ASHLEY: Welcome to Outgrowth: A Slice of Pro Beauty with your hosts Ashley Gregory Hackett.

JAIME: And Jaime Schrabeck. The new year brings new bills targeting the beauty industry, some that could drastically impact our licensing and the way we operate our salon businesses.

ASHLEY: To learn more about how we can advocate for our best interests, we’re joined by Kati Rapoza from the Professional Beauty Association. Let’s grow together.  

JAIME: Welcome to Outgrowth, Kati.

KATI: Hi, Jaime and Ashley. How are you doing today?

JAIME: We’re so excited to have you here. Thanks for joining us.

KATI: Thanks for having me.

JAIME: Kati, would you please describe what you do as the manager of the advocacy program for the Professional Beauty Association?

KATI: Yes, of course. So I am the advocacy program manager and what that means is that while my counterpart, Myra Reddy, she looks over all the legislation at the state level and as bills come up that would affect licensed professionals or other parts of the industry, we look over them together and decide what ones we need to act on. And then I engage the industry and industry members to make sure that their voice is heard at the state level on licensing issues that would affect them.

ASHLEY: We’ve done a few of these episodes with your colleague Myra and they always proved to be very popular because we always want to know what’s going on with bills being introduced. So a year ago, we probably would have been bracing ourselves for the introduction of just a slew of deregulation bills in states across the country, but what are you seeing from this newest crop of bills and what can we expect from this year’s legislative efforts?

KATI: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve listened to those, those episodes that you’ve done with Myra and I’m so happy to be able to participate today as well. So last year, we were really like bracing for a slew of bills and because everything got upended with COVID, many state legislatures ended early last year, and so there were some bills that we had to take action on, but there was many other things that the state legislatures were focused on obviously. So what we have found this year, what we thought was going to happen, or what I thought was going to happen anyway, was kind of like, okay, everybody is still focused on COVID. We still got to get this under control. What I am seeing, what we are both seeing is that my best educated guess is that whatever was on the docket last year is being introduced this year instead because it has just been insane. I’ve been with PBA for about six and a half years now, and I have never seen a legislative session this crazy, this quickly. We’re already tracking 502 bills across the nation. I think in Myra’s last episode with you guys, back in like September, she said we over 2020 had tracked something over 800 bills and legislatures have only been in session for about a month now. Some of them are not even in session yet, and we’re already at 500 bills. So it’s crazy. In, I want to say, 15 of those bills, we’ve already had to take action to push out information to the industry and say, this is not a good thing for the industry. We need you guys to take action. I want to say this time last year, you know, before COVID was something that we were concerned about, we probably had about five bills that we were taking action on at this time. So what we’re seeing right now is just an influx of a lot of stuff that would affect the industry.

JAIME: Kati, what are the criteria for taking action when you have so many different bills being introduced? What elevates a particular bill to that level?

KATI: The way that we decide on that is that our board of directors and our advisory councils, which are both made up of segments of the industry that we represent, have kind of vetted what should be our priorities, voted, looked at, given input into, and said, if this sort of thing is introduced, that’s what we want to make sure that we’re taking action on. And what’s included in that is obviously full deregulation. Anybody that wants to omit the license for cosmetologists or beauty industry services completely is obviously something that we’re going to say, that’s not safe. Here’s why. But also different things like taking just different parts of the licensing away for specific services or we’ve seen a bill this session that said that we don’t want to do licensing at the state level. We want to do it at the municipality level and we want to give them the choice as to whether or not they’re going to do the license. Another thing is certificates. Certificates for our industry are detrimental because they’re not necessary. They, you don’t have to get a certificate, and there’s no continuity between which different certificates have specific education and training, and then it gets rid of the oversight of the state board. So those are all sorts of things that we would take action on if they’re introduced and we’ve got a handful of states that have bills that have had that introduced this session already.

ASHLEY: Well certificates is definitely a hot topic here on Outgrowth. We both really feel strongly about certifications and things kind of being disguised as increasing the scope of practice by virtue of having this piece of paper. That not withstanding, I’d love to get into some of the specific bills that you’ve been tracking, starting with Utah SB87 about the deregulation of hair styling. Tell me a little bit more about what’s happening with SB87 and what we should be doing, especially our listeners in Utah.

KATI: Yes, thank you so much for asking, and we have actually had a few different bills that have mirrored that, but the Senate Bill 87 in Utah has been something that’s moved through the legislature pretty quickly. And we’ve got a great group of advocates in Utah that are just doing so much great advocacy work to support the opposition of that bill. So that bill says that anyone is able to shampoo, condition, dress, dry, style, flat iron, curl, and arrange hair without a license or training. The bill has been substituted to say that they have to have a hair permit, but there’s no details as to what is going to go into the permit. So I think that came from the huge amount of opposition that this bill has received, but the main argument of legislators in Utah is that this is protectionism, and having to have a license to blow dry hair is just trying to keep people out of the industry, and making people jump through hoops to do work. Obviously, you know, we’re kind of feeling like we understand where they’re coming from, but also this is a safety issue. It really is to ensure that consumers are able to go in and like most people just believe that the person that is doing their hair is licensed, and has received training, and that is an expectation of consumers, I believe. We’ve had some third-party data polled that really proves that, that people go, and get their hair done, and they don’t question whether or not that person has received training to have it done. Because with skin-to-skin contact, I mean, we all know this industry, next to healthcare, is really the most skin-to-skin contact industry and that’s why there is licensing. I know you guys are very familiar with that, but I’ve done research into, because this is such a hot topic of protectionism and red tape, when the cosmetology industry began licensing and for almost every state in the United States, it was mid-1950s at the latest. So this is something that has been a concern for people for quite some time.

ASHLEY: It seems like we keep Having the same arguments over and over as each new session begins, but I would love to know your thoughts on Indiana House Bill 1364, which essentially amounts to complete deregulation, as long as there is a notice posted to consumers.  This one really reminds me of one we highlighted last year, which was Illinois House Bill 5558, which had that kind of stipulation of creating or posting a notice with no real detail as to what that notice should be or where it is or what it should say. So what’s happening with that in Indiana and what can our listeners in Indiana do to make sure this doesn’t pass?

KATI: Yeah, absolutely. It’s funny. I do feel like the full deregulation does come up at least once every session and obviously those are the ones that we want to act on quickly because there is so much information that we can share as to why that is detrimental. Luckily, Myra did receive some communication from the house speaker pro tempore in Indiana that said that this bill is not going to be heard this session. Obviously, we are going to continue to monitor it, you know. Things are fluid. Things can change throughout the session, but I think that they really did hear opposition from the masses very quickly on this bill. Now you can still reach out to your lawmakers in Indiana, and I certainly encourage all of the Indiana professionals to do so, and just let them know, you know, this isn’t something that we want. This isn’t something that is safe for consumers. We did have a take action alert for that. And just for people who are not familiar with PBA, as we find these bills that need action taken and we need lawmakers to hear from the professionals in the industry who have a professional view of what it takes to be in this industry, we want people to get involved at whatever level that they are comfortable with or have time for. And so we try to make it really easy, and we’ve put these take action alerts up so that you can with a few questions reach out to your lawmakers and say, this is detrimental and this is why. And then we also encourage anybody who is interested or has the time and wants to get involved at a more personal level, which is, you know, making phone calls, cultivating those relationships with lawmakers so as more bills come up, you are the go-to person. They have a contact in the industry that they can kind of get the view of as these bills come up, but Indiana House Bill 1364, we are very hopeful will not move forward this session.

JAIME: How important is that momentum of getting the information out there and then having such an immediate and large response to your call to action?

KATI: Yeah, that’s a great question. And I think it really varies state to state. I think that momentum, for the most part, is really important. It’s important for stylists and salon owners, anybody in the industry, to know what’s going on and obviously if you’re working behind the chair or you’re running a business, that’s not something that you’re keeping an eye on 24/7 the way that Myra and I are able to. But getting people involved at the get go is often, great for lawmakers to hear right in the beginning. Because in most states, it goes to a committee before it’s heard before the full legislature, whether it starts on the house side or the senate side. It’s going to be heard in the committee before it goes to the big group. And so if you can get in at the committee level and kind of appeal to them as to why this is detrimental, then you can kind of stop it in its tracks. You don’t have to keep worrying about it throughout the rest of the session. However, you know, in some states that bill’s gonna die anyway. But I don’t think it’s ever a bad thing to reach out to your lawmakers and let them know where you stand. They are elected officials. There are people that we vote in, and so it’s their job to listen to their constituents, and hear every side of a bill and whose views are what.

JAIME: The reason I asked that is that I think some people will be passive about it thinking, well, that bill’s not going to go very far because it contradicts the prevailing opinion in the state or what’s represented in the legislature politically. So I’m not going to really put any effort into expressing my opinion, but I think it is so important because we know that legislators talk to each other, and if a certain idea is a bad idea, it really doesn’t matter who introduces it, it should be considered a bad idea.

KATI: Yeah, I absolutely agree with that and on some of these bills, even though they’re like really out there ideas, you can see that they have multiple sponsors. And that’s always kind of concerning to me when it has multiple sponsors because it means that people in the legislature are already having discussions about this. It’s not just one person who’s like, occupational licensing shouldn’t be a thing. We always kind of have those little out there bills where there is just one person that feels strongly that there shouldn’t be occupational licensing at all. But there are also these, you know, well thought out bills that have good intentions with multiple people on them, but there is maybe some unintended consequences that might come with them. And so I think it always is important to reach out and give your viewpoints because it’s easy to think that lots of people are doing that, but the group think comes in, and you think that it will be taken care of, and that’s just often not the case. So I think that it is super important when you see something that would be concerning to you and that would affect you, that you reach out and make sure that your voice is heard on the matter.

JAIME: When they have to step from behind the language that’s been presented to them often, and I don’t think that they’re coming up with this on their own, we know there are organizations out there and this same language gets recycled from state to state to state. When they have to actually explain it in their own words, it’s such a unique opportunity to really analyze their thinking and find ways to either work with them or work around them.

KATI: Yes, absolutely, and it’s unfortunate because these organizations that are really pushing this, they’ve had a couple of wins and so that kind of makes the domino effect  just, you know, keep going because they can point to the other states and say, well, they’re doing it so it must be safe.

ASHLEY: Can you speak a bit on this, Kati, as far as, this wasn’t a planned question, but something you just said kind of knocked something loose in my head. In engaging with these lawmakers, I know there was a state senator in Michigan last session who went live on Facebook and basically talked about how this bill is being introduced because they want it to really look at all professional licensing, specifically real estate, and that was kind of their end goal, but they started with beauty. And I know we find that this fight towards deregulation of most professional licenses starts with beauty and if you could editorialize a bit for us, why do you think that is?

KATI: Oh man, that is a great question. I think the perception of legislators of our industry is often it’s just doing hair. It’s just moms that need to bring in a little bit of income. There’s really a misperception of how much professionalism goes into this, the science, the art, the safety that is necessary to bring to every single client. And you know, I think that, of course, it’s a bad thing on a legislative level, but I really think that it shows that the industry brings all of that with ease and has a commitment to the client without making the client worry. Because they know that they’ve got it, but it really does kind of lend to the perception that there isn’t much to worry about. But I really do think that that brings in the point of people can do hair and have all of the boxes checked without having anybody need to worry about it whatsoever. I do think it is detrimental though. I mean I think of all of the licenses, cosmetology is licensed in all 50 states and there is a reason for that. I mean it started early because people were concerned about the safety and sanitation, especially before there, there was a huge commitment to safety and sanitation. But now in the midst of a pandemic, we did some data collection to kind of let state legislatures and people on the federal level know that this industry is safe and it is safe because of licensing. We collected data from, I think, about 2,500 salons across the nation with over 2 million clients that have come in since reopening of state-mandated shutdowns and the infection rate was 0.07%. It’s not that there were no cases reported of people who got COVID and went into a salon. It’s that once they went into that salon, they were not spreading it to other people. So there was a handful of people, you know, that went into this salon and within two weeks got COVID, but there was not a lot of people reporting that other people in the salon were traced back and had that because a client came in with COVID, and I think that really speaks to the salon environment and the importance of licensing.

ASHLEY: To build on that, I’d love to know what is your strategy when it comes to approaching bills that are sort of, that can be a bit of an anomaly, like the one that’s kind of sticking out in my head is a bill we highlighted last year that came from a younger Democrat in Rhode Island. I think it was in the assembly in Rhode Island who introduced a reduction of hours bill. When you’re engaging with lawmakers who aren’t necessarily coming at it from that total deregulation, businesses should be able to do what they want kind of mentality, how does your strategy shift with bills like that?

KATI: In that situation, I mean in most situations, we kind of just want to figure out what their thinking is. What was the intention behind this bill? And we did call that sponsor, and kind of try to get information on why this was introduced, and they just felt that it was too much time was being put into it, and that people should be able to get into the industry faster. And so we have a lot of information that can back up why total deregulation is not a great idea. But on a state by state basis, we have so many contacts and relationships that we can ask schools, what is the curriculum? How much can be taught in this amount of time? And stylists that have gone through that to say,  would you be able to learn anything else besides safety and sanitation if it went down to this amount of hours? And that’s kind of what happened in Rhode Island. We did have school owners and licensed professionals go and kind of paint the picture of what can be done in that amount of time. And I don’t think that he had bad intentions, but he didn’t have a lot to back up why he wanted to bring the hours down to this. I think his total amount was less than anything that has been tried in any of the states and so it was kind of like there is no evidence to back up that this would be a sufficient amount of hours for professionals to get out there and still be able to keep the public safe. So yeah, it’s always kind of, you know, trying to figure out what their intention of the bill is so that we have an understanding of each other while we have these conversations and then we can kind of figure out how to message that within the industry as well.

ASHLEY: Just to follow up on that, I’m very curious to know what his response was to being questioned as far as the intention behind that bill and if it created any kind of understanding.

KATI: He didn’t take the feedback well. He was kind of just like, well, this is what we think. But we were at least able to like have a conversation about it and I think that I, I wasn’t in the committee meetings where that was put on hold, but I did receive feedback from people in the industry that some great points were made and that the committee did see the concern. Because it’s great to hear from the sponsor as to what their intention is, but once it moves on from the sponsor and there are other people considering it, we can obviously appeal to them and what their outlook is on it as well.

JAIME: Because we are in the situation we’re in, there are other topics that have sparked our interest that are being dealt with legislatively and the first one I want to touch on is the COVID relief package and what if anything is in there for the beauty industry?

KATI: Yeah, absolutely. I think they are once again looking to push out unemployment insurance and PPP. So those, I believe, will be replenished in this bill, but we are still having conversations about the FICA tax tip credit and how we can get that included in the package. Salons have been so hurt by this, and unlike restaurants, there’s no curbside pickup. If you have a 25% capacity limit, which many states do, that’s what you’re held to. And I’ve heard from so many people in the industry, you know, that haven’t gone out of business yet that their overhead is still past what they’re bringing in and they don’t know if they can make it a month, let alone six months, to make sure that vaccines are rolled out and we can get back up to capacity. I’ve been watching this really closely and I saw that the Senate intends to give the restaurants an entire grant package for their relief, which is great for restaurants, but salons are also struggling and they really need a way to make it through this. And so we did just have our FICA bill reintroduced in the house. It’s HR 821 and we are working with different members of the House Ways and Means Committee and hoping to get support on both sides of the aisle and both the House and Senate to get that included in this COVID relief bill. I know that you guys spoke a bit about that provision with Myra. So I’m happy to touch on, you know, what that would include if you want more details too.

JAIME: Just to clarify, this applies to salon owners with employees who are paying taxes on tips that ultimately don’t end up in their pockets, but of course end up in the pockets of their employees where they belong.

KATI: Right, exactly, which in the best of times, it’s not great to be paying out taxes on money that you don’t receive into your business. But when you’re just not sure how you’re going to continue to keep your doors open and keep your employees on payroll, it really makes no sense to be having this extra worry, especially because right now, tips are so in flux. People could be tipping more because they only are seeing their stylist here and there, or there’s just no way to really estimate well how much you’re going to be paying out on tips, and so that could really be something that’s making or breaking your business right now. And we believe that getting a credit for what you’re paying back on that is something that can keep employment-based salons in business through this crisis and hopefully see them over the edge.

JAIME: Another part of that package that I don’t think is getting nearly enough attention in our industry is the possibility of a $15 federal minimum wage and what impact that might have on the beauty industry at levels where we know we have many fellow professionals working where they’re, you know, they’re not earning $35 an hour. They’re earning minimum wage and perhaps a subminimum wage based on tips.

KATI: Yeah, absolutely. There are still some states that are doing subminimum wage  with tips, kind of pushing that up if those are included and I think that’s such an interesting question because different segments of the industry are going to feel differently about that $15 minimum wage. Is that something that you have heard feedback from people in the industry on?

JAIME: I have not and I’m shocked because what I’m trying to focus my research on is  what would this do for us in terms of stabilizing the safety net of our industry and making it quite clear that these laws are in place, workers have rights, and I think it would take away a lot of the exploitation and wage theft that we see within our industry.

KATI: Yeah, I can absolutely see that and I think that a lot of stylists would agree with that as well. And I know that a lot of business owners are having a lot of anxiety about it as well. But I do think that with the wage theft issue, it’s definitely something that could help with techs reporting, all of that sort of thing. But I know that there are a lot of different opinions about every segment of the industry would have a different opinion about the issue. However, I have been reading about it and I am just, I mean, it’s, it’s so interesting because I think that there is a huge push for it. But with the Congress being  50/50 split, they need every single Democrat to say that it’s something that they’re behind and I am just not sure that is a place that we’re at right now.

JAIME: I can definitely see it as a priority and our country moving that direction as far as the economy goes and to reward those who are working hard. And even though we’re not considered an essential industry, we certainly have the numbers of people working in those kinds of positions, you know, unfortunately, The highend salons don’t represent, I don’t think, the bulk of who makes up our industry.

KATI: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, most of the industry is small businesses with under  10 employees and so making sure that you have the stability when you are employed  by anyone in the industry is definitely, I think, something that people are looking for. And a lot of states are kind of doing their own thing and saying, we believe that you should be at $15 an hour. That’s kind of a trend that we’ve seen. So it’ll be interesting to see what they do federally. If that isn’t included now, I think that it will continue to be a conversation throughout the year.

JAIME: One of the other topics that I wanted to touch on, even though it’s not broadly known about is the New York Nail Salon Accountability Act, which we did a podcast episode with Catalina Cruz who’s the assemblywoman sponsor. And just recently it’s been announced that Diane Savino, the senate sponsor has also reintroduced this bill which would put additional burdens, I’m going to use the word burdens, but restrictions on nail salons in New York state in order to operate in response to these issues that we’ve seen about wage theft, and exploitation, and the health and safety of the workers. Is this a bill that you’ve been tracking?

KATI: Um, you know what, I have not been tracking it closely, but we have been involved in the issue since probably 2015 when they did kind of an expose on what is going on in New York with nail salons. And we were definitely absolutely saying we agree that it should be something that workers know that they’re not going to be exploited in their place of business, and we stand with manicurists and say, this shouldn’t be going on, and we would do whatever it takes to make sure that they’re not being taken advantage of.

JAIME: The author was fairly confident that had not.COVID interfered, that this would be something that would pass. So I’ll be interested to see just how much support this gets and whether or not the PBA will take a position. And let me ask you that, Kati. At what point does the PBA then put in its own support, not just encouraging individuals in the industry to express their opinions, but where the PBA  either supports or opposes a bill?

KATI: So anything that we take action on as far as sending out an alert, we are also doing our own personal, we oppose this bill. And then there are subjects that we will go through and say that we support this bill as well. It actually really depends on how much bandwidth we have to make those communications happen. I know Myra has mentioned it’s just she and I, and as things get really busy, we have to kind of hone in on what we can do to best protect the industry and renew the industry. And so we have to really dial in those priorities, but especially if we are asked for our opinion, we’re always happy to give our position. And so if we’re asking industry people to take action on something, we’re also, as an association, saying this is our position on it. So that is kind of part of our protocol in having a position on that. But there are sometimes legislators will reach out to us and say, you know, we’d like to hear your position on this as an association that represents so many professionals across the nation.

JAIME: Kati, the last legislative thing I want to focus on was this Prop 22, which passed in California and affects the gig economy and the workers by creating essentially a third type of employment. We’re seeing this spread to other states. We’re seeing efforts already to generate that momentum that those who oppose this proposition, it was voted on by the voters of California, the momentum that was behind the gig companies in getting that passed is already starting to build in other states like Illinois, where Ashley is located. Is this something that you’re paying attention to?

KATI: Yeah, absolutely, as an association, we’re paying attention to that. Myra watches those sorts of things closely and for a little bit, we saw some information coming out of Washington on that and so, right now, we’re just trying to gather as much information on that as we can to kind of see where the trend is going. It’s so interesting because some things come out of California and it’s like, everybody’s just like, oh, that’s a California thing. And some things come out of California and then it kind of spreads like wildfire across the nation. So that is obviously something that people are paying attention to and we are paying attention to it because of that. But that is definitely something that is more in Myra’s wheelhouse than my own.

ASHLEY: Okay, another hot topic. I am seeing a lot of conversation around why beauty salon and industry workers aren’t higher on the priority list for receiving vaccinations  and a lot of misinformation, as you would find really anywhere about the vaccinations.

So will the PBA be actively involved in any kind of vaccine education and has the PBA taken any kind of position on where beauty workers should really fall in that priority level?

KATI: Yeah, thank you so much for asking that because we do get a lot of questions on that and it is something that we are obviously concerned about and as an association that is the voice for the industry, it’s something that we have definitely been paying attention to. As you know, as everything happened with reopenings, we really worked with every state to say, we are happy to be a resource for you about the safety of our industry to make sure that we were on the priority list to get back to work. And all of our messaging has really been about how safe the beauty industry is. It’s a licensed industry. Stylists, cosmetologists, barbers, anybody who is a licensed professional has a very solid understanding of safety and sanitation and practices safety and sanitation.  Now as we have gotten involved in the vaccine conversations, what they’re saying is that their priority first and foremost is to get vaccines out to situations, and facilities, and  people groups who are not in safe situations, such as nursing homes, and grocery stores, and just the sort of places that you would go and maybe not know that you are in a safe environment. And as I mentioned earlier, we’ve collected quite a bit of data to show that the salon environment is a very safe environment. So it’s such a hard kind of double-edge sword to say we are safe and our people should be able to get back to work because then when we’re having the vaccine conversation, they’re saying, we allowed you to go back to work because it was a safe environment. And so you’re not the first on the priority list for a vaccine because we have so many other groups that are vulnerable and we need to get vaccinated first. Of course, that does not mean that we are not continuing the conversation because as, you know, an industry that is able to be out in the public, and is working right now for the most part and having skin-to-skin contact and not having the ability to have six feet of distance, that is something that we really want to speak out about. But it is an interesting conversation because we’ve been on the other side of the conversation for almost a year now saying that the industry is as safe as you can possibly be within the conversation of a pandemic, but also wanting to make sure that the industry gets taken care of and is part of the conversation in the vaccine.

JAIME: I’m encouraged you are getting so many of those questions because that tells me that there’s a general acceptance and appetite for having this done which I feel is so important for us to move ahead and overcome all of our economic struggles is by first tackling the health crisis. So again, very encouraged, and I’m even seeing that among my clientele. They’re thrilled to tell me how they’ve been securing their vaccinations, even as I’m not able to myself. Kati, are there any other bills that we should be focused on right now, or ones that you feel are particularly threatening to our industry?

KATI: The one that I spoke about, about the certificate, that’s in Oklahoma, Oklahoma Senate Bill 756. I do think that that is super detrimental because the language didn’t include anything about what the private institution that was doing the certifying would be required to provide as far as education and training, and so I am quite concerned about that. It hasn’t been heard by a committee at all, but you can find it on our take action page. A couple others just of interest, New Hampshire House Bill 606 would allow anyone to provide cosmetology services without a license if there’s no pay involved, which I think that the reasoning behind is good in that they are trying to figure out creative ways to allow people to not get in trouble for doing friends’ hair. But I think that there were some repercussions from that that can be really detrimental to people not having oversight. So that is something that you can also take action on, on our probeauty.org take action page. And then there are quite a few blow dry bills in a number of states. Luckily, the Mississippi bills didn’t make it out of committee, so we don’t have to worry about those anymore, but there are other ones in North Dakota, Missouri. We already spoke about the Utah ones. Yeah, there’s quite a few blow dry bills. And then there was also another one in Oklahoma that would allow people to perform services within a private residence without having the private residence open to be inspected. So that is something that I think people in the industry will kind of have a differing views on. You’re able to take action on that on our page as well, but it is kind of concerning not to have any oversight or a licensed environment for people to be doing those services in.

ASHLEY: You mentioned the take action page which I’ve become very good friends with in the past year. Beyond visiting that take action page on the PBA website and signing up for alerts, what would you suggest that our listeners do just to stay on top of all of this information?

KATI: In every state, there should be a way for you to track bills on your state’s legislature page and usually you can go in and in keyword search bills. So that’s always a good thing to do, but we do really try to keep people informed about what’s going on. It’s kind of hard when we’ve got our head down doing the work, but we do try to be as communicative as possible. Also, we kind of revamped a few of our documents in the past year just so that people who maybe haven’t taken action before have a better understanding of how and why to take action. So if you go to probeauty.org/advocacy, you can find those documents. We have a deregulation 101 toolkit that kind of tells you what deregulation is, why lawmakers might try to go down that avenue, and then to pair up with that, we have a communicating with elected officials toolkit, and that kind of gives you the basics on personal communication to your elected officials. And then we also have our ladders of engagement toolkit that kind of tells you what we would recommend as far as dipping your toes in the water with advocacy. But it is pretty easy to kind of make Google your friend and figure it out. I don’t think that it’s super difficult

to find what bills in your state would affect you if you’re keeping an eye on it, but it is done on a state by state basis so you do need to get the specific information in your state. That being said, every single state has kind of a slightly different process and I’m always happy to work with anyone to try to figure out what their state process is and  figure out what the best route is for them to get more involved.

JAIME: We’ll be including all of those resources in our show notes, Kati, and we want to thank you for the work you do and your willingness to share it with us.

KATI: Well, thank you so much for having me on. I really have enjoyed this so much and thank you for, you know, just being in the know and getting people more involved as well.

ASHLEY: Always great to get such phenomenal information right from the source so thanks again for being with us, Kati. 

KATI: Bye, guys

ASHLEY: If you’re enjoying Outgrowth, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts with one click. Just visit bit.ly/outgrowthpodcast. 

JAIME: As always, you can follow us in comment on recent episodes on Instagram at @outgrowthpodcast.

ASHLEY: Until next week, Jaime. Be smart.

JAIME: Be safe. 

ASHLEY: Bye.

JAIME: Bye.