Allie Egan believes hormones matter, especially in skincare. Allie founded Veracity, a wellness company focused on finding “holistic solutions rooted in hormone health.” Veracity’s skin care and supplement lines are formulated for hormonal balance, using clinically proven and science-backed data.
When Allie and I met last year, we chatted about Veracity’s origins and the company’s research-backed approach to skincare. Allie’s personal journey with hormonal health fueled her motivation to support other women. Through research and experience, Allie observed hormones are the key to optimal health and skin. Our hormones are constantly giving us signals, and Veracity offers tools to decode those signals for optimal wellness.
Veracity offers a Hormone Wellness Test, to give clients insight into their unique hormonal blueprint. Clients can use the results of an at-home saliva test to build a wellness routine that suits their needs. Veracity’s team advises clients about how to adapt their diet, exercise, and lifestyle routines based on their results.
Allie gave me an update about Veracity’s strides in the past year. She talked about Metabolism Ignite, a new metabolic supplement in Veracity’s product line. We chatted about the difference between personalized skincare and bespoke skincare. Allie also gave insight into brand partnerships and spoke about the role hormones play in skin care.
Can you catch us up on some ways Veracity has evolved over the past year?
??[Veracity has evolved] quite a lot. We really want to bring [a] root cause based functional medicine approach to the way people take care of themselves every day.
[We touch] the lives of so many clients. I intentionally say clients rather than customers because we want to give [a] functional health experience to everyone that comes to our company. We try to use the problems [our clients are] trying to solve and create solutions around that.
We’ve been hearing from a lot of our clients [using] our hormone tests that one problem [they’re] trying to solve is gaining weight or [the] inability to lose weight, especially around when [hormones change], whether it’s postpartum or perimenopause, or stress, etc.
We’ve been working in the background with our physician team and a researcher, a PhD, [who] has been researching plant polyphenols for ten years on a product that we got to bring to life. That’s our newest supplement called Metabolism Ignite, which is an all-natural Ozempic alternative. I think there’s so much conversation now around semaglutides and GLP-1. People are kind of finally seeing that there’s something biologically going on.
I think what we offer through this product is the ability to get some of the biological benefits without the side effects, because it’s safe. It’s all natural, it’s proven. It’s plant based. It’s kind of giving you that leg up that a lot of people need without giving you a lot of the downsides that come with some of the other solutions.
You’ve collaborated with other female entrepreneurs like Megan Roup from The Sculpt Society. What was that experience like? What factors do you consider when choosing collaborations?
First of all, we have to kind of have the same mission and same sort of general alignment with how we see the world.
With Megan, she’s a mom, we have two kids [of] similar ages. She’s trying to take care of herself. So in the same way, she’s very honest with her audience. We [were] really excited to meet her.
We start out with any of the partnerships we work with, whether it’s people or companies, we’d like [them] to try and genuinely like our [products]. We want to make sure that people genuinely appreciate what we’re doing. [It] was really nice that Megan thought that about us and our products.
After we met a while later, [Megan] ended up approaching us. [She] wanted to create cycle syncing content [that] so many of her clients were interested in.
We have this big physician team and so it’s really fun to help her design the programs with the science in mind and then to kind of create some consumer-facing content around explaining it and how it works.
What values do you want Veracity to embody?
Well, the first is, what we say the meaning of Veracity is, which is habitually truthful. Commitment to truth. [It’s] your own truth, what’s happening in your body, as well as our promise to our clients.
We’re selling a weight loss supplement, but we hopefully are straightforward on what the clinical results say. [They are] powerful clinical results, but we’re not trying to oversell some miracle thing or take something that wasn’t originally created for this purpose and just put GLP-1 on it. Just having that authenticity [and] honest respect [for] our clients, and the questions they ask, is [a] priority. [It’s] number one for us.
Another big principle is using functional medicine. Someone might correct me on this, but there [are] a couple basic principles of functional medicine. One is, take out all the bad stuff. Eliminate toxins, clean the gut, get out the bad stuff before you can put in the good. The second tenant is put in the good, natural, safe things. [That’s] treating the fundamental imbalance rather than the symptom.
So those are the tenants of what we do. Even when it comes to our team, [we think] about, how do we get to the root cause of any problems or issues? We try to take that same scientific principle and bring it to how we work together.
What are your thoughts on the beauty industry’s lean toward personalized skin care rather than a one-size-fits-all approach?
I think personalization stems from people not feeling like they’re being heard or respected. In skincare and health care, something like over 60% of women say that they’ve been gaslighted by their providers. So then it’s like, what is right for me if no one’s paying attention to me and I’m still not getting results?
Personalization is really about helping provide people with the confidence that they’re making the right decisions for themselves. We’re very much a personalized experience, but not a bespoke experience, if that makes any sense. And it’s a very clear delineation for me. Because it’s not about being bespoke.
[For example,] I don’t need one serum that doesn’t exist for anyone else in the world. I want a serum that works but is also right for me. And so that’s the approach we take.
What advice would you give to women who are hesitant to change their skincare routine even though they aren’t completely satisfied with the one they’re currently using?
It’s funny, you either have people who are, so loyal or that people who just want to try everything in the entire world. The mindset is so different.
The personalization is running these micro experiments on yourself. It’s the same thing with diet. [Let’s say] it’s trending that dairy is not good for breakouts. So if you’re having any breakouts, you need to get rid of dairy unequivocally. That’s not the right answer. If you want to see change, you have to be prepared to run many experiments on yourself.
And I would say the best advice I can give is don’t change a lot at one time. You don’t need to go from one brand using everything that they [make] to clearing house and trying something totally different. It’s actually kind of nice if you just want to replace your moisturizer and see how that works. Then try serum. Then you can isolate how your skin or your body are reacting to different things.
[It’s the] same thing with supplements. Let’s just start with some basics. And then you can add there and see what your body really needs and what it’s benefiting from.
Is there a question you’ve always wanted to be asked in an interview? What’s the question and how would you respond to it?
Why [do] hormones matter for more than just these moments that we think about, [like] periods, pregnancy, postpartum and menopause? What else do we think about hormones?
Hormones are so important to our daily ability to function, our metabolic health, our mental health. It’s not just about female reproduction. It’s really about making sure my body has the right ingredients to give the right instructions.
Does your body have the right sort of like education and set up to signal all the right buttons to push to make you operate the way you want? Whether it’s having great glowing skin or thriving hair, or just feeling energetic and in your day.
People will ask me very specific hormone imbalance questions, but I think what I have found in my journey, and then running this company, is even the little changes make such a big difference to how you can look and feel better.
It’s not finding just about what works for you now and that being the forever thing. Our bodies change, our stress levels change, our environment changes, and we’ve just, we have to be curious enough about that to give our body what it needs to be supported.
What’s next for Veracity?
We’re really excited because with Metabolism Ignite we’re pioneering [a] natural, safe alternative in an area that’s so important to so many people. We’re really excited to continue to bring this to more folks.
[Metabolism Ignite is] a proprietary blend of plant polyphenols. Plant polyphenols are colorful plants. It’s really amazing the power they have to activate what’s called your AMPK pathway and turn on your metabolic rate. We want to continue to bring that to the world and, and integrate our functional nutrition, which has always been a big part of our brand and platform.
When you take the hormone tests, you get to meet with one of our functional nutritionist who helps you understand your hormones. [Giving] that coaching and advice along the way is how we help people on their journey to achieve whatever goals they’re looking for.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
