The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – JoAnn Fowler on Clean Beauty and Fighting Forever Chemicals

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

JoAnn Fowler on Clean Beauty and Fighting Forever Chemicals Mysappho.com About the Guest(s): JoAnn Fowler is an Emmy-nominated makeup artist with over 30 years of experience in the film industry. She is the founder of Sappho New Paradigm, a pioneering Canadian clean beauty company. With a college diploma in childcare and an educational journey that included a transformative four-month stay in Kenya studying anthropology, ecology, and sociology, Joanne brings a unique perspective to the beauty industry. JoAnn's initiative to create safer, PFAS-free makeup products has positioned her as a leader in the fight against harmful chemicals in personal care products. Episode Summary: In this engaging episode of The Chris Voss Show, host Chris Voss interviews JoAnn Fowler, the founder of Sappho New Paradigm, about her revolutionary approach to clean and PFAS-free beauty products. With over 30 years as a makeup artist, JoAnn shares her journey from the film industry to founding her company, which prioritizes transparency and safety in cosmetic ingredients. Her passion for creating products free from harmful chemicals like parabens and PFAS offers valuable insights into the beauty industry's challenges and innovations. JoAnn explains the historical context and current issues surrounding harmful chemicals in cosmetics, highlighting how Sappho New Paradigm rigorously tests its products to ensure safety. She dives into her personal motivations and the pivotal moments that led her to embrace this cause, including the impact of endocrine disruptors and the far-reaching implications of PFAS in everyday products. Through her experiences and advocacy, JoAnn emphasizes the importance of consumer awareness and the need for a new paradigm in beauty standards. Key Takeaways: Transparency in Beauty: Joanne underscores the necessity for makeup brands to be transparent about their ingredients and the importance of consumers demanding safer products. Impact of PFAS: The episode alerts listeners to the prevalence and dangers of PFAS chemicals in cosmetics, urging a switch to PFAS-tested products. Personal Motivation: Joanne’s shift to clean beauty was inspired by a profound personal loss and a realization of the harmful impacts of certain chemicals, including their presence in newborns. Challenges in Innovation: Developing PFAS-free products involves extensive testing and innovation, demonstrating the dedication behind Safo New Paradigm's product line. Consumer Education: Joanne advocates for consumers to educate themselves about the chemicals in their products and to transition slowly to safer alternatives. Notable Quotes: "My generation has done so much harm and we really need to turn things around and create a different world or we're going to lose the world we have." "We need a different world or we're going to lose the world we have." "The clean movement was looking at mainstream cosmetics and saying, you know what? We're getting information here that is not good." "Choose the thing that you wear the most, because you have to do it on a budget. You can't just change everything overnight." "We're not here to buy a yacht. My company is about serving and moving a paradigm to a better world."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Strap yourself in, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Chris Voss Show. I think I broke my voice doing that. Welcome to the show, my family and friends. It's always for 16 years and over 2,000 episodes. I'm tired already. We have been bringing you the

Chris Voss Show unapologetically for free. Whether you like it or not, damn it, we're just bringing you the show and you're just going to have to deal with it. Anyway, guys, welcome to the show, as always. We love you as an audience. You guys are so amazing, except for that one guy in the back, but we won't talk about that. Anyway, guys, go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss, linkedin.com, Fortress Chris Voss, Chris Voss 1 on the TikTokity, and chrisfossfacebook.com. Anyway, we have an amazing young lady on the show. We're going to be talking to her about her amazing insights and stuff that she does with her amazing line of makeup and different things.

You're going to learn some interesting things too as well. The chemical makeups of makeup and some of the things to watch out for, things that some of them do. And then maybe she'll put some on me, make me look better on the show. We'll see how that goes. I don't know if that's going to work out virtually because she's on the other side. So we have Joanne Fowler on the show. She's an emmy

nominated makeup artist with a college diploma in child care rather than pursuing a degree she attended university to take courses that generally interest her mainly in the arts sure her educational journey also included transformative four-month stay in kenya where she studied anthropology ecology and sociology as a mirror dyslex, she excelled in school through determination and her own creative workarounds. A lot of successful people and smart people are dyslexic, just because you can't read kind of half right doesn't mean you're dumb. I might be dumb, but no one else is.

Anyway, her progress was greatly influenced by her third grade teacher, Ms. Stanton, whose kindness and patience helped me learn to read and write. God bless teachers. Welcome to the show, Joanne. How are you? I'm good, thank you. How are you? I am excellent. I'm coming off the COVID here, day nine. I still have most of my body parts left, and I'm just excited to be here and have you with us. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs. And the name of your brand, too. I kind of skipped that.

The name of the brand is Sappho, New Paradigm, and the.com is mysappho.com. So S-A-P-P-H-O, like the, she's a 2,000-year-old poet. Sappho is? Yes. Oh, now is this based on lore from Kenya or? No, no, actually she's actually was a 2000 years ago.

She was a poet in, on the Island of Lesbos. She was one of the reasons that we call our company after her is because she was a woman that lived her own life on her own terms. And she was the first poet to write in first person. So she was not writing about battles and all that kind of stuff. She was talking about her emotions and who she was. Plato referred to her, I believe, as the, you know,

most important poet of her time, of his time. So, yeah, so that's Sappho. And, you know, I like to say, you know, she's been around for 2000 years. You can put that in the byline. Oh, it started in 2000 years ago. What would that be? 024? So Joanne, give us a 30,000 overview of your company and what you guys do there. Basically, we are a small Canadian clean beauty company. We're a heritage company. We're one of the very first to ever start the movement and we're actually breaking up with clean beauty right now because we are moving into pfos tested beauty so we're we're looking at scientifically verified ingredients now

so so what is defined for me the clean movement and then how is that different than the PIFA, all that stuff? I think the clean beauty movement started around in the early 2000s. We launched in 2008, and it was really to tackle things like chemicals that we were finding, like parabens, which they found to mimic estrogen, and then phthalates, which were endocrine disruptors that they were using in fragrance and hiding in fragrance and all sorts of different, you know, petrochemicals, different things that were getting into the bloodstream through cosmetics. So the clean movement was looking at sort of mainstream cosmetics and saying, you know what, we're getting information here that is not good, we're going to try and change the paradigm and move over to something that's sustainable, good for our planet,

good for our skin, good for our bodies. And learning about PFAS four years ago, forever chemicals, has sort of changed the whole thing because now we have found out that through all our great efforts, we missed the one thing that is actually probably worse than all the chemicals. Oh, wow. Together. Yeah. And we had some people on that were on the show a few years back that talked about estrogenics, parabens, and different things. I switched out all my soaps and detergents and and my shaving cream i i did the full switch and i try and you know stay away from bad stuff and it was kind of

interesting how evasive it was it was like everywhere on everything everywhere yeah it's and and pfas are even more ubiquitous they they were chemicals that were created in the 1940s to win the World War. Yeah. Along with the best, maybe. What's wrong? It was... I mean, basically, they were made to help the tanks get out of the mud. Yeah.

I mean, they put plutonium on watches, and girls would lick the brush so that it would paint better. of the mud. Yeah. I mean, they put plutonium on watches and girls would lick the brush so that it would paint better. That was bad. Yeah, it was bad. We did a lot of stupid things in the 40s. Yeah, we sure did. We were pretty stupid, I have to say. We're not getting much smarter.

I mean, you know, so these things, you know, they were created and the guys went, hey, they work really well. Let's waterproof everything. We ended up with them in our carpets, in our cups, in our personal care items, in our everything. And so now we have them, half the Americans have them in their blood, half our waters have them in our water. And they are endocrine disruptors on crack. Wow. They're messing up our system. You know, people hear about stuff like this,

and they wonder why there's so much cancer, disease. It just seems to be escalating crazy. And a lot of this stuff probably is at the root cause of a lot of it right I really actually believe so and I think the more we're learning about this and the more we're delving into it we're finding out that there are about 250 of these PFAS that have been studied and most of them are turning out to be pretty dangerous there are 15,000 of them. Wow. Yes.

That's a lot. Yes. We need to calm down with all these PFAS. Yeah. And watch the movie Dark Water. I really suggest people watch that. They'll get a really good idea of where I'm sort of coming from. Cosmetics is the third fastest way of getting PFAS into your system,

particularly through your lips and your eyes. Usually I just scrape the Teflon on and chew it off the pan and chew on it. That's another great way to get those in your system too. Or you just go down to the old foster grant plants and just roll around in the dirt and you can pick up some of that stuff there. Yeah. The Teflon is pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty horrible. Yeah. But it's nice. You know, it kind of gives a, it's got a chewy taste to it. So, crunchy. Yeah, we're going to miss that taste. I just put a little on my eggs in the morning. It comes with the eggs because you scrape the pan with the egg.

Never mind. Anyway, enough PFAS jokes, Chris. It's not a PFAS. So, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you grow up? What influenced you? We want to hear in your words a little bit. yourself. How did you grow up? What influenced you? We want to hear in your words a little bit. Well, you know, I'm a kid of the, I was born in 55 and a kid of the 60s. I grew up listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Politically,

I've always been left, you know, tin soldiers and Nixon coming. I, you know, I'm very much someone that believes in humanity and equality and equity. You know, I was a child care counselor. I quit. And then I moved to BC as a child care counselor after training in Toronto. And because the system here was so great. But then the SOCREDs got in and everything privatized and it was the system just just was horrible it became very very hard to do your job and I started studying makeup and I never looked back actually makeup just became my life of film became my life I loved it I started working my

very first show was wise guy as an assistant to talk matt Todd McIntosh, Emmy award winning, multi Emmy award winning makeup artist. And yeah, I just sort of, you know, I was very fortunate. called The L Word. I was the head makeup artist on that show. And Mia Kirshner came and sat in my chair. And she said, you know, Joanne, I'm not wearing any more parabens in my makeup. And I said, oh, good for you. I don't know what you're talking about. And so she had been in Europe. And Europe had banned over 1, 1800 chemicals from personal care items and she told me about it my mom had just died of cancer so I phoned my girlfriend Norma Lowen Patton who

is Halle Berry's makeup artist and I phoned Norma and she was from Britain so she knew a lot about organics and you know all that stuff and I called her and I said do you know what what this paraben thing is and she said no but I know what this paraben thing is? And she said, no, but I just got this book, Not Just a Pretty Face. Would you like to, you know, read it? It's called Not Just a Pretty Face. I highly recommend it to everyone. The first paragraph was about, there was hundreds of chemicals found in the bloodstream. Wow. Even PCBs from the 1970s. There was endocrine disruptors, neuro,

you know, things that mess with your brain. I'm not a scientist, obviously. And, you know, these subjects were newborn babies across the United States still in the hospital. Wow. And that changed my life. How are they getting these chemicals into their system, you know, through their mother's body? How are the women getting it into their system?

You know, and then came, you know, all these studies on dermal absorption and all that stuff. And still, now we're finding plastics, you know, testicles with plastics in them. Yeah, I stuffed a couple in there extra just press the ladies exactly stuff a couple extra i just put them in the jockstrap there but i i you know the the skin is your largest organ right and there's absorption there you know you can put medication on your skin and it will it will absorb that so patches yeah that can make sense that if you're using makeup that's got these forever chemicals and stuff in them and you know that could easily be passed you know it's

in your system it passed your children so yeah that's kind of wild this is why i never had kids i don't want to pass off all the teflon i have in me the thing too is this it's really not even a matter you can't get just rid of them this is going to be a matter of everyone getting together and this has got to be progress not perfection you know because we're testing everything for organic fluorine so we're testing for the 15,000 in all our products and our products are coming back non-detect 10 parts per million which is the smallest you can test actual products for and packaging. The other thing to know is that

plastic loves PFAS. Wow. It seems like they're all running together. They're just a bad group of people. Yeah, the peepees. Hey, even here in Canada. I have a lot of problems with the peepees in my old days. That's a political joke. I'm always waking here in Canada. I have a lot of problems with the pee-pees in my old days.

That's a political joke. I'm always waking up in sleep. Is it a Canadian political joke? Pee-pee is a political joke, yes. It's a Canadian thing. We're in America. We don't really pee-pee. You don't get it.

No, it's good. But that's okay. I'm a big Canadian fan. Some people say I'm a love Trailer Park Boys and Rush. Big Rush fan. Neil Peart and Alex Lifeson. Some people say I'm the red-haired guy on Trailer Park Boys. I forget his name. I don't know.

I forget his name. Anyway, my friends tell me that I'm him, and I'm like, really? Seriously? But maybe I am. I watched it once after they told me that, and I was like, I think I see what they're talking about. But I don't live in my car, so there that anyway so you developed this line tell us about how many different products you have on your website that you feature and you've developed and like some of

the variations of of you know the genre yeah I'm not sure what the right things the genre or whatever of the products you know lipstick and we have mostly we have complexion products so things like foundations and cc creams and it's a very it's a small line and because we've learned about pfas we are actually getting rid of a whole bunch of stuff that we tested and they've tested it tested so high in fluorine that we didn't go into the organic fluorine or fluoride we didn't go into the organic fluorine or fluoride we didn't go into the organic chlorine so we're sort of like switching now to just developing things that are pfas tested or organic fluorine tested so i'll show you this this is our vegan mascara and it's mascara yeah can i eat it too you can can eat it. You probably could. I don't know. But it's also refillable.

Oh. Right? Sometimes I get hungry putting on my mascara in the morning. Yeah. It's in the morning and you have a coffee, but you don't have a donut. You're just like, I'd chew on it a little bit. Just bite a piece off. Yeah.

It makes your teeth look kind of mascara. The good thing is that you won't get any PFAS because this has been tested for organic fluorine to 10 parts per million. The plastic has. It took us, and then we tested, the formula was tested to 10 parts per million. And then we had this little part here tested for 10 parts per million. It took us eight months. Holy crap. and we had to make four now it wouldn't take a big company eight months but we had to actually make four different ones to find this piece of plastic to test non-detect for pfas oh wow so for organic fluorine which is the 15 000 so basically you know what we're doing is we're trying to

create a new paradigm of business so everything's transparent so we know we can't get rid of all the organic fluorine in every product but we're going to try to keep it under a certain number and we're going to tell everybody what that number is because if you go to mamavation.com, M-A-M-A-Vation, like motivation, but mamavation, she tests everything. She is the whistleblower. She has a whole bunch of stuff on clean beauty, but she also tests things like food. They're really testing a lot of food now. They're testing, she's testing materials. You know, she's testing materials you know she's amazing so she's really the the thought i think the thought

leader on the whole of organic fluorine testing so how do you how does the competition fare to you it sounds like you're being really innovative and and cutting technology and stuff do the big brands care about this stuff or they just kind of i don't know just give them some of that chinese whatever makeup i don't know oh i think that some of the lines have taken things seriously and in fact made some changes without any telling anybody whereas we have been we're really basically the only company that's been really transparent about a whole process i don't know what anybody else is doing i do know the numbers that momovation has tested for some of the bigger clean brands, and it's not pretty. And so I would suggest that people go to that site and take a look at what the numbers are.

So, you know, the thing is, is I can't care about all that other noise. I'm not interested. That's why I say we're breaking up with clean beauty. I don't have time for the other noise. I'm not interested. That's why I say we're breaking up with clean beauty. I don't have time for the other noise. I'm here for one thing, and that is to create a line that is transparent for human beings to be able to use and know exactly what they're putting on their bodies and into their skin. And I can't, you know, I'm not a marketer. I don't want to, you know, I'm not here to buy a yacht i lost my first home i lost everything to an investor that wanted me to put phthalates back in the products in 2008

with my first company so this is why my second company is called new paradigm because it's got to be based on transparency yeah you know it's it's hard to to hold told to be held to a higher standard hold yourself up to a higher standard you know is sometimes it can be costly to have integrity but you know in the end you can sleep with yourself at night and you can you can know that what you did was the right thing yeah i kind of think like this company is my apology to the next generations. You know, my generation has done so much harm. And we really need to turn things around and create. We need a different world or we're going to lose the world we have.

Most definitely. Yeah. I mean, it's really important. And it's time for, you know, it's funny how a lot of these chemicals are banned in Europe and other countries, and we're just like, no, let's just bathe in them and wipe ourselves on them. That's great. That's awesome, man. This asbestos is nice, too. Let's get a sniff of that.

Oh, that's good stuff right there. That's what you get when you put private companies in charge of regulating themselves. Like, you put the manufacturers right. The big companies are regulating themselves, so put the manufacturers right either the big companies are regulating themselves so what are they they don't care you mean we can't trust people in capitalism who knew unbridled capitalism is bad surprise i mean capitalism is great folks but unbridled capitalism you know might need to be they need to be reined in a little bit i can see on your website you got all sorts of great makeup products.

You've got foundation, reflecting CC cream, cream concealer, brow pomades. Brow pomades. That's to make your eyebrows, yeah. I have to have a whole career as a woman to understand this. You have to go to college, I think, to everything all these terms maximum tendency vegan mascara and eyeshadow blushes brushes cruelty fee cruelty free pro makeup brushes refillable paper compacts and skin patrol press stuff so where can people find your products are they available in any retail outlets or do you need to go to the website no No, there's the Detox Market, Beauty Heroes, California's amazing store.

I can't think. We're available in Europe and in Australia, across Canada, Green Kiss. Yeah, you know, I mean, but the thing is that we were probably in about 75 more stores before COVID. And what's happened is that the large corporations have swept in what they're clean at. And we've lost so many retailers, like small family. The women that actually grew, that started the movement and grew the movement have tanked. Because, you know, the big corporations have come in and swept in with all their money. And so, yeah, we've lost a lot of our customers, which is really sad.

Really? Yeah, so sad. We'll probably get some more off this. Absolutely. But I feel bad for the stores, you know, for these small businesses. Family businesses have been wiped out, and we really need to pay attention to these large corporations sweeping in. How do you start a clean beauty regime or one without the PFAS?

How do you make the switchovers? Like, let's say you're using some, I don't want to get sued by some beauty company. Let's say you're using XYZ, you know, China-based makeup, you know, and they're bad for you. How do you make that switchover to your stuff? I think that you choose the thing that you wear the most, you know, because you have to do it on a budget. You know what I mean? You can't just all of a sudden just unless you're, but you know, like you said, so you

use the things that you wear the most, but also pay attention to the fact that your lips don't have oil glands. So they get dry and they're there a very quick way of getting PFAS into your system. Same with your eyes. So your eyes, you know, I would start maybe with a mascara and take a look at lip products that are testing lower. You know, your foundation, you know, it covers a lot of area. So your CC cream or your foundation, you foundation you know maybe but you do it one step at a time like you know like you've been using these things forever so like just

do your research and and and and look at the small independent companies and you know do you see who's testing ask the questions i really encourage people to you know take take the brands that you're using and and ask and ask the hard questions. Are you testing for organic fluorine? You know, what is your stance on this? What are your plans? You know, all that kind of stuff. Transparency.

And I imagine you have some of the disclosures and stuff like that on your website so people can take a look at what you've done. Oh, sure. Yeah. We've got tons of blogs that will teach you about PFAS and show you what our journey is and yeah my my disclosure is that I'm not a scientist so I'm you know doing my best to get the information out as best I can and it and it changes quite quickly that's the other thing this is a new science this is all brand new I mean it's not they've been around for many years but actually trying to mitigate them is a is a whole other story oh yeah i mean it takes a long time to figure all this

stuff out and make sure you get clean stuff so on your website too i can see there's a shade guide trial size a makeover quiz that's probably what i need a good makeover quiz oh and we have ai too you can actually go and you know try the virtual try on oh really oh yeah i see that virtual try on right below the makeup consultation i'll have to do that try on some different shades and soon we're going to have a version three the company is called pulpo they're amazing and we're going to have version three so you can do a whole makeup in one go so that'll be fun maybe i'll get in there and play around and show up on the show people be like what it'd be great he changed on the show. People will be like, what? That'd be great.

He changed on us. So whatever. But it's what's going on nowadays. Final thoughts. We go out, tell people how to onboard with you, reach out. Maybe they can, if they have questions or something, how can they learn more? You know, absolutely. You can just go to our website, mysafo.com.

And, you know, all the questions come to me. And I will answer whatever, I will answer whatever you ask. I'm here to serve and that's how I feel about this project. This is about serving and moving a paradigm to a better world. Anything to make the world better, safer for kids. You think about coming,

kids can put on this makeup too and they get into mom's makeup. I've had a few girlfriends, their daughters get into their makeup. When I was a little girl, the first book I read was a story about Anna City View. And it was a little girl that was in a suburb of Ottawa that died of leukemia. They don't write those books anymore. Yeah. There's too many.

Yeah. This is a thing we need to do. Clean up everything because we make a mess. Give us your dot com so we go out so people can look that up on the internet. S-A-P-P-H-O M-Y-S-A-P-P-H-O dot com. MySappho.com. Thank you very much for coming to the show Joanne. We've had fun and loved it and I've learned a lot about makeup and

of course these bad chemicals we need to get rid of thanks so much Chris for having me thank you and thanks so much for tuning in go to goodreads.com for just Chris Foster else don't make me stop the car and come back to our kids be good to each other stay safe we'll see you next time