Latest / Honest Esthetician Education / You Don't Need Every Device & Skincare Line When You First Open!
Transcript
- 0:05When I first opened up my business, I think the biggest pressure for me was to feel like I had to invest in every single product and every single device to be successful.
- 0:15And that was simply not the case.
- 0:16And I'm so glad that I did not do that when we first opened because it would have dug me in a hole and just led me down a rabbit hole of just being unsuccessful.
- 0:29I agree.
- 0:30I also think that one of the biggest things, and it's almost the mindset of beginning and starting your business with a place of, when you go to get those products and those devices, you think that your business is going to be successful because you have those.
- 0:48You think you're going to sell them because whether it's the rep that tells you that you're going to sell this and make X amount of money or you have this dream in your brain without like an actual plan.
- 1:00Because everybody else does and they can sell, but not without a real plan and not without even being a little bit established.
- 1:07And we've always spoken very highly of like hydrafacials.
- 1:12their whole marketing system and everything they do on their back end.
- 1:15But at the same time, they don't do enough to just make you buy a machine and then a client comes in the door.
- 1:21I can speak from personal experience.
- 1:23The first thing that I personally invested in when we first opened up our business was Skin Better products.
- 1:29And one of the biggest things that they sold me on was that I can make money online.
- 1:34Yeah.
- 1:36And it's not that simple.
- 1:37Yeah.
- 1:37And you can.
- 1:38You can.
- 1:39Definitely.
- 1:41In my opinion, I think that to make the amount of money that...
- 1:46they say you can make is unrealistic.
- 1:50Yeah.
- 1:50Unless you're on Instagram 24 seven and you have the perfect audience when you first start.
- 1:57Yeah.
- 1:57It's really, really difficult.
- 1:59And their products are expensive and you know, we sold plenty of products online, so I can't act like, you know, you've never done it, but we definitely did not sell any products online for probably the first three to four months.
- 2:11Is that sound pretty close to, I don't know.
- 2:13I can't, but I feel like it was a while.
- 2:15Yeah.
- 2:16To actually really sell, especially to random people.
- 2:19I think that one of the biggest pressures that I put on myself was that I compared myself to huge estheticians that maybe they have been doing this for so much longer and they actually understand.
- 2:32And maybe they do sell online and they are successful.
- 2:35But when you're first opening up your business, you should not rely on that source of income.
- 2:40Yeah.
- 2:41And I think that's what a lot of reps put pressure on is you can make X amount of money if you sell this X amount of treatment.
- 2:48And it's not realistic because when you're opening up a business, all your money is going towards the cost of your services.
- 2:57And you may be breaking even, which is what we did.
- 2:59Yeah, I agree.
- 3:00I want to go back really quickly because you did just, I don't want you to sound, uh, you know, hypocritical is that you say, don't, you don't need to go big.
- 3:10You don't need to spend all the money, but skin better was very important to you to bring on right when you open.
- 3:16And that's a very expensive over $2,000 opening order.
- 3:20So why was that important for you to go with and not other things?
- 3:24For me personally, if I didn't work with Skin Better before, not working with the company, but selling it, knowing the product, being super obsessed with their product line, I would not suggest that for the average person.
- 3:40But because I had personal experience of it and I loved and I still do love Skin Better to this day.
- 3:45And I think it's blown up even more than when I first started.
- 3:48Yeah.
- 3:49It's important for you.
- 3:51For me, Skin Better was the line that I fell in love with.
- 3:54I felt I knew I could sell.
- 3:57Gotcha.
- 3:57So that was my personal experience.
- 3:59And so whether that's you, let's say you carry a line that like you, you went to school with, invest in that.
- 4:07I mean, everybody starts somewhere, but it's so important to be authentic to who you're selling to.
- 4:12So whatever you fall in love with, I think it's really important for you to
- 4:16have that confidence to sell.
- 4:18And that will get you such a long way when you are an esthetician.
- 4:22We were almost kind of, uh, we were set up for a more difficult journey because of the line you fell in love with had an expensive opening order.
- 4:30I also had, you also have to think of the long term of who you are selling to.
- 4:34So for me, I really wanted to focus on anti-aging clients and I knew the type of clientele that I could attract because I had been in this space before.
- 4:43So whether that's
- 4:45acne, anti-aging, you know, whatever you want to specialize.
- 4:48And I think it's really important to carry a line that resonates with your values and who you want to be as a provider.
- 4:54And as we see on social media, there's a bunch of different avenues that you can go.
- 4:59So whatever resonates with you and whatever you can see yourself selling till the day you die is what you should invest in, in my opinion.
- 5:06So it's not about not investing in the big expensive things.
- 5:10It's just about picking which ones and when to pick them.
- 5:14Because then you could say you investing in skin better, which I would also argue it's probably the best thing that ever happened to our business.
- 5:21It attracted our dream clientele.
- 5:23It gave you a confidence.
- 5:24It gave you this boost of energy when the business opened to go, no matter what, I have my, I have a, you know, at least $2,500 worth of my favorite product I've ever used before that I can sell.
- 5:38And you knew you could sell it.
- 5:39So it's more about not trying to do that with everything because a little bit of our story, again, you love Hydrafacial too.
- 5:48Yeah, you loved Hydrafacial too.
- 5:49Doesn't mean that we opened the doors with Hydrafacial.
- 5:52That took, I think, three to four months to finally bring on, which that's still very quickly, but we also were able to get in a good position pretty quickly to be able to feel comfortable with taking it on.
- 6:03I felt in, like I asked my clients, you know, I'm thinking about bringing the service that I've worked in in the past and they were super excited.
- 6:10So that gave me hope and I knew I could sell it.
- 6:12It was just making sure that it was the right timing and that when I did kind of put in that, you know, little teaser, if they would be interested or not.
- 6:20And I also think it's really important that whatever line, I mean, I started with a super, super small line and I still carry.
- 6:29certain products here that are from that line.
- 6:32But I carried a very small line when I first started also.
- 6:35So when we first started, I carried an inexpensive line, which I think gives phenomenal results.
- 6:41They're Goldskin Fitness.
- 6:42I feel like you're like, are you gatekeeping that information?
- 6:44No.
- 6:44The way you were saying it.
- 6:45I was getting there.
- 6:46Sometimes I take a little bit longer to get to the point.
- 6:48I was like, are you going to say it?
- 6:50We've talked about it before.
- 6:51No.
- 6:51Is it a secret?
- 6:52I mean, it's in our course and everything.
- 6:54It's on the internet.
- 6:55But anyways, I do think that...
- 6:59I did invest in I invested in what I knew I could sell.
- 7:02So even if I started with a smaller company and then a huge company, it may not make sense to the average person, but with my background of working at a few med spas, that's what I fell in love with.
- 7:15So I also worked with lines like Zio, which I didn't fall in love with personally, even Elastin skincare,
- 7:23so there's been a lot of different lines that i've tried and it just i didn't fall in love with them so these lines that i started with are lines that i was like i can sell these and i know that from my personal results and me having such sensitive skin that i could genuinely recommend these products to my clients and that they would be happy and attract the right clientele to people that i wanted to be long term yeah and maybe in the beginning it
- 7:48It was truly trial and error because we were trying specials.
- 7:51We were trying all these different things.
- 7:52But now I can confidently say that bringing on what I did in the beginning, Hydrofacial Skin Better, you know, all these targeted anti-aging and even acne lines.
- 8:04I filled in holes as I was growing.
- 8:07So I started with just standard facials and then I brought on Hydrofacial.
- 8:12And I knew eventually, like, I'm like, I want to,
- 8:15target anti-aging clients.
- 8:16So we started with that.
- 8:18And then there was holes in my, when people came in for appointments, I was like, oh my gosh, there's a lot of people struggling with acne.
- 8:26There's a lot of women struggling with hormonal acne.
- 8:30And I truly don't feel like, for instance, Skin Better was there for me personally in my business.
- 8:35And I know that a lot of estheticians have success with Skin Better.
- 8:38But to me, that line is strictly just anti-aging.
- 8:41You can throw in products here and there, customize it with different products.
- 8:45But when you're dealing with acne, it's so complex and you're focusing on managing it.
- 8:50And you don't want people to go through the purging process for way longer than they have to be.
- 8:55Very discouraging.
- 8:56Yeah, I've had people on skin better.
- 8:58And maybe they went through the process six months versus face reality.
- 9:02They went through it within 90 days.
- 9:04People within four weeks saw a difference.
- 9:07So for me personally, there was a gap that was missing that I truly felt in my practice that I found the missing piece to my practice.
- 9:16So as you're growing in your practice, you have to know...
- 9:21when to invest in those things because you're constantly listening to those things that your clients are saying.
- 9:27And so if I would have invested in lasers because I felt FOMO of missing out on all these different things.
- 9:35Yes, that everybody else is because I didn't feel as successful.
- 9:39I would have dug myself in a hole and not saying that you shouldn't invest in things because whatever you, because sometimes we do invest in things and it does make us go under.
- 9:50But if you truly believe in the product, it will eventually sell and you will dig yourself out of that hole, if that makes sense.
- 9:56Yeah.
- 9:56And it's really easy to, yeah, it's really easy to fall into those kind of hype and what everybody else is doing and not fully understanding if it's really going to be the best for your business and the best for your clients.
- 10:06The gym there to me is circling back to like the main point of this video.
- 10:11The gym is that.
- 10:13invest early on into products that you absolutely love and that you know, and then find the holes as your practice grows and figure out what things that you can add on as you know your clientele.
- 10:27And I think that's absolutely beautiful.
- 10:30I think that's an amazing piece of advice for a young esthetician that sees, especially someone like you now, who's established.
- 10:38I mean, it feels a
- 10:39weird for us to say that because we just feel like we're struggling still sometimes, but that you're established and you offer skin better face reality, hydrafacial skin pen, you've done buyer repeal, you have perfect derma peel.
- 10:49And we didn't start with all of those things.
- 10:52And we've had to bring them on one by one and then figure out which ones worked and which ones didn't work.
- 10:57Just like skin better.
- 10:58When we placed our first skin better order, you place a lot of products that you've never bought ever again.
- 11:03Or just very rarely, right?
- 11:05If people need them, they've bought them online because your clientele- You start to know what products sell the best.
- 11:10Exactly.
- 11:10And I think in general, it's easy to look at.
- 11:12If you take that one scenario and look at every product line or different devices, you just know, okay, my clientele, the clientele I'm building is not very interested in that.
- 11:22And you've realized that going back to laser, I want to talk about that a little bit.
- 11:26Why have you not brought a laser on?
- 11:28You're anti-aging.
- 11:29There's plenty of anti-aging lasers.
- 11:31What stopped you from bringing on even a quote-unquote cheaper laser like the Aerolase?
- 11:36I think the more that I... Air Lays?
- 11:38Air Lays.
- 11:38Yeah, Air Lays.
- 11:39I think the more that I grew in my practice, the more that I personally realized that I didn't want to expand as far as bringing on a team.
- 11:49And maybe I will eventually hire on a receptionist, but it didn't bring me passion managing somebody else.
- 11:55And I think that there's so much more that I want to do with this community and something that I feel is missing, something I wish that I had when I first started in...
- 12:05in terms of comparing myself to other successful estheticians is I don't, I know that there is community out there.
- 12:13I'm not saying that there isn't, but there is a lot of misleading information in this industry.
- 12:18And that's why I, we started this course that we're working on right now is because I,
- 12:23I want there to be true community.
- 12:24I want there to be the realness of it.
- 12:26And I don't want people to dig themselves into a hole.
- 12:29I don't want people to invest in things that aren't going to help them in the long run.
- 12:33And we've had a lot of consultations recently where people feel the need to expand in things, but they don't realize that they need to niche down in whatever they specialize in.
- 12:44So, um, with that being said, pause you right there.
- 12:47Let me jump in.
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- 13:50Is there anything you want to add to that?
- 13:51No, I mean, I, I think.
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- 14:06So back to the point of investing in things.
- 14:09I want you to circle back really quickly.
- 14:11I want you to give specific advice for an esthetician who's just opening up because we're saying...
- 14:16don't fall for kind of the hype and investing in everything.
- 14:20How do you recommend them finding the product line to carry or the first device or devices to bring on?
- 14:28I know there's a question about budget.
- 14:30It could matter if they have a big business loan.
- 14:33All those things could take an effect.
- 14:34But generally, kind of what general advice would you give somebody to go,
- 14:38I'm interested in, I know this is kind of a blanket, a broad statement because people have different niches, but can you speak a little bit about like general advice you'd give to how to find that first product line or find that first device?
- 14:50I would say whatever, whatever led you to become an esthetician, find that passion of what motivated you to become that.
- 15:02So whether you really wanted to focus on anti-aging acne,
- 15:08Whatever it is, for me personally, I wanted to be a makeup artist.
- 15:13So for me, when I toured the school and I went to esthetician school, I realized my true passion was not...
- 15:23I knew I always wanted to make people feel confident in their skin.
- 15:27But when I was covering people's acne with makeup, I didn't feel...
- 15:32I just felt like a different purpose.
- 15:33So find your passion of what it means for you to be an esthetician and niche down in that.
- 15:41It's so, and there's only a few ways that we can go as far as an esthetician, but let's say that you specialize in acne.
- 15:49Let's say that you struggled with acne.
- 15:51That's a really common thing that we, that a lot of people go through these days.
- 15:56So let's say you had a personable experience
- 15:59you specialize in acne now niche down in that and don't feel pressure to bring on every single product, every single device because it's just going to dig you in a hole when you're first starting.
- 16:10And something that I always tell people is that you're, you're,
- 16:17your brain and your hands are so powerful.
- 16:20And that's something that I had to constantly remind myself when I first started is that I have knowledge, number one, and I have my hands.
- 16:29And I started with facials.
- 16:30That's all I had.
- 16:32And I built a business from that.
- 16:34So I hope that that can give you guys some hope that when you start,
- 16:39with your clientele, you are going to eventually have to make an investment, but study your clients, figure out what they need and start with a niche.
- 16:48Because if you have a base of what you want to specialize in, you'll know what to invest in, in three months.
- 16:55And I want to talk really specifically, really quickly to the kind of the aesthetic space that's different, that's outside of the realm of facials.
- 17:04But I want to talk about waxing eyelashes and eyebrows, which are also in the aesthetic niche.
- 17:10And I, my biggest issue with people that do any of those things, not my issue, like I
- 17:17niche down on those things as well.
- 17:18And if you're somebody who does facials, don't try to bring on brows or eyelashes or waxing as well, just to try to like bring it on, just to bring it on.
- 17:30I know it feels scary and we've been there.
- 17:32Trust me, we've been there before.
- 17:34When clients are asking like... Where we've actually had serious conversations about you bringing on waxing.
- 17:38Or not serious.
- 17:38It was serious to you, but not to me.
- 17:40Because you had multiple clients ask you, can you wax my eyebrows real quick?
- 17:45And you started going like, hey, Chris, like a wax pot's $30.
- 17:48Like I learned how to do it.
- 17:49I feel pretty comfortable.
- 17:51Multiple clients have asked me.
- 17:53And we steered away mostly because we wanted to niche down with the type of client.
- 17:57We didn't want you to be known as the waxer.
- 17:59I mean, and the more that you develop those habits, the more that you're going to develop that type of clientele.
- 18:03Yep.
- 18:05just imagine yourself even a year from now of what you want to be doing in the treatment room.
- 18:11And just remember that it requires patience of what you want to be.
- 18:16So when you set yourself up for success, that's you being patient and putting yourself in opportunities that is going to lead you towards that dream journey.
- 18:27job that you have as an esthetician yeah but i hope i don't say that in a way to like discourage the eyebrows or the lashing thing because if that's what you do just focus on that and if you do eyebrows don't try to bring in facials yeah stick to that be the best of the best at that and offer just that because you'll get the best clients and you can raise your price of not being the jack of all trades don't be the person who does a little bit of everything because you
- 18:57And I've seen it.
- 18:58I've seen a lot of estheticians that branch themselves out so far that you can't even like comprehend what type of clients you're getting.
- 19:06You're, you're, you're getting so many different clients.
- 19:08Every day it's just something new and you have no clue what you're in for.
- 19:11Something that I can speak to from personal experience is I've, you know, this past year I've really focused on attracting my dream clientele and that's premium high-end clients that value my time and, um, just.
- 19:25know what they're getting in for.
- 19:26So the type of clients you get when you offer higher prices, for instance, like I go into work every day and I know that people value my time.
- 19:35So I think it's really important to attract- A lot less cancellations and yeah, things like that.
- 19:39And you can be that in any niche.
- 19:41Yeah.
- 19:41And even like requiring, I know it's scary in the beginning, but requiring a card, requiring a deposit.
- 19:49And the type of people that I get now is, hey, I have to, even if they do have to cancel their appointment, they're like, please charge my card.
- 19:56Or it's something very serious and we don't charge the card regardless because that's the type of clientele we bring.
- 20:02I think that was an amazing episode.
- 20:03I hope that everyone got some really valuable information.
- 20:06I hope we answered all the questions.
- 20:08Yeah.
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- 20:18Yeah.
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- 20:37But thank you so much for tuning in for today's episode.
- 20:40And I will see you next time.