851 Lejla Cas: Founder of KNESKO Skin

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro.

0:47Kara Goldin:Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job.

1:39Kara Goldin:Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire.

2:19Kara Goldin:Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business. Hey everyone, Kara here. Let's get real about those early days of building a business. Not the highlight reel, the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected. I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it. And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice to have. It's the lifeblood of your business.

3:03Kara Goldin:As a founder, you don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time. That's why AT &T Business matters. AT &T Business is the reliable provider for small business owners. And when you have that kind of reliability behind you, you can focus on what actually moves your business forward. Powered by AT &T Business, built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Cara Golden Show. Every once in a while, you meet someone who's really, really impressed you, actually tried to build something different, not just another cream or skincare line in pretty packaging.

3:52Kara Goldin:Today, I'm joined by Layla Cass, who is the founder of an incredible brand called Nesco. Now, you may recognize her name or the brand. I had her on a couple of years ago to speak about her incredible serums that you may have enjoyed, say, at the Four Seasons, if you were getting a facial there. They are huge around the world and many, many luxury hotels, but they also have incredible masks and the sheet masks as well as the body care products. But the brand has built its reputation by combining high performance skincare and body care. And now they came out with an entirely new line, which as I was saying to Layla, I thought that they actually had this line already, but I just hadn't tried it.

4:52Kara Goldin:I had only tried the serums and oh my gosh, so, so good. So, Nesco is making a major move into a full skincare system with its new gold repair collection. And I cannot wait to hear more from Layla all about it, all the clinical studies, all the good stuff that you are going to want to hear about. So, Layla, welcome back to the Cara Golden Show. I'm so excited that you're here. Thank you so much for having me back. It's so lovely to see you. So excited. So, okay. So for people who maybe don't recognize the name Nesco or haven't tried it yet, what is Nesco really about? So Nesco Skin, I founded back in 2012.

5:39As I like to say, Nesco Skin is high vibrational skincare brand that bridges science with spiritual and emotional wellness. I've been in beauty industry for 26 years. This is all I know. And I absolutely love this industry. And I wanted to create a brand that promotes self-care. So to me, Nesco Skin really is formulated, as I say, like clinically, but really the heart of the brand is promoting well-being, wellness, and this lifestyle, you know, this lifestyle of being able to take care of not only our skin, but as I say, also our, our spirit. So it's been an incredible journey doing this, expanding my brand globally, and having this line that I actually embody.

6:28Like, I love what I do, and I hope people can feel it.

6:32Kara Goldin:This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business. Hey, everyone. Kara here. Let's get real about those early days of building a business. Not the highlight reel. the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected. I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it. And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice-to-have, it's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, You don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time.

7:16Kara Goldin:That's why AT &T Business matters. AT &T Business is the reliable provider for small business owners. And when you have that kind of reliability behind you, you can focus on what actually moves your business forward. Powered by AT &T Business. Built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing.

8:09Kara Goldin:Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical. Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings.

8:54Kara Goldin:Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. So you've built a brand that blends luxury skincare with science, Reiki, and Ritual. You don't hear that often when you talk to a founder about building the brand.

9:42Kara Goldin:You've done an amazing job of really combining four things that, again, people don't really hear about it. What did that combination, how did you come up with that? I know that you're also trained in Reiki at all of these points. And why is that important for your brand? To me, energy healing, it's part of skincare, like wellness. As an esthetician, Reiki master, an energy healer, I wanted to combine those both worlds, which typically kind of feel separate. But to me, like how I feel on the inside, it shows, you know, on my skin and how the world like responds to me. So it's always been part of my personal like practice is to create something that, again, is connected to our deeper selves.

10:34Like I never feel it's it's disconnected to me. Energy and clinical performance can be in the same sentence. and that's what I wanted to create as a woman who likes high performance skincare you know I you know I care about you know like the ingredients that I put on my skin but I equally care about those moments when I pick up my jar of like the moisturizer or you know like a face mask and I know that's my time for myself and I want to enjoy it and so to me it's always been like part of the same experience. It's like skincare, wellness. It's part of a full, full experience. And that's what I wanted to create for myself.

11:19That's what I wanted to create for the audience in the future that haven't heard of Nesco, that maybe want to try it.

11:26Kara Goldin:It's so, so incredible. So take me back to the early days of Nesco and you made the decision to launch the body care line along with the serums. I guess what came first and how did you get it out there in the world? You were an esthetician. Talk to me about sort of those early days of actually creating your own products. So my first products that I created were the masks. So masks were the gold repair collection actually. And we were considered like the mask brand for the first 10 years. And then after like really building our clients and seeing the people really wanted to use Nesco more on like, you know, in their day, I decided to expand to the face serums.

12:13And I work with amazing chemists and just really wanted to have, you know, like a two-step experience where you would use a face mask and then you would have to use a serum to finish off with. So serums came after the masks. And then two years ago, I decided to expand into age-defying body care. To me, body was a category that was such an amazing opportunity. I personally felt like I was, you know, there were days that I was like skipping my body moisturizers and I was like wondering why. And I knew that it had to do with the fact that I wanted to feel every body application meant that I was doing something good for my skin.

12:52So I expanded into this innovating age-defying formulations. We won a new beauty award for best body serum for 2024. And it's just been incredible. And in the back of all of that last time I saw you two years ago, I was already working on my skincare collection, which I knew was the biggest launch since the launch of the brand. Like for me, launching full skincare line had to come after I really felt like our customers trusted us and they wanted to bring Nesco into their daily lives more than ever. And so I started working on skincare in January of 2022, Cara. So it's been four years and my biggest launch yet, my whole career highlight in this one big launch, 26 years of experience as an esthetician and a product formulator all manifested into this big, as I call it, the gold standard of Nesco.

13:51It's the full completion of my line.

13:53Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical.

14:37Kara Goldin:Luckily, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is built for that reality. It's your hiring partner designed to help you hire with confidence by surfacing only the right candidates without turning hiring into another full-time job. Posting a job isn't always the hard part. It's finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Their updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language, no recruiter jargon needed. Nearly 60 % of hires find a candidate to interview within a week.

15:19Kara Goldin:With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business. Hey everyone, Kara here. Let's get real about those early days of building a business, not the highlight reel, the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected. I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it.

16:08Kara Goldin:And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice-to-have, it's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, You don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time. That's why AT &T Business matters. AT &T Business is the reliable provider for small business owners. And when you have that kind of reliability behind you, you can focus on what actually moves your business forward. Powered by AT &T Business. Built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. Well, the skincare is so incredible. I'm so excited that you finally launched with it. And I've been such a huge fan of your serums and the body care.

16:57Kara Goldin:I mean, the body care, I agree that it's award-winning. I mean, it is so, so amazing. And for somebody who is constantly looking for great lotions, and I get incredibly dry. So the body lotions are just amazing. And now I'm such a big fan of the skincare line that you just launched. So can you talk about the number of SKUs? How did you decide to launch with each of these? And what's kind of the backstory behind them? So Nesco Skin's expansion into skincare is part of the gold repair collection. So it's kind of, you know, like connecting back to our gold face mask, our globally best-selling gold face mask that just went through the clinical studies as well.

17:50And yeah, it was just how I started my brand. It's like humble beginnings of just launching with this one SKU that really helped grow the brand to now six collections and now final full completion going back to my body and now the skincare line. And so what I really wanted to do is create a collection that is like non-negotiable in my standards, like what I felt we needed in the industry. so the way I formulate is without the parabens chemical like the UV like filters no silicones mineral oils forever chemicals hormone disruptors all of these things that are traditionally in a lot of luxury skincare so I knew that I had a big job to really create something that I always wanted for my skin that I knew that my client wanted and and I also realized that I had to actually create a system because we are not a new line we've been around for 15 years our clients already use our products our masks like you said that you know the serums and the body so launching a single face oil probably didn't make sense for me at this stage of my business we work with luxury hotels and spas who wanted to complete a nesco facial they wanted a full experience so actually alone you know i'm launching we just went live you know like recently with eight SKUs.

19:13And I can take you through all of that whenever you're ready.

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20:02Kara Goldin:Then Rippling AI can turn those insights into real action, like recommending a retention strategy that includes a 5 % spot bonus for top performers in your next payroll run. Just tap confirm to add it to next month's payroll run. So don't settle for AI that's all talk. Head to rippling.ai slash Kara Golden and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your business and take complex actions across your entire organization. That's r-i-p-p-l-i-n-g dot a-i slash Kara Golden. Sign up for exclusive access today. Yeah, definitely. Go ahead. Amazing. So we basically have our proprietary GP8X technology, which is the Nesco's technology.

20:56They incorporate gold as a peptide and it actually, it's like a signaling skin-like platform that, you know, incorporates gold, pro-colleges supporting actives by active peptides and plants themselves. So it's part of my GPX technology and it's clinically tested to improve eight markers of skin quality. So things like hydration, firmness, elasticity, radiance, we are addressing all of that in these beautiful eight skews. And so we have a cleansing balm, we have a cleanser, the exfoliator, beautiful SPF, sunscreen, face oil, and then we have a rich and a light cream and an eye cream. And so they're designed to be used together with the existing serums and the mask, depending on the skin seasonality, people may choose between our firming like a face serum to the hydrating face serum, but essentially they're coming to us now for that full experience where they can double cleanse with the brand exfoliate like twice a week and then use our treatment creams and oil and eye cream daily to really take care of their skin and knowing that I was launching this skincare line 15 years into my brand you know I really wanted my clients to know that I did not compromise like I honestly love what I do and like product you know development is such a big passion of mine and I just thought of everything on the market you know how the industry I feel is disconnected you have your luxury brands you have your clinical brands then you have your holistic brands but as a woman I want it all like I want to bring it all into my world so I worked very hands-on through the formulation process every single ingredient in my ingredient list has a purpose um it's you know it's there for you know like a reason if it was a filler or a silicone or things that I just felt I didn't want in my personal skincare line I took out which just made the process a lot longer because it's really easy and frankly cheaper to formulate with silicones and all of these fillers and I just didn't want that in my skincare I waited 26 years and and I was ready to do it on my own standards and I think that is the beauty about being self-funded like you don't have to answer to anyone you can actually really do it on your own terms and that's what I did and then I knew that it was time to invest in clinical studies and brand is very well known for our well-being for our wellness as a Reiki master I actually also recently like created meditations And, you know, I always say to me, it's very equally like if I invest in something to do with spiritual sides, such as recording beautiful guided meditations that are now part of my every mask experience, I honor that.

23:53But at the same time, I'm very much committed to serious formulation processes. And that's when I invested in clinical studies as well. So we actually went through 11, you know, like clinical studies. I'm talking about third-party tests that are not brand sponsored. We took our gold face masks through the clinical studies, as well as all of the six serums that you absolutely love and that I love. And then, of course, certain SKUs within our new collection. So that is still going. It's a big undertaking. I'm unpacking like 500, 600 pages of data. And it's just what I love. Like, I want to give my clients the best quality skincare that I know they will enjoy.

24:38And it's been amazing. I can't wait to see what the future holds for us.

24:43Kara Goldin:So when you look at your new collection, do you use all of these products every day? or are there certain ones that you just use a couple of times a week so i can take you through that so with the new gold collection as i mentioned is gold repair i obviously always talk about the cleansing so we have the first product which is the cleansing balm have you used cleansing balms i'm very obsessed yes so yeah you gotta love a good cleansing balm and again everything that I created comes from like a need that I felt I could improve on right so for me cleansing balms and you know like traditionally I felt sometimes were maybe a little bit easy you know like harder to take off or not as luxe so I wanted to create a cleansing balm that's very luxurious that melts makeup impurities SPF and that's always my first cleanse so if you wear sunscreen if you're you know if you wear makeup every day i highly recommend that your first step be the cleansing balm which is designed to melt and nourish it has like the prickly pear like cranberry pomegranate oils and then of course the plants themselves pro collagen active ingredients and peptides so every single skew within my gpx technology skincare line comes with the three is I call it like the three Ps, always peptides, you know, like plants themselves and ingredients that are actually supporting the skin barrier that are nourishing your skin.

26:18So from the first cleanse, your skin is being nourished and taken care of. So that's always my first cleanse. I always recommend that, you know, at night, like if you've been wearing makeup, I would always do a double cleanse at the end of the day and then we have our cleanser so the cleanser is my my cleanse right it's like a gentle lotion to leather cleanser that removes makeup that cleanses actually even tones it has like the witch hazel in it aha's pha's so it's again just designed to remove all of your makeup from the day and really deep cleanse the skin. It was the hardest one to formulate in many ways because I'm so particular.

27:04Like I didn't want to ever have to use those wipes again. I wanted to really have a cleanser that I'm not worried about putting on my eyes. And I know that will actually remove my eye makeup because I love makeup and I do use makeup. And so I was a bit selfish when making this product because I wanted it to really take everything off, but it's still very luxurious. I mean, with Nexco, our textures are very luxurious. There's this sensorial, emotional connection with the texture. So when you're putting it on from the first step, it feels really like you're taking a nice, you know, like a good care of yourself.

27:40So those two I use every day. And then when it comes to the exfoliation, that usually I recommend twice a week. So our version is polish it's like our microdermabrasion as i call it it's a dual action exfoliator that combines refining like crystals lactic acid ahas to give your skin that very polished smooth and soft skin and also helps to revive any dull looking complexions just very i almost call it like addictive like in the shower you know it has a bit of that like tingle and so um people are loving it. It's already becoming one of my top sellers, you know, because everybody wants a good exfoliator that doesn't feel like it's scratching your skin, but at the same time is deeply polishing and refining.

28:31So I do that twice a week. I don't use it the same day that I do my like Pearl Serum, Pearl Renew Serum, part of my serum collection. I don't do it the same day because of the AHAs. It's probably too much, but I love a good exfoliator and I love it in the shower. And then face oil. This was so fun to formulate. It's actually like clinically, you know, like proven to increase a skin radiance instantly by like 22 % and just really helps with fine lines and overall visible improvement in firmness. And I like your traditional face oil that's just there for moisturization. Our face oil is really a treatment with the peptides and plants themselves.

29:14We use like pomegranate and baruti oils. We have like 18 different exotic oils, but it's very light. It's not heavy. It's not like greasy. You can use it alone or you can use it with our rich cream or the light cream. I do like a few drops maybe every night to mix with my moisturizer. But then for those that are really normal to dry, I think you mentioned like you like the hydration. You would love this one. So, yeah, that's like one of my, this can be used every day or if people just, you know, as needed. but I love a good nighttime treatment. So I do like to use it every day. I put on my neck, my decollete.

29:53I feel like we forgot those areas. So it's very important to go all the way down. And then with the new skincare, Rich Cream, if somebody's normal to dry, they can possibly start with the Rich Cream. Also like clinically proven to improve like the fine lines, the wrinkles and to visibly like also you know help with the skin immediate hydration boost 111 it's just really wonderful has alpine rose goji plant stem cells vitamin c again it's just a beautiful formulation melts into the skin i really didn't want my moisturizers to be heavy like they're moisturizing and they're age-defying, but they're just lightweight even under makeup.

30:45So depending on your skin type, you might do the rich cream or the light cream is equally age-defying, but it's more of that lightweight gel cream texture, which I think is wonderful in the morning. Actually, I'm wearing it right now under my makeup. I used that with my firming serum this morning and then an SPF on top before I do the foundation. And that is just a very light version, also like clinically proven. And then we have two left, which is the eye cream. I mean, eye creams are interesting ones. Some people love to use them. Some people feel like they don't need them, but I created an incredible eye cream that's actually using over 10 different peptides designed for that very delicate eye orbit area.