Erin: Welcome to Hotter Than Ever, where we uncovered the unconscious rules we've been following. We break those rules and we find a new path to be freer, happier, sexier, and more satisfied in the second half of our lives. I'm your host, Erin Keating.
Today, I talked to Melissa Palmer. Melissa is the CEO and co founder of the skincare company, Osea. You have probably seen their all natural and seaweed infused products. If you are tuned into such things, because they are everywhere and they have been a leader in the clean beauty space before anyone ever heard the phrase clean beauty. Melissa is the business brain behind the brand. She's been the CEO since 2016, and she leads the company today.
She was previously the CEO of a company called Hoopnautica, the industry leader in hula hoop fitness. Who knew that was a thing? Melissa was recently named EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2024 for Greater Los Angeles. We have a great conversation about what it's like to start and run a business with your mom, which is what Melissa does.
You know, we talk about how that deep and connected relationship really gives each of them the freedom to bring out their respective talents and capabilities. And there's so much trust there that it really makes them both blossom. We talk about listening to your intuition and leaning into your expertise.
We talk about success and how it's about showing up. Every day for a lot of days that felt really relevant to me. They started the company 28 years ago and in year 20, that is when their brand really exploded. We talk about the benefits of having been around for the beginning of the tech revolution and how that has made women our age really good at adapting to cultural and business change.
We get into the language of beauty. We talk about anti aging, whether that's a thing. We talk about the notion of age defying, which is a marketing term that came about, about 10 years ago. And we talk about the indignities of chin hair. Oh my God. All right, let's get hot.
Melissa Palmer, welcome to Hotter Than Ever.
Melissa: I'm so happy to be here.
Erin: Thank you so much for coming on. I am excited to have you here to talk about your life as an entrepreneur and your path to success, which has not been a linear one. To hear you tell it, this is a bit of a leading question, and I'm sure you get this question all the time, but how did you come to co found a line of skincare products with someone very near and dear to your heart?
Melissa: Well, I think the only fair answer is I was born right on into it. So my mom, I always like to joke, is not only the founder of the company, but the founder of me.
Erin: Oh, facts. Yeah.
Melissa: So she's truly the founder. And I really got to grow up with the company. Really did grow up with, like, bathtubs full of seaweed, essential oils running all through the house while my mom was blending and making things. And when I was in high school, she finally got her formulas right after decades of perfecting them, raising us as a single mom, and we'd all been really entrepreneurial, and I decided, okay, I'm gonna help you do this. That was really the beginning 28 years ago.
Erin: That is amazing to think about you in a house. Is it just you? Are you her only?
Melissa: No, I have a brother as well.
Erin: Okay, great. So the two of you running around the house with mom sort of mad scientisting it up, is she a creative visionary? Would you call her that? How would you characterize your mom, and how would you characterize yourself in relation to your mom?
Melissa: So I think she is definitely creative and eccentric. I think our whole family probably falls into line with that. And she was really passionate about natural health and wellness and healing, and that was really her moment of creation for the company. The truth is, it really kind of started at a commune where I grew up, where we were doing, like, natural health retreats, and my mom was looking for products to use at the spa there, and couldn't find a product that was safe enough to put on her body because she equated it with the same. Couldn't find a product safe enough to put in her body. So why would she put it on her body?
Erin: In your body, through your skin.
Melissa: And it's so crazy because let me tell you, 25 years ago, we were the total nutjob, saying the skin is the largest organ in your body. Everything you put on, absorbed is absorbed. Just so amazing and gratifying to hear that be mainstream knowledge now, but she definitely is creative. I think I can kind of sum that up best in a lot of our roles in the business today.
Erin: Right.
Melissa: She spends anywhere from four to 6 hours, she likes to say, minimum three, meditating on the brand and the products and the energy of the products every day.
Erin: Every day.
Melissa: And I run the business. And in those meditations, she gets creative visions for products, and she really just holds our vision very strong. And on the one hand, it's completely insane, and on the other hand.
Erin: I wasn't gonna say it.
Melissa: Yeah, well, let's be real. But I cannot tell you how often I hear this line, which is, yeah, I just picked up the product, and something felt different about it to me. So I think it's crazy and it's working. So, yes, the answer is yes. She is a creative visionary.
Erin: Wow. And then, like a lot of people generationally, we are in response to our parents or in response to our siblings, we develop differently. Would you say that you are the opposite of that, or that you. I don't want to overdose simplify things, but it seems to me like if you're running the business, like, that's a different brain.
Melissa: Well, I can already tell that this is a different kind of interview than the one I'm used to, because anytime I say that, no one asks me that question. Really? Yeah. That I run the business. My mom's the creative. And I think there's so much truth to that, of how things. How we grow in relationship, to our parents, to our siblings, to our partners, and I. It highlights maybe an over activated part in who we are or who we aren't. And I think if she.
Yeah, I do think about that. If she would have been, like, really pragmatic and driving the business, in that sense, I might have been. I don't think I would have been meditating that many hours a day, to be clear. So, yeah, I think it really has shaped who I am in this business, and I've also found a lot of areas of my own creativity. So we've split things up pretty well, and we come together really well.
Erin: I think that's amazing. You hear about, like, Joe and son's auto parts or whatever. There's one of those down the street from me, but we rarely hear. The first time I ever heard it was Russ and daughters, which is a line of knishes or something in New York. And so it's gorgeous to me, and I think a sign of the times that this is a mother daughter company. I wish that it was more of a model for people because it shows so much agency and so much empowerment that the two of you are doing this thing together.
Melissa: It's so true. I think that makes me so excited to hear you say that because if anything we do could be an inspiration to mother and daughter businesses. That would be so cool because, I mean, listen, when things are sticky and rocky, nothing's rockier because, yeah, mother, daughters, all the triggering. But it has been such an incredible deepening of our relationship. And my mom always says that she loves being able to see this side of me, like, in the world versus me calling up and, you know, or coming home for a holiday and saying, oh, works great. So she knows this entire other side of me. And I think for me, a lot of the journey has been learning to trust my mom more because I was actually doing this as a teenager and there were so many times where I doubted her. And she really, in terms of, she always says, osea just, like, came to her through a channel and something came in very clearly because in the 28 years we've been around, we have the same logo, we have the same mission statement, the same packaging, and I also get told all the time, congrats on your new brand.
And it has just remained so true. So I've gotten to, in the process of her seeing me flourish in this sense, I've really gotten to, like, tap into her wisdom. And I would say if daily I get to be like, oh, yeah, my mom was right. Something comes up.
Erin: I'm sure she loves that.
Melissa: Well, I don't actually tell her that, and I don't know if she'll hear this, but if she shouldn't.
Erin: Listen, if you want to keep that a secret.
Melissa: Yeah, I'm going to keep it away.
Erin: So it's so interesting. What is the give and take that allows the two of you to be in business successfully together? Because like you said, it's like, when it's bad, it's got to be really bad. But at the same time, you know, neither of you is actually going to go anywhere from each other's lives. You have that endless history to lean on. You have all the good and all the bad to lean on.
Melissa: I think you really just answered it. It's like, fundamentally, that is the truth. I would add that we really trust each other. So I know when to ask her when to go to her and about things in the business because I kind of, like, know where she has really good intuition, but she really taught me to lead with my own intuition. And part of that is she really trusts mine. And there's actually quite little back and forth between us in the areas of the business that we run.
Erin: She's so
Melissa: We know what each other. She's very busy. She also runs the product development team.
Erin: Yeah.
Melissa: And I can tell when the product development team, you know, as we've actually become not a small company anymore, when you said. Because the products everywhere, it's still a shock to me, because to me, it's still us in our garage, which is where we were for 15 years, but it's a totally different ecosystem now. There's lots of people. And so I just, like this week, I was like, you know, I think this is, like, missing some of my mom's essence in creativity. So they're going to spend time just, like, tuning in with her. So she definitely. Meditation is the primary, but she's really good at correcting grammar. She just has such good instincts on stuff.
Melissa: But fundamentally, we just trust each other. Sometimes she'll hear about huge things. I mean, I'm so guilty about not keeping her updated, even though we talk all the time, like something big that happened, a piece of distribution or something, she's like, oh, didn't know that. But she just totally trusts me.
Erin: Yeah. So how big are you now?
Melissa: We have a team of 70, which is 65 women, five men, maybe. It's like six now.
Erin: Good for them.
Melissa: Yeah, exactly. I think so, too. Lucky them. Yeah. And I think we've grown something like 8000% in the past six years.
Erin: That's really, really exciting. I mean, it's just exciting to think about, you know, as a person who's starting her own thing myself, like, you know, if you show up every day and you do the work and you put in the effort and care and love and you're smart about it, step by step, brick by brick, you can build something big and successful. You need luck and strategy and resources. But I'm inspired by it.
Melissa: That is exactly the combination I say that you always need. Luck is so much of it, and the hard work is so much of it, and the inspiration and the strategy. And I think our biggest gift as women is that intuition and listening to it, it guides so many choices we make. But I think the other piece is, he said, when you show up every day, if there was one thing we could share and I could share about our story is it sometimes can take a lot of days. We've been doing it 28 years, and we didn't really start to see success until you're 20.
Erin: Okay, stop. I don't want to hear that.
Melissa: Okay. That's a really long path. But also, where we've gotten in 20 to 28, those years is radical. But we did this a really. We had no business experience whatsoever. And we did it really slow at first, but we were successful the early years. We grew 10% a year, every year. We had a really nice life.
We had a great business. It supported ourselves, supported our family, and supported both of us. And we built in some really fun things. We sold in spas and hotels. So our whole world was about traveling for free to the nicest hotels on the planet and staying there and teaching them how to do treatments and then having an incredible trip. So it was a really great lifestyle. So when I say, I think I'll recategorize that, which is the first 20 years were really successful by all standards. We had a profitable, healthy business that sustained us. The past eight years have been something altogether different.
Erin: Right, right. I think because not only are you now expert at what you do, but also the culture caught up with what you were doing.
Melissa: Absolutely. And I had incredible luck. It's that piece on our kind of like, fringe thing we were doing. We had a piece in Forbes come out recently, and the headline was fringe weirdos in their garage, which is how I kind of had described us. And then they described business.
Erin: Was that about Bill Gates?
Melissa: Thank you. No, just a couple of hippies, which was us.
Erin: But no, the culture caught up with you.
Melissa: Okay. Thank you. Yeah, the culture caught up with us. And I. I also had the incredible luck. I left for two years and helped to run the Hula Hoop company. Okay. And it was incredible luck because I learned how to do something that the business needed.
Erin: Amazing. I want to hear that story, because first of all, what brought in my mind, it's very dramatic how you left, but it probably isn't. And then talk to me about hula hoops as a business. I mean, what I think is so interesting, seaweed and hula hoops is like, you know, who would have thought, right.
Melissa: That they were so weirdly connected or even very false?
Erin: These as businesses. Oh, very nice. Very nicely, nicely punned.
Melissa: So I developed this hobby. I am someone who goes very into things this past couple weeks. I'm heavily into making waffles out of, like, protein waffles, but, like, you've never seen broccoli in a waffle. I'm on a whole kick, but then I'll never do it again. So I get very into something. But hula hooping was a pretty long lasting hobby. And I was just really, I loved it because it was this movement practice. I love dance and ecstatic dance with this, like, tool that if you weren't present, it would just drop.
And it was hoop dancing and fire hula hooping and all of this. So everyone knew I was like kind of the crazy hula hooping addict and had told a friend that I really wanted to start a hula hoop company. And he'd been kind of trying to help us mentor growing the business. And he, of course, thought cosmetics was much better business. And then met someone with a hula hoop company, said, well, I actually just met someone who's doing that. You should meet them. And I ended up just. My mom was.
She said, you have to follow your passion. And I did. I hired an employee and we had someone work in that garage. And I stayed somewhat involved, but I left for a few years, and it was the best thing that could have happened. It was very dramatic growth of the company and, you know, everything from going on good Morning America and selling like a million dollars of a handmade product in a morning and just every up and down. But it was at just the moment that selling stuff online, it wasn't even. It was called e.com. not quite d two c yet.
Oh, yeah, I remember had started. We had like this big Facebook group and Instagram was starting. And I just developed this total passion for that kind of marketing. Learned how to, like, code and build a website and everything I loved because it was like so new and so, so accessible at that time. So I ended up leaving and was figuring out what I was going to do with my life next. And I left. I'd invested money into the business that I shouldn't have, and I was kind of in a very down place and thought, okay, well, while I figure out my life, I'll just build a website for Osea, start an Instagram and see what happens. And that was the start of our growth.
Erin: Wow. Wow. It really is luck and timing and putting in the reps. I meet you today in this conversation, and you're on top of the world and you have all this success and 70 employees. Holy moly. And you're out of the garage. But you mentioned to me that you feel like you're someone who found your success, both professionally and personally, later in life. And it's not, you know, you're just 40, right? Or almost around there. No need to be shy. I'm turning 53 on Saturday. This is a podcast for women over 40.
Melissa: Well, I'm definitely rolling into my forties still shy about it.
Erin: Still shy about it. No need. We are hotter than ever.
Melissa: That's right.
Erin: It's the gospel.
Melissa: And preach that's starting to make a lot of sense to me. The pun or the double meaning of that. I get it.
Erin: Yeah, yeah, totally. So as a person who's rolling into.
Melissa: Her forties, she's rolled in, let's be.
Erin: Honest, I'm in as a person in her forties. Yeah.
Melissa: Thank you. By mid you could get there and.
Erin: Say, I give you permission to own that because we have never been better. Women have never been better in our forties, fifties, sixties and beyond. This is an unprecedented moment in history for women. We have our own agency and we have our own careers. We have never had more power or influence, more participation in the culture, and no one's gonna make us invisible at this point. Like, that is not going to happen. What I continue to see is women doing extraordinary things in this chapter and reinventing outside the rules of what society says our utility is.
Melissa: I couldn't agree more. I have to share just a little moment where that hit me this week. We're in the business, really actively working to grow the business on TikTok, doing TikTok lives, TikTok shop, all this stuff, okay? So to me, I'm really excited because this is a new pocket and I learned how to market when everything was new. And I have this team that is in their late twenties, early thirties on that digital team, and they're like completely skinny, scared of new channels. Not scared, but they're like, well, what should we expect? How should we do this? And I had this moment of like, they've been marketing as long as all of this has existed. And so they like an affiliate market that's always been around in their career, whereas like, it was radical affiliate marketing 15 years ago. And I thought, oh, that's a really cool perspective as an older generation of marketer who's been through like digital marketing growing. And to get to, like, now I get to work with them and be like, hey, this is new.
Like, this is what's exciting about digital marketing. And I thought like, oh, I think that like, marketers in their forties and fifties are going to actually have a lot to teach about learning digital marketing as it evolves into its next era.
Erin: Well, because we were around for the invention of all of this, right? Like you were talking about how you are so excited to build a website and do e commerce. It's like, I worked for a PR agency in my twenties, my first grown up job where I was like, okay, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna have a regular nine to five while I'm an artist on the side, instead of putting the artist part at the center. I worked for a PR firm in San Francisco that all of our clients were tech clients, and Jeff Bezos was one of our clients when Amazon was just starting. And he would walk around the office and we would sort of whisper to each other, do you think people will buy books on the Internet? Do you think people are going to be willing to put in their credit cards? Like, it was really, like, we have witnessed this insane speed of growth and cultural change and business change, and we have been agile enough to, like, go, oh, okay, not that, this. Okay, this, not that. Okay, that change, that's not happening anymore. Oh, I got laid off from that. Oh, that side of the business is contracting.
Oh. You know, and then for me, like, I had worked in tech and then I worked in entertainment, and then those things merged, and now I'm like, okay, I'm in this world of, like, creators, and that's a totally different marketplace, but I'm not scared of it, just like you're not scared of it because you've made up the rules as you've gone.
Melissa: And I think that that is just one more point. I mean, aside from everything going on culturally, I feel like the fact that I even get to exist and do what I do today and have a leadership team that's led by these incredible women. Like, that's just. It's just so amazing to be, like, in business and growing at this point, but it's just so cool to think about, like, that history that you get to bring that and, yeah, so I love that you have this podcast and I love this topic.
Erin: I just want to set us against a cultural backdrop because I think women in midlife feel like, okay, I did all the things I'm supposed to do. I had the career. If I wanted kids, I had kids. If I wanted a marriage, I had a marriage. Maybe I'm keeping that. Maybe I'm not. But we're all at this moment of, like, okay, what's next? Oh, my God, I'm gonna live another 30 years. I'm probably gonna work a lot of that time.
Like, what does that look like? What do I want that to look like now that I'm not in the business of pleasing everyone else every minute of my life? Like, whoa, whoa, we need some paths. We need to see some models. That is what I'm here to do, you know?
Melissa: Yeah, I love that. Well, I think in terms of my path, yeah. I had never, until we briefly connected, described myself as having later in life success. And then when I thought about it, it actually does really click. I was successful in the business that I was running, had jobs, but I did not experience, like, really radical, exciting, like, fast growth success like I did till my mid to late thirties. And I feel like I never, I just, like that never clocked to me that that was a different time to experience. And my greatest success in life is now in my forties. So I didn't even like, you know, because we're in our own reality.
It never really occurred to me that that wasn't the path. And then I started, well, it might be. Yeah, it's, it's like the, my forties I know are my most professionally, like, growth oriented, successful time. And now I'm thinking about what my fifties will look like, and I can't imagine that that would change. I see, like, my career and interest continuing to grow at that point as well.
Erin: Yeah, I will say that my forties was when my career exploded, that I had been really, really headed somewhere for a long time. And then really in my forties, it was like, oh, now you're the leader on the team, now you're training everybody in what you know how to do. Like, and for me, it was, I had been a television executive and I had, and then I worked at Snapchat for six years making short form original series. And then when I got laid off from there, it was in the moment when I had blown up the rest of my life and decided to get divorced. And I had gotten Covid and almost died. And sort of that was like a revelation for me. Like, oh, fuck, I'm not gonna be here forever. How do I wanna live my life? And I had this vision of what could be next for me, which is like, stepping out from behind the scenes and actually letting my voice be heard instead of, or in addition to bringing other people up and bringing other people's stories out.
And I don't think in my forties I had the confidence that I have in my fifties. Like, now I really just don't give a fuck what people think, except for the people who I want. Do I care about?
Melissa: I'm so excited because I feel that way already.
Erin: Yeah.
Melissa: And the idea that that's going to continue to grow. I mean, I have a friend in her sixties.
Erin: I have a friend, a good friend who's in her early sixties. And, like, to see the way she walks through the world is like a nuclear version of where I'm at. Like, it's great. Like, she gives so little care to the people who would doubt her, like, and I want to be her when I grow up. You know, like, which may. I don't think I'll ever grow up, but, you know, I'd like to stay this sort of adult teenager version of myself.
Melissa: Yeah, I'm with you. Yeah, I can imagine how much that grows. This past couple years has been so many hard and often quite expensive lessons in just not giving a fuck about what other people say. You know, this is my little world of. This is where, like, my intuition and my feelings are cranking. And that has. It's. It's been a transition for me to lead like that, because so much of our culture is really built around kindness and for me to learn how to assert myself really clearly of like, hey, actually, I hear you. Thank you. But this is what we're gonna do. That's been pretty radical for me.
Erin: Yeah. So even as a founder, even as the head of the business, you have felt like you needed to claim that mantle in a different way.
Melissa: Totally.
Erin: That's so interesting. Why do you say was an expensive.
Melissa: Lesson for you, some really expensive lessons? Because I've gotten my. I've allowed myself to be talked out of so many things, like, ugh. And if there's any listeners on here, I'm sorry. We switched pumps. This is, like, just a small thing that it turned into such a crazy thing. We switched suppliers of our pumps and our best selling product, and I was like, I just don't have a good feeling about this. And they did testing, and it showed it was fine. And we were saving a couple pennies, nothing.
But they liked that supplier better. And I said a couple of times, I don't really like this. It turned out to be a multi year insane situation that really annoyed a lot of our customers and drove us. You know, it was a. It was such a mess, and I said it. I just, like, I knew it. And so my CFO, of all people, she's a woman in her fifties, so I know what you mean about women in their fifties. The best to work with quite a few on leadership team.
And she, when I say something like that now, she's like, okay, we should be listening because it happens so many times, and sometimes I cannot even explain where it's coming from, but the more I listen, the louder it gets. And it's usually really practical stuff. I'm not meditating on it, but it is like, we were gonna have this huge influencer event, and three weeks before this happened, this past summer, I told the team, I was like, I don't wanna do this, and we're canceling it, and they're like, oh, okay. I just kept saying, like, I don't know why. It makes me nervous. Lo and behold, a huge scandal the day before the event happened. Like, so now that team really listens to me. So it's.
Melissa: I think it's like, just. It's. It's. It's a version of not giving a fuck. But it's like, I think our greatest power as women is, like, that guidance that we have and just listening has been so powerful. And that's what I mean by expensive. On not listening.
Erin: Yeah, yeah. It's a. For me, I had some similar experiences where it wasn't about not listening to my intuition. It was about saying yes to things that weren't good enough because it was going to make something feel easier in the moment.
Melissa: That too.
Erin: And I have every single time I ever did that when I was developing a show where I was like, okay, we'll just cast that person because everybody else seems to like them. I don't think they're quite good enough, but who am I to say? It's like, well, actually, it's my job to say. And so I just took on the fact that people are gonna not necessarily always like my leadership, but I can always rationalize it and I can always explain it. And I always get thanked for it afterwards because I hold the bar incredibly high when I'm making a product. At the end of the day, that's what you're doing too. It's like you have to tune into what you're hearing in yourself. And it's very easy for us, especially in business, when we're in a patriarchal structure, like a big corporation or, say, a big tech company, for example, to override our intuition because of XYZ data point or XYZ, what do they call them? Okrs. Objectives and key results.Go fuck yourself. I never want to use that language.
Melissa: KPI's. I've been learning all those expressions.
Erin: KPI's okay, find a different way of talking about the stuff is so it's necessary. It's fine. It's good to set goals, but also, like, you could choke on that language. It's so oppressive. I hated it so much. And maybe that's just because I'm a creative and I'm not meant. I'm, like, very left and right brain split, and I'm not meant for those structures, but I did really well in that world, and I was like, well, I guess this is. I'm good now.
I'm like, I'm a success in quotes. I was, like, getting all the cash and prizes and the promotions and all of that, but, like, dying inside.
Melissa: Yeah.
Erin: But the lesson is to never override that. If you have the position where you actually have the final say, that is your job.
Melissa: Take it. Yeah. And I think I'm sometimes conflating. What you said really gave me a little moment of clarity, experience with intuition. Like, yeah, I do have the final say because this is the world that I'm running. I do have it. And it's been all about learning to take it and when to, like, how to surround myself with the right people to make those decisions.
Erin: Yeah, I definitely had bosses who I would do the work, and then I'd present the work, thinking we were headed on a certain path, and then they would go, no, we're not going to go that way. And I was, like, furious, you know, like, my labor, my effort, my creativity. But they were not wrong, and they were doing their job.
Melissa: Did you have women bosses who did that?
Erin: I had male and female bosses who did that.
Melissa: Okay.
Erin: Yeah. The male boss was much more likely to do that. The female boss would also do that, but not in the same way. It wasn't as such a blanket.
Melissa: I think that's the lesson as a female boss learning. Oh, yeah. Okay, thank you. We're not gonna do that.
Erin: Yes.
Melissa: Yeah.
Erin: Yeah. I think, well, if. If I could put myself in her shoes, she felt the need to explain.
Melissa: Yeah.
Erin: Why? And he didn't. And that was fine with us because that's how it works in, you know, an old boys, young boys network. Like tech.
Melissa: Yeah.
Erin: Talk to me about anti aging. I'm so interested in. I've had people on this podcast who have said to me, there is no such thing as anti aging. Like, you are aging.
Melissa: So this was something that I think maybe about seven years ago in beauty, they started saying age defying instead of anti aging, and anti aging became this kind of, like, dirty word. And I talked to my mom about it, and she was. She had a very strong opinion. She was like, of course I'm anti aging. I want to wake up every single day and feel as great as I possibly can. So I am actively working every day to slow down my aging process. And this is. She's turning 70 this year.
At the time, she was in her sixties, and I was in my thirties, and I was like, yeah, that kind of makes sense, because, actually, there's no such thing as age defying. So that's a little bit, like, weird that that's what we would switch to.
Erin: Right.
Melissa: And she was like, yeah. Inherently, I'm anti aging. It means every day I'm getting older, I have less time on the planet. I'm anti that. Every day I'm gonna stretch more. So I feel like I'm not getting older or do this. And so she decided we were going to double down, and we started naming products with the word anti aging. And her comment was, let someone come and talk to me about it.
At my age, I'm happy to tell them. So maybe you're right about a woman in her sixties. She gives even less fucks.
Erin: Yeah. Yeah. And everyone I know who's older than me is like, I'm fucking fighting it tooth and nail. Fighting a tooth and nail. My best friend has always been an athlete, and she's like, this is my workout routine now. My goal is to be able to squat and bend and reach. When I'm 90, she's like, I'm going to do everything I can. She's like, I don't care what my body looks like, whatever this is about. I'm agile, and my body works beautifully. Like, as long as I want it to.
Melissa: I think that could be the name of a brand for skincare. Fighting it tooth and nail. Yeah. That's what we're doing. So. So we are not in the camp of. We won't say anti aging. And at the same time, some of our most successful models are number one successful model.
I'm so proud. We found her on instagram. She wasn't a model. She's 65. She's now modeling all the time, full time career, and every time we have, we would never put makeup on her or airbrush a wrinkle or her. Because you can age gracefully and beautifully and feel good. But we're all aging, so we're pretty clear about doubling down on anti aging.
Erin: It's so interesting because that's, like, a different way to do your hippie values.
Melissa: Yeah. I will say, when I did say, I feel like this is the show that will appreciate it. So we don't airbrush. We don't do makeup. We do nothing. There is one thing we airbrush.
Erin: Which is what?
Melissa: Chin hair.
Erin: Oh, good.
Melissa: Cause it's the only kind thing to do.
Erin: I have been in a battle against chin hair for 20 years.
Melissa: Yeah.
Erin: I don't know why no one wants.
Melissa: To see their chin hair blown up on a billboard. It's just not kind.
Erin: I'd rather die. Yeah, I'd rather die.
Melissa: I never told them I did it. I did that as just a kindness.
Erin: Yeah. Nothing says crone like chin hair so bad.
Melissa: Yeah. I recently said to my partner, like, I asked her as a casual question, which was like, a year ago, and she still hasn't gotten over it. I said, what's your strategy for your chin here? Because that seemed like a normal thing to say. And she's just practical, like, what's your strategy? And she still hasn't gotten over that laser. Yeah, laser electrolysis. I've tried it all.
Erin: Yeah? Yeah. Fuck. Just. Yeah. It's been a battle. I was a plucker, and then I always had ingrown.
Melissa: Yeah.
Erin: Oh.
Melissa: Nothing more insulting than an ingrown chin hair.
Erin: Yeah. You're like, look, what? What are you speaking up about? What? To be involved. Get away from me. Yeah. Yeah. I don't feel hot with chin hairs. Nope, nope. Talk to me about your.
You said that you found success in your personal life later in life as well, since you brought up your partner.
Melissa: I did. I really struggled with that. I've never been married. And I had a long term relationship in my twenties, which was every bit as dramatic as one could have, could make it out to be like, I just did it all. And then I just didn't have great relationships in my thirties. I started. I just kind of stopped dating. I stopped caring.
I started. I was thinking about having a baby by myself. I pursued that. It didn't work. I just was like, I don't know. And then I focused more on having a baby than dating. It just was an area of my life that I hadn't felt like I, like, landed. And just over a year ago, I met my partner.
We were fixed up. And I think it's like dating at this age. One of the coolest things is because I'm a whole and healthy person, and she's a whole and healthy person. When we knew, it's like, you just know on a different level.
Erin: Yeah. Yeah. That's gorgeous. It's really--
Melissa: It is.
Erin: That's gorgeous. I think a lot of people have had that experience and don't cop to it, where it's like there's a long stretch of time where you're like, fuck this. I'm not gonna keep trying. I'm not gonna hit my head against the wall. I don't know how to do this. I'm gonna not succeed at this. For me, I just want babies so bad that I, like, ignored a lot of red flags on the way to the altar, which I pay for every day of my life. Even though I'm divorced.
Melissa: I've seen a lot of friends go through that, too.
Erin: Yeah, but I have two beautiful kids, and that's what I wanted. I wanted two beautiful kids and, like, no amount of. I just have no regret, like, because even though the marriage was hard and all of that and maybe not the right person or the person I needed to heal a part of myself that's now healed, I can move on and have happy love, relationships, and, you know, and do my dating and sex life however the fuck I want at this point.
Melissa: I had a lot of healing to do, and I did a lot of therapy. And if there was a personal growth workshop, you name it, I was there. And the exciting thing is it worked. And I found my way to a really healthy relationship that is just so fun and feels so good.
Erin: I want that for every woman. I want that for every woman. Fun and feels good. Especially at this point where it's like, okay, if you were going to have kids, you probably figured that out. If you. You know, I just feel like we don't have to date the kind of people we would have dated if we were going to mate and go on the relationship escalator together, which is like, you know, we're doing all the right things at the right time with the right steps in the right sequence, like everybody else's. And everybody says, you're supposed to, like, we're at the top of the escalator now and looking around and going, huh. I wonder how I want things to be.
Melissa: That is exactly it in a nutshell. That's it. And it's not like, oh, you know, I need this person to create financial stability for me because, you know, we're taking care of ourselves already, and it's such a, like, I want to be with her because I want to be with her and because the top of the escalator. I love that.
Erin: Yeah, yeah. Oh, good, good. I'm working out my metaphors these days.
Melissa: And also some of the little things that were such a big deal. Who cares?
Erin: Oh, like what?
Melissa: Oh, I mean, this is. I remember I wouldn't go on a date with someone. Cause I didn't like the restaurant they picked. I was just, like, so picky. This was decades ago, you know, or I didn't think their career seemed promising or who knows? And maybe it wasn't that specific, but I think I was, like, looking for that relationship to mean something about me or, like, make me something. Whereas now I feel really good about who I am and I want someone to enjoy life with.
Erin: Right. Who you're genuinely compatible with on the important things?
Melissa: Yes.
Erin: Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. I'm trying out some new ending questions, and so I guess I just want to ask, like, what advice would you give to our listeners who are women over 40 who might be at a moment of reinvention in their lives? They might be at the top of the escalator, looking around, going, what do I do next in their career, in their personal lives? What advice would you give them about how to figure out where the next thing can come from?
Melissa: Gosh, I think I could have this conversation with myself right now, and there's this, like, part of me that feels like so much in my life is established and fixed. You know, I do this. I live here. I have these friends. I, you know, I like these kinds of things. So I think what I've really been working on is being really expansive as, like, okay, what actually now feels like it would be really fun and exciting for me because one thing I think about is, like, so much of what drove me previously, Washington. Like, things feeling new and exciting and feeling nervous, and I don't get that feeling as often. It's pretty exciting when I do, so I really go for it.
But I think I'm just, like, starting as I'm thinking about, like, the. The next decade of my life, like, and I'm just. I think I'm maybe just talking to myself now because I've been thinking about the same thing so much. I'm really happy with a lot of things in my life, and. And I think I'm also at that point where I want to make some pretty big changes, and I'm just. I've just been really thinking, like, okay, like, this is, like, how can I, like, look at myself, like, newly. Because I'm a totally different version of myself and, like, lift those restrictions and think, like, it's just because it's been this way doesn't have to be. So that's a lot of, like, the practice I've been in, and then I love that everyone talks about therapy now.
Erin: Yes.
Melissa: It was, like, a thing you kind of did by yourself before. But I have found, like, therapy and spirituality to just be, like, if I just take the time to create that quietness, like, there's so much wisdom to be found.
Erin: Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think we get used to overriding those little sparks of intuition or those, like, ooh, I heard about this thing, and that person's doing that thing, and I wonder what that would be like. Oh, I'm not the kind of person who would do that. Oh, am I. Could I be like. I think these conversations happen in our heads and at this point in our lives, like, tuning into that station, that's curious and is like, hmm, hmm.
Melissa: Like. Like, no matter how small.
Erin: Like, no matter how small.
Melissa: Yeah, that looks.
Erin: Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, sometimes I think maybe I'll go to burning man next year.
Melissa: Oh. I could not recommend it enough.
Erin: I went. I went in 97. I went. I did in 97. Yes. But I think, like, am I a burning man person?
Melissa: I mean, considering right now, while we're recording this burning man is happening, I thought, why aren't I there? From this interview, I feel like the answer is yes. I'm gonna say that for you.
Erin: I just don't know if I can handle the dust. I'm like, my princess side definitely wins out on that. My comfort side, anyway. It's just a stupid, small example. Right. But it's like, I just think those things pop up in a million areas of our lives where we go. That's not me. I wish it was.
Melissa: Yeah.
Erin: Then it's like, well, maybe it could be if you were willing to think about yourself differently.
Melissa: Yeah. Also, I've been thinking about all the things I said I wanted to do. Like, I really want to live in Europe for a year.
Erin: Hey, I've said that, too. Yeah, Rome. Rome. Yeah.
Melissa: Paris. For me, we'll be close to each other. And then there's this thought, like, oh, well, I could just, like, start planning that and do it. Yeah.
Erin: Yeah. You can run your company from anywhere.
Melissa: Yeah.
Erin: As long as you're willing to work weird hours.
Melissa: I'm a night owl. It's a dream.
Erin: Oh, my God. That's amazing. That's amazing. Well, I hope the next time I talk to you, you will have clarified and manifested all these cool new things that you're gonna do. But it's been really inspiring to talk to you and. And I really appreciate you taking the time today.
Melissa: I have to say this is. I can only imagine how addicted your listeners are to this show because this conversation was so incredible for me, and I love your viewpoint, and it's so cool to actually, like, talk about chin hair in an interview. My PR team is gonna be like, what were you doing?
Erin: We talk about everything.
Melissa: We do.
Erin: We do.
Melissa: So thanks for creating this channel.
Erin: Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for giving us a special code. If you use Hotter Than Ever on oseamalibou.com, you will get 10% off of their amazing products. And there is also a sale going on right now. I noticed because I'm on all your social media.
Melissa: And we just launched our biggest launch ever of our undaria algae body wash. So if you are already a fan of our body oil or haven't tried it, suggest to try the body oil and the body wash with it. My two holy grail products.
Erin: Amazing. Amazing.
Melissa: And just know my mom will be meditating on those products and future ones.
Erin: Oh my God, Melissa, thank you so much.
Melissa: Thank you so much for having me.
Erin: Thanks for listening to Hotter Than Ever. If you loved this conversation, please share it with a friend and you can find out more about Melissa and Osea and the other episodes of this show and other people that I interview. interview on our sub stack at hotter than ever dot sub stack. com or at hotter than ever pod on Instagram, comment on our posts, drop us a note. Let us know if this conversation about beauty and change and entrepreneurship spoke to you in any specific way.
It's really great to hear what you think hotter than ever is produced by Erica Gerard and podcast productions. Our associate producer is Melody Carey. Music is by Chris Keating. with vocals by Isa Fernandez.
I will see you next week, beauties. You know, you're not aging. I could swear you are aging backwards. You know, I bet that's because you're starting to put yourself first after such a long time. Well, it's really working. Keep it up, Benjamin Button.
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