Tata Harper – Founder & CEO of Tata Harper Skincare
Episode 94
Tata Harper, Founder and CEO of Tata Harper Skincare, never planned on being an entrepreneur in the beauty industry. In fact, she was an industrial engineer when she started learning about clean beauty and realized that she could make a cleaner and more effective product than what she was finding in health food stores. Now, Tata owns a farm in Vermont where she has her own manufacturing and production of her skincare products. On this show, Tata talks about how she put together the pieces of the puzzle to create a business that aligned with her values but was innovative and different. She also talks about how she has made the most of the COVID pandemic, her tips for teaching her kids about skincare, and much more.
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Transcript
Kara Goldin: Hi everybody, it’s Kara Goldin and I am so excited to have my next guest here. I’ve been a super fan and just thrilled that she agreed to come on the show today to just talk a little bit more about her brand. So, Tata Harper is here with me to talk about her skincare line. Just a little bit of background on her, she’s a pioneer in natural luxury skincare. The company is 10 years old and we’ll talk about how skincare has really changed, and that these guys were really on the forefront of really driving, I think a lot of that change into the overall industry.
She, Tata herself couldn’t find 100% natural products that were up to her standards, and so she decided why not make it. And she, we’ll talk a little bit more about this, but we were just talking about her farm in Vermont, which sounds amazing, amazing and I want to hear a little bit more about that. But they’ve been featured in Vogue, Vanity Fair, Town & Country. Today, Tata is offering our listeners $50 off any purchase at tataharperskincare.com when you use code TataxKara, my name, there we go. And we’ll put it on the post as well, so everybody’s got it, but use it at checkout. And this code is valid with a minimum purchase of $100, excluding gift cards and spa accessories, and is valid for seven days after this podcast. So, we’re very excited to have you here, Tata.
Tata Harper: Thank you for inviting me. This is so fun. I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while. I love your podcast, I listen to it regularly.
Kara Goldin: Oh, thank you. Very, very excited. So, can you explain a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey and how did it all come about?
Tata Harper: Sure. So I am from Columbia, so I am a Latin girl, a Latin woman. I never thought that I would become a beauty entrepreneur similar to you. I never really thought that my destiny was in beauty. I’m an industrial engineer and all of a sudden in 2005, while I was having a completely different career in life, my stepfather got diagnosed with cancer and he gets treated here in the US and I was living in Miami at the time. I accompanied him to doctors, clinics, you name it, a lot of different places. And I realized how important lifestyle is for your overall health and wellness.
I had always been a health enthusiast, trying to eat well, exercise, do your thing, but I had never really thought about toxic load, which is something that the doctors keep talking over and over about. Basically, it’s this concept about the accumulation of synthetic chemicals that given this daily interactions with synthetic chemicals, just you accumulate so much throughout your life without you realizing. And that it gets to a point where your body is so overloaded that then your propensity to different disease just become greater.
So, I became obsessed with reducing my toxic load along with him. So I started buying organic, changing my cleaning products, changing as much as I could, and really I left skincare as my last frontier, because I have always as a Latin woman, Latin woman are similar to the Korean and Asian woman in the sense that beauty is very important to us, really more is more when it comes to beauty, more steps equal more results in a way. And, I had always been a serious skincare customer. When I wanted to change to natural products, I just didn’t find that any of them really were meant for me, for someone that was looking for high quality, the best ingredients, the best technology.
A lot of natural products revolved around very simple, low cost formulas that, yeah, they were natural, but they just had three or four ingredients, or they were mixtures with a lot of naturals and synthetic. And I really wanted this idea of, where can I find a product that has no synthetic chemicals, because we don’t know in 20 or 30 years when they actually study the different raw materials, what is the repercussions in the longterm? Because a lot of those studies haven’t really been done for a … The beauty industry uses thousands of synthetic ingredients, right?
So I wanted this concept of, no tolerance for synthetic chemicals, where can I find something that it’s truly natural, but deliver results? So obviously I was not very happy with the quality that I found at little apothecaries and places like Whole Foods. I had never really bought beauty at supermarkets. I bought shampoos and body lotions, but not necessarily eye cream and serum, you know what I mean? So I would go to department stores and beauty stores where we used to get my beauty products and I’d be like, girls, please help me go natural. What do you have? And then they would show me things that had algaes, formulas that contained orchids, honey.
But then along with the honey, the orchids and everything else, there was always all this 40 or 50 industrial chemicals, parabens, PEGs, everything else. And it was like, I love the idea of this algaes, but why do you guys have to mix it with all this industrial chemicals that when you Google them, they’re like things that belong in your car like petroleum, battery acid, propylene glycol with just antifreeze? Why does that belong here in the eye cream? I thought that you were saying that algaes are what performs, then why do you have all this other things?
And then I quickly realized, and I think that this has to do with my background as an industrial engineer, that I’ve always loved science and I’m not intimidated with research and clinical studies. And then you realize that a lot of those synthetic chemicals are not necessarily in the formulas to deliver results, they’re there to make the formula work. They’re functional raw materials, right, like preservatives like parabens, they’re there to make sure that the formula lasts a long time without growing mold and without being contaminated.
For example, PEGs and other, this class of ingredients that are called emulsifiers, they’re used to mix water and oil together to create textures and creams. There’s thickeners, stabilizers, I mean, so on. And then I realized that a lot of those synthetic chemicals were not necessarily the ones driving results very differently than what I had been told, that you needed synthetic chemicals to perform. A lot of the results came from the algaes, the orchids, the honey, the roses, and that all of this was there just to make the product feel, not be contaminated and to look a certain way and feel a certain way.
So then I became really passionate with solving this problem because I had a problem, and I thought, I can’t be the only person that’s looking for something that’s really high tech and really potent, but that doesn’t have any synthetic chemical whatsoever. I had no idea at this point, how big, how small. I started this company just with pure passion and with this idea of, I am going to use my skills, my curiosity to try to solve this for whomever is interested, right? Whomever is looking for this, here I am, I’m going to try to solve this. And that’s how it began.
And then I was honestly faced with a thousand obstacles all ranging from customers are really not looking for natural products, serious skin care customers hate natural products. They will never buy them. And it’s true. I mean, at the time, if you’re a serious skin customer, you would never buy them, right? Because a lot of the natural beauty sector started really bottom up, right? A lot of formulas that were really simple, low cost, that they were [inaudible 00:08:55], that they were natural and that they were effective. So a lot of people that are buying skincare because they are effective, which is the majority of the people, because that’s the whole purpose of skincare is to provide results to your skin, were not necessarily in the bandwagon for that.
So, that was my biggest challenge, right? Because a lot of women have been, we have been marketed for so many years, 20 or 30 years, that synthetic chemicals are what deliver results, and if you don’t have brands that have celebrities or doctors and lab coats, it’s just like aloe vera juice and irrelevant formulas. So, that was a big obstacle honestly when I started, along with the journey of formulating the products, because creating the company, creating the formulas was almost a challenge to the status quo. If you want to start a skincare line, basically what I realized after I hired a lot of experts is that everything is outsourced. The formulas are not necessarily proprietary. You go to labs to make them for you, and typically those formulas begin with basis that are driven by-
Kara Goldin: And you add on to those things.
Tata Harper: Yeah, and then you will be like, oh Tata you’re from Columbia, great, let’s add this ingredient from the Amazon or this ingredient that it’s all about being Latin and the Latin culture. And no one was really interested in doing ground up formulation, which is what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to just take something that has been out in the market for 20 or 30 other brands and just change one raw material, just one ingredient, name it something else, change the smell, change the color and then here we are telling a new story and …
It’s almost like private label. So, I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to have a unique formula, and that took almost five years with help of almost eight different scientists that really helped me develop different parts of the formulation. So it was really about decoding formulation and reengineering it back with natural ingredients, all those thickeners, everything else.
Kara Goldin: People are always curious, how do you get started? Because, you didn’t come from the beauty industry. How did you find the people to actually help you figure this stuff out?
Tata Harper: You know what I did, I started reading a lot of books on skincare, on ingredients, on technologies because the natural world has so many different sciences. You have aromatherapy, you have herbalism, you have homeopathy, then you have a lot of the traditional medicine like Chinese, Ayurvedic, then you have all the new green science that it’s blooming, was blooming at the time. And I just started reading and then contacting a lot of those authors. I’ll be like, oh, I really love his point of view, I want to see who he is. And then he’ll be like, oh, this is the president of the Society of Aromatherapy in France or in Germany.
And then, I started just traveling and meeting with these people. And some of them thought that I was nuts and some other people were like, yeah, I’m going to help you. I think that this is interesting. I will definitely help you figure out this piece of the puzzle. And it was really about having multiple pieces of the puzzle going in at once, whether it’s preservatives or emulsifiers, actives and figuring all that out all simultaneously and then putting it all together into a formula. And that’s how I began really finding the scientists, finding all the people that still a lot of them work with me still today.
And then also not listening to a lot of experts. I realized that when you’re trying to do something innovative, something new, experts might not necessarily have all the answers for you and you need to feel … I felt so bad about that. I’m spending all this money, here they’re giving me expert advice and what are the best practices, and here I am almost rejecting everything, right?
Kara Goldin: Well, it’s funny as you’re talking about this, so I have a book coming out very soon in a few days called, Undaunted, and, Undaunted, Overcoming Doubts and Doubters. And there are a lot of similarities in what you’re saying, and I always talk about, you mentioned puzzle. I said that I think that the best entrepreneurs are okay with living on working on a puzzle, right, that just doesn’t end, right? And because you just keep innovating and you keep trying new things and you’re excited by that. And not everybody is excited by that, but I’m very similar where I really wanted, I kept …
We actually produced, we use real fruit in our product and we produced the first nonalcoholic beverage that didn’t use preservatives in our product. And that was 15 years ago. And everybody said it can’t happen, I’d call bottlers and I’d say, I want to produce a product using real fruit, how do I do that? And they didn’t know how to do it. So, industry experts came in and kept telling me, can’t do it, can’t do it, can’t do it and I’m like, why, why, why, why? And a lot of people got really annoyed by it, but then every once in a while you find this person who’s also curious, right? Who can go with you down that river and it’s just interesting. And sometimes the rivers go nowhere, but sometimes they go somewhere and you start to realize that you’re doing something different. And it sounds-
Tata Harper: Totally. You should have patients in the process because it’s definitely not easy what we do formulating skincare from the ground up. And also, another thing that we also went again to a lot of expert advice had to do with the manufacturing of the product, which was another puzzle that was happening almost simultaneously to the formulation of the product that had to do with how to produce it. Because that’s another piece that also the industry is so used to outsourcing, right? Who makes your goop, who fills your bottles, who packages your products, and even the distribution of the product is many times outsourced.
And because I’m an engineer, again, I thought, wow, I am so excited to have a skincare factory. And then when I realized that actually that wasn’t the common practice, I was so surprised, right? Because, I know that it sounds funny, but we created a real skin care company and I know that many listeners might not realize, but most skincare brands don’t make their products. And then when I realized that I was not going to make the products, I was not going to make the formulas, I’m like, what am I going to do? What it’s going to be my life as a beauty entrepreneur going to be like, if I’m going to have a lab making the formulas, another lab making my goop and producing for me, someone else filling, someone else packaging, someone else distributing? That didn’t sound as fun to me.
The more complicated … I was ready to do it all and I was really interested in doing it all. And that’s how I actually, we ended up turning most of the barns in my farm in Vermont into a skincare factory. That’s where we make all of our products. So, I also wanted to make sure that we made everything because, I not only from a hypothetical standpoint, okay, this is great. It makes sense. This is what my customers expect from me, right? They wouldn’t care if I outsource my accounting. They don’t care if I outsource my content, but they, for sure don’t expect that I am outsourcing my production. So, I became just obsessed with having my own factory.
So, we create our own formulas in the lab, in the farm. We also produce absolutely everything in the farm. And what I also found is that it is the way to not have to make excess product that could be extremely wasteful, because as a young brand, and even today, 10 years later, we find that very useful to have our own factory, because that way I produce exactly what I need. I am not to the mercy of minimums that are based on other people’s requirements of what works for them, but really what works for me and what works for my customers. Because if I make it, then it’s two, like with all the internal testing, two months, it’s out the door, it’s into clients’ hands. I’m not warehousing anything that it’s expiring that it’s becoming old. My clients just get products that are really fresh.
And when they’re really fresh, they’re really potent. And then at the same time, things are not just expiring on me to the point that then it’s just, you’re producing more than you should have. And then it’s extremely wasteful using all this resources, all this energy to create all these different things, and then it just goes bad, right? So I found that making my own factory was actually critical for the potency, the freshness, the quality of our products.
Tata Harper: So, we basically produce absolutely everything. We source all the raw materials, all the ingredients, so we know the exact quality of what we’re dealing with. We make exactly what we need every month. We fill what we need, we package what we need, and it’s out the door from our farm to the doorstep of our clients every single month and every single week. But that’s really exciting.
Kara Goldin: So how do you get a brand out there, right? I mean, that is a … How did you think about it?
Tata Harper: Number one, I had never had a corporate experience. I’ve never had a corporate job. I’ve always been an entrepreneur, but a different type of entrepreneur. I’ve never had made consumer products. So for me, it was all about the product and all about the formula and still to date, I think that we are a product company first and foremost, that really like a branding and marketing company, we are a product company. So when I started, I just started doing a lot of little trunk shows all over the US with my friends in Malibu, with friends in Brentwood, New York.
I would just travel all over and I had been working so diligently and for so many years in creating my products that I wanted to make sure that people loved them. What do they think about them? Do they like them? Do they not like them? So, that’s how I had got started. And a lot of the people that came to those trunk shows wanted to rebuy the product. So, I started a website with $3,000. We put a website up and we started selling products there and then, and packaging it. I hadn’t even thought about packaging at this point.
Kara Goldin: I love it.
Tata Harper: It’s like no idea about packaging, so we quickly had to figure it out. I really wanted to bring, because the products were so, they were 100% natural and they also come from nature from, we do science in the context of a farm in the middle of nature. I wanted to also bring a little piece of our landscape and our surroundings to our customers. So one day, in the summer afternoon, I was looking at the farm, everything was just green with yellow dandelions. And I was like, oh, this is so pretty. This is [inaudible 00:21:28] looks like.
Kara Goldin: I love it.
Tata Harper: And that’s how the color came about and the packaging came about and we just started everything step by step. It was all very organic. We hired our first marketing team, maybe two and a half years ago. So all this time it’s been very like me, my sales channels that’s really just creating a product and really focusing on the products and what the clients are looking for. And that’s how it began. One of the friends that came to one of my trunk shows, actually shared the products with one of the girls at Vogue, one of the girls at Vogue fell in love with them, and then they wanted to cover the story. So it just happened so quickly, and all of a sudden they’re like, no Vogue is coming and they’re doing a five page story on the brand, before we even had a packaging.
Kara Goldin: Oh my God, I love it. That’s such a great story. What was your first product?
Tata Harper: So, I didn’t want to launch one product. I wanted to launch a regimen because I had … I wanted to launch all the products that I was using because I am a firm believer that regiments are really important. Layering is extremely important and especially the complimentary effect of using all of the products together, it just gets you much better results. So, I mean, probably the first formula that was stable was the Resurfacing Mask, which is one of our best sellers, it even won multiple awards. But, I didn’t launch until I had all of them, all 12, a set of 12 products, and that’s how we launched.
And yeah, and then quickly we started just receiving calls from different stores that wanted to carry them. The first store was [inaudible 00:23:23], here in the US. They just had opened their stores and they were super excited. I met with Nikki, she wanted to carry the products. And for a long time, I was just really focused on that account and not really looking to open a lot of other accounts, just because I wanted to make sure that everything was running smoothly, that the production was working, the forecasting was working, that the distribution was working, the packaging, all of the different pieces that go into making of the products.
Especially because when I started, I think that I’ve done almost every single job in my company, from filling, batching, packaging. So, it’s like I have a general understanding of how everything pretty much works, first with firsthand experience and also being an engineer, I love operations and I love getting involved in a lot of the planning, the forecasting. I actually have to now, really stop myself and be like, no, that’s a really well run machine, you don’t need to get involved there and really focus on the teams that really need me. But yeah, that’s how it all began.
Kara Goldin: I love it. I love it. And so, what did you see during this time? Obviously we are recording this in hopefully the end of the pandemic, I’m an optimist, so we’ll see. But, what did you feel like your company, what were the biggest changes that you saw during this time?
Tata Harper: Sales channels?
Kara Goldin: Yeah.
Tata Harper: Consumer behavior was one of the, I would tell you the biggest change, honestly like the stores being closed, being almost all digital for a while. Things are starting to normalize and the economy started opening like the Middle East opened, then Asia started opening and then here we started opening, and then Europe started opening last. But yeah, that’s been the main shift and we took a lot of that time to not panic and just really focus on the right things.
I think that my life as the co CEO of my company has changed so much, my daily activities have changed so much. What I used to do has changed so much. And now I am learning and involved in so many more aspects, especially of the digital part of the business that I was not involved before, creating content, telling stories, doing videos, things that I honestly didn’t have time for because I was traveling to so many places, opening markets and doing all of that and doing launches and supporting my teams in the field, being out there.
So yeah, that’s probably been the biggest change. I think that also we’ve noticed that people are much more open and appreciative of all the things that we do, because they’re much more healthy. I think that people are more conscious about their health. They want things to be more healthy. They also want to be more conscious with the resources and how much trash they’re making and their footprint. So if anything, we’ve seen a positive outlook from this.
Kara Goldin: Yeah, that’s-
Tata Harper: And even professionally too, because I’ve been forced to just work on different things that I’ve been wanting to do for so long, but then you never find the time, right? You never find the time to do the video, to get involved in the photo shoot, to have the time to tell stories, refine a lot of the things that we’re talking about, talking about our beauty philosophy. So, it’s been interesting. It’s been extremely interesting. We’ve been learning a lot. I mean, trying a lot of different things to see what works, what doesn’t work. And I know my team, if anything, has gotten stronger and really hunker down, and we will be okay and we will get out of this okay.
Kara Goldin: That’s awesome. Yeah, and I think the focus on health too. I mean, even I see this in the beverage industry, I mean, I think we all walked into this in March, as people were eating whatever, cupcakes and Doritos and stuff that really wasn’t great for them, and maybe boozing it up a little too much. And then people started saying, wait a minute, I can’t do this. I need to really take care of myself. And I think most of my friends too have not only been focusing on eating better and drinking better, but also their skincare. I mean, especially if you are a working parent today and you’re dealing with Zoom, right? You want your skin to look the best possible, right? And I think that’s a key thing.
Tata Harper: Yeah. And also I think that skincare provides this emotional release as well. It’s very subconscious, right? It’s not something that you can necessarily think about. And it was very prevalent in my culture as I grew. I grew up in Latin America and in Columbia where beauty is not something that you necessarily do only to look better, but also to feel better. It’s like that ritual, massaging your skin, putting your creams on, a lot of times, beauty it’s also very inclusive of the rest of the family. It’s a fun time to mask and cleanse. I grew up in a family that we loved beauty so much and it was like a reason to celebrate and get together.
And I think that that is definitely something that skincare provides. It provides this emotional release and you feel good. And our skincare also, it’s such an aromatic experience. We don’t scent our products, you smell everything that it’s inside of the products, because they’re just in there for a different reason, right? They’re there to provide results, to make the products work. And you smell the combination of all the flowers, all the extracts, all the gums, all the different things that go into making our products.
And it just like, we get so many emails and comments from our clients about how amazing they feel and how much they look forward putting their products on. And I think that in this time that we all need soothing and we’re all defined, trying to cope and adapt to this new time. So, I think that skincare and self care practices, and also knowing that you’re doing things that are good for you are a priority and that are also good for the planet. I think that during this time it’s been a time of reassessing a lot of our priorities, how we live, what’s important, what’s not, what it’s good for me, what it’s good for other people around me, my community. I think that this has been a great time to just reevaluate a lot of our habits, a lot of what we use, a lot of what we put on our skin and also buying better, right? Buying better.
Kara Goldin: Definitely, no I think that’s really important. I know you have three children as well. So the big question, when do you start proper skincare, right, for kids? I mean, I have two girls and two boys, and I got to tell you, even my boys end up taking some of … They’re high school and college and they end up grabbing some of my skincare. And I really do, I’m a huge believer that it’s starting younger and younger and …
Tata Harper: I mean, I started so young. I think that I was maybe six. For me, what had helped me when I was young is that it gets me into the habit. It’s a habit, but then you really just cultivate for life just like you brush your teeth, you brush your hair, then you put your creams, you wash your face. So it’s just really getting them into the habit. My girl, I have two girls and a boy, and we tend to do a lot of our grooming at night. We shower, we bathe, we do our skincare, and it’s a sweetie sweet time where we all … I let them use whatever they want. Sometimes they want a mask, sometimes they just want to cleanse, sometimes they want to cleanse, mask, eye cream, serum, moisturize.
Kara Goldin: I love it.
Tata Harper: And then when their friends come, we also, with the little girls, I have right now six girls here for play dates from their school and we are going to do a little beauty ritual tonight. And it’s so-
Kara Goldin: So, fun.
Tata Harper: Yeah, it’s so fun. I think that you can really start at any age, the younger the better, not because they need it, but because they start the habit. But I think that it’s thing that stays with them for life and it’s an important practice. I think that it’s really important. I mean, sometimes beauty is looked at very superficially, but beauty is, it definitely has this quality of just making you feel better, not only because you look better and that makes you feel better, but the act of putting the products on your skin and having a ritual to look forward to, it’s something nice to have, right, in this busy times.
Kara Goldin: Well, I love all the passion that I’m feeling from you just in developing this company too, because I’m a huge believer and something that I speak a lot about, especially to younger audiences is that you have to … The trick is really to find something that you’re really passionate about and interested in, because I think it ultimately makes you a happier person, right? When you’re really doing something that you’re curious about and you’re excited about it and you can definitely hear that in your voice. So, I think it’s awesome.
Tata Harper: [inaudible 00:33:37] passion, I don’t think that I would have this company because it’s hard to start a company. Yeah, passion is a really important component, but then it’s extremely hard and there’s so much sacrifice and time away from the family. And so, many unglamorous parts of having a company that you endure as a CEO that thank God, I didn’t know how hard it was going to be, because if I would’ve known, maybe I wouldn’t have gone for it. But it’s true that the passion and the love that you have for what you’re doing, and also what you’re contributing to society is such a big component of that passion that then that alone keeps you going, you know what I mean?
That really kept me going. It’s like, no, I’m really going to prove it. I always felt that I was so close, right? You’re so close to making it happen and then you’re like, I am going to prove that this is feasible, that this is scalable, that you can be profitable, that you can have a company that can do things responsibly, sustainably, that you can have a product that it’s completely desirable. And then, you can do this and you can scale it. I think that that was a big piece for me because there were so many naysayers and so many negative people at the beginning, just telling me how, what I wanted to do was never possible that thank God that I was not listening to them because I was so passionate about it that you’re like, yeah, that’s what you think.
Kara Goldin: And you tried, right?
Tata Harper: And you think, maybe I won’t be able to be successful, but I am going to try. And if I am, it’s going to be a win win for everybody. And this happened not only in the formulation, it happens also a lot in even the choices that we make around our packaging, how to find a sustainable packaging that it’s great, that looks amazing, that reflects the quality of the products, but it’s not necessarily polluting the earth, right? Because, I don’t think that my clients are expecting that with their purchase of Tata Harper, you’re polluting the earth.
And that has been the other piece that I’m also very passionate about. And you’re able to pour a lot of your values into your brand, around sustainability, responsible production, how do we make things, right? I think that, that’s another thing that it’s not talked about a lot, it’s how to make products that you make them in a better way. You design a better process for making them, and being able to do all those things at once was just so, it’s so exciting, especially in this time that we’re in, right, where it’s booming. It’s baseline, I think, especially in a couple of years, I feel that it will be baseline for companies to not be using controversial chemicals and all of this polluting materials, right, in their products. Because I think that that is the ultimate act of sustainability to produce products that are in and of themselves sustainable.
Because what I tend to see with a lot of people, a lot of the efforts around sustainability revolve in the periphery of their products, like giving money to charities, offsetting their carbon footprint, doing a recyclable pump, right? But, the product in itself is still polluting, right? So it’s like in order to have a sustainable company, you must produce products that are in and of themselves sustainable. And I feel that that is at the cornerstone of having a company that it’s truly sustainable. Not that the donations and the charities are not amazing, but I think that ultimately to do the right thing is to, we just have something that it’s sustainable and responsible.
Kara Goldin: Yeah. I mean, that’s my lookup there theory, and get people to take their eye off of it. So, I totally, totally agree, but. So, my last question, what makes you unstoppable? You’ve already shared a few of these ideas with me, but what do you think in a few words what makes you unstoppable?
Tata Harper: I don’t think that it’s one thing. I don’t think that it’s one thing. I think that it’s a different things that you need to have to become unstoppable. Number one, is to really don’t give up. I think that it sounds so cliche, but that cliche is so true, because as you’re developing something new, you’re just going to face optical obstacles. That is the reality of trying to innovate. It’s like you are going to face tons of obstacles and you need to find solutions and you always need to find things. You always need to find ways of doing things better, right? So, that’s number one.
I think that the other thing is just having a lot of energy. I mean, starting a company takes a lot of energy, and then at the same time starting your family, which was the case for me, so it’s like high, high energy. And also being extremely organized with your time. I think that discipline and organization are my friends especially to be able to balance my life, because I have a company that I adore and I work with a group of people that I love. And without them also, I wouldn’t be able to be as unstoppable as I am. But then you realize that you have a family, you have kids, and then you have your own life, right? You have your own friends, you want to go to the spa, you want to exercise, you want to keep doing all the things that you enjoy, and not forget about your own happiness, let’s say, and your own routines that you love. And I think that being extremely organized has been one of those ways.
Kara Goldin: I love it.
Tata Harper: I think that those sum up some of the things that make me unstoppable and then plus an amazing team, right, that you trust that it’s really right there with you and that really make things happen for you. I think that that is, probably one of the most important things so that you can never stand still and accept everything, and then you can really continue innovating and continue producing amazing things and just really not accepting the status quo, but really disrupting and making things better and showing that they can be done, that a lot of those obstacles might be more cultural and psychological than technological, right?
Kara Goldin: I totally agree. So, everybody go to tataharperskincare.com. And where do people find you on social?
Tata Harper: Tata Harper Skin Care is the company’s handle on Instagram, and then I have a personal one, Tata Harper, but that’s just me, my friends, my kids, nothing serious.
Kara Goldin: Nothing serious, I love it. And don’t forget about the special code of TataxKara as well, and we’ll put that on the promotional for the website too. And if everybody likes this podcast, definitely share it and subscribe. And, we love that you were here today, Tata. So, thank you so much. Love it, love it. Love it.
Tata Harper: No, thank you for inviting me. So fun to meet you, at least virtually for now.
