This is the Art Beauty podcast where we tell the real truth about the fake shit. Hi, everybody, I'm Amber. And today my fabulous co-host is Michal Morrison. She is the founder of Michal Morrison and we are talking about this incredible product that she has called Genesis. This is based on an incredibly new high tech patented metal molecule. We'll be talking all about that. But before we get into the size of the party, you talked so nerdy to me as I like to say, welcome to the show, Michal.
Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here. Oh, I love having you. You know, I want to jump right into this because when I was reading about your background, it was really kind of interesting. You started as an archeologist. I did. It's not the typical path to beauty entrepreneurship as it. No, but can you tell us how did you go from archeology to beauty? Sure. It's just a pretty different story, not the typical entrepreneurship story, that's for sure.
So I was in college when I first decided that I wanted to get into archeology and was really fortunate to have a kind of professor make some room for me on an archeological excavation to create. And so I got to have my first experience. I was 20 or 21 years old and getting to go to go to Greece by myself without my family for the first time and have this incredible research based experience. And that's when I found that I really have a real love for science.
And research is really interesting to me, and it just went from there. So I ended up working in places like the United Arab Emirates. I worked in Puerto Rico, I've worked in Alaska, Turkey, Italy, Ireland, all over the place. So it's been a real pleasure. I got to spend my twenties doing that.
Okay. I've got to tell you, because I love watching like anything on the Discovery Network, whenever I see these shows on ancient civilizations, I've been to Greece, which is insane to be walking through, you know, these ruins and that have sort of some of them have been restored and some of them haven't. It's just an incredible thing. I mean, you must have some great stories. Was there anything that you ever like like did you discover anything?
Were you on any of these digs where like dinosaur bones was found or something like that? You know, there's always really interesting things everywhere that you go. The Emirates were full of fascinating objects. You know, we found gold jewelry that used to be worn by women. Women have been adorning themselves for thousands of years.
And it felt, you know, gives you a real kinship with people who lived a long time ago to find things that really humanize people that they lived a really long time ago. But still, I don't think we've actually changed all that much. People still want a lot of the same things. They want to be surrounded by love. They need safety in the world. And also there's a real appreciation for beauty. And so being able to see that and feel connected to women from thousands of years ago was really beautiful.
I also have a real interest in Assyrian sex, and so one of my favorite times, yeah, in the archeological record is when people went from just having to survive to having a little bit of extra time on their hands where they got to make things that were also beautiful, moving from the functional to functional plus esthetic. And so people's creativity and it's joyful.
It's joyful to see actually in Minoan culture on the island of Crete, there's adorable pottery that's made in the shape of birds and hedgehogs, and they have painting all over their pottery of animals from the sea. And it's just precious. It's so much fun to study.
You know, it's funny when you were saying that before, I have a friend who bought a property in Ibiza, and she they were digging up, they were doing some renovations and they found like a what do you call like a pitcher dug up that they're pretty sure was some sort of, you know, but it was old and kind of reading my words today. But I was like, wow, cool. So you being interested in pottery? Like what? What a cool thing.
Yeah. I've been really fortunate to be able to spend a lot of my a lot of my time doing that. But in terms of your question too, about getting back to entrepreneurship, I was at home actually in Austin, where I'm from. I was born here. It's becoming more and more rare these days to meet someone who lives in Austin. He was actually born there, right? I had a big interruption in life. I was in a really bad accident here in Austin and had a severe traumatic brain injury.
And so I spent a year on bedrest and several years after that, almost full time and cognitive and physical therapy, I had severe aphasia and lost all my childhood memories and really had to work extremely hard to find the right doctors for me, neurological care. That was up to date, honestly as well. I was told a lot of outdated medicine.
And so again, I've really benefited from innovative research, which is one of the reasons why I'm so excited about what we're doing with skin care is once I found the right doctor who believed in neuroplasticity, believe it or not, I didn't hear that word for the first 14 months or so after my accident. So all that to say, I went from a really intense lifestyle of living all over the world in remote locations, no access to health care.
You know, it's really hard on your body to okay, I've had a traumatic brain injury. I was able to make a significant recovery, but I still have day to day issues that I have to deal with. Archeology probably doesn't fit that.
And, you know, moving into applying for jobs for the first time as a disabled person, that was such an eye opener to me about the kinds of barriers that are still in place for people who have health conditions, whether they're chronically ill or they have a disability that they were born with or that was acquired the way that I had an acquired TBI. And so I just had some really negative experiences around that.
And that's what funneled me toward entrepreneurship, is I want to create an environment that works for me that I get to control a little bit more of my schedule, have a say about company culture, and hopefully hire other people who've had similar situations. I mean, that is incredible.
You know, before we move on to, you know, the beauty part of this, can you just enlighten us a little bit about what that experience was like for you as somebody who had a traumatic brain injury trying to apply for jobs? Sure. It's you know, it's a really emotional process to recover from a TBI. It changes you as a person quite a bit. I was fortunate that my actual personality didn't change, but I had know a lot more to deal with in terms of my health.
And so thinking about the traditional workplace, traditional workplaces are not set up to be accessible to everyone, but a lot of people actually don't want to hire disabled people, even if they would never say that in practice, that's what ends up happening. So I, I know a lot of other people in the disability community who are either underemployed chronically. They work part time because they can't get a full time job.
People who might pay for their benefits because they're expensive since or they're just unemployed and they can't find somebody to take them seriously. And that's what I experienced is, okay, so you've had a brain injury. Can you even do this job? And I got to the point where, yeah, I can and now I have value that I can bring that I didn't have before. I have a new lived experience. I know how to make a better product.
I know how to communicate with more empathy and authenticity than I did before. That's valuable to companies that are like hundreds of thousands of people who have disabilities in the United States who are unemployed. And they should be picked up like that because they have these skill sets and a perspective that would be invaluable to companies.
So I definitely experience that in the application process, and that's difficult for a disabled people to figure out as well is do I disclose my disability at all? And if I do, when? Because is this a safe person who will, one, have compassion and to like follow the ADA that there's laws in place that should be protecting us and it doesn't always function that way, unfortunately. Wow. I mean, that's got to be so tough. And I know, you know, having done many job applications, they do have that.
But do you have a disability, which I guess that would be really challenging if you do to have to make that decision. Do I admit this? Do I not? When do I tell them? Just adds a whole other layer of complexity onto the already challenging process of going through interviews and applications? Thank you for like kind of filling that in on that for people who might not have experienced that or know anybody who has. So. So now, how did you then work on funding?
Because you've got some incredible science behind this Genesis product, and I definitely want to get into culture. How how were you introduced to that? I assume that through your recovery and dealing with you said great doctors talking about neuroplasticity. You must have had insight into, wow, there's things going on in the body that were not, you know, maybe the regular public isn't even aware of.
Yeah, and that's definitely the case with stem cell science, is it takes a long time for things to go from a lab where researchers are working on things that trickle down into everyday science. And that's what I experience with my TBI. I was told, stay in a dark room, sleep as much as you want, or whatever your body is telling you to do. And that's old news. I almost slept for a year and I needed to do the opposite of that to recover.
So once I got the right science, absolutely everything changed. For me. It was excruciating to go from barely being able to function at all, not being able to hold a conversation, much less like make a new memory and hold on to the realities of life around me to okay, we got to kick it into high gear and really push yourself in order to recover from a brain injury. But I'm so grateful that I did find the right doctor. I went up to Pittsburgh.
Actually, they have a sports concussion program at UPMC that I really do credit with my recovery. So yeah, once you get good science, it really does change everything. It sure does. And thank you again for sharing this. I mean, to me, you know, for lack of a better term, this is mind blowing because you are so eloquent, you would never be able to tell that you're somebody who who had to sleep for essentially a year. And that's going to be so challenging. And relationships on everything.
So thank you for sharing that with us. So so what was that aha moment and how did you get in touch with a doctor who had been working on this beta stem six? Right. So that's Dr. Michael Khan, who's the progenitor of all this amazing science. I feel really lucky to work with him. So 2020, you know, March 2020 came around. Everybody was locked down in their homes. And it really struck me, as you know, I've had such a bad experience applying for jobs to work for other people.
Maybe this is my time to start my own company and then I get to be in the driver's seat. It was a big mindset switch for me, and so I jumped in by doing about six months of research about the industry prior to coming in. You know, of course I don't have a background in beauty, and that's becoming more and more common for beauty nerds to come from really varied backgrounds and I definitely fit that category as well.
And so during that six months of time, I was introduced to Mr. Paul Primo, who who's my acting CEO of the company right now. He has decades of experience in personal care, pharmaceuticals, luxury, beauty, fashion, like you name it, he's done it. He's really a titan of the industry and has helped a lot of entrepreneurs get their companies up and off the ground. And the minute I met him, I knew I need to work with Paul. This is a game changer for us.
And he introduced me to Dr. Michael Kahn. So that's how that came about. Dr. Kahn has been working on this for 25 years, and it actually started in cancer research. He and some colleagues were looking for a cure to colorectal cancer, and it has happened so often in science and in research that you go looking for one thing, asking one question, you end up with hundreds of other questions and you find all of this other amazing stuff.
So that's where our research came from, is that 25 years of foundational research in stem cell medicine. Great. So now tell us a little bit about this beta stem six. It's a meta molecule. Okay. Okay. Tell us a little bit about what the science is behind that. Sure. So just some basic information about skin is that when we're born, our skin has an ability on the cellular level to self rejuvenate, but over time, that ability diminishes.
So I think about it sort of like a dimmer on a light switch as it starts to go down a little by little, and that activity within your cells goes down. And that's when the aging process really starts to accelerate and people start to see visible signs of aging. So beta STEM six is a biotechnological breakthrough based on that research from Dr. Michael Kahn that reverses that process and incorporates cells again into the process of getting rid of damage that's been accumulating over time.
So you end up with skin with really significant longevity. After that process had been turned off beta, some six turns out back on skins, our skin cells are recruited again. It's the process of erasing damage and across the board the results are remarkable. Okay, so tell us about some of the results that you're seeing with this, because I did go on your website and the before and afters are beautiful. Thank you. I appreciate that.
So we decided to invest in doing a clinical study with Dr. Zoe Trehalose from Duke University. She's one of the top research dermatologists in the United States trying to work with the very best of the best across the board on this venture. So we did an eight week study and of course, we're really working hard at R&D, So we're introducing another study in the next couple of months to study out to 16 weeks.
But even at the four week mark, we had people in our clinical study that started noticing results that if you use something like a tretinoin or retinol can take six months to a year to see. And that's one of the really powerful things about this, is that a STEM six is not inflammatory, by the way, that retinoids. And so for people with really sensitive skin like myself, I have rosacea and melasma and a variety of other things that make me really sensitive to an inflammatory response.
This doesn't cause that at all. So all skin types are safe with this. And at the eight week mark, people start to see an increase in luminosity. Skin laxity is decreased, which is really exciting. That's a really tough thing to tackle, especially around the neck area. A lot of people have concerns about that as they age. We had some people who had really good results with that fine lines and dark spots. Even so, this isn't just targeting one sign of visible aging.
It's targeting a lot of them and one false, you know. I notice. So I always look at before and after and hypocritically. So one of the things that I look is like, does the eye color match? Right? Because I you know, we know that things can be manipulative in this day and age. You can really doctor photos, even though I know that you're not supposed to. But I always look for that. I can't match yours a perfect.
And one of the other things I notice, in addition to the skin being brighter and just looking better, a lot of the redness seemed to be lessened. Is that something that you feel like is is is is happening with this product? So we've gotten a lot of feedback from people who have flushed skin or rosacea. You know, we didn't test on rosacea specifically and we are selling this as a cosmetic and not a medication. And so technically rosacea is a medical condition.
So that's not something that we're making claims about. I don't want to overstate the line with that, but a lot of people who've had very flushed skin have had great results where that redness is brought back down, which is great news for me, because the minute I step outside in the Texas sun or Heaven, I have a hollow piano. It's game over over here. Oh, I hear you. I hear it's in the wind. The wind here.
Although it's been a mild winter in New York City, you know, that dryness that the cold air can really wreak havoc on the skin. You know, I'm also interested in I want to point out, you know, one of the other things I loved about your product and that I noticed immediately is that the packaging has Braille on it, which I don't know if we can see here. And now that makes so much sense that you are really looking out for people with disabilities.
I think it's the first packaging and a beauty in the beauty space that I've seen that has Braille on it. And you know, I've seen it on a few products, not all of them, but a few on La Roche-posay and I think a brand or two in Europe. And you know, I never had trouble with my sight after my TBI, but that really opened my eyes to wow, brains are not made with disabled people in mind. Stores aren't really designed for people who have disabilities to navigate and be really engaged.
And I want to make this a more accessible brand. I know that there are people who are waiting to feel included and like someone cares about them and that they're welcome into the community. And that's really important to me because having a disability, particularly in the United States, can be very lonely. You know, I'm going to encourage everybody right now. We did a fabulous podcast with a woman who works with sight impaired people to help them apply makeup, to help them do their hair.
She helps them find products that they can, you know, feel their best even though their sight might be impaired. And I thought that was such a wonderful, inspiring episode, too, because, yes, I agree with you. I don't think that enough care is put into people who have disabilities. And, you know, your proof of that right now is telling us that. So going back to a little bit of your discovery of this, you meet with this doctor and then what was he?
Did he say, you know what, I've actually been thinking we could use this in skin care. Like, tell me more about that. Sure. So, you know, he didn't start this whole process with the anticipation that this was going to enter the beauty world. He comments on that to me a good amount. Like, wow, I never expected to see my work, you know, with talking to beauty editors about it.
So it's a pretty exciting thing for him, I think, to see how far reaching this is actually going to be as this amazing sort of workhorse material that we get to introduce for the first time to the beauty industry. And they were really focused on that cancer research for such a long time. They found through that process that there was a really amazing impact on skin. So he's actually still working on the pharmacy side.
My company owns all the pharmaceuticals, not the pharmaceutical rights are the cosmetic rights to the molecule. But he maintains those pharma rights. So he's working on fascinating research right now. This molecule works as an anti fibrotic and a wound healing accelerant. And so he's working on that. It's incredible. Happy to connect to you if you're interested. He's working on amazing things that have wide, far reaching implications. I love that you said it before.
It's like so many times in science, they find something, you know, Botox as a cosmetic was discovered because they were using it in a medical sense. And then they said, well, patients are coming back and seeing them a lot less wrinkles. Lattice was another one that was used, you know, to cure iconoclasm, pressure in the eye, maybe grant coma. And they found wow everybody's lashes are growing super long.
So this was like he was studying essentially colon cancer and was like, hey wait a minute, maybe there's an application for a rare enough on our face to look. Absolutely. And I'm grateful for that because it definitely saved my skin. And, you know, I was really inspired to get into skin care because my mother has had a ton of trouble with skin cancer and my grandmother's as well.
And so having that as part of my worldview growing up, I was a really dedicated consumer in this industry for a long time. I'm so grateful to my mom. She told me, Wear SPF like it's your job. And I have. Thank you so much, Mom. I think that will save me a lot of grief in the future. But we have access now to this really inspiring science.
A lot of it doesn't actually enter the beauty industry very often, which is one of the things I'm most proud of that we get to bring that forward as a brand is, you know, intellectual property floats around every once in a while that brands can sort of compete over and try to offer something really differentiated in the market. But most of what you're seeing is brands using the exact same ingredients over and over. And was ingredients work there effective for, you know, a variety
of skin conditions? And, you know, I'm I use a lot of them. I absolutely love Skinceuticals as an example. I haven't gone a day in the last couple of years without the discoloration Defense Absolutely. Nice. Okay. But we actually had. That as a pretty good Friday, I have to say, for New Beauty. So, yeah, discoloration on your skin is beautiful. You know, we are seeing a lot more though, you know that that we're blending sort of science and beauty.
I was just talking with a biotech woman who actually patented a delivery system that she uses for pharmaceuticals and she's incorporated that same delivery system into a line of skincare. So I think that we are starting to see a lot more of that science in beauty. You know, going back to Genesis with the stem cells now, I think what people think stem cells, sometimes there's that controversy of visit human derived, is it plant derived? What is the latest STEM six.
That's a great question because I have seen, you know, there's some misinformation, I think, about stem cell science. And I remember I did a presentation on stem cell science when I was like a junior in high school, and that was when it was becoming part of, you know, people's understanding of the world and a topic that people were talking about. And it was very controversial. So molecule that we have works on your cells, We haven't bottled stem cells.
There's, you know, brands that make claims around a variety of things like that or that they use plant stem cells. But stem cells are very species specific. And so there's not evidence that you will change your skin by putting a plant stem cell on your skin. So right now, if you want something really regenerative, you can go into doctors that offer this and have your blood drawn and have stem cell injections, which is really exciting. It's. Mm hmm. Have you done that before?
No, but I'm literally leaving this. The reason that I'm not is done up right now. I'm literally going from this to do a microneedling with Exosomes. There you go. I've heard amazing things. Please tell me, like, if you like. It, say yeah, which is essentially it. Which is essentially stem cells, correct. I mean, yeah. It's also. Going to learn all about this. Big thing. Yeah. That's really exciting. So we have something that works on your cells by attaching them.
Yeah. So we're not, we're not battling stem cells. I'm not sure if anyone's actually done that or if that's even feasible. They don't last that long outside of the human body. So and that's one of the a good point to bring up, too, is that there's a lot of misinformation in marketing, and that's something that as the founder I want to be really careful about is people deserve, frank, authentic, trustworthy information.
And there's a lot that is confusing or vague within the industry or making claims that they can't back up. And that's the reason why we did our clinical study. And it will continue to put money and time and effort behind R&D. Michael, I cannot tell you enough how impressed I am not only by you, by your products, but also by your brand ethos. When I went on, you have your ingredient list broken up, and by every ingredient you explain why it was put in there.
I have so much respect for you for doing that because a lot of us will go on and ingredients can be tricky. I've worked in the beauty industry for a long time and I look at an ingredient list and it's like, whoa, Because you know, we know that things can be disguised as other things, right? And unless you are some sort of a biochemist, a lot of the times you can't tell the difference between these nomenclature. So I really do appreciate and I think it's wonderful.
And when you read the reviews in your product, so many people were absolutely blown away by what you said, the transparency and also the science. Thank you so for the results. I appreciate that so much. You know, being trustworthy and authentic is really important to me as a founder, which is one of the reasons why I want to share my story.
I think we need more examples of disabled people, both in the industry and in the world at large, which is one of the reasons why I want to use my platform to do that. But even down to, you know, making our ingredient list really visible, that doesn't happen on every brand and every product. And to your point, a lot of it's very confusing as well. We have a very simple formulation and we did that on purpose. Beta STEM six is really the star of the show, but we have a few other peptides.
Copper is in there as well, which is really, really effective at creating collagen underneath your skin. And so there's supportive ingredients there, but we wanted to keep it very simple on purpose, which contributes to it not being inflammatory on a lot of people's skin. And I will say when you apply this, the texture of this is so gorgeous. I mean, and it feels, you know, this product that I hate to just say they feel rich and luxurious and afterwards your skin is going to feel baby smooth.
And I love it because it's not greasy. That's quite a bit on my hand, but it is a beautiful it's beautiful formulation and it feels great on the skin. If people want to know more about this right now, where, where, where can they go and find us? So we're selling direct to consumer right now. So on our website is where you can find a lot of information over time. We're going to be building out. So I feel good. So again, I think it's in the hands.
It's like so good. Yeah. So for me, because I live in Texas, it's so humid here, I cannot stand products that end up feeling tacky on your skin, which is why we went with a serum instead of a moisturizer, because you don't feel that any more to you. Like No, and I'm sorry. My hands are so veiny. But it's also it has a beautiful like I would almost like satin finish. Right. So it's going to give you a little bit of that luminosity. But without that grace, you're going to look glowy, not greasy.
Right. And I don't I don't need help with the. Yeah. Feeling. Yeah. You're getting my products. Yeah. So can I ask you right now, this is you are the star and only product in your line. Are you thinking about expanding it at all or are we just going to kind of stick behind this? So I really want to focus on getting beta stem sticks front and center as part of our approach. This is a new ingredient, and so we owe the people information.
And so that's one of the things that we're going to be building out on our website is an opportunity to talk more about the science, not just of skin, but how beta STEM six works as well as part of our effort to really make sure that people feel empowered and like they have access to that information. So we'll probably be in the market for about a year before we introduce new products. They'll probably be treatment oriented.
You know, eventually we might branch out into some other things, but a lot of people are doing cleansers really well, a lot of people advisors really well. And there's also not a huge need to put beta Semtex and something you're going to wash right off your face. Like I wouldn't hold it, you know, in a cleanser. So we have some, some ideas up our sleeve and are continuing the research and development around that as well around different applications of the molecule.
There's a lot of exciting stuff coming down the pipeline. I cannot wait to see what you come up with and I want to thank you so much for giving us your time today. Michael. As I said, if people want to know more about this, what is the website that they can go to? It's Michal Morrison dot com. And you can also find us on Instagram @ Michal Morrisonskincare.
And apply that's m i c h a l. I will have that in the show notes will make sure to have a link to this and thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. It's been a real pleasure to talk with you. I've loved it. And if you at home listening, if you've tried this, make sure to post on social and tag Art Beauty podcast. Make sure to tag Michal Morrison. And we want to know what you're thinking.
And of course, if you have questions you want me to pass on to Michal or any of her team, I'm always happy to do so. You can email me at hello@artbeautypodcast.com. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube @artbeautypodcast. And as always, we'll see you next Tuesday Bye.