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Build Simple, Sell More: Thomas Smith on What Customers Really Want

Coffee with Jon - Think Big. Get Unstuck. Grow Your Business

Release Date: 08/18/2026

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I sat down with Thomas Smith, founder of skinatwork.com.

Here are 3 takeaways.

1. Simple is a strategy.
Nearly 70% of Thomas's customers buy a full kit on the first visit. Simplicity is doing the hard work so your customer doesn't have to.

2. Know your numbers.
Acquisition cost. Lifetime value. Repeat rate. Chase one metric and wonder why you're losing.

3. Build for a need, not a moment.
Thomas launched during the pandemic , when everyone said don't. He did it anyway because the customer pain was real. That's the only reason that matters.

 

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In Thomas Smith's words:

I’ve been in skincare for 30 amazing years working for some of the most exciting brands and retailers in beauty: on the sales floor, in the spa, as a buyer, developer, marketer, entrepreneur and lover of all things skin. I spent a decade in NYC at Saks and Sephora, a decade in Colorado creating formulas for dry, sensitive skin at my own stores called MELT and a decade in LA marketing or developing products for Murad, Meaningful Beauty and Anastasia Beverly Hills, to name a few. My mom loves to tell people that I started as a cosmetics stock boy in Saks Denver, I prefer to say that I didn’t choose skincare, it chose me.

Over the years, I have watched as skincare has gotten increasingly complicated. So many steps, so many new products and so much time, money, brain space and energy spent trying to decode it all. Trust me, the amount of choice overwhelms me, too! Whenever I visit family or friends, they always ask for my advice on what to buy, when to use, how to use and in what combinations and it got me to thinking… how could I create the simplest, and I mean THE SIMPLEST, most efficacious skincare system possible for my mom, my sister, all of my peeps (including myself!) for skin of all ages, stages and concerns?

That’s how SKIN AT WORK was born.

SKIN AT WORK is an obsessively streamlined, ultra concentrated, ALL-IN-ONE-STEP skincare system of clinically tested, gently powerful, hyper-tasking hero formulas that give your skin everything it needs (over 14 ingredients at efficacious levels) to thrive at its healthiest, deliver head-turning wow and the freedom to spend less time doing steps in the mirror and more time squeezing the juice out of life."

*E - explicit language may be used in this podcast.