Better Skin Care with Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness

george grombacher 0:02
Dr. Sheila McGinnis is a double board certified dermatologist and pediatric dermatologist. She is the co founder of strike club. Welcome to the show. Dr. Sheila,

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 0:12
thank you so much for having me, George. To be here.

george grombacher 0:15
Yeah, excited to have you on. Tell us a little about your personal last more about your work and why you do what you do.

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 0:23
So as you mentioned, I am a board certified pediatric dermatologist. So I see,

I work in an academic center of a busy practice in Minneapolis. I’m a mom to two tween boys. And over the last four years, I’ve had an interesting side journey where I have kind of taken this step into the entrepreneurial world with CO founding strike Club, which is a personal care brand for teen boys.

george grombacher 0:53
Excellent. And you’re in Minnesota, you said that you were from Canada? I’m not picking up. I’m not picking up any accents. Sheila?

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 1:00
Maybe that’s a good thing. I think. I’ve been around you know, so I did my I did some of my residency and my fellowship training at UCSF in San Francisco. So I was there for four years, then Boston for four years before we moved to to Minneapolis. But I will say that the Minneapolis climate, of course, is much more home for me because having lived in Toronto and Edmonton. I’m very used to the cold weather. Yeah,

george grombacher 1:27
yeah, there’s no doubt about that. All right. So you what I’m curious what drew you to medicine, and then what drew you not out of it, but also towards entrepreneurship.

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 1:41
So I always knew I wanted to work with kids. And it kind of took me to a pathway through my medical training of, you know, thinking about pediatrics, as a specialty. And within my journey in pediatrics, I actually got introduced to this area of pediatric dermatology. And it really fascinated me, and kind of prompted me to pursue further training. And that’s why I actually ended up in California with a mentor there. So most pediatric dermatologist being that it’s kind of a small, and growing subspecialty we tend to work at Academic Center. So I have a busy academic practice focused on, you know, seeing complex children with lots of different types of skin disease, you know, even from common things like eczema and acne, but even like the more complex and severe like genetic skin disease, and so a lot of the first I would say like seven to 10 years of my career was really spent doing that career building with like, research, clinical education. Really, that was my primary focus. And then, you know, 2020 swung around, and in the pandemic, I kind of was interested in maybe doing something new and I kind of had this little edge. And I was approached by a friend I had met in San Francisco, also a mom, who just told me about her idea for a white space in the market with with with skincare for boys, something really aimed at Boys, because she and my other co founder, were, you know, scouring the aisles at all the different drugstores and target looking for skincare products that addressed the unique, you know, changing skincare needs that teens have, and in particular boys, and they came up empty, you know, a lot of what’s there is really marketed for girls, you know, pink, fruity scented things, or the medicinal things that I had growing, you know, with acne in the 80s. You know, we still have the Clearasil and the Zima, and everything out there. So it was just a really interesting time to, to think about a way to innovate in that area. And of course, as a mom of two twin boys, myself, it really resonated with me. And I started to have a bit of an identity crisis, you know, how do I marry these two different parts of my personality and my career? And how do I see myself in a new light, and that was a really kind of interesting journey for me. But I did it, I jumped in and I was, you know, very frightened at first, you know, what will my colleagues think of me? How will this work in academic medicine if I’m doing something new, and very different, but you know what, when you start to see yourself in a new light, you kind of remove those barriers and you realize, like, well, if not me, then who like I can do both things. And hopefully I can do them. Well. Yeah.

george grombacher 4:32
Well, well said. And I also remember Clearasil and oxy and all that stuff. Oh,

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 4:40
yeah. Yeah, it’s still there. Which

george grombacher 4:43
I looking back. I mean, I can’t imagine that was good for my skin. I don’t even know if it works

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 4:49
really hard. I will tell you that.

george grombacher 4:53
Yeah, but it also I didn’t like having zits. I didn’t have a problem with acne, but I certainly had Z It’s and I certainly Yeah, it was grabbing stuff out of my mom’s medicine cabinet not knowing what it was or or whatever

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 5:10
your experience because you were kind of boring for mom or flooring from sister that kind of thing. But what about the boys? I feel like so often, the young boys are getting left out of this conversation because I don’t know, Georgia, if you’ve been listening to the news at all lately, you’ve been probably hearing about like, the Sephora baby trend and all these young girls tweens as young as 10, flocking to Sephora Ulta Beauty trying to get their hands on this like expensive, really, you know, luxury skincare brands that are formulated for adult skin. So on the one hand, we have the girls who are being targeted, and whether it’s by the companies themselves or social media, what they’re seeing, to do more and to, you know, get into all of this different skincare super early when maybe it’s not that appropriate for their skincare needs. And yet we have the boys who maybe don’t have enough, and a lot of times as a mom and a doctor, I’m just like, Did you wash your face? And sometimes it’s hard to get the boys even to do that.

george grombacher 6:11
For sure. The answer’s no. And I’m probably not going to

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 6:16
hear right. Oh my gosh, and you have to ask because if you don’t, you won’t realize that your tween or teen son is actually using shampoo head to toe Pantene all over in the shower, because no one has really laid down the lesson for them about hygiene practices early, you know, unless mom or dad sits them down has the conversation shows them what to do tells them what to do. They may not know what to do. So it’s our job. You know, as parents and caregivers to ask and open up a healthy conversation about hygiene practices for our boys too.

george grombacher 6:51
I think it would be extremely uncommon for a teenage boy to have any idea what they ought to be doing with their skin. They’re just simply aware that they have it just speaking for myself and the things that I’ve come into contact with over the course my poor 4045 years on planet Earth, I think probably took me till I was in my 20s to realize I should be using some kind of a moisturizer, but I didn’t have any idea what that was or anything else. So that’s it is a white space, or a blue ocean, Sheila,

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 7:22
a blue ocean, I love that I’m going to use that with my partners. But yes, that is exactly what we we saw and with stripe club is what we tried to fill. And so using my background with, you know, dermatology and ingredients that work, but yet are really gentle, because a lot of times that teens can it’s changing so much and it’s not quite mature. So you don’t want to overdo it with the heavily scented, you know, really harsh things that are on the market right now. But yet, we want it to fit easily. And give a nod to the lifestyle factor. You know, boys are not going to do a 12 step skincare routine. They’re just not. But we also don’t want to minimize the fact that boys care about their appearance and 90% of boys will get acne or have another type of skin condition. So we really want to make sure that we are providing them with tools they need that are easy, simple, effective. And not embarrassing. Yeah,

george grombacher 8:19
I appreciate that. All right, so So you’re you’re in this wonderful academic center doing research and meeting with patients. And you do tell your colleagues, hey, I’m starting I’m becoming an entrepreneur, I’m starting a business, how did that go over?

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 8:38
It took me a while to come out and tell people about it to be honest, because, you know, I had spent so much of my career identifying myself and even my personal, you know, identity as an academician. And, you know, there’s almost, I think, a stigma among physicians who are practicing in medicine, that they really shouldn’t care about money or that they shouldn’t really partake in things that are you know, going to potentially lead to wealth or interface with industry. There is a bit of a stigma about that, and I think it’s, you know, misplaced because, quite honestly, I believe that more dermatologists who are board certified should be engaged in formulating and creating dermatological skincare brands, you know, because, I mean, looking at it from a consumers point of view, I think I’d much rather have a dermatologist create the skincare lines that have the ability to fight you know, all the different dermatological illnesses out there or even just anti aging acne all of that rather than you know someone like a celebrity who doesn’t have the same background but yet their name gets put on it or they work with a with a cosmetic chemist to do it. I really We think there’s an opportunity here for more dermatologists to become more intimately involved with the creativity process with the formulation, and bringing something to market. I think it’s, it would be great if more more of us did it. Yeah, that certainly

george grombacher 10:15
sounds like it makes sense. To me. That sounds very, very common sense, what you’ve just described, and I have incredible reverence and respect for physicians, I, it’s, I can’t imagine myself going to medical school, and therefore, I’m super glad that lots of people did. But I’m also surprised to hear the your thoughts and perspective on on the way Some doctors think about money and making money. So I appreciate that. So what’s what’s been surprising, what’s what’s been the most challenging thing, the actual creation of the business?

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 10:57
One of the things that we’ve learned so much along the way, we’ve had tons and tons of lessons. One big lesson that we that we faced was we got too big, almost too quickly. We participated in a target business accelerator program, I’m here in Minneapolis, and that’s where target headquarters is. And we were able to pitch our product to target through this really cool innovation program that they had four years ago, and they loved us. And they took us in right away. And then right after that, Walmart started knocking down the door. And so we were in Target and Walmart so fast. And I think that it’s great. Those are wonderful problems to have. But the financial reality of being a new brand with that type of distribution posed a lot of a lot of challenges for us.

george grombacher 11:49
What are those good problems that you hear about? Yes,

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 11:52
a good problem. But you know, leading to making new and different decisions and smarter decisions about brand awareness, and getting Amazon up and running. So lots of those kinds of business things that of course, as a medical doctor, I have no background in but learning on the fly with my talented partners who have much more financial and business background than I do. Yeah.

george grombacher 12:15
So four years into this regrets, things you would have done differently.

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 12:24
You know, I think that we we would have been, perhaps in a slightly better situation, if we had have built that brand awareness earlier, you know, maybe stayed on direct to consumer for a little longer. But, you know, honestly, the the journey kind of goes like this It ups and flows. And when distributors and stores like Target and Walmart are knocking on your door, you kind of have to respond?

george grombacher 12:47
For sure. For sure. All right. So you have the challenge and the opportunity of creating a brand. So that’s a whole a whole thing. But then there’s the just every aspect of it, I guess my question is, how difficult was it to get your product approved to actually be sold?

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 13:11
Well, George, you might be surprised to find that the health and wellness industry is not that regulated by the FDA. And actually, it’s something that as a doctor and a mom, I wish there was more regulation, there are some more rules and regulations coming out about how the FDA can interface with health and beauty. But there’s not a lot that the government or the FDA regulate. So it really is up to the brand’s own integrity of what type of testing that you want to do. And of course, we did all of the testing, third party testing independent, you know, hypo allergenicity, testing, preservative testing, all of that, you know, was locked down and really, really safe before we ever, you know, started selling to the public.

george grombacher 13:56
I am somewhat surprised, but then again, I’m realized that just not that much surprises me anymore. That that so looking back, double edged sword, to all of a sudden get tapped by target to sell your product. Just Just amazing. I can’t even imagine what that probably felt like, then you’re like, oh my gosh, we have to do all this stuff to make sure that we can actually sell the product. So to degree, and I’m just just guessing. And I don’t expect you to know the answer to this question necessarily. But is, is target sort of performing that function of saying that this is a good product where the FDA might do it with the actual medication? Say we’re not going to put your stuff on our shelves unless we know it’s high quality? Yes,

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 14:45
of course. I think you know, companies like Target have high quality ingredients standards so you can trust you know, a lot of what of what is on the shelf in those larger stores, especially Target has really gone Due to a lot of effort in terms of its like, verification of are these ingredients clean? What does it mean to be clean? Is it target clean? Is it environmentally sustainable? So yes, I think that there’s a lot of integrity when it comes to, to brands in like a store like that for sure. Yeah.

george grombacher 15:19
Fair enough. In terms of in terms of funding, did you go and raise money? Did you bootstrap?

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 15:27
We did. So we self funded for the first year with with all four of our founders putting in. And then we did a raise with friends and family, which was successful, we had enough then to kind of get moving and distributing. And then we did need additional funding, especially with Walmart, we needed to get some capital. So we did end up get securing VC funding two years ago.

george grombacher 15:53
And how was that whole process?

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 15:57
Um, you know, for us, I actually thought it went fairly well, of course, we have to pitch to multiple people. And getting that experience under your belt is kind of cool and interesting. But at the end of the day, we found a really great partner, and they’ve been been wonderful with us. And hopefully now here in you know, maybe a year, year and a half, we’ll be looking for another round.

george grombacher 16:20
Nice. Do your boys use the product?

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 16:23
They do? Yes, of course they do. I actually use it myself. Because although, you know, the whitespaces boys and the boy market, you know, having formulated it myself, I know all the ingredients, and I know how they work. And yeah, so we all we’re all pretty proud of the product. Yeah,

george grombacher 16:39
that’s awesome. And your, your, your your partner’s How is how is the relationship they’re going businesses can be like marriages, partnerships can be tough.

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 16:49
Oh, I think that we’ve we’ve done a great job sticking together. So the four of us, one, two, well, all three of them live in sunny California. Well, I’m here in Minneapolis, and one is a licensed family therapist and a mental health care provider. And that has been such a great rich history for us with you know, just talking about boys talking about hygiene, mental health and all of that, you know, angle, I think it’s been wonderful the things that she’s brought to the table. And then we have my partner Darcy Rosenbloom, who’s a marketing guru and worked with brands like method and all the vitamins in the past. And then Stacy Blackman, who is a serial entrepreneur and sort of the financial whiz behind behind us. So it’s a good merger of four different you know, completely different backgrounds with people.

george grombacher 17:41
Nice. So you are from Canada, you live in Minnesota, those are stereotypically really nice people. And you seem like a very, very even keel. Well, well tempered person you ever get? Do you ever get pissed off? stuff ever, ever get stuff out, get under your skin? Oh,

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 18:00
for sure stuff gets under my skin all the time. You know, we talked about, you know, regulation or the lack there of in the health and wellness. And, you know, in my practice, clinically, I see a lot of babies and I see a lot of babies with bad rashes, like severe eczema and, you know, all kinds of other different things. And so when I look around Target, and I’m looking at the products that have been formulated for baby skin, I look and think, you know, there’s so much there, there’s a lot of work to be done there. Because a lot of a lot of things that are going into baby products and onto baby skin are things that that really shouldn’t be. So I’d love to see a little change in that area.

george grombacher 18:44
Fair enough. In terms of the education for, like what we were talking about, we just teenage boys did not necessarily receive a lot of education. And I always I always want to sort of follow that up with he probably could have told me lots of stuff and I don’t know that I would have listened anyway. But how are you approaching that? You’re obviously or perhaps you’re not you’re obviously making a high quality product. Have you also thought about providing education?

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 19:14
Yes, and I think that’s one thing that with a dermatologist backed and formulated brand that we can offer that others may not be able to do is the education piece. So there’s a lot on our website, education wise and then you know, really coming at the formulation in a way that speaks to voice resonates with them and is easy for them to do. Like we talked about it’s not a 10 step regimen. It’s not going to have so many harsh actives or fragrance in it that it will you know burn or damage their skin barrier. This is easy. It fits seamlessly into their lifestyle we have you know a wipe that is amazing. It’s anti microbial of course because body odor again is another thing that boys at this age are dealing with With and so you know, that’s something that can go right into the backpack, bring it to school wipe down after your after your game or your gym class. Boom, you’re done. Beautiful,

george grombacher 20:10
I love it. But Sheila, thank you so much for coming on, where can people learn more about you? And where where can they learn about and get some of the products from strike club.

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 20:20
So strike club is on Amazon and our direct to consumer site and the name is spelt str YKE. So www dot strike club with a y.com. And then you can find me on Instagram and Tiktok another part of this journey has been, you know, broadening my reach in terms of providing education for, for people on social media, which I never expected to be doing. But here we are. And, you know, honestly, it’s been a really another like, really fun and creative aspect of this whole thing for me, because what I’ve learned through this is that, you know, as a physician and educator, carefully curating the sites like the American Academy of Pediatrics, healthy children.org website, our own society of pediatric dermatology website, what I’ve learned in the past four years, especially since the pandemic, and more and more people were utilizing social media is that the families and the parents may not be on the sites that you’re curating for them. They may not be accessing or knowing to even access those, you know, resources, but they are on social media. So when I started posting, I really was surprised at the response and realize that there’s an unmet need out there for more education in places where our patients and families actually are. And people actually are on social media, like two hours a day.

george grombacher 21:48
It makes it makes all the sense. Yeah. Well, Sheila, thank you so much for coming on. If you enjoyed this as much as I did, she’ll your appreciation share today show the friend who also appreciates good ideas go to strike club.com It’s as try ke club.com and check out all the great resources and information and education you can find the product on Amazon as well. And as well as Instagram and Tiktok. Thanks again, Sheila.

Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness 22:17
Thank you so much, George. Till next time, remember,

george grombacher 22:20
do your part by doing your best. You

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.