(upbeat music) - Welcome to Medical Spa Insider. I'm Kathy Christiansen, President and CSO of AMSPAW. And I'm happy to welcome you to this very special podcast featuring four leaders in the medical spa industry who are also featured speakers at the upcoming Medical Spa Show 2025. - This week, we are so pleased to chat with Medical Spa Show speakers, Dr. W. Christopher Crowley, Skin and Tonic, Kerry Doober, CRNFA, CANS, Lemon Avenue, George Baxter Holder, DMP, ARPN, CANS, Skin Spirit, Katie Duke, MPBC, Katie Creative, Riley Worth, MP, Elay's Medical Spa, and Nicole Gregory, Urban U. - Before we kick things off, we would love to give you the chance to see these faculty members, as well as all of our other speakers and exhibitors while enjoying the parties, networking and fun in Vegas at MSS. As a Medical Spa Insider podcast listener, we're offering you 10% off registration. Just use the code medicalspawinsidermss25, all caps, medicalspawinsidermss25, all caps, as a promo code when you register at www.medicalspashow.com. - Promo code expires on April 10, 2025 at 11.59 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. Promo code only applies to the primary registrant. Promo code cannot be applied towards additional attendee registration and cannot be combined with any additional offers. Discount only applicable to new MSS 25 registrants. - And now without further ado, please welcome Dr. W. Christopher Crowley. - Hi, I'm Dr. Chris Crowley, owner of Skin and Tonic in PACE, Florida. I'm really excited to be part of Amspaw's Medical Spa Show this year at the win April 11th through 13th in Las Vegas, Nevada. I have been in the medical aesthetic industry now for over 17 years. I know, I can't believe I'm that old either. But it's really been a fun journey. And one of the things that I'm most proud of is our practice. So my husband and I, Jerry Drinkard, have really started as a side business and grown Skin and Tonic to one of the premier medspaws in Northwest Florida. Not only did we have to learn, as many of you guys are the technical challenges and the medical skills necessary to deliver outstanding results to our patients that we're seeking things just like Botox and filler. And early on, we were just putting a little bit of Botox in the forehead or the glabella region and a little filler in the lips. And it's amazing where we've come over the past 17 years and how we're changing shapes and really doing some fun and cool and innovative treatments now. As we were learning that though, a big challenge was learning the business side of things. And we really had multiple times that I thought we were gonna fail. And just when we were at that point that we were gonna throw in the towel and say it's really not worth it, let's go back full-time to our primary jobs. We would have a little bit of a win or a little bit of success in that perseverance and just pushing through at those hard times has brought us to the place that we are today. And we have a wonderful team here at our practice. And it really, it's been fun to watch that grow, to learn how to manage teams, to grow teams and really to build a thriving med spa is probably one I'm most proud of. - Now, this is a hard question. What is one of the biggest clinical failures or business failures that we've faced while we've been in practice? And I can tell you, you know, there's a lot of things that I would say we've learned lessons from. So, you know, I don't know what you classify as a failure 'cause sometimes those are really not failures, they're opportunities for growth. And I think that we've had a lot of those over the years where we've maybe invested in the wrong technology or partnered with the wrong individuals or companies. And we've had those lessons that we've had to learn the hard way. But I would say if I have to really look at, you know, clinical failures, I think it was early on, we decided to invest in some energy-based devices without really fully understanding this industry, without fully understanding our market, what our patients were looking for. And the person we bought was a really aggressive CO2. It was fully ablative. Our patients, it was such an aggressive treatment. It didn't match what they were wanting. They were wanting to come in for a quick minimal downtime procedure with a low recovery or minimal recovery. And we were doing something that was super aggressive, something that may be great if they were under general anesthesia or having a surgical procedure. So, not only did it not match our patients, but we weren't really equipped to manage these patients post-procedure. And so, we dealt with some of the pigmentation issues, some of the scarring, and then we were really scared to do the procedure. We had an expensive device that sit in the closet that we really didn't use to its max. Now, again, I would say that was a failure on our behalf for many reasons. One is implementing a technology before we fully understood it, buying a technology that didn't match our market and our market demands. But we didn't learn so much from that. Now, it was many years before we decided to bring any energy-based device back into our practice. And now, I'm proud to say we have a lot of different lasers and equipment. They're very profitable for our business, and we are able to combine those with a lot of treatments that we're doing to really give our patients phenomenal results. But it did take us time and a lot of nights of lost sleep to learn those lessons. The Med Spa Show by Amazon is such an exciting trade show. It's where you're gonna learn so many things in the aesthetic industry that you can take back and apply to your practice. I invite you to attend my first session on Saturday, April 12th. It's going to be from 9.35 to 10 a.m. in the inclusive beauty, embracing diversity and equity in the Med Spa track. We'll be discussing classic male and female characteristics and how we can apply these traits and techniques to our transgender patients to optimize their care. In my second session, I'm gonna be joined by Mary Smiley for one of my good friends, a brilliant entrepreneur, owner of Smiley Aesthetics, who's been in this industry for a while as well. Now, I'm really excited to be doing this topic with her. We're gonna be talking about male and female characteristics. This talk is going to be from 10.35 to 11 in the clinical to innovations track. And in this session, you're gonna hear from both of us now. Now, I'm a gang trainer with Galderma and Mary is an Alergen trainer. And so both of us have been doing this for a while. And you're gonna get to hear both of our takes on male and female traits and how we address them in our practice, how we keep our cisgender patients appearing the way that they want to appear and represent themselves as they go out and show off our beautiful work to the world. - Hi, my name is Carrie Doober and I'm a nurse injector in Dallas, Texas. I have been in the medical aesthetic industry space for about 26 years. And the business success that I'm most proud of is the development of Lemon Avenue Plastic Surgery and Laser Center. I think my biggest failure in business would just be trying to expand too rapidly and doing too much. Through that, I've learned to persevere. Steve Jobs put it best when he said I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is just pure perseverance. And so that's something that I really use in my practice. I wanna invite you guys to come and check out my session at the Medical Spa Show 2025. My class is taking place on Saturday, April 12th at 10 10 a.m. It's in the clinical innovations one, bridging theory and practice track. And I'm gonna be with Dr. Sheila Barberino and the two of us are gonna be talking about snatched, advanced lower face technique injections. So Sheila and I are gonna be talking about advanced lower face filler injection techniques called snatched. So you guys are gonna wanna come and check this out. It's going to be something that practitioners can take away those little pearls, those things that just make your patients so happy and you makes you so happy because you're getting the results that you want and your clients. So things that you can immediately utilize in your practices. I'm super excited and I will see you there. - Hi, I'm Dr. George Baxter holder, nurse practitioner and doctor of nursing practice. I'm also the vice president of talent development at Skin Spirit. And I want you to join me at the Medical Spa Show. - I've been part of medical aesthetics, medical specialty for 16 years now. And what I'm most proud of is medical aesthetics when I started, it was a fledgling specialty. We were on the cutting edge. We were putting filler and nasolabial folds and we were putting Botox between the eyebrows and we were really doing much else other than that. You know, I really feel like I've helped drive innovation forward in this industry. And I continue to, I'm really proud of that. And it's not just been me, I love working with the mentors that I have in this industry. And I really find that having those mentors has really helped me become a much better provider and a much better practitioner. And now a much better business person. - Well, my biggest clinical failure, my biggest business failure, oh my goodness, probably, I hate to admit this, but my biggest business failure was trying to be owning my own med spa. Back in Seattle, many, many years ago, before I joined Skin Spirit, I had a company called Seattle Youthful. And, you know, I had a lot of fun with it, but I really wasn't making a lot of money. But it was kind of a mwah, mwah, mwah. I invite you to check out my sessions at the Medical Spa Show 2025. My first session is actually the keynote session on Friday morning. It's the secrets to an unbreakable spirit. And what I'm gonna be covering there is something that's very personal to me. It's my personal story of resilience and perseverance. You know, for anybody that knows me, you know, that I haven't had the smoothest life. And I'm actually gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about how that life, how that those dark periods of my life have really made me the provider that I am today. And that makes me want to keep on going. Please join me for my second session, that I'm doing with Dr. Chien Shredirani in clinical innovations. One, it's gonna be at 2.15 to 2.40 on Friday afternoon. And we're gonna be going over a full-face assessment. We're gonna be doing a demo of full-face assessment and really giving everybody in the audience some pearls and really how to take a top-to-bottom out-to-in approach and really make your clinical assessments absolutely spectacular. Finally, on Sunday, join me for a full day in the Academy for Injection Anatomy, Cadaver Training, where we take a complete deep dive in the Cadaveric Anatomy, something that I'm completely passionate about. There's an extra fee to take part in this, but I really hope that you'll join me. If you've never been to a Cadaver Lab, you have to come to this Cadaver Lab. This is the Cadaver Lab for injectors. It's not just layered dissections. You're actually gonna take a look in all of the rooms of the face to know exactly where filler goes. I see you there. - Hi, my name is Katie Duke. I am a nurse practitioner and the founder of Katie Creative, which is a digital media creator business based in New York City. I am so excited to be a speaker at Amspa's Medical Spa Show. I have been on the digital media marketing side of aesthetics for 10 years. And the business success that I am most proud of are the relationships and the successful campaigns and initiatives and products and services that I have helped different aesthetics practices and providers launch all across the country. The biggest business lesson that I have learned so far is that you really can't wait around to get other people's buy-ins and other people's approval. You have to make the difficult decisions. You have to take the risks. You have to take advantage of the resources and the network around you. And you have to use those things to help push you through those moments to get you to the next step because growth is so uncomfortable, especially in the aesthetics industry. So know your resources, be willing to take risks and make sure that you push yourself through those difficult moments. I invite you to come check out my session at the Medical Spa Show on April 12 from 3.50 to 4.15, taking place in the marketing mastery strategies for success track. The title of my talk is Making the Pivot, How to Find Your Authentic Path in Aesthetics and Beyond. In my session, I will be covering how to develop strategic partnerships across social media, especially in the space of working with digital creators so that your brand and your practice stands out. I will discuss the importance of branding and the presence of your brand on social media and how that's different than just posting. I will also cover how to develop meaningful campaigns that are impactful that can not only build trust within your community, but build respect within the space of your profession. When you attend my session, I want you to walk away with a very clear vision, the tools and a plan of how to create an authentic and a successful presence on social media that will encourage creators to want to work with you, brands to collaborate with you and patients to book with you. But why is that so important? Well, here's the thing. Everybody's on social media, everybody's making content, everybody's a creator, everybody's an influencer, everybody's an aesthetic injector and a master injector. So how exactly do you make yourself stand out in a sea of people? It's by embracing your unique selling value. And that right there is understanding your authentic path and your purpose within your aesthetics presence, not only in your practice, but on social media as well. Because at the end of the day, the one thing that you have going for you that no one else has is that only you can be you. - Hi, my name is Riley Wirth. I'm a nurse practitioner at Elace Medical Spa in Salt Lake City, Utah. I'm so excited to be a speaker and spas of medical spa show. So today I'm gonna be going over a couple questions that I have as well as what I'm gonna be speaking about in the medical spa show. So the first question that I have is what clinical success am I most proud of? So I've been injecting and I've been in the medical aesthetics field industry in general for nine years. And I would say that the clinical success that I'm most proud of isn't necessarily one particular treatment or moment, but rather a transformative impact that I've been able to make on all my patients in general with their confidence and well-being. And I'm assuming that a lot of other injectors would feel the same way. One case to me that stands out very vividly is I had a really cute patient that was bit by a dog when she was very young. I think she was about nine years old. And it took basically the whole portion of her left upper and lower lip off. And she had to do a lot of positive surgery, a lot of reconstruction. And unfortunately it didn't go as well as they had hoped, but they were able to replace the upper and lower lip. So 30 years later, she decided to do a little bit more than that with me where I was able to assess her. She did have a lot of scar tissue and definitely a lot of scarring. But what we did was we tried to make her left side match at least her right side. I told her there was only so much I could do for her and she totally understood and she felt that in general, it was gonna be better than what it was. And she was okay with that. So what we decided to do with her treatment plan overall was I did a little bit of lip filler on her upper and lower on just her left side to try to match her right side. And I was able to break through a lot of that scar tissue and I was able to help release some of it and filling just a little bit within the borders and a little bit of the pink pillows of her tissues, as well as a little bit down and to kind of that chinshadow area just to try and again help match the other side. It actually was such an amazing transform of result for her, it changed her life. She cried, I cried, everybody cried. And to this day, she is so beyond grateful and her confidence has increased. I feel like for us as providers, that is such a big rewarding opportunity that we're able to have. I feel like this experience taught me definitely in medical aesthetics that it's more than just about clinical outcomes sometimes. It's about listening to your patients. It's about understanding their goals and becoming a partner in their aesthetic journey and their transformative journey. Every treatment I provide was an opportunity to combine artistry and science and compassion to make a tangible difference in someone's life. I feel like that case and countless other cases has reaffirmed my belief in the power of aesthetics to heal more than just the surface. It could also restore confidence, it can restore and enhance quality of life and it can bring out the best in people. And I feel like that's really powerful and it feels my passion for the industry. The next question that I have is what is my biggest clinical failure? And what did I learn from that opportunity? And I feel like it's always hard to express failures that you have, but I feel like the biggest failure, and I had to think about this for a while, I feel like my biggest failure in general, was getting a little bit too comfortable, injecting, I've been doing it for nine years. And I felt like I was pretty good at what I do until I realized the moment I started to film myself, to hold myself accountable, I noticed a lot of errors that I was making, especially in terms of patient safety. And I think the biggest thing is when you get comfortable injecting and thinking that you're just great and you know what you're doing, you just kind of get in the groove of things and you're like, oh, I'm getting great outcomes. Sometimes we forget to hold ourselves accountable and always testing ourselves, I think is a great opportunity and recording yourselves and making yourselves make sure that you don't create bad habits. And I found that I was, but I didn't know that until I recorded myself and I shocked myself and I humbled myself a lot. There's always room for growth, there's always room for opportunity, and it's always important to make sure you always hold yourself accountable for what you're doing. So I feel like self, what I learned from this was self-assessment is crucial in our profession. By critically evaluating ourselves and your own work, we set the stage for personal and professional developments. And we have to remember that true success is not necessarily what you achieve, but it is also about that we need to inspire others and ignite that in others as well. So the biggest lesson I did learn was always self-reflect and humble yourselves, record yourselves, and there's always room for growth and to be better in other ways. So I do invite you guys to come to my session and at the Medical School Show in 2025, my class is taking place on Saturday, April 12th, five to 525 PM in the Clinical Innovations to Talk Truck. So the title of my talk is the importance of facial mapping and how to obtain a sharp jawline using HA fillers. And during this session, I really want to be covering the importance of facial mapping. It's so important to map everything that you do to set yourself up for true success, mapping and then remapping. So this helps set the stage for the outcome you're trying to achieve and to get repeatable and consistent outcomes for your patients. This, for me, I also want to go over needle versus cannula with this is we're going to be doing facial mapping specifically with just the jawline in terms of time and then showing you my exact technique to get that sharp jawline outcome on male versus female versus needle versus cannula. Why do both? And I want to show it a lot of different ways on your body position and how that's also very important, not only with mapping, picking the right product for your patient, but how are you standing next to your patient? What angle are you trying to get? What projection? What structure are you trying to achieve? And doing the same angle every single time is not always going to get to the best outcome. So how do you utilize your body and your position of your needle and your syringe in general to get that outcome? So definitely be going over that as well. I also want to show everyone how to utilize every single drop of the product that you have and how to utilize that to your advantage. The biggest thing that I do want everyone to walk away with and take away with and why this is so important is to get reliable and consistent outcomes. I want everyone to be able to achieve that wonderful sharp jawline for your patient, male or female and going back to the basics of facial mapping and how that sets you up to be able to understand the importance of that. I'm going to be teaching everyone your recipe. I want you to walk away with the recipe and be able to go back into your practice, feel confident with trying the technique and utilizing that on your patients and gaining confidence, honestly, for all of you guys to be able to do that, especially with lower anatomy as well, which is obviously always important to know how to prioritize, how to pick the right product for your patients to give the best outcome and who's the best candidate and who is it, a good candidate. So I really hope to see you guys all there. I am so excited to be able to meet everyone, to be able to go over everything that I want to cover in terms of the presentation. So excited to see you guys there and don't forget, April 12th, 5 p.m. Can't wait to see you guys in Las Vegas. Bye-bye for now. - Hi, I'm Nicole Gregory and I am the CEO of Urban You, medical aesthetics and wellness. Really excited and honored to be speaking this year at the Amspa Medical Show. If you've been before, you know what you don't want to miss and if you haven't been, it's a great time to go and check out what's coming up in the industry, but also, you know, how to advance your skills. It's a really, it's a wonderful networking opportunity. I have been in the industry for a little over seven years. I've been in multiple different businesses in the past. The medical aesthetics business is one that really, it kind of grabs you and pulls you in. Once you get into it, there's so many different layers and it's always changing, ever changing. So that keeps it really exciting, but also kind of nerve-wracking, too, because the changes can be hard. And I'd say that's probably one of the biggest areas that I feel happy and successful about, multiple areas I feel happy and successful about in this industry, but mostly with kind of looking at trends. Urban You, we say trends live here, you belong here, and trends can be, they can be tricky. So really looking at where do we want to be a leader? Where do we want to be a first follower? What trends don't we want to get into at all? And when we put our matrix together and just continue on that thought process of trends live here, you belong here, yes, we want to bring it to our audience, our guests, and our clients, but at the same point, we also know that we have a responsibility of trust and we want to be able to provide that to our guests. So, patient advocacy is a big part of what we do. And so, being able to look at that matrix of trends and pick out what's good and what's bad for us, doesn't mean it's for anyone else, it's for us. That has been a real, it's kept us on the straight narrow. I think one of the biggest challenges, so that's a good part, I'd say the bad part, the challenging part of the industry is been, you know, the growth, like seeing this amazing growth, and it's good for everyone. It really has been great. But when we see that kind of growth, the fragmentation, saturation, we've all heard that and seen it ourselves, I think one of the biggest areas of failure, maybe that I've seen in the industry, is that we're not staying collectively together with a voice of how do we provide patient advocacy? Our patients, as of right now, really don't have anywhere to go. If there's a bad outcome, you know, they can go to their doctor or the ER and try to figure something out, but there's really no one keeping us accountable is an industry. And I know AMSA's about compliance and they have a lot of resources available, but really looking at it so we can all come together collectively and be able to provide the highest level of care along with patient advocacy and work together on, you know, really providing the best service as possible. I also know as a business owner, it has, you know, it's challenging and also to look at, you know, people. You know, people, I would love all of our people. We have an amazing team, our team, you know, and again, I know a lot of people might say that about their team and so we think it, you think it is great and that's the way it should be. But really understanding our people. We've taken a lot of time in the last two years to, you know, put together a lot of consistencies in regards to growth for our employees. And so it's not just, you know, it's not financial growth, some of it is, but it's growth, you know, clinically. It's growth from a customer expectation and engagement satisfaction standpoint. So we've really taken the time this past, you know, a year and a half, two years to put those metrics in place where we hadn't had those before. And, you know, it's not just a business failure, it's a people failure. And so really learning from that and moving that into where we're going now in 2025. I'm excited to be able to share some of that learning that we've had with everyone. I really hope you can come to my session at the Medical Spa Show in 2025. My panel is taking place April 11th, Friday, 8.55 to 9.25. It's in the general session track. And the title is dangerous practices, devastating consequences, a compliance perspective. So really talking about how we can all raise up some of the standards in the industry together collectively. You know, what we're seeing out there, we've all heard the crazy horror stories, but also how we can take and learn from that. And again, come together as one collective voice and opportunity to do its best for the industry. I look forward to seeing you at the medical show 2025. - Don't miss Medical Spa Show 2025, April 10th through the 13th at the beautiful win in Vegas. Use code medicalspainsider, MSS25, all caps, as a promo code when you register at www.medicalspa show.com. See you there. - Promo code expires on April 10th, 2025 at 11.59 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. Promo code only applies to the primary registry. Promo code cannot be applied towards additional attendee registration and cannot be combined with any additional offers. Discount only applicable to new MSS 25 registrants. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
In this Medical Spa Show speakers series, we hear from W. Chistopher Croley, MD, of Skin & Tonic; Cary Deuber, CRNFA, CANS, of Lemmon Avenue; George Baxter-Holder, DNP, APRN, CANS, of SkinSpirit; Katie Duke, NP-BC, of KD Creative; Riley Worth, NP, of Elase Medical Spa; and Nicole Gregory of Urban You. They describe their wins and lessons learned, along with what conference attendees will learn from their classes at Medical Spa Show 2025, from April 10 - 13, 2025!
W. Christopher Croley, MD
Saturday, April 12: 9:35 - 10 a.m. | Beyond Binary Beauty: Elevating Transgender Care in Medical Aesthetics
Saturday, April 12: 10:35 - 11 a.m. | Male and Female Facial Balancing
Cary Deuber, CRNFA, CANS
Saturday, April 12: 10:10 - 10:35 a.m. | "Snatched": Advanced Lower Face Filler Injection
George Baxter-Holder, DNP, APRN, CANS
Thursday, April 10: 12 - 4 p.m. | The AART of GAIN: Education on the Galderma Aesthetic Portfolio
Friday, April 11: 9:25 - 9:40 a.m. | The Secrets to an Unbreakable Spirit
Friday, April 11: 2:15 - 2:40 p.m. | Full Face Assessment Demo
Sunday, April 13: 7:30 a.m. - 4 p.m. | AIA Cadaver Training
Katie Duke, NP-BC
Saturday, April 12: 3:50 - 4:15 p.m. | Making the Pivot: How to Find Your Authentic Path in Aesthetics and Beyond
Riley Worth, NP
Saturday, April 12: 5 - 5:25 p.m. | The Importance of Facial Mapping and How to Obtain a Sharp Jawline Using HA Fillers
Nicole Gregory
Friday, April 11: 8:55 - 9:25 a.m. | PANEL: Dangerous Practices, Devastating Consequences: A Compliance Perspective
Music By Ghost Score
