Day in the Life of a Beauty Founder
New Skincare Textures, In-Lab Experiments, a Colorful Collab & Why the Multi-Step Skin Routine Reigns Supreme
If you’ve ever been interested in how things work behind the scenes at an independent beauty brand, this post is for you.
Below I document a typical-ish day in my life as the founder and formulator of Sabbatical Beauty. Sabbatical is a Korean-inspired skincare line that uses high concentrations of Asian herbal ingredients. I started this brand in 2016 based on the success of the skin formulations I concocted in my own kitchen while on sabbatical as a tenured English professor. I quit my academic job to manage Sabbatical full time in 2017. Sabbatical has just had its 9th birthday.
The day I capture below is representative of what things look like behind the scenes at a small beauty brand: daily activities include content creation, order fulfillment, making and jarring products, experimenting with new products, and planning for future drops. Everything we sell at Sabbatical is made, jarred and labeled in our lab by my tiny team and myself, not machines in a factory.
As an owner of a micro brand I wear all the hats: product formulator, photographer, content creator, web developer, marketing manager and many more. It’s par for the course as a small business owner.
A Day In My Life
7:15am: I wake up from a somewhat bizarre dream that my brother in law and his wife have joined a country club which is very unlike them. We’re all sitting at a table at the country club which has these intriguing tiny flower arrangements. I get up, shaking off the weirdness of the dream.
7:20am: I stumble to the bathroom and check Substack, my new favorite platform. I’m thrilled to read that
of has posted a review of the Sabbatical Sake and Rice Sleeping Pack, writing: “When I wake up my skin isn’t very shiny or clogged, just bright and moisturized. I think it may also be lightening a couple of stubborn post-acne marks.” I chalk this up as a big win as I am an admirer of her work on Black Beauty Pop. It hits different when someone whose work you respect thinks highly of yours too.7:25am: It’s skincare routine time. Many people assume that as a beauty founder my skincare routine is very elaborate, but this is untrue: my morning routine only takes 5 minutes. My morning routine goal is simply to add back moisture lost overnight to my dry aging skin. I never cleanse my face in the morning, I just add a slew of hydrating products.
I start with a splash of the Sabbatical Maple Essence Toner and then a few drops of the Chang E Serum to clear up redness. I then layer a new moisturizer I’m developing (tentatively named Jeremiah’s Dream Cream as I’m designing it for a team member named Jeremiah).
I add a layer of my skin barrier treatment Calm Cream to seal in the layers of hydration I’ve applied, and finish with one of my favorite sunscreens: the original Beauty of Joseon sunscreen. Korean and Japanese sunscreens are much more elegantly formulated than American sunscreens because the FDA hasn’t approved a new sunscreen filter since the 1990s. You won’t catch me using an American sunscreen as long as I can get access to my Asian favorites. Here’s a whole rabbithole for you to go down on American vs. Asian sunscreens if you’re interested.
7:30am: I make and drink my caffeinated tangerine tea in my favorite mug with carton butt images. I stopped drinking coffee after I quit being a professor; I realized it was giving me heart palpitations. Now I caffeinate just with tea.
7:45am: Open my laptop and look over my day. I have a few experiments to work on and I have a meeting.
8:00am: Open Facebook because I am an old person who still uses Facebook. I have a lot of notifications on my post about an Atlantic article reporting that Meta pirated an immense database to train its AI. 8 of my publications have been pirated by Meta, all from my former life as an English professor. My Facebook friends, many who are also academics, report that their work has also been stolen. The irony of course is that we’re communicating all of this on the oldest Meta platform.
I visit Substack again and repost
’s lovely review of the Sabbatical Eye Gel Oil. Emma writes that she’s experimented with alternate uses for my Eye Gel Oil and started using it as a body glow product for her photo shoots and raves that “it lasted hours and looked incredible,” which warms my heart. My Eye Gel Oil is indeed one of my most multifunctional products, I love it for a gua sha face massage at the end of a long day.8:30am: I shoot and edit an Instagram reel of the new Sabbatical Cherry Pressed Serum, which is a seasonal product that launches today. Cherry Pressed Serum is a serum-moisturizer hybrid that features cherry blossom extract oil and smells lightly of cherries from a natural extract. It also helps treat discoloration. We launch it annually to celebrate cherry blossom season, and we’ve timed it right this year: the blooms are just starting to blossom right now in Philly.
I muse on how I still have to make Instagram content for my small beauty brand despite learning that Meta has ripped off my academic work from my previous career as professor. Small brands are faced with Hobson’s Choice: stay alive by playing the billionaire-owned platform content game or fade into obscurity and lose your business. The illusion of choice is soul-crushing.
I post the reel to Instagram.
9:45am: I arrive at the Bok building in South Philly, where the Sabbatical Beauty studio is located. The Bok is a former technical high school that has been repurposed to host artisanal small businesses. The building is now the home to many fascinating small creatives including pottery studios, jewelers, indie designers and more.
I head to the Machine Shop Boulangerie to pick up some legendary cookies for my team, and Two Persons Coffee to grab everyone a little caffeine boost.
I pet a little dog at Two Persons who gives me a small kiss under my chin. My dog passed away 2 years ago and I miss him.
10am: I arrive at the Sabbatical Beauty studio where Maia, my new operations assistant, is occupied with shipping orders, and Jeremiah, my operations manager, is busy in the lab.
I follow up on things that need my attention, such as testing the texture of the latest batch of our Calm Cream. This new batch is different because we’ve just received a new homogenizer with a higher shear rate, which is supposed to yield a more texturally elegant emulsion.
I try the latest batch of cream, and am impressed with the difference. It’s a lot smoother and creamier to the touch.
10:30am: I get busy in the lab to make a few new experiments. I’m experimenting in a new product category. It’ll be a while before the batch is ready to test due to the nature of the product, but I’m excited by the results so far. Hint: it smells good.
Experimenting with making new products is one of my favorite parts of being a beauty founder-formulator. Being arrogant enough to believe that I could make a better skincare product — as a humanities PhD — than all the huge brands with teams of trained cosmetic chemists is literally how I started Sabbatical Beauty. But crossing Sabbatical Beauty’s 9 year birthday has shown my arrogance has merit: we do not run paid ads, 50% of our customers are referred by friends and family, and we have an astonishingly high repurchase rate. We also regularly snag nationwide press in outlets like New Beauty, Elle, Buzzfeed and more.
11:30am: I meet with a representative from Klaviyo, our CRM (customer relationship management platform). Klaviyo manages both our email and text communication with customers. All month I’ve been trying to implement some big changes and it’s been a huge and frustrating task.
12:00pm: I have an exciting meeting with Shelly from Room Shop. Room Shop is a whimsical small batch accessory brand founded by the genius Shelly that regularly goes viral. They created the original giant scrunchie trend.
Shelly and I are working on an upcoming collab for Room Shop x Sabbatical and are meeting to decide which colors from the vibrantly hued pots below we’d like to move ahead with for the launch. (Reveal of what they are exactly coming soon!)
In the meantime, help us out: which color do you like best? ⬇️
12:45pm: I eat lunch, a slice of pepperoni bread from Paris Baguette.
Jeremiah and Maia have moved to bottling the Moar Honey Serum. I’m publishing a Substack on niacinamide featuring the multi-purpose features of Moar Honey this Sunday, so we’re trying to get it in stock before it’s published.
1:15pm: I get back in the lab and get set up to make a few more experiments, before I realize I’m out of a critical ingredient. I sigh, undo my lab setup, and order the ingredient online.
1:30pm: I help a customer who comes in for a pickup. I offer to let her try our new Cherry Pressed Serum. She remarks on how light and fast-absorbing the texture is. Working with folks who drop by the studio is always rewarding because I get to see first hand how people respond to my creations.
2:00pm: I return to working on Klaviyo updates.
My team has moved to jarring a new limited edition pressed serum we’re launching in a few months. A pressed serum is a multifunctional serum-moisturizer hybrid. I take some footage to use for future content.
2:45pm: I head home. It’s a beautiful sunny day driving through South Philly. I meditate on being present and grounded while enjoying the sunshine.
3pm: At home, I decompress a little. I see I have just crossed 300 followers on Substack, woohoo!
I eat a small packet of peanut M&Ms to fuel myself for the gym, and then work on drafting a Substack I’ve called How to Not Panic: From Someone Who Is Always Panicking
5:00pm: I hit the gym with my husband. I am one of those annoying people who can’t get enough of working out. I’d signed up for both a HIIT class and a heavybag boxing class. The HIIT class goes well, but the boxing class starts aggravating an old wrist injury, so I stop halfway and wait for my husband to be done so we can leave together.
6:45pm: I can’t wait for dinner, I am starving. We get Indonesian takeout from one of my favorite restaurants. One of my favorite things about living in Philly is the abundance of Southeast Asian restaurants here. I get their Bakmi Goreng —Indonesian stir-fried noodles —with their addictive fried chicken dumplings. It comes with a side of meatballs in soup.
8:00pm: I take a bath and wind down with my evening skin care routine along with chocolate and whisky. I read Substack to unwind — I much prefer reading Substack to scrolling Tiktok. I often learn new things that inspire me to write.
My evening skincare routine today is elaborate and multi-step: I start with the Sabbatical Kombucha Cleanser (for my sensitive, dry skin), then exfoliate and nourish with the Dreamers Mask. I wash off the mask after 15 minutes and then follow up with the hydration-filled Maple Essence Toner and a Medicube sheet mask. I finally finish with my new drop, the brightening Cherry Pressed Serum.
There’s been a lot of flak given to multi-step skincare routines over the past few years. Yet I look like a dried out prune on a skin minimalist routine, but plump and hydrated on a multistep one. While I understand the pushback in terms of economic anxiety, the pushback against the routine’s effectiveness doesn’t make sense to me.
Here’s what the multi-step vs. skin minimalist debate misses: If you’re using primarily Korean skincare products (where the multistep routine originated), you’re employing an extremely effective hydration technique that is unlikely to irritate skin. You’re layering multiple coatings of humectants (moisturizing agents) onto your skin, just like layers of air trap heat in a building.
If you’re introducing American skincare into the mix, however, many of which are formulated with harsher active ingredients in higher concentrations (retinol, acids), the multi-step routine has more of a chance of sensitizing your skin and not achieving the results you’re looking for.
I muse that I should probably write a Substack about this.
9:15pm: My little nieces in Singapore want to video chat, so I gladly oblige. I miss them a lot. They are 4 and 7 and the most adorable little girls ever. I also chat with my brother and his wife.
9:45pm: Finished with the video call, I go back to writing. I am inspired with a new direction for my Substack post How to Not Panic: From Someone Who Is Always Panicking and rewrite the majority of it. Words flow out of me. I’m exhilarated when I finish; I’m really happy with how clearly my voice comes through in this. The more I write, the more grounded I feel, so I’m very happy I started on this Substack journey this year.
10:45pm: My husband reminds me he had requested an early bedtime that night, so I close my laptop and we head to bed to get ready.
11:00pm: Lights out and we’re asleep in a flash.
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New to Sabbatical? Want to try some of my line? Use code SUBSTACK15 to save 15% off.
Enjoyed this Substack? I post most Sundays.
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Thanks for sharing! Love seeing the day to day of a women scientist!
It makes me so happy to see how Substack and Sabbatical have married together to make a unique space for both writing and skincare.
Also I can’t help but giggle at how this is the second time I’ve come across you and Sabbatical after becoming mutuals on TikTok.