DEEP DIVE: The Esthetician's Path to Success: Unveiling Client Psychology with Douglas Preston Part 2

Enjoy part two of this episode. 

[Intro] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Facially Conscious with myself, Trina Renea, Esthetician, Dr. Vicky Rappaport, dermatologist, Rebecca Gadberry, the Cosmetic Ingredient Guru, and our fabulous, overly-educated consumer, Julie Falls.

We are gathered here together with you to talk about this crazy world of esthetics. It's confusing out there in this big, wide world. That's why we are here to help explain it to you all, subject by subject. We will be your go-to girls. And from our perspective, without giving medical advice, we will keep things facially conscious. 

Let's get started!

01:02 Rebecca Gadberry: Let's talk about anxiety, because that's a deep feeling. I think a certain percentage of esthetics clients have some anxiety around either getting the treatment, what's going to happen, even being alone in the room with the esthetician. So what can you suggest that an esthetician can do to calm anxiety? 

01:27 Douglas Preston: The first thing is it goes right back to the consultation. That consultation should be in-depth. And you should be sitting, facing the client, not across the desk. You’re mirroring them. If they're not making eye contact with you, don't force that. Also, when you're talking to them, look away, look obliquely. Try to win that feeling of parity. 

Talk to them at their vocal level. If they're excited, don't be droll. If they're very quiet and nervous, just be very quiet and take your time with them. And familiarize them with yourself. Also, let them know that you know that they could be feeling that way, so there is an understanding. 

You have to do a little research here to say, "Okay, this person seems to be a little anxious." 

Now, I get this with teenagers all the time, particularly teenage boys. Anybody who's ever worked with teenage boys know they're very untrusting. They're very pain-sensitive Every time I get a new boy, it's like, “Oh, man.” And so I have to make them feel good about me, right? So I talk to them and I use a certain humor. I sort of minimize all that's going on.

On the other hand, I let them know. “Hey, when we go in there and we're working together, you're in charge. I'm not going to do anything to you. We're going to do this together. It's kind of a partnership. And if anything doesn't feel right to you, you need a break or whatever, talk to me about that. Okay? I'm a pretty cool guy. I understand. I was your age. I'm a boy.”

I don't have kids, so we never really grow up. 

03:18 Rebecca Gadberry: I have testosterone. 

03:24 Douglas Preston: So you talk to them directly about their feelings, again. It's when we circumvent that that we have that problem.

First, as you so succinctly said, you have to be aware of that. If you're myopic or you're self-centered, you're going to miss it. But if you are speaking to them about how they might be feeling, and you could see it in their body language, right? And tone of voice and eye contact and all of that. You can at least attempt, you may not always succeed, but you can at least attempt to get them to feel good about you going into a private treatment room. 

And me being a man going into a private room with a female that I've never seen before, I have to be extra sensitive about that.

04:18 Trina Renea: For male estheticians, I feel like because women are like, “You don't know me. I'm a girl.”

04:27 Douglas Preston: I really haven't encountered that, I can say, very much in my career. Probably more than anything, the comfort came from the fact that everybody thinks I'm gay.

04:41 Rebecca Gadberry: He's very straight. When his wife met him, she thought, "Oh, I can have a gay friend. I've always wanted a gay friend." Then they got married. 

04:52 Douglas Preston: And virtually everybody I ever dated. And when I was a wardrobe consultant many years ago, that worked really well, because I was going into bedrooms, in closets. I'm like, “Oh, honey, these are never going to work for you.” And, “Oh, my God, is this your husband's stuff? And you're still married to him?” That's got some private misery.

05:15 Trina Renea: Playing a character.

05:17 Douglas Preston: I could do it. 

05:19 Rebecca Gadberry: You can do it. 

05:22 Douglas Preston: So to some degree, that would create comfort. Of course with the guys, it doesn't, unless they're gay too. But I have to say, in all the years and the tens of thousands of people I've worked with, it doesn't even register as a statistic. But when we go back and talk about just the basic comfort level of a person where anxiety might be involved, and particularly today because it's rampant, recognizing that as a possibility to begin with. 

And everybody has some nervousness going into a new place, right? And if your reputation precedes you, then especially so. There are people who won't come to see you because they think, "Oh, my God, I can't go to him." So it does play a role in there, definitely. 

06:13 Rebecca Gadberry: I think the more you come from the heart and people know you do, the more you care about somebody, I think that that's even more important, especially in the beginning, than what you know about a product or the skin. They want to be the center of your priority, of your attention, and everything that you do needs to go towards them, and everything that you know needs to be applied to them, not rattling off a bunch of feature-function benefits, as we teach in sales, about a product. Make them specific to that person. Think about what they've told you. 

Would you agree with that, Douglas? 

07:00 Douglas Preston: I would, but always coming back to the feeling benefit. It's like, if you're talking about it in terms of progress, well, “We're going to reduce that acne,” or, “We're going to get those lines softer,” “We'll get the discoloration in the skin to fade somewhat,” and, “Oh, my gosh, you're going to love that.” So back to the feeling. It's always what, because the emotional payoff is the real payoff, and the ingredients are just the means by which we're going to arrive at that station.

07:36 Rebecca Gadberry: And you bring up, when you're talking about address what's bothering them, I hear estheticians now talk about do everything you can on everything that's wrong. And some people are going to be there for hours trying to work on everything. But I also think that you need to leave something for them to come back to work on. 

I was standing, I guess I was at a Whole Foods conference in Anaheim. One of the editors that was on a panel that I was on turned to me and said, "Well, analyze my skin." 

I started talking about what was wrong with her skin. I didn't ask her the questions that I know to ask. I was in front of a group of people that I was showing off how great it was. So I started talking about some of the lines that were around your mouth. 

She said, "I have lines around my mouth? Oh, my God, I didn't know.”

08:32 Trina Renea: Oh, God, you just gave her a complex.

08:33 Rebecca Gadberry: Oh, my goodness. I thought I was going to crawl under the table that we were sitting behind and just hide from everybody. 

And I heard myself saying, because I teach sales classes also, I heard myself saying, “Never bring up what you see. Ask them what they see and if it's bothering them." Because if it's not bothering them, move on to something else. 

08:33 Trina Renea: That's right.

08:57 Douglas Preston: Yeah. And it may bother you, but... 

08:58 Trina Renea: Yeah, that's a super important thing that people do. That happened to me as well when I was interviewing this one esthetician. I was like, "Oh, she seems good. She knows everything. Okay, I think I'm gonna keep her here and do the consultation with her that I..." That's usually the next step.

But she was doing a great job, so I asked my esthetician who was working for me, “Come in and act like the client. I'm gonna have her give you our consultation.”

So, she was doing the consultation. She was doing a great job at it. I'm like, “She's hitting everything exactly right.”

And she gets to the end and then she does the recap, which I was like, “Great, great.” 

And then she goes, “So the one thing you didn't mention is the lines on your forehead. Did you wanna address those as well?” And I started laughing so hard. 

My esthetician looks over at me and she's like, “I have lines on my forehead?”

And I was like, “You do.”

But she literally had a complex about that for like five years and she went and got Botox because of it. And I'm like the little tiny thing that that girl said, of course I didn't hire her because I couldn't, because I'm like, “You don’t even know that concept? I mean, come on.”

10:08 Rebecca Gadberry: I think one of the key elements here, because among the three of us, we've probably had more facials than most people in their lifetimes. One of the things that really gets to me is that when I go into especially a resort spa who's never going to see me again or I go into a chain spa, and you find them in malls all over the United States, they don't do a consultation, or they don't do an in-depth one. 

And the consultation is the key to everything you do. If the consultation is not done— and I believe it should be done every time the client comes in myself, at least a mini form of it so that you're up to the minute on what's going on with them and what they're going through at the time. I don't think that that is a place that you should be frequenting, because you're putting your skin in their hands. And if they don't know what's in your head and what's under the skin, I don't know how they could treat you properly. 

What do you two think about that? 

11:17 Douglas Preston: I think in that environment, it's not quite as critical, because in most resort spas that I've seen, and also on cruise ships, first of all, the turnover is very high. 

11:37 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes. The turnover of estheticians and the clients.

11:41 Douglas Preston: And of course the client, too, right? 

11:42 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes. Purposefully so, yes. 

11:45 Douglas Preston: So that esthetician never gets to see the progressive value of their work. It would be like having a sack of flower bulbs and you go in the backyard, you dig a hole then you put them in the ground, cover them up and go to the next garden. 

12:00 Rebecca Gadberry: You never see what comes up.

12:01 Douglas Preston: You never get to see. Never. 

And I'm not saying that you can't learn from that, but usually in businesses like that, they're a reflection of management down. All the years that I worked with resort spas, and even day spas, management was far more concerned just about efficiencies and, quite frankly, philosophy, which was usually misguided, than the actual interaction between customers and esthetician. Which is why any resort spa that could see 3% of retail service was like flying high.

I could fix that for them easily, but they'd never hire me to do it because it wasn't their priority. They'd say it has to happen, but they almost literally engineered that out of being a possibility. And it's so easy to fix. Yeah, go ahead. 

13:07 Trina Renea: I was just going to say, when you go to a resort spa, their focus is like you're getting a massage, basically, on your face. It's really just a feel good. Don't talk to the clients. They as an esthetician don't want you to talk to the clients at all. They want you to just go in and make them feel good. 

And so all the things that they're doing on you and the facial is more of a massage and a cream that feels good and a mask that feels good and it's very feel good. So you don't ever do a consultation. It's not appropriate in that way. But I have told estheticians at work in places like that, at least when you're walking the client in the room, just ask a couple simple things, which is, “Do you have any allergies to any ingredients and are you on any topical medications,” so that you can just determine a couple things so there's no reaction in there. And at least then they know that you care a little bit.

But like chitchatting or talking too much is not appropriate. Like when I go to a spa, I don't want the esthetician talking to me either. I definitely don't want them pushing products on me, because they're not my esthetician and they don't know what I'm even using on my skin. 

But the spa makes you push products after the facial or even massages. The spa themselves expect you to sell a certain percentage every time in order to get a bonus, which I think is so not fair, because those estheticians are like, “I'm flying blind. Why would they ever buy something that I say?”

And when I've been at a spa being the customer and there's products up on the counter for me that the massage therapist recommended, I'm like, "No, thank you.”

14:50 Rebecca Gadberry: Why is that there? 

14:51 Trina Renea: Yeah, that's just crazy. 

14:52 Douglas Preston: But that's a management problem. I'm going to go back to that, because I think an esthetician can do a very good job of interviewing a client in a resort setting. In fact, you could be blown away by that and find out, “Wow, hell, this person that just gave me a massage at the Ritz is better than my own person.” Because the thing is, again, it's the kind of questions that you ask.

Chitchatting, now, you don't want to do that. But I still want to find out what this person's expectations are. And I don't even know if they've had facials before. It's not even part of my question, so I can't compare myself to that. 

For example, there was a day spa in La Jolla that years ago I did some sales training for. They were trying to get their massage department to sell something, any kind of product. They kept bringing all this stuff in, because he has the massage therapist, "Oh, we want this. We want this.” Of course, they don't sell any of it. 

They said, "Do you think you could have an influence on that?" 

I said, "I can give you a method that I think will work if you work it." 

“Sure.” Management again, right? This isn't a plug-and-play, guys. You've got to manage it. 

So, in this training, I showed estheticians— excuse me, massage therapists, how to work with a client and how to tell stories that involve sales. I won't go into all of that right now, but I'll tell you how it came out. 

When I was done with this training, they gave me a treatment as a gift. It was some kind of a body treatment-massage combo thing. It was lovely. And at the end, when I came up to the counter, I didn't have to pay for it. The massage therapist came up there and she said, "How did you like that?" 

I said, "Well, it was phenomenal?" 

She goes, "Where are you staying?" 

I said, "I'm over at the Valencia." 

She said, "I know that hotel. You can't open the windows there, right?" 

I said, "Yeah, you're right. You're hermetically sealed in this." 

She said, "I was thinking about that and I thought maybe, if you're going to be here a couple of days, you can kind of create a little spa experience.”

She went and got a candle and she got this honey. It was some kind of scrub. It was in a glass jar and it was honey and wheat germ and it had some aggregate in it.

She said, “You could take this into the shower and you're going to get this nice scent.” She opens it up and I smell it. And she said, “And that'll give you some aromatics in there and that'll feel nice. And then when you're just in the room, light this candle. It's got an orange-vanilla scent.” And she goes, “And then it'll just kind of create this nicer environment in there for you.:”

I said, “Wow, that is a great idea. Thank you so much.”

So I buy this stuff. And while they're bagging it up, she comes back. She smiles and she goes, “Did you get it?”

I thought that was a weird question. I said, “Yeah.” I thought she meant like did I get the products? I said, “Yeah, I bought them. They're right here.”

She goes, “No, no, that's not what I mean.” She goes, “I was wondering if you'd get it, because I did what you told me to do. I told a story and you fell for it.”

18:18 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes.

18:19 Trina Renea: You fell for it. 

18:21 Rebecca Gadberry: Did it feel better? Did you do better in your room?

18:25 Douglas Preston: It was wonderful.

18:26 Trina Renea: I think that's a good thing for us, massage therapists to sell is the candles. It's such a good idea because you can burn it in your room and it smells great.

18:35 Douglas Preston: Well, you know what? Preston win. We had a 30% retail-to-service ratio.

18:38 Rebecca Gadberry: That was a spa. 

18:40 Trina Renea: That's amazing. 

18:41 Douglas Preston: That's a body therapy business. But all they did was tell stories.

18:44 Trina Renea: I love that. That's amazing. 

18:46 Douglas Preston: And it was lovely. And this kind of thing can be incorporated into resorts. But again, I've never once ran into a resort where management cared enough to work these programs.

19:04 Trina Renea: Right. They don't. And it happens in doctors' offices too with estheticians, unfortunately. 

But I have a question for you. You guys, in the beginning of our episode today, and we're getting close to having to wrap up here, you were talking about a new business that you're doing. What is this? I've been so excited this whole time to hear. 

19:26 Douglas Preston: Well, I'm about to retire from hands-on practice. It's been a lot of years. The only reason I've continued to do it for so long is it's like a test kitchen for me, like Wolfgang Puck. You got to go in and pick up a skillet now and then to come up with something new. You don't just walk away from your tools. 

And so I learn a lot from that. I'm learning what the new customers like. What does Generation Z like? The kids that have been raised and pampered by their parents, and the helicopter moms and all these things that are in there, and, boy, do I see it. What do I need to do to create programs that are effective with them? How do I get them to mitigate their behavior so that the acne that they're experiencing can abate to some degree?

So, for me, it's always testing. Always testing. I do these treatments as a result, not a lot anymore, but somewhat. 

But, anyway, I finally decided I'm going to retire my practice. I have a protégé I'm working with. I think she's going to be good. I think she's going to be able to take it over. So by the end of the year, my hope is that I can just literally give her this company. 

20:37 Trina Renea: That's nice. 

20:40 Douglas Preston: And she's on cloud nine, I mean, whoever does this, right? And I mean everything, the business, everything in it, all the clients, free. 

At that point, then Preston Skin Center will become, actually, it'll be a hybrid business for a while, what we call Preston Acne Pros. Preston Acne Pros is about acne education, largely centering on congestive acne, which is the type of acne that most estheticians encounter, and because I have a tool, the Preston Comedone Extractor that is geared towards that type of treatment.

Then we just launched back bar products and desincrustation and exfoliation masks. We have those. 

And then our educational programs, we have an Acne Certification Program and then we also have some hands-on training, which I'll see you after, Rebecca, in Irvine. 

21:37 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes. It's in July, isn't it? 

21:40 Douglas Preston: In July, yeah. That's sold out in April. 

So I want to focus on acne. When I don't have the skincare business anymore is that we'll still maintain our online business, which is actually much bigger than Skin Center at this point. 

So we'll be kind of positioned the way that Face Reality is, which is a wonderful company. But Face Reality, like any business, it's not the end all. I would say in our certification programs, at least half of them are Face Reality-certified. But wisely, they're still looking for more information and education.

22:27 Rebecca Gadberry: Will all of this be offered online?

22:31 Douglas Preston: Oh, yes. All online and also some in-person classes. 

22:36 Rebecca Gadberry: Excellent.

22:37 Douglas Preston: And that'll be prestonacnepros.com. It's not live yet, but we're hoping to have that live in a couple of weeks. 

22:47 Rebecca Gadberry: Actually, by the time this airs, it will be live. 

22:52 Douglas Preston: Fantastic. So then everything will be there, including acne education, resources and so forth. It'll be pretty thorough. 

23:01 Trina Renea: But you're still going to do some in-person training then? Not full retirement? 

23:07 Douglas Preston: Right. I'll still be doing some in-person training, certainly the extraction training, possibly a certification program. 

I have a program called How to Become a Five-Star Esthetician, which is really a psychology program very much based on what we're talking about here. And then I may do an acne business program. I'm testing the waters on that in Las Vegas in a couple of weeks. 

23:34 Rebecca Gadberry: There's a big trade show in June in Las Vegas for the esthetics industry. 

23:38 Trina Renea: I used to go there every year. 

23:41 Rebecca Gadberry: Douglas and I always spoke there and now Douglas is still speaking there. 

23:47 Douglas Preston: I'd retired from the speaking circuit about three years ago because I really didn't have anything to sell to it anymore. It's not philanthropy for me. As I said, I do this for the money, but I also want it to be a quality product when you make it. 

24:02 Rebecca Gadberry: The best you can provide. 

24:05 Trina Renea: It was definitely a great place when I was a new esthetician to go to all the trade shows, because I always got free classes, mostly free. And I would go to all the things I could to learn, learn, learn, learn. 

Then you finally get to a point in your career where you're like, “Okay, I've learned everything that's here. I've got myself established and I don't need to go there anymore.”

24:28 Rebecca Gadberry: As much.

24:29 Trina Renea: Yeah, as much, unless there's a specific thing you're going for.

24:34 Rebecca Gadberry: And people like Douglas and I and Mark Lees and a whole bunch of other people in the industry, we actually were the ones that helped to bring up the current and future generation of estheticians in this country. So most of us will keep working until we can't work anymore as far as education is concerned.

24:55 Trina Renea: For sure. 

24:56 Rebecca Gadberry: We're not going to be working on clients. Other people can do that. But we still have a lot to teach and a lot to bring to people that we've offered in the past, and it's still relevant today.

25:06 Trina Renea: 100 percent. I love that about the educators teaching. 

25:10 Douglas Preston: It's still fun, isn't it? 

25:12 Rebecca Gadberry: It is. And, you know, I learned so much. When they ask you, like when you're in high school or college or whatever, what is your purpose in life, my purpose is an educator. Douglas's purpose is also an educator. We've talked about that. And there's a group of us, we're here to educate and that's our reason for breathing. I think it's really important. 

Well, Douglas, we've learned so much, as always. This has been really interesting, especially talking about the consultation and how it can help you give a better treatment, and also what to expect for your esthetician to be asking you that they should be asking you and why they're asking. it.

25:56 Douglas Preston: So helpful. 

25:57 Trina Renea: Well, thank you so much for being with us. We could go on for hours and hours, and I just want to so badly, but we have to go, unfortunately. Studio time is up.

26:07 Douglas Preston: Thank you, both, for having me here. It's always an honor and usually a lot of fun.

26:14 Trina Renea: I'm going to go buy that client consultation video. I don't know how I'm going to find it, but you said you sell it in your storage. Are you referring to online? 

26:23 Douglas Preston: If you go to prestonskincenter.com and you look at the menu bar, prestonskincenter.com right now is a landing page for the studio. But if you look in the menu bar, you'll see Skincare Professionals, and that opens up the B2B side of what I do. 

And then if you go into the store and scroll down, you'll see the client consultation. I think it has a picture of an old DVD. They were going to use the graphic. They used to do that. But it streams from Wistia and it's well worth it. 

The link is permanent so you can go back to it again and again. It is taught in classroom format, so there are estheticians literally in the room receiving this information. It's a real eye-opener.

27:19 Trina Renea: I actually teach myself, but one-on-ones, up to four people. Very small. I teach extractions and consultations. But even with me teaching, I'm always learning from you as well. And so I want to take that again, because with the psychology and the feelings, that's so important. And so I just want to refresh. I love taking classes. 

27:50 Douglas Preston: Well, thank you. I'd be honored if you did that.

27:54 Trina Renea: Thank you. It was lovely having you. Thanks for coming, Douglas. And we'll see you soon. We'll have you back, hopefully.

28:02 Rebecca Gadberry: Absolutely.

28:05 Trina Renea: All right. Bye. 

28:06 Douglas Preston: Bye-bye now.

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