Shall we just leave 2020 behind us, start again and see how 2021 goes?  🙂

Okay, in all seriousness I can think of better years than 2020 and we have great empathy for everyone and anyone who has struggled or been affected by the events of 2020. Rather than dwell on the past, as we look forward to 2021, let’s focus on the positive potential, on what can be created, changed, evolved and made better. 

It is so easy to linger on the negative, be brought down by fear and worry about the unknown, but there comes a time when you just have to say, okay, enough is enough. Time to move forward. Time to make some changes. Time to create, innovate, dream and take action.

We have to look and move into the future with hope, optimism and a sense of purpose; humanity will prevail, but it must do that with love and belief. We must lead with and from the heart.

Whilst writing this, I took the time to glance back over our Creating Your Vision For 2020 article and there are many interesting points that reflect what’s important as we now try to move into the future. The key points were:

1. It’s about the journey, not the destination.
2. Moving on, letting go, embracing change.
3. A vision of natural health and wellness.

These are important lessons that reflect where we are up to now at this point in time, as we move from what was in 2020 to what is in 2021.

So, I’d like to take the ideas from 2020 and talk about them specifically for 2021, but with a different perspective that the benefit of hindsight can provide. 

I’d also like to add one more thing to it:

Be true to your heart and live without fear. Do what makes you happy and what makes your heart sing. Believe you can. Put everything you have into doing whatever you can to become whoever you want to be.

Moving on, letting go, embracing change

Why does it matter so much that we try? Why should we move on? Why should we let go and embrace change?

Because if we don’t try, if we don’t have any hope, if we don’t believe, then what are we becoming?

It matters because we’re all connected. Every single human being on this planet is connected in more ways than we understand. From the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the cars and bikes we drive, the public transport we use, the buildings we live in, the computers and phones we use, the access to the internet that most of us enjoy and the TVs we watch… We are able to benefit from many of our fellow human beings who innovate and work hard each day. 

As a collective species we need to be part of the solution in whatever way we feel is right.

Let’s be part of the evolving solution rather than the problem. 

Be positive, be creative, be innovative. 

In times of hardship the world needs humanity to rise up, to embrace, to come together, to change and make a stand, to be creative, to be (dare I say it?)… intuitive. 

The future is ours to create and in every second of every day we are all creating it, whether you believe it or not. Every action, thought, belief and word uttered matters.

So, as Mahatma Gandhi said;

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Don’t stand for the rhetoric… But what can I do? How can one person (me) change the world? How does me doing something small, have an impact or difference on the whole of humanity and our planet?

The truth is, I don’t know. But what I do know is that if everyone in the human race said the same thing, we’d never achieve our goals or realize our dreams.

If each and every one of us made small changes, tried to innovate and attempted to make a positive difference to the lives of others, the compound effect of that collective effort becomes significant.

Also, the more people who wake up, rise to the challenge and try to make a positive difference, the more opportunity there is for everyone to advance, move on, progress and grow. It doesn’t matter how small your efforts, it just matters that you do.

Think ethically, act sustainably, support locally, strive to live naturally.

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.” – Dalai Lama.

A vision of natural health and wellness

If we look back at what has become of the world over the past 12 months, it is true that many of us have come to understand our own mortality. In some cases, more than ever before perhaps.

As we now look to the future, the next 12 months, with the idea of wanting to create a positive future, we have to do whatever we can to maintain a healthy body, a loving heart, a connected and positive frame of mind, a happy disposition and a strong immune system.

On this topic there’s a limit to what we can recommend because we’re not qualified experts in this field. 

So, how can you make a difference in 2021?

Whatever we think of 2020, there were plenty of positives to take from it and there’s not a lot that we can do to change it now anyway – other than change our perspective of it, which may be impossible for some. 

But we can look to 2021 and choose to do our best to experience the good things, look for the positives, create the life we want to create in the way that we can with any restrictions that may come about.

Of course, we’d love for you to come and study with us, but that’s not the purpose of this message for 2021.

The message is this:

Be true to your heart, live without fear and do what makes you happy.

What do you want to do in 2021? 

What do you want to create? 

How do you want to be in 2021? 

What kind of a difference do you want to make in 2021? 

How will you improve things in 2021? 

How will you grow in 2021? 

What will you learn in 2021? 

How do you want to reflect on 2021 when you get to December 31st 2021? 

If you don’t know yet, that’s okay… Sit with it for a while, write some notes in your diary.

Perhaps the following questions will help you:

What are you passionate about?

What is moving and meaningful to you?

What do you love?

What do you enjoy doing?

What makes your heart sing?

When are you at your best, and when do you feel the happiest?

What are your hobbies? Or what hobbies would you like to take up?

How could you do more of the things you love?

How could you live more in tune with your values and beliefs?

How could you help yourself and contribute positively to other people’s lives?

Free Resources to Get Started Today

If one of your answers to the above questions was “I would love to create my own natural skincare products”, and it it is skincare that excites you, please check out our portfolio of online courses here!

We have stacks of free resources like our Beginner’s Guide to Formulating Natural Skincare Products and our Free Natural Beauty Recipe Book!

We’d love for you to get in touch at hello@schoolofnaturalskincare.com and let us know how we can help you.

Also, please do check us out on Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook! We’ll be launching our YouTube channel soon, so stay tuned for that!

And to all of our readers, we wish you a joyous, peaceful, and abundant new year. Happy holidays!

Loved reading this article? Make sure to remember it by pinning it!

One of the biggest challenges we face in life is how we look after ourselves, how we stay well, healthy and happy. However, we tend to take our wellness for granted, until we find ourselves struggling with ill health, injury, disease or some form of life trauma.

In addition, we all experience varying degrees of stress which are managed and coped with differently by different people. In times of stress, anxiety, fear and worry, our health, wellness and resilience are challenged, our immune systems are placed under greater strain, and our ability to cope with what’s happening in our everyday lives is called into question.

The potential risk to our health, wellness and happiness is high and the fear, tension, anxiety and stress that many are experiencing right now – not just as a result of the threat of the virus, but of the effect it is having on our society and economy – is rising and very real.

Despite the negative impact COVID-19 is having on our global community, one thing that is positive is how seriously we’re currently taking our health and happiness. 

Now, while we don’t have any answers about how our immune systems will hold up and combat COVID-19, one thing is true: we all stand a better chance if we have good underlying health and good resilience to stressful situations, and if we do a few simple but healthy things for ourselves.

• What easy things can we do to support our general health and wellness?
• How can we reduce stress and anxiety?
• How can we stay relaxed and calm?

Let’s take a look at a few things that we hope will help you.

1.Essential oils

Essential oils are amazing! They possess many therapeutic properties that support the healthy functioning of our mind, body, spirit and emotions. 

The great thing about essential oils is that they are easy to obtain, inexpensive, and when you follow the general safety advice, they are easy to use at home!

You can sit and inhale them, put them on a tissue or handkerchief, put them in your oil burner or diffuser, or make some simple skincare products.

Essential oils such as tea tree, lavender, chamomile, geranium, eucalyptus and frankincense can support your every need. 

From skincare concerns, cold and flu-like symptoms and respiratory complaints, to digestive discomfort and general immunity, the benefits are amazing. 

They are also very effective at combating stress and anxiety, improving our mood, lifting our spirits and helping us to have a more positive, calm and grounded disposition.

We have lots of articles about essential oils that might be helpful:

• The secret of really getting to know your essential oils
• The best essential oils for skin (and each skin type)
• 3 essential oils for study
• Getting the most out of your essential oil burner or diffuser
• Energizing and revitalizing essential oils for spring
• 10 essential oils to combat stress and anxiety and encourage better sleep – naturally!

Of course, there is nothing like personalising your homemade skincare, haircare and wellness products with essential oils – they are the perfect companion to carry around with us but also incorporate into the products we make. 

2. Herbs, vitamins and supplements

There are many herbs, vitamins, supplements and remedies that may support you during this time and help to boost general immunity.  They could be really valuable aids right now to help us all stay well, healthy and happy and perhaps the solutions you find right now will support you for many years to come.

However, unlike essential oils they are a little more complicated to use safely, partly because they are ingested. This means we really need to know “exactly” what we’re doing.

We would therefore advise that you seek qualified professionals for recommendations about all of this. 

You could seek out a herbalist who may be able to recommend some herbs to use or provide you with some herbal remedies, or a naturopath who can advise about which supplements would be suitable for you personally.

Just check their credentials, training, memberships and accreditations before seeking advice.

3. Diet and nutrition

We all know how important a good diet is, right!? But how much attention do we really pay to the things we eat and drink? 

Now more than ever, it is important to ensure that we are well hydrated by drinking plenty of water and herbal teas. Now more than ever it is important to ensure we’re eating foods that don’t just fill the gap and reduce our hunger, but also support our body, mind and soul.

A balanced diet is different for everyone, and while we probably all understand which foods we should eat, and which we should avoid or limit, it could be a good idea to seek out some good recipes, make some wise dietary choices and perhaps find someone who can help us plan it all out well.

Naturopaths are good at this, as are nutritionists and ayurvedic practitioners.

After all, we are what we eat. We encourage you to eat and drink as well as you can right now.

4. Yoga and Pilates or Qi Gong

Yoga, Pilates, and Qi Gong are all wonderful sources of exercise and support for mind, body and spirit.

Learning to move our body in ways that are conscious and in tune with our breath helps to quieten the mind and enables us to more easily connect with ourselves and our surroundings, feel grounded and connected, as well as stay calm and centred.

Each of these three practices not only give us a good physical workout, but they all help to improve our breathing, circulation and sense of happiness and wellbeing, and reduce tension, stress, anxiety, fear and worry.

In addition to that, practitioners and teachers of these different art forms will explain much more about how a regular practice can improve the functions of our body, mind and emotions.

The great news is, you don’t have to go to a class to take up this supportive practice, you can do it from your own home. Many teachers now offer online courses and free tasters, DVDs to use at home and remote 1:1 tutorials. 

If you have a teacher, why not make contact and ask for some 1:1 help so you can create a home practice?

If you don’t have a teacher, why not search online or ask friends and family for some referrals?

We would recommend Christopher Gladwell Yoga, and you can find out more about him and his teaching here.

One of our graduates, Angela Elliott, runs her own yoga studio, Aromatic Yogi, in Scotland but has some online resources.  You can find out more about that here

She told us…

“Our mission is simply to empower people with easy ways to implement health and happiness in their everyday lives incorporating yoga, meditation and aromatherapy.

 

With over 20 years of teaching experience, we are confident that we can pass on words of wisdom and show you simple ways to enhance your life for the better, one relaxing breath at a time.”

When it comes to practising yoga, she explained…

“At Angela Elliott Yoga we believe that practising yoga and proper breathing not only keeps your body healthy but more importantly your mind. And especially in times of crisis (what with all the social distancing and self-isolating), we can benefit from yoga more than ever.

Yoga helps you stay connected to others and manage any feelings of fear, anxiety and frustration! 

Our yoga sessions will focus on breathing techniques to calm the nervous system and clear the mind and yoga postures to release tension and give your body much-needed relaxation.

We are so thankful to be able to offer these online yoga sessions and hope that they may help guide you through your days and weeks.”

If it is Qi Gong you are interested in and looking for, check out these two people:

Daverick Leggett from Qi Gong South West here. They are just moving to running their classes online, but join their mailing list and reach out to them and you’ll receive links to join their live classes by video conference.

Elizabeth Wilcock and her Online Fundamentals of Qi Gong here.

… and if you have little ones at home who need entertaining, have you heard of Cosmic Kids Yoga on YouTube? It’s definitely worth checking out here. 

Also take a look at PE with Joe. He’s currently offering a free PE workout for kids on YouTube every weekday morning at 9am (UK Time)! 

5. Mindfulness, meditation and breathwork

Practicing mindfulness, meditation and breathwork all help your body’s autonomic nervous system move from ‘sympathetic’ mode, which is our fight-flight-freeze response, to ‘parasympathetic’ mode, which is our rest-and-digest response. 

Our bodies are designed to experience a sympathetic nervous system response as a reaction to immediate, short-term danger. Imagine being chased by a tiger and you get the idea! It’s short, sharp, and dangerous. 

Our bodies save us by increasing our heart rate (so we can run away quickly, or flight the danger), diverting blood from our digestive tract and slowing growth (as they are not essential in an emergency), among many other physiological responses. 

This is all amazing, and vital – but only in the short-term.

When we are exposed to long-term stress, as many of us were even before COVID-19 came into our lives, the constant influx of stress hormones can be toxic for our systems. One major aspect of this is a lowering in the effectiveness of our immune system response. 

The great and empowering news is that we can do something about it! By practicing mindfulness, meditation and breathwork, we can help our bodies move into parasympathetic mode. Parasympathetic mode is associated with normal bodily function, digestion and healing. It also strengthens our immune system response. It restores our bodies to a calm and composed state.

Mindfulness, meditation and breathwork enable us to develop a greater sense of self awareness, facilitate recovery from illness or injury or emotional trauma, improve general health, boost emotional and spiritual health and help us to build greater resilience.

These three practices could be very useful for many people around this challenging time of COVID-19. They could offer much-needed support for many people all around the world and the great news is, there are so many amazing resources to be found online.

Chris Gladwell offers a variety of online courses around this subject

• A free 7-day breath challenge which you can find out more about here.
• A free compassion course here helping you to bring more compassion into your life :-). Here’s a snapshot from YouTube of what you can expect to find on this course.
• A short course called “The Art of Resilience” which you can find out more about here.

There is a 100 day mindfulness challenge here as well as lots of mindfulness exercises!

You might also like to check out the Meaning of Life Experiment. This is an amazing and completely free app offering tons of meditations, videos and journal prompts. It’s presented as a 30-day challenge but you have the content for an unlimited amount of time – all for free!

6. EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), also known as Tapping

This is really powerful stuff! 

It might look a bit strange and many might question how effective it is, but from personal experience, we can vouch for how good it really is.

We can recommend Sam Neffendorf from EFTnow. He is fabulous! 

You can find out more about Sam and EFT here and you can make contact with him to see how he can support you. Plus there is a little video on this page to introduce you to what EFT is all about and how to do it for yourself! 

Sam told us…

“EFT”, also known as “Tapping” involves gently tapping on different points on your face and hands, while thinking about specific emotional issues and unhelpful thought patterns. It is often described as psychological acupressure.

 

You can use it simply for self-help at any time to resolve feelings of stress, anxiety or other discomfort.

Strangely, tapping while focusing on the difficult emotions can release emotional issues incredibly quickly. Studies have shown that it calms the parts of the brain that control the fight-flight-freeze response and enables you to think more calmly and objectively. 

During this time, it can help with issues such as fear of the virus or lockdown situation, obsessive thinking and worry about vulnerable loved ones, feelings of isolation or cabin fever or anything with an emotional charge. 

You can also use it to focus on what is important and make the most of the time you have at home, so that you can come out thriving when we get through this – incredibly valuable for small businesses that may need to evolve and adapt.”

If you want to try tapping for yourself, Sam has made his online course “Tapping for Self-Help” free to access during this time. 

You can access it here – https://eftnow.kartra.com/page/tappingcoursesignup

There’s also a great free app by The Tapping Solution. Some of their content is paid-for and some is free. There is currently a ‘releasing coronavirus anxiety’ package, offering several free tapping meditations.

7. Exercise and fresh air

If you are able to go for walks in nature, along coastal paths, through forests and across the moors, over rolling hills, do take the opportunity to do that, observing government restrictions on movement, of course. 

These places are often less inhabited by other people and are wonderful for revitalising the mind, body, emotions and senses.

If the only access you have to green spaces is a park near your home, then go for it. Just be mindful about the contact you have with other people. Do make sure you know what outside movement is currently authorised and stick within those guidelines.

There is nothing like fresh air, exercise to lift the mood, revitalise the senses and make us feel alive!

Obviously, if you are not able to go outside and do any of this, then yoga, Pilates and qi gong will help to support your physical health right now.

8. Create your own luxury at-home spa experience!

We all love a luxury spa experience, don’t we?! 

There is something about being pampered and treated kindly by others who know what they are doing that makes us feel fabulous.

It is a calming environment, with lovely aromas, low lighting, purifying waters, lovely treatment options, and more.

You could try to recreate the experience in your own home, especially if you are in isolation or lockdown. This could help to keep you grounded, centred, calm and feeling happy.

Check out our article How to Create a Luxury Spa Experience At Home (it’s Easier than you Think!) for some top tips and recipes to help you set up your own luxury spa!

9. Do anything that makes your heart sing

If you are self isolating and in lockdown during the coronavirus outbreak, anything that makes you happy, gets your body moving, gets blood pumping around the body, makes you smile, helps you to feel alive or calm is worth doing as much as you can!

Singing, dancing, listening to your favorite music, playing an instrument – even learning that instrument that’s been lying around for ages gathering dust…

Playing board games, cards or doing puzzles…

Reading books, drawing, painting or creating anything…

How about watching some of your favorite movies? Watching some of the box sets you’ve got but haven’t picked up for a long time – one of Gail and Gareth’s favourites is their Friends Box Set.

What about watching your favorite comedian? Nothing wrong with some side-splitting laughter to help cheer you up, lift your spirits and make you feel good 🙂

And finally, how about dedicating some time and attention to your hobby and passion for making natural skincare products 🙂

As we’re sure you know, we have an amazing portfolio of online courses that will help you to make your own natural and organic skincare and haircare products for yourself, or to sell.

If you’re not quite ready to enroll on a course just yet, check out some of our best free resources:

Free Natural Beauty Recipe Book – find out more here.

Free Natural Shampoo and Conditioner Recipe Book – find out more here.

With the extra hand washing we are all doing right now, many people are experiencing dry and sore hands. 

Our advice? 

1. Check whether your handwash/soap contains SLS (sodium lauryl sulphate). 
2. If it does, find an alternative.

This quick blog post will explain why you may choose to avoid SLS, and give you some alternatives.

How does soap kill the coronavirus?

If you are interested in understanding why hand washing is being promoted so strongly right now, here is a good article that explains the science of soap: The science of soap – here’s how it kills the coronavirus. In brief, “the virus is a self-assembled nanoparticle in which the weakest link is the lipid (fatty) bilayer. Soap dissolves the fat membrane and the virus falls apart like a house of cards and dies – or rather, we should say it becomes inactive as viruses aren’t really alive.”

Avoiding handwash with SLS (sodium lauryl sulphate)

SLS (sodium lauryl sulphate) is one of the cheapest and strongest surfactants used in skin care; it is also one of the most irritating. It is found in many cosmetics, especially in shampoos, body washes and handwash. Surfactants, like SLS, function as detergents; they have the ability to remove dirt and grime (and viruses) from a surface. 

Many handwashes contain SLS as the main cleansing agent. Check the ingredient list on the handwashes you are using. Can you see it?

Studies on skin irritation of surfactants show that irritation is dependent on the structure of the sulphate. SLS is an anionic detergent, which tends to be more irritating to the skin and eyes in comparison to amphoteric and non-ionic detergents (L. Rhein, 2007).

Their ability to remove stratum corneum lipids means they penetrate the skin deeper into the viable layers and can cause immune reactions (Lémery et al, 2015).

In an effort to make SLS less irritating, chemists created SLeS, which is produced through a process of ethoxylation. This resulted in a surfactant that is indeed less irritating to the skin, but is regularly contaminated with 1,4-dioxane, a carcinogen byproduct of the chemical reaction.

In addition, SLS and SLeS are also known to elicit skin reactions such as irritant contact dermatitis, and may cause inflammation. Though emulsions are often used to treat inflammatory skin disorders such as eczema, emulsions may also cause skin disorders because of the presence of surfactants added as stabilizers (Bárány et al, 2000).

If your handwash does contain SLS (or SLeS), switch to a more gentle soap.

Two hand soap options that are less drying and irritating than SLS

1) Bar soap

Traditional cold-process bars of soap contain high amounts of glycerin as a natural byproduct of the saponification process. Glycerin is a humectant that helps moisturize the skin. 

Soaps can also be nourishing and softening. The fatty acids that provide the best nourishing and conditioning properties are unsaturated fatty acids, such as oleic, linoleic and linolenic fatty acids. These fatty acids are present in considerable quantities in oils such as olive oil, avocado oil, almond oil, sunflower oil and macadamia nut oil so look for soap made with these oils.

Soap bars generally have a pH between 9 and 10 and some people worry that this is too high for the skin since the pH level of the skin is around 5. However, while it is true that using soap increases the pH on the surface of the skin, our skin has a natural ability to regulate pH, and over time it will return to healthy acidic levels (typically taking 20 minutes to two hours). 

An added bonus of soap bars is that they can be free of plastic packaging.

Support your local artisan soap makers by buying soap directly from them!

2) Handwash with gentle surfactants 

Switch your SLS-based hand soap to one made with more gentle surfactants. There are many alternatives to SLS, some of which are more gentle and less irritating.

Alternatives to SLS include surfactants such as: 

• Decyl glucoside.
• Lauryl glucoside.
• SLSA (sodium lauryl sulfoacetate).
• Sodium Cocoyl Glycinate.
• Disodium/Sodium Cocoyl Glutamate.

Check some handwash ingredient labels and see which surfactants they use. If it seems quite confusing, simply look for one that doesn’t use SLS.

Our personal favorite handwash? We like Avalon Organics Handwashes. This isn’t an affiliate link, simply a product we like and have used for years without experiencing any drying or irritating affect.

Glycerin is your friend!

Humectants attract water from the atmosphere to the skin and bind it there, which hydrates and moisturizes the skin. Glycerin is the most easily accessible and inexpensive humectant and is commonly plant derived. 

Traditional, cold-process soap contains good amounts of glycerin and many liquid hand soaps contain it, too. Check the ingredient label and if you see glycerin, you’ll know it’ll help keep your hands moisturized.

References

1. L. Rhein, 2007, C.3 – Surfactant Action on Skin and Hair: Cleansing and Skin Reactivity Mechanisms.
2. Emmanuelle Lémery, Stéphanie Briançon, Yves Chevalier, Claire Bordes, Thierry Oddos, Annie Gohier, Marie-Alexandrine Bolzinger, March 2015, Skin toxicity of surfactants: Structure/toxicity relationships, 469:166-179.
3. E. Bárány, M. Lindberg, M. Lodén, 2000, Unexpected skin barrier influence from nonionic emulsifiers, Int. J. Pharm., 195 (2000):189-195.

Masters of their craft all have one thing in common: they never stop learning. But how do they do it? How do they pursue their passion whilst keeping on top of everyday life?

Whether your dream is to start a natural skincare business, or simply to create products for yourself, your family and friends, we know it’s not always easy to find the time to develop your passion.

To help you with this challenge, I (Gareth) will be sharing my own experience and advice when it comes to the art of juggling life with doing what you love.

1. Start with your passion – your ‘why’.

The School of Natural Skincare grew from just two people and a shared passion for natural skincare.

Gail and I founded the business whilst both working full-time jobs. And as if that wasn’t enough, we then went on to start a family, including twins!

Somehow, amidst all these commitments, we managed to turn our shared vision into the wonderful, thriving community and online business that you see today.

It wasn’t easy! But it is possible.

So, how did we do it?

We have always believed in what we do, 100%. We find joy in doing it, and we look to the future with unwavering faith. What we needed was focus.

Finding out that we were expecting our first baby got us VERY focused indeed.

Now, we only had eight months to get things moving! Otherwise, we knew our dreams would only be pushed further and further down the line.

So, ask yourself, what is your passion – your ‘why’? What do you love to do, and why do you love to do it?

2. Figure out a way to do it around your family.

Our business grew dramatically after the birth of our baby girl. We had both quit our full-time jobs, and I can still remember vividly working on material for our flagship courses well into the early hours of the morning. My office hours became 9pm-4am!

Gail and I shared night shifts looking after our daughter, feeding and changing diapers – and writing course material in between!

It was the best and hardest experience of my life.

Being able to do work that I loved, as well as having quality time with my baby daughter was wonderful, and a joy I’m all too aware is not always possible for working dads.

Figuring out a way to work around our family was extremely important to us. We have always sought to find the fun and the excitement in our job – the things that get us going – and to incorporate these things into family life.

We even took our business and our baby travelling the world for 8 months – going from the USA to Australia, and then New Zealand.

Though balancing a baby and a business was definitely daunting at times, these months were our commitment to living the one life we have to the fullest. This was a time we will always treasure.

Juggling parenthood with starting a business taught us that if you want something badly enough, you will find the time to do it. Sometimes that means staying up late – after the family’s gone to bed – or waking up early.

Whilst doing this crucial work, remind yourself that these challenges won’t last forever, and that nothing feels as good as seeing your hard work pay off.

How could you make your passion for natural & organic skincare work around your family commitments?

3. Find your focus.

Our business was growing, and demanding more of us than ever before. And then… the twins arrived! OMG!

We weren’t sure how we were going to cope – but we did! And you know what?

Our business grew because of our children.

There’s no doubt about it: looking after three children under the age of two, as well as running a relatively new business, gave us no choice but to focus!

What could have been an obstacle became a strength! Without any spare time to waste on procrastination, we found our minds, senses, and energies more centered than ever before.

And the focus and hard work paid off.

In that time, our business more than quadrupled in size. In 12-18 months, we went from what was a very part-time business, to becoming a fully fledged, internationally recognized online school, with students all over the world who loved what we did and were as passionate about natural skincare as we were.

4. Listen to your customers.

For those of you aiming to start or grow a business, feedback is your best friend. Early feedback from friends and family is especially helpful.

Of course, because this is your business – your passion – feedback (especially the critical kind!) may be hard to hear. It may even make you feel defensive. But never forget that your customers can teach you so much. This is why having a platform where your customers can connect with you is vital to success.

When you create a platform to connect with your customers, you open yourself to a wealth of constructive feedback, and, in turn, your customers can connect with your vision and with you.

We believe that when you communicate with passion, belief, and honesty, people can sense that you speak from the heart, and this resonates with them. Whilst building our business, we focused on problem solving, and in maintaining an unwavering faith in what we did. We aimed to stay calm in times of stress. And to figure things out together, as a team.

Listen to your customers’ comments and criticisms. Take in their praise and answer their questions. It is your gift to be able to deliver solutions to their problems and to create a community of customers who truly love what you have to offer.

What feedback would be helpful for you and who could give it to you? How could you receive this feedback in a way that helps you improve and grow?

5. Embrace mistakes – no one is perfect and you will mess up!

Nobody’s perfect, and we all mess up from time to time – we’re only human, after all! We’re sorry whenever we do and we do our utmost to correct the mistakes we’ve made.

We also recognise that mistakes offer an important opportunity to grow.

Now, when Gail and I look at the past, we cherish our growth and the work that we’ve done. At the same time, we are always aiming to improve and to grow, to evolve and develop, and to find the best solutions possible to any new challenges that arise.

6. Seek help!!!

You can’t do it all on your own. Seriously. You’ll likely experience burnout if you try to. We did it alone for a while, until we realised we needed help in order to stay sane.

For our business, we sought expert advice from across the board. From graphic design to advertising, from book-keeping to tech support, from business coaches to life coaches, and online courses of one kind or another.

Over time, we gathered a team of freelancers who have helped our business go from strength to strength – beauty business experts, cosmetic formulators and scientists.

Now, with a number of full-time staff members, we can reach and inspire more people than ever before and give opportunities for more people to learn and grow!

At home, when our twins were three months old, we hired a childminder for 12 hours each week. This carved out dedicated time for work. As our business has grown, we’ve been able to increase the amount of support we have at home in order to continue to grow our enterprise.

This means that a cook, a cleaner, and our childminder all play integral roles in helping us to juggle life with what we love.

Let me be clear though, we are still hands on parents – we still cook, clean, and tidy every day.

We dry tears, wipe bums, clean up sick, and deal with sleepless nights and very early mornings. We do the shopping, play with our kids, organise family adventures, and do as much as we possibly can to ensure that we are able to live our most authentic truth as a family and as a business.

As well as this, it was important to us that we could home-school our eldest daughter. She is now nearly six, and we intend to do the same for the twins. There’s no question that it’s all hands on deck, but still we do it!

And why?

Because this is the path we choose. It may be hard, but our faith is unwavering, and at the end of the day, we know that we believe in what we do.

What help do you need? Who can help you to achieve the dreams you have? What training could you get and what support would be most helpful?

7. Don’t wait around.

It’s easy to put our dreams on hold because we feel that we need more knowledge, more money, more time. But the truth is that with this mindset the ‘perfect day’ might never arrive. Realising that NOW is the time to connect with your passion is the only way forward.

Harness your passion! Be consumed by it! And work hard to find ways to bring your goals to life.

Ask yourself what’s stopping you. What is standing in the way of you progressing, learning, and dedicating time and energy to your passion for natural and organic skincare?

Not enough money and time are always big reasons we hold ourselves back. But money and time are problems that may never go away. What we can choose to do is to find a way to pursue our passion regardless.

How could you help yourself to keep going, to keep working on your passion, no matter what the obstacle?

8. Plan Ahead

A few years back, Tara Gentile (now Tara McMullin), shared with us this golden nugget: design your business now as if you were already achieving your three year goals. That is to say, dream big, and as you dream of your future, put the required infrastructure in place now. Then you can start the next dream, and the next!

By following Tara’s advice you are setting your business up to grow. And this works for learning a new craft, too!

Here’s why:

1. You’re more likely to successfully achieve your goals because you feel as if you almost already have.

2. Upon achieving your goals for your business/craft, you will already have made sure that the necessary people, processes, and systems are in place for your next goals to be reached.

And so the cycle of success continues!

Planning ahead is also about cultivating the art of dreaming, ofImagining the future and mapping out what it could be like, then making a plan to make it happen. Everything starts with an idea! And planning ahead is what allows our ideas to take flight.

Without needing to rely on anyone else, think right now how you could plan ahead.

9. Cultivate the art of marketing

If you want to start and grow a business, you must cultivate the art of marketing. It doesn’t matter how good your product is – if no-one knows about it, how will your business grow? Who will come knocking at your door? And how will your business endure?

Start small, by dedicating an hour a week to finding customers, then build that up to an hour a day.

Find experts to help you with everything. We’re talking web design, photography, advertising and selling online; don’t take bad advice or engage with anyone who will devalue your offering and limit your sales.

10. Find your tribe!

Most important of all, find people who want to buy from you – who listen to and are inspired by you, and who enjoy being part of your business.

The customer enables your business to exist – so get searching for people who will love what you do. Ask yourself, how will you find and connect with potential customers? And how will you help them to find you, too?

With hard work, a good attitude, and plenty of nurture and care, the rest will take care of itself.

What tribe could you join? Where can you get support? Who can help you to learn, grow, develop and progress? Who could help and support you to do what you want to do?

11. Never forget your ‘why’.

At the end of the day, there’s nothing more important than your ‘why’. Whether natural skincare is your hobby or your career, always remember the real passion that put you on this path in the first place. Never forget your love for what you do.

In times of challenge or uncertainty, find pockets of time (they can be big or small!) for learning more. Then, watch and take pride as your newfound knowledge elevates your creative endeavours to a whole new level.

What is your ‘why’? Try writing it down.

Ask yourself, why do you make your own products? What is the underlying meaning and joy of your passion for natural skincare?

Why do you do it, and what does it give you, in turn?

12. Be a lifelong learner AND be kind to yourself.

Masters of their craft are lifelong learners. They invest their time and money into their craft because they know they’re investing in more than just learning.

An investment into your craft is an investment for your heart and soul, your health and wellbeing, and ultimately, your happiness.

Because we’re happiest when we’re learning, developing, and making progress. We’re happiest when we do the things that make our heart sing. We’re happiest when we allow ourselves to see how good we are at what we love.

What steps will you take to become a lifelong learner?

If we could only all spend more time doing the things we love, spending time with the people we love the most – surely life would be that much more pleasant.

This is why we choose to be lifelong learners. To never stop growing and never stop trying new things.

The most important thing in all of this life juggling?

Be kind to yourself. Seriously.

Take pleasure in treating yourself from time to time – in practising self-care, and just remember: follow the fun, speak your truth, and practise unwavering faith in yourself. 😊

How could you be kind to yourself?

It’s a new year. It’s time to look forward, and consider how you are going to live more in tune with your values and beliefs. What are you going to do so you can lead a more meaningful life and bring out all the fun, creativity and new experiences which are at the heart of who you are and what you do?

In a world of so much noise and so much choice, sometimes having so many options can be overwhelming. How can you choose?

However, one of the amazing things about the way we live today, and the way society and commerce are shifting, is that it is possible to live more in tune with your values and beliefs.

Here at School of Natural Skincare, we’re blessed to live in the UK. It isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, and there are still ways we hope to see society progress forward, but we love the fact that here, people are free to think, act, and speak their personal truth.

Of course this isn’t 100% true in all cases, but overall, things are becoming more open and accepting—and we think that’s a good thing.

Natural Is Mainstream

For example, the natural and organic movement is now no longer considered “alternative.” It’s mainstream, no longer looked down upon as odd or unusual.

People are free to seek out the organic food they prefer, adjust their tastes to suit a vegan or vegetarian diet, or be thoughtful about where they source their produce, meat, and dairy.

Natural health food shops, therapy rooms and homeopathic pharmacies are popping up in every village, town and city.

And the natural skincare market is now the fastest growing segment of the cosmetics industry globally.

More and more people are seeking holistic therapists from herbalists, aromatherapists, shiatsu practitioners, reiki practitioners, acupuncturists, massage therapists and beauty therapists. Yet, when my parents were in their younger days, they said all you had to rely on was the GP really.

Yoga is being practiced by people all over the country, but my yoga teacher tells me stories of how campaigners and protestors rallied outside his yoga studio in the late 1970s and early 1980s. All they were doing was stretching and meditating.

Now, instead of seeking out herbs, oils, and incense in a small speciality shop the next town over, you can find them in a grocery store or in a mainstream shop. The founder of Star Child told me how people campaigned to have his shop closed down in Tewkesbury and then again when he moved it to Glastonbury. All he was selling was herbs, oils, and incense!

Our Part to Play

One factor that we believe underlies all of this change is that collectively, we are gaining in awareness of the effects of our very existence on planet Earth.

The rise of all things eco-friendly and sustainable is in response to the air and water pollution, the vast rubbish dumps, the waste and destruction across once pristine environments, as well as the consequent results of climate change.

At the same time, we’re seeing the rise of the vegan movement as we begin to question our treatment of animals, our place amongst all living organisms and our responsibilities as the most evolved being on our planet.

Even those who do not choose veganism are becoming more aware and thoughtful about how animals are treated, conditions for manufacturing and production or various animal products.

Now that we know we have a choice—and that our choice really does make a difference—we’re making a choice.

In short, we are all becoming a little more conscious, more ethical, more green, eco-friendly, more organic and perhaps a little more ourselves—and we’re beginning to wonder how we can become connected to the natural world again.

Empower Your Choices

Whatever values guide you—whether you choose organic, natural, halal, vegan, fair trade, ethical, sustainable, cruelty-free products in your daily life—one of the great things about natural skincare is that when you make it yourself, you can make it your own.

You have the power to create something meaningful, unique, and personal. Something as good as—if not better—than store bought products, for a fraction of the price. And you can do it in a way that embraces your deepest values and beliefs.

So, instead of expressing our natural and organic values by only buying them from elsewhere, like the health food shop, organic food market, when we make our own natural and organic skincare products, we’re not just buying our values, we’re living them, expressing them, and making them—and by the same token, we’re making our own individual values-based movement that much more vibrant and bigger.

It can be hard to find products that conform to our own set of values, needs, preferences, and desires. But when you make them for yourself, the world is your oyster.

When you buy a product, it takes a moment to make the decision and feel good about conforming to our values, but when we make them, we get the excitement of thinking about the ingredients, wondering what we’re going to create, the joy of making them and then the huge satisfaction of using them and seeing the benefits they bring.

You can then take your masterpieces and share them with other people.

We’re not saying stop putting your money where your values are, of course! Please continue to support the businesses that reflect what is precious to you.

But if you make your own, who knows? Maybe one day, you’ll be the one selling the products that other people buy, and resonate with, and cherish.

Live Your Deepest Values

At the core of all of this is the idea that we do have choices, we do have the power to express our deepest values. We do make a difference with our purchasing choices, and we can effect change when we take ownership of creating our own natural products. Little by little, change has come, and it will continue to come if we keep pushing on.

There has never been a better time to enjoy living and expressing your deepest values, and there has never been a better time to join the natural and organic skincare revolution.

In years gone by it was silenced, kept at bay, but as more and more consumers become wise to what’s in the products they use, the growth and demand for natural and organic alternatives has come on strong.

It is here to stay—and those in the industry know this.

Many of those large global cosmetics companies are having to change their plans and offer natural and organic alternatives to their synthetic products.

Go to any cosmetics conference today and the big topics are vegan products, natural products, organic products, and sustainable cosmetics.

But you don’t have to wait for commercially-made products to get with the program. You can start today. You can start choosing to live your values, expressing them through the products you make.

When you learn a skill, you aren’t buying your values, you’re living them. It becomes a lifelong process and builds joy.

Getting Started

Your next steps depend on your goals and where you are right now in your current skincare journey. One thing is true for everyone, from a complete newbie to an advanced formulator: Whatever you think you’d like to do, learn and become, it is entirely possible!

The great thing about making your own natural skincare products is you don’t need to be a scientist.

All you need is the interest, a passion for all things natural and organic, a willingness to give it a go, and the desire to devote some time to learning and practice. Your confidence will build as you study and apply what you are learning, and begin to make products.

If you haven’t ever tried making your own products, that’s okay! We created our Certificate in Making Natural Skincare Products online course to meet the needs of absolute beginners.

Instead of digging through stacks of poor-quality advice (and there’s so much of it out there) or learning by trial and error (and error, and more error) you can get everything you need to know in the Certificate course to start making skincare products straight away.

Working from our hand-crafted selection of foundational recipes, and incorporating up-to-date information and professional-quality advice on mixing, safety, and storage, you’ll be well ahead of the DIY method.

Learn about suppliers, ingredients, and equipment. Watch videos and refer back to audio and text again and again, switch up ingredients to make it customized, and study at your own pace.

You got this!

If you’ve been making products for a while, followed some recipes, or had a go at making them yourself without recipes, the Diploma in Natural Skincare Formulation might be a fit for you! Especially if you have some questions, or have experienced some problems with your past batches, and need some troubleshooting.

With the Diploma course, you’ll learn how to make your own products from scratch just like a professional, rather than needing to follow a recipe.

This course will teach you the start-to-finish design and development process of skincare products, and will take your skill and knowledge to a whole other level.

We’ll also help you and show you how to weave your values and beliefs into the products you want to make, and we’ll go one step further to get you ready to make products that are good enough (and safe enough!) to sell.

We’ll explain what you need to do to comply with cosmetic regulations.

So, if you are looking for a way to express yourself, live your values in a way that is fun and creative, and learn skills that can translate to a meaningful business, then we’d love to welcome you to one of our courses. Start the New Year with focus and purpose, and learn how to formulate natural and organic skincare products like a professional.

If you’re not sure you are ready for that yet, then perhaps start with our Free Natural Beauty Recipe Book.

This coming new year is also the start of a whole new decade! As the seasons change, and we start thinking about the end of the year, we can set our sights ahead on what’s yet to come.

We wanted to take the opportunity to encourage you to create your vision for the future, not just for 2020, but further than that.

• What do you want to create next year?
• What do you imagine creating by the end of 2020?
• What would you like your life to be like 10 years from now?

The Days are Long, But the Years are Short

In 2013, I (Gareth) left my job in management consultancy to dedicate my full time to the School of Natural Skincare and family life with Gail and our children, the first of whom was on the way.

I had been with the same company for just over 9 years. As I left the office for the final time, I walked home and suddenly wondered what had happened to the last 10 years.

What had I actually done with my life? Where had it taken me? What had I truly and honestly achieved?

I was stumped.

Silent and dumb-founded as I considered these questions, I made a pledge, a promise to myself that in 10 years time I would not look back on my life and wonder what on earth I had achieved.

Of course, during the previous 10 years, I had done a lot and achieved a lot—but not really anything grand, or amazing, or groundbreaking, or wonderful, or memorable. The last 7 years by contrast have been unbelievably amazing, and I promise myself this: The 2020s will be the best ten years yet.

Right now, with all of that in mind, I am creating my vision for 2020 and beyond. What about you?

It’s About the Journey, Not the Destination

Best selling author, motivational speaker, and life coach, Tony Robbins, said something once that has stuck with me for years. It was something about how people are happiest when they are growing, learning and developing, when they feel like the are improving, advancing, looking forwards and going somewhere.

This isn’t a verbatim quote, but it is the essence of what he was saying.

To him, the feeling of happiness wasn’t just about reaching a goal, achieving a milestone, or gaining some marker of success, but it’s about the progress.

I love the energy and potential surrounding this philosophy, and I wanted to write a personal note to anyone who wants to read this to encourage them to spend some time in contemplation about the future, about next year and about the forthcoming decade to uncover the mystery of what it might look like, feel like, and sound like.

What might your life be like next year? What about ten years from now, in 2029?

How are you going to grow and develop? What are you going to learn? What are you going to embrace in your life, and in return, what do you expect to experience? Where will all of this take you?

Moving On, Letting Go, Embracing Change

Remember, in order to grow, develop, learn and experience more, or different things, we may also need to leave things behind, let things go. In your exploration, consider what things can be left behind so that you may move forward.

If you don’t know where to start, the best thing to do is to begin at the beginning.

What do you love?

Do you love essential oils? How about looking at aromatherapy? If you love working with herbs, how about looking into taking some herbalism courses or becoming an herbalist, or just finding out ways to use herbs at home?

Do you want to look after your body a little more, get in shape, become a little stronger, fitter, healthier, more vital and flexible? How about yoga, pilates, tai chi, qi gong? How about swimming, running, walking, hiking? It doesn’t have to be a huge first step, but even a small step in the right direction will get you going.

Are you missing a connection to the natural world? How about going walking? Explore the areas where you live, whether they are woodlands, riverside walks, hiking some hills and mountains? How about forest bathing? How about finding some adult workshops that embrace nature and the good outdoors?

Maybe you’d like to be happier in life? What choices can you make right now to help move in the direction of that future you want?

You can choose to take some time out for you to be you, just listening to your own mind and being present with your goals. Or, you could go to a spa, set up regular self-care treatments, move your body, go dancing, practice some yoga, tai chi, qi gong, pilates, or other movement that speaks to you.

If your goal is to work on your mind and shift your current way of thinking, you can seek out some Positive Psychology, NLP, or EFT.

Caring for your mind, heart and soul is just as important as caring for your body—it’s all connected, after all. Famous public speaker and life coach Jim Rohn is a huge advocate for giving the mind as much of a workout as the body.

It is easier for us to work our bodies, and most people know how to do this, but when it comes to giving the mind, heart, and soul a bit of positive attention… we’re not really sure what to do or how to do it. It takes time, and practice, and intention. But it is so important to look after the whole person—body, heart, mind, and soul.

Get out in nature, or even try a laughter workshop—yes they exist!

You could learn (or re-learn) a musical instrument, take up a new hobby, spend more time with family and friends, or just do something that makes you feel good for the sake of feeling good.

Pamper yourself. Don’t push. You’re stronger and more capable than you know, and you can change, even if you feel stuck in a rut. As they saying goes: Little by little, great oaks from acorns grow.

You don’t have to start on January 1st as a mighty oak. But find the seed, and plant it, and be intentional. By honoring your inner self, and listening to that call, you can start to grow into something you may never have dreamed was possible.

A Vision of Natural Health and Wellness

As the School of Natural Skincare, we’d be missing an obvious opportunity here if we didn’t talk about the impact that making your own natural beauty products can provide.

There’s something deeply satisfying about making things with your own hands, using those products, and not only seeing results but feeling the love, care, and attention put into them.

If you’ve always wanted to get started, now is the time! Our students often tell us how they wished they’d found us years ago, or how they’d wished they had enrolled on one of our courses earlier.

Or, you can commit to taking your existing product making skills to another level.

Either way, when we ask our students what they are most proud of, what they are happiest with, and what they’ve accomplished this year, they tell us about how far they’ve come, how much they have learned, how good their products are, and how their whole vision for the future has shifted.

They tell us how they see new potential for their hobby, how their skin is better, how it’s improved. They tell us how excited they are when their latest ingredients and equipment arrive, and how eager they are to get started making new products.

When we teach students to formulate like a professional, we teach them to begin with the goal in mind: What skincare problem do they want to solve, for which type of end user, and how will that user’s needs be met? That informs their choices all throughout the formulation process.

And at the end, we consider how those problems were or were not addressed, what can we improve, what can we do better. It’s not too dissimilar from the bigger-picture questions about life, and the future.

• How have you changed?
• How do you want to change?
• Where do you want to go?

If you do the same thing for yourself, and take the time to explore these questions, what would that be, and what would you do?

And if there are things you want to change, what would it look like if you embraced that change?

Make 2020 Your Best Year Yet

The answer is up to you.

It may take some time to consider it, and that’s good.

And of course we’d love to have you come study with us, but that doesn’t have to be your best answer. What matters is what you are passionate about, what is moving and meaningful to you?

• What do you love?
• What do you enjoy doing?
• What makes your heart sing?
• When are you at your best and when do you feel the happiest?
• What are your hobbies… or what hobbies would you like to take up?
• How could you do more of the things you love?
• How could you live more in tune with you values and beliefs?
• How could you help yourself and contribute positively to other people’s lives?

This is our invitation to you to start considering these questions, and making the active choice to make this coming year your best yet, and to make the 2020s your best decade yet.

We invite you to make this the decade where you decide to do more of the things you wanted to, and move towards the life of your dreams.

One thing is certain, when you reach the life of your dreams, you’ll have other dreams and it will never end, but it will make the journey of life a more magical one.

Free Resources to Get Started Today

On a serious note, while you’re here: If it is skincare that excites you, and you want to know more about how to get started making your own natural and organic skincare (and haircare!) products, we’d love to hear from you.

Please check out our portfolio of online courses to see if there is something there that you would love to do, please email us at hello@schoolofnaturalskincare.com to make contact and let us know how we can help.

If you need some more time or if you want to check us out for a bit first, we have stacks of free resources like our Beginner’s Guide to Formulating Natural Skincare Products and our Free Natural Beauty Recipe Book!

Also, please do check us out on Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook. We’ll be launching our YouTube channel soon, so stay tuned for that!

And to all of our readers, we wish you a joyous, peaceful, and abundant new year. Happy holidays!

For most people, going to a luxury spa is the ultimate self-care, pampering experience.

It would be amazing to have access to the decadent products, exclusive treatments, and relaxing atmosphere of a luxury spa whenever and wherever we wanted it. But who has got the time, money, and ability to go to a luxury spa every single week—or even just once a month?

For most of our budgets, and our busy lives, that just isn’t realistic. So a spa experience becomes, at best, a very special, one-time treat, if we go at all. (And if one is even in your area!)

But what if you could create a luxury spa experience at home?

It’s not as out of reach as you might think! You have the power to create not only the spa-quality, luxury products, but also to make a soothing, indulgent, and nurturing space for self-care within the comfort of your own home!

Defining the Space for Self-Care

Bathing has been seen as a luxurious activity since ancient times. Going to the spa is relaxing, refreshing, revitalizing, and rejuvenating. It’s good for the soul, mind, and body—the whole being.

What is it about the spa experience that makes it so special?

For some, it’s the social aspects of sharing a relaxing self-care day with friends! For others, it’s the time to step away from the hassles of the world and the cares of your busy, stressful life, and just let go for a while.

Either way, you can begin to craft the ambience for that at-home spa experience by thinking about what aspects you personally find relaxing. It doesn’t have to be exotic or expensive, or even perfect. It just has to fit your needs, and speak to you.

Your Home Spa Experience

Now that you’ve set the space for your at-home luxury spa day, you’re ready to decide what treatments you want to do!

A relaxing bath or footbath

To start with, a bath is a wonderful way to unwind, relax, revitalize the mind, body, and senses. Bathing is also a powerful way to renew your body as well! It helps to lower blood pressure and heart rate, lengthen and slow down our breathing, promote calmness and relaxation, bring warmth to the body, alleviate aches and pains, and cleanse the skin… all of which boosts our own body’s power of renewal.

You could do a full bath, or a foot bath—but either way, there are loads of amazing options for a soak, from the simplicity of fresh flower petals and a handful of epsom salt to even more luxurious products that you can make at home.

• Try our Foaming Orange, Frankincense and Sandalwood Mineral Bath Soak

Bath bombs

One product that’s as fun to make as it is to use is a bath bomb.

Working from a basic formula, you can customize it to suit your needs so easily! Tough day at work? Try a relaxing lavender bath bomb. Need an invigorating wake-up to start the day at home with the kids with energy? Citrus Mint is sure to put a spring in your step. Have a date night planned with your special someone? Sandalwood and rose sets the mood, and perfumes your skin beautifully. Just toss the bomb in the water and it will fizz and dissolve into a soak that’s out of this world.

• Try our Rose and Cocoa Butter Bath Truffles

Body scrub

Another excellent and customizable home-spa product you can make is a body scrub.

Packed with deceptively simple, yet beneficial ingredients, sugar scrubs exfoliate and condition the skin—and use ingredients that won’t contribute to plastic pollution, like some products made with beads or pellets. A scrub can be as simple as combining the right proportion of white sugar with a nourishing carrier oil and an essential oil of your choice.

For a real treat, choose an emulsified scrub. This delightful rendition will allow the oil in the scrub to turn into a creamy lotion when it meets water and your skin. Once you’ve tried one of these scrubs you are sure to be hooked. Your skin will glisten, be baby soft, and smell divine. Here’s a tip: Scrub before shaving for the smoothest legs you’ve ever had!

(As an added bonus, emulsified scrubs will not attach themselves to the side of your tub as stubbornly as an oil only (anhydrous) scrub!)  

Just a few simple ingredients make up this exhilarating, skin-smoothing body scrub. Want to learn how to make it at home?

• Coconut Coffee Body Scrub recipe

Be careful, though, and avoid using salt or sugar scrubs on your face. While these scrubs are perfect for the body, they are just a bit too much for our delicate facial skin.

Face mask

Instead, if you’re looking for facial exfoliation while you soak, choose a clay, a gelled lactic acid, or sheet mask for the delicate facial skin. Add a hydrating and tightening caffeine and hyaluronic acid mask formulated specifically for under eyes to condition and brighten this fragile area.

Want to learn how to make an amazing antioxidant face mask with matcha, honey, and orange blossom? Check this one out:

• Vitamin C Antioxidant Face Mask

Body butter or lotion

Once you’ve found the willpower to exit that luxurious tub (be careful when stepping onto the floor after that conditioning scrub!) your skin is primed to take full advantage of a nutritive-filled body butter or lotion. Consider choosing one that includes cocoa butter. Cocoa butter possesses occlusive properties, meaning it will greatly reduce water loss from our skin. Certainly, we want to give our skin the full advantage of that nice long soak and let the moisture hydrate for as long as possible.  

Check out this article—complete with a free recipe for a nourishing cocoa body butter—to help you get started:

• 5 ways to use nourishing cocoa butter (plus a free recipe!)

These four simple things—bath bomb or soak, sugar body scrub, facial mask, and body lotion—are just a few of the wonderful, decadent products that you can incorporate into your home spa-day routine. You can also include specialized treatments for trouble spots, customized scent combinations, and they’re all things that you can make at home!

So why not give it a go?

What’s In Your Luxury Products?

If you’re someone who is drawn to putting only the finest, most natural and eco-conscious products on your body, then you’ll already likely be aware that there are many ingredients used in commercially-available products—even products labeled as natural or organic—that you probably don’t want to be using. This includes ingredients that either don’t conform to your natural and organic values, or ones that are synthetic, harsh/irritating, petroleum-derived or animal-derived.

Spa products are quite likely better quality than the average product found in a department store or supermarket, but not always! And you may or may not be able to look at the label of the products used at a spa.

So many products contain ingredients that we either don’t like, don’t trust, know cause harm or irritation, don’t conform to our value system or that we just don’t want to use on our skin—doesn’t it make sense to make your own? That takes all the wondering and guesswork out of the equation, and puts you in control.

Spa products usually also carry a premium price tag! Bath salts for example can often cost in excess of $50 for a small tub when they are actually a low cost product to make for yourself. So by creating your own spa products you’ll both know exactly what is in them and save yourself a huge amount of money too.

In our article about creating a skincare ritual, we emphasized the importance of creating an approach to skincare that honors your inner beauty as well as nourishes your skin. Sometimes, it’s not just the change in products we use, but the change in our approach to how we honor ourselves that can bring out the happiness and positivity we want to see in our lives.

It’s our intention that makes our routine more magical, more meaningful. And the change we can make in ourselves and in the world around us can start with you.

Where to Get Started

If you’re brand-new to all of this, and inspired to start making your own products, take a look at some of the recipes we provide and try them out! And then, hop on over to our Certificate in Natural Skincare to learn more about customizing recipes to suit your needs. If you really want to learn everything you need to know to formulate your own amazing range of spa products from scratch, and come out with a professional quality result for a fraction the price of shop bought brands, then the Diploma in Natural Skincare Formulation is for you. You can develop the skill, confidence and knowledge required to stand on your own two feet and make whatever product you choose! Whichever course you choose, we’re excited to welcome you to our vibrant online global community and to helping you to make your own gorgeous natural and organic beauty products, for yourself or to sell.

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Skincare products can do amazing things.

On the surface, they can nourish our skin, calm irritation, combat signs of stress, and bring vibrancy back to dull and tired skin. All of these effects are wonderful, and for some, can add a life-changing boost of confidence. But with intention, skincare can do so much more.

Health, healing, and wellness can—and should—go deeper than just the surface. It’s not just what you do every now and then that makes a difference (although it can help) but the rituals you create for yourself, that space where you create meaning and purpose, which can truly be transformative. It’s more than just picking a lotion or cream with the hope that it will fix a problem, put it on and walking out the door.

There can be magic in creating a self-care ritual, tailored just for you.

Each and every one of you is unique and special. There’s no one else in the world quite like you! Which is why you each deserve to let your inner beauty shine.

So what does this mean?

The Power to Change—Inside and Out!

We wrote “It’s Not You or Your Skin, It’s Your Skincare Products!” as a response to the overwhelmingly common frustration that many of our students experience, trying to address a persistent and frustrating skin concern. In that article, we wanted to reassure you that no matter how frustrating your struggle has been, odds are that it’s not some intrinsic flaw in your skin, which can’t ever be fixed, but a challenge to find the proper products to meet your skin’s needs.

You’re not broken.

You can—with intention, proper formulating knowledge, and the right tools—create your own products and tailor them to suit your needs, values, and desires. The best part about that is you know exactly what is in the products you make, and you can avoid the ingredients that you find harsh, or simply view as undesirable.

And, you can take that one step further, setting yourself up with a sacred space for a daily beauty routine that transcends the physical, and makes your passion for this creative hobby something more meaningful, magical, and empowering. Instead of only making time and space to make your products, make special time and space for you to use them.

Note: Those with chronic conditions should seek the advice of a medical professional before starting any routine!

Creating a Skincare Ritual

What does a skincare ritual mean? Although the word might conjure up (ha!) all kinds of images, ritual isn’t anything sinister, dark, or negative, it simply means an empowering routine that is infused with your positive intentions for what you wish to accomplish. It’s about giving yourself the gift of time and a sacred space to focus yourself, body and soul, as you thoughtfully apply your products.

In a sense, formulation can be a ritual—a set way of creating, the proper steps you have to follow, to get your desired end result—once you approach it with intention and infuse it your passion, your spirit. We like to encourage people to make their own products, to take control of what they use, and to help find the passion and spirit and energy in their creative hobby.

In the same way, we all have the power to supercharge anything we want! If you are passionate about natural and organic skincare, we ask you to bring that passion into your daily life in the way you use your products, and honour yourself in the process. You can infuse your skincare practice with passion, belief, and purpose.

Your skin is yearning to be nourished and treated to the very best. Is your spirit, your inner self, yearning for the same thing?

What Ritual Looks Like For You

Just like with formulation, the key to creating a skincare ritual is to begin with the end result in mind. Start with the result you want to have—what would you like to experience? How do you want to feel about yourself when your ritual is complete?

I want to feel… empowered, clarified, focused, determined, healthy, radiant, awake, peaceful…

Next, think about what time of day might be best for your self-care routine. Mornings can be powerful, a great way to begin the day with intention, clarity, and purpose, but right before bed can be excellent as well. What suits you, and your lifestyle, best?

I want to set my intention for the day…

I want to peacefully drift off to a healing, restful sleep…

Then, think about the space for your ritual, as well as the other elements you can bring into your space, to set the mood and reinforce your intention. This could include anything from music, candles, diffusing oils or burning incense, holding a stone or crystal to use as a focus point, or incorporating yoga, qigong, or some other physical movement before or after your ritual. Or even something as simple as a bath or shower!

I define my ritual space with scent, feeling, and emotion… here, in the safety of my ritual space, I can begin to set my intention…

Finally, consider the products you will use for your ritual, and in what order. Which products should you start with? We have a few ideas…

Simple Products, Big Changes

Starting small and simple with your product choices is great not only for beginners, but for anyone who wants to make a focus point for their own intentional skincare work. Rather than making lots and lots of different products, you can make products for a purpose. That makes it easier to learn how to do it properly, if you’re brand-new, perfect your skills, if you’ve got some experience, and overall, to make products that work.

Trying to make too many products, too quickly, can be expensive, time consuming, and make you lose sight of your original goal. Remember, the focus here is on you. When you get caught up in making lots and lots of products—and we’ve all been there!—it’s possible to get carried away and overwhelmed. Start simple, and do it right, the first time.

Do It Yourself, For Yourself

Creating that sacred space gives you time to focus on what’s positive, what’s beautiful, and to honor yourself. This takes us beyond the physical and beyond just our skin. It transforms a when-I-remember-to-do-it occurrence into a ritual focused on our own intentional wellbeing, health, and happiness. And you can weave your passion and hobby for natural & organic skincare into the space.

Sure, you could go and buy some amazing products that are natural, organic or vegan and bring them into your newly-created space. But there’s something special about creating your own products and using them in this way—not to mention the fact that it will be cheaper to make your own!

Once you do know how to make your own products, you get the joy from creating them, the excitement from using them, the satisfaction of seeing the results, all wrapped up into a sacred space created by you for the purpose of honouring yourself.

If you’re not sure where to get started with a ritual, here’s a simple routine to get you started!

Creating a Ritual, One Step at a Time

Here’s a simple routine that works for all skin types for a morning or evening routine:

Occasional treatments

Exfoliating products: Depending on how abrasive the exfoliator is, it may be used once or twice per week. It’s best to use it after the skin has been properly cleansed and before hydrating products.

Masks: Facemasks are typically used once a week. Of course, if you feel like your skin needs more pampering, you can use a mask more often.

In our next article, we’ll be exploring treatments in more detail and how to create a home spa!

Get Started: It’s Easy!

We can teach you how to make your own complete skin care range including cleansers, toners, hydrating mists, exfoliators, serums and moisturizers!

If you’re brand-new to making products, and want to learn more about how you can develop thoughtful rituals with hand-crafted products, made to suit your skincare needs, then we recommend our Certificate in Making Natural Skincare Products online course!

If you have a bit more experience, then the Diploma in Natural Skincare Formulation might be the best choice for you! Both the Diploma and the Certificate course are hosted in our state-of-the-art online classroom, which enables you to study in your own time at your own pace from the comfort of your own home.

We’d love to welcome you to our vibrant online community, help you to take your power back, ditch products laden with ingredients you either don’t want to use or that are known to cause harm or irritation, and supercharge your health and wellbeing with a new and empowering creative hobby.

(Who knows? It might become more than just a hobby! You might join many of our students who have gone on to set up their own brands!)

Want to learn more? Check out our free Natural Beauty Recipes book, right here!

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If you’ve got a troublesome skin issue that just doesn’t seem to want to heal no matter what off-the-shelf product you try, then you know how frustrating, disheartening, and expensive it can be to try product after product and see no results! Or worse than seeing no result, someone else’s ‘holy-grail’ balm, cream, toner, tonic, or cleanser might actually make your skin worse. It’s just not doing what you expect—and you might worry, is my skin to blame? Is there something specifically about me that makes these products not work? Do I just have bad skin?

If you’re having trouble finding commercially-available skincare products that work for you, we have good news:

It’s not you or your skin, it’s your skincare products!

Just because the products you’ve tried don’t work for you, doesn’t mean that you just have ‘bad skin’ and can’t do anything about it—it simply means that you haven’t found the right answer for your skin’s needs. You shouldn’t just give up hope and throw in the towel, or let that negative self-talk get to you.

We’ve seen it before, how devastating it can be to feel like your body is to blame. It’s not! If you’ve got problem skin that doesn’t play nicely with the products you’ve been using, hope is not lost. You can still learn what to use, and what to avoid. Healing your skin is possible!

Here’s what one of our students shared with us, after joining our course:

So, What’s Going On?

If the products you’ve been choosing aren’t a good fit for your skin, then you can start to shift your perspective and look for an answer to the puzzle of why they aren’t working.

Here are what we see as the top five reasons:

• Your skin isn’t getting what it needs, maybe because you don’t know what it really needs. Skin types and concerns can sometimes be very difficult to identify and you might not know what your skin really needs.
• Your skin is getting too much of something and too much of even a good thing can be bad. For example, even the best, most nourishing vegetable oils can be too much for someone, if they are used in wrong amounts and wrong formulations.
• You’re over-cleansing and damaging the skin barrier. This is such a common issue, especially with oily skinned people.
• You’re allergic to something, possibly a perfume or colorant or something? Just because it is natural or organic, doesn’t necessarily mean it is fine for your skin. You may have a reaction to some of the ingredients e.g. the essential oils used. Essential oils are very complex mixtures of molecules, and many of their constituents can cause allergic reactions, much like artificial fragrances.
• You’re dealing with an internal issue that’s showing on your skin, a symptom of something else—diet, hydration, hormones, environment.
• You’re using a product with an irritant. Many commercial products contain harsh ingredients that can irritate the skin.

Your specific skin concerns might be a result of one, two, or a combination of all of these factors.

Think like a Skin Detective

We hear stories just like this one more often than you’d think. (In fact, problems with commercially-available skincare products are one of the top reasons why our new students want to come make their own products!) And it might seem a bit overwhelming, trying to pinpoint what the real issue is in the products you’ve tried. Here are some quick tips for the most common issues, to get you started.

Skin Type or Skin Trouble?

If you have quite oily skin, or quite dry skin, you most likely have been trying products that are specifically labeled for that skin type. Those products might work for some people, but for others, they don’t. If they aren’t working for you, then it’s likely that there’s something else going on beyond a general skin type.

People with very oily skin tend to use harsh cleansers and drying products filled with alcohol, to minimize oily feel on their skin. They want to strip away that extra oil in the hopes that their skin will calm down and balance, but skin tends to respond to those ingredients by producing even more oil. This obviously makes the problem worse, not better!

Also, in many cases, oily skin still needs moisturizing and emollient skincare. Even skin that appears visibly oily might be secretly dry, because it’s lacking in moisture, and oily, due to overproduction of sebum at the same time. (Fun, right?) With proper care that includes humectants, suitable emollients, and even the right type of occlusives, you can balance your skin’s sebum production and turn oily skin into normal skin.  

On the other end of the spectrum, people might experience dry skin for a variety of reasons. It might be dry because it’s lacking in lipids, due to a disrupted barrier, or due to a lack of moisture. Or, a combination of both! Products need to be designed differently for each of those situations. One person with dry skin might need a product with more emollients, occlusives, and barrier-supporting ingredients, while another person might require more humectants. It truly depends on what your skin needs.

Identify and Avoid Irritants

If your products are feeding your skin and providing more of what you need, the next step is to use less of what you don’t—and in this case, nothing at all, if an ingredient is an irritant. Specific irritants can be tricker to identify, but one way to do so is through a skin detox.

With a skin detox, you take out products from your routine that contain the most harmful and common irritants, and then let your skin react naturally and respond to no longer coming into contact with them. Check out the 8 ingredients to detox from your skincare routine and the 12 toxic and harmful ingredients in makeup and skincare products you must avoid for more information on identifying and detoxing from common irritants.

Inside, Outside, and All Around Us

Skin is our bodies’ largest organ, a living, breathing part of us, which plays a very important role. In addition to all of the sensory and immune functions, and the super useful job of making sure our organs don’t fall out, skin protects us from our external environment—the pollution, chemicals, weather, and climate around us. It’s possible that some skincare troubles are a result of the non-skincare products that our bodies come into contact with. What are you using to clean your home? What soaps or laundry detergents are you using? How often do you touch your face, potentially bringing those soaps into contact with your facial skin?

Our skin is a reflection of our internal environment as well as the external. It takes a battering not only from things we put onto our bodies, but the things we put inside. The products we apply to our skin are just one piece of a puzzle. They can be a very important piece, but there can also be other underlying conditions—allergies, food sensitivities, hydration, and more—which change how our skin appears. It’s possible to shift your perspective and become more mindful of what your skin is telling you about your body, inside and out. Are you nourishing your skin through proper hydration and a healthy diet?

Go Natural (The Right Way!)

Synthetic ingredients tend to get blamed for a lot of problems, and in many cases, that can be a very legitimate grievance. We go into more detail about what ‘natural’ really means in this article, but it’s important to note that just because your skincare product is made from the most natural, organic, and wonderful ingredients, it can still be wrong for your skin.

While natural ingredients are more complex in their chemical structure and bring phytonutrients to the skin, even the best naturally-derived and minimally-processed oils, for example, can be unsuitable for a specific skin type—while an oil-derived petroleum jelly can do wonders for skin with disrupted barrier function. And, likewise, something like mineral oil, which is a synthetic ingredient, might not contain the antioxidants, vitamins and other phytochemicals in a natural oil, it can still do good for the skin (if if is not contaminated with other petrochemicals.)

Each one of us is different. If you’ve struggled to find products that work for your sensitive and stubborn skin, don’t beat yourself up about it. The right product and treatment is out there. Some people can use little or no products and look fabulous, and others need to use more products, or more specialized ones, and that’s okay.

Really understanding skin function and what benefits different ingredients provide will help you formulate products that actually do what they say they will do. Switching to natural skincare isn’t everything, your products also need to be properly formulated for you! (Which is what our courses teach…) People can certainly still have reactions to natural and even organic ingredients. The more you learn about skin and skincare, the more you empower yourself to truly find effective, long-lasting, and much more affordable solutions to soothe your troubled skin.

So now you’ve become the mother of all skin detectives… You’ve begun to identify some potential problems and tracked down possible skin issues to their source. You know it’s not just you, or your so-called “bad” skin that’s giving you trouble. What about the solution? What can you do?

Learn to Formulate like a Pro

Whatever your skin complaints may be, the single most important thing we want you to take away from this is to not beat yourself up. We’re not saying you have to radically change your diet, sell everything and move somewhere with perfect weather and no pollution, or drastically adjust your lifestyle. In fact, it’s possible for someone to still have skin problems, even with a healthy diet and minimal external irritants, because they still might not be using the right products. You can now become a little more aware of the effect of all of these influences and perhaps see if some small changes might yield big results. Control what you can control—that’s where you’ll make the biggest difference. And one thing you can control is what products you apply to your face, what goes into them, and what effects those ingredients are having on your skin.

When you learn to make your own products, you are in control. You understand what goes into your products, and you can tailor them to suit your needs—so whatever skin type or problem you have, it is possible to create something for yourself as good as, if not better than, what you can find in stores, and for a fraction the price. You just need to know how… and that’s where our range of courses come in!

Your skin is a hero! It’s the front-line soldier against everything the world throws at you. Learn to give your skin something radiant, something delicious, something wonderfully nourishing. Let your skin dine out on the best nutrients it could possibly wish for.

Even natural and organic products off the shelf can contain things you might need to avoid. In reality, the only way to truly know what’s in the products you use is to make your own. The only way to ensure your products contain the essential ingredients required to treat your skin type and conditions is to select the ingredients yourself in the products you make for yourself.

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People with big ideas have big goals, and they envision big results!

As exciting as it is to see this amazing potential in running your own beauty business, and know that you have the tools to actualize it, all of this can seem… pretty overwhelming—especially if you feel like you have to go from zero to one hundred in a week.

The good news is—you don’t have to do it overnight. You don’t have to go from product development to world domination in the next ten minutes, and you don’t have to quit your current job or abandon your current commitments to start to build your brand. And you absolutely can run a successful, thriving, amazing beauty business on the side, without feeling like you need to clone yourself, or invent a time machine.

How do we know? Well, not only do our students do it, but we did it successfully as well. Our own business was initially established alongside working at our regular day jobs. We dedicated our evenings and weekends to running workshops, building a website, and marketing—an investment of time and energy that really paid off in the long term. By the time running the School of Natural Skincare was our sole job, we had our baby daughter to look after and shortly after, two more when our twin boys were born! It’s not easy, but in our experience having constraints on our time has made us amazingly focused and productive. Coffee certainly helps too, especially after sleep-deprived nights!

Number One: Be Kind to Yourself

Thinking about proper skin care immediately brings to mind the idea of pampering, nourishing, and healing—and this can be true even outside of formulations and ingredients. You absolutely must take care of yourself. And sometimes, the best way to take excellent care of yourself is by setting healthy boundaries, knowing your own limits, and not overextending yourself.  

Amazing changes can be made with incremental improvements over time. Just like the marvelous benefits of a nightly cleansing and hydrating routine, setting aside even a few minutes a day for your business can make a huge difference. Knowing how to structure those minutes, and being specific about your time for each individual thing, can help you stay focused and not feel like you’re being pulled in twenty-seven directions at once. Time-management is a solid way to set yourself up for success and do it in a peaceful, mindful way.

As one of our students puts it:

We hear this over and over from our students, whether they’re just beginning to launch their brands, or have been out there for a while, but it’s true. If you set yourself up for success by carefully structuring your time, and making the most of each moment, you can keep your life in balance without having to compromise on the things which are most important to you, and the people who depend on you to be there.

Number Two: Get a Good Team

On top of structuring your time wisely, it’s also a very useful thing to have a team in place that can step in to support you. Whether it’s making more hours in the day, or filling in with an essential role, it’s a great idea to delegate tasks when you can.

For some, it means bringing on people who can support your everyday tasks, the responsibilities of home, family, and even pets. Investing in a sitter to give you just an hour of extra work time, or hiring a dog-walker, adjusting your hours at a current job, even friends and family can become your team in small but effective ways as you work to make your beauty business a reality. Even exchanging your products for their valuable support is one way to make things mutually beneficial.  

Further along in the process, building a team can mean bringing on people who can support your business in specific ways. This could mean simple, time-saving things like having someone else putting labels on bottles and jars, assembling packaging, or updating a sales website with new products. If branding and website design isn’t your strongest area, or you’d prefer to focus on formulation, you can always hire someone to support you with that, too.

Or, it could also mean looking for ways to simplify easily-automated, repetitive tasks that keep your business process going. Just because you can do it all, doesn’t mean you have to do it all by hand, the hard way. Why not lighten the load?

One of our students, Catalina Cazan, of In Green Beauty, says that it has been important for her to “prioritize, and establish priorities among priorities… If you can invest a bit to get help […] do it: pay for a logo, labels, website, etc. Maybe a business coach. It will save you a lot of time and headache later.”

Number Three: Keep Everything in Perspective

As we mentioned before, running a business and getting it off the ground is a long and often challenging process. It can be hard to keep things in perspective when you’re planning for a business launch, or even running a brand-new business, even in the very best of circumstances. Add on a full life and a busy work schedule outside of that, and it gets even more hazy.

Be sure to define your goals, and check in with them periodically, to make sure that you’re still heading in the direction you’ve planned for and prepared for. Take the long view; this isn’t an overnight process, and though it may seem like you’re not going anywhere, every little step gets you that much closer to where you want to be.

One key way to do this is to take your bigger goals and break them down into smaller, more manageable mini-goals. This can be challenging work! Don’t hesitate to tick off the boxes when you accomplish even something that might seem small.

Number Four: Keep Showing Up

Another key piece of advice that we have found useful, as well as our students, is to keep showing up for your work. This can mean setting a steady rhythm of work, not pushing so hard you burn out and lose steam and focus. Stay determined, and keep your eyes on the road ahead.

We think those are pretty solid tips!

Number Five: Focus on the Important Things

The key to launching and running a business on the side is becoming good at the important things in your business. That might mean you need to learn what those important things are, where you should direct your energy, before you can work on those important things properly. All too often, we see passionate people and budding beauty entrepreneurs either do the wrong things, or do the right things incorrectly or poorly. Sometimes we see both of these things happening at the same time!

If you’re going to run your own business, you need to get the basics right, and know how to do them well; if you’ve not invested in these areas, and confident that you know what you are doing, it might be tricky.

There are three things you absolutely need to get right.

1. Product formulation: The first thing you absolutely need is a winning product that you absolutely know is safe, stable and effective. If you follow a professional formula, you’ll also be able to make products that are unique to you, that conform to your values, beliefs and ethics. You’ll be able to draw your own personal story into your creation in a way that gives you a strong narrative that will help you attract people to buy from you. There is a skill and an art to this which comes from the right training, and from practice. You’ll save a HUGE amount of time, energy and money by knowing how to do it properly. Invest in learning how to formulate professionally.

2. Branding: Do not scrimp here. We see too many great products fall flat because the branding is poorly done, substandard, or just not quite right. This is often because the investment has not been put into branding, and likely that an expert has not been consulted. If a product doesn’t look good and if a brand image is not top-notch, it doesn’t matter how good the product is, people probably won’t try it. Here’s the truth: Whether we like it or not, if your branding is bad, people will not be attracted to it. If your branding is good, they will. Your branding is like your shop front—it tells the people who don’t know you (almost everyone btw!) what to think before they’ve actually tried it. Based on that image, will they want to pick up your product and try it, knowing nothing but what they see?

3. Marketing: This is the thing that gets you known… and if people don’t know you, haven’t heard about you, they’ll have difficulty finding you! Nail your marketing, and you’ll be helping people find you. If your branding is good and your products also good, they’ll want to spend money. And guess what? If you follow a professional formulating model, you’ll gather a lot of information during that process that will help you in marketing—defining your values, ethics and beliefs, identifying your target audience and niche, deciding on the problems you want to solve and coming up with solution you want to provide—all important in your marketing! You’ll also find this helps when you work with a professional designer!

Our Diploma in Natural Skincare Formulation is perfect for you if you are going to be creating or growing a beauty business on the side. It features

• Bite-sized lessons and self-paced learning that you can fit around a busy schedule
• Formulation templates and guides that take away the guesswork and save you time
• Branding and business essentials to give you a headstart in creating an awesome brand
• A supportive community of other beauty entrepreneurs, brand owners and formulation experts

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