What's an Esthetician?/ with Mark Lees

[Intro] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Facially Conscious with myself, Trina Renea, Esthetician and Rebecca Gadberry, the Cosmetic Ingredient Guru, highly-acclaimed educator and award-winning journalist. She is the cosmetic industry leader.

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: Hello, everybody.

01:04 Trina Renea: Hello.

01:05 Rebecca Gadberry: All of you out there in listening land. it's Trina and Rebecca in the studio with one of our favorite contributing guests, Dr. Mark Lees, who we have had in past episodes. He, now, is such a regular contributor. Instead of us talking about him, you can look him up on our website under About at faciallyconscious.com.

01:32 Trina Renea: Yes. Hello, Mark.

01:33 Rebecca Gadberry: Hello. I call him Dr. Marky.

01:35 Trina Renea: Hi, Dr. Marky.

01:36 Dr. Mark Lees: How are you both?

01:38 Trina Renea: We are good.

01:40 Rebecca Gadberry: How are you?

01:42 Dr. Mark Lees: I'm good. Everything's nice here. It's actually warm here today in Florida.

01:47 Trina Renea: Does it get cold there?

01:50 Dr. Mark Lees: Yeah, it gets cold. It gets cold generally in January. It gets down to freezing occasionally, but it's probably 75 out right now. More like California weather right now.

02:01 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, California weather is in the 50s today, because we're recording this in December.

02:07 Trina Renea: It rained yesterday.

02:08 Rebecca Gadberry: It did. You call that rain.

02:11 Trina Renea: So, how is your dog?

02:14 Dr. Mark Lees: She is fine. She's asleep right now. 

02:18 Rebecca Gadberry: Halo. Halo is the dog.

02:19 Trina Renea: Halo.

02:22 Dr. Mark Lees: We went for a walk in the park this morning and she went on a couple errands with me. She likes to go. She's a car girl. She loves to go in a car. We're actually going on a trip in a couple weeks. We're going to see my sister who lives in Ohio. Halo goes with me every year when I go.

02:43 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, your sister gave you Halo, didn't she?

02:47 Dr. Mark Lees: Yeah, she was a present from my sister and her partner.

02:50 Trina Renea: That's so sweet.

02:51 Rebecca Gadberry: That's sweet.

02:54 Dr. Mark Lees: Halo just turned five. So we go up and we stay at a doggy-friendly hotel halfway there, because 7 hours, if we did all 12 or 13 hours, whatever, it's just too much. So we break it up in half. She enjoys going to the hotel. She thinks that's cool.

03:16 Trina Renea: That's so cute.

03:18 Rebecca Gadberry: I've been practicing the slippery segue into the topic. Our topic today is licensing of estheticians. And if you're driving between Florida and Ohio, you might pass or go into states where licensing for estheticians is not mandatory. 

Then, again, you might have a state that requires more training than another state that might have a license.

03:50 Trina Renea: Yes, it's weird that it's state-to-state and not a United States Federal.

03:55 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, we tried that but it doesn't work, just like cosmetology in general is not licensed federally. 

04:04 Dr. Mark Lees: And it's not uniform.

04:06 Trina Renea: Estheticians can, I mean also hairdressers, but estheticians can scar people's skin and they can also cause Staph infections, and they can do all kinds of bad things to the skin. I feel like it should be mandatory training and mandatory follow-up training that should happen every year. There should be across the board.

04:30 Rebecca Gadberry: I sense a soap box being climbed upon. That reminds me of a funny story.

Back in the 1990s, mid-1990s, around 1995, California was, in government, they were going through all of the licensing boards. Somebody decided that the Board of Cosmetology in California wasn't necessary to protect consumers. And these are protection agencies.

So back in 1995, there was a statewide but also a nationwide movement to de-fund and deregulate a lot of the licensing boards that were no longer deemed vital to protecting consumers. In California, when you get rid of a board it's called sunsetting the board.

In the state of California, they looked at over 80 boards that they wanted to sunset. One of the primary ones and one of the first ones up was the Board of Cosmetology. When we found out about it, we formed a coalition as an industry to help fund information campaign to consumers who went to salons.

Well, we found out that what they wanted to do was to take all the licensing money and put it into the general fund to build highways rather than to protect consumers by funding the investigators that went out and investigated salons to make sure that they were properly cleaned.

What I did was I went in and I took sampling from the floors, the walls, the chairs, the facial beds, the equipment and then I put them in Petri dishes. I cultured them for a week-and-a-half.

Then when the Board of Cosmetology was meeting and the people who wanted to disband the board was there, I had one of my lab people dress up in like a hazmat suit and put gloves on, the big, sturdy gloves, take the Petri dishes, double bag them and then pass them around the board so they could see what grew from the culturing. 

And they did not disband the Board of Cosmetology.

07:06 Trina Renea: Good job, Rebecca.

07:08 Rebecca Gadberry: Thank you. It was not that sold.

07:11 Dr. Mark Lees: That’s very good, but you have to throw it in their face, literally, sometimes.

07:16 Rebecca Gadberry: Most of the people didn't even touch it. They just let the lab assistant walk and show them. They were gross.

And this drives home the need for licensing, not only of estheticians and cosmetologists and nail technologists, electrologists, but also a business license for the business that you work at. Because we need to maintain these regulations. And what we're educated in, and Mark will say this and I know you know this too, is not necessarily the procedures but the safety that's involved in protecting the consumer.

07:53 Trina Renea: And the sanitation.

07:55 Rebecca Gadberry: The sanitation that's part of the safety. So above and beyond learning anything, we learn safety and sanitation procedures before we can practice. In some states, that's licensed, in some states it isn't.

So we asked Dr. Mark to come and talk with us, because he's been very involved in getting licensing in different states. Back in the early ‘80s, Dr. Mark and I worked to help get state licensing in over half the states. That is a separate license for estheticians from cosmetologists, because cosmetologists, to this day, only have about 200 hours of skincare, whereas an esthetician can have 300, 600, even 1200 hours. That's only on skin.

So, Dr. Mark, let's talk before we get into this. What does an esthetician actually do?

08:52 Dr. Mark Lees: An esthetician treats appearance issues of the skin, basically. The standard definition of what we do is it's the practice of improving the appearance of the skin for aesthetic rather than medical purposes.

It can vary with state rules. Sometimes there are laws, sometimes there a separate set of rules as to what specific services are within scope of practice for estheticians, and that varies from state to state also. It's not just the laws that vary and the educational hour requirements that vary, also there may be things. 

For example, in Indiana and Tennessee, estheticians can use certain types of lasers. In Florida, you can't.

09:59 Rebecca Gadberry: And in California.

10:00 Dr. Mark Lees: Even in California you can't, at this point. There are places that have Master's licenses, like the state of Washington. If you have a Master's Estheticians license in the state of Washington, which means you basically have 1,200 hours of training, which includes laser, includes up to medium-depth peels and microdermabrasion and microcurrent. A lot of the more advanced modalities are covered in that second 600 hours.

Some of the states are now even going, even though cosmetologists have routinely been grandfathered in and allowed to do esthetics, the trend seems to be, and it's already in a couple of states, that cosmetologists can only do basically machine-free facials…

10:58 Rebecca Gadberry: What's that?

10:59 Trina Renea: A machine-free facial?

11:02 Dr. Mark Lees: A machine-free facial, which means they're not allowed to use any equipment. For example, they couldn't use microdermabrasion, microcurrent, galvanic, high frequency.

11:12 Rebecca Gadberry: Nobody now listens to those rules. They're still going to do it.

11:17 Trina Renea: And if they don't have funding for their state boards, there's nobody going out and checking that they're following the rules.

11:24 Dr. Mark Lees: It depends on the state, again, as to how thorough inspections are and how often they happen. And when the cat's away, governs a lot of activity, unfortunately. But the only thing that saves them is insurance, because the insurance companies who do malpractice insurance know what those state laws are from state to state. 

If you're in Florida, for example, and you're doing laser, and you're an esthetician, which is illegal in the state of Florida, it'll say in your insurance, “We're not insuring you if something goes wrong and you're doing an out-of-scope practice.”

So if somebody was injured and they sue the esthetician, the insurance company will say, “You're on your own. You were practicing outside of scope of practice.”

12:14 Trina Renea: In California, I do know some dermatologist offices that have esthetic departments in them who let their estheticians do some of the lasers, and that's totally illegal but they're covered under the doctor's insurance that’s why…

12:31 Dr. Mark Lees: They're basically functioning as a medical assistant under the dermatologist as opposed to an esthetician at that point, but there are states that have rules about that. It doesn't matter if they're deemed a medical esthetician or a medical— there is no such thing as a medical esthetician, and we'll get to that in a minute — a medical assistant, if they happen to be practicing in a doctor's office.

Again, it all varies state to state within both the cosmetology and the insurance laws as well. That varies from state to state as to whether or not that's kosher.

13:11 Rebecca Gadberry: This kind of opens up a line of questioning here. First of all, how do you know what they're licensed to do, as a consumer? What your supplier or your esthetician is allowed to do under the state rules and also what their insurance covers. Because let's say you go in and you have a procedure that isn't covered by their insurance and it goes wrong. You decide to sue the esthetician. You're not going to get a settlement. You're going to just put her out of business, and that's not going to help you.

13:47 Dr. Mark Lees: Right, you can't get blood out of a turnup. You know what I mean?

13:49 Rebecca Gadberry: That’s right.

13:50 Dr. Mark Lees: If they have an insurance company, the only thing you can do, really, is…

13:55 Trina Renea: Go to someone you trust.

13:57 Dr. Mark Lees: Go to someone you trust or ask a dermatologist to refer you.

14:01 Trina Renea: Or a friend.

14:04 Dr. Mark Lees: Or a good friend.

14:07 Rebecca Gadberry: You can look up their reviews online.

14:09 Dr. Mark Lees: Look up their reviews, look up their credentialing. If you go to my website for the salon, it tells you all about my education and what have you. To look that up online, and experience counts. My salon's been open almost 40 years. The fact that we've been here 40 years…

You can also go to places like Yelp and stuff like that and look too, but I think the best thing to do is to check with a good friend who's lived in the area for a while or a medical or dental professional, somebody like that. A lot of dentists work with people's faces all the time too, so they, a lot of times, will know somebody to refer to.

14:54 Rebecca Gadberry: Also the state, a lot of the states require that your license be on display in your business of practice so the consumer can see it.

15:03 Dr. Mark Lees: We have to not only have ours on display in the State of Florida. It has to be laminated.

15:08 Rebecca Gadberry: Okay. I don't think that's true here.

15:12 Dr. Mark Lees : They were having trouble with people having a couple of licenses and switching pictures.

15:19 Rebecca Gadberry: Or people taking the license under somebody's name.

15:24 Dr. Mark Lees: Right, but the main thing was switching pictures, and this was mainly in the nail salons. They were having problems with just having the license up there. And you were always supposed to have your picture on your license, but now it has to be laminated. You’ll get in trouble if it's not laminated.

15:41 Rebecca Gadberry: There's also certifications. I have one of my favorite people in the whole world, and I hope to have her on sometime this year, is an esthetician in Huntington Beach. She used to be the top salesperson for Estee Lauder nationally. Leonard Lauder used to come in and take her to lunch to learn about his products. She's that good.

She's taken my UCLA class bunches of times. And when you walk into her salon, every certification, including all the certificates I issued to her at UCLA, every class she's ever taken, I think there's several from you, Dr. Mark, because you teach our industry too, they are all there. It's like a who's who of certificates.

She's a single operator. You walk in and you just feel like you are in the hands of the most professional professional that there is. And it's all laid out right there for you.

16:37 Trina Renea: She puts them all framed up on the wall.

16:39 Rebecca Gadberry: All framed, all right there.

16:41 Trina Renea: I thought about doing that at one point and I didn't have enough wall space, but I put it in a binder.

16:48 Rebecca Gadberry: She has a binder for the ones that she doesn't put on the wall.

16:52 Trina Renea: Yeah. I put some up on the wall.

16:54 Dr. Mark Lees: Maybe put the big ones up on the wall and have a binder possibly laid out.

16:56 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, UCLA is up on the wall.

17:00 Dr. Mark Lees: You know, Rebecca, as long as we're talking about this, we should definitely mention CIDESCO. CIDESCO is the worldwide esthetic accrediting group. They've been in existence since 1946 and they set a lot of the standards for curriculum as well as testing and stuff like that.

17:22 Rebecca Gadberry: And they're a private group. They're not a government group.

17:26 Dr. Mark Lees: Right, they're not government. They're private.

17:28 Trina Renea: What it does is it makes you able to work as an esthetician in other countries and anywhere if you have a CIDESCO. 

17:34 Dr. Mark Lees: A lot of countries accept it in lieu of a license, if you have a CIDESCO diploma. It's a 1,200-hour program. They have another program that you can do if you've been in practice three years. Let's say you're working in California, it would only require 600 hours. You don't have 1,200 hours of classroom training at a school, they will equivocate, I think that's the right word, three years of practice for those other 600 hours you're missing. And you're required to take a five-day class.

18:15 Trina Renea: Up in San Francisco or something, right?

18:17 Rebecca Gadberry: They're actually in several other countries.

18:18 Dr. Mark Lees: Yeah, they have them in San Francisco. Our friend Kathy Driscoll does them in Houston. Elaine Sterling does them in Atlanta. Lydia has people up there that do them. 

18:32 Rebecca Gadberry: Lydia who? Lydia Sarfati in New York?

18:33 Dr. Mark Lees: Lydia Sarfati, yeah. I don't think she does them in New York. They might do them in New Jersey…

18:38 Rebecca Gadberry: Okay. And who does them in San Francisco? I forget.

18:45 Dr. Mark Lees: That’s a really good question and I should have known this coming on for this thing, but I will…

18:50 Rebecca Gadberry: The Paul Mitchell School, I believe, aren't they? 

18:53 Dr. Mark Lees: The SFIEC is not CIDESCO, I don't believe.

18:56 Rebecca Gadberry: San Francisco Institute of Cosmetology.

18:59 Dr. Mark Lees: That's Deedee’s school. I don't think that they are CIDESCO, but I think there's two schools up there that are CIDESCO.

19:10 Rebecca Gadberry: Can you look on the CIDESCO website and find out who?

19:14 Dr. Mark Lees: Yes, you can go to CIDESCO International. I think it's CIDESCO.com. 

19:19 Rebecca Gadberry: And that's C-I-D-E-S-C-O, CIDESCO. 

19:24 Dr. Mark Lees: Yeah, and they're all caps, because it stands for— it's an acronym.

19:30 Rebecca Gadberry: I forget, but anyway it's C-I-D-E-S-C-O, CIDESCO. 

19:36 Dr. Mark Lees: Right, and they will tell you what schools are accredited, where they have people who take the 1,200 hour exam. Sometimes, they give the exam at national functions. We used to do that within CA. I don't know that that's being done anymore. 

And the United States, because we're 50 states, there's so many variants. Let's say we're in France or Japan, there's less variants because the country kind of runs it. So you don't have 50 states with different laws and different inputs and stuff like that. 

The main reason for CIDESCO is to have a standardized and safe education for estheticians and that they're thoroughly trained to go out and practice.

20:27 Rebecca Gadberry: Right. So everybody practices at the same level. And you get it in addition to your license, if you need to be licensed in the state now. It's like a second standardization licensing.

If you go to CIDESCO cidesco.com, schools and colleges, you can find it online.

20:50 Dr. Mark Lees: I think we have 10 or 12 now in the United States. For the longest time, there was only a couple, but I think we're up to 10 or 12. It might even be 15. 

20:59 Rebecca Gadberry: And Dr. Mark helped bring CIDESCO to the United States. It was originally founded in Europe, like he said, in the 1940s.

21:05 Trina Renea: That’s amazing.

21:06 Rebecca Gadberry: Are you CIDESCO?

21:09 Dr. Mark Lees: I am CIDESCO. I'm not only CIDESCO-board certified, my salon is CIDESCO-accredited, and I have served as an international CIDESCO examiner before. 

21:26 Rebecca Gadberry: Right, and I've been a trainer for them for 20 years.

21:29 Trina Renea: Talking about that, CIDESCO, a lot of estheticians ask like where can I get further advanced training? Outside of school, there's local trainings you can get. Different people teach trainings, but CIDESCO is a main one that's legitimate that you can really get a proper advanced training education.

And being a medical esthetician, just saying those words does not mean that you've had extra training. It means you work…

22:07 Rebecca Gadberry: Or specialized training.

22:09 Trina Renea: Specialized training. A lot of estheticians say they're medical estheticians just because they like to say the words.

22:14 Rebecca Gadberry: Or clinical estheticians.

22:15 Trina Renea: Or clinical, but when you work in a doctor's office, like I worked in a dermatologist’s office for eight years, and she called me a medical esthetician because I was working in her medical office. But there's no training for that. There's no licensing for that. 

22:34 Rebecca Gadberry: There's no regulation of the term, just like we were talking about clean beauty in some episodes, or natural. There's no government regulation that defines it. So it is up to the person who’s saying it. 

22:47 Dr. Mark Lees: There are plenty of estheticians also out there that call themselves medical estheticians and they don't even work in a doctor's office. Never have. 

22:53 Rebecca Gadberry: And they don't know anything special. 

22:56 Dr. Mark Lees: I mean, they just kind of make it up, and it's wrong. I'm very well-certified and very well-trained and very well-degreed, but I don't call myself a medical esthetician. I think clinical esthetician is a better one. 

Again, there is no license for clinical. 

23:16 Rebecca Gadberry: It's just esthetician.

23:18 Trina Renea: Yes, but the way I like to describe it as a clinical aesthetician, if somebody's saying that to me, it means that they're doing more clinical things, like microdermabrasion, microcurrent, peels, things like that. Where if you work in a spa, you're not doing clinical-type services.

23:37 Rebecca Gadberry: Unless it's a medical spa.

23:38 Trina Renea: Unless it's a med spa, yeah. But if you're working in just a regular spa and doing basic facials, that's not going to be a clinical esthetician. Clinical just meaning…

23:50 Dr. Mark Lees: Clinical means adhering to scientific standards. We actually looked this up one day for some class I was teaching.

24:01 Rebecca Gadberry: Then there's also the oncological esthetician that specializes in people with cancer.

24:10 Trina Renea: I didn't know that's what they were called.

24:11 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, they're called oncology estheticians who work with cancer.

24:13 Dr. Mark Lees: There are programs for that and I'm not aware of programs— Rebecca, you may be able to correct me on this or Trina, you may too. But I'm not aware of any. There are some programs out there, and I've sat in some of them. I don't specialize in that and I don't offer it as a specialty. I certainly have had clients with cancer over the years.

And some of those courses are very good, but I don't think that there's any standardization there either, and I don't think there's anybody who really accredits that.

24:47 Rebecca Gadberry: No, but there are certifications that you could take.

24:51 Trina Renea: Yeah, classes that you can take from specialists who do it. It's not a license you get from the state but it is classes that you can take to learn that, just like lymphatic drainage.

25:05 Dr. Mark Lees: Like a postgraduate thing.

25:07 Trina Renea: Yeah, postgraduate. Right. There's lots of those.

25:11 Dr. Mark Lees: Then we were talking about clinical estheticians or people more like me and Trina, I think, that do science-based programs. I've said this before on other webcast with you guys, that when I look at a skin, I'm not thinking about what I'm going to do the next hour. I'm thinking about this client in six months. And where we're going to go with this and what we can do to improve her from ingredients to home care to treatments to peels to whatever modalities we have to go through to get there. That's a science-based approach, as opposed to someone who's having a fun facial and there's nothing wrong with that.

25:54 Dr. Mark Lees: What do we call those? Slap and tickle or something? I forget. 

25:55 Trina Renea: Slap and tickle? That sounds sexual.

25:57 Rebecca Gadberry: No, there's a nickname for like a relaxation facial. I forget. It's a derogatory term in the industry. As far as clinical estheticians are concerned, it's derogatory.

26:13 Dr. Mark Lees: One of Rebecca's and my friends refers to it as the Jackie Onassis Feel-Good Facial. Basically, we're talking about spa facials, and there is nothing wrong with having a spa facial.

26:26 Rebecca Gadberry: Relaxation is so important.

26:29 Dr. Mark Lees: It's stress control, it's relaxation. There's nothing wrong with it. But they're not doing, generally…

26:39 Trina Renea: Fixing of the face.

26:39 Dr. Mark Lees: And treatment. They're not doing focused treatment resulting in an appearance change.

26:48 Rebecca Gadberry: Clinical is result-oriented.

26:51 Dr. Mark Lees: Very result-oriented and spa is more relax-oriented, in my opinion. I love having spa facial done.

27:00 Trina Renea: Yeah, some people go to spas and they have massages and some like to have people rub their face and push on their skin.

27:06 Rebecca Gadberry: Or put on a wonderful mask or something.

27:08 Trina Renea: A mask and just relax.

27:09 Rebecca Gadberry: But you'd never expect a spa facial to also include…

27:14 Trina Renea: Clinical extractions or peels or anything like that.

27:16 Rebecca Gadberry: Extractions, because extractions tense you up, and so those are avoided.

27:22 Trina Renea: I'll tell you guys a quick little story. I had an esthetician work for me once who worked at a spa for 10 years. She was their high seller. She was really good at selling products. She was really good at her facials and she did really well. But she had never been a clinical esthetician. She had never had to do that.

So when she came to my spa, she could sell products really well on that first visit with the client and they said It felt amazing. But for some reason, we weren't retaining the clients with her. I was like why? I don't understand?

I had to break it down to the fact that she didn't know how to do clinical facials in the way that she didn't know how to say, “Okay, next month we're going to do this and then we're going to build up to this and do this and that.”

28:20 Rebecca Gadberry: And your esthetician, if it's a clinical, should be doing that. She should be future-pacing.

28:24 Trina Renea: She would stay quiet and she would take care of them and make them feel good.

28:27 Rebecca Gadberry: That’s the spa facial.

28:29 Trina Renea: She was a spa facialist and she was really great at it. But putting her into the position that she was with me, it's like because she has 10 years of this, we couldn't change it. It's just like it wasn't in her. 

28:43 Rebecca Gadberry: She was trained otherwise, and there's value in both. With a clinical esthetician, they're explaining what's being done and why, what you can expect from it, what we're going to do next, either next in the facial or next month or in your next treatment. They're also explaining the products to you and suggesting products and talking about why the product you're using may be causing some of the problems that she's seeing.

29:09 Trina Renea: Right, and adjusting products that they're using and watching their skin and analyzing it every time, finding out what currently is going on, if they have any issues along the way.

29:18 Rebecca Gadberry: Absolutely. Whereas with a spa facial, it's silence because they are supporting you in de-stressing. They're not going to talk about anything. They're not going to do anything that traumatizes you or gets you out of stress. They may suggest products for you to use at the end of the facial, but it's not intended for you to take home and work on the skin that they just treated. It's intended for you to de-stress.

29:45 Trina Renea: Right. I often tell estheticians that I'm coaching that you can be one or the other. You don't have to be both. Also, if you want to be quiet and give a really relaxing facial and you want that to be your career, you can do that in a spa. If you don't want to have to be clinical, you don't have to. And if you want to be clinical, don't work in a spa, because you're going to lose all of that.

30:11 Rebecca Gadberry: That’s right. Unless the spa offers those kinds of facials. And you find out about that by looking at the menu, which should be online at this point, your menu of treatments. This is basically the difference between a spa facial and a clinical facial. They may be offered by the same person but they're going to be different procedures and different approaches as far as you're concerned and what you're going to benefit from them.

30:37 Trina Renea: Yes. And a clinical esthetician can do a relaxing facial too, if that's what people want. But there is definitely different areas that an esthetician can go in the industry. That's another thing I tell people is don't give up if you're not making it in a certain spa or if clinical is not for you. You can also go and work in a lab. You can answer phone calls about ingredients. You can work in a store that sells products. There's so many different ways that estheticians can work.

You can work in doctor's offices. There's so many different avenues you can take with it.

31:19 Rebecca Gadberry: But it's the same license for everybody who works everywhere, then you start to specialize through your certifications. But your basic license is just an esthetician license. There's not a medical or an oncological or a spa.

31:37 Trina Renea: And guess what? In California now, this is what I want to throw out there, you used to have to do a practical and a written. They just took the practical away. 

31:48 Rebecca Gadberry: I know.

31:50 Trina Renea: That's where you learn sanitation.

31:51 Rebecca Gadberry: And safety.

31:52 Trina Renea: And safety. Like what are they doing? What are these estheticians coming out?

31:57 Rebecca Gadberry: But they're charging the same amount, if not more. I forget how much the license is now.

32:02 Trina Renea: It's insane.

32:03 Rebecca Gadberry: I just had a friend take the license. She was so worried about the practical. The month before she was set to take it, they got rid of the practical.

32:11 Trina Renea: It's unbelievable. I'm horrified.

32:13 Rebecca Gadberry: It is. It's horrifying.

32:15 Dr. Mark Lees: It's a trend, though.

32:18 Rebecca Gadberry: It's a tragic trend.

32:20 Dr. Mark Lees: The State of Florida does not require any state exam, but they are…

32:25 Rebecca Gadberry: What?

32:26 Dr. Mark Lees: Yeah, they have no state exam at all. Because the school is licensed by the state, by the State Department of Education, that when the school graduates an esthetician— this is according to the state. This is not my opinion. This is the state's opinion. When someone graduates from a state school or a school that's licensed by the State of Florida, could be a public school, could be a private school, but they're still licensed by the state, they are saying that when someone passes the final exams in this program, that serves to certify them.

Now, we don't use the word ‘licensed’ in the State of Florida. You are ‘registered’, not ‘licensed’.

33:17 Rebecca Gadberry: What's the difference between licensed and registered?

33:20 Dr. Mark Lees: Licensed means you took an exam. In the State of Florida that's what it means. It means you took an exam.

But, see, I work in the State of Florida because I am old-school, O-L-D school, because when I went to school, there was no esthetician’s license and I had to work as a cosmetologist. I only got my esthetician’s license in 2005 in the State of Washington, because I was working up there with Ann Martin with the Institute of Advanced Clinical Esthetics.

33:57 Rebecca Gadberry: One of the best estheticians in the world. I love her. Absolutely love it.

34:02 Dr. Mark Lees: And one of the best programs that we ever had. Unfortunately, we don't have it anymore, but the program that we offered at Swedish Hospital in Seattle.

34:10 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes, Mark and I were both part of that. It was an amazing program.

34:13 Dr. Mark Lees: It was. We only offered it for two or three years and, unfortunately, didn't take off. Maybe we could try it again at some point. 

34:21 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, certain things changed in the state and with the hospital.

34:25 Dr. Mark Lees: And then we had 9/11 in the middle of all that, so people were ____ [34:28]. There was a lot of that stuff going on too.

Anyway, I took my exam then. I am actually Licensed Master Esthetician in the State of Washington. In Florida, I practice as a cosmetologist, because there was no cosmetology school when I went here. You had to go to Valmy in New York, which is where I went to esthetics.

35:02 Rebecca Gadberry: Christine Valmy was the first esthetician, really, in the United States. She started the whole industry in New York.

35:08 Dr. Mark Lees: And she was one of the first, I think she was the first or one of the first two, because I think Carole Walderman School and Valmy’s were formed at about the same time.

35:16 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, Bud and Carole.

35:18 Dr. Mark Lees: And then Christine Valmy is also now CIDESCO-certified too. 

35:23 Rebecca Gadberry: Oh, has been for a long time.

35:24 Dr. Mark Lees: For a long time, yeah. They didn’t offer the program when I was there, but I went back. I took my exam. I took the three-year, which at the time was called the five-year exam in New York, at the CIDESCO World Congress.

35:40 Rebecca Gadberry: Then there's also different states, like Utah and Minnesota who offer tiered licensing, so you can get your basic license and then go back for different procedure practices to get licensed again.

35:57 Dr. Mark Lees: Each tier has certain services that are linked to it. Washington State has that now. Utah has that now. I believe Virginia now has that and Minnesota has it now.

And I love the name of the one in Minnesota. They don't call it a Master's License. They call it an Advanced Practice License. I think that's a really good name for what it is, because it's making sure that you know how to do more involved, more complicated services so that you can operate a hair removal laser or treat capillaries or things like that.

And so even with all my licenses and trainings, because I practice in Florida, I can't do those things in Florida.

36:50 Trina Renea: So you got to leave Florida.

36:52 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, he does on occasion.

To wrap this up, because we're getting to the end of our time together, is there any place that somebody who wants to get a treatment from a licensed esthetician with specialties that are indicated by their certifications, how do you find out? Is there a master list by the states?

37:14 Trina Renea: No.

37:15 Rebecca Gadberry: And how do you find out what an esthetician is licensed for in your state?

37:20 Trina Renea: You just ask the esthetician.

37:23 Rebecca Gadberry: You know what? I'm going to look into this. 

37:25 Dr. Mark Lees: Yeah. You could go to the state board, but it requires some reading. You have to be kind of familiar with the terminology in order to read through it. There are rules. You can get copies of the law and copies of the rules.

37:40 Trina Renea: People don’t do that.

37:42 Dr. Mark Lees: No, people are not going to go through all that. I think the very best thing is to ask a professional. Ask your hairdresser, your dermatologist, your dentist, somebody like that who knows something about hygiene and things like that.

38:02 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, Safety and Sanitation.

38:04 Dr. Mark Lees: You might ask them how long have people been in practice in your area.

38:09 Rebecca Gadberry: Also, Mark, if one of our listeners or some of our listeners wanted to become estheticians, do you just look for schools? What do you do?

38:22 Dr. Mark Lees: That’s a really good question.

38:22 Rebecca Gadberry: Or maybe we should have a separate podcast on that.

38:24 Dr. Mark Lees: We could have a whole separate thing on so you want to be an esthetician.

When I was in theater years ago, my acting coach published a book called So You Want to Be an Actor, is the name of it. We could have a show called, “So You Want to Be an Esthetician.”

38:45 Trina Renea: Yes.

38:45 Rebecca Gadberry: I think that would be lovely. 

38:46 Trina Renea: Yeah, and then estheticians can just listen to that episode.

38:50 Rebecca Gadberry: Or people, you know, a lot of kids now are choosing it right out of high school or college to be an esthetician too.

38:57 Trina Renea: Yep. I'm doing some advanced training right now for some very young estheticians that are in school because, unfortunately in COVID, all the advanced training places that I would send people after school closed, even the Dermal Institute, which is like stable.

39:17 Rebecca Gadberry: That Dermalogica owns.

39:18 Trina Renea: Yeah, Dermalogica owns, but it doesn't, they don't promote Dermalogica in Dermal Institute, which I love. They use their products, of course, but they don't— like, you can't talk about Dermalogica in class, which I like, because it's a real school. They have a really good training for when you get right out of school, like I did. 

I did, personally, 100 hours after school of individual classes that I felt like I needed that I didn't get enough training on. So there's not, in LA anyway, any advanced training for these students who are coming out without even doing a practical in their school. 

So I'm like, “How are they going to go out and be estheticians right now?” It's terrible. So I'm helping some of them, but there's a lot of super young kids, like you said, coming right out of high school. 

40:13 Dr. Mark Lees: I wish we had a sort of mother organization. I guess CIDESCO is internationally, but it's not active or state-wide one in this type of situation where we could have a list of places or just people who offer recommendations of you should take the best courses from these people.

40:37 Trina Renea: Yeah, advanced training.

40:41 Dr. Mark Lees: These people are experienced and they are known for their, you know. But there's no official body to do that and I think you would really need that.

40:50 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, speaking of bodies, we're actually getting, I don't know if everybody heard the alarm go off, but we're getting told that we have to wrap this up. We hope that you enjoyed it. I know we enjoyed talking with you, Dr. Mark and I think you got a tickle out of talking with us too.

41:09 Dr. Mark Lees: Absolutely. I enjoy being here.

41:12 Rebecca Gadberry: We love having you, and we will talk to you later. 

41:16 Trina Renea: Bye.

41:16 Rebecca Gadberry: Bye, everybody.

41:17 Dr. Mark Lees: Goodnight. 

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