Talk Nation Spring 2017 Featuring Dr. Kamal Woods

48
an antibiotic because they’re just
extremely sick, but overuse has cause
a situation in which antibiotics are
not strong enough to fight off infection
because people are becoming
immune to it.
When you use something
too much, it loses its ability to actually
work correctly. So when you’re
walking around and you have the
antibacterial gels, and everyone has
one, it is a problem. Basic soap and
water will do the trick, just as well.
Washing your hands with basic soap
and water, it’s the same, it’s going
give you the same result.
Frank: You mentioned, Jill, that you
have a six-year old, and when he was
born, Beautycounter didn’t exist.
So you’re on the ground floor
of something now, and in essence,
he’s on the ground floor of something
now. And it should provide for
him, and others, a healthier upbringing.
And the idea that, just to point
to the statistic you gave us, that 11
ingredients were banned in 1938
in the United States and out of the
same group or the same pool of
ingredients, 1400 were banned by
the European Union. That’s interesting
and outrageous, you can’t
even keep a straight face when you
make an argument that we’re doing
enough in America to ban these
harmful substances.
What is that? Is it the power,
or the money behind the lobby for
these big businesses? Is it that, or
do we know less than them? Shine a
little light on that if you could. Why
are we so far behind on this?
Jill: It is a bunch of loopholes.
We’ve gone to Capitol Hill and we do
lobby on Capitol Hill. We are actually
one of the few, if not the only one.
I can’t speak for the other companies
out there that are trying to go
more clean with their products. But
we have gone to Capitol Hill, and we
do lobby. And our founder, Gregg
Renfrew, is the CEO and founder
of this company, and she’s nothing
short of incredible, amazing. And she
will stop at nothing.
She really wants things to
change. But it has to do with jumping
through a bunch of loopholes. This
is not something that’s on the top
of their list to do. And it’s going take
a lot more voices. Right now, this is
direct sale. Right now, that’s probably
about 16,000 consultants that
are running businesses, and we have
our own team. We need a lot more
voices to continue to be heard. And
our mission is to educate and to continue
to get safe products into the
hands of pretty much everyone we
meet.
People are going to make
their own choices. But I’m always
asking people when the time is
right, maybe friends or family first,
I might say, “What are you using?”
Or things like that. And I never
push it on anybody. You hit a lot of
roadblocks.
This industry is so huge -- it’s
like a 200 billion dollar industry. And
in this industry, if you look at so many
cosmetic companies and skincare
companies, and they’re making a lot
of money. And so it doesn’t matter
whether it’s safe or not, they’re not
looking at whether or not it’s safe
or not. They are making a lot of
money.
Frank: They enjoy the status
quo, they’re making money, why
would they want to change unless
somebody forced their hand? It’s horrible,
it’s very cynical, but it’s true.
Jill: Right. Exactly. There is no
law saying that everybody has to
list every single ingredient. We do.
We’re transparent. So if you go to
our website, you will see that we
list every single ingredient on every
product that we sell.
Frank: Very interesting.
Jill: So you will know exactly
what you’re getting.
Frank: When was the first time, Jill,
that you heard of anybody concentrating
on what’s good to put on your
body or to put in your body, and it
really isn’t that long ago if you think
about it. And you’re a lot younger
than I am, I was going say before
your time. But I didn’t start hearing
this really until the 80s or the 90s,
heavily. But before that, in the 70s,
people started talking about it, but
it was very ill-advised.
Seems like Beautycounter is
blessed by timing in a sense, where
people are now more educated
and they’re more aware, and I think
you have a growing market for this
argument.
Jill: Yeah, there’s definitely a
growing market. For myself, I’ve
always tried to keep things dietwise
more healthy. And then it got
into more the organic. But if you
think about it, I think everything,
even going back to say, I graduated
in college with my bachelor’s degree
in 1994. So even then, I think what I
started noticing is that food started
tasting a little bit different. You just
started noticing this processed taste
in a lot of the food.
TALK NATION |ISSUE VIII