When it comes to taking care of skin, most people invest the majority of their time and money into treating their face, leaving skin on the body as an afterthought. However, skin care professionals are working to educate and bring awareness to the importance of treating the entire body. This awareness is leading to the demand for results-driven body treatments in the treatment room along with the desire to have a homecare regimen specifically for the body.

SKIN & BODY
Regardless of where skin is located, the main function is universal. Skin provides a protective barrier against ultraviolet radiation, hazardous substances, mechanical and physical injury, and thermal protection. The organ detects infections, helps regulate body temperature, and controls moisture loss. Nerve endings in skin communicate to the brain so that experiencing temperature, pleasure, pressure, and pain will keep the body safe from harm.
Skin on the body tends to be thicker than on the face and has more fat in the subcutaneous layer for thermal protection. It also produces less oil due to fewer sebaceous glands. Fewer oil glands leave skin on the body drier than the face. The T-zone area (forehead, nose, and chin) contains the most sebaceous glands, which leads to more oil being produced with higher visibility. Certain areas like the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet are unique in that they have an extra layer in the epidermis that allows for more elasticity and resilience.
New skin is constantly being produced through a process called cellular turnover. Cellular turnover is the continuous act of shedding dead skin cells and subsequently replacing them with younger, healthier cells. Age, hydration levels, skin care, and overall health are all factors that dictate how fast this process happens. Skin on the body has a naturally slower turnover rate than the face, so treating concerns may require stronger formulations, stacking multiple modalities, and more frequent treatments. Exfoliation is one of the easiest ways to support healthy cellular turnover, which is why it is a core step for the majority of body treatments.

Rebecca Olpin has been at the forefront of the luxury spa industry for the last 18 years as an aesthetician and massage therapist. Her career began in Las Vegas, Nevada at the prestigious Ritz Carlton Hotel & Spa. During this time, she not only discovered a growing passion for high-end spa and hospitality service but also the desire to lean further into management and training. This led her to open yet another Las Vegas spa at Palms Place. In recent years, Olpin applied this expertise as the department educator for the Mandarin Oriental and then was a key member of the launch team for L’Occitane’s first spa in the United States. Education, coupled with her vast hands-on experience in the spa industry, eventually brought her to Sorella Apothecary where she is currently the brand’s lead educator. Olpin’s passion is visible in her educational webinars, live trainings, and successful remote education curriculums.

Your clients trust you. The regulars spend a good deal of time with you, sharing details of their lives. Up close and personal, you are a witness to how they are caring for their skin. Every day you see the effects of glycation, dehydration, barrier damage, inflammation, stress, and ultraviolet exposure.

Yet, you also know how hard it is to help clients have beautiful skin if they have a crappy diet. The largest organ of the body, skin, reflects what is taking place internally. When key vitamins, minerals, and fiber are lacking and someone’s diet is laden with refined carbohydrates, added sugars, excessive omega-6 fats from refined oils, and preservatives from processed foods – skin reacts negatively. The client then comes to their skin care professional to improve their skin from the outside in.

THE NUTRITION-SKIN CONNECTION

For a long time, the prevailing wisdom has been that diet, with the frank exception of severe vitamin deficiency, does not have much to do with the appearance of skin; most notably, diet didn’t affect acne. Believe it or not, there are still some medical professionals who cling to this paradigm today. A paper that reviewed 53 studies published on acne and diet between 2009 and 2020 conclusively showed the foods and diets that impact acne.¹ Today’s clients want help getting their acne under control, but they want more than that. They want glowing, radiant skin. This requires a beauty from within approach. 

Dr. Mark Tager is the CEO of San Diego-based ChangeWell Inc., an organization that trains and coaches certified nutritionists, licensed aestheticians, and other healthcare practitioners to enhance their craft. As a physician, he is well grounded in aesthetic, lifestyle, regenerative, and integrative medicine. He has served as the founding Chief Marketing Officer to introduce the Fraxel laser and as CMO of Syneron. A prolific author and speaker, he has written eleven books, the latest being “Feed Your Skin Right: Your Personalized Nutrition Plan for Radiant Beauty.” Dr. Tager is also the producer of the nine-hour online training program Inside Skin Beauty. 

Skin care is at over $100 billion in market opportunity, and there have been a few trends at the forefront of the industry’s momentum – the topic of sustainability and the notion of natural or clean, meaning better for people and the planet. Consumers have come to believe that natural ingredients don’t pollute the environment and have the added benefit of being less harmful or harsh to their skin and bodies. What is indisputable is that all industries are responsible for the impact they bear on the environment and the planet, and the beauty industry is not unique. 

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS

According to the latest reports from Zero Waste Week, beauty packaging amounts to 120 billion units every year. That includes plastic, paper, glass, and metals, all of which end up in landfills year after year. Aside from packaging, there aremany botanical ingredients with incredible skin benefits whose high demand by brands and manufacturers has caused a strain on the supply. One example is bakuchiol, which comes from the Psoralea corylifolia plant originating in India. A2018 study showed it to be similarly efficacious to retinol for aging concerns and therefore, a safer alternative to retinol. 

Karen Raghavan currently leads brand development, marketing, and public relations at Purissima, a leading, multi-patented health and wellness biotechnology company. She started her career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong and New York before pivoting to the beauty and wellness industry. Raghavan brings decades of beauty sales, marketing, and international experience from her work in senior leadership roles at major brands, such as Biossance, Benefit Cosmetics, and Estée Lauder. Raghavan has a bachelor’s from Dartmouth College and master’s from Stanford University in East Asian Studies as a recipient of its Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS) Fellowship. 

Deciding to go solo and open your own business is an exciting time, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed with where to even start. When to go solo depends on several factors, but the general rule of thumb is to have six months of spa rent saved. If you are going solo while currently employed and have a solid book, you’ll have a better chance of having a higher baseline of clients. There is never a guarantee that clients will follow you, but some clients do get attached to their service provider and will. If you’re in this position, be careful how you market yourself and inform your clients when you’re leaving. The beauty industry is notorious for having managers who let aestheticians go the minute they get wind of you going solo. So, unless you are in a position where you don’t necessarily need your current job, be very cautious with letting your clients know you’re going solo.

BRAND DEVELOPMENT 

Once you’ve decided you’re prepared to go out on your own, brand development starts. Your brand is more than just a logo and business name. It is your color scheme, font types, and overall aesthetic. You want your brand to be cohesive and recognizable. Don’t be afraid to experiment either. If you don’t like something, change it, but change it across the board. Your social media channels, e-mails, and whatever other marketing material you create should always be aligned with any rebranding. 

Taylor Wilson is a licensed aesthetician hailing from the DMV. She’s a graduate of Von Lee International School of Esthetics, founded by the legendary Carole Walderman. She was a wax trainer at a European wax center and eventually transitioned into her own studio, JB Skin Clinic, full time where she provided waxing and skin revision treatments. Realizing she wanted to focus on education and helping other aestheticians reach their goals, she came on board to Starpil as their brand educator.

Aging is inevitable, and many factors influence it both intrinsically and extrinsically. There are several ways to slow down the impact of aging, and products like sunscreen help combat the biggest extrinsic factor, ultraviolet damage. Muscle loss due to aging happens through the entire body. People lose muscle mass naturally as they age, and most people don’t realize it until their skin starts to sag or become loose. So, how can you help clients that are concerned with muscle loss? First, you need to understand a little more about muscles.

Andrea Gregaydis is a licensed aesthetician and international CIDESCO diplomat. She holds multiple additional licenses as a New York state instructor and nail technician, as well as a certified laser technician. Gregaydis is the lead instructor at the Aesthetic Science Institute and has over 10 years of experience as a practitioner, team coordinator, and role model for hundreds of future skin care professionals. She is a contributing author to top industry trade magazines, as well as a speaker at various aesthetics conferences across the United States. She is also a CIDESCO International Examiner.

Happy March, aesthie besties!

Solopreneurs have finite resources, and nowhere are their resources more constrained than in the time they have for the business. The theme for 2023 is maximizing effort. Because of a solopreneur’s need to wear so many hats, it is paramount that time be spent efficiently whenever and wherever possible. No aspect of business is as potentially time consuming as time spent on marketing and social media efforts. What to post? How to post? When to post? How can marketing efforts made across the board be their most effective? How can the solopreneur get every last bit of benefit from the time they spend on their business, especially in the marketing and social media arenas? 

As with most things, the concepts are relatively simple. Executing these concepts requires the solopreneur to be self-aware, have a clear and consistent direction for their efforts, and, most importantly, have their ideal client in mind at all times. 

Nichelle Mosley’s passion for aesthetics was born out of a desire to help others, after failing to find help for her own acne as a young adult. Licensed in 2015, she has worked in clinics, plastic surgery practices, dermatologists’ offices, and with family practitioners. She then opened her own clinic in 2017, Queen City Beauty Group + Wellness. She focuses on integrative aesthetics and holistic solutions to clients’ skin concerns. As a member of the International Association for Applied Corneotherapy, Mosley seeks whole-person solutions, while delivering results for clients. She is also the 2019 Skin Games Age Management Champion and 2018 Skin Games Acne Finalist.

Starting a business is like weaving a tapestry; each thread is integral to the final product and builds upon the row, or task, that came before. The cast on in weaving is the foundation of the beauty to come. Similarly, the business’s why is the foundation that all future tasks must weave through, including creating the business’s perfect potential client. No matter the name or acronym, every spa must know theirs on a first-name basis. Knowing the ins and outs of who the spa will be serving is most important when deciding the brands, services, and devices to carry. Making the best and most informed decision when considering the three P’s – price, prevalence, and problem – with the perfect potential client in mind will garner paramount results.

THE WHO

One of the first exercises in a thorough business branding session is nailing down the perfect potential client. Big brands use this to target those who will benefit the most from the item or service they are selling. Getting very granular about the perfect potential client helps in several areas of the business, including where to place ads, what voice to use, and what images will produce sales. 

When creating a perfect potential client profile, it’s beneficial to ask all the questions one would ask their best friend – everything from their name, gender, and relationship status to their kids, what keeps them up at night, and everything in between. It may even be helpful to give the perfect potential client a name. Once the perfect potential client is completely fleshed out, they can be used to determine the brands, services, and devices that best suit the spa.

Melissa Allen has lived many lives as a dance teacher, biologist, and marketing director before becoming a successful aesthetician and spa owner. All of these former positions help to color her opinions, actions, and style. Allen’s career in aesthetics has also been far-reaching; she has been an aesthetician in the back of a salon, a solo aesthetician, a spa owner with several employees, and a global brand consultant. Allen has experienced many of the paths of aesthetics and is open, honest, and willing to share her adventures. As her time in the treatment room comes to an end, she is focusing on mentoring and guiding the next generation of thinking skin care professionals and spa owners.

For many years, women have been waxing their intimate areas, but what about men’s intimate areas? In the past, manzilians or brozilians were almost taboo. It was hard for professionals to get Brazilian training, and men weren’t even considered for the service. In some waxing studios, men weren’t even allowed to work as aestheticians, and male clients couldn’t get any service done in that area at all. 

During the early years, male intimate waxing was an untapped market, but in 2014, it blew up, got really popular, and remains that way to this day. However, some skin care professionals are afraid to perform this service, and men have sometimes gotten a bad rap. Hopefully, this article can help ease your mind about this service and provide you with some insight that can help you increase your income and clientele.

Maxie Frericks has been a licensed aesthetician for over 13 years. She owns Maxie’s House of Wax, a waxing studio located in Littleton, a suburb of Denver, Colorado where she currently resides. She is a writer for DERMASCOPE and Skin Inc.. Frericks also teaches waxing workshops and is an educator for Face and Body. Specializing in waxing, Frericks is a trainer for Lycon Wax and teaches waxing workshops nationally. She will also be an upcoming judge at this year’s Skin Games. 

When you work in the service industry, which applies to any job that requires interaction with clients or consumers, you must know how to communicate appropriately. In the beauty industry, you want your clients to understand how to care for themselves. Proper aftercare can ensure you can do your job more effectively. Here are some ways to convey this message to your clients, so they will be more receptive to information and more likely to take your advice.

BREAK IT DOWN
Communicate with your clients in a way that makes it easy for them to understand and follow instructions. Tailor each message to the particular service they are receiving. For example, if your client’s preferred method of hair removal is waxing, you will want to explain the correct protocol for that type of hair removal.
After you wax and cleanse your client’s skin, you can discuss the benefits of each step they can take in their post-wax care, like moisturizing daily. Follow up with your client about what they should avoid, such as going to a sauna and being in the sun, and then explain why.
If you tell your client to avoid the sun without telling them how sensitive their skin is post-wax and how easily it can irritate them, they might not be as likely to listen.1 Ensure you break down the information so your clients understand why they shouldn’t perform specific actions after hair removal.

Mia Barnes is a health and wellness freelance writer with over three years’ experience covering beauty and skin care related topics. Barnes is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Body+Mind Magazine, an online wellness publication.

The incomparable Angela Bassett is no stranger to DMK. Throughout her career, she has benefitted from the restorative skin-tightening powers of DMK Enzyme Treatments and graciously allowed DMK therapists to post her skin health journey on social media. Her makeup artist D’Andre Michael, a genius in his own right, also uses DMK Cosmetics to enhance his clients’ natural beauty. DMK’s noncomedogenic products allow Michael to carefully highlight and sculpt Bassett into a masterpiece fit for any role or red-carpet look. Meanwhile, Bassett is free to focus on her acting, not her makeup, while DMK formulations stand up to harsh lighting, sweat, and long wear. 

Angela Bassett is a Yale University alumnus with a Bachelor of Arts in African American studies and an Master of Fine Arts from the Yale School of Drama. She is known for her crisp, powerful voice and elegant countenance, bringing fiery confidence and regality to any role. Bassett establishes herself as an iconic cornerstone of film and television, with a long and accomplished career – from her role in Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” to portraying Tina Turner in “What's Love got to Do with It” to her recent forays in “American Horror Story” and the Black Panther series. She proves her undeniable talent and magnetism again and again.

We extend our congratulations to this accomplished actor, who recently won a Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice Movie Award for her role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” In addition, she is nominated for Best Supporting Actress in the upcoming 2023 Oscar race. Angela Bassett is one of this generation’s most powerful examples of perseverance and stands as a bastion of proud, black womanhood. She is DMK royalty, Hollywood royalty, and a queen in her own right.