Ep 370 – Overstories and Tipping Points

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0:00:41.3 Maggie Staszcuk: Meet Comfort Zone, the Italian science-led skincare brand trusted by estheticians and featured in over 7000 spas worldwide. Founded by pharmacist Dr. Davide Bolati, Comfort Zone is powered by over 60 in-house chemists and skin care experts dedicated to skin longevity. Our clinically tested formulas blend advanced botanical and biotechnology research to deliver real results and elevate every treatment experience. Discover more at us.comfortzoneskin.com or follow @comfortzoneskin_official on Instagram.

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0:01:17.5 Ella Cressman: Hello and welcome to ASCP Esty Talk. I'm Ella Cressman, licensed esthetician, forever student of the skin and of life and content contributor for Associated Skin Care Professionals.

0:01:39.9 Maggie Staszcuk: I am Maggie Staszcuk, licensed esthetician and ASCP's program director.

0:01:43.9 Ella Cressman: I know we say this a lot, but I'm really excited about today's episode because it's bringing together things that I love.

0:01:50.1 Maggie Staszcuk: Tell me all about it.

0:01:50.7 Ella Cressman: I'm gonna ask you a question first. What do you think Malcolm Gladwell, my favorite author, dermaplaning, suite rentals, and TikTok skinfluencers have in common?

0:02:02.5 Maggie Staszcuk: I have no idea, Ella.

0:02:04.2 Ella Cressman: Well, way more than you'd think, and that's what I wanna talk to everyone about. So you know my favorite author is Malcolm Gladwell, and I love his books. We've talked about 'em in our book club. But this year he released The Revenge of the Tipping Point. So Tipping Point was the book that came out about 25 years ago, and it talks about basically how these seemingly small ideas or actions end up really making a huge difference, and in sometimes reshaping entire industries. It's a fascinating book. The first one and this one, he comes to revisit some of his earlier thought processes. But what I love about it is how he shows how certain people or environments and narratives combine to create these wow, everything just changed then moments. So today, what I want to do is connect his ideas to aesthetics and talk about the tipping points we've lived through and the ones that might be coming. You on board for that?

0:03:11.1 Maggie Staszcuk: Yeah, I love this.

0:03:12.8 Ella Cressman: Let's start with talking about some of Gladwell's concepts. So he has these three concepts, and then he has something called overstories. With these three concepts, one of them is called the law of the few. And this is where we see connectors, mavens, salespeople, and now influencers spark certain shifts, even platform leaders. That's way different now. I think we can identify a lot of the few. Who do you think when we first started out? Who would you say might be some of the few that were really leading changes?

0:03:50.9 Maggie Staszcuk: That's really interesting because when I think back to when we entered the industry, it was still so new. And all I can really point to are the people that were so business savvy, and then the skin care reps. So I think you had these estheticians that entered the industry and bam, they knew what they were doing, and they built amazing skin care empires. And then reps who were saying, "These are the trends. This is what you have to buy. Here's how you do it."

0:04:20.4 Ella Cressman: I think so too. I think we early in our career, we leaned on our product representatives for the newness, and that often could shape our business practices too. The other thing, this reminds me of something super specific, but one of the concepts he talks about is the stickiness factor. Why some ideas catch fire. I think of the J Sisters, who were really responsible for Brazilian waxing popularity. But others might be peels or lash extensions, Hydrafacial. I mean, you can't think of. They call it wet hydrodermabrasion and hydrodermabrasion. I can't stand the term wet either. Just call it hydrodermabrasion. But you can't think of that without Hydrafacial or dermaplaning or brow lamination, things like that. And then finally, his third key concept is the power of context and how environment shapes adoption. Think of things like what we have lived through, would be economic downturns, how that shapes or shifts. The pandemic was another one. Social media, huge one. And then also shifting consumer values, which is definitely something we've both experienced throughout our career.

0:05:36.0 Maggie Staszcuk: Yeah, absolutely. What's interesting to me is that when we first started in the industry, because aesthetics was so new, we had to educate the consumer about why you don't go to Walgreens to buy your skincare products. And now the industry again is having this pendulum swing, and there's such this merging, for lack of a better word, where again, consumers are going to Target or Walgreens or whatever and buying their skincare products. And you have influencers that are pushing those products. And I think estheticians are either having to jump on board or again, educating about why they have value and why the client should be purchasing the professional products from them.

0:06:23.0 Ella Cressman: And putting their trust in that, their professional expertise versus something they saw while doomscrolling. Yeah. Doomscrolling was even hard for me to say. I hate it. I do it, but I hate it. So let's talk before we get into some of these huge shifts like what you were talking about, let's talk about a concept that helps make sense of this. It's called overstories. And these are stories that sit above our profession. These are the larger narratives, the movements or whatever that shape how the world sees estheticians and also how we see ourselves. So an overstory is the big narrative that sits above our individual experiences, or it could be the story that shapes how we understand everything happening around us. This is the cultural story, the professional story, the emotional story. Here's some examples. Early on in our career, spa. Spa really means water, right? But it equates to luxury and pampering. And this was the visual that was presented to the world in movies. Or really that was what we had was movies or magazines. So when I started, I had to convince that it wasn't just a treat, right? We had to move things into something like corrective care.

0:07:43.1 Ella Cressman: So corrective care is where I had to switch the narrative with my clients back in the day. Corrective care, the overstory is results and science. Or influencers, their overstory is that they're somehow the authority. Medical aesthetics is somehow legitimacy and quicker results. Or a solo suite owner or a solopreneur is independence, and identity. These types of overstories would determine which trends tip, which fade, and which reshape the industry. What do you think?

0:08:18.8 Maggie Staszcuk: I think all of these make total sense. And as you're saying it, I can see this overstory play out in marketing and how people perceive the industry.

0:08:30.7 Ella Cressman: For sure. Which overstory do you feel defined the early years of your career, and then maybe helped push certain tipping points in your duration?

0:08:42.2 Maggie Staszcuk: Well, I would say, so I entered the industry as it was evolving new. And so it was very, "spa." And I think what defined it is spa equals luxury and pampering. And that's what I tried to provide for my clients because that's what I knew. And as the industry evolved, I just followed that path. So medical aesthetics became a thing, and that's the path that I went down. And so I am telling my clients this overstory that, you know what? I am all about results and science, and this is corrective and blah, blah, blah.

0:09:21.1 Ella Cressman: Enter medical skincare. Like some kind of a differentiation to your point, the vernacular changed to match the trend where we know it's not. It's like, what do they call it? Cosmeceutical. Things like that were born to emphasize the difference. When we got away from the... It's a whole other thing, but we got away from the pampering, thinking that pampering was fluff. Remember we called it fluff?

0:09:44.9 Maggie Staszcuk: We did, yeah.

0:09:46.2 Ella Cressman: Fluff. And there was no benefit. But what we're learning now is that there is so much benefit to human touch or other elements there. So, major tipping points in our career span would definitely be where the overstory changed. Like you said, the rise of medical aesthetics, things like lasers and injectables, and these medical-grade lines. Not to mention there was another shift where clients demanded faster and more visible outcomes. They wanted it quicker because it was associated. This was a blessing for me because I was able to imply this and have them come in more regularly. This is what changed my career for sure, this medical side. Not that at the time... I have a medical spa now, but at the time I didn't. But my language changed to treatments instead of services. You were a client instead of a guest, things like that. And it encouraged the frequency for them to want to come in, in a different kind of way. So what moment made you realize medical aesthetics wasn't just a subset, but that it was changing the industry? Is it when you were working with a doctor?

0:10:52.0 Maggie Staszcuk: Well, yeah. I mean, as the industry evolved and I evolved with it, that is when I started working with a doctor. But I would say when I realized this shift in the industry is when I was still in this spa mindset, and clients were coming in, and I'm providing this luxury and this pampering and this fluff, but clients are telling me, "No pain, no gain," and "I want results." But I'm not in that mindset.

0:11:06.1 Ella Cressman: Oh, interesting.

0:11:20.2 Maggie Staszcuk: I am saying, "No pain, no gain? What do you mean? Lie down, let me pamper you." Yeah. And so we were on two different pages, and there was a little bit of butting heads. And that's when I started to realize I gotta get with the program here, that my clients are starting to shift and move towards more of this medical mindset. And that's the way the industry is evolving. And we're no longer spa, and luxury, and pampering. We're now moving into corrective, and science, and results-oriented.

0:11:57.2 Ella Cressman: And now it's so much about the whole experience, including the ambiance, which got taken away a little bit, or the focus on it got taken away. And the other thing that's interesting, while there's this return to an essence of that luxury mindset or that pamper, we just call it self-care now.

0:12:06.2 Maggie Staszcuk: Yeah.

0:12:15.1 Ella Cressman: And then the other thing, I just read a statistic in an article that talked about Gen Z, and they're more loyal to ingredients than they are to brands...

0:12:20.6 Maggie Staszcuk: That's interesting.

0:12:22.6 Ella Cressman: For efficacy.

0:12:24.9 Maggie Staszcuk: Oh, interesting.

0:12:27.3 Ella Cressman: I know. I thought it was interesting. Maybe we can talk about that in another pod. But speaking of Gen Z, another huge overstory was social influencers and how they became a new skin authority. And that is an overstory shift. The expertise was combined with visibility, and YouTube started it, then Instagram, or Facebook, and TikTok. And this created a democratization of skin information, misinformation also, and product dumping. So, when did you first feel the influencer wave hit the profession as someone who doesn't have social media? Because it still hit you.

0:13:09.0 Maggie Staszcuk: I was gonna say when I found my social media flooded by influencers. I don't know that there is a moment in time when I felt like influencers have taken over. I think it was one moment I woke up and realized not only are my clients being influenced, I'm being influenced. And I myself also am following influencers. We've talked about it before. There are dermatologists that promote all these great products that I would never in a million years recommend or use, and I want to go out and buy them. And it's kind of like a light bulb moment.

0:13:45.6 Ella Cressman: Yeah, it's very effective.

0:13:46.9 Maggie Staszcuk: Yeah.

0:13:48.2 Ella Cressman: For me to really understand the impact of influencers, I think it was at the very beginning of calling them influencers. Right after the pandemic was when I was working with a brand, and they were getting calls because X influencer had put this on her social, and they wanted to figure out how to do it too, put the brand up. This was early, and it just took off. Then I was also part of organizing the influencers, what content we would ask of them, what kind of talking points we would give them too on the other side. So it's new, but it's fast, and it's super important. Yeah. So that was one very interesting part. The other part is interesting for me because I started out as a solopreneur, but there was definitely a shift in the last 10 years to solopreneur and boutique corrective studios where it was employer-defined, now self-defined. And you saw that even with hairstylists, too. I'm talking about the suite spaces, not just the booth renting. Now, this is something in my career, everybody that worked at the hair salon I was at was booth renters too, and then I had a room, so I was a room renter. But this was interesting because all of a sudden, you had freedom to create your own signature modalities. Then you could have specialty versions, specialty studios, suite culture, and independence. So you talk to a lot of people. You're aware of many different styles of practitioners, in fact, probably some of your former students. How did suite culture change aesthetics from your perspective?

0:15:33.5 Maggie Staszcuk: Well, as you said, when we started out in the industry, you always used the term booth rent. You had the opportunity to be an employee, and even that is controversial because there was no hourly rate. You were technically 1099, you were paid commission only, and you had to hustle to make a living. And booth rent is the word that was used, even though we were in the spa industry, it was adopted from the hair industry. And that evolved, and you had those spa salon owners demanding that you were working the 9:00 to 5:00, even though they weren't paying you to stay there, and that became an employee situation. They had to pay you by the hour. And I think that how this suite opportunity truly changed culture of aesthetics is that these estheticians were saying, "I used to have some semblance of independence. I was paid commission, I was in my treatment space." And in some situations, you had an opportunity to determine what treatment were you choosing for your client. You weren't following a strict protocol.

0:16:48.6 Ella Cressman: Yeah, 'cause you're part of a day spa and this was the Rainbow Bright facial.

0:16:53.3 Maggie Staszcuk: Exactly, exactly. And suites came around, and now truly you were your own business owner. All the money was yours. You weren't splitting a commission, you weren't paid by the hour, you weren't being told what hours you were required to work. And I think it became even more freedom and more opportunity for estheticians to feel like they really have their own business.

0:17:19.0 Ella Cressman: Yes. I think there was two overstories collided, too. I think we had solopreneurs, we had booth renters, as we call them, or room rentals now. And then when social media hit, and they could see people's rooms and people's suites, and these are the new estheticians that are very, very versed in social media. They grew up, they didn't grow up without it like we did, and they're seeing that as the norm. I think it shifted into the majority is now solopreneurs at some point, whether they're part of a collective, whether they have a suite, whether they have a room, whether they have their own brick, and mortar shop. I think I see that more frequently than I see people working in a spa unless it's a chain. Hold that thought. We'll be right back.

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0:18:48.7 Ella Cressman: Okay, here we go. Let's get back to the podcast. Let's finally talk about consumer awareness. We touched on it a little bit, but this is where beauty moved into wellness and now a little bit of identity. We have clean beauty that was huge, we don't hear as much in that, or now neuro-cosmetics. We've talked a lot about happy skincare and then emotional skin and then ingredient literacy, like I mentioned with that Gen Z. We saw that happen with Eva Longoria when the hyaluronan acid, too. But now it's normal. It was something we reserved as professional estheticians who understood cosmeceuticals, and were the authority, and were teaching you, our client, to now mainstream marketing is teaching about ingredients and it's adapted. That Gen Z puts ingredients first above brand loyalty.

0:19:47.9 Maggie Staszcuk: I think that ingredients is so much more at the forefront of conversations than it ever was before. Nobody thought about what's in it. When we started in the industry, that was never a conversation in the treatment room. My clients never asked, it was never a factor. Nobody worried, "Is this entering my bloodstream?" And now, I mean, you see people walking down the aisles of Target looking at the back of their bottles. You're telling me Gen Z, that's what they're loyal to, that's all they care about. So ingredients is such a factor. What we're putting on our bodies and in our bodies is more important.

0:20:31.5 Ella Cressman: Yeah, more important than it used to be for sure. So that's definitely some identifying tipping points or overstories in our industry. But you just really sparked something in me to talk about what's coming up. What are these emerging tipping points? Where are we headed next? So let's talk about ingredients first. I want to propose something because, as someone who's worked behind the scenes for a long time, I will tell you, not naming any names, that it's been my experience that some brands, not all brands, but some brands, will tout the benefits of a product with creative product naming. Let's just say this is just made up, but let's just say this is a happy... Let's just call it a happy cleanser. This happy cleanser has happy things, and you're gonna put it on, and you're gonna be so happily clean, exclamation point. And I know that in the ingredient deck, this happy ingredient is so far down that it's not really as effective. They've just pushed it and emphasized it. So I think emerging, understanding tipping points, now we're tipped over to where the next generation is loyal to not product, which was the beginning of our career. People were loyal to product or idea, now they're loyal to ingredient. Maybe start thinking about how to use that in anticipation. Teach them how to qualify. I mean, it's not something we haven't done before. We've said, "Look at the top four" and everything, but really focusing maybe your social media as your... Most people on social media are educating on something. Talk about ingredient concentrations or active ingredients and how they work, and how to look for them. Teach them that part too, and that might reestablish the said practitioner as an authority.

0:22:21.9 Maggie Staszcuk: Yeah, I agree with you.

0:22:24.1 Ella Cressman: So let's talk about some other interesting overstories. You can't go anywhere without talking about AI right now. But AI, we have this opportunity for hyper-personalization. Skin equals data. So a lot of the AI tools that are coming out are helping with diagnostics. Remember when you did that at-home scan with your chat, and wasn't your chat mean to you? Yeah, yeah, chat.

0:22:49.0 Maggie Staszcuk: We have a special relationship.

0:22:50.9 Ella Cressman: Mine's very nice, but oh well. And then how to tailor routines at scale. It's important to not be afraid of AI. And then also there is this one software that is a booking software, that's the easiest way to put it, it's called Spasphere. But they have AI elements in there that help you understand how to price similar services in your area using AI algorithms to reach out to your clients based on specifically the treatments you've performed before or things that they've asked for. Helping with SEO or AI trigger, I don't know what they're called. AI SEO, and so that people are pulling because they said that people aren't going to Google as much anymore. They're going to Perplexity or Chat or Claude instead. So finding a way to incorporate it is going to be super important. The other one, and this could be because I'm just so involved in it, but I see it everywhere, is emotional skin and psychoderm shifting. This is a new overstory to understand your clients holistically. So holistic isn't a new word, but this is going to be big. Understanding stress pathways, psychodermatology, somatic esthetics, and whole person care.

0:24:08.4 Ella Cressman: What do you think about that one?

0:24:10.6 Maggie Staszcuk: I think the idea that your esthetician is your little therapist, if you will, again, not new. Psychodermatology is not a new word. Evaluating the whole person, not a new concept. But as we enter this new phase of whole body health, I think we're going to see this big push or resurgence of estheticians, and hopefully they're educated and certified in all the things that they need to be, but also dabbling in some of these other areas as well, and coupling it with their aesthetic services.

0:24:45.0 Ella Cressman: You know what that goes back to? Our favorite thing: the consultation. Really mastering the consultation is going to be key. Making it part of your initial appointment, allowing time for it, allowing time for returning appointments, just a little touch base is going to be key. Here's the other thing. We talked about when we first started out that brand education or the brand representative relationship was so important because that's who brought us information. I was a brand educator for a long time, and I made these relationships with my accounts that I still have today about things outside of just normal product stuff. But this is who we leaned on. I also developed brand education for a long time. But what they're craving, this is another overstory, is there's a new one forming: knowledge and community of brand-agnostic or brand-neutral education and practitioner-led stuff that comes from lived experience that you really can only find in the treatment room. So people are like, "Hey, this is what I did. This is what I did wrong. This is how I learned this the hard way." So you'll see independent educators, you've seen them start popping up their shared expertise and really comparing notes not just with brands, but their actual application in the treatment room. I love it.

0:26:09.8 Maggie Staszcuk: I think that people want to know that they're not alone, that the mistakes they made, it's okay, it's normal, or that their thought process is on track, and having this knowledge as community does that.

0:26:26.7 Ella Cressman: Yeah, I think community is so important, and where you find it is important. That's where I think there is going to be the next overstory of the rebirth of true expertise. Whether it's you talking about how to read a label more effectively, or if this does dispelling myths, talking about emotional or understanding different things, the professional is more important than these TikTok shop influencers. So putting yourself on social media as an influencer isn't bad, but really having an arm wrestle with these other ones who... The one that kills me, and I'm gonna say it, is the guy who's like, "I just did a lot of research, and I am now on the Today show." I won't say his name out loud. But you're not an esthetician. You're not an esthetician who has lived experience, lived experience where you've seen this in a lot of people, but somehow you became an authority because you were able to ride the algorithms to where people were looking at your stuff and liking your stuff. And because you had this volume of people saying thumbs up or heart or, "Oh, you're so cool," that now you're an authority.

0:27:02.6 Maggie Staszcuk: Yeah.

0:27:38.6 Ella Cressman: And so it's time for estheticians to take it back. You're the one who's actually doing this in the treatment room, and your results in the treatment room are so much more important. You have so much more to add than somebody who just read a lot or whatever. And I'm telling you, consumers are craving these trusted, licensed answers because they are now hip to like, wait a minute, I got excited because I was home in the pandemic and I didn't have anything else to do but order two-day shipping products, but it burned my face, or I still have wrinkles. They're still going to seek you out. The pendulum is swinging back to qualified guidance, wouldn't you say?

0:27:57.7 Maggie Staszcuk: Yes and no.

0:28:16.7 Ella Cressman: Yes and no. Well, okay, so if you had to bet on one of these being the next big tipping point, what's your pick?

0:28:23.5 Maggie Staszcuk: I honestly have to say AI, and I only say that because we're already there, and I think it's just growing more. And so I know we talked about AI and hyper-personalization. I think AI is only just going to become more hyper-personalized, which I know kind of points to leading away from the esthetician. We have to find a way to take advantage of that AI as the esthetician.

0:28:51.2 Ella Cressman: I think the more we put into AI as estheticians, they're gathered. The AI is not the super smart person behind a curtain, right? It's because there's pulled information. So where are they pulling that information from? Because you can see it evolve. You know what we should do in the next couple of months? Ask your chat the exact same questions you asked, what was that, a year ago?

0:29:02.7 Maggie Staszcuk: Yeah.

0:29:14.1 Ella Cressman: And see if it changed. Because they've got more information now, whether it's from asking specific questions or brands utilizing to help with their marketing, or estheticians asking questions for their marketing, or like that SpaSphere software I was telling you about. It's going to change based on the information, the data it's collected. What's in the bowl?

0:29:26.3 Maggie Staszcuk: Yeah, totally.

0:29:38.5 Ella Cressman: Interesting. Cool. Well, we've seen spa eras, corrective eras, influencer eras, and now we're writing or anticipating the next overstory in real time. Or maybe ChatGPT is. Now, listeners, we really want to hear from you. Think back on your own career, however long that's been. What were the tipping points you lived through? Do you see any new tipping points on the horizon? Reach out via Instagram, Facebook, or send us an email at getconnected@ascp-skincare.com. We want to know all the details. In the meantime, thank you for listening to ASCP Esty Talk. For more information on this episode, or for ways to connect with Maggie or myself, or to learn more about ASCP, check out the show notes. Stay tuned for the next episode of ASCP Esty Talk.

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