Gabi Day: Founder & CEO of Bright Body

Episode 755

On today’s episode, Kara welcomes Gabi Day, Founder and CEO of Bright Body, the sustainable beauty brand redefining what “clean” really means. Bright Body combines modern science with Ayurvedic-inspired botanicals to create refillable skin, hair, and baby care products that are safe, effective, and truly sustainable. Every formula is crafted to meet stricter safety standards, packaged in glass and aluminum, and designed with a closed-loop refill system to reduce waste and protect the planet.
Gabi shares how she built Bright Body from the ground up — scaling sustainably without outside funding, earning high customer loyalty, and setting a new standard for transparency in clean beauty. We dive into her philosophy on balancing purpose with profitability, what it takes to stand out in a crowded industry, and how thoughtful systems can drive real growth. From product formulation to leadership lessons, this episode is full of insights for founders, beauty lovers, and anyone passionate about building with integrity. Don’t miss it!

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up, that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control, control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. I’m so excited for my next guest. We have Gabi Day, who is the founder and CEO of an incredible brand that I was not familiar with, and a former guest actually introduced me to it, and I am so happy that she did, because it’s a terrific, terrific product that you must, must know about. It’s called Bright Body, and it is not only sustainable, but also science backed. It’s a science backed beauty brand redefining what clean really means. And Gabi started Bright Body with a mission to create truly non toxic, effective and refillable love that products for skin, hair and baby care, combining modern science with the wisdom of Ayurveda inspired botanicals, every formula is crafted to meet stricter safety standards, And I cannot wait to hear a lot more about that, but Gabi’s leadership Bright Body has achieved double and triple digit year over year growth, meaning She’s killing it, and her approach to beauty is simple but powerful. So I’m so thrilled to have you here so that we could hear a lot more about your journey and the brand. So Gabi, welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. So let’s start at the top. So how would you define your brand, Bright Body, and what makes it so unique?

Gabi Day 2:12
Yeah, I mean, we’re there’s a lot of bluster in the world about clean and non toxic, and on one end, there’s a lot of fear based marketing that says chemicals are bad, but in reality, everything is a chemical, water is a chemical, air is made of a bunch of chemicals. And then on the other end, there’s kind of this obedience to the traditional industry norms around, well, it’s it’s all safe, and I feel like we’re kind of missing the the middle where there’s some, there’s some nuance to it. We actually don’t, we don’t necessarily know everything about everything as far as ingredient safety, just because, you know, there’s so many confounding variables, it’s impossible to have a long term study about the safety of one ingredient, because we’re all using so many products or so many ingredients. So it’s impossible to isolate. Anyhow, I have a very nuanced take on ingredient safety because of that. You know, I came to this industry because I have multiple chronic illnesses, and what got me better, what got me into remission, was hardcore prescription drugs, including IV antibiotics for months and months in my 20s, and also Chinese herbs. And what I loved about both my medical doctor and my acupuncturist is that they really respected each other’s approaches. At one point, I said to my acupuncturist, I just want to pull this line, you know, I had, I’ve had a I have a scar in my chest from where my this one port was. I have two more hidden in a tattoo now. And I remember saying to her, like, Megan, I want to yank this thing so annoying. And she’s like, you’re not ready. You still need those meds, and the herbs are going to help them. And then, on the other hand, my doctor would say, I’m really glad that you’re seeing an herbalist. It’s going to help with your medication regimen. So that you know what, what I owe my life to Now, as far as being a healthy person, being able to have this company is the exact same philosophy that brought me to how I feel about our ingredient standards and using both, you know, the traditional, what people would call chemical, but everything is a Chemical. Ingredients are synthetics that are safe, and then also still borrowing from some more of those Eastern traditions, Ayurveda is from India. I’m not Indian, but I have a background in Yoga and Ayurveda, so I have a lot of respect for that. But basically, I wanted to redefine from these extremes. I feel like beauty has become quite polarized, in a way where it’s like you’re either putting straight up beef tallow on your skin and you’re quote, unquote, doing it right, or you’re using the conventional stuff, and it’s all fine. And I just feel like there’s a middle ground that needed to exist. And so that’s what Bright Body is all about, and ultimately about taking better care of our bodies and. The planet, because we are interconnected, and there’s no way to take care of ourselves while also neglecting the planet where we live. It’s just not possible. We can’t, can’t pick and choose. So I definitely carve out an interesting third lane in this industry that has become a bit dogmatic.

Kara Goldin 5:21
So I we’ve had a lot of founders on the podcast over the years. You’re actually episode 755 if you can believe it. I love founders and hearing all of their stories, and so many of them, it starts with their need, right? They they needed to figure out something to solve a problem that they had first, and then it ended up, hey, there might actually be some people out there who would be interested in this too, and they are. Obviously, you have incredible, incredible products, but it’s one thing to have this idea that the product should be out there. It’s another thing to go start a company around it. Totally. So what, right? And what is, what kind of what was the moment when you said, I need to go do this. I would imagine that you were creating your own products in your home and, and, but when did you start to say, Gosh, I think this could actually be a company, yeah.

Gabi Day 6:26
So I was actually working in health administration, so I have an it’s an mha, it’s kind of like an MBA, but for health care. And I was working in long term care. My grandparents were a big part of my life growing up, so I have a soft spot for my elders, and I love the residents. I did not love the culture. Everything exploded. And it was while I was out on FMLA, mostly bed bound when I was 24 so over 10 years ago, that I just started thinking, Okay, if I can’t physically do much because I’m in so much pain, and I’m so tired, even if I’m not, I still have some brain fog going on, and I, you know, I can’t totally perform like a normal human. I needed a project. I needed something to do. And it started off as, just to your point, like, I’m just going to research for myself. I’m just going to learn more about formulation and what goes into all that, it will be a fun project. And then as I got stronger in treatment, and I would tell friends and family what I was doing, they’d be like, Hey, can you make me a jar? Like, put one aside, Save one for me. And then I would get feedback. And it just it started once I started getting feedback from friends and family, as I was tinkering around, as I started getting healthier, that I thought, okay, maybe what started as this fun mental project to keep my mental health solid while I was in, you know, really serious pain. What? What could I do to keep my brain going like I definitely inherit that from both sides of my family. We’re all a bunch of nerds and intellectuals, and it just turned into something bigger when I saw a from other people, and I also just felt there was a certain judge, there’s no real there was a certain excitement and a certain passion where I really loved it. I always say that in the business, my first love was formulation. My second love was digital marketing, and it all started with really loving the science behind it, sharing it with other people. And then it just became this endless positive feedback loop of, I love it, other people love it. Okay, what can we make of this? And I knew I didn’t want to go back into the world of corporate health care, so I thought, Well, now’s the time. At the time I didn’t have kids, and I thought, all right, if there’s a time to take a risk, it’s, it’s right now.

Kara Goldin 8:43
So when you were formulating the first few products, so how many did you do? And what product did you start with?

Gabi Day 8:53
I definitely started with too many. I’ll tell you that. I mean, if I could go back, I would tell little Gabi, I would tell her to be like, slow your roll. But the the very first I probably started with like 10 to 15 SKUs. And it should have been like five, you know, should have been less than that. But where it really started, and the the products that still exist today, from that very first time was our curly hair products, for obvious reasons, there’s a lot of hair care now that’s more textured hair friendly, but I couldn’t find something that was meeting my ingredient standards and that had a true sustainability focus beyond just saying, Oh, we’re packaged in recyclable plastic, well over 96% of Plastic care, 92 93% of plastic is not really successfully recycled here. So that’s where I started first, because those were the products that I was currently using that I was least happy with in terms of performance, in terms of ingredients and packaging. And I thought, Okay, let me start here, and those have become you. I always joke. I call them my gateway drugs. Those have become a lot of our like, first entry points into the brand. For people, they see me in my ads or on my website, and they’re like, wait a second, you with the hair? We kind of have the hair. I can trust you. So we started with our flaxseed and oat protein, curly hair gel and our moisture locking, curl refresher. It used to be a spray, now it’s in a pump. So those were like the key products, the key hero SKUs in the beginning, and we did have some skin care, but so much of that has evolved and changed as I’ve evolved in the brand and as a formulator, but we definitely started the cornerstone was curly hair for hopefully obvious reasons.

Kara Goldin 10:44
That’s awesome. So today, how many SKUs Do you have?

Gabi Day 10:48
We have now 20 individual SKUs. I believe if I were, if I were to walk my stock room is right there. But we have six, no seven for baby, we have 246, for hair, and then I think we have, yeah, seven for skin. So we definitely have a lot. And I’m always in the in the pivoting of, I’m kind of relentless about discontinuing things when it’s not working as well, or reformulating whether out of genuine desire to improve or customer feedback or issues with supply chains, which have definitely become more of a thing in the now times. But yeah, we definitely have a deep stack now between hair, skin and

Kara Goldin 11:35
baby. That’s awesome. So when you look at or think about developing some of your products. Is there one that was really tough and you’re sort of most proud of I remember when we were developing the flavors for hint, as funny as it sounds to people, lemon was so difficult to create because it would like, taste like turpentine. I mean, at times, I mean, it was like, and, you know, it can actually, lemon rinds can actually turn into turpentine. So, so it’s a, you know, a real thing. But is there one product in particular that was just really tough, and you look at it and it like, has your heart

Gabi Day 12:20
absolutely, I definitely think the curl gel is one of those. But I think a deeper cut that a lot of people might not know is our clear skin potion. So it’s 15% azylic acid. Azelaic is was originally developed for rosacea, so it’s first and forest foremost, an anti inflammatory ingredient. It’s notoriously hard to formulate with, so even a lot of the big mainstream brands, they won’t really touch it because it’s annoying. It takes a long time to fully dissolve. It can be a little bit finicky. It’s she’s she’s a fickle beast, azealic acid, but once I finally nailed the formula for that, I was really proud. You know, I started that formulation before I knew that I had unexplained infertility. I was on an IUD that kind of wrecked a lot of things for me personally, I am very pro birth control, but the progesterone IUD was not, not a suit, not a suitable alternative for yours truly, my body didn’t like it, and I was breaking out from it, and I just thought, Okay, I don’t want to go like the scorched earth, dry my skin out like the desert kind of situation. So I love an Azelaic formula, but I couldn’t find one that really ticked all the boxes for me. So when I finally nailed that formulation, i think i Little did a little dance around my kitchen like I did it. Finally, I have conquered the beast. And that one

Kara Goldin 13:47
is called, again, the clear skin potion. The clear skin potion, that’s awesome. And is, is there a product that you’ve developed that is kind of the runaway bestseller, is that is there one in particular?

Gabi Day 14:02
Yeah, definitely the curl gel. And then baby Kara. Since we launched, I launched the baby line when my boys were six months old, so now they’re three and a half. I have three and a half year old twin boys, identical twin boys. And ever since it’s become a huge cornerstone of the brand. I knew that it would take off, but I I think I underestimated just how much it would take off, because we hear all of the very real demographic data about the birth rate declining, and so I thought, Well, I still really feel passionately about that, about this. I still think there’s going to be a solid market, but we’ll see what it does. And it’s really exploded to be a significant part of our sales and the number one bestseller over there is our head to toe wash. So it’s like a shampoo and body wash in one that’s actually formulated for textured hair as well. So it’s funny, when I was formulating it, my boys didn’t have much hair, so I was like, Well, who can I test it on me? I would want. To have it work well on my textured hair as well. And it’s, I mean, we just can’t even keep it in stock. It’s become really popular because it’s really great for cleansing and detangling, including textured hair. And then it’s really gentle on skin, so it gets you clean but not stripped. And that was a big pain point that I had when I was newly postpartum, didn’t have energy to formulate myself, so I was using some of the mainstream brands, and my boys just kept getting all this irritation. And I said, Okay, universe, I hear you loud and clear. I will get into the studio and start formulating. But yeah, the head to toe wash is a really, really big seller for us from baby care.

Kara Goldin 15:39
How have you gotten the word out about all of your products? So I think you’re self funded as well, and so, so that’s challenging, right? To actually start something, you have to, I always tell people who aren’t familiar with all the hard that goes on and being an entrepreneur, but you have to purchase all of the packaging and the actual formulation ingredients and all those things, and then on top of it, actually get the word out about it. But how have you been able to do that

Gabi Day 16:16
the biggest way, as a small, self funded brand that has, you know, limited, very lean team. I’m currently the only one that is handling any revenue generation marketing that’s all on my shoulders. I’ve become a huge paid ads nerd, and I’ve become obsessed with, you know, lowering our CPA, boosting our ROAs. I’m in the process of, kind of diversifying risk across multiple platforms, meta, Pinterest and soon Google and, you know, third party data tracking, all of the nerdy stuff I could talk about for hours, but that’s been the way that I can hit the volume that I need to in order to scale. You know, in the early days, when my health was still I was solid, but I was newly in remission, I was kind of scared to go pedal to the metal. So in the early days, it was a lot of pop up markets, a lot of old school hustle just showing up in different places, in my community, in Richmond, Virginia, and then also in the DC area, where I’m originally from. And then when I went through, you know, I had three miscarriages, I went through six rounds of IUI, two rounds of IVF, and on our last embryo transfer, we found out that it’s split. So that’s how I have identical twins. That was quite a surprise. Once I found out that embryo split, there was a little, not even a little, a big little megaphone on my shoulder yelling, You better work like it is serious. Now there’s going to be two babies, so you better pedal to the metal. And I said, Yes, I hear you. And that’s when I just invested in my own skills. You know, my friend Sam gold, who was on the podcast, I believe, in August, talked about how she always says, learn it in house first, before you ever outsource it, and I am very much of the same cut from the same cloth. So I got a wonderful ads mentor. Shout out to Ashima Verma. She’s Canadian, she’s wonderful. And that has been the some of the best money that I’ve ever spent, because it’s it taught me an ADS brain in a way that can translate to any platform. And I’m very unabashedly values forward in my marketing, and that has been a huge lever for acquisition and retention I find, especially for as a millennial. You know, I think 83% of millennials do research on the values of the brands that they support before they buy. And so being very values forward, and not just the plain old this is for dry skin, you know, that really resonates with people. So I’ve become a nerd in the art of the ads and what does the creative look like, and then also the science of all the data and analytics. And that has been the way that I’ve been able to scale effectively, profitably with a lean team, was just really doubling down on my own skill set and being obsessed with constantly learning and improving.

Kara Goldin 19:12
That’s incredible. So how much of your advertising would you say is actually telling your own story, and sort of, I think, especially when you’re a new brand, it’s people really want to know what’s behind it. You touched on the fact that, you know, just saying you’re good for dry skin or, you know, having one sort of takeaway doesn’t really do it. I think for so many consumers the beauty industry in particular is just confusing. Like, you know, they they look at packaging, but then there’s a lot of other packaging that’s out there and and so it’s, it’s actually getting people to try your product, but I think it’s the people behind the products. That you build trust. So I’m just curious how much of this and and not just ads, but also community overall, how much has been really critical to growing, to launching and growing the

Gabi Day 20:12
brand. It’s been huge. I mean, I’ve found that founder led storytelling is one of the most effective strategies for meta ads, in particular, people like you’re saying they want to know the people behind the brand, especially when you’re a small business, when you’re self funded, they care about the the human aspect. They don’t care about, you know, the logo. So the more that I’ve shown up authentically as myself in my founder story, the better things are in terms of the hard data and metrics, but also in terms of just general engagement, customer sentiment, retention, all those kinds of things. So I do a lot of founder, founder, story ads. I actually just recorded one before we met, that talks about how you know why I’m so values forward and it connects back to really. I sat down and thought about this a couple of months ago, and I was like, Oh, that is why my grandparents, on both sides have really strong and unique stories. On my dad’s side, my dad is Brazilian, and my Volvo, my grandfather was tortured as a political dissident during Brazil’s 1964 military coup. He was tortured for three days, and they came here to the US on political asylum and then on my mom’s side of the family, both my parents, who were born in the 19 or excuse me, my grandparents, born in the 1920s were graduate educated physicists like my grandma, back in like the late 40s, early 50s, had a master’s degree in physics, which is almost unheard of. And so I just have this rich family history of science and political activism that’s just in my DNA. I can’t help it. It’s just who I am. And so when I talk about that with my audience, whether it’s newsletter or ads, when I talk about my story of starting off sick and how that became Bright Body, you’re just going to resonate so much better. People really respond to those and it people really buy into the why. It seems like this kind of, you know, nebulous textbook idea, like, yeah, yeah, the why, the why. But I’ve really found it. It does matter, especially for small, self funded businesses. So I do a lot, a lot a lot of storytelling in our marketing, whether it’s paid or organic,

Kara Goldin 22:35
yeah, definitely it’s, I think everything you’re saying makes tons of sense. So when you think about, I think you said you have 20 ish SKUs right now, when you think about launching new products, because innovation is always like, I mean, innovation is so fun as a founder, right? Like, great new products, but then all of a sudden, then, you know, especially if you’re dealing with stores or or planograms, or, depending on what the category is, it’s, you know, they don’t always have space for all 20 SKUs, for example. And so there’s always this, this kind of balance that needs to be struck around launching new products in order to get visibility and newness out in the world, versus really doubling down on your existing products and maybe even putting advertising behind certain products that you know everyone’s going to be really, really happy With. But how would you, how do you think about innovation overall? Like, when is it time that you have to do it versus not do it?

Gabi Day 23:47
Yeah, I think as entrepreneurs, we’re a little bit addicted to the newness. So I often, you know, we like to be the gas, and so I let myself, I can be the gas and the brakes, you know, be a little bit of a wet blanket when I have an idea and I put it like in a Google Doc, that’s my idea parking lot, and let it percolate before I take action on it. I’m very data driven, but I’m also I’m kind of equally, as they say, right and left brain. So that’s why I kind of can equally play the role of the gas and the brakes on innovation. So I always take a look at before I launch anything I’m like, is there any low hanging fruit that I can just cut that’s just not worth keeping anymore? For you know, the additional cash that’s tied up in inventory, what’s not worth it? So typically, I come from a place of one in, one out, unless there’s other data or customer research that suggests otherwise. So I always start from from that kind of place. I’m big on pruning. I will prune like it’s my job, and then I just do a lot of customer listening. I have a it’s a special segment of my email list, and also it’s a feature. Book Group. It’s called my R and D squad. That’s all of our customers who have made at least three or more orders with us are invited to be part of it. And that’s one thing I’m going to start doing this quarter, is using them more. I use them all the time, and get their their thoughts and their insights, but I’m really going to make a point of talking to them more. It’s hard when you’re spread thin being mom of toddlers, running the business, but I get a lot of really great feedback. And again, I pop it in an idea parking lot. I put it in a you know, Inbox folder, wherever it makes sense. And then I revisit it, especially when I’m, you know, end of the year, doing a full financial strategic review. I just take a look at everything all together and kind of make decisions based on the qualitative and the quantitative. What, what are people saying, and what is the data saying? And how can I make sense of both of them? But I think that’s, that’s the main thing. Is just continuous customer listening and never never forgetting that that’s ultimately who you’re making for even though I started from my own problems and from my own pain point that was then transferred to other people, I just always keep that top of mind, you know, if I have a doubt, I put a little question in my R D squad, and I always get a really great response.

Kara Goldin 26:23
What do you think is the most surprising thing about being a founder to you? Is it a is it as challenging as you thought? Is it more challenging?

Gabi Day 26:35
That’s a great question. I think it’s one of those things where it’s like, trying to explain childbirth to someone, right? Like, you can’t, you know, you can say, like, I guess it’s kind of like a really bad period, but it’s not, yeah, you know, it’s like, you you can’t, you know, you can get a doula, you can take the birth class, you can take the breastfeeding class, but you birth is going to go, how it’s going to go, you know, I ended up, in my own case, having a very traumatic birth. We’re all okay now, but it was pretty harrowing, and I had a lot of, you know, PT, literal PTSD, from my birth situation. But it’s kind of like that, you know, you in your mind, you have a concept of how entrepreneurship is going to be, and then being in it is just a totally different beast. I try not to compare too much of expectation versus reality, because it almost feels like I’m looking through a veil, like how could I even know what to expect? So I think it’s just as hard as I thought it would be, but in different ways. I think it’s if you let it again, kind of like motherhood, if you let it, it can be an amazing teacher and show you things. It’s a mirror. It shows you things about yourself, not just in your career, but just areas of opportunity for personal growth and improvement. And I think motherhood is very much like that. I think entrepreneurship is very much like that. But I think the one thing that has made it not more daunting than I guess I expected in theory, is just being relentless about continuous learning and always trying to invest in my own skill set, my own mindset, support, all those kinds of things that’s been really key to surviving the journey. But, yeah, it’s been a journey mostly of just continuing to learn and staying agile. And I think that’s the one time where being self funded is a strength, is that you can typically be a bit more agile when you’re the one that’s really steering the ship?

Kara Goldin 28:42
Yeah, definitely. So what’s next? What? What are you most excited for? I mean, you are killing it. I mean, Bright Body is doing so well, so proud of you, and you’re making it happen. You’re changing people’s lives. I mean, people think, Oh, I’ve just got a skin irritation that won’t go away. And suddenly, you know, they find Bright Body and they think that it’s, you know, why? Like, what is this? And then it makes them start to think about what else is in all the rest of the stuff. And I think it’s it, you know, you’re doing something that is really leading, right? So that that’s incredible. But what’s next?

Gabi Day 29:27
That’s a great question. The big thing on the horizon was, is going to be a sunscreen next year. So it’s our first foray into OTC, you know, over the counter drugs in the US, sunscreen is regulated as an OTC drug, so there’s a whole lot more that goes into that. So I’ve worked hard to find a really wonderful values aligned manufacturing partner in Latin America, which is near and dear to my heart as someone who’s half Latina. So I’m really excited about that. It’s going to be mineral only formula that’s Pack. Packaged. Actually I have it’s basically being packaged in a little aluminum bottle with plastic free refills. So that’s really important to me in terms of the sustainability aspect of it. And it’ll be inclusive to a wide range of skin tones, SPF 30. So it’s not going to be as as much of that white cast that a lot of mineral formulas are prone to. So it’s a big step for us. It’s our, like I said, our first foray into FDA regulations, all of the testing, all of that. So that will be coming end of spring, early summer, next year, and we’ve already gone through the R and D process. We’ve just started the FDA testing. And I’m actually really excited our our manufacturer is going to be visiting the US next month, and they’re going to make a special flight to come meet me. And I’m like, I feel like I’m the queen or something. That’s so cool. Sounds so silly, but it’s really wonderful and exciting to to connect with a manufacturing partner that I really, really trust so that’s the next big thing on the horizon.

Kara Goldin 31:04
I love it. Well. Gabi, thank you so much for sharing all about the story behind the brand and more about what your mission is and what you’re up to. Your story is such a great reminder that doing business the right way doesn’t mean doing it the slow way you’re you’re just pushing forward every day, which is super, super terrific. And thank you everybody for listening. As always, don’t forget to leave a great review and share this episode, and also go to bright bodies website to purchase all their terrific products. So Gabi, thank you so much. Gabi day, founder and CEO of Bright Body. Thank you so much. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening and goodbye for now.

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