How clean are your beauty products? With skincare co-founder Natalia Monnard - Episode 61 | English

For many of us, a major part of our health and wellbeing journey
involves 'cleaning up' our food. But what about our skincare?
This is an area that often gets missed or undervalued, even
though our skin is our body's biggest organ.


For my guest Natalia Monnard (known as Nats), her passion for
creating beauty products all began with an unlikely product...
deodorant. What started as a personal need to find a great
toxic-free option turned into a business mission to create the
product that was missing from her search.


With true entrepreneurial spirit, Natalia saw a problem and
sought to find a creative way to fix it. This purpose led her to
transition from her very successful corporate career in banking
to team up with co-founder Sarah to create their natural beauty
company SQIN Ø.


And they didn't stop at deodorant! SQIN Ø produce a range of 100%
natural, chemical free beauty products that include moisturises,
oils and balms. But their recent success in securing crowdfunding
means that a new batch of products will shortly be revealed.


In this episode, Nats shares a wealth of guidance and wisdom on
everything from natural skincare and starting your own business,
to the pitfalls of positive thinking and the limitations of
approaching 'work-life balance' as if our career and personal
lives are in competition with each other.


She warns us of the lack of transparency in the natural beauty
industry, how toxins hide even in the products that claim to be
organic, and why we must avoid anti-perspirant and reach for
deodorant instead.


We also delve deep into her personal entrepreneurial journey. She
shares her top lessons learned after one year in business, the
number one thing that helped her leave behind a traditionally
successful career, and the two 'sources of courage' she regularly
leans upon when she's having one of those days where everything
feels hard.


Whether you're curious or passionate about natural skincare, or
want some inspiration about starting your own business, this
episode is for you. Nats shows us that purpose and vision are not
just things we do or work towards, but are a system of beliefs
that can offer us incredible support and motivation through both
the joys and challenges of creating something new.


Natalia Monnard is CEO and Co-Founder at SQIN Ø (SQIN ZERO), a
Swiss startup working in natural skincare and sustainability. The
company was founded in December 2020 and launched its first
product only 5 months later in May 2021. Since then, the company
has developed an entire facial skincare line in addition to its
initial core product, natural deodorant cream. Before that,
Natalia spent a decade working in financial services,
specifically in Wealth Management.


Quotes


“On average, women use about 12 beauty products per day. This is
almost a 160 different chemicals on a daily basis going onto the
largest organ of our body.” – our skin.


“Today we have developed more awareness about what we eat, but
still put a lot of chemicals on our face, some of which have been
proven to have a negative affect on our health.”


“Natural skincare is an important topic because it’s about
consistently in our wellbeing choices. Holistic health is not
just about diet and exercise, but what we put onto our body.”


“I feel our society today is a bit obsessed with positivity,
which is a lot of pressure and is quite unhealthy. It’s nice to
be positive most of the time, but you also need to learn to
embrace that sometimes you will not be positive, and that’s OK.
Embracing your bad day is how we find ways out of it.”


Links


www.sqinzero.ch