Skincare Basics & Treatments

Hannah: It’s something I always wanted to do. I remember when I was 10, my mom let me have my first set of nails, and then, I dunno if you remember, way back in the day they were fibreglass, and I can’t still remember <laugh>, the feeling I had when I had those first nails and I went installer, made my mom not let me do PE. And so I keep them really nice <laugh>, and that is when my love for beauty started. I wanted to do it obviously after school and whatever, but I didn’t go down that route at first. I went down the business route. So I’ve got to green business, that type of thing, but still have like the urge to do beauty. So I went and trained like evenings, weekends, took time off work, that type of thing and built it up from there. And here we are 15 years later; my business is 15 years old on Monday.

Dawn: Oh, crikey. Well, happy birthday to the business!

What skincare is pertinent to do anyway for Customers? Even before you consider any Advanced Treatment?

Hannah: You need to make sure you’ve got what you are doing at home down to a T. The one thing that people confuse is a skin condition and a skin type. Two different things. So they’ve got, they’ve got oil, these skin, which could be come from dehydrated here, but they’ll go and get products for oily skin. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, so the best thing to do is get these loads of categories and clinics that do free consultations. Have a chat with the professional, go away and get the right products for your skin. Work on a home care routine. Mm. Because although you can have treatments in clinics there, that’s only 50% of the whole, the whole thing. The other 50% is you doing your bit at home. So, if you can start off by getting that right, you’re gonna get better results from the treatments you have in clinics. So make sure you’ve got a good cleanser. Make sure you, things like when you’re taking new makeup off, have a new flannel every day.

Literally, go to Tesco, go to Primark, get seven flannels, use a fresh one every day just so we’re not transferring bacteria and point it back that it’s the little, the little habits if we can tweak, they make a massive difference. So we’ve got things like cleansers to moisturise, and one thing that is the most important is SPF all year round, at least fact 30 plus.

Dawn: That’s one thing I never really picked up on, the fact that you should probably wear Z cream on your face or at least like the most skin, skin and skin that’s always shown like the back of your hands and stuff like that all the time. I have no clue that you’re supposed to do it all the time cuz I just thought, Oh well, the sun’s away, it’s fine. I know a lot of people think like that because we live in sunny England. <laugh>.

Hannah: Yeah, it’s always raining; it’s cloudy today. I don’t, I don’t have to worry about it when actually there is still some UV rays going on. It’s just not high.

What could customers ensure they’re doing to get the best outcome for treatments, for pre-treatment and post-treatment as well?

Hannah: So again, having that free consultation, some people charge whichever really gets the education out of it. You need to ask the professional why they would recommend X, Y, and Z treatment. What you can do beforehand to enhance that to get better results and what you are gonna do after that. So, from a business perspective, if someone books with me automatically, my booking system will send them print advice. So what to do, links on products, what we spoke about in the plan, things to avoid. So don’t come straight from the gym so you’re hot and sweaty or don’t have sun beds for like a week before if you’ve been on holiday and just landed back and obviously you’ve got a sun time. All those types of things. Even things down to now beginning to send out with COVID and vaccine advice.

So, leaving two weeks on either side, so before and after. There are all these little things that you have been and had medication from your doctor; things down to basic antibiotics can affect treatment. So make sure you disclose all this information in your consultation. So again, you get the best advice from your practitioner and then get good advice pre- and post. So, as I said, from a business perspective, my assistant will send pre- and post as soon as you’ve booked in. So you’ve got it, you’re aware, you’re educated on what not to do and what to do before and after.

Dawn: That’s very key. Is there an example you can give me? So, for example, if someone you know who’s been on who does regular like Sunbed tanning. And they were going for a treatment, you know, obviously, if they didn’t listen to advice, what could possibly happen?

Hannah: There are so many things that can happen. We can misdiagnose skin because it’s not the true reflection of your skin colour. You might have pigmentation that we missed because, obviously, you’ve got a tan, and it’s covering those bits. So we could potentially give you the wrong treatment because we don’t know further. We’ll ask you about your lifestyle and what you do for the rest of it, but we also go off what we can see. The fact is that your eyes never lie. So if you are coming in and it’s not a true reflection of yourself, you’re potentially gonna get the wrong treatment.

Yeah, no that’s stuff from Keyan is also, you know, but then if they’re not happy and it’s like, well, you need to be truthful with your practitioner from the start, really you can’t just hide it. You may see some people kind of, you know, I think a classic one I see is when people go into a hair salon, and they say, ‘Oh, you know, I haven’t really used box dye recently.’ And that’s why they do test strands because they need to see how it’s gonna react with whatever is on their hair, and half the time, they are lying, and it saves the hairdresser a lot of issues because it’s like, well, we’ve done a test strand, and actually you’re lying <laugh>.

Hannah: It’s a bit harder times they really do been on holiday, and they’re like, you haven’t been on holiday. And I’m like, I’ve just seen on your Instagram you landed back 48 hours ago on <laugh>. And it is also super key as well because, you know, you may not get the result that you want because there’s a slight difference in your skin or a tan and stuff like that.

So, are there any sort of Brands or Key ingredients we need to look out for when using skincare products?

Dawn: Because obviously, you know, people go to consultations, they may recommend like a certain line, stuff like that. But I guess for those who are looking from high street to high end, like what kind of ingredients we need to be looking at that would be beneficial to your skin.

Hannah: Yes, I get that. So, depending on your budget, it’s important that you think about this from a client perspective before you go to your consultation because nine times out of 10, almost thousand, a hundred percent that the practitioner is gonna recommend products. Now, obviously, if we’re doing medical grade treatments alongside medical grade products, but if you don’t have the budget for that, we do have the knowledge to say X, Y, and Z on the high street. You’ll get some results from that. It might not be as good as what we recommend that the medical grade products sport is gonna help you. For things like acid hydration, every single person needs hydration and looking for things like peptides and ceramides in there and hydration puffs as well. And it’s the active ingredient and generally the UV SPF and hydration; I can’t tell you hand point now together.

So, just to note, remember SPF and moisturization above all and wash your face. I know this might seem like a thing that everyone does, but you’ll be surprised that a lot of people don’t. They’ll say I’ll just take the makeup off with the wipe, or I’ll leave it on for the next day because it actually looks really nice today. And I’m like, okay, so here’s a flannel, you going need <laugh>, and then I’ll do the rest. You must wash your nose. Simple things.

Dawn: No, it’s silly. It’s quite silly cause it’s like, you know, I know some people just kind of like, oh yeah, just wash my face like once a day, and there’s me over here with like acne-prone skin and stuff, and I’m like is that good for you? <laugh> <laugh>, I mean, I guess it might work for them cuz their skin looks absolutely great, or maybe they’re just lying, and actually, they do a 10-step routine in the morning that makes ’em look so glowy. But I think so keen to remember that, you know, a surface wipe doesn’t necessarily get into like the nooks and crannies and the pores and everything else where you need to do it for a watch.

Hannah: It doesn’t. And also, the thing is with wipes; obviously, you can wipe your makeup off with a makeup wipe or a cleansing balm, whichever. And then the advice is, have you heard of double cleanse? Go and wash your face to get the rest off because essentially, yes, you can look like you’ve removed a lot of your makeup, probably half, but there’s still a little bit that with a wipe, you’re moving from here to here and that’s all you do in the end. So you need to actually go and wash it off in the shower to get that off.

Tell me more about your Clinic. Do you have a Favourite Treatment you do?

Hannah: My favourite treatments are basically anything to face, from chemical peels to therapy to microneedling to dpla. And I love that. I think a lot of my clients because I am very specific with what I target. So a lot of people come to me with high pigmentation, acne, and textured skin; they’re the things that I can treat, and I get excellent results from them. So generally, it’s the LED light therapy, the chemical peels that I will target there and a really, really, really my client strict home care routine. And I will know if they have strayed.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

Hannah: No. The only thing I want to like reinforce is the pre and post-care after treatments. Please just always follow it. From a practitioner’s perspective, we have to cover our backs, usually the booking system, to automatically send things out. And so my, I use fresher as a booking system so as soon as you book, as I said, it sends both things out, and they have the tick that they’ve read it. So, you know, I always make sure that my clients have done that. I say, can you redo this form, blah, blah blah before you come into consultation, and we’ll consult from there.

Dawn: That’s very key as well. It’s almost like a form of the beginning of a consent form as well. You wanna make sure that if they ticked it but then they didn’t listen to it, and it’s like, well, you said you ticked it, that you’ve read it so exactly. Gave you this information. Yeah, we go on quite a lot about the importance of consent forms. We work with Face’s Consent.

Hannah: Yeah, the forms are like really thorough, really great, and it’s, I think, so key to hammer in again; get the information to the client, make sure that they’ve signed and understood and then if there is a problem like well you did read this, and you’ve signed that, you’ve read this then yeah and it covers your back.

I will say I used a little bit of information from some permanent makeup, um, for Michael Bladen from the face of consent, and I had a solicitor come to me for a consultation, and she said, ‘I just wanna say about consultation form’, and in my head, I was thinking, oh my god, <laugh>. And she was like, ‘It’s very thorough. That I’ve seen yet. And I thought, oh, must email Faces and tell them <laugh>.

Dawn: We’re so proud of it. We helped develop those consent forms alongside the insurers as well. So that’s great, especially with our insurance policies. The insurers are happy, especially if you use the apps. We have an Insync-specific faces app as well for our clients and any customers who buy a policy with us. So, no, it’s really good that we got nice feedback straight from the source.

So, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. I appreciate you taking out your day for it.