SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Aesthetic Report, a podcast for skincare professionals who want to grow in their careers by hearing directly from the individuals who have been there, done that, and are paving the future of their industry. Join us for the latest in all things skincare, beauty, wellness, business, and more. From interviews with leading experts to the burning topics on your mind. The aesthetic report starts now.

SPEAKER_01: 0:34

Hello, hello, everybody, and welcome to the Aesthetic Report, a podcast by Dermoscope. I am your host, AIA President and Director of Education, Michelle DeAllard Brenner. And as you guys all know, the Aesthetic Report is for all of you skincare professionals who want to learn more about how to make it in the industry by hearing straight from our industry leaders with one-on-one interviews about the latest dish on all things professional skincare. And today's episode is pretty special. We have a special guest who was the associate publisher of Dermoscope Magazine, a former day spa owner, and a seasoned professional in skincare and aesthetics, and a dear loving friend of mine for a very long time. She is here to share her wisdom, her laughs, and her favorite SD confessions. Please welcome Patricia Strunk, Pat. This is so exciting. We've never done this before.

SPEAKER_02: 1:38

Yeah, well, you know, I'm an oldie but goody, so all of those old stories are, yeah, they're passe now, but they're they're still there.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49

They're there, and there's some good ones. And the best part of all of this is that so many times that I'm always talking to everyone, I feel like, oh my gosh, I'm dating myself. I get to talk to someone who's been in the business longer than I have.

SPEAKER_02: 2:05

Yeah, it's been a long ride, but what a wonderful life it's been.

SPEAKER_01: 2:08

It has. It has. And that's why I just this is a great opportunity. I mean, you have really seen so many changes, not only just in the profession, but in the different avenues of the profession that you've been in. And, you know, at living through so many eras of the professional industry. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about your journey and ultimately how you ended up with Dermoscope?

SPEAKER_02: 2:36

Well, you want to go way back to the 70s and start there? I do, yes, yes. Okay. Well, in the 70s, I graduated from college and I worked as a fitness and health instructor for the football team at Nautilus. When I graduated, then I went to the Dallas area, worked in fashion at the Apparel Mart, and got involved with the Pat Walker Figure Salon where I learned special little tricks on nutrition, skinny fatty, skinny, and stuff like that. After I did that, then uh my mom, she's a she was a nurse and was grandfathered in on aesthetics, body treatments. She was a licensed electrolysist in the state of Florida. And um, she bought a little dermicare clinic. So when I got my divorce, she begged me to come home, go back to school, cosmetology school, get my aesthetic license, and then join her in our new venture in the skincare in health industry. Oh my god. So mom and I and a friend of ours, Angel, worked at a little derma care clinic in West Texas where we basically brought skincare and hair removal to an area of the United States that really was just brand new. Uh, this was like in 1983. I worked there for a couple of years. Will and I met at an aesthetic trade show in Dallas. My brother and my mother and I went up there. I met Will. He and my brother were lifelong friends. So Will and I kind of connected. He was very interested in my passion for making women feel beautiful from the inside out. You are what you eat, you know, the whole basic little scenarios. Will and I got married. I moved to the Dallas area, went to work at a little salon up there. And Will was in construction at the time, but he was so fascinated with my education and interest in what was new and coming out at that time, that I talked him into, or he volunteered to go to massage school. And that's where he met Ron Renee. He finished his training there. My mother at the time wanted to go ahead and retire. So she said that if we didn't come back home and run the little dermicare clinic, she was going to sell it. So Will goes, let's take our brand new baby, let's go back home, let's run this little business. And that's when he got interested in the computer. When the computer came into our life, everything changed because he was a massage therapist at that time. And he wanted to start educating and reaching all of the massage. And at that time, there was like 600 registered massage therapists just in the state of Texas. So he thought, well, if I can reach some of these massage therapists and start corresponding and sharing information with them, then I'm going to start me a little newspaper or a little magazine called Body Therapy. Well, after he and Body Therapy put their first magazine out, which I made the cover on, my first cover magazine.

SPEAKER_01: 6:11

Do you still have that cover?

SPEAKER_02: 6:13

Do you have that cover, Pat? I still have that copy of that magazine, yes. After we did, after he did that, then he was really interested in trying to expand because he had also started a little newspaper in a little town we call we lived in called the Toenail Tribune. So he was quite interested in writing and educating. And at that time, he reached back out to Ron Renee in Dallas and said, Look, I'm trying to reach out to these massage therapists and you know get everybody connected. Can you help me? And um, Ron said, Come on up here, I want to talk to you. And when he got back up to Dallas, Ron said, You know what? I think that you would just be a really good turnover because I'm ready to retire. And how would you like to take over the magazine? Basically, it was an opportunity that he couldn't refuse, and I supported that. I stayed at the Dermacare Clinic in West Texas while he moved to Dallas, came into the Dermoscope magazine, and at that time Ron had six trade shows from Canada to Puerto Rico, New York, Beverly Hills, you know, all of that. So Will just stepped into an opportunity that he manhandled and tried to figure out how everything worked. And so about six months later, the kids and I up and left Dermicare Clinic in the hands of my electrolysist. Oh my gosh. And we moved to Dallas and started right off with trade show business. And that's how we basically got started with Dermoscope.

SPEAKER_01: 8:07

That's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_02: 8:08

I still transposed Dermoscope with Dermicare because we spent so much time with each one. But the salon business was really great and very important in our first starting out with our marriage and the kids and all that. But by the time eight years went by, you know, and the magazine started going, we just fell into that. And I just loved sharing everything that I knew with whoever would listen. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 8:39

Well, and I think Pat, you know what? You you guys going into the business that way with the understanding of the day spa business and aesthetics and massage gave you a whole different perspective as you enter into publishing at the exact same time. You know, you knew your target market in a very different way.

SPEAKER_02: 9:00

Well, I was more of the hands-on, and Will was more of the putting everything down part of it. He loved it. He loves writing, he loves sharing all of his information, and he's a great researcher too. So that is absolutely true.

SPEAKER_01: 9:17

So, Pat, when you if you go back to first opening the day spa and going in with your mom, what was the biggest, would you say, back in the day challenge that maybe today's aestheticians would never believe was such a challenge?

SPEAKER_02: 9:35

My mother did um body massage treatments, but with Will's license to do body therapy, and we started telling our clients that we did body therapy, and then I had, you know, a man to do it. Then I think they either shared it around and the news started kind of going around West Texas there, and we started getting these really weird phone calls where people would go, Y'all do body massage? And I go, Yes, sir. Can we schedule you one? Well, is it a man or a woman? Well, I have you can have your choice. Well, I want to have a full body release. Oh my God. I want to excuse me. Excuse me. Uh yes, do y'all do that? Uh, and we only live like an hour or so from the Mexican border. So my comment would be well, you can either go south or you can go to the Metroplex. I'm sure you could probably find a studio or something up there that can help you with that. So, really educating the women and the husbands that massage was healthy. It was a lymphatic drainage, it stimulated circulation, it did all these wonderful healthy things instead of the personal aspects that they thought massage led to. Right. That's so that was a really big educational uh jump because when mother and I first started, we did electrolysis, waxing, facials, nail care. We didn't do hair, you know. I didn't want the perm smell and all that in my aesthetics area. We had a nice massage room all set up, you know, but yeah, we had to screen our calls at first. Was it when they would come in and then go, uh, excuse me, I got a man doing my massage? I go, Yes, yes, you do. I I think I'll I'll reschedule it another time.

unknown: 11:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 11:33

So I can imagine one of the hardest to really get around.

SPEAKER_01: 11:38

So, you know, so that leads me into and maybe you answered it, but at that time, well, what was the most popular treatment when you started out? Was that it or was that not it?

SPEAKER_02: 11:51

No, our most popular treatment back then in the early 80s, late 70s, early 80s, was facial waxing. Really? Lip waxing, lip waxing and eyebrow waxing paid all of our bills. Really? So between the dermicare galvanic treatments, yeah, because back then dermatologists didn't do any work on healthy skin. Right. So if a lady would go in and say, you know, I have blackhead through this or that, they would refer them to me. They would say, Well, there's a dermicare clinic here in town, and they do extractions. If you want your skin cleaned, you can go over there. That's awesome. Yeah. Oh, the waxing paid our bills. So it was a great, it was a great service.

SPEAKER_01: 12:38

And you know, and Pat, the interesting thing is, is it still is a great service that's that I honestly feel as though so many aestheticians are live m missing out on. Back then, a lip wax was five dollars.

SPEAKER_02: 12:50

Oh my god. So you know how many five dollar lip waxes I did? I mean, you just bring them in, bring them in, bring them in. And of course, after they got on your table, you tell them, oh, I can do a bikini wax, I can do your underarm waxes, you know, I can do your little facial or eyebrow waxes. So waxing just built and built and built. And the more I had somebody laying on my table, the more I could upsell them with the other surfaces that we sell. I'd go, oh, well, you know, we could do a paraffin dip on your feet, you know, they're all cracked. Or we can do, you know, a European facial with that has more moisturizing and massaging. Basically, the galvanic treatment and the um waxing was our bread and butter for the services back in the early 80s.

SPEAKER_01: 13:38

That's amazing. And you know what, you you just said something that I also find very interesting. That I mean, you know, as a as a school owner, but even professionals that are out there, today's professionals, and I see it here in the school too, everyone's afraid to upsell. They're afraid to make suggestions, they're afraid, not even upsell, sell period. Just say, you know, this is what you need to take home. I mean, it's been for years.

SPEAKER_02: 14:06

I would start with, I would start with, can you please tell me what you use on your skin? And they'd go, oh, you know, Irish spring, oil of Olay, you know, my dermatologist told me just to use soap and water. That gives you an opening to educate them on what tallow does to the skin and how you need to remove the extra, you know, dead skin cells to give you a nice little radiant, you know, glow. It gave you a captive audience laying there on the table to educate them as to why we are here and what we can provide to make them look better, feel better, and be able to make better purchases. You know how many women would come in with a bag of stuff and dump it all out and go, I've tried all of this and it doesn't work. I'll go, baby, you need to start simple, clean, moisturize, exfoliate, protect, you know. So it was just a great way of starting out and building your clientele because once you had the woman in, then the husband and then the daughter, and then you know, the word would spread. So we had a great little business back then. I really liked it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:17

Well, and you know what you make, you make another interesting point as you said that too, because you know, I spend so much time answering, you know, Instagram or questions and all this stuff that's out there. And social media has become so huge that so many aestheticians feel that that's how they're going to build their business. And you just said it, you know, once you get one client in, you get the husband, you get the wife, you get the best friend, you get the daughter. It's it hasn't changed.

SPEAKER_02: 15:48

Well, it's networking and it's trust and confidence in yourself. Yeah. You have to know what you're talking about, don't over-explain it. You have to talk to them in an ex in a conversation that fits them and their lifestyle. You can't put something on somebody that has exactly four minutes, you know, to jump out of bed, get the kids dressed, and get up, you know, to the bus and all that kind of stuff. So every woman and every routine is very different. And just communicating with them and learning what they need and what they're looking, what they expect to get is how you can build the confidence in providing professional services for them. Otherwise, they're gonna go, I can do that for myself at home.

SPEAKER_03: 16:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 16:39

Or, you know. Right. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 16:51

And it was either, and you know, and it just kind of worked out okay afterwards.

SPEAKER_02: 16:56

Well, like I told you, the waxing was our best sale. And I had clients from all walks. I had a particular young gentleman that was a model for like catalogs, and uh he wanted the body waxing. So, of course, I was happy to oblige him. And the only problem with that was is that I put my waxing table on a rolling tray. So when you're trying to walk around a body with a rolling tray of wax on there, there's oops, that happens. So I'm just letting all the girls know that my point of view is to always keep your wax station permanent because accidents do happen. And if you drop a wax pot in somebody's shoes or blue jeans, you're basically re liable to replace them, which I did. So, you know, a lot of little oops things, you know, if you wax somebody's little part of their eyebrow or whatever off, things happen. You know, you get over it, they get over it. You know, you're learning. So don't be afraid to make a couple of uh oops things, you know. You can joke about it, you can, you know, compliment their service. You know, there's other things that you can do, but most of my oops things were little goof things. I had one oops thing from a remember back in the old the equipment had like all these 13 different operations on it or whatever, and they had the little vacuum things with the tubes on it. Absolutely. Well, you have to remember to dial the vacuum tube down before you start because when I did this woman's neck, it looked like she had hickeys up her neck from me vacuuming it without turning the thing down. So you have to remember thinner skin and older skin doesn't require that much suction. If it's a young kid that has a lot of blackheads and stuff like that, turn that booger up. But you have to just you have to test things. So, yes, I I told her that the redness would go away tomorrow. And it did, maybe tomorrow or the next day. She was very happy. She said it was very stimulating. So, yeah, I love doing all the little vacuuming things. I loved using all of my equipment and all that. So I do too, and we still teach, we still teach all of it. Things happen. Learn from your lessons.

SPEAKER_01: 19:39

Yep. You know what you do. And you know what? It goes back to you just said the word, the the one of the most important words for aestheticians is you have to be confident. You've got to be confident in your abilities. You're gonna mess up. We're not all perfect. It happens and it's okay.

SPEAKER_02: 19:56

Yes, yes, yes. There are many, many oops things that happen in um your workplace, but the confidence that you have in being able to handle it and calm the client and to reassure her that you know everything's gonna turn out just fine. That's important.

SPEAKER_01: 20:16

So aside from like the massage calls and your oops, I mean, this is there's so many unforgettables. Is there any other moment that you're like, yeah, this could only happen in American skincare? This could not be possible.

SPEAKER_02: 20:31

Well, that brings me to, you know, when you go to trade shows, you go there to network, you go there to pick up new ideas, to learn out, learn what's new, to see who's doing what, what's been improved. Will and I were working on a trade show floor, and um this man approaches him. I think it was uh from South America, but anyway, he comes in with a dolly and asks Will how he can get involved in this clinic because he has a new piece of equipment that he would like to bring to the industry. And Will looked down at it and it literally looked like a battery charger on wheels. It was a microderm abrasion machine, but the word vacuum was misspelled on it. So Will looked at him and he said, No, I don't think that there's a uh a place right now where you know that would fit in. So, you know, maybe if you go back and you know, redo it. But back then that's when derm abrasions were first coming out, and he thought he could just make a home version of one and bring it in. And I thought, you know, only in America can somebody come in and go, I got something, somebody will buy it. I know somebody will buy it. So true. So true.

SPEAKER_01: 22:00

Did you know that Dermoscope is celebrating 50 years this year? Founded in 1975, Dermoscope has been bringing skin professionals the best in continuing education for half a century, with more to come. Follow us on social media at Dermascope on all platforms. Subscribe to the print magazine at www.dermoscope.com backslash subscribe and tune in to the aesthetic report weekly to stay in the know on our semiciennial calendar. Celebrate 50 years with Dermoscope in 2025 and join us as we usher in 50 more of the best generic non-branded education in the industry. In all of your years, you have you have worked with so many different brands, some that have lasted, some that haven't. In your opinion and what you've seen, what do you think makes the difference for those brands that have stuck around and are still there?

SPEAKER_02: 23:02

They usually provide quarterly training seminars at their training facilities, and they invite all the distributors and all the estheticians that use that product to come. I would highly recommend any line that you carry that you do all of the educational classes that they give because reading a manual is not the same as seeing a service performed. Plus, while the practitioner or the esthetician is doing the treatment, you also learn so much by watching them do the treatment. So I think that with Will and I, when we had our Dermacare clinic, we carried three brands: a top-of-the-line brand, a private label brand, and a brand that went with the Dermicare clinic machine, these their product line. So with each one of those product lines, and I do think that estheticians should have a variety because at the dermicare, when Will and I were working there, if you had teenagers coming in, they were not going to be able to afford the top of the line. But you did want to get them off of Oil of Olay or Irish Spring or whatever they were using. So you would start them on the private label or the dermicare line. And then if a doctor's wife came in and she was going to Dallas to buy all of her products, you know, at Neiman's, then the top of the line would be something that you could educate her on, the difference between professional and retail skincare that was available. So really educating the client after what you've learned, the differences from the ingredients that that brand provided gave you the confidence to tell her that well, you could save her the trip to Dallas, you know, because you have the best that's available right now in a professional line, a full range of anything that she wanted to address. Yeah. So, and then even then going to trade shows, I would highly recommend that you step into other lines and listen to what they have too. Yeah. You can always add other things that can fill the hole if there was one in the line that you were using. And that's what we did with the private label, because vitamin E, avocado oils, little things like that that I would use, you know, for soothing or topical moisturizing, I got with the private label. A specific product, I would use, you know, my top of the line, particularly when we did the European facials. I used the top of the line product to do all of that treatment with.

SPEAKER_01: 25:54

Yep. You know, I just I love listening to what you're saying because those are all things that haven't changed in the industry. They're all business builders, they're all customer service skills, they are they're all attributes that make you a successful aesthetician. I mean, that hasn't changed in all these years.

SPEAKER_02: 26:13

Well, you know, also going to the trade shows and bumping into somebody that you hadn't seen since the last trade show. Yeah, it's really nice to be able to share those oops moments and also those bonus moments that made you really shine, you know, something that you really did to somebody that, you know, helped them so much, you go, oh my God, I wish I'd had a before and after. These were before we ever even did before and afters. Right, yeah, right. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 26:44

So in such a in such a tight-knit industry, you know, stories and legends travel fast without naming any names. What's a rumor that's just too good not to share with our listeners?

SPEAKER_02: 26:58

Well, Will and I had the Dermic Care Clinic in West Texas. We were nobodies. We were just two passionate people trying to make a difference in a small community, less than 100,000 people, but our territory went from almost Lubbock to Mexico, from Dallas, you know, to El Paso. We had, you know, 250 square miles of clients that would come because it was, you know, so new. We were new. We got the Dermoscope, we were new. Our first trade show was Long Beach. Oh my gosh. And we get there, and you know the Long Beach Convention Center, they have that huge cafeteria you're in there. We're sitting in there having our little sandwich, you know, beforehand. And there is gossip on the floor. You can hear people saying, Dermoscope's been sold. That guy that has Dermoscope, I wonder how he got connected with Ron Renee. The news would go around. We were sitting there listening to people talking about us. They didn't even know who we were. We were sitting right in the middle of the cafeteria. And pretty soon you could hear this. Well, you know, Ron's Ron's gay. I bet that guy's his love. I bet that guy's his lover, and they just passed it on so they could keep it in the family. Will and I were sitting there going, um, I guess, honey, I'm gonna keep my arm connected to yours all day while we walk around so that there's not another guy that comes up and gives you some attention. I'll be letting everybody know you're mine, you're mine. I love it. I love it. So yeah, we had to fight that. We had to fight that little misnomer for the first round of trade shows because you know it goes the same people basically work the trade show industry. So from coast to coast, Canada to San Juan, you know, everybody would go, oh, you're you're Will Strunk, you're the new owner of Dermascope magazine. Yes, yes, I am, you know. And of course, Will and I have uh, you know, we have kind of Texan accents. So, you know, they were going, well, you know, y'all are from Texas, you know, Ron Renee's from Texas. And how'd y'all meet? Oh, Will got his massage license in Ron's school. Uh-huh. So you can see they started connecting all the little false, false fingers there. But yeah, we worked through that. That's a pretty good thing.

SPEAKER_01: 29:26

I can't believe in all of the years I've known you guys, I never heard that story. Well, it's not one that Will likes to tell. I love it. I love it. So, Pat, bringing us fast forward and where we are this summer. You help celebrate Thermoscope's 50th anniversary after the Ukrainians have stepped away for oh my god, for for quite a while. I mean, what was that? What was that like? That had to be amazing.

SPEAKER_02: 29:58

You know what's amazing. Is our children traveled with us? We had them in a school where we could take them out and take them with us. You know, we are beat it from coast to coast. So they grew up in this industry. And Amanda, she loved standing at the bottom of the escalators, passing out that dermoscope magazine. So from the time she was four years old passing out that dermoscope magazine, she always said, This is what I want to do. This is what I want to do. I love this. I love meeting all these people. I love having all this stuff. I like traveling. I like, you know, sharing everything that I know. I like talking to all the people that want to share all the things that they know. And so after 50 years of Will and I keeping the magazine in a certain way, watching Amanda's exuberance and her newfound passion and social media, which Will and I, you know, weren't involved in that decade of everything coming up. Watching her progress gives us a lilted heart, knowing that she's found something that she knows that she can make her career in, keeping everybody in the network connected and also providing a platform for people to share and continue offering up all the little notes of wisdom and oops moments and things to build confidence in the professional industry because the wellness industry, and Will basically coined this back in the 80s when he started Body Therapy Magazine, wellness, you know, it includes everything. So with Amanda including everything in the magazine, you know, highlighting, you know, people and their journeys, highlighting spas and their, you know, decisions of what you know they lean towards and how you specialize to draw more clientele in. And I think she's just done a wonderful job and bring it into the 21st century. Yeah. I'm a from the last century. So we did our job the best that we could we knew how. And now watching Amanda do her job and sharing with this educational format and having friends and people like yourself and Dorian and everybody within the magazine and in the industry, you know, supporting her, I think it's going to continue for another 25 or 30 years without breaking a stride.

SPEAKER_01: 32:39

So yay! Yeah, I would well, I would agree. And that brings me into my last question is you know, given everything that you've seen and the insight and your experience, and at the same time what you've seen Amanda do in the last few years, if you had to give a toast to Dermoscope for the next 50 years, what would it be?

SPEAKER_02: 33:02

Love your educators. Yeah, yeah. I love them. Lift them up high. It takes a lot of energy to write. It takes a lot of your time out to put things on paper and to share them with Dermoscope. It's a commitment that working people just don't make room for stuff like that. So having a platform for her to be able to include anybody that wants to share, that's you know, a valid conversationalist that can share something is um, I think, a great, a great platform for her to keep using Dermoscope and to keep the educational platform and to keep supporting the schools, the trade shows, all the symposiums and seminars. I think Dermoscope is just a center of a networking hub. Yeah. So the more she can do with it, the better it'll be. And we've connected, you know, the medical industry, the you know, so many things to it over the last, you know, 30, 40 years that there's no telling where where it can go from here. So I think just keeping the professional industry a step above the retail and you know, right underneath the level of the medical gives everybody a platform to succeed in and continue growing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 34:22

Yep. I I agree with that wholeheartedly. So if there were, and I think I know what your answer is gonna be to this, but if there were one thing that you could say to our listeners to be sure to do, or to do to succeed or move forward, what would that be?

SPEAKER_02: 34:42

Take care of yourself. If you don't love yourself, how are you gonna share the love with those that you have your hands on? Your body is an energy field, and when you come into a room, that ambiance, your energy when you walk into the room, don't carry the baggage with you when you go into a room to do treatment. When you walk into that room, that client should feel confident, you should be relaxed, and you should have had sleep and water, and you should have had treatments. You need to know what that client is feeling. I think any esthetician that doesn't do monthly treatments on themselves should be ashamed of themselves for not making time for themselves. So, you know, kudos for all of those that take the Mondays that are closed days off. That's what we used to do on Mondays when we were closed. That's when the girls could come in. We'd do whatever they wanted. They wanted to wax their legs, they wanted to have a galvanic treatment, they wanted to do their own nails. You know, the the salon was kind of open for them to use that on that time. So I would say, girls, practice what you preach. I knew you were gonna say that. Learn more about yourself and what you need so that you can share that with those that are in question as to why is this happening to me? So um, yeah, that's what I would say. Take care of yourself, and um all other things will come. I love that.

SPEAKER_01: 36:18

Okay, so this is really due to Amanda, but we always have to play a game at the end of every podcast. Would you rather? So I have five questions for you, and I'm gonna give you the question, and you have to answer it as quickly as you possibly can with as little thought as you possibly can give to it. I'll try. Okay. Question number one: one spa treatment from the 80s or 90s that you secretly loved or secretly hated.

SPEAKER_02: 36:55

Well, back in the 80s, when a gentleman would come in and want to have hair removal done, it would surprise me when it was on his genitals.

SPEAKER_01: 37:08

Really? That would surprise me too in the 80s and 90s, especially the 80s. It did. It was it was a big surprise.

SPEAKER_02: 37:15

I would go, how can I help you? Well, I'm doing a little transformation, and I need to have some facial hair removed and some body hair removed. And I go, okay, let's get with it. You hold it, I'll work on it.

SPEAKER_01: 37:32

That's it. I love it. I love it. Okay, question number two. A product launch you witnessed that went totally wrong.

SPEAKER_02: 37:44

Um, a product launch. I don't know, but you know, that just brings me to this big picture that I see. You know, when you go to a trade show and you're in a great big classroom, they have these great big huge screens on the stage where they can show you what's going on up close. It was kind of a faux pont because I didn't really know whether or not this was going to be good or not. But there was this waxing class going on and this great big blue ball on the stage. And my son was running errands, and he just happened to stop by just about the time this Brazilian wax was being done on stage. And he said, I wish I'd never seen that.

SPEAKER_01: 38:38

I can actually see his face right now.

SPEAKER_02: 38:42

Brazilian wax going on. And he walked by and he goes, Oh my god, I wish I hadn't seen that. That's hysterical. So that was kind of a faux pas thing. We should keep the doors closed on personal things like that to protect the uh demonstration.

SPEAKER_01: 38:58

Yep, that's great. Okay, how about a mentor or a colleague that left a lasting impression?

SPEAKER_02: 39:05

Oh my goodness, I had so many, you know, Erica, Robert Demer, uh, Mark Lees, uh, you know, there were so many of those from the very beginning. They all left an impression. Silly things from like hiding their drinking bottle behind their booth in the trade show. Uh, you know, I mean, all kinds of things go on, and all kinds of impressions are left. I think one time I was trying to hurry through the trade show because there's an emergency phone call. And so I can't remember if it was Paula or Will or somebody, but they came up to me, they go, please go find this man, please go find this man. There's an emergency phone call. And I went, All right, so they gave me this name on this piece of paper. So I was walking through the trade show, hollering out this name of this French Canadian man with my Texas accent. So, of course, it made a big impression on everybody in the trade show because all weekend they were walking around saying his name Texan instead of French. His name was Jean Brian. But I was going around going, Gene Breen, Gene Breen, is there Gene Green here? So, you know, when you have somebody, and he was like a big distributor for like, I can't remember, Touch America or one of those great big equipment companies that involve this stuff in. Oh, so everybody on the trade show floor the rest of the weekend was going around going, hey Gene. That's hysterical. You know, they're just little things that leave impressions on you, but they're all pretty quirky and funny. And one of my favorite impressions right now is just thinking about the spa that Paula built for Erica here in Hot Springs. It's a gazebo outside with two matching massage tables on the lake, and you can go and have this fantastic couple's massage anytime during the day at this resort up there, and it's all in Erica's name. So, I mean, little things like that. I mean, I love Erica, she you know, she's been gone a long, long time, but you know, everybody still you think about people like that that have made impressions in your life. Paul and Erica were one of them. I used to love going to their spa in Dallas. I mean, they had all those little dogs, you know, they were playing. Anyway, it was great. They were great institutions and great mentors, too.

SPEAKER_01: 41:31

That's awesome. All right, my last question is the funniest nickname or term that you've heard in the professional skincare world?

SPEAKER_02: 41:41

A nickname or a term? I guess when we first learned how to do chemical peels, and I'd be explaining to someone how to remove the melasma or to take care of their little pigmentations and stuff. You know, we'd just go, you want to peel it? We're gonna peel it. We're just gonna peel it off. We're just gonna put it on there until it's all frosty and then it'll just peel it off. But don't scratch it, just let it come off by itself. That's awesome. So they come in, I go, You ready for a peel? And basically, girls, this time right now is prime peeling time. There you go. There you go. Because you have no sun, everybody can hide indoors for a week, and um, then your skin will be absolutely gorgeous. So, my beauty tip to you at the end of this right now is set your beauty routine. Go ahead and get ready for that new year's look and schedule yourself a nice easy peel. That's yay!

SPEAKER_01: 42:45

Yeah, yay. Excellent advice. Excellent advice. Well, Pat, we have known each other a long time and I just love you to pieces. So thank you for doing this with me today. It was so much fun.

SPEAKER_02: 42:58

Thank you for letting me share. Y'all have a great weekend and enjoy your holiday season too.

SPEAKER_01: 43:04

All right, love ya. All right, everybody, for everyone listening, thank you so much for spending the time with us. I am Michelle De Allerbrenner. This has been the aesthetic report, and we'll talk to you all real soon.

SPEAKER_00: 43:15

Okay. Thank you for listening to the Aesthetic Report. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you'll never miss an episode. If you love the show, leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and tell all your FD besties to give us a listen. And don't forget, the education doesn't stop here. The Aesthetic Report is one of many platforms offered by Dermascope. Visit Dermascope.com for more education and industry news from the Authority on Professional Skin Care. Stay tuned and we'll see you next time for another episode of the Aesthetic Report.