My Journey to Clean Beauty with Beautycounter

Here is the full story and I feel like you may see yourself in this somehow. Because at the end of the day we are all trying to do better but I could not believe this information had not reached me yet.

Over the last few years I have become really aware of my health & wellness - I exercise, eat organically (try our best, no processed foods, whole 30-ish, etc.) and have switched household cleaners to safer brands, along with, put a focus on work/family balance. BUT I am a girl who loves her products…beauty products. Hair, skin, makeup, you name it, I like to use product! Then THIS happened.

Using 17+ products a day on my hair, skin and face, (take a sec to add it ALL up - shampoos, to lotions, deodorants, face and skin…) I never once turned over a bottle to read the label, care to try to pronounce the words in the ingredient deck or even question what the heck was in the bottle! Them my best friend showed me Beautycounter.

She said, “We need to look at what we are putting on our skin.”

So I turned my bottles over and started to dig a little deeper. I was shocked to learn that there had not been a federal law passed regulating the personal care industry since 1938 and less than 10% of 80,000 chemicals commonly found in personal care product have health & safety data and we know many of those toxic ingredients are linked to cancer. 

Yikes! I was floored. I assumed over the years that if a product is on the shelf, it should be good for me and that just isn’t the case!

So, I started to check the safety of my products by seeing if my ingredients we on Beautycounter’s Never List. 

I did this by looking up my products safety score on my Skin Deep app (created by the Environmental Working Group). 

Immediately I was appalled, so many of the products I was using had a rating of 7 or higher and I learned that several of the baby products I was about to slather on the skin of my babes contained formaldehyde, parabens and tons of fragrance. This got me fired up and was an area of my life I was really striking out on when I thought I was doing so well with my wellness as a whole. I started to really engage in understanding how these elements affect our systems. How chemicals disrupt our hormones, at any age and wreak havoc on our endocrine system daily. This was not acceptable and how wanted to do something about it for others. Why had no one known this information or told me?

Beautycounter helped to open my eyes to “how”. HOW to check your products, how to make better choices based on facts and how to empower others with those choices as well! I was happy to find a solution through products and a one stop trusted brand I could shop for myself and my family. 

Then I decided to jump all in and make the shift as I just couldn’t keep this information to myself. I had to share Beautycounter, so I joined this mission as a Consultant and started to educate my friends and family about what is lurking in their bottles.

Until a few short months ago I had no idea as well…how many more people are out there just like myself! And why were we not having this conversation on women. The reality is that the information was not available. We were left in the dark on this topic and it was affecting our health.

Fast forward to today, 3 years after I said YES to Beautycounter, YES to myself and YES to empowering more women through business to do the same. 

SO, WHAT HAS SAYING YES BROUGHT TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY?

Beautycounter started out as a side hustle. I knew I wanted to share it but I was working full time, raising two kids and my husband was then in the restaurant business. Needless to say I didn’t have a lot of free time :) So for me, I started and I shared education and products. I dropped off products to friends on my lunch hour and worked Beautycounter into my daily conversation. And what I loved about it was that people listened. They were as shocked as I was about the standards in the industry and friends and family were quick to switch to safer.

It has brought not only a major income into my life by replacing my full time job as Creative Director X2, allowing my husband to leave his job and enabled our family to take a gap year but given me so much more that I never realize I was looking. Beautycounter was a channel to  connect with amazing, passionate, smart women & men who want a better world for their families. Even more than an amazing income, I was able to create more TIME for myself, to give my family and flexibility to create my own hours and explore other passions in the health & wellness field, all while working about 20 hours a week! And who love to have FUN while making an impact. 

Links - Social Responsibility Report XOXO- 

Kelli