Who's the Expert?

As two professionals in the skincare space, on this episode of Divine Skintervention Ramon and Angelo dare to ask: WHO really is the expert? Education and experience in the industry can look very different across different sectors in skincare and cosmetics, so when it comes to being an “expert”, who can really say that and what does that even mean?

Ramón
https://www.instagram.com/glowbyramon/
https://www.tiktok.com/@glowbyramon
https://www.youtube.com/glowbyramon

Angelo
https://www.instagram.com/dermangelo
https://www.tiktok.com/@dermangelo
https://www.youtube.com/dermangelo

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hi Angelo. Hi Ramon. We've been doing this, not the podcast, but content creating for a minute now.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Mm-hmm. Yeah, more than a minute.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

More than a minute.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

More like six, seven, seven years for me.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Six. Angelo is older. But for you, having done so much and achieved so many things, for you, what will be the signifier of I've made it?

SPEAKER_01 0:27

I don't think there is one. I think that's what I've realized as time goes by. Part of it is that the landscape has changed and things change all the time. In the beginning, I was just literally writing a blog and trying to promote it so that people would read it. And the goal was just to give people better information. Obviously, it's grown a lot since then and become something different, but I do get glimpses of I don't know, the difference that I've made for people in the comments. I'll always be like, I wear sunscreen every day because of you. I followed your tips, and now I'm so much happier with my skin. I learned so much. Uh, I love your content because you know, you're always teaching me something new. So I feel like that is really part of the achievement for me. More than getting a lot of views, having the most followers, doing the brand deals. I mean, it's allowed me to also live a pretty flexible life, to balance out my career with a lot of different things, to launch my own brand. To be a mother. To be a mother to my child. So I don't know. I've already made it. I tend not to have huge goals. That's the thing. It's like I have a lot of small attainable goals, but I don't think I'll ever have made it until I make it to the grave.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Oh, that's such a wholesome answer. How about you? Bring us back down to Earth. Um Brazilian fan club. Brazilian fan club! For me, it's you know you made it when you got like fan pages forums in Brazil. Brazil mention. Um, no, for me, that's like the pinnacle of like success.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

I never thought about that, but uh a while ago I did say in my five-year goals was uh somebody making a fan cam of me. Which somebody did. That's funny. Recently. Recently.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

I'm asking if you're watching this, please make a fan cam of me. I am begging at this point.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Both of those things, please. I also wanted to become a meme.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Oh, I feel some people tried that with some of my videos, my formulation videos. I lived. Um, yeah, basically, it's just like existing in the internet sphere. It's again to Angelo's kind of point, less wholesome, is the reach that you have and the influence you have on people, but more so it's entering the cultural zeitgeist. Like, how how wide can you cast that net outside of the immediate community you're a part of? Yeah, for me, it's Brazil. And I if I can bring it back a little bit more wholesome, it's in our world's science, um, Brazil is a huge hub in Latin America for formulation, for innovation. Fun fact: Brazil is a really big hub for hair care innovation because Brazil has some of the most diverse communities of people and hair types. Um, so to be able to go down to Brazil and really see that be a part of that uh development innovation, that would be really, really cool. But also just to go down to Brazil and yeah, Brazilian um fans, if you're watching, obedial.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

It's well, okay, to your point, Brazil is also a hub of scientific innovation and research, too. I've collaborated with research groups from Brazil several times, and also when it comes to skin, to your point about the diversity, uh, the diversity of skin tones there leads them to uh kind of lead when it comes to some skin of color research.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

So don't discount Brazil, and as two Latina icons right here, we recognize Brazil as a Latina sister, hermanas. I know how to say that in Portuguese, sorry. Question for you. Yes. What is a skincare expert to you?

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Oh, uh you don't that's a difficult question because how do you have no answer? Yeah, like how do you define skincare? I think within the realm of skin, beauty, cosmetics, dermatology, formulation, it's like there's so many different uh, you know, vocations, areas within it, expertise that I don't think that there's any one definition of like this person is a skincare expert. I quite often think that also that's just making me think about an era of social media and YouTube or whatever, where people were proclaiming themselves skincare experts because they worked in retail or they worked for a brand or something like that. And I don't think that that necessarily makes somebody an expert.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Would you consider yourself a skincare expert? Absolutely. Oh, see, for me, I would be I would be like honestly like humble to say like I don't want to consider myself a skincare expert just because it's like I know formulation and I know formulation for a bunch of different product categories. I can speak to marketing claims, but when it comes to like crossing into your field of things, there are certain conditions and associated treatments and remedies like I I couldn't actually speak to. On top of that, when it comes to like aesthetic like uh treatment, like the devices and all that, I got trained, I might not I actually got like I went to aesthetician school. So I got some training on a specific subset of devices, but like I wouldn't consider myself an expert in that either.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Yeah, but would you consider that skincare, like the cosmetic dermatology of it all? Uh okay, maybe not. So yeah, it's like that's why I'm saying it's it's hard to draw the line somewhere. The reason why I say I would call myself an expert is like I completed a dermatology residency. I'm board certified in dermatology, I've had like thousands of patients. I have touched skin. A lot of the time, people I have also touched skin. People love to get up on the internet and give advice, but it's like if the only skin you've ever touched is yours, I don't think that that necessarily makes you an expert or put you in the position to start giving people advice because I cleared my acne. Like, come on. So, um, and in addition to that, to your point about devices, injectables, medications, and then even when it comes to cosmetics, I have worked in the industry and to some degree as well, one as a content creator, and I've tried thousands of products, but also product development. Product development, which stay tuned. I mean, uh, by the time this comes out, you probably will have seen it, but I've been teasing it for a while, like you know, helping to how many years in the making? Five. So, and it's it's here, and I think it's as close to damn perfect as we could get it. So, yeah, in that sense, I believe I am an expert.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

I'm humble. So I always say, you know what, there's always more for me to learn, but it's like one of those things where you have literally all your schooling, all your experience, all your work. I have a bachelor's and master's degree in cosmetic science, which involves every aspect of the cosmetic industry behind the scenes, beyond just formulation itself, actually. Um, I've also worked retail. I told you I did aesthetician school. And those are different certifications or different things I've done. There's no skincare expert licensing certification degree. So whenever I see that, it makes me think like, who gets to be an expert? Who said you could be the expert? Exactly. Especially in I don't want no shade. But if your experience starts and ends in a retail environment, what does that mean? Yeah. You can sell Clinique real good, probably no shade to Clinique.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

We love Clinique, but yeah, I think one of the issues that often comes up with skincare education is how much of it is coming from brands. So in a retail environment, and I think this came up in the past when we were talking about retailers on another episode. Brands have to provide education to the people who are on the sales floor for them to be able to talk about the product.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

And at the end of the day, it always comes back to still being marketing though, because you want to sell the product. So sometimes what gets taught to the retail uh team oftentimes is a variation of the truth. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

So to say. It's marketing. And I think unfortunately, not to shit on aestheticians, but there have been a lot in our comments disagreeing with us about medical grade, clinical grade claims. And I'm sure nine times out of ten, those aestheticians got a lot of their education via brands. I think this is an issue when it comes to aesthetician training. It's that a lot of the programs have branded training. And because of that, they're basically spouting off marketing. There are certain brands, like for instance, uh Skin Better? No? Skin Better, not as much, but uh face reality. They give a course and then afterwards, aestheticians start calling themselves acne specialists. Acne is a medical condition. Even dermatologists, we do not call ourselves acne specialists. And it is the most common skin disorder. But as somebody who is not a medical professional, I think it is misleading of this brand to tell people that they are now an acne specialist and they are a specialist in this medical condition. In addition to that, yeah, these spa brands that are going to say they're medical grade, if that's what they're teaching these aestheticians, that's what they're gonna be parroting. Or even brands like ZO that have very ridiculous claims about their products and how things should work and a skincare philosophy that doesn't make any damn sense, where if that aesthetician is trained in a program where ZO provides their textbook and a lot of their education, that's what they're gonna be spouting off too. And I've had new aestheticians come at me online being like, Well, I heard this from a dermatologist, meaning they read Xenobaji's textbook, which is full of shit.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

It's like the Scientology of skincare, if we're being honest.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Actually, yeah. Just to tell you, what I'm on about with Zio is that they say that moisturizer makes the skin weak. You should not be moisturizing, you should be hydrating. And they sell a product called an active hydrator, which is you guessed it, a moisturizer.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

All hydration is is just increasing the water content in the skin. Yeah. And moisturizing and hydrating are basically the same thing. So Yeah. For me, it's having gone through the training and this as a chemist, and I did my acidation training after I already started uh cosmetic science in this um that side of the industry. And this is where sometimes I'm critical of dermatologists as well. And it comes down to the learning material is often outdated or just wrong. And a really good example is we go back, um, we go back to the chemical sunscreens absorb, physical sunscreens reflect, like that kind of basic training. But also, I remember did my aesthetician course and I ended up having to like essentially do uh a master class on like skincare ingredients. Really? Because the course didn't really like have a really good here's what niacinamite is and what it can do, here's what vitamin C is and what it can do. There was no good ingredient-based training for the girls in this course, which is really unfortunate.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Yeah, I think no matter where the education is from or like what pathway, nothing can cover everything. So I think part of being an expert too is having a dedication to continue learning and not just be like, hey, I got my certificate and now I'm done.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

I know a lot of aestheticians who reach out to me regularly, ask me a lot of questions, they ask for the resources because they do want to better their understanding, especially of ingredients and formulations. So this is not to say like all aestheticians have this specific, like marketing-focused rhetoric that they uh platform and they preach. There are aestheticians who actually are continuously learning and want to better, because they do understand, like, oh, what we were taught was not the tea. It's unfortunate when then like that information does get platformed. There's one instance, this is back when I first started content creating. There's a really big creator, and I'm not gonna say the name because they're notorious for blocking people, but I remember they did an ad for the Biosons mineral sunscreen when it first launched, spouting all this misinformation. And the unfortunate reality too was it's a mineral sunscreen that had horrible marketing, horrible white cast, and this was the black creator, and she wasn't putting on enough of the products, and she was saying all these incorrect things about sunscreens, mineral sunscreens, how they perform. And I was in the comments like, I love you as a chemist who works in formulation. Like, unfortunately, some of these things aren't true. And this creator was like, Well, that's what my esthetician she said, that's what my esthetician told me, and I trust her more than I trust you. So I'm gonna go with what she says. And I was like, I'm like, okay, girl, it's wrong, but okay, girl, don't block me.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Yeah, no, I think that sometimes there are a lot of aestheticians in my following that are constantly like being like, I love learning from you, I love learning new things, you know. Oh, maybe this is something that I could bring my clients. Like, it's I think that there are a lot of people doing a lot of good out there, and that's why it seems like the education is just really uneven because some of them seem like they've been indoctrinated by brands, and others are more like open-minded and developing their own philosophy and thinking for themselves. But even outside of aestheticians, I think it's important to know what you don't know and know when you don't know something. Like, I don't know everything. Quite often, there are things that I have to read up on and look up, or even, you know, in my medical practice, I'm constantly updating on new treatments, new medications, new devices, new so it's like you you have to keep learning, um, no matter what stage you're at. And I'm sure even when it comes to, you know, cosmetic science, it's like there's gonna be new stuff brought to market constantly. New laws, new laws, new regulations, new regulations.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

I mean, even when I got to the studio today with Angelo, he taught me something completely new about like potential skin can uh skin cancer treatments with blue light that I wasn't aware of. So we're always learning, we're always the the goal with bettering yourself is always to want to continuously learn what's the new innovations, how is the industry like moving forward, changing, shifting? The rise of social media though kind of I feel like inhibits the overall movement forward because you have a lot of people with platforms constantly spewing misinformation, going back to like who gets to be the expert. When we actively work and specialize in a skincare cosmetic focused part of the industry, what is your opinion on people who are doctors but don't work in dermatology? Talking about skin conditions, skincare.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

I mean, it depends on what it is that they do because there is some overlap when it comes to things like internal medicine. Um but to me, if you're going around saying, Yeah, I have an MD, but you're not a derm, but all you talk about is skin and skincare, I feel like that's a little misleading. Or even people who are just calling themselves doctor, and you know, this is more when it comes to health overall, and they're a chiropractor, but you have to dig and dig to find out that that's that's the deal. Um, even there's there's one creator on TikTok who just does a ton of TikTok shop videos, and she's like, I'm a cancer researcher, and buy this supplement. I'm like, okay, a cancer researcher, you could be the lowest person in the lab and have not even a bachelor's and call yourself a researcher, and you're out here giving people health advice when even in your scientific capacity, you would never do that. So I think a lot of it is misleading. In addition to that, you know, one thing that comes up a lot is yeah, a lot of people put trust in these figures online because they develop a parasocial relationship with them. And I just want to be clear, this is not your friend. Even if it was your friend, uh, they're not an expert in everything. And having a large number of followers is not a qualification for any of this.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

A lot of these people are just wrong. For me, it's the there's okay, there's the white coat bias, which I mean, I wear white coats in content. Sometimes I'm in the lab, so I kind of have to wear my white coat. But that visual already does something for people being like, oh, I trust this individual. For me, it's when like my platforms to educate and to uplift. I find that some people kind of use it to grift, and part of that is like the overscientification of it, and kind of like, oh, this ingredient does this, which uh causes an uptick in this biomarker and which means this. And I'm like, you're doing too much. It's a toner, it's just gonna hydrate. Like, you don't have to overcomplicate this because realistically it's a cosmetic. So also all these different things you're talking about, I think it's outside of the scope of what this product actually is going to achieve for people.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

A lot of it's mental gymnastics.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

It's like you're doing too much to prove a point that you you shouldn't even be trying to prove in the first place. And it's one of those, like the loudest person in the room generally always has the most to prove.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

So just as a loud person, I resent that.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

But you're not like you're not shrill. My thing is like, thank you. The people who are constantly like, oh my gosh, you can tell like they're crashing out five videos a day on the same exact topic. They're basically screaming in the video, and it's like, girl, it's not that deep. There's war in this world. This specific thing on exosomes right now, like, you don't gotta, it's good. It's chill, girl.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Yeah, we we don't have to be fighting over skincare ingredients necessarily. Also, I think one thing that people don't understand is that experts could disagree on things. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Even sorry, that was like really skin the D. I love IKEA. Um, no, a lot, even in like the science, like uh sci- what am I trying to say? The cosmetic chemist community, a lot of us have differing opinions on like pretty big things. Like, for example, unfortunately, I'm a big proponent of for reapplication, particularly, if all you have is a mist, I'd rather you use that mist and not reapply it all. Or I don't hate a sunset. If it's a matter of reappl of reapplying it and you're using it generously. And those are opinions that some people in the community don't have. And that's great. But I'm one of those where I'm like, I'd rather you do something than nothing kind of things. Yeah. It's not as black and white to me.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Yeah. Um, I think this is something that comes up a lot is like reapplication over makeup or what have you. You did a really good video on how to use like more of a liquidy sunscreen and apply over makeup. But in my clinical practice, I will tell patients, hey, that spray that you're doing over your face, that's not enough. It's not enough. But if it's all that you're gonna do, it's better than nothing. As long as people are informed that they're not getting the listed SPF, like if they're gonna tell me there's no other way that they're gonna reapply, I'll be like, use the spray. There's probably some sort of a small benefit to it. Even with the sun sticks, another thing. I don't understand why people are so and maybe you could inform me on your take on this, but like while why people are like, oh, this method is fine for reapplication. Even the sticks, people are like, oh, for reapplication. And I'm like, you have to assume that you're starting at square one. I know that people are like, oh, we're gonna try to fill in the holes of the film, but testing doesn't work like that. And also it's a different product that you're putting on if you're just reapplying with the stick.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

So I think part of it's like the liability of the you can't guarantee the full application and the full deposition of the sun's stick. Whereas with the lotion, there is a level of compliance and guarantee of even now. Distribution, film formation. So I think part of it is kind of liability of this is better for reapplication, in that I can't guarantee you're gonna get enough to achieve the advertised SPF if you use this as an initial application. So I think that's like the one, like I'm not gonna make a false promise, therefore, this is a safer statement to say. But again, part of me is like meet people where they're at. And the average consumer, I'm sorry, like they're not well informed on sun care and sun safety measures and all these things. So I'm like, if I can at least get you to wear any form of sun protection, that's a win in my book. And for full transparency, like I did launch a sunscreen with Beauty of Joe Sun like a few years back. And part of that development process was ensuring with four to five swipes, enough of that product was depositing and adhering to the skin. And I've gotten a lot of people say, like, because of your sunshine, my husband actually enjoyed wearing sunscreen for the first time. And I'm like, ugh, that is a win in my book. And I can fully tell you, like, actually, objectively, they're probably not getting enough product, but that is still better than nothing. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So it's like meet people where they're at.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Yeah. Yeah. And this is why opinions differ. Yeah. I've had people come into my comments being like, well, this other dermatologist said this, and you said this. And I said, we can interpret the data differently. We could have different opinions on stuff. Not everything is black and white. However, if most of a field of people are saying one thing, the majority of the time the one naysayer is probably gonna be wrong.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Big sunscreen is behind this.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

Big suck big sunscreen. Or like, I don't know. Big recently was big moisturizer, big petrolatum.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Wait, what happened with that?

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Um, a derm went online and made a video saying that like all these occlusive ingredients like petrolatum or like dimethicone or whatever, like if that's what your moisturizer is made out of, it's no good. She sells, she has a product line. And I basically made a response video saying those are occlusives and basically explaining what they do in moisturizers because she had left a comment saying that these don't provide nutrients to the skin. Nutrients and skincare, that makes no sense. Nutrients are for nutrition. Um, I basically said, you know, talked about occlusion and how occlusive ingredients uh contribute to moisturizers. She made some sort of response video to that, being like, well, like I'm not anti antipetrolanum, I'm not. But like I think sometimes that's the issue with I don't know, just like being an edgelord and putting out statements that are are just like intentionally provocative and short. You can't explain yourself. And if I remember correctly, the her response video was like way more even and like made more sense. So I'm like, yeah, sometimes you need to elaborate on stuff.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

With content, sometimes there's like a lack of nuance, and you can't elaborate fully on a point if you're only given three minutes. But it goes back to sometimes it's like It was 10 seconds. Like you can only say so much in 10 seconds, but it goes back to like the if you don't understand again the different components of a moisturizer, or how an emulsion breaks when it's spread, or how you can have lipophilic or hydrophilic actives, which maybe that's what she means by nutrients. I don't know. It's one of those things where I'm like, maybe you just focus on like the dermatology.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

I've yeah, I've not tried her product line. Um and I don't think I'm gonna be on the PR list now.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Boo-hoo.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Like, did I go a little too hard?

SPEAKER_00 25:58

No. I didn't name names. People want the drama. They do. That's the other thing. People saying that we're doing a lot of the things we say is like sound bites to like get engagement. But I'm like going back to the what's it, the clinical grade, medical grade. Ascorbic acid is ascorbic acid. Ferulic acid is ferulic acid. So when you're saying, basically, when it comes to two products that have the exact same inky list, but one of them is medical grade, it's nothing's different about that. It's the exact same formulation, it's or more or less, it's the exact same type of active. There's not a separate grade of ascorbic acid, um, especially if they're the same percentage.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

What do you say to people who are talking about like the delivery system and all this?

SPEAKER_00 26:34

I mean, delivery system that warrants a higher price point just because A, that is a new technology, or that in itself could cost more because it's an actual ingredient technology, an ingredient complex. But um, a really good example of this, if I can like name products, is Geek and Gorgeous has a peptide serum. And people recommended it to me because they're like it's super affordable and it has a specific complex. They actually um are very transparent about what actives, what complexes they feature. One of the complexes features a specific drone technology delivery system. So it delivers the peptides where it needs to go. Um, I got recommended that because I talked about the educated mess freeze frame peptide serum. And the main difference between those two is a big price point difference. Geek and Gorgeous is like less than $10. Educated mess is like $95. The educated mess one has three different delivery systems for the peptides. So it does warrant a higher price point. But we're also looking at the fact that they're both indie brands, they have different marketing budgets, they have different brand strategies. A lot of the chemists talk about Geek and Gorgeous because we're like, we don't know how they're making money because the margins on those products have to be so low. As a brand, I always come back to like people talk about brand pricing. I'm like, you might not have taken business 101, but to have a successful business, you have to have margins to actually make money off the products. So some of these delivery systems cost a lot of money, correct? And then how the products themselves are priced is a whole different thing. So that can warrant a price point, but I'm just talking about when it came to that, there's no different grade of ingredients between your regular cosmetic and a medical grade unless it's a prescription, like an actual OTC product. And people kind of took that initially and just ran with it.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

I think also our point was that label means nothing. We're not saying that um, you know, no product warrants a higher price point and that everything should be dirt cheap. That is not what was said. We were just like, this is a marketing term. It doesn't mean that these brands can do anything that other brands can't do. And you have brands that make expensive, nice product that are not calling themselves medical grade, clinical grade, any of that stuff because that's just not their business model.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

To me, medical grade is a is a marketing model.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

Correct. And against and unless you are a prescription product, you should not be calling yourself medical grade. Going back to the different uh pricing points, though, for those two products as well. Educated mess had to do clinicals, which costs an obscene amount of money. So they're also trying to recoup the investment of that as well. Geeking Gorgeous wasn't able to do that, or they haven't done clinicals for their products, thus another reason to have a lower price point. But yeah, to Angela's point, their medical grade is just smoke and mirrors of that's why we charge more for this product. But realistically, you can still be a cosmetic product and have a delivery system. Sometimes a delivery system is something as simple as this one ingredient makes the other ingredients penetrate a little bit better through the skin. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

Yeah, I mean, even thinking about running a sort of medical grade business, think about why you might have to increase the price on things if you need to provide better packaging. You need to hire reps in every region.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

People don't realize if you have people on the ground actively educating, promoting, pushing your product, those are people's salaries you have to pay.

SPEAKER_01 29:57

Yeah. And your distribution, say, oh, we only sell through spas. There's more ultas, I think, in the US at least, than there are spas. So the access point for the customer is rarer. You're you have access to less people. So of course you're gonna increase the price.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

And before y'all are like, oh, Saravi's deep in your pocket. First of all, I'm Saravi's biggest hater. Um, we recommend products across all different price points, different product categories. So it's not like we're just trying to promote only buy the cheap products, only buy these structure products. We're just saying understand the pricing of certain things and understand the marketing is just that it's marketing.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

Yeah, I love me some skin pseudocals. They sell in spas a lot, but you know, I would never say, oh, this is medical grade.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

Also, I like Obaji's products, a handful of Obaji products. I think they do like something really interesting. Fun fact, Obaji and ZO are different entities altogether. And Obaji's like, we don't know her.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

Yeah, she sold a long time ago. Um, yeah, even like I like some of the skin better products. Yeah, like a lot of these brands, uh, Skin Medica, it's like the products are good. I'm not saying they're bad.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

It's just it's marketing at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

And some of y'all in the comments are tripping over yourselves trying to explain formulation to Ramon.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

My thing is also like, so my first intro to Skin Better was they have the alphabet, right? Yeah. And people being like, oh, it's literally a stretinoin and lactic acid and blah blah blah blah. And I'm like, you know, like all the retinoids, it's the retinoic acid base with a functional group attached to it. And they all technically all conjugate to become retinoic acid. So it's not like the Skin Better, it's a new technology. Yeah, it's a really interesting concept, but it's not like they it's retinoic acid and lactic acid. It's like it's a retinoid.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

It's not tretinoin. It's not tritinoin. That would be illegal.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

And that is the point people try to make so much as to like warranting the price point and all that stuff. That's a L'Oreal company, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:05

Was it all as of a few years ago, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

Okay, because I'm like, L'Oreal is always innovating, they're always doing something behind the scenes. But what's crazy to me is they'll launch a technology. And what's really funny, fun fact about L'Oreal is L'Oreal as a conglomerate exists. Someone behind the scenes creates a technology and then they will sell it to the individual sub-brands. And as an umbrella company, they make the brands compete with each other, which I think is actually kind of crazy. Um, well, that's why you'll see like specific technologies kind of disseminated throughout some of the L'Oreal brands as a base, and then they will accent it with other things or very similar textures amongst the products. You see it a lot with like the Sun care formulations in Europe between La Roche-Pose, Umbre Solaire from Garnier, Lancome, and what that's.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

I was like, anybody who loudly calls themselves an expert, uh, be cautious. But at the beginning of this episode, you were like, I'm an expert. I am an expert.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

Going back to you're not that loud.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Yeah. But I think have a little humility, maybe, and realize when you don't know something or how to keep learning. I think a lot of the expertise comes from being able to take in and process information and perform like uh create a coherent uh sort of uh opinion on things and not just parrot.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

For me, is I have a lot more respect for a professional if there is a level of maybe I could be wrong and maybe let me reassess why I think this and what this person is telling me. I've been wrong. I've definitely been wrong before, and I think it takes a big person to assess or reassess and be like, oh shit, let me let me course correct here. And that's the thing is there's people that are online constantly fighting with either of us, and I'm like, you don't specialize in this. Like, assess who it is that is critiquing you and be like, oh, they're actually an expert in this, or actually do a lot more work in this than I do. Maybe I should listen to them, maybe have a little bit of that humility. My biggest thing is ego is the downfall of a lot of people. Be humble, sit down, be humble.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

Sit down, yes.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

I'm sad.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

I I think, yeah. Another thing that comes up for me quite often is being able to say when I don't know something, or if there's not an evidence-based answer to something. Quite often people will ask me questions online, and I'm like, hey, there's no evidence-based answer to this. Or, you know, maybe I could opine on it, but there's no data about it, or something like that. So knowing that your knowledge is not everything and like where your blind spots are, or yeah, just like uh I think one of the main things that I learned in medical school that I've taken with me through life is like learning how to say when you don't know something. It's easy.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

It really is. Like, you know what? Maybe I don't know enough about that. Let me let me come back to you real quick.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

Yeah. Like these people are always like, that's a great question. About every question.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

That's a great question. Let's look into that. Let's research mamas. Um that being said, full disclaimer, we love aestheticians. We love derms. Yeah, we love chemists.

SPEAKER_01 35:41

And we love you. Thank you for listening, guys.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

In the comments section, what should they comment this episode?

SPEAKER_01 35:48

They should comment what they think an expert is or tag your favorite experts.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Tag your favorite experts. I love increasing the community, growing the community. I love showing love to people.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

Yeah, like put them on blast so other people could discover them.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Exactly. Support your favorite expert by listening to this podcast and leaving a review. Yes. Bye. Bye.