This episode is brought to you by Bondi Sands Everyday Skincare.
So I think collaborating and connecting with like minded people is really really helpful. So instead of being competitive, it's like, well, there's a lot of room for us. You realize that your struggles aren't unique. I think a lot of us tend to fixate there is the one partner and there is the one job for me. But I don't think that's the case. I think there's many possible ones and it's not like there is one part that you have to somehow fall into. There are many parts that can lead to happiness.
Welcome to the sees the Yay Podcast. Busy and happy are not the same thing. We too rarely question what makes the heart seeing.
We work, then we.
Rest, but rarely we play and often don't realize there's more than one way. So this is a platform to hear and explore the stories of those who found lives.
They adore the good, bad and ugly.
The best and worst day will bear all the facets of seizing your yay. I'm Sarah Davidson or A spoonful of Sarah, a lawyer turned entrepreneur who swapped the suits and heels to co found matcha Maiden and matcha Milk bar CZA is a series of conversations on finding a life you love and exploring the self doubt, challenge, joy
and fulfillment along the way. Welcome back, Lovely neighborhood. I hope you had an amazing Easter break, and thank you so much to everyone who' submitted questions for our very belated birthday Q and A episode. As you can hear, I recovered from the spicy cough, but somehow caught a cold straight after and still sound a little bit like a man, so we delayed it again, which means if you have any extra questions or good news stories for the episode, please shoot them over this week and we'll
eventually get round to recording it. In the meantime, I've got a zinger today for you that are recorded when I sounded much nicer than this, from someone I've admired and learned from for a while now and whose brain I feel very lucky to pick. Today's guest is the perfect example of the many things at school that we often felt like would never find news in real life, but who has proven that wrong. Bringing science to the
wild world of beauty. You may know her as lab muffin, but Michelle Wong is far from a lab rat, bringing her credentials ie a chemistry PhD, to explain what works and what doesn't in the world of beauty and cosmetics. Think of all the intimidating ingredient names and jargon in the beauty world, and Michelle has probably demystified it in an approachable, easy to understand way in one of her videos or posts, gaining her a booming audience around the world.
Michelle is also a fellow lover of Ozzie's success story. Bondi Sans and we run through some of our favorite science backed goodies from the new everyday skincare range. I hope you all learn as much and enjoy this one as much as I did. Michelle, Welcome to Cca.
Thank you for having me.
I am such a big fan.
I think I've already just found gold over you, and let you know that I've been spending the last couple of days. I've been in isolation for seven days before recording this, and I've been balls deep in your incredible videos, just having my mind blown by the science of beauty.
You are incredible.
Thank you that's really nice to hear. And also I have terrible imposter syndrome like most people. I think our age that is really lovely to Oh.
We will definitely get into that, and especially given how incredibly knowledgeable you are, and I just it's always surprising, even though it's not surprising when someone else has it, someone who you think you hold in such high esteem and who you think is so qualified and so infinitely able to do the things that they do, you know what I mean, I feel like it's surprising how rife it is and how many of us it affects. So I think we should definitely get into that. That's a
big part of this show. But before we kick off, I mean, you've kind of already done it by starting with that, but I start every episode with a little ice breaker just to kind of, you know, help shed that really glossy surface that we sometimes have throughout perceived identities in the media on social media. And you know, anyone who has a PhD, I should have introduced you as doctor Michelle. I feel like a lot of people who have PhD for not to use doctor. I'm going
to use it because I think it's so cool. So it's very easy to think that you are, you know, infallible and up on a pedestal. What is something really relatable about you or the most down to earth thing about you?
Well, I guess it is like probably the impulse syndrome. Like anytime anyone asked me a question, like my first thought is did I get it wrong? I just assume my wrong and then like it takes me like a few minutes ago, No way, no, no, no, I did actually think this through and agonize over this for three hours before I posted it.
Right, Okay, so we all got we all have it.
Yeah, one hand, it does make us like produce better content because we are so perfectionist. But at the same time it is not great for us as well. But yeah, I'm sure we'll get into that.
Yeah.
I actually always well, particularly over the past couple of years, I used to think because I had a big career change, I used to think that as I got more you know, further into and more accomplished or had more practice at this new career path, that eventually the marker of success would when the self doubt disappeared altogether. So I was kind of waiting for that day to happen. But now I've realized, as long as it doesn't topple you, it's actually it's not a bad sign that you're not complacent,
you know. It's like kind of a good keeps you on your toes and it shows you that you're invested in doing a good job. So maybe it's not that
we want it to disappear altogether. It's just that we want to learn how to channel it better or how to push it aside, rather than waking up one day like I kind of now think if i wake up before a podcast like this, for example, and I'm not nervous, maybe I'm too comfortable, Like maybe I should be a tiny bit nervous or a tiny bit worried about just invested in doing a good job.
Yeah, I think it does help a little bit. But yeah, at the same time, sometimes like we just end up a bit too anxious. Yeah, you need to recognize that little good stage, that like little happy medium.
Yeah, that little pocket of good self doubt and can the rest absolutely so. I don't know if you've listened to the show before, but the first section of the show is something I love doing, is going back to the very beginning of people's journeys. The first section is called your WAYTA and that's because I think often people walk into your life at the chapter that you're in now and see you incredibly accomplished, with such direction and
clarity around what you're passionate about. And you know, cosmetic chemistry of all things is already on its face, combining two worlds that don't automatically come to mind as things that go together. But I think we often skip through all the chapters that it took you to get there and to figure out all those jigs or puzzle pieces. And I like to remind people that no one really woke up having it all together and knowing where they
were going to end up. So can you take us all the way back to young Vichelle what you were like as a child, you know, your first jobs or your first ideas of who and what you wanted to be.
I think I was a quiet, nerdy child. I had typical kind of tiger parents. I just had tutoring all the time. And yeah, eventually I became pretty rebellious as a teenager, partly because of that. I was a nerd and I was quite competitive, so I was still you know, doing really well at school while being really rebellious, which.
Great combo.
Yeah, it's just stumped my parents, I think, because it was like, she's doing really well, but she's also really annoying.
How do we cope with this situation? Yeah, so I think.
Sort of like a typical Asian child with Asian tiger parents. They wanted me to be a doctor, a lawyer, or an accountant. They actually weren't super keen on the doctor part because they're nurses.
Oh wow, that's interesting.
Yeah, So I had a lot of pressure to do that sort of thing, and I went to a school where everyone became doctors and lawyers. So being a bit of a rebel, I actually wanted to be like a journalist or a novelist.
Or humanities no way.
Yeah, I was really into history. But I still did one little bit of chemistry. And the reason I got into chemistry was actually again not you know, the sort of path you would think, but one of my friends went to this after school chemistry class and so ashlely was lunchtime and so it was more of a social event. So yeah, and we ended up like learning chemistry, and because I went to that class for so long, I
ended up getting good at chemistry. Even though I wasn't really naturally into chemistry, and I think that was sort of helpful because I've always loved teaching, and if you're really crap at something and you had to work hard to become good at it, you become a much better teacher of that particular subject because you've gone down all the wrong rabbit holes. It didn't come naturally to you. You can remember the path you took, right.
Oh my gosh, that's so interesting. So I don't know if you know, in my background, I was adopted by a Caucasian family, so I don't have the tiger parent experience, which always makes it really interesting because I think some people assume I went into law because of that, but
I didn't. And then hearing about that experience, it's one of the things that I, you know, think, particularly for women in the science now, is that they're often dissuaded from scientific careers, especially back at school for children of tiger parents, that's not necessarily the case. Often you're kind of pushed towards the sciences, towards medicine and chemistry. But it's so interesting that even back at school that wasn't
your pathway. It wasn't a conventional, like I was made to do chemistry and then I loved chemistry, Like it wasn't that straightforward. It was a lunch club of all things that got you interested in it. Yeah, I feel like chemistry is one of those subjects at school that you know when whenever we sort of say, oh, nothing I.
Learn here will ever be relevant in real life.
That's often I think what we say about chemistry of all subjects, but you've obviously gone on to prove that very wrong. What about that subject that you initially, you know, weren't pulled to ended up being so interesting to you?
Yeah, I think you're right, Like it's a really good point. A lot of girls especially don't really see sciences. It's something that's interesting because a lot of the examples they give are kind of male tinged. A lot the time they talk about you know, planes and stars and space and yeah, it's just not stuff like it's quite gender coded.
And I've actually got some lecturers who are lecturing chemistry now and they've like, like they were friends with me and my PhD, and they've email me saying, do you have any examples, because like I want to get rid of some of this star stuff.
That's so interesting.
Yeah, so it is definitely the fault of the educators. I think partly that we don't see their applicability in our everyday lives. But I think some of the things that really interested me was like, as a child, I used to stare at the window a lot, so I would notice little things and be like, oh, that's interesting, Like you know how rain drops merge on a window? Yeah, in the car that sort of thing. And chemistry explains that. Chemistry explains all these little things that you notice, like
why does ice float on water? Why do you have condensation on the outside of the cold glass? Why is it if you have a head and you take a panadol pill, why does the panadol know to go to your head? That sort of thing? And so I found that bit really fascinating about chemistry. Just there are things that are relevant everyday life, even though it takes you a while to find it because they don't really target that now when you're in school, it's mostly.
Mas Yes, Oh my god, that's so interesting. Like I always think about the panadol thing.
I'm like, how does it know where to go? How are you doing this? This is so cool?
I think there are so many people in the show who reflect back on school, and it's often like a particular teacher or a particular person that just explained it in a different way or that just gave you a different perspective on how chemistry could actually apply in real life.
And similarly, I.
Think the increased visibility of women in sciences and the less male tinged career paths, the increased visibility of that for younger women is what's making them more excited because they just see one person or one story, Which makes me so excited to have you on the show because I feel like you're already doing that for so many women by showing the really really cool ways that you can end up using it once you did realize that
level of interest. So converting that into an actual career path in practice is probably one of the biggest hurdles. Like it's one thing to kind of see, oh cool, the panetl thing, oh cool, the window thing, but obviously there is a study path involved to get there, but
also then finding the job. You know, from a young school kid who often sees like three jobs that exist and doesn't know that there's all these gray areas in between, how did you choose your degree from that and then kind of forge the pathway into where you are now.
There was a lot of getting lucky and sort of like being in something and realizing I didn't want to do particular things, so I did sort of fall into it. So out of high school, I graduated and I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life as usual, and most of my friends did law because like the ones who were into humanities did law, so I also did law, and in Sydney have to pretty much choose a second degree to do with law. And it was
really just well, what degrees can I combine with it? Well, I hate money, I don't hate I love money, Please give me money, but I don't like dealing with money, So commerce is out. Science seemed more useful than arts, which in reality it's not really, but yeah, it just sounded a bit more useful. So little seventeen year old Michelle was just like, yeah, that sounds that sounds good. I'll just do that without looking into it. And then I started studying science and law. I loved studying both
of them. Partly why I chose science as well is because I did that lunch club thing. I actually got to skip first year chemistry, so amazy I could. I decided not to. I was like, well, if I've loved you already, I may as well just like sleep through lectures and ace it.
Easy distution.
Yeah. So it was like a sort of pragmatic slash lazy route. I do tend to go for like the path of least resistance a lot of the time.
PhD student, I don't know about that, but yeah, you're not doing yourself justice.
Yeah, maybe the PhD wasn't the part of the police resistance. Said, Yeah, so I chose science and law. I studied them both. I loved studying both. But then I worked in a law firm as a paralegal for a bit and I've discovered I really didn't like it.
I hear that, girl, I hear that.
Yeah. I was quite lucky that I discovered it at the paralegal stage and decided to like look for a way out. I just realized I had a big issue with trying to help a client that I disagreed with morally. Like, I know that in law, you get taught you are just an advocate, Like you advocate for whatever client and then the court decides and you know, everyone deserves the best representation they have and then it works out in
the end. But yeah, just morally, it just didn't quite work for me, which was something I didn't realize I had a problem with until I was in that situation. It didn't help that the client at that point was a tobacco company.
So wasn't that It.
Really wasn't the easiest thing to compartmentalize for me personally. Yeah, So I ended up doing science and dropping the law, and again, at the end of my degree, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I did a project for my honors which I found really interesting and that could be carried on to a PhD. So I
just decided to do that. And again a lot of my friends were doing a PhD. So I was like, yeah, even if I don't know what I'm doing, I'll just see what they're doing and then maybe that will give me an idea. Yes, I sort of fell into it. It was like a combination of passion and just falling into what I ended up doing.
Oh my gosh.
So this is what I love about this show so much, because if you walked into your life now, you could easily assume passionate chemist, wanted to be a chemist, you know, was fascinated by test tubes by the time she was in grade five. Like, you know, you could so easily assume that you wouldn't necessarily assume law degree or that even like had worked in law for a little while.
You know, there's just so many ways that I love reflecting back on the moment of even deciding what degree you did, and you know, literally often it's just because you're like, oh, I probably should do that, Like that sounds cool, Like that's why I.
Chose law, arts because I was like, well, law because.
You know, I hate blood, not going to do medicine, so like, prop should do law because I went to a similar school to you. And then arts because like, well I don't want to do straight law, and like I kind of want to travel.
And do languages.
So you know, like the way we make our decisions in life is just so often so crazy, not necessarily because we have direction or clarity or anything, but it still sometimes can lead you to the right place.
And I think it's so important to remind people.
That, like so much of the decision making and even like incredibly successful and driven and directed people's lives is just like a process of elimination rather than actively choosing.
Yeah, I think it's also quite reassuring as well. I think because I think the fact that a lot of us just accidentally fell into our careers sort of shows that for every person, there's probably like a good bunch of great careers out there that you can just end up in. I think a lot of us tend to fixate. It's also happens in relationships too. We fixate there is the one, there is the one partner, and there is the one job for me. But I don't think that's
the case. I think there's many possible ones, and a lot of people like who are very happy in their jobs have just found one of the ones. And I think that hopefully is a really reassuring thing for people who don't know what they're doing, because yeah, it's not like there is one path that you have to somehow fall into. There are many parts that can lead to happiness.
Oh my gosh, I feel like that's the SoundBite for the whole podcast. Thank you very much, Michelle. You can leave now. It's the most amazing interview anyway ever. But no, that's that's exactly what I try and show, especially with this section the Wagta, that like, no one gets where they get to you in a straight line. But also even once they've got to where they've gotten to, that doesn't mean that's the last one that they'll have. Yeah, they can be multiple ones kind of along the way.
So before we move on, I'd love to focus on the PhD because I also think that in this day and age, it is wonderful that the landscape has been very democratized. You can start businesses, you can make career jumps without necessarily having studied, you know, in a linear fashion in the way that perhaps you did have to you know, some generations ago, or maybe even just some
years ago. And I think maybe that has pushed us away from focusing on the academic pathway when it can still be a really incredibly enriching, enlightening and important experience. So what was a PhD like for you? Firstly, what was your thesis, what didn't involve and how has it benefited you in ways that maybe you didn't expect or ways that you did expect.
So my project was on medicinal and super molecular chemistry. Basically, what I was making was structures called cyclic papt ties. These are like little rings based on amino acids, and because they're based on amino acids, they're very nat for your body, which is important when you're taking a drug
because a lot of drugs have unpleasant side effects. But if it's quite natural, then your body can break it down into things that your body is fine with, and so it was like a path to less toxic medicines. It was also cool because the little rings are good at finding particular things and so they can interact with different parts of your body in very interesting ways. So there were things like applications like possible cancer drugs, possible
hormones as well. Yeah, so I was mostly looking at making these rings and then trying to get them to do things I wanted. So in reality, what that kind of looks like is you turn off have the lab every day and you pour a lot of things into other things, and then you have to move a lot of test us from right to.
Left amazing, and.
You go to a machine sometimes and you also go there and you wait for the line to go up, and when it goes up, you have to like rush and get a test tube under a particular piece of metal and then collect some stuff and then when the line goes down, you pull it away. So yeah, in the day to day is quite boring, even though it gets to a very interesting place. Yeah. So that's what a chemistry PHG typically looks like. There's a lot of moving things around.
I love that so much, amazing. I mean, I love it. You're being real about it.
I love it.
Yeah. So, in terms of where you go from a PhD, I think a lot of the time when you're in the PhD, you don't really see much of a career path outside of academia, which makes sense because everyone you're surrounded with is in academia and has found a good place in academia and they either happy about it, or if they're trying to leave academia, they're not going to tell everyone about it. So it's a bit of a narrow sort of view, and I think a lot of
PhD students are stuck in that view. So there are actually a few websites and podcasts now where it's all just focused on careers for PhDs outside of academia.
Wow.
Yeah. So I think the main thing about doing a PhD that tends to help is that you develop analytical skills and lots of critical thinking, problem solving skills which are very transferable to lots of different things. So some of the typical career paths out of a PhD apart from academia, management, consulting, patient law, yeah, those are the typical ones. Mine is very non typical, earthly.
Oh my gosh, Okay, so tell us about that then.
I mean, I also think if anyone's listening and is interested in those kind of resources for someone who might be in a PhD or has finished a PhD and is looking for a pathway, then I'm sure I can get Michelle to share those and I'll pop them in the show notes. But in terms of your a typical way out of it, this makes me so excited. As I mentioned, like the fusion of two seemingly not the most straightforwardly related areas. How does one get into cosmetic chemistry?
So my path into it was when I was doing my PhD. I'll sit around a lab waiting on experiments, and so I was also looking at how to improve my skin at that point. So I was looking up different skincare products and there just wasn't very much on the Internet about the science behind skincare products at the time, this was twenty eleven, and so I started looking into it.
And because I was doing medicinal chemistry, a lot of my PHG work was looking at how different things interacted with the body, how different drugs worked, and so with skincare sort of very similar. It's like, how does this ingredient interact with your skin? And I wasn't finding that information.
So I was going deep into journal articles and like the academic research behind these ingredients, and I realized a lot of people probably had the same questions and just couldn't find this stuff because they didn't have access to these papers, or if they did, they couldn't understand what was going on. So I started writing a blog with that sort of info in it, but translated to something that everyone could understand. So that was part of it.
Another part of it was I was in a few skincare groups and a lot of people would be asking questions about, like, AH sulfate's really toxic? Should I be using parabins in my skincare? And I would like type long replies to people, and I was like, this is very inefficient. If I have it all on a blog, then I can just paste the link and I don't have to like rewrite a new thing for every person.
So that was also part of my I guess being lazy being efficient, efficient efficiency, my rebranding of lazy.
Oh my gosh, that is so cool that it literally just came out of like a personal journey combined with just you know, I feel like sometimes ideas drop on you, not because you were looking for the next big idea or the next big pathway, but because you were literally sitting there trying to solve a problem for yourself and then thought, oh, like, if I'm sitting here thinking that, obviously quite a few other people might be sitting there thinking that, and then turn it into like a full
career and it makes so much sense, Like obviously I think one of the things I did a mini series on women in science and had never really connected Obviously it makes sense now, but had never connected that, like to make beauty products, there needs to be science, Like science is related to beauty intimately, so then of course going backwards that you know, we would also want the scientific explanation behind why some things work or why some
things don't. And I think it's just so amazing that you've realized it and did something with that information, Like I think you started blab muffin when blogs weren't like, were so new.
Was that ten years ago?
Yeah, it was. I think it's ten years and five months now.
Congratulation, Oh my gosh.
So did it just start getting traction or sort of how did it become now what you actually do?
So I think back then, yeah, blogs were a sort of niche thing, but there was like a very small intimate blogging community, which was great. We would all like go around and comment on each other's blogs. And this wasn't like an algorithm boosting thing because back then there weren't these social media algorithms. It was really just community. It was really just supporting each other and encouraging each
other to keep posting. So it was really lovely. And then of course you would link to other people's blogs when they were interesting and when they were relevant, and so I built a bit of traction with that, and a lot of Facebook groups people would be sharing my work because it was quite unique, and yeah, there just wasn't really that much info. So it was actually kind of nice and easier because it was a lot easier to develop your own niche and be the only one
in that niche. Back then, around twenty fourteen was when Instagram got really big, and I started using Instagram to just promote my blog posts, and then I realized Instagram itself was really a whole niche. This was back in the days when people would just post like really old school looking photos of like their toast.
Save I was there.
I was the toast, but I'd have to toast in like a crazy filter with like a with a corner. Oh the glory days.
Oh man.
Yeah. So yeah, I started post promoting my blog on that, and then I started making post just for Instagram, and I developed a following from that, just like making little bite sized nuggets of information for people who weren't going to read a whole blog post. And I think there was a boom time for like skincare signs around I think twenty seventeen eighteen when The Ordinary launched. And the Ordinary is a brand that's very budget friendly, and I
actually have one here. It's like very budget friendly and they actually have the names of their products on the label, so you can't just buy, you know, anti aging serum. You have to buy ethylated a scorbic acid fifteen percent solution so that was when people started going, well, I don't know what this is, but it's all ten dollars, and now I want to know which ten dollar things to buy. And I think that's when it really got
really popular. And around that time I also started a YouTube channel because I kind of got sick of like drawing fifteen drawings to try to show how something worked, and I could like just hold up some molecules and like make them like smash into each other. So yeah, I think everything sort of developed quite organically. It was just like when I got limited by one medium, I just kind of started looking into another thing. I think it's also partly because I get bored quite easily, and
I really like new things. So when I got bored of one thing, I started doing more of another thing, and I kind of, yeah, just progressed from there.
Oh my gosh, I love that so much.
And now, I mean, even just on Instagram alone, you have like three hundred and fifty thousand followers of people just soaking up your knowledge and like waiting for the next video and requesting things for you to explain, and like you're really demystifying a whole landscape in such a like approachable and interesting, but still it's not dumbing it down so much that we can't then like take away the science from it either, which I think is also really interesting.
It's not just like buy this, don't buy this.
It's like by this because this ingredient does this, which is you know, like such an education piece as well.
When did it become a job for you?
So, I guess like when I was doing my PhD. Actually, all through my life I've really loved teaching. I don't know why. Maybe I just like having authority. I've always really loved teaching and I've always found it really rewarding. So I think most of my jobs in high school were tutoring. During UNI as well, we're tutoring. And then when I finished my PhD, I started also teaching. There's this tutor in college in Sydney that hires mostly PhD students to teach science and maths and stuff, and so
I started working there and it was amazing. I was really sad to leave that job actually, but yeah, I started teaching there while doing lab muffin on the side, so it was like I would learn skills in that job and take it to lab muffin and then I'd learned skills and labmuffin and take it back to that job. So I think it was around twenty nineteen that was
the breaking point. So I was growing both jobs at once, and I got in my first sponsorship to go to France with Biodoma, and I remember, like, I went to France, I had to skip a particular teaching period, which my job were really lovely about, and then I went back and I was telling my boss about like, oh, they took me in a helicopter. I got to see all of this stuff. I got to go to this lab. It was amazing. And he was like, Okay, so when
are you quitting? And I was like what, Like, I don't want to quit, And he was like, look, so Veritassium, who is this YouTuber who does a lot of science stuff.
He was actually working at the same workplace as me and at the same time as my boss, and he was like, look, I saw what Derek went through when he was trying to transition to a full time job, and yeah, like going on an international trip like this is a sign that you are going to end up with a lot more on your plate and you should really think about stepping back.
So Oh my gosh, that's amazing.
Yeah. So my boss was super supportive. He's still super supportive, and he was like, look, at some point, you're going to have too much on your plate and you need to know when to step back, and it'll be healthier for you. It'll be easier for me because I can have someone who's there full time. Yeah, let's build a path. So yeah, that was when I started looking at dropping back my day job. At that point, I was also starting to earn enough money to look like it would
be a viable full time job. So yeah, at one point I just had to make the leap and quit that job, which I'm still quite sad about because it was actually the best job of my life until now.
Oh my gosh, that is such an extraordinary story. And lab Muffin is also the cutest name ever. Did that just come to you?
Oh? It was one of those things where I wanted to start a blog for ages and I just couldn't think of the name, and I was letting that just hold me back forever. Yeah, and at some point I was like, Okay, I'll just make up a name. I'll use it and then I can change it later. So it was like I was working in a lab and my partner at the time called me muffins. I was like, put them together, kind of goes together. Done, and then I just never thought up a new name.
So that is because it's so new. That's the best tame ever Lovely Neighborhood.
You might remember our incredible guest from episode one hundred and fifteen, Blair James, who started out in a town of just one thousand people, only to grow Bondi Sands to over fifty products in a whopping thirty thousand retailers worldwide. Since then, Bondi Sands has launched an incredible everyday skincare range packed with Australian botanicals. It has something for every
skin type, even the sensitive ones like mine. I love an Aussie business, as you all know, especially one that serves up that glow all within one hundred percent recyclable post consumer packaging. And the range itself has options to cleanse, treat, hydrate, protect and mask, with packaging colors and shapes to identify each one, and there's a skincare quiz online.
To help you choose what's right for you.
My favorites are the Golden Hour, Brightening vitamin C, serum bond Dibabe purifying clay mask, especially with all the travel and makeup at work at the moment, and most importantly the sunny days hydrating spr fifty plus moisturizer. Suncare is so incredibly important for our skin, as we all know. I'll pop the link in the show notes for you to check it out. I really want to get into, particularly around the career, the full time leap and the
career change. I think that's where the self doubt, conversation and comparison and all all those kind of burnout and just like the fear, all those kinds of things are
really important to talk about. But while we've got you here, I also feel like it would be remissive me not to ask you to just dish the dirt, like along the way, what are some of the more practical like either things that you think would really surprise us or big myths that you've busted, or tions that you get asked the most, like what are some of the lab muffin top five facts that you think we all should know about, like the cosmetic chemistry behind like the things we use.
What would they be?
I think the first one would be where sunscreen, which I know everyone says in skincare, but yeah, it's true. Sunscreen is the best anti aging product you can get because it prevents aging. It prevents the UV that comes in and makes your skin prematurely age. And of course, like it's always, prevention is better than cure. So if you're preventing your natural collagen from degrading, it's much easier than trying to build it back up later, and it's
much cheaper. There are tons of sunscreens out there now that are really nice and light and comfortable to wear, so don't be afraid of sunscreen. It is not all greasy and heavy. It is actually really great. So yeah, there are lots of really nice options out there now. Boder nice sands as one, which is the fragrance free lotion that is super popular everywhere, because yeah, it's just
really hard to find really light products. There's also so if you are the brands like Ultra Violet, which is a bit more upmarket, but it's very light and it performs really well under makeup. Australian brands have a whole bunch. There are also lots of Asian sunscreens and European sunscreens that are really lovely and light, so that's probably the biggest one. Yeah, there are nice sunscreens out there. Please wear sunscreen before you start buying expensive anti aging products.
Oh my god, the Brando sund sunscreens are my all time favorite, all time favorite. But also you recently did a video on whether you need to wear sunscreen inside as well, which I think is really interesting.
Yeah. I think there's this sort of kind of two extremes with skincare. It's like you either don't wear any sunscreen or you start wearing sunscreen, and then you start thinking you have to wear it all the time, like do I need to wear it to bed in case shines on me when I wake up? Yeah, which I guess is like a legitimate fear, because once you start getting too skincare, you start hearing all the stuff about how the sun is a deadly laser and you need
to avoid it at all costs. But I think it's not quite that bad if you're quite far away from a window, actually not that much sun that can get to you. So if you work indoors and you work next to a really big window, or if there's direct sun shining on you, then sunscreen is a good idea. If there isn't, then you probably don't need to wear sunscreen unless you want to wear it as like a habit so you don't forget to put it on when
you leave the house. There is this new thing in skincare where everyone's going on about screens and how like the light from your monitor will age your skin. The evidence doesn't support that so far. There's no good evidence that it's intense enough to cause any sort of permanent damage. There is like a little bit of evidence, but it's not very convincing. But a lot of brands are seizing on that little bit of evidence and trying to freak you out so you buy their product. So don't fall
for that. Screen light protection is just not necessary at the moment, even though sunscreen is very necessary when you're outdoors amazing. I guess another thing is I can't think of any cosmetic product that is worth over two hundred dollars. Yeah, if it's over two hundred dollars, I wouldn't recommend it unless you love it, like if you love the texture, if you love the packaging, like I mean, I have
candles that are very expensive, but that's for sure. If you find joy in it, then it is worth whatever it's worth to you. But in terms of effects, I can't think of anything. Maybe there is one, maybe there will be one in the future, but right now I don't think there is anything that is in terms of effectiveness worth more than two hundred dollars.
Oh my gosh.
In terms of products, procedures is a different thing. Yeah, tools is a different thing. But yeah, just skincare products that you put on your.
Face, Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh.
That is like that in itself is like whoa industry shaking, which also I think ties in really nicely to the fact that you are also now a Bondi Sands ambassador. And one of the things that I think is extraordinary about this brand. We've already had Blair on the show.
I think it was god quite early on.
Then he actually grew up in the town of one thousand people next to the town where my mom grew up, so lots of connections. They're extraordinary human but also doing amazing things in the Australian landscape. And one of the biggest things has been how affordable they are for such high quality products that are also using Australian botanicals and
exporting the beauty of Australia to the broader market. And it's just absolutely amazing, particularly being someone as discerning as you are but also bringing so much knowledge and science to.
What you do. Why are you so proud to be a Bonde Ambassador?
I think it was a really easy choice for me, to be honest. So I've been blogging since twenty eleven. I think Bondi Sands launched in twenty twelve, and Bondi Sands has sort of like always just been the tanning brand that you go to since they launched. Their products are really much a friendly I think back then the competing channing products were twice surprised, but in terms of effectiveness and in terms of how even they were and how nice they were, Bondie Sands was already like comparable
or better. So it was sort of a very easy choice when they said, oh, hey, we're thinking of launching some skincare, can you give us your thoughts and would you like to be involved? So yeah, that was the very easy yes, because I mean I don't really do fake tan anymore that much, but when I was it was all just Bondi Sands. I would post about them on my blog all the time, and then they would send me more products and they would have a new
products which were really cool. So yeah, very easy choice in terms of the brand, in terms of the line, the fact that they were butter friendly was super important to me because yeah, I think having very financially accessible skincare is really important, especially if you're a teenager. Back when I was a teenager and you as well, I'm sure we just had like clean and clear, three step supermarket skincare. It was so hard to find good products.
It was always just like really harsh cleansers, really alcohol tona's that stung your face and you were like pain is good, beauty is pain.
I don't remember that phase. Oh my god.
Yeah, we just like gritted our tea through it. But yeah, the Bondi Sands range I wish I was around when I was a teenager because it's just so user friendly, it's so budget friendly. All their products are really nice. All of them are a really nice experience as well, So I think that is really underrated in skincare. There are so many products that are just awful to use, Like you'll have cleanses that like stick to your hand,
and don't really foam up. You have moisturizers that peel off your skin or like they just look really bad or they don't sit well under makeup. But the whole range that I've tried, well, I've tried the whole range, the whole range. Every time I've tried it has just been a pleasure to use. Their moisturizers are incredible. I don't know if you've tried them.
Oh my gosh, So everyone context the new everyday skincare range that they just brought out.
Obviously, Bondi Sands have.
Been doing amazing things in self tanning and then sun care for a really long time, but they've just introduced skincare and the range is not only a pastoral dream like absolutely beautiful packaging or recyclable as well, which is incredible.
But they've brought out like the textures of.
There's a whipped moisturizer, there's an SPA fifty plus moisturizer, there's a night moisturizer, there are all kinds of I think there's five different serums in the range. There's a hero oil, like there's just one of everything, and the textures. I've got actually a video about to come out where I have like all of them in a line on my back of my hand so you can see all of them.
They're just exquisite.
Yeah, they are like some of the nicest textures. Like I was not expecting nice textures when I heard it was going to be budget friendly, because I mean, something has to be a compromise, right, No, it's not. The textures are so good, especially with moisturizers. It's so hot to find a budget friendly moisturizer that I would comfortably recommend to people for any skin type. And they've put out two, So yeah, incredible range.
Are there any sort of of those big facts or myths or key tips or things that tie in around the ingredients or the layering of the serums, because I actually one of the things I did think was that the range is so expansive that I kind of for someone who's like a little bit basic in skin, got a bit overwhelmed of like, oh my god, Well, if there's an oil a serum, there's an amazing chemical exfoliant, which I think is really cool because going back to
that pain is beauty thing, the harshness of microbeads for exfoliating my skin does not like that. So a chemical exfoliant is so cool, but again, like there's so many different things like what order they do they go in? And also what ingredients should you use on which days and all that kind of stuff, Like is there anything around your trial of the range that you can tie in with some lab muffin top facts?
So I think the biggest tip for approaching a range like this is think about what your skin is, Like what do you feel your skin needs the most, Like do you need to deal with uneven texture? Or like if you've got fine lines, do you need to deal with uneven tone? So do you want your skin to be aes more one color the whole way, or what do you want out of your skincare. I think that's probably the best way to approach it. So if you think, well, I have some fine lines, then you go off and
pick a product that will address that. So for fine lines, for example, I would probably recommend the exfoliant and or the Fountain of Youth serum, which is a big qutrer product which is really good for anti aging. So then you would pick those two and then you would put one into your routine at a time, so you maybe start off on the exfoliant and use that every two days. If your skin is fine with that, then you can build that up more so you can use that every day.
Once you're happy with that and you look at your skin, you reassess it and see what your skin looks like now, and see what you want to change about it then. So I think that's usually a smarter way of doing it than just getting too excited about products and using
them all. One will simplify your life, and two it will save you money because then you're not just like every time someone suggests a new product, you just add it to your routine and you end up with like twenty three steps, twenty three products, of which twenty you actually don't need. Yeah, So I think that's probably the best way of approaching it. I think in terms of layering, generally the rule of thumb is thinnest to thickest. It's
both practical and also scientific in a way. Thinner things tend to absorb better into your skin, and usually they tend to have systems that, yeah, are designed to absorb better into your skin, and so if you layer it that way, you will probably end up with the correct order. I think that's probably the least confusing way, because then you don't have to think about a million ingredients. With the BONDI Sands range, all of the SEMs can be
used together. So yeah, just see how thick they are and then just go with the thinnest first.
Oh my gosh, thinnest to thickest is like the most practical hack you could ever have given me, because otherwise it's just like so overwhelming, so many different layers of things. But that really, like, yeah, that makes so much sense. Before we move on, because I did interrupt you before. Are there any other big hacks or like most watched videos or most asked questions, like little nuggets of wisdom that you have from a cosmetic chemist perspective, I think.
In terms of Australians and sun protection. I think one of the things that kind of blew people's minds when I talked about it was I think about layers of sun protection. I think a lot of people who get into skincare end up hyper focused on sunscreen, because again, sunscreen is the most important thing. But then people are not really stressed about it. They're like, how much do I put on? How often do I have to reapply?
What can I use with it, And I think the answer is really just try to use a generous amount, so about a quarter tea spoon for your face, or you can sort of measure it out as like two finger links, that's around the right amount. But then after that just think about layering different types of sun protection because then if you mess up your sunscreen, then make sure you're also wearing a hat or try to stay
in the shade when the sun is really high. So I think that's yeah, that's a bit of a destressing sort of approach to sun protection.
Oh yeah, that's a great one.
Yeah, just have a fallback.
Yeah, And are there any like big rife you mentioned before about the screens and the effect of that, like aging us. Are there any other kind of not rumors, but just like things that are going around at the moment that you've busted recently.
Brief safe sunscreen is a big one.
I watched that video.
Yeah, so there's a lot of advertising around brief safe sunscreen at the moment. But sunscreen is not a cause of bleaching of coral reefs. There's pretty much no evidence that that has ever happened in the wild. And one of the top sunscreen scientists in the world who is Australian. He studies the Great Barrier reef. He said that if you put a list of everything that's bad for coral reefs in a list, sunscreen would be about number two hundred.
So yeah, don't stress about, you know, the sunscreen you're wearing every day hurting coral reefs. Maybe if you're going to dive near coral, if you're going on like an actual tour of coral, maybe then just use the sunscreen that they recommend. Try to wear less sunscreen, so wear a wet suit instead. But for every day sunscreen where even at the beach, don't worry about reef safe, just use the sunscreen that will protect your skin.
WHOA, Oh my gosh, that's fascinating. I did find that so interesting, especially around the chemical versus physical sunscreens, which also is something that people should go and watch your videos for because if that was only a couple of years ago that I even knew the difference between those two things. So much to learn, guys, go and hit up blood Muffins on Instagram, because there is just so much to learn, and I would love to use this
entire episode on that just for selfish purposes. But I didn't promise we would come back to the whole imposter syndrome and self doubt and how that's played out for you along the way as well, because particularly when you are growing a really devoted audience who is really leaning on you and trusting you for advice and like you've grown this, you know, enormous community, that can be really overwhelming, and of course, naturally along the way, especially if you
fell into your career path and didn't kind of you know in advance, think how am I going to arm myself to feel really well equipped to do this? You know, it can be really hard not to experience self doubt along the way. So how has that played out for you? And in the worst moments, what are some of the things that have helped you kind of get through it.
I think I've always had a lot of self doubt, so I'm not sure I really have any great tips for getting out of it. I think for me personally, just doing things and then proving to myself that I can do it because I've got this hard evidence that I've done it has been very helpful. So for me, it's one of my big problems is just procrastinating and not doing stuff because I'm scared, and I've just found that forcing myself to do it and then dealing with
it later tends to be quite good. I'm sure there are a lot of people who are very much the other way around, and they should go the other way, But for me, it's very much I need to do things. In terms of dealing with pressure and that sort of thing. I'm not great at it, to be honest. I think having a good sleep schedule helps a lot with me.
But yeah, as someone who works on the internet who lives in Australia, it's quite difficult to have a good sleep schedule and a good work life balance because I think, like my peak time for posting is midnight, so.
Inconvenient, very inconvenient. What about the fact I love.
That idea also of the rip the band aid method, because I think that, you know, everyone's method of getting through self doubt will be different, and it's really important for everyone to kind of learn to tweak, you know, what works for them. But often the rip the band aid method does kind of just help you push through it now, but it doesn't give you enough time to
think about it too much before you do it. Just do it and a lot of the time you'll surprise yourself and that gives you a lot of then anecdotal and empirical evidence to be like, oh, well, I survived that time.
So maybe I should go again next time.
But the other one, I think as we moved started our first business and I moved out of law in that same time as you around twenty fourteen when you first started kind of using the Internet and social media as a platform, was the same time as we did,
and in a totally different field and way. We were also kind of first to market with much of powder at the time, so really had to adjust from a good couple of years as the only market leader without really any competitors, to then a very saturated market very quickly in an increasingly busy landscape where everyone was coming onto these platforms. And I think it's quite a unique thing to have self doubt when there's no one else
around you. But then to add comparison onto that a couple of years later, when suddenly everyone's doing similar things, that's also it kind of throws you all over again. So in terms of comparison, I think it's something we all fall into it very easily. Just looking at the minute details of everyone else's lives. How have you stayed on track now that I mean you want the industry to grow, that's a good sign, But without worrying too much about like it invalidating what you're doing.
I think it's a really tricky balance. I found that collaborating for my particular field is really good. I feel like with skincare science, there is so much room for people to come on and have their own little niche, So I think collaborating and connecting with like minded people is really really helpful. So instead of being competitive, it's like, well, there's a lot of room for us. If anything, we're competing against the pseudoscience rather than competing against each other.
So let's collaborate. And it's also really good in having friends because then you can have your little group chats where you complain about things and you realize that your struggles aren't unique. So even little things like being able to complain about like the same issues and that sort
of community building is really really old. But in terms of comparison, I do tend to just not really look at a lot of similar content because then I find that I don't want to inadvertently plagiarize and I like coming up with my own ideas and that really does help with the comparison. I have found that when I'm creating rather than consuming media, I am happier.
Yeah, that's really interesting.
I think that that kind of blinkered method is you know, that's why racehorses were blinkers. That they're not you know, they're running their own race. And that's the kind of analogy I think of is that sometimes it is best to not look at it.
Like it's pretty simple.
If there are things that you know, you tend to know in your landscape, people who are doing similar things around you, and it's actually, you know, maybe good for you to create an environment where you're not seeing that all the time rather than you know, I think sometimes it's like a car accident. You don't want to look away, like you just keep looking and you can't, and you know, it makes you feel crappy. You keep going back to it.
That sometimes curating your environment so that you can just focus on creating in your own lane and doing your own thing is a.
Really good strategy. I find that really helpful as well.
So we've spoken a lot about your incredible path Ya to lab muffin and cosmetic chemistry. But I think another thing that's a really big part of this show is that we get very consumed by our working identities and productive output related identities, and when what you do is also part of your everyday life, it's really hard to
get any kind of balance or division. But I think having things in your life that I just play that aren't productive, that are unrelated to your work, that are just for joy are so important.
So how do you play?
Is there anything you do that you just do that would be otherwise considered a waste of time, but that just brings you joy.
I do try to relax more now, because yeah, I have been working quite hard and I was quite close to burnout recently. Still kind of at but I'm trying to introduce more elements into my life. So one thing I really enjoy doing is cooking, So I try to cook a nice dinner pretty much every night and just have that time where my hands are occupied and I
can't be on my phone. I've also found that I started doing crochet, which is really nice, and yeah, it's very meditative because you're just focusing on I mean, there are hard projects and there are easy projects. So it depends on what I want. But like, if I need something to just occupy my hands while I watch TV, then an easy project is nice. If there's something I have to focus on, then again that gets me out
of the what I'm doing and into that. Before the pandemic, I was also doing pole dancing as my leiser activity.
I love that.
Yeah, it's really fun. It's pretty much the only exercise I've ever been able to stick to for a long time. So I started doing that actually back in twenty eleven when I was choosing, like I wanted to do a blog, the choice was actually skincare like or beauty science or pole dancing. Yeah, it's kind of lucky that I got into skincare science. It could have very well been pulled down.
Sliding doors moment. Oh my gosh. I love that.
So this is really interesting to me because in this section, most people who have a career doing something they absolutely love and that they're passionate about. Because a lot of people don't necessarily combine their passions with their career. There's always something to help the brain unwind or the body unwind that is so unrelated, and I love that. It's something like manual or physical that's like wholly consumes your brain.
Like crochet makes me so happy. This episode should be called Seize the crochet, Like if there's a pun to do with play, it makes me so happy. But it is often those really manual back to basics like knitting or cooking, or for me, it's gardening randomly. I'm so bad at it, Like I don't do it properly, but I just ripped it up in the yard just because it makes me so consuming. I can't look at my phone.
I can't, you know, concentrate on anything else. And I think that's so important that we all have that outlet that's like off your devices you don't have to worry about, like when we're quite a type, you know, it's so easy to want to be the best at something or to turn that into a job. But I love that, Like you know, you're like, I just do it because I enjoy it. Like my gardening is terrible. I don't
need to win at gardening. It's fine. Second last question for you before I let you go, what are three interesting things about you that don't normally come up in conversation.
Well, I'm allergic to everything.
That would be so hard in beauty.
Yeah, not everything, Like I'm being dramatic. I like, I have terrible hay fever. So I'm allergic to like dust pollen cats, which is really sad because my family have these gorgeous cats that I'm very allergic to. No, the more I love them, the more they run away. Oh I guess another one would be like I used to do a lot of pole and before I became super a type with blab muffin, I was super a type with poles. I was doing a lot of competitions and.
I was just saying, it's not a competition. You don't have to be the best. You do have to be the best. You do have to be the best.
I think it's just that a type personality. Like at some point I sat down and I was like, right, I can't be a type of both. I have to chill out on the pole. So, yeah, I stopped doing competitions I think twenty oh, twenty eighteen. But yeah, I used to do pole comps and it was tons of fun.
That's amazing.
I wasn't that good. I was good at an amateur level. I wasn't like a professional level, but yeah, it was heaps of fun. I highly recommend doing it. I think I've heard so many people tell me they've been thinking about doing pole, and yeah, I guess this is back to my rip the band. I think, just do it, just try.
We did a segment on House of Wellness on Channel seven.
It's a show I co host.
We did a segment on fitness but not in a gym, like all the different ways that you can work out if you don't like gym or if you don't like running, and it was like aerial yoga, roller blading, haula hooping, and we did.
We went to do a pole.
Class and it was insane, like the women holding themselves up without their hands, like the strongest legs ever, like hanging upside down. It's so athletic, it's insane.
It's so much fun as well, like it combines so many things, because I think me anyway, I'm terrible with repetitive things. I get bored very easily. But because pole has like elements of dance in it as well, like remembering choreography and that sort of thing, it's really good you like accidentally get fit.
While yeah, that was kind of the criteria for what we were doing. It was like what are the things that you do for fun? And then the exercise part is just incidental, Like it's like, oh, I happen to have sweated, but actually I was just taller, hooping like a child for an hour and having the best time of my life. And the smiles like it's just grown adults like jumping up and down like children when they'd get a new move or like you know, it's just
that's why it's called. Like the idea is to be a little bit childlike and to kind of like get that childlike sense of wonder back for an activity in your life. Very last question, since I love quotes so much, what's your favorite quote?
I don't really have one. It's terrible. I really should have one, But I think it's like, have you got one of those things where you like have core values for your business? Yeah, I've been trying to do that and I'm still slowly trying to get whittle it down. But yeah, that's why I don't have a favorite quote.
My god, that's so fine. What about like a core value? What's a core value or a call like even just like a mantra or like a philosophy of your life by do you have any like rules for life.
I think for my business at least one of them is just educate with empathy. I think one of the things that that we kind of don't feel like is great for business, but it actually is, is empathy. I think it's always dismissed as just, you know, some fluffy thing, but I think having that empathy and having that connection is really good for just being humans really. But at the same time, it is like a good sort of business value to have. There is value in it because connection is what makes us human.
Absolutely, Oh my gosh, that was all. That was so much better than a quote. That was amazing.
Oh my gosh, Michelle, thank you so much. This has been absolutely fascinating. I do this thing at the end of every episode where I realize, oh my god, my big epiphany. Today's I want to be a cosmetic chemist. I just like it's so excited about seeing other people do what they're excited about that it makes me, Yeah, I want to do it too. Oh my gosh, thank you so much for joining us.
It's been wonderful.
Thank you for having me.
Oh my gosh, what a clever cookie.
You must go and visit Michelle's page to learn the inner and outer workings of your beauty regime. What an absolute game changer she is for the industry. As always, please thank her for sharing so generously with the neighborhood by sharing the episode and your learnings or any further questions you might have for her tagging at lab Muff and Beauty Science and the podcast, so we can keep
growing the neighborhood as far and wide as possible. Eventually, I promise you'll get the next dose of Yays of our Lives.
But don't forget.
There's still time to submit your questions or any stories. If you haven't yet done so, you might have seen that last week's incredible episode with Alison Gordon was the result of a yeghborhood nominations. So if you do have a beautiful community hero or story to dob in. I love whistleblowing in the good sense, please shoot it over. In the meantime, I hope you are seizing your yay