Episode 271: Makeup for Rebels | Sandra Soskic on Skinwear, Self-Expression, and Redesigning Beauty
Sandra Soskic is the founder of Humanoid, a skinwear brand that reimagines beauty as a form of self-expression, not perfection. In this episode, Kara and Sandra talk about launching a cosmetics company with no industry background, building creative confidence, and leading with intuition. They also dig into the future of the beauty industry and how Sandra’s multidisciplinary approach is opening up space for more freedom and fun.
“When someone is self expressed, they’re magnetic. We all don’t want to look the same. I want to make self expression as easy as possible for people.”
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Follow along using the Transcript
Chapters:
(00:00:01) – Why Sandra Started Humanoid and What Skinwear Means
(00:04:30) – Time, Confidence and Why Makeup Isn’t Working
(00:07:10) – The Beige Era and How We Lost Creative Expression
(00:13:00) – Building a Brand Without Beauty Industry Experience
(00:18:15) – Divorce, Risk and the Real Startup Learning Curve
(00:24:00) – Identity, Individuality and Being a Punk Optimist
(00:29:45) – Parenting, Planet and Why Systems Have to Change
(00:36:00) – What Comes Next for Humanoid and How to Get Involved
Yeah, I mean, you know, we humans have always expressed ourselves with color and our bodies. And for some reason, I mean, we know the reason, patriarchy, the last 100 years, it's become about the face conformity, mostly for women, beautification. And what we find beautiful is kind of the general consensus.
That's Sandra Soskic. I'm Kara Duffy. And this is the powerful ladies podcast.
Welcome to the powerful ladies podcast.
Thank you. It's great to be here.
I am excited to talk to you. We just got introduced from my client and friend, Sven, and we had an amazing conversation about your business and how cool it is. So let's jump right in. Let's tell everyone your name, where you are in the world and what you're up to.
My name is Sandra Soskic. I'm based in LA originally from the Netherlands and with parents from Croatia and Montenegro, so nice and multicultural I have been in Los Angeles since end of 2019. And I started my early stage company pretty much, oh, well, actually it was 2021. So not too much later than joining or coming to LA. And that's what I'm working on.
And what is the company name and what do you guys do?
The name is humanoid. We are a, we call it an identity platform that enables and inspires expression, self expression in the physical, digital, and virtual worlds. And our first products are in the color cosmetics space.
We call it skinwear because you can wear it on any part of the body. So it's kind of creating a new category between makeup, tattoos, and fashion. And they're connected with NFCs with an app that kind of serves as your personal makeup assistant. Because, you know, it all started because I was frustrated with myself.
I would be buying all these cool makeup brands and they would all end up in my drawer. And one day I was like, what's wrong with me? I'm super motivated. I have all these cool things and I don't do anything. And I also had an amazingly Inspiring Pinterest board with thousands of looks and I still wasn't doing anything.
So, you know, after some soul searching, I realized, you know, my barriers are pretty much time. I literally would have five or 10 minutes to get out the door. I have two kids. I was working in a job at the time. And so typically I had five minutes, maybe 10 to get ready. And if it didn't happen in that little interval, it wouldn't happen the whole day.
Unless it would be at a traffic light and I would put some lipstick on, but that was hardly the type of cool stuff I was actually hoping to do. And so, yeah, I realized time and then also skills. Cause you know, I, I don't, I'm not the type of person that goes and learns these super skills on my free Saturday.
It has to be instant. And you know, in some cases, also confidence. Am I able to execute it? Is it going to look weird? And yeah, so also just basically time, inspiration, skills and confidence were my issues. And then when I started looking around, the more I felt like more of us have have that challenge.
So I was like, you know, solve this. We just need to make this so much easier and really democratize it. You know, And not just be for the very small portion of women that are deeply into makeup and teach themselves all these artful skills and have no trouble spending an hour in front of the mirror in the morning and another hour to take it all down.
Which is just not most of us. So yeah, I felt like this was a challenge for solving. So we got on the journey.
I love the feature you have in the app of seeing a look on yourself. I need that for all of my products. I keep joking that I need to write a book called "everything my mother didn't teach me" because I hate, like, I don't hate, like I, I like Looking nice.
I like having my hair done. I like having my makeup done, but done meaning like not by me because I am not, I'm just not good at it. Like the fact that I've ever had a photo where I look like a normal adult human being is amazing because I just don't know what I'm doing. Every time I would read a magazine as a kid, I would just skip over the beauty section, go right to fashion or whatever else they were talking about.
It's just never been something that. I have patience for I think as you said, even though I want to look my best, it just feels so overwhelming. And I feel I, I often talk to my hairdresser about the fact that I'm always asking for tips and how do I do this? And how do you do that? Cause like you, I have five minutes, maybe 10 max to get ready.
So how can I do it quickly? And then they'll tell me something. I go and try it. I'm like, hold on, what were steps like five to zero? Because there's something that I'm not doing about how this is really supposed to start. Like the idea of primer. Well, who, no one told me that for the longest time until I accidentally stumbled across someone On a tiktok talking about it So I don't necessarily think it's gatekeeping.
We just don't realize I think the people who know how to do it Don't realize those of us who don't how much we don't know.
No, I I think you're spot on and also for us who don't know speaking for myself and I I know by now because we've done a lot of research spoken to a lot of you know customers a lot of us also Don't want to spend the time learning all those semi pro skills.
You know, it has to feel much more intuitive and easy and click. And and that's indeed what the app is, you know, helping to do. Cause it kind of starts with the end result. What is the look you want to have? And then, like you said, you can first try it on in augmented reality. So you can kind of see it on your face before you even, you know, invest the very, you know what is it?
We're valuable. 10 minutes actually executed. And then when you actually feel like, Oh, this looks cool, I'm going to actually do this. You have these very quick easy to follow tutorials. So indeed, you know, you don't have to skip step five and, you know, seven or up to seven, it's really up to your own kind of pace and skill level.
So if you Have trouble with a certain technique. You can just let that step loop as often as needed and get through it at your own pace and your own skill level. But it's very much tailored to the end result and getting there as easily and quickly as possible, because there are promises you can do all this in 10 minutes or less.
Well, I also love that you guys are calling it skin wear first. I love that. And I also love that you are, it's going beyond the trending or traditional makeup looks. And it's really about self expression. Why was that important to you? And how did that become a pillar of the business?
Yeah, I mean, you know, we humans have always expressed ourselves with color and our bodies and for some reason, I mean, we know the reason patriarchy the last 100 years it's become about the face conformity mostly for women beautification and what we find beautiful is kind of the general consensus, not so much what you individually.
Find beautiful and how you want to show up and we just wanted to liberate all that and really make it about expression rather than, you know, conformity or concealment or beautification and and really kind of, you know, be as fluid as possible when it comes to skin tone, you know, whatever color skin you have, it really is these bold colors that were beautifully on any skin tone and on any gender as well.
And, and yeah, self expression as a form of communication is insanely important. You know, when you walk into a room and there's somebody there who have actually are wearing something or have done something with their hair or their makeup that is showing a little bit of their personality, it is magnetic.
You kind of want to To them. It connects people. And for some reason, what I noticed as well, when I started on this journey, apart from being frustrated with myself and really trying to solve my own kind of very tactical problems, it was also a general kind of observation about, you know, humanity, it felt like what's been happening the past decades, the more we have an inspiration on the web and technologies and all the tools and products, the less creative we seem to be, we kind of seem to be settling into a Kind of baseline of conformity and, you know, just think about previous decades, like the eighties, the seventies, the sixties, we looked so much more interesting.
Just the general and I was just selfishly thinking I get joy from seeing people expressing themselves and showing a little bit about themselves and I wanted to kind of make that as easy as possible for everybody because it is. A form of, you know, communication and we don't want to all be the same. It just makes the world so much more gray.
And I mean, you know, I've dug since then, since then I've dug into the psychology of all this and what's been going on and it's been going on everywhere from architecture to cars, to colors, to interiors, to everything has been undergoing this. Kind of gray, beige, conformist, sort of the common denominator, least expressive form of aesthetic.
And it's a shame. I just wanted to do something about it. Out of selfish reasons,
I totally agree with you. You know, when all the nineties trends have been coming back, I'm like, cool. When is we're all supposed to look different coming back? Like that's when I think back to the nineties, like that's what was most important.
Like we weren't supposed to be looking like our friends. It was supposed to be, how are you interpreting this differently? And same thing about interiors as well. Like, I, I like when a home, you walk in and you can tell something about the person because of it. And lately you walk in and you're like, Is this an Airbnb?
Is this who, who lives here? And so I, I, I, individualism and sharing the stories of who you are, I think is so important. Obviously why I probably have this podcast, but I agree. It's like, where's the, the creative unique approach and where's the different inspiration? Cause we, we have done a good job of getting very homogenous.
Well, and I want to just say, you know, for us, it's very much an identity topic rather than individualism. Cause what we're basically saying is the more you show of yourself, the more it invites somebody else to connect with you. And the more authentically you show up, the more magnetic that is as well.
You know I've noticed that back when I was a kid and I would be in school, it would be most attracted to people who are truly authentic, whether they were jobs. Or nerds or cheerleaders or whatever it is, punks, it doesn't matter. It just is, there's something inviting in this, you know this arming when somebody is just their truest self and yeah, and that's one of our missions to just really kind of celebrate the benefits of being.
Bolder and with bolder mean being your true authentic self because it requires some level of getting out of the comfort zone to be that right. It's way easier to just kind of try and fit in and not, you know, out too much and live according to whomever rules you think and expectations you should be living up to.
But there's so much freedom and joy to be found in living your truth and living your. Your real values and who you are. So yeah, we want to, we want to make it so easy for all of us to do that.
I love that. It's, it's a core foundation as to why I'm a business coach. Like I want people doing the work that's in alignment with them.
So I love that. Speaking of starting a business. Starting a business is not easy and starting a cosmetics, makeup, skincare business, maybe one of the hardest to get off the ground. Did you have experience in this space before you went into it? Like what type of learning curve have you had? What advice would you give for someone else?
Who's like, that sounds fun.
Well, I didn't have experience in the particular category of beauty and beauty products. My background has been on the marketing side and technology side. So there is a, You know, obviously, always a marketing component to everything you do. And there is an app involved, so there's technology.
But I think there is a blessing in also not knowing too much about a certain category because then you go about it a little more naive and feel like surely this can be done instead of having all the knowledge of all the kind of reasons why it cannot be done. And it has helped us in many ways in kind of really pushing the envelope of innovation.
Because had we known what we know now, a few years later we probably wouldn't have gotten on the journey of developing certain formulas because they're just so difficult to do. Now we've developed them, we were naive enough to stick with it. But I think, you know, there is a blessing in not knowing too much.
And. There was also an awareness that I personally don't have that experience. So I brought on a co founder who comes from the makeup space, and we've kind of surrounded ourselves with advisors with deep decades long experiences in the various fields that we needed more know how in which accelerated our own kind of learning and also network, you know, because you kind of get access to the manufacturers and get access to all the all the players that are These people have been building over and we're just plugging in.
So, yeah, I guess an awareness of what you don't know and how you kind of supplement that, but also embracing a level of naive to just feel like, hey, we can do real new things.
It takes a lot of self trust and confidence to, I think, both be fully self expressed and to start a business because you have to really listen to yourself.
There's, you know, you can have advisors, you can have partners, but at the end of the day, it's like a you to you, like, are we really going to do this? Is your confidence and your power, like, where does that come from? Where has that always been who you are or have you developed it over time?
I mean, it's definitely an ups and downs situation.
There's, there's definitely years in my life where I felt, Oh gosh, I can handle the whole world. And then there's moments in your life where you're like a little beaten down and whatever it is that life had thrown at you and you have to pick yourself back up. It's definitely taken much longer for me to take the leap, to start my business than what I probably had expected of myself.
Cause you know, my, my dad, for instance, has been I will call it brainwashing me from little, you know, hit on to kind of always strive for doing your own business because he felt he always regretted it that he didn't do that, that he felt too risk averse. So when you grow up with a, with a parent that always is going, Oh my God, you know, if you really want to have the freedom and, and, and, you know, The, the, the control over your life, this is what you should do.
And I kind of had the luck or maybe the not luck that I've had a career that I actually really enjoyed. I felt like I was constantly challenged and I was doing super cool, innovative things. I used to work in the creative agency world for, for 18 years, and it felt very entrepreneurial and I was always doing new things, but it kind of kept me in that space of working for a boss.
For about 18 years and but in the meantime, the monkey was always on the shoulder like, hey, you should be doing something else. And I don't know if it was, you know, a level of fear that kept me from doing it or really. That I was super excited and engaged in the jobs that I was doing, or probably a combination, but it took a while.
Right? And so. And finally, I didn't have any more excuses. I got to a point where I was really bored in my job. I felt like I honestly had been doing it for too long. I had just come out of a divorce and my personal life was finally kind of settling down again. And it felt like, okay, I'm now kind of.
Definitely bored in this career. I have no more excuses with anybody kind of keeping me away from doing this. So am I going to try and do this? And, you know, that's when I definitely felt the, the, the fear of, you know, coming out of a comfortable position of having a paycheck. And, you know, that's when I felt.
And I was a single parent, obviously coming out of a divorce with two kids. So yeah, I definitely had to face a lot of, you know, anxiety and demons and also kind of, you know, do you have it in you, right? You know, this may be something that you wish you would do, but you just don't. Don't have the guts or the idea or the confidence or whatever it is.
And that whole process took a minute as well to go through. And at the time, you know, I didn't figure out yet what I wanted to do, but I just knew it had to be something in the fields of creativity and technology and that I had to be in the Bay Area because I felt like Silicon Valley is the place where those two powers forces meet and serendipity.
I don't know universe. I got I got it. Literally almost the same day that I decided that I had to go to the Bay Area. I didn't know what I was going to do there. I got the phone call to interview for a job at Apple. And I got myself again in front of this crossroad, like, okay if I go for that job, obviously that's another job, right?
Going to be another distraction from what you now know by now is what you should be doing. And, you know, I kind of justified it for myself, like, okay, you still don't have the big idea. It's going to get you to the Bay Area and it doesn't hurt to have Apple on your resume and you're going to start building a network.
So maybe it's not a bad idea to just kind of take a little side step with the focus on ultimately, you know, daring to take the plunge. So that's what happened. And I moved in 2016 as a single parent to the Bay Area and it took a few years still, you know, to Face all the demons and the insecurities in me, you know the anxiety that comes with, wow, am I able to do this?
Do I, is my idea even good enough? How about, you know, is this maybe selfish as a single parent to kind of, you know, take away the security from the kids and jump into an adventure like that? So many things that you've got to resolve for yourself and yeah, it took me, took me some time to get there. And yeah, there's always moments still right where you kind of go.
Oh, there's a challenge on your path. Maybe that's the job isn't, you know, that bad. So, yeah, it's, it's I mean, I've never had a. More exciting journey. Honestly, I've always been lucky in my jobs. I've loved them. But the journey that I've been on since starting humanoid has been the most magical and the most exciting and the most I've learned the most.
I've met the most incredible people. I've been challenged on all fronts. It's been the most incredible adventure. I don't Want to do anything else? I am super motivated to make it work, but there's obviously always times where you kind of have a lack of confidence or there's something happening that makes things hard.
There's never guarantees, you know, I'm always following other companies and founders. And it's one thing that I've concluded is it doesn't matter how strong and established your company is. There's always other bigger challenges. The further down you are, the bigger your challenges are. I mean, obviously coming from Apple, I've been following what's going on with Apple and the new year has not been easy for Apple, right?
Bigger companies, bigger problems. And it's always a survival game. It's just not guaranteed for any level of company that they're going to make it. And yeah, it does take a certain stomach to be able to navigate through all that. And there are days that I'm like, I don't know if I'm built for it. You know, and then there's days where I'm like, I'm on the top of the world.
This is fantastic. So it's a roller coaster.
That's a great segue into how would you define the words powerful and ladies and does their definition change when they're next to each other?
I mean, I've become more of a feminist as I I've been getting older. It's really interesting because I I, I had those phases in my life.
I would hang out with men, guys more, and then there would be a period hanging and having more female friends. And and I feel like the older I've been getting, the more I've been really connecting with other strong women. And there's just so many. Amazing strong women. I definitely think that there is a layer of I don't know how energy power that comes from the feminine energy and some sort of empathy love.
Just I don't know more than just the. Alpha type of forces and and women have those two, you know, and I feel like we've been forced in this patriarchal society to tap too much into the men energy and kind of put all the other powers a little away. But, you know, I think women in general are incredibly powerful because, you know, we're just wired with additional energies like love, giving, nurturing, community, all those things. And I'm not saying that men don't have a level of that too, but I just feel like there's more, more of that in women. So I feel women are insanely powerful and yeah, I don't know if there's a disconnect for me between the words, powerful ladies, I think I would say ladies are powerful in general.
If we go back to eight year old you, would she have imagined that this is your life today?
My 8-year-old me had Pipi Longstocking as her hero. So I mean, that's a good hero. , I mean, Pipi is amazing. I I was definitely kind of loving the freedom and I actually would never had predicted I would be in the United States or anything like that.
So but I definitely think I would've expected myself to be living a life that. is following your passion and doing things that inspire me rather than kind of cruising slash sleepwalking through life for sure.
I do think it's so interesting that there were so many fictional examples of girls and just young people in general.
Having adventures and following their passions and starting businesses and being detectives. And you're like, and I never realized what a theme there was going through my childhood until I've been doing this podcast and seeing how many times it's come up. And it makes me wonder what the generation who created those things was.
Hoping or wishing for those of us who have received it because it's definitely been influential. Like you can't have Pippi as a hero and then choose. In ordinary life.
No, and people would always say, I don't know how familiar you guys in America are with people, but she would always say, I've never done it before.
So I'm sure I will be great at it. And I love that slogan. That's one of my favorite quotes. It's very much about don't fear and keep yourself in a little box because you. You're afraid you're going to fail. No, just embrace it. Life is about learning. It's about trying fully getting up and doing it again until you get really good at it.
And I, and I think there's so many, especially adults who like we wake up one day and realize that we haven't tried something new in decades. Haven't tried a new sport. Haven't tried a new restaurant. Haven't tried a new country, like a new anything. And it's. It's like staying there's a Jesse Eisler says like, stay ready, like ready to say yes to the thing.
So he used that from a fitness perspective, cause he wants you to say yes to climb Everest or do this crazy bike ride. And for me, it's like, stay ready to, to be used to that uncomfortableness because it's, I think one of my biggest psychological fears is getting in a rhythm that. is bland and doesn't have new.
Like I need the new, the adventure, the curiosity. I have a sphere of eight, like the eight core pillars of life, one self expression. Another is curiosity. Like. If, if I'm bored, the world is going to be sad about that. It's like a pinky in the brain situation. It's like, I love picking.
Yeah, exactly. So, so there's a trouble to be had if I end up getting bored, but
yeah. And that's, I think too many people somehow at some point accept that they've Done the learning, you know, and now this is life and there's this super known psychological paradox, apparently in humanity, that it's easier to look back on yourself and go, Oh, I've come a long way and I've evolved in the past 10 years.
But then when you get asked, okay, where are you going to be in the next 10 years? People tend to answer it. This is my life. And, you know, they kind of Envision that there will be as dramatic growth and changes as they've kind of experienced in the past 10 years. And, and somehow we kind of tend to just accept and sort of stay in that comfort zone rather than embrace that.
It's never too late to keep learning, change things up to, you know, reinvent things to create. Even artificial triggers for change, you know, just move your city move something, right? Learn a new skill, pick up music or language or dancing, just kind of, you know, shake yourself up a little and keep learning.
So, yeah, I would love to hear all your eight. I love that self expression is one of them.
Yeah, the, the full eight, if I can remember them right now, it's like finances, money is one bucket. Health wellness is another bucket. Love and relationships. We talked about self expression, curiosity. Learning is super important for me play an area that I, and I, there's like a scoring system, like a one to five in these buckets and I'm always not high enough on play for how high I want it to be.
And then I'm missing my number eight business and career. It's so obvious to me. I forget that it's an eight. Yeah. But yeah, because I was looking at the design your life book, which I think is really amazing. That came out of the two professors at a Stanford and I loved it, but they only had four.
And like, I, there's too many things that I think need to be balanced for me personally to be happy. So I added another four essentially to what they had. It's similar to, I saw one of the talking head entrepreneurs on Instagram, this guy, and he's like, My whole life is 33 percent fitness, 33 percent work and 33 percent family.
And I went, that's it? Like what? What about like art and creativity and adventure? Yeah. And
it was it's I still haven't done the work, but do you know Mindvalley? Yeah. So there's this one, there was this one program, which was. I think 12 chapters of designing your life and it's kind of, you know, when you start a business, you create a business plan, but why don't we create a plan for our life?
And, and there was this couple that did this program for Mindvalley, and they do this every year. They basically, They kind of and they're super successful in business, but also super, super successful in their romantic life, still in love after, you know, 25 years. And it's incredibly inspiring because the way they do it is they write their own life business plan for those 12 opics slash chapters.
And then every year. They do like a week getaway or whatever, and they kind of reevaluate the past year and write the next year's one and I'm like, Oh, amazing. I need to do that. I started, but I didn't finish. So yeah, definitely,
it just speaks to how much authority we have to create whatever we want. I, I'm speaking or I, I guess when this comes out, I will have spoken at Noya house about how to have it all.
And When you ask somebody like, what would all of it include? They're usually like, oh, a family and a house and a career. And you're like, and then and I just think that there's that's that's the stereotypical, you know, the white picket fence, American dream thing. But it's like, do you even want that? Do you want a house?
Do you want a family? Like you, we don't have to say, choose the prepackaged option as things go. And there's just, there's too much, there's not enough time to be living someone else's life.
That is so spot on the humanoid mission, because what we mean with celebrate the benefits of being bolder is exactly that.
And we kind of call it the Identity loop. What our actual bigger picture proposition is. So the first say circle of the idea loop is who am I really tapping into your values and you've got it figured out with your eight parts years.
Yeah.
So who am I? And it's getting incredibly challenging in the modern day.
To figure that out because we are constantly just kind of triggered and entertained and snacking through feeds and, and, you know, cause it does take some work to figure that for yourself. And plus, you know, our identities are scattered across physical, digital, and virtual platforms. How do you figure out what it is for real, right?
So that's the first part. Who am I? The second part is how do I show up? So really showing up with living your values. In our case, your self expression and showing them and the third part is connecting with others because we are social animals and there is a lot of joy we get just in general in life by just, you know, human connection.
And that's the ultimate bigger picture of humanoid, but, you know, the figuring out who we are, a lot of us. Indeed just sleepwalk through life unless and this is my kind of hypothesis I'm not a psychologist by any means but If you are not a minority in whatever shape or form whether it's lgbtq or social class or an immigrant or I don't know religious minority You it's too easy to not have Done the work, right?
Because you just skate through life. You're in this nice, homogenous society and you fit in super seamlessly. And maybe you wake up in your midlife crisis and you go, I don't want this mortgage. I don't want this partner. I want something else. Right? And we're trying to with our system to be that.
Catalyst in a fun way in a very easy way to get people on that individual journey of figuring out. Hey, I have agency over my life and I can be anything I want to be and I'm going to discover who I want to be. And I'm going to try and show up. In the most authentic form every single day, not just in what I wear and what is how I express myself, but it becomes a snowball effect for every part of our life, and we believe that if we all live our own magic, that as a humanity, we can also create the world that we want to live in.
It doesn't have to be. The old systems that we just embrace, you know, because it is time for change. We've lived on this in a very kind of, you know, parasite type of way, you know, growth, growth, growth, and it is not easy to change all these intertwined systems, but we do need to change them and we are infinitely creative.
We can solve any problem once we set our minds to it, but. What you know, I'm a parent and my co founders are parents. Our biggest fear is that we're, you know, bringing up a generation that is going to feel like we're already doomed. Because, you know, climate change, political disasters, wars, hunger, you name it, we're doomed, so let me just, you know, travel the world and dance on the volcano, rather than, you know, we actually can take charge and have agency also over, you The systems and the planet.
So we call ourselves punk optimists because we actually believe we can make that change. And you have to be an optimist to feel like you can actually make that change. And the punk element is more, yeah, we want different systems. We want those systems to be more inspired by what we see in bio systems, right?
Where things are. Connected. Nothing is in isolation. You can't exploit it here and expect that things are not gonna fall apart. So that is our bigger mission. We believe that if we wake people up on an individual level to tap into their magic, that as a collective, we can also have that agency to create the world that we want to live in.
And, you know, sustainability is important for us. It's everywhere in our products and in our packaging and in how we do our business. But yeah, it's a, it's a big, big, big, big mission.
No, I love it. Cause it's so aligned with what I'm doing in a completely different space. It's there's I, and I also love that.
I have a new way to describe myself as a punk optimist because it's, it's such an easy way to explain how I pull from the punk rock and skate background of my life to be, but I've never been pessimistic. It was never a. Fuck it, it's never going to work situation. It was like, Oh, like we, it can be different.
We can fall down. We can get back up. We can build something just because we thought of it and it can radically change an entire culture if we choose it to. I think that also, you know, going what I said before about the individualism or the, the being different. Intentionally from the nineties, there was also a lot of purpose in like what people were doing, like, I keep waiting for him, like, who's the new rage against the machine?
Like when, who's the, the Fuji's that had a very distinct voice about what they were singing about. And I'm waiting for some of that to come back. And I hope it's coming. I hope we're in that next cycle because yeah, like I. I'm surprised knowing what we talked about in primary and elementary school. Like we were already being indoctrinated about like, we have to save the planet and we have to save the rainforest.
And it's like, guys, like, we already knew this. People were working on it. What happened? Yeah. Like, what do you mean it's not done yet?
No, and that's the thing. I mean, you know, before we started humanoid, there were a couple of bigger movements happening. Like, you know, you had the Greta Thunberg with the climate movement, and then you had the black lives matter.
And then we had the me too movement. And it felt like there was a, there was something happening there. It felt like. We were really finally getting fed up with, you know, just kind of complacency and thinking somebody else will solve it for us. And somehow, I guess, Covid, we all got put back into our little boxes and now we're back all complying to the system.
But there is, you know, what is interesting when you kind of, you know, it's inevitable to see it everywhere. Everybody seems to be noticing that there is a change in, you know, a five shift. There is just something where. The, the, the disparity of wealth has become too big. There is unrest in parts of the world that are paying the price of our capitalist systems.
There is just a lot that is currently just kind of brewing and the richer getting more kind of anxious about the, the, the, you know, the, what do you call it? The forks at the fences. And I don't know, I don't know who the next rage against the machine is. I definitely have high hopes for the new, the younger generations.
I really do. I feel like they have their values, like you said, you know, they've been educated and they've been growing up in with, you know, more information around certain important topics. Will they be the punk optimist that actually kind of care enough to do something about it? I mean, time will tell.
We certainly hope to inspire to get there.
Well, I recently read that America has the highest number of Millionaires plus applying for dual or multi citizenship, which is, it's crazy because it essentially just means, well, I mean, I would also love a European passport because I would love to be able to have the freedom to move back when I want to without a visa, but I'm not giving up my us citizenship and no matter where I'm living, I'm not running away from the problems that.
I don't want to deal with. And that's how it's occurring. Like, Oh, well, if America has too many problems, we'll just move to Malta or Monaco and you're like, wait a second. Like you have all these resources, like what fix it, help.
No, and that's been frustrating. So for so long to me, cause I've had, I've got friends who've been telling me about the wealthy building their bunkers for like a decade now, because there would be.
The scientist invited at their round table and, you know, one of my friends, I think this was 10 years ago, he said, I was invited at this billionaire's round table. And I was expecting they would have all these questions for me about which stock to invest in and what have you. But their only question was like, what, when the apocalypse happens, can I do to protect my family?
And they were, they were all building their bunkers in New Zealand and whatever. And this scientist was like, well, you better start treating your employees. Well, like your security staff, et cetera, because you can build a little bunkers, but what do you think your security staff is going to do? They're just going to keep their family in the, you know, areas that are drowning and are going to protect you.
No, it's going to be, yeah, they're going to have the muscle and the weapons and they're going to take it. But my, my biggest, and the scientists too, frustration was like, okay, so you've got all these resources. You have the looking perspective that you can see this. On the horizon, using all your resources and all your influence and all your brain and ideas to do something about it.
It's super selfishly kind of, and who wants to live in a freaking bunker? I mean, how long does it take before they become cannibals or, or, you know, what a life is that? And recently I had a friend over and she's from, um. The wine country up north, and she was saying how in Humboldt County, old millionaires, billionaires are buying those previously weed farms because they are all already set up with infrastructure and everything is already there.
With, you know, the weapon posts and the gates and the, you know, self sustaining systems and what have you. And I'm like, but that's exactly what I'm talking about. The, the, the, the current, the vibe is intensifying, right? On both. So how long until it starts breaking somewhere is the question and how is it going to be breaking, right?
Is it going to break in a Very disruptive way or in a constructive way where actually, you know, there's some new ideas of how to solve challenges. I don't know, you know,
I don't know either, but I feel good about knowing that I really do believe there's more good people than not. And there's more people who want to make a difference and want to be a positive contribution than not.
So I think it's, it'll be very interesting. I just recorded earlier today with. An indigenous woman who is roller skating across the U. S. for murdering missing and murdered indigenous people. And the same thing she was saying about like, you're not listening to us and our people go missing. You're not listening to us when people get murdered.
You're not listening to us when we get abused or you're not listening to us when you're taking away our rights is the same thing that's being echoed by every minority, every LGBTQ plus women in general. I'm like. I'm like, do they realize that the minorities are the majority, like, and we're all saying the same thing.
So it'll be a very interesting time. Pivoting away from Apocalypse what are you excited about for this year? And yeah, just like, what are you excited about in short term and long term?
Yeah, I'm excited about we're currently in public beta. So we're, you know, kind of testing the water still with early community and all that.
But I'm excited about being more publicly available after the summer. So in Q4, we've been building for 2. 5 years and, you know, we're getting close to that moment of, you know, opening the kimono, which is, you know, scary and exciting. So, yeah, I think that and for the for the longer term, just, you know, keep building the ambition and the road map are are bigger than just the first, you know, stab it with the cosmetics.
So, yeah. I hope we can have the opportunity to keep doing what we, what we love the most, which is, you know, building humanoid and making the world a little better.
For everybody who wants to buy the products, follow you, support you, maybe even invest, where can they find and follow you?
We're on TikTok and on Instagram under WeAreHumanoid, and the website is also WeAreHumanoid. Com. Currently the products are only available for community members, but it's super easy to be part of the community, you just join our Discord. So if you go to the website, it's all there, you can just click on one of the links and it gets you to the Discord.
Perfect. And then we also ask everyone on the podcast where you put yourself on the powerful lady scale.
If zero is average everyday human, and 10 is the most powerful lady you can imagine, where would you put yourself today and on an average day?
Kind of started back my meditation practice, so I'm feeling in a better space, you know when I stick to my routines of, you know, connecting with everything. So I would say an eight today.
There's definitely room for improvement. I need to keep up my rituals to just really take the time. And prioritizes. Yeah,
perfect. And then our last question for today. This is a big, powerful community. What is on your wish list or to manifest lists? And how can we help you?
Well, currently I'm fundraising, so definitely investments or investors angel investors high net individuals, people who believe in what we're building.
And yeah, the other part of the question was,
what's, what's on your wishlist or to manifest list, what, what can we help make happen?
Success with what we've been this baby that we've been nurturing for the past two and a half years. Yeah, we've been trying to stay close to our values and close to our beliefs with it, rather than water it down to, you know, what we think is going to be that kind of black and common denominator.
And that's always a bet, right? Like, is that going to be recognized? So time will tell, but I, I believe in authenticity. So hopefully that's going to prove itself true.
Well, thank you so much for being a yes to me and to the powerful ladies. This has been such a great conversation and it reminds me that.
There are so many people with shared values and missions working in their pockets and that we really aren't alone. We're all working for the same thing, but just in different ways. So thank you for that too.
Yeah. Thanks, Kara. I didn't know about your punk background. So we both know.
All the links to connect with Sandra and Humanoid are in our show notes at ThePowerfulLadies. com Subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening and leave us a rating and review. Join us on Instagram at powerful ladies, and you can connect directly with me at Kara Duffy. com or Kara underscore Duffy on Instagram.
I'll be back next week with a brand new episode until then. I hope you're taking on being powerful in your life. Go be awesome and up to something you love.
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Website: www.wearehumanoid.com
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Email: sandra@wearehumanoid.com
Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
Production by Amanda Kass
Graphic design by Anna Olinova
Music by Joakim Karud
