New products: what to ask (and how they should answer)

Pretend that someone tells you something about a product that claims “X,Y and Z.” (Being the kind of person that will fall for any new apparatus that will seemingly make my life easier or more organized, it is easy to market to me in these areas.) 

But give me a new product, and I automatically ask all of the questions. 

Check the claims

For instance, imagine someone tells you, “This lightbulb is guaranteed to work for 13 years, averaging a cost of $1.47 a year.”

—> Then you read the fine print, “Based on an average of 3 hours per day.”

Will you end up paying more for that bulb’s energy in the long run because you use it more than 3 hours a day? The answer is yes. But, your subconscious will hold onto the positive aspects of it only being $1.47. 

Not everyone is going to ask the tough questions or know how to handle situations where someone is claiming all of the amazing benefits of a new fad. 

But what about your hair and skin products? “I have this brand-new product for you to try, and it has this rare oil from a plant that only grows from this small creek in Oregon called ‘XYZ’ and it’ll do ‘ABC.’ ”

If it seems too good to be true, it just might be. And it would be good to look up some of the ingredients in question, and ask the seller a couple of questions.

The Right Questions (and answers)

1. What can you tell me about the pH of the formula? (This is important because all hair and skin works best when it can be balanced to its normal pH). —> If this answer isn’t around 4.5 to 5.5, it’s not what you need. 

2. What do you do to increase hydration?  —> If this answer has anything to do with a specific oil, butter (think shea or coconut) or silicone, run away. OK don’t run, but remember that oil does not bring more water into the skin or hair because oil and water do not mix. Oil can make something feel softer, but oil doesn’t contain water. Water is the only thing that can rehydrate.

3. Is it safe to use this product on my scalp (roots-to-ends) and on my face? —> If you make it this far and someone tells you “yes,” I need to speak to them because I feel like the creator and I would be best friends. 

How ONLY Works

ONLY has a resulting pH of 5, and all hair -- no matter your age, hair type or ethnicity -- wants to come back to this pH. ONLY increases hydration with ingredients that continuously pull water from the air (the guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride or honey). ONLY is made to be used on-scalp, roots to ends, and on the rest of the body. It will never make you feel “greasy” because it doesn’t contain any oils. 

And it will actually give you the softest hair WITH volume. 

Imagine that your skin looks lackluster, then you drink a lot of water for a couple of days. Your skin will become plump and radiant because of all that water. That’s what ONLY does for your hair. 

Remember, it’s OK to ask questions. I learn the most when people challenge me because it helps me reaffirm what I’m using and allows me to take a look at what is new and upcoming. We are always evolving.

XOXO,

Nina

Freebie Friday the 13th

Happy Freebie Friday the 13th, all!

Today, I’m afraid we’re announcing our last weekly winner. Congratulations, juju_masta! It’s now officially your lucky day, so make the most of it! (And we’ll send your free sample of ONLY ASAP.)

Here’s hoping the rest of you lovely followers enjoy your weekend, and the last Friday the 13th full moon until August 13, 2049! 👀

Give your body a workout, not your hair

Do you love how you feel after a good work out, but hate having to shampoo your hair every time? Try the ONLY method and skip the shampoo!

Let ONLY Conditioner neutralize the salt and oil on your scalp so that you have refreshed and ready-to-go hair. Just wet hair, scrub your scalp with ONLY, rinse, and go!

The science behind it is that the combination of ONLY’s natural conditioning ingredient and your fingers scrubbing your scalp helps to rid the hair of the oil and dirt from exercise, while still keeping enough of your hair’s natural oils behind to hydrate. 

The biggest plus? Your color stays longer, and that’s always a win in my books.

The challenge is on!

Xoxo,

Nina

Freebie Friday: My Favorite Way to Use ONLY

Happy Friday, everybody! Here’s to the unofficial end of summer, and maybe some cooler temperatures on the horizon!

You know who’s the coolest? This week’s winner: Facebook follower Sara Hamilton Crowl! Thanks for following, and congratulations!

This week, we’d like you to finish this sentence: “My favorite way to use ONLY is _______.” Leave us your answer in the comments, and you’ll be entered to win a free sample of ONLY Conditioner. Good luck!

ONLY for the Littlest Ones

Is there anything softer than a baby’s cheek? Maybe their little squishy toes. Or the downy tufts of hair on their heads.

But here’s the truth: Babies get dandruff, too. It’s called cradle cap, and while It’s common and painless, it doesn’t look or feel great. It’s caused by your baby’s oil glands working overtime, giving their skin a scaly look and feel.

Does your little one have cradle cap? Don’t worry! ONLY Conditioner is gentle enough to use on your kiddo’s hair and skin every day.

Treating Cradle Cap

1. On their dry scalp, put about a half dollar-size amount of ONLY.

2. Scrub ONLY into the scalp with a soft bristle brush. 

3. Wet hair just a little and re-scrub to create a lather. 

4. Rinse and repeat again, if necessary. 

5. If a portion of the cradle cap doesn’t want to budge, do not force it off. Re-try again the next day on dry hair and it will naturally loosen from the scalp. 

XOXO,

Nina

Freebie Friday: Followers FTW

Happy Friday! And you know what that means: Another free ONLY Conditioner sample to give away! This week’s lucky winner is ebeeari! Congratulations! We’ll get your prize to you ASAP!

For next week, we’ll choose our winner from our many wonderful followers on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. So if you haven’t followed us yet, this is the perfect week to start.

Good luck, and have a wonderful holiday weekend!

Nina’s routine: Where haircare meets science

I’ve gotten a lot of questions lately about my haircare routine, so now is a good time to come clean. (Come for the beauty advice, stay for the fun dad jokes!) 

But seriously, here’s the low down: I haven’t used shampoo on my hair since April. It’s now mid-August and it’s still light and fluffy and not weighed down or oily. Do you know why?

Science. 

Believe me, I was the most skeptical of this routine before I started it, and I told myself I would keep doing this routine until my head got really dirty or oily. And then the months started ticking by. 

I also told myself that I love the foam in a shampoo, and while I still love bubbles, I love the purple color staying in my hair so much more. 

You see, shampoos nowadays have strong enough surfactants to make sure that our hair gets pretty clean without having to heavy-duty scrub. Think about it this way: the surfactant, in the case of shampoo, is the part that helps to break down dirt and oil. It’s the actual cleansing part. The stronger the surfactant, the more dirt and oil will be pulled off -- along with any color, treatments or masks that you’ve recently done. 

You can’t use Dr. Bronner’s soap on a duck that has been in an oil spill. You need a strong surfactant like Dawn to break up the oil and grease.

The reverse is also true: You don’t want to wash your hair with Dawn, or any other dish soap for that matter, because it will strip every essential oil off of your head and hair. Hellllooooo, tangle city! 

How I wash my hair

1. Soak your hair with water. 

2. Take a good quarter dollar’s worth of ONLY and SCRUB it into your scalp. All over. Chances are that you missed the middle back part of your head, so use a little bit more and scrub that spot again. 

3. Put your head back under the water for TWO seconds, just enough to re-wet the head and scrub, scrub, scrub again. This time, you’ll start to notice slip. It’ll foam up some, and your hair will start to feel super soft. Put some more ONLY on your hands and immerse from roots to ends. (You may choose to let it sit like this for a bit. The longer it has, the better.)

4. Rinse hair, and then you’re done! 

5. For those EXTRA dirty wash days, repeat steps 2 and 3. 

PRO TIP

I hear this a lot: “Nina, how are you saving on products when it seems like I’m adding so much ONLY to my hair just to cleanse it?” 

Glad that you asked. 

Just bring an empty 2 oz. ONLY bottle into the shower. Fill it half with water, and a quarter of the way with ONLY, then shake it really well. Pour this mixed product over your head, making sure that you got every inch of your scalp, while decreasing the amount of product you use. 

(But always use the newly mixed product the same day. Discard the rest.) 

What I’ve Learned

• If you add a product that doesn’t add oil to the hair -- like ONLY -- it’s balanced and doesn’t get oily. 

• If you have a lot of buildup, scrub ONLY at the roots when hair is dry, wet it just a little bit and scrub it into the scalp to let it suds up. Putting it on dry will concentrate the formula and concentrate the ingredients, since added water will dilute it. 

• You probably aren’t using enough ONLY if your hair feels dry, and that is from a buildup of your other products. 

• If your scalp still gets oily, you didn’t scrub it in well enough at the roots when you washed. 

This process can be used for ANY type of hair, even on pets to help combat dry, itchy skin. And is sensitive enough for the most gentle skin.

XOXO,

Nina

Freebie Friday: ANA (Ask Nina Anything)

Happy Friday, friends! Here’s hoping your week was a good one, and next week is even better.

And congratulations to this week’s winner: @thephoenixprojector! We’ll send your free sample ASAP.

Now we’re looking for something from you: Your burning questions about everything and anything skin- and haircare.

We’ve covered cowashes. We’ve showed you the warning signs for damaged hair. We’ve even told you how to avoid the dangers of summer sun and water fun. Now we want to know what keeps you up at night about routines, products, salon visits and healthy hair and skin. Leave your questions in the comments, and you’ll be entered to win a free sample of ONLY Conditioner.

Life Lessons Learned

Why do I do what I do. Why do you do what you do?

These past two weeks -- actually these past two months -- have been some of the hardest, yet some of the most rewarding times of my life. It’s really come into focus that there isn’t a time when you get to check the box for “Life: Mastered.” 

Hitting the wall, hard

For the past two months I’ve been trying to put all of my products onto the ONLY by Nina Fitzgerald Facebook page and create a shop, but I keep getting declined by a third-party because they think I don’t own my website. Something that I thought was an absolutely mindless task, I’ve now spent a grand total of about 23 hours on. 

On top of that, Facebook can’t regulate what this third-party is looking for, nor can they help. I got frustrated -- I’m still frustrated! I was angry for about 30 minutes, and then the epiphany happened: I’m working against my own process.

I’m trying to force an issue that I have on Facebook by repeating the exact same steps I did the other 15 times I tried to input my information. It’s easy to say that Facebook is to blame because it’s their system. Obviously it’s not me; it’s always the other person or system. 

But I’m not one to give my power away, that’s not what I do. I didn’t realize that I am my own lesson, I’m always my own lesson. Facebook isn’t the big boss I’m supposed to beat at Level 35 of life in order to get to Level 36. It was my own self.

The obvious answer to this great dilemma wasn’t that I inputted all of my information correctly and that I was just misunderstood. (I probably inputted it just fine, but what should’ve knocked me back was that I forgot a very vital piece of the puzzle.)

 I did it wrong. I made a huge mistake. 

Lesson No. 1: Trust your process

I was forcing what I wanted and trying to make the system see it my way without seeing the bigger picture. Life doesn’t give you the big caption bubble in your face that tells you when you should make a left turn instead of a right, or when you need to go back and double-check something you think you might’ve accidentally forgot. I was frustrated that it wasn’t as easy as it should’ve been. If I had listened to my heart, it always guides me in the correct direction. Instead, I was listening to my head and doing this fast-and-furious style. 

Now comes the funny part: I was inputting the wrong number this whole time into the program, so it was always going to come back wrong.

Lesson No. 2: Learn From Challenges 

Have you ever felt like the whole world was just coming to get you? The “Why is everything happening to me, and why can’t this be easy”? (We should all be nodding on this one, save for the 2 percent that have really done the tough work and have undeniable self control.) 

Here is what I’ve learned -- what I’ve really learned over the past two months: It is all about the impact of what you do and why you do it above anything else.

Now when a frustration arises, my new mantra is, “What am I going to learn from this, how will this teach me in some way?” Every single person and entity has the sole right and discretion to do all of the things they do and more. That is what free will is all about. I don’t have to agree with what they do or understand why they do it, but I can learn from it and make sure that I don’t have to learn the same lesson twice. 

If nothing ever bothered me I wouldn’t learn, I wouldn’t grow, and I wouldn’t have much of an impact. The opposite is also true: There will be some people that will never understand me, will never see things the way I see it, or understand why I do what I do. Facebook doesn’t have time for every single person. They’re a huge conglomeration that gets so many requests all day, every day that some things just need to be automated. 

Lesson No. 3: Recharge to Refocus

Once I sat back and let life take the wheel (and the whole process), I forgot about pushing this timeline I so desperately wanted to hit. (It was for the 1st of June, so we are long overdue on that one.) But thanks to my frustration, I became lazy as a lizard sunning itself on a rock. I was Googling random things that served no immediate purpose for a week -- here’s looking at you June 5-12. I didn’t work much at home, but I did allow myself to breathe and have time to recover and start anew. 

My lesson for that chapter? I needed more self care and self impact.

More times than I would like to hear, but I will hear it a 1,000 times more, is “Nina you look tired, you’re overworking yourself, you need to get more sleep.” Have I pushed myself to some limits that I didn’t think were possible? Yes, totally. Would I take it back if I could? Absolutely not. 

Sometimes I don’t start working on ONLY things until 8:30 at night, and most times I don’t get done until 1:30 in the morning. On the weekends, I spend as much of the day with the boys, watching them grow up and learn what life is all about. I’ll never forget the first time that my oldest son (he was about 2.5) saw that I left my phone in a room and said, “Mama your phone!” and ran up to give it to me. That plucked all of my heartstrings at once. 

How many times had I thought, “Please just go to sleep, I have some things I need to finish”? Not anymore though. Holding down a dream full-time job that never ends at 5, styling wedding hair and makeup, mothering two boys under the age of 4, and starting a product business, I solidly know that it will require grit. I will choose to be tired to live my passions while still having an impact on the boys. 

Business will always have its own timeline, life will not. 

Lesson No. 4: Be True to Your Purpose

If I didn’t push myself to limits then I wouldn’t be asking people to help and to come and join me on this journey. (Tyler, Nancy, Ashely, Amber, Monti, Chelle, I’m looking at you!) I’ve learned that in order to make an impact, you have to push yourself and work through some pretty grueling times. I’ve wanted to quit several times, I’ve lost my drive several times, but then I’ll get an email detailing how what I’ve created has so drastically changed someone’s life  -- and I melt into tears because that is why I do what I do. 

I’ve impacted someone’s life; I have helped. 

It finally came full circle when I was talking to Robin Emmerich last week, one of my Austin gurus, and she asked me, “What is your purpose?” 

This summer was a summer of intense learning, because I needed to fully understand what my impact would be. I needed to be present in my family's life, and in order to do that I needed to be present in my own. 

I needed to understand when life challenges were meant to be discovered that day, and when they just needed time to play out because I wasn’t supposed to learn them in that moment. By fully being present, I could create products that above all were about impacting others’ lives and being present to what they needed, too.

Being present doesn’t mean being right. It means being able to see both sides of the coin and taking ownership of situations, even when it creates goosebumps on my arms and makes my palms sweat. Ultimately, ONLY is about the lasting impact I want to have by creating products with a purpose and a meaning. 

What impact do you want to leave on this world? What will your legacy be?

XOXO,

Nina

Freebie Friday: Make Time to Relax

Happy Friday, everybody! And congratulations to this week’s winner, @evesway! We’ll contact you to send your free sample ASAP.

National Relaxation Day May be over, but that doesn’t mean we can’t ease up, loosen up, lighten up — all those ups that hopefully bring your blood pressure way down.

So take a deep breath, unclench your jaw and drop your shoulders before you smack on that heart or like button — and you’ll be entered to win next week’s sample of ONLY Conditioner. Good luck!