Fourth in a series – The Mad Scientist in his kitchen!
These simple, unedited videos are my way of starting a video archive of the story of ChopSaver Lip Care. My hope is you will find the story behind The World’s Greatest Lip Balm informative, entertaining, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and maybe even inspiring. Today’s video is all about creating the actual ChopSaver formula. While I was having fun being a Mad Scientist in the kitchen, my wife thought it was a mid-life crisis! Full transcript below.)
Hi everyone. Welcome. This is Notes from Dan, The ChopSaver Guy, and this is number four in our little video series about ChopSaver Lip Care and how the product came into be. My name is Dan Gosling, also known as The ChopSaver Guy. And this is number four in what we hope to be an ongoing series, about ChopSaver, my journey as a musician turned inventor, turned entrepreneur, turned business owner. Hopefully you’ll get something out of it in terms of maybe some inspiration or education or entertainment at the very least. And the first three videos I kind of explained my journey as a musician. And then that fateful day when I had the idea or the idea came to me from a conversation I had with a friend of mine about the herb arnica and that conversation changed my life.
(0:51)
In fact, at that point in my life, I was practicing a lot for an audition that I ended up not winning. And if the confused by this already, please go back and watch the first three videos. They’re very short. But I was at the point where I transitioned from keeping track of my practicing in a journal to keeping track of my recipes in this journal turned recipe book. So it’s always fun for me to look back at these because it shows what I was thinking at the time. And I’d like to share that a little bit with you. So I literally have notes here from my first attempt, to create this product from this idea that I had. Attempt Number One, first attempt. 15 milliliters Aloe, five milliliters lanolin and half an ounce of beeswax. Okay. Second attempt.
(1:49)
Now I’ve got, I’ve graduated to John’s Wort, aloe, arnica, and see it all there. Olive oil, lanolin, Advil. Who puts Advil in their, who knows what I was thinking. This was just crazy science Mad Scientists in his kitchen kind of stuff. But quickly the recipes got more sophisticated. You’ll notice here, I’m on number six, the sixth iteration of this. Now I have my ingredients separated into light and medium and heavy ingredients. Light ingredients would have been the things like the fragrances. The medium ingredients were like the avocado oil and the aloe and the heavy ingredients were the shea butter and the honey which I was still trying to get in the , still trying to get into the formula. Fast forward a little bit more, or a couple of weeks. I think I’m about two months into it. Now this is number 17 and number 17, which I wrote to myself based on number 13.
(2:53)
Let’s see what 13 was all about. Okay. I’ve got my ginger and comfrey and arnica. And, interesting, I put 13 drops, see right here, 13 drops, not 12, not 14, 13 drops lemon, four drops lime, five drops grapefruit. That’s how anal I was getting about things like the fragrance, how important that was to me, that the fragrance be interesting citrusy, but not just orange or not just lemon. And that it would appeal to men and women. I think I, I think I achieved that, but number 17 was kind of where I realized, I think I’ve gone about as far as I can with this, it was based on 13. And then I said at the bottom, I said, lots of stirring, finally whipped up into a frosting like consistency. This is awesome! I wrote it right there. This is awesome! So I must have felt like, and in fact, I, yeah, I remember feeling like, I think this is about as far as I can go.
(3:54)
This is pretty cool. I mean, there were a couple more, it’s interesting. I didn’t call them 18 and 19. I called it 17A and 17B. I guess they were similar enough to 17, formula version number 17, that they didn’t merit their own number. They were just variations on that theme, but that’s what was going on in my head. What was literally happening in my world is I took over the kitchen and, cause I was going to make this stuff, right? But even though I took over the kitchen, I at least want my own utensils, bought my own mixing bowls, little knife, little measuring spoons. These were the actual spatulas I used. I don’t know what happened to this one. And some of the things that obviously made it into the final formula, were lemon oil and lime oil. And, ginger. Of course these are tinctures.
(4:55)
These are literally the, the ones I was using 17 years ago when creating the formula. I keep these just as a memento of what was going on in my life. And who knows, maybe these will end up in the Smithsonian someday. Arnica of course, that’s what started it all. This is a 17 year old bottle of avocado oil. Hmm. Let’s see what’s in that. Maybe let’s not. And of course I was getting, I was buying big jars of shea butter. Don’t think there’s anything left in here, but this shows how much of this shea butter I was going through making this kind of stuff. Some of the ones that didn’t make it into the formula. St. John’s Wort, nutmeg, rosemary oil, eucalyptus oil. And this one always makes me smile, thyme, thyme oil. This one nearly burned off my lips. Why I didn’t just stop the whole project after I put some of this directly on my, at 100%. If you’re familiar with thyme at all, it is a natural, use it in natural cleaning products. It’s very powerful stuff. And somehow I thought it might be good to put in a lip balm, but not a full strength. Let that be a warning to you. But this is literally what this all looked like. See there and that picture there. Yeah.
(6:26)
Those are the pictures my wife took when she thought I’d lost my mind to her. This was maybe I was just a fun little side project. Yeah. He’s a little depressed because he lost the audition. And we’ll just kind of let daddy do that until she literally kind of suggested or kicked me off into the laundry room. But this was like, maybe this is a midlife crisis. Maybe he’ll get over this. Clearly I did not get over it. I kept pursuing the idea. We got to that 17th version of the formula and that’s where things got really interesting because now I think I have a product and now I’ve got to try it to get it on the market. And that will be the topic of the next video. Thanks so much for watching up to this point. If you’re enjoying this content and enjoying this series, you know, drop a comment or like or maybe even share it. And of course the best way to support what we’re doing here is become a fan of ChopSaver. If you’re already a fan of ChopSaver, if you’re one of the thousands of people whose lives have been changed by this product, we thank you. Keep telling your friends and loved ones about it. And if you haven’t tried it yet, give us a try at chopsaver.com or you can also find us on Amazon. Until the next time, This is Dan Gosling, The ChopSaver Guy. We’ll see you soon. Thanks!