taller. Well, not obviously, but and he said, That shampoo is working because I cannot see your scalp like I used to be able to. And I was like, Yes! And she's only been behind it for six weeks. Now, I'm not saying the hair is growing, however, when you get that buildup off, your hair is fuller, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Because it's not it expands because it's not being suffocated.

SPEAKER_04 9:46

Yeah, I said give it another six weeks, and you're gonna notice new hairs growing in because that's happening for all of my clients and me.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

Yeah, everybody, yeah. I I had an extension client, she texts me, she's actually a business partner of mine, but we put her extensions back in because she cut her hair off, and then she was like, That was a horrible idea. We're gonna put extensions back in. So I put her extensions back in, and she was like, Gino, what I've noticed, like more than anything, because she's been using Fermaglove for a while now. She was like, My extensions don't slide. Like my grow out, and she was like, It's gotta be because there's no plastics or anything on my hair. She was like, Normally, by like the four-week mark, I really feel like I should probably, you know, because even though they're secured in there, when they move down, like because your hair growing, they just kind of feel funky, they're not like I don't know, it's just a weird feeling. And she was like, It's they still feel so good. She's like, and my hair is you know grown out a lot. She was like, but it's just it feels so much better.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

That is amazing. Me too. Yeah, I the the responses from people right now with this product, uh they're just amazing. Yeah, they're just amazing what they're doing. I do have to tell you guys though, I had to get my mother-in-law in trouble. Wow, my mother-in-law had to have brain surgery. Beth, if you're listening, I'm throwing you under the bus because you know how mad I am. This is why so she had brain surgery. So she is bald from here, like the perfect circle. Okay, here. She has very sparse hair that will grow here, but never could we get anything up here. So she's been on the Fermaglow journey. Well, when they were here for Easter, I looked at her in the light, and I could just see the little bitty hairs standing up all over. And I said, Beth, your hair, you've got so much hair coming in. She's like, I do. I was like, Yes, you absolutely absolutely do. And she said, um, I said, she said, well, I figured it would be more by now. And I said, how long have you been consistently using it? Mind you, remember, she got her products confiscated when they went on the 52-day cruise. Remember? They've made them throw them in the trash. So anyway, she's not been using it consistently, but maybe month or two months. And I said, but you're not using any other product, right? And she said, Well, I like to conserve my products, so I do do my first wash with something different, and my second wash with the Fermaglow. And I said, A, no. B, what is the first, what are you using for your first wash? Garnier fructise. Oh shit. I literally got up and walked out of my own house.

SPEAKER_04 12:52

Full of classics.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

I said, you're gonna kill every single thing that you you got going on there, and I'm not gonna feel sorry for you if you are gonna be that reckless. No, reckless. She's like, oh, I thought it was one of those good ones. And I was like, I who who told you that? Because I've literally never told you that. What are you all right? Huh? Guardian eye precise.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

Yeah, I had a client um she purchased in September of last year, and she was like, I was asking her how everything was going, and she's like, it's great, I love it. And I'm like, you know, I was thinking to myself, like, I feel like she should be further along. Like, something in my brain is telling me to ask her. And I was like, So are you just using Fermaglow or are you using other stuff? And she's like, Well, I just wanted to make sure it lasted a really long time. So I like I use it on like date nights and stuff, and I'm like, what are you doing? Like, you might as well not use it. Starting over every single time, like, and that's what like that's what I said. I was like, just so you know, um, you don't have that much hair. So you're gonna be using a half a pump each time. Your your shampoo is going to last you like six to eight months, and I'm gonna talk about that real quick because yeah, I I feel like people are not this is not the direction I thought this podcast was gonna go, by the way. But it never does go any direction we plan, so it doesn't matter. So if you are spending, I because I did the calculations last night, I know we have it broke down, but it is $175 give or take for our bundle, which is your shampoo, your conditioner, and your elixir. If that lasts you eight months, I feel like that's you know, depending on how often you wash your hair, you're gonna get about six to eight months. I wash my hair once a week. I'm gonna get about a year out of mine, give or take. Um, that's like it ends up being like $22 a month on your champagne. Yeah, your conditioner. I don't I I need somebody to make it make sense to me because I've been buying high-end products for the last 17 years. That's how long I've been doing hair. 17 years I've been spending 40, 50 on products. And they I can promise you on each product, so like 80, 100 on shampoos and conditioners. And I can promise you, I was buying those like every month or every other month. So make the math math. You cannot, you like you've got to think about this as a whole, as a collective. If you only have to buy shampoo every six to eight months, is that $25 a month really like like it you've gotta make it math?

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Yes, because think about it, even if you go to Walmart these days, have you guys looked at the price shit of products on the the shelves at Walmart? No, just just for your own research. Next time you go to Walmart, CVS, wherever, look in their shampoo aisle, and I want you to look at the prices of the shampoo sitting on there. You're gonna spend so much more in shampoo and conditioner with buying that junk that's killing you and ruining your hair and your scalp than you will with buying Fermaglow. Yeah, new challenge. We'll discuss that on the next one. What prices we've seen at Walmart on the shelves or wherever, CVS, uh TJ Maxx, I don't know. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 16:47

I think we need to explain to people too, like, okay, people are trying to conserve, so using piantine or whatever with it, what what our product does is it removes buildup, right? And once the buildup is removed, then all of our good fermented ingredients can go in your scalp and into your hair and do what they're supposed to do, but you have to get the buildup off first, okay? So if you're using a product that has silicones and plastics and wax, you're putting that buildup back on every single time you use it. So now Fermaglow has to try and get it off again. So you're in that vicious cycle and you're never going to get the full benefit of the Fermaglow. So I tell my clients either use this or don't. Don't pull in with anything else. And you're not going to hurt my feelings. It's okay. But if you want hair to grow, if you want healthier hair, again, not a doctor, not making medical complaints, I'm a hairdresser, sharing what I see behind the chair. Um, you can use this and have great hair, or you can have the hair you have right now that you're complaining about with whatever you're using because it's not working. And I literally have said that to my clients, like, well, that's a lot of money. Well, you break it down like Monica spoke about a second ago, and it's you're you're complaining about your hair right now. Do you want to do that?

SPEAKER_02 18:14

I just did the math on it. If you if you shampoo almost every day, and it only lasts you about three months, that is $58 a month. That's it. $58 a month. Now I'm now I'm interested because now we're just gonna deep dive into this. Divide that by three. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Um, I think it it ends up being like 66 cents a wash or something like that. Yeah, we added that up. It was I thought it was 55 cents a wash or 58 cents a wash, something like that. I think ridiculous like yeah, just yeah, way cheaper.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

Okay, so on Walmart.com, I'm on Walmart.com. Redkin is 55.95 for shampoo and conditioner. And how much are you gonna have to use that? You're getting a it's 10.1 ounces, but you have to use a ton more.

SPEAKER_04 19:12

You do.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

I want to do that or use a whole palm pole.

SPEAKER_04 19:15

All things up in the back, pumping, because not all the girls use you know, Fermablow. And I just want and it's like five or seven, we have liters, and you know those pumps pumped out what two to three inches, and they're going one, two, three, four, five. And I'm like, your client has short hair. What in the hell are you doing? But you need that because they don't work like yeah, ours do.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

Do you see these 65, 63 for shit? Yeah, so yeah, and I just picked redkin because I feel like everybody thinks that's a great one to use.

SPEAKER_04 19:51

Listen, big difference because ours is medical grade water. Yep, yeah, it's concentrated, it's it's concentrated, but this is the thing, and people need to learn about water. Everybody needs to learn about water, start researching it. They there's no regulation at all on water that they put in beauty products, they could get it from a backyard mud puddle.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

Yep, you have backyard mud puddle.

SPEAKER_04 20:20

Anybody's doing that.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

You might have mud puddle water.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

I have a couple, I've I would guess a couple of companies that probably do do that. There's a lot of things that are hidden. So much. And the fact that ours are concentrated. What if you don't know what concentrated means out there? It means that it's actually taking the good ingredients, all the ingredients in it, and you're getting those ingredients, not additives to those. You're actually getting those awesome, amazing ingredients that actually work for your hair, um, instead of all this other crap that is mixed in with it, formaldehyde and all that, that makes 0.1% of cocoa butter work, and that's why you can list cocoa butter on a shampoo bottle, but you don't have to list the formaldehyde. Wake up, people. Wake up.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

So I just looked up Olaplex for for Olaplex, like a retail like size Olaplex. Um, it is for our price because I went on Cosmo. We would be selling it for $78 as a stylist. $78.

SPEAKER_04 21:40

Sure, it's a shampoo. For the shampoo. Yeah, that's what I figured. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

That's what I said. I've sold I have me too.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

And I sold it 250 milliliters. Five 8.5 fluid ounces. We would be selling that for About $40. $45 for the smaller bottle.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

It's you're going to get more out of our bottle. Yes. And not everybody. I think once I think a lot of people see we just put a lot of the sorry guys that I'm snacking the bundle out there. Not everybody is going to need that scalp elixir. No. You're not going to always look at the price of each individual and you're going to see, you're you're going to see $42.99 for a bottle of shampoo that's going to last you six to eight months or a year. That's nothing. $49.99 for a bottle of conditioner, which we all know our conditioner, lasts longer than our other stuff. The fact that you can go on there and re and order reorder your shampoo and not have to get more conditioner if you don't want. You know, I I don't know. It's just uh it's just really a no-brainer.

SPEAKER_02 22:56

I've fallen down a rabbit hole now. I've fallen literally. I'm fallen all the way down this rabbit hole. Does it have to do with dolphins? No. Only your your only you. Natural.

SPEAKER_04 23:12

I mean, I used to use L'Oreal Professional. That's what I was always go back to. And I can't look up that, Monica. Look up like absolute repair and see what that costs. I bet you're close to $65 now.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

Yeah, so I I hear a lot of people talk about neutrophil. Like they're like, oh, I'm doing neutrophil. So its size is 8.1 fluid ounces and it's $45 at Ulta. Just for the shampoo. But what's in it? We can already pull that up. Because I want to see, because you know that the you know why they don't ever put this for everybody listening. You know why they never put the ingredients right up for you to see it, and you have to actually look for it all the way at the bottom? Because they don't want you to look it up. They don't want you to. Sodium C1415, olefis, sonophate, um, sacralose, glycerin, glypeptides, glycerin right there.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Um depending on if it's depending on what kind. We have glycerin in ours, but it is plant-based. We have the the ole and C. Sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Here we go, right here. Look what's can you guys see? Fragrance. Oh, right on right there. It is ingredient number one, two, three, four, four. So it's ingredient number four. So there's a lot. If you guys don't know how to read your labels, this is another really important part. The ingredient at the very top, the first ingredient is what there is the most of it in. So it goes like most to least at the very end. So the most in in this one is water, sodium C14, olefin cetafata.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 25:21

I'm not it I'm not an ingredient.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

I'm not an avat nerd in ours, but it is plant derived.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

It is yeah. Okay, so I just threw it into Chat GPT because that's what I do. And it says with one so it says short answer. I just literally copied and pasted the ingredient list and they said short answer. It's a mixed bag. It's not terrible, but it's not what I'd call clean or scalp first. Let me break it down for you. Not so great. Okay. Now the first ingredient was water. The second ingredient was sodium C14-16 olefenin sulfate. This is what it says. Not so great. This is where you lose me. Sodium C14C16 is a harsh cleanser, a harsh cleanser, often stronger than sulfates, can strip color, dry out extensions, and irritate your scalp. It also has fragrance and perfumes. The allergens, it's a big red flag for sensitive scalp and inflammation. Polyquarmine. Polyquaramine. Yeah, that one. 73 is a film forming which can cause buildup over time. And cochamide MIPA is a foam booster, but not super clean beauty aligned.

SPEAKER_04 26:55

So I hear some uh I don't want to say the name of it, but it's claiming that they have um they said non-toxic uh products and hair color. So that's what kind of grabbed my attention, and I don't want to say what it is, but it is a professional brand. And so I went down that rabbit hole last night, and that's exactly what I did, Monica, is I put it into Chat GPT, and I didn't say compare to formaglow, I said what ingredients are not good for you, and yeah, broke it down, and then it even compared it to Pharmaglow and said that formaglow is better because there's absolutely no toxins in our products.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Yeah. Well, and here's what people need to know too. So some of those things that she named can be plant derived, some and they can be plant-derived or they can be synthetic. Most of the time, nine times out of ten in products, they are not plant-derived. Yeah. In our products, they are fermented, which means they are broken down to their natural state. So, yes, they are fermented, they are plant-derived, and they are safe because of the way they are um presented in ours. A lot of them, if you're seeing that in, for instance, the um product that you were just talking about, Monica, that is not, they're not fermented products, right? So they're not taking they're not taking plant-derived ingredients and and fermenting them and breaking them down into their natural substance. Just like coconut, somebody could be allergic to coconut, but if it's fermented and broke down, nine times out of ten, you're not gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

So it's greenwashed, yes.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

It's greenwashed. Make it a pretty bottle, put a pretty green plant on there or some kind of something, and boom, oh my gosh, this is so natural and clean, I'm gonna use it. It's green washing. I think that needs to be our next topic.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

Understanding what greenwashing is, because I don't think that people really truly understand. And it is so like we are such a market-driven, um, easily influenced generation because everything is at our fingertips. Yeah, that like I feel like as a as a as a marketing people market things so well that it makes people not question it. And that's the problem. Yes. Like, look through the marketing, people. Look at the back of your bottles. It take took me 30 seconds to copy those in ingredient lists and throw it into chat GBT. Yes, yep.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

Well, this was a great episode. It really was. We went from different direction to always, yeah, but I loved it, and I think that um there's a lot of good information out there, and I do think next time we need to um talk a little bit about that greenwashing because it's all over the place. And people, you gotta start protecting yourselves. Gotta start. We're not in this. I when we talk about furlough, we're not in this just to sell this. It's because we are three hairstylists that have we all want to protect our clientele, our families, ourselves. These products truly are amazing, and that's where our passion behind this is getting this out to people so that they know, and this information that they've got to be looking at if you buy Fermaglow or not, whatever. But you need to know the information that we give about what these products that you're putting on your body or on your kids or or whatever are doing to you. So sometimes bear with us when we go down our Fermaglow rabble holes or our ingredients or all the things. We have a purpose for it. It's not just to be salesmen at all. We just want the world to know. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

All right, guys. See ya.

SPEAKER_01 31:35

And that's a wrap on this episode of Hair First. Thanks for hanging out with us. We hope you laughed, learned, and maybe felt a little more safe through all the good hair days and the hot best ones too.

SPEAKER_04 31:46

Remember, we're just sharing our own thoughts and experiences. No medical plans or professional advice here. Just real talk from stylists and moms who get it.

SPEAKER_03 31:54

Don't forget to follow, subscribe, and share hair first with your fellow beauty lovers and boss moms. We will catch you next time with more stories, laughs, and probably a little conditioner in our hair.