Drew is a global hair artist, educator, and founder of Cruxe brand; the coolest luxury hair clips and comb in the Hair Industry. Drew grew up as an athlete in the midwest. His journey evolved after going to school for business when he was faced with deciding on going into finance or perusing cosmetology. He decided on hairdressing and the rest is history. Drew is a L’ORÉAL Professional based in Brooklyn, NY where he has created advanced workshops specializing in cutting and styling.

Follow Drew Schaefering on IG

Shop his tools and hair oil, Cruxe 

Listen to his podcast, The Strands That Bind Us

Episode photo taken by: @heathmgrout

For time stamps and those with audio impairments; the Transcription is below. Thank you for being here.

Transcript:

Carin Chantel  0:00  

Good morning, Drew.

Drew Schaefering  0:02  

Good morning. how are you?

Carin Chantel  0:03  

I'm good. How are you?

Drew Schaefering  0:05  

I'm great, thank you.

Carin Chantel  0:06  

I'm here with Drew Schaefering; a L'Oreal professional artist Cruxe brand founder, and overall, beautiful human being. We're going to talk about the ethos of Cruxe, and anything else you'd like to share.

Drew Schaefering  0:23  

Yeah, amazing. Well, thanks for having me. I love it. It's so cool that you're doing this. 

Carin Chantel  0:27  

Thank you. 

Drew Schaefering  0:30  

So where should we start? What would you like?

Carin Chantel  0:32  

I love your minimalizing the bullshit and getting back to what's important. I really identify with that. Can you talk about why bringing clean hair oil and body oil was important in the hair industry? 

Drew Schaefering  0:51  

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think you know, more importantly, for me, that hair and body oils were like a personal project. And it was something that I started just creating because I couldn't find something on the market that was an all-purpose oil for luxury skin and body. And something I wanted to leave in my own personal hair, let it air dry and have a texture to it. In. We all know that synthetic properties in machine-made ingredients have numerous benefits to them. I think that there's such a push going back to not only sustainability, but a more natural element to everything that we use, and getting rid of so many of the chemically derived ingredients. So as I was going through the process of making it for myself, I really just kind of found that the feedback I was getting from other people that were noticing it, were smelling it because the fragrances was so huge for me, I mean, we all wear different scents, and it's our sense of smell that is connected to so deeply rooted in our memories and our emotional connection to how we feel. And I just saw an opportunity and said, Hey, I just kind of created something for myself, let's put it out there and see if this has, you know, a demand and an opportunity in the market for other people to enjoy it. So I literally was buying all the highest quality ingredients I could find mixing them in my kitchen, my own Breaking Bad style setup, and I got a lot of great feedback on them. But I also got a lot of positive criticism. And you know, reasons that not everyone loved the X oil, which was the first one, and quickly realize that obviously not all hair is the same. Not all skin is the same. And not everyone loves the same fragrance that I created for myself essentially with the first one. So about a year later, after going back to the drawing board, I created The Y Oil. And it essentially is the counterpart within the ethos of Cruxe; the dark in the light and the black and white emotional spectrum. It's its counterpart to that and it's having a lot of really good success. So I think it's it's a great alternative to the highly perfumed flower the leaves like powdery fragrance synthetic, machine made ingredients and products out there. And I think it also just needs to be used a little bit differently, because natural ingredients do have a different weight and viscosity to them. So there's a learning curve with that, that we're kind of ironing that out as well.

Carin Chantel      I love how, I think the word I'm looking for is strong. It's like, it's just, it feels powerful and as not like overwhelming, powerful, but like I feel empowered.

Drew Schaefering    Yeah, I love that. Because I mean, you know, for anybody that doesn't know Cruxe; it's black and white story and ethos really is to embody the emotional connection that we have to things and the emotions that we feel and the often crazy emotionally erratic things that we go through as creatives and human beings. And for me, it's a ritual, it's I put that on and the ingredients in it start with the palo santo as that grounding element in that energy clearing element. And it goes into vetiver which is like a root and so it definitely has a sense of power to it. And I love that you found that because to me, Cruxe is all about getting back to an emotional connection to the products and tools we use and embracing that and minimizing the all the noise and the gimmicky bullshit stuff and I love that you feel that that's definitely part of the purpose a It's like someone who puts it on wears, it smells it you want it to be just identifiable that they can't you know, it's a Cruxe product and you win someone you lose some with that, you know, for some people they don't they're not looking for that. But we're inclusive by nature, but we're exclusive because we're not for everybody.

Carin Chantel  5:07  

I love it. So five minutes goes by really fast. We have one quick question regarding like, ritual, is there anything that you started doing during the pandemic to support your mental health that you are still doing today to keep you centered in both in both businesses, your personal business and Cruxe.

Drew Schaefering  5:32  

I think, perspective and expectations have, like, awareness of those have been hard. It's been a daily practice, because ideally, I have four different jobs. And when you're only able to put so much time and energy into something, it only is going to grow and expand with how much you're able to put in it. And I'm by nature of perfectionist and I expect very good things. So having realistic goals and expectations out of everything is very important. Because otherwise, you just get left with a feeling of being inadequate. And just like a sense of like, emptiness of it. So it's just a sense of mindfulness, little dial turns that help in achieving results as you go along the way. And not everything happens overnight, as we experienced during the pandemic, like sometimes we have to take a step back and reevaluate, and address things differently.

Carin Chantel  6:29  

I love it starting with baby steps, Drew, thank you. I appreciate you so much. penciling in five minutes for me, and I know you got a lot going on today. So thank you. It's great seeing you. 

Drew Schaefering  6:42  

Of course. Thank you so much for having me.

Carin Chantel  6:45  

Bye Drew, Thank you