Business Innovators Radio - Mandy Hawtin – Cosmetic Chemist – Mark Stephen Pooler

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

Mandy Hawtin is a qualified cosmetic chemist, published author, and keynote speaker, with over seven years of experience as a beauty entrepreneur. She is the founder of Seadragon Organic, her third brand and first as a solopreneur, known for its high-performing, certified organic formulations powered by marine bio-active ingredients.https://seadragonorganic.com.au/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/mandy-hawtin-cosmetic-chemist-mark-stephen-pooler

Welcome to Business Innovators Radio, featuring industry influencers and trendsetters, sharing proven strategies to help you build a better life right now. Welcome to Brilliant Business TV, conversations with leading experts in business. I am your host, Mark Stephen Pula. We have an incredible guest on the show today, Mandy Horton, and we're going to be talking all about the cosmetic industry, which is a really, really interesting topic. We're streaming live on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube. We're on the 360 TV network, USA Global Radio and Television Network. We are on business innovators radio network, MSPNewsGlobal.com, Android, Roku, Fire, and many, many more platforms. So let's bring in our incredible guest, Mandy Horton, Mandy. Welcome to Brilliant Business TV.

Thank you, Mark. nice to be here and I was going to say good morning but it's actually good evening for you. It is, it is and yes, we're in very different parts of the world but that's a great thing with technology so let's get started with the show. Just share a little bit Monday about who you are and what you do. Well Mark, I'm a cosmetic chemist and I do have my own skincare brand called Sea Dragon Organic but what I'm really enjoying this year is sharing the truth. about marketing in the beauty industry, particularly around skincare. Yeah, it's something I'm really, I guess, passionate about and really enjoying.

Really, really interesting topic. And I'm sure it can ruffle a few feathers as well, Mandy. So let's get into the topic. You have recently returned from Paris, where you were involved in speaking, publishing and awards. Can you share what that experience meant to you, Mandy? It's actually been really incredible, Mark. I got an email in February asking if I would contribute to a book. And I replied and said, well, this is sort of my story.

Are you really interested in me? And they said, yes, yes. And we're going to launch it in Paris. And then, you know, as the weeks went on, they said, oh, we want to invite you to come and give a keynote. No, I hadn't done that before. So this is really, you know, really a stretch. And I thought, well, I can think of 10 reasons to say no, but only one to say yes.

And that is, it's a great opportunity to step through that fear and go for it. So, yeah, I went to Paris. I prepared my keynote. I have my little words on little cards. And I practiced at home. I even had, oh, look, I've got a clicker here. I practiced pretending to change the slides. And then when I got there, they didn't have a mind.

microphone on a leg turn, they had this great big microphone like what a pop star would sing into. And I thought, how am I going to hold my cards and turn them over? And like, I need three hands. So I thought, oh, okay, no one in the audience knows what I'm going to say. So if I forget something or I don't quite say it the way I want to, no one's going to know. So I kind of braved up and just took the microphone without my notes, stood on the stage, walked around. and gave my presentation. Now, it wasn't perfect, but I was just really proud that I did it. And, you know, people, I got a really good response because I was talking about just how marketing and skincare works and gave the audience two tips that they could use to help select

products that they want, depending on what their values are. So, yeah, it was really great. And then at the end of the day, they had an awards event. And I won an award. I won first place for Rising Star. And I thought, wow, you know, at 52, it just shows that I'm not too young to be a rising star. Amazing. This is a brilliant, man dear. I speak as well.

I've spoken in schools on stages. And I think that's such a brave thing to do. It's one of the biggest beers to overcome and to not use your nose. and just go and do it. And no matter how experience you are, Mandy, you will always find some critique in yourself. So I would just say, you did it, and I'm sure that people loved it,

and to get an award at the end of it. So congratulations. Thank you so much. Yeah, I was walking on Cloud 9 for like a good week afterwards. So, yeah, that was amazing. You should be. What inspired you to return to study cosmetic, chemistry in your late 40s?

Yeah, well, I've been an entrepreneur for about eight years across three beauty brands. And I've been making really simple skincare products since I was a teenager. And I got to that point where I wanted to make, I guess, you would say, technically complex products, but I didn't have the skills to do that. I always had to work in with a chemist. And I'd met this incredible chemist called Peter, who introduced me. me to green chemistry and formulating with, you know, sustainability in mind. And I absolutely loved it. And I thought, I can do this. He went back to uni when he was older as well.

And I thought, yeah, I'm going to give it a go. So, yeah, I went back to study because I wasn't busy enough, you know, running a business and being a mum and all the things. But even though I found myself incredibly busy and I had so many missed, you know, family events and social events that I couldn't get to. I loved it. I hadn't been happier. I absolutely loved it. So tell me, how did becoming a qualified cosmetic chemist change the way you see the beauty industry, Mandy?

Quite a big question there. It was mind-blowing. You know, I went back to study thinking I was going to learn how to make, you know, shampoos and skincares and mascara, which I did. But what I wasn't expecting was just how much I learned to be. about the industry itself and how they use, you know, emotional language and vague statements to sell their products. And we were even, dare I say, taught to, they could say it formulate to a brief. So if a brand says, I want to claim that this, say, serum contains hyaluronic acid,

but they had a very tight budget, you could put it in there at input levels. That really doesn't offer any benefit to the skin, but they can still legally say, this product contains hyaluronic acid. And that actually blew my mind. And I felt, actually felt a little bit angry for a while. I thought, hang on, I've been buying these products for years. And I've been ripped off. So yeah, it sort of taught me how to identify a quality product from the rest. And that's, well, what I've been focusing on this year is trying to get those messages out there that, there are ways for you to see through that marketing and then choose a product that does what you want it to do.

A little bit misleading, and I think when people are buying skincare, they want the best really, don't they? Because it's like food. You want to put good foods into your body. You want to put good things onto your skin. You want to use the best things on your hair so that we're looking after ourselves.

So really, I think they should be a bit more firm with their rules. on that man, D? Yeah, absolutely. I know that certainly in Australia, there's no legal definition of the word organic, so it tends to be used interchangeably with the word natural, and there certainly are a lot of products, you know, in the UK as well and all over,

where they claim to be natural, but they're only partially natural, that there's still, you know, certain percentage of each product that is derived from petroleum, so it's derived from fossil fuels. And people, it's aren't, unaware of that often it's what's not said on a packaging on packaging that says more um i guess because i'm trained in that area i'm like okay well they haven't mentioned this i wonder why

yeah actually i i was i take supplements mandi so i don't know if you've heard of like saffron extract and um i take like a functional mushrooms so like rashi mushrooms um um Lions Main and they're really, really good for the mind and the cognitive function. But when I was buying these products, thankfully, AI helped me to find this amazing company where you get no nasties at all in the product. I didn't realize in some supplements, they use like filler, so they use like rice flour. and these fillers that are not actually very good for you and they stop the supplements from working it in the body as well.

Yeah. It's a little bit like what you're doing in the beauty industry. I had to really make sure I was going to one that was like totally organic and totally not putting any nasty fillers in the product so that your body still absorbs it like it would have food so that you're getting the full effects of the supplements. So it's a little bit like that in cosmetics, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.

And even the quality of the vitamins within your supplements, you want them to be as potent as they can. And it's the same with, you know, I'm in the natural space. If plants are harvested at the wrong time, they haven't developed those natural qualities that we like that we want in our skin care. So, yeah, it's quite complex. And when people are just looking at, for example, the ingredients list,

that's not enough information. And some of our ingredients have the same name when they are in their natural state once they're processed and they are deemed synthetic. They still have the same name. So the consumer can't tell. So yeah, it's very complex. And I would say there's a lot of people out there

using products, what they think are doing something. Same with supplements. And they're probably just like a placebo. They're probably not even working because they've not got the proper compounds or the proper ingredients that make them work. So I think it's really important that you're educating people on these kind of things, Mandy. What should people look for when choosing their skincare products? I guess it depends on what their values are and what's important to them.

So I'll assume that the listeners want anti-aging products and natural products. just for the sake of this conversation. So you need to look for proof. So when it comes to whether a product is natural or organic or even sustainable, brands will often use an image. It might be a leaf in a circle or the planet or even like a rabbit and our minds see those images and come up with things that perhaps are not directly connected to the end product. So you might see a picture of a rabbit and it's just a rabbit with no words and you think, oh, that must be a vegan or cruelty free or whatever your mind comes to. You see a leaf and you think, oh, that must be all natural. But maybe the product is 70% natural and 30% derived from petroleum. The thing is there's no agreed meaning to those

symbols within the beauty industry. So what you need to look for are the names of a certifier. So certified natural, certified organic. And those symbols, they look similar. There might be a leaf in a circle, but they will name that certifying company. And that means an independent company have come in and ordered to the products. They've ordered to the packaging. So if the brand says 98% natural or 98% organic, you know that it's legitimate. The other thing to look for are numbers.

Try and steer clear and see through those emotional words like, you know, glow up and age-defying, radiant and look for the boring results of clinical trials, such as when used twice a week for three weeks, 98% of customers saw a reduction in their wrinkle depth by 34% right. It's not as glamorous, but it's those numbers. It means that, again, an independent company have done a trial and there's proof that the product does what it says it does. Brilliant. Great, great tips for people out there.

What made you decide to call your company, Sea Dragon? Very unusual name there. Yeah, I had a friend of mine say to me, she actually laughed, we're out for dinner and just like, Sea Dragon, like, really? Why didn't you call it Unicorn? And I'm like, leafy sea dragons are an Australian fish. They are real.

I didn't make it up. They are the state emblem for South Australia, which is where I'm originally from. And when I was a student, I started to explore marine actives, and I really loved them, and I loved that the clinical data showed that they were performing at the same level

of the traditional synthetic actives. So if you go back five or ten years, the natural and organic products really didn't perform as well as the traditional synthetic, but that conversation is changing these days. So my range now has those beautiful marine actives, all sustainably sourced, of course. But no, sea dragons, they are vegan.

Sea dragons are not in the product, they're just on the outside on the packaging. So it was also a nod to the fact that it's all made in Australia. And all of the people that work on the company are in Australia. A lot of brands, even if they're Australian or from the UK, or from the US, they get their products made in Asia. So it's Australian or American or UK brand, but it's not made there. So it was like a nod to the marine ingredients, but also a nod to Australia.

I love it. I love it. Now, just tell us a tiny little bit about your products, Mandy, and your brand and what you offer for people. And obviously we've got the website up there where people can check you out. It's C-Dragon, Organic. com. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, thank you.

It's interesting that only a few months ago, I won four awards from a UK company from the Beauty Shortlist. And that's my entire range. I only have four products. And it was, I guess, just reassuring knowing that I'm on the right path. Because I have been told to do things differently.

I've been told by industry experts, do not use large 100 gram tubes. Use airless jars. They're more glamorous. People like them. But to me, that they end up in landfill, they're not recyclable. Most beauty packaging isn't. I also wanted multi-purpose products, and I was told not to do that.

Have lots and lots and lots of products in your range. Again, I thought, well, it's landfill. It's a lot of time in the morning. Women want high-performing products, but I don't think they want five or six steps in the morning. There's just too much else going on. So all of my products are multi-purpose. So my day cream, for example, has your eye cream, your serums, your primer and your moisturiser all in one product.

So in the morning you'll cleanse, put on that day cream, that's it. Then you can put on some sunscreen and makeup and the same in the evening. And then I've got a once a week treatment product. So I've kind of gone against the industry. And the outcome is less packaging. People have to shop less often because they last five months instead of usually it's one month supply and smaller jars. And surprisingly, per gram, it actually works out cheaper than any other Australian organic brand on the market, which wasn't my intention. But because I have cut out a lot of

that packaging, suddenly the price is lower. So that's been a real surprise. So it's, it's just great to get feedback from people that they are loving that. They love that the products are simple to use, but they're also really enjoyable. You know, I formulated with ingredients that have a beautiful sensory feels. They feel silken and lovely but not breezy. They have beautiful essential oils for the aroma. So yeah, it's been a journey. I'm breaking a lot of rules, but I'm having fun along the way. And this is actually my first solo business. I guess I'm a solopreneur now. So I get to do things my way this time around. And I really love that. Keep breaking those rules. Now, people can connect with you. I've already mentioned your website, cdragonorganorganorganic.com.com.

But people can also connect with you via email. Who would you love to connect with you and how can people reach you? Yeah, you can email me if you have any beauty related questions or if you have a look at my website and you have questions. I've also started a new Instagram account called True Beauty with Mandy. And that's where I'm, I guess, being really open about the industry because I'm stepping away from the brand. And it's like, all right. this is what I think about all of this. But yeah, I'm always happy to have a chat with people. I often recommend other brands as well if my brand isn't for you

and it might not be because we're also different. I can suggest other brands or even, you know, for the tweens, things that you can buy in the supermarket. They don't need active, they don't need expensive products. Excellent. I would encourage everyone to email Monday at c.orgonorganic.com. that's mandy at c dragonorganorganiccom.com. dot a u.

Mandy, I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed having our conversation today. I think it will open eyes for people definitely. So thank you so much for being my guest today. Oh, it's a pleasure, Mark. Thank you so much for having me. The pleasure has been all ours. Thank you everyone for joining us for Brilliant Business TV. Thanks for listening to this.

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