Ep 02 - Back to Business Straight Talk with Dr. Mark Lees (Part 2)

00:00 S?: You are listening to ASCP Esty Talk where we share insider tips, industry resources, and education for aestheticians at every stage of the journey. Let's talk, 'cause ASCP knows it's all about you.

00:16 Tracy Donley: Hey guys, it's Tracy here. Welcome to ASCP Esty Talk: Back to Business. Let your setback be your comeback, and we are here again with Dr. Mark Lees resuming our chat with him. This is part two, so let's get into it.

00:32 Mark Lees: One other thing that... I think I'm jumping ahead here, but I'm on board having...

00:36 TD: That's okay.

00:36 ML: To do this, and since you already talked about it... Is not leaving a lot of time in the reception room. To try to book them where you're ready for them so that they don't spend a lot of time in the reception room. And just get the... Have them wash their hands, that will be a protocol. They can go to the bathroom while they're there, a lot of times they do that anyway, and then get them back to the room. And don't try... Don't let them have a whole lot of sitting time because the other thing is if you have other people coming in, the reception rooms are not always huge and it's kinda hard to do the six-foot distance thing, so.

01:10 TD: Have you thought about, at your spa, what check-in looks like? Have you thought about asking clients to prepay so that you're not exchanging money or maybe they're prepaying online before they come in for their service? Has there been any discussion about that?

01:31 ML: We have a lot of clients that do that anyway.

01:35 TD: Okay.

01:36 ML: But I think that we use Square so it's pretty cut and dry and you can basically do that without touching anything, unless they have to sign the screen and then you need disinfectant for the screen. So the other thing is if you do that, from a business standpoint, a lot of times they've prepaid for it and they think of a product and, "Oh, I'll just get it next time."

01:57 TD: Yeah.

01:58 ML: It kinda kills anything that you might want them to start...

02:01 TD: For an at-home treatment?

02:03 ML: Yeah, right. But I think anything that doesn't involve a lot of touching and then the reception staff needs to be brought up to date, too, on everything they've gotta do in terms of spraying down their surfaces when they get done, cleaning the screen. Fortunately, my chief front desk person is also an aesthetician so she's already trained a lot...

02:26 TD: Oh, she's already getting it, yeah.

02:28 ML: She's already getting it so it's a team effort. It's gonna have to be a team effort. And also handling them. We need to let them know this stuff but we wanna do it gently and we wanna be friendly, and make them feel comfortable, like not they're all of a sudden they're going into a germ-free zone that they feel uncomfortable with, particularly when you're used to... We need to make sure that our personalities don't change.

02:53 TD: So how about... We talked a little bit about your team and how to bring them on board, is there anything else that you wanna elaborate on? Like what that looks like to make sure if you do have a team...

03:06 ML: Well, I think before you reopen, you need to have a big meeting where you go and you have all this prepared and written down for them where you can go through everything. "This is how it's going to be, and let's make sure we're all on the same scientific page." We can't get emotional over science, okay?

03:28 TD: I know, and that is a hard thing. I mean, [03:29] ____.

03:30 ML: It's very very hard especially for people in the beauty business who have an intensively right brain, they're very creative. But they don't have as much absorption of hard facts and science and where scientists are just the opposite, they tend to be very unemotional. They're kinda able to kinda bark it out, and when they bark it out sometimes that's offensive to people. And we try not to do that, but if things have to be said, they have to be said. And on the other hand, no one should be offended by science. Science is science and it's facts, and that's just the way the world is, and virus doesn't have any emotions. Virus is just... Virus is science. [chuckle]

04:16 TD: Right.

04:18 ML: So we have to think in those terms. So a big meeting beforehand, trying to... How it's gonna affect procedures, how much more time do we have to block out for facials? You can't... There's no way in hell you're gonna be able to do a facial an hour unless you give really many facials because it's gonna take you a good 20-30 minutes, just change the room without running crazy. And you're gonna have to block out extra time for that probably more than what you have been.

04:47 TD: When you've kind of done your analysis, which I'm sure you have, as to... What percentage does it look like that it's gonna make each treatment, is it 20% more expensive? Is it 30%, is it 10%? What are your thoughts on that?

05:03 ML: Okay, if you're just looking at the time alone and your projections, I would say that it is probably... We've always had, or at least the last 10 or 15 years, we've always had a lot of time between treatments. I have several aestheticians that work for me who are older and they just don't move as fast. [chuckle] And they don't want to. But they're doing two and $300 treatments as supposed to $60 treatments. So they block out a little extra time for folks anyway. And they may only do five... Four or five facials a day, but they're all 2, $300, that's a lot of money, you know?

05:46 TD: Yeah.

05:46 ML: And they block out extra time. So I don't know if that's gonna be a huge problem for us because we already block out so much time, but for the average salon, I would say... And you have to be respectful about this because people start freaking out if you go too crazy, probably another 20 minutes minimally. So, whatever your 20 minutes is in terms of dollars and that would depend on where your salon is and what you normally charge for treatments. But if you charge... If you normally get them in and out in an hour, you're gonna need an hour and 20 minutes, which is really gonna be an hour and a half. My experience is that clients can't remember appointments that are not on the half-hour or the hour. So if you tell them to come at 10:15, they're gonna come at 10:30 or they're gonna come at 10:00. And if you're not ready for them until 10:30, they've been waiting a half-hour and they're ticked. [chuckle]

06:40 ML: So I think on the half hour is a better choice. And just tell them there may be... And another thing you can tell the client is there maybe a little bit of delay because we're having to do extra cleaning and we're gonna have to turn the ozonator on. We're just having to be extra careful.

06:56 TD: They're gonna have to buy some things. They're gonna have to buy some extra things to go back into business. That's what I'm hearing, right? We're talking about face shields, we're talking about ozonators. We're talking about more disposables. So what are some... I'm throwing this out to you and I know we didn't talk about it before but what are some of the ways that they can best manage that financially? Do they start, even if they know they're not going back to business right now, do they start purchasing these things right now...

07:31 ML: Yeah. We are, we are. I'll tell you, we've been doing that since it started. We've been closed over a month.

07:37 TD: So you've been preparing?

07:38 ML: None of this stuff we had in place, anyway, because our plastic surgeon works with us sometimes in the salon, so we had a lot of this stuff in. And we've always worn gloves, so we've always had masks. And we didn't wear them 24/7, but we had somebody who was coughing or sounded like they might be getting something, we had them for the staff. I would say, yeah. And fortunately, most of this stuff is not horrendously expensive. You do not need an N95 mask, you're not doing cardio surgery. You can use a good cloth, even a cloth mask. Sometimes they can be washed and reused and just get a bunch of them. They're not that expensive...

08:18 TD: I love that. I'm really happy to hear you say that, that cloth masks can be... You can wash them and reuse them. And is there anything very specific that we should be looking for within the cloth masks out there?

08:34 ML: No, just mainly that they cover as much as they can and fit as closely as they can without being uncomfortable because you're gonna be wearing that for eight hours. So you want something that's comfortable, that covers the area that doesn't get you too terribly hot. Some of the paper masks make you sweat more and they're fine for quickie things, but they are one use. You're just gonna have to throw them away.

09:02 TD: I feel like in the future, there's a webinar in our future, Mark, about helping to treat the aesthetician spaces.

09:10 ML: Oh, yeah. We're gonna have mask eczema, yeah.

09:13 TD: Yeah, basically. I'm like, and that goes...

09:15 ML: That's gonna happen, that's gonna happen. You've seen in that... I work with a lot, have a lot of physicians that are clients. I have a lot of nurses that are clients, I always have. And I have treated iodide-related mask things from the handwashes that they have to use, the super antibacterials and things like that they end up getting on their face or sprays into their face, or it gets on their face and then they have a hot mask over their face for X amount of time. Yeah, it's... Even some of my doctor buddies have come to me before and said, "I asked my derm buddy about it and he didn't know." But I'm used to working with faces, so I see more stuff like this, so.

10:03 TD: Yeah.

10:03 ML: Yeah, that can happen. But I really don't think it's that expensive. And if you look at even the ozone producing machines, they are roughly 100 bucks. Maybe a little less.

10:16 TD: Oh, great. Oh, that's great.

10:17 ML: You're gonna need one for basically per row. So if you've got a three treatment room place or we're gonna need six. [chuckle] But you have them and they last a while. So, I think that's fine. It is an additional expense and you may have to go up. What I wouldn't do is go up crazy. I might go up to cover that, because if you go out crazy as people are coming back, they're already missing you. And they're already missing their treatment. They come up and then they say, "Oh, we've had a price increase since we've been shut down because we have all this stuff." Just make it as modern. Don't try to make money off the... Well, the PPE. Don't try to make money off that, for sure.

11:08 TD: That's good.

11:10 ML: Yeah, and that was basically it on that, I think. But to try to emphasize the relaxation, we're all stressing right now. And having the relaxation will be great, but when we get to that point.

11:24 TD: So we were talking about our teams and talking about relaxation. How are you... So we've talked about, okay, we're gonna have this very specific way that we're gonna do business, you're communicating that to your teams, how are you speaking to your teams to help them maybe deal with any anxiety or stress that they might be feeling about getting back to work, too? What are some thoughts or ideas that you could share in that area?

11:52 ML: Well, I think first place just reach out. It depends on how long you've worked with these people as to how much reaching out. Because my staff and I have been around each... Our shortest term employee right now is over two years and some of my people have been with me 30 years. So we know each other. And we know how we're gonna handle this and stuff like that. But if you don't have a team like that, at least reach out and say, "If any of you need to talk to me privately," if you're the owner or the director, "If any of you need to talk to me privately about this, I will be happy to block off some time. So if you don't understand something... " And you may want to look into assigning them some things to watch at home in terms of reports or go to this website, this is a good thing on how CV-19 operates. Because I think what people are forgetting is that you can carry it and not have any symptoms. And when you're carrying it without any symptoms, you can give it to another person. And I think that there are a lot of people in our business who are not science people, and they may or may not understand that you can be carrying it and give it to somebody else and not know you have it.

13:16 TD: And you might never show any symptoms. You might never ever show a single thing, not once.

13:22 ML: No, and you may develop immunity to it and not show a symptom. But this is why they keep talking about testing.

13:29 TD: Yeah.

13:30 ML: Because the testing gives us data to look at and that gives us factual statistics to look at. And this is why the states that are talking about opening yet, none of them have even made the first tier of what the President's Committee laid out. None of them, at this point, and they're talking about opening Friday. I just think that's so wrong. And it's not right. And it's putting money and business before health and before life. You talk about being pro-life? [chuckle] That means that you should be thinking about your life and your mom's life and your elderly grandmother's life and your kids' life and your clients kids' life when you make a decision to do this. Now, I don't know 'cause the state of Florida was very late shutting down the salons. We shut our salon down a good two weeks before it was mandated. And then it was mandated. They came in that morning and said, "No." As a matter of fact, I have heard that there's an inspector in our city right now going around to see if salons are open.

14:50 TD: Oh, I love that. That makes me happy to hear that.

14:52 ML: A $1000 fine if you're practising during this shutdown period. So it made me happy, too. It gives the inspector something... The inspectors can't inspect if the salon's not open but they can inspect to see if the salon is open when it's not supposed to be, okay? So it's health first, folks. It's just that simple. It's health first, science first, then we'll worry about... I know it's hard. I miss my money coming in and I miss my business on a day-to-day basis. Now I will tell you this and this was not in our plan, Tracy, but...

15:30 TD: What? Tell me what?

15:31 ML: We have maintained a lot of retail.

15:35 TD: That's what I was gonna ask you actually about. Yup.

15:37 ML: We have maintained a lot of retail. Now we are... Our salon is very program-oriented. So part of the business is your treatment and part of the business is you taking self-care at home. So our people are normally on a multi-step, four or five steps morning and night at home, and they love their products. We've got them matched perfectly, they feel naked if they don't have it. So they're running out... Now, so what we've been doing is we've been using our e-commerce site, our constant contact for our clients locally, along with our Facebook pages, to let them know that we can still get you product and if you go by the salon right now, there's a big sign on the door that says, "We're suspending our services until further notice, but you can still get your product." And they can go to our website and get it or we have a number and then our receptionist has all of the phone lines, everything, including our 800 numbers and everything else, focused to her phone.

16:45 TD: Wow. From her home, yeah.

16:45 ML: She's wearing a lot of hats, but our wholesale number is separate. We have somebody else doing that separately because we're too busy for that. But she's taking orders and she is scanning them and sending them to the warehouse. And when we have enough, we go in, probably every other day, we've got enough to bother going in. So we've still got about 10 or 12 orders going out every time we go in. At least that's some money. It's not the same as having your service dollars and things like that. So those people out there who are already good retailers and who already have self-care programs and know the importance of them because I always say this to my clients, I say, "What do you do to your face 24/7, twice a day, 60 times a month is more important than what I'm doing when you come in once a month to get your facials." I mean, "What I'm doing is giving you a booster."

17:49 ML: But think about it in terms of dental hygiene. If you go to the dental hygienist four times a year as much, some people do, and you never floss or brush in between or you are haphazard about it, what good is it gonna do you? So you have to... The homecare is so important. Now my salons that I sell to, I know the ones that do good retail. Some of them are just doing back bar stuff and for one reason or another, they're not really doing any retail. Those clients are still ordering from us, because they're still selling. And they're going to the post office... And they may be doing it in their kitchen at home putting the boxes together, but they're taking it to the post office once or twice a week and getting to clients. I have one client who, most of her clients know where she lives.

18:43 TD: Yeah.

18:43 ML: So she just leaves it in the mailbox and they leave their cheque, and... [chuckle]

18:46 TD: Well, I know, I have a next edition. One of our members, she just does deliveries, like... Not in person, she drops off a little delivery and puts it on everyone's porches. She does it. She goes around and does it every Tuesday and Thursday. And she does make it really special.

19:01 ML: But that's good care, and it's also good business.

19:06 TD: Yeah.

19:07 ML: Maybe this is a lesson for people who don't retail very much. [chuckle]

19:10 TD: Maybe, yeah.

19:11 ML: For those of us who do retail a lot, we're better off during the pandemic [chuckle] than those who only did services, because they're...

19:21 TD: Well, it's diversifying, right? I mean, everything in life, if you do diversify, you're always gonna be likely to be a little bit more resistant.

19:31 ML: You're always gonna have a die in the hat, right.

19:34 TD: Yeah, exactly. Hey guys, stop. Let's take a quick break.

[music]

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20:27 TD: Alright, let's get back to the conversation. One last question, and it's kind of jumping ahead a little bit, 'cause what I'm hearing from you is you're saying, "Don't go back yet, don't go back there yet," but once people do go back, what does that look like for marketing to their clients? What is the... I know you do use constant contact, so you're sending out emails, you're putting messages on your website. What does that look like? How are you speaking to them?

21:00 ML: We are, probably what I will do, is meet with my staff and these are our regulars, people who are regular clientele. I will have my... Their aesthetician individually called them on the phone and reach out to them each one individually and take a few minutes to explain what it's gonna look like when you come in. So they're a little... They know, so that hit 'em and face the minute they walk in the door. Now, if you work in a bigger spa that doesn't have that repeat business as much. Okay, they might come in a couple of times a year, or they're more in there for a relaxation than they are for therapy. Then you have to worry about... Well, social media is still the best source, I think, to get it out there. I think you're gonna hit more people with that than you are with a newsletter or something.

21:55 ML: So I think giving them a heads up, "We're open again, please read this." And then when they make their appointment or they're called to confirm, "Did you see our thing online?" You can go to our Facebook page, it's all up there just to make sure you understand what's gonna happen, when you come 'cause we're gonna... We have to take these precautions. It's gonna be just a little. It's still Mark Lees, but it's gonna be a little different.

22:20 TD: Okay. So one last question, and this may seem a little bit counter-intuitive because we're talking about like, "Oh, we might have to up the price of our treatments to offset some of these expenses and timing and such." In your opinion, Mark, did you think that people should be offering specials and special COVID-19 pandemic come-back-and-see-us deals? And if so, what would those deals look like?

22:48 ML: I would never do that, but that's me. I would never get involved with a coupon for a pandemic. A welcome back to... Because it's not welcoming back, because it's still out there.

23:04 TD: Right? It's not like, "Hey, we're doing a party, it's gone.

23:05 ML: We haven't seen you in a while thing, yeah. I personally, I find that a little distasteful, a little bit, just kinda snarky. [chuckle]

23:17 TD: Not classy?

23:20 ML: Not classy, no. It's not classy. I think they should be glad that we're back. Maybe have some cookies for 'em or something instead.

[chuckle]

23:34 ML: But you had too much cookies during the pandemic.

23:37 TD: It is to something like some protein.

23:40 ML: [laughter]

23:41 TD: I call it the COVID19 carb diet that I'm on.

23:43 ML: Or little COVID shakes. No, I don't think that... I wouldn't do that.

23:51 TD: I know that it's a little sketchy out there but there are certain services that I'm feeling like I can't live without. And I wonder if aestheticians or waxers or lash artists or what have you, should be pre-booking appointments. Now I'm nervous for once things do get opened up...

24:14 ML: You won't be able to get in to see your person?

24:16 TD: Yeah, like what if it's two months and maybe that could be a good thing, but... So what does that look like?

24:25 ML: I think you can always book and tell them that this may change but we are anticipating hopefully being back up by X date, I think we're really looking at June.

24:40 TD: I do, I think end of May, June.

24:43 ML: I think we're looking at June to be on the safe side, and I may have to eat those words in either direction, but I think that if everybody... It was pointed out, I was watching health program this morning was a doctor from George Washington University. And he was talking about when these places open up the incubation period is two weeks. Okay, a little out to two, two and a half weeks. For the first two weeks, they're open, they're not gonna see anything, everything's gonna be great, okay? The third week people are gonna start having symptoms. Some people. And the fourth week, they're gonna start showing up at the hospital 'cause they can't breathe. So we need four weeks worth of observation.

25:34 TD: I wanna, I want to hear what you're saying. Say that one more time.

25:38 ML: We need four weeks worth of observation two weeks for the virus to become established and show symptoms, the third week for little symptoms to develop and the fourth week to see how many people we get in the hospitals. Okay, so that's four weeks. So the only good thing to come out, in my opinion, this is a little raw, okay, of a state reopening now, is that they're going to be our experiment. They're gonna be our canary in the coal mine, okay? To see what happens four weeks from now, and then we'll have some more data, and hopefully by then more testing.

26:21 TD: I know, and I think that's the really hard part. But it's like, that's the thing, there are hard realities to all of this. And it's not...

26:30 ML: And it's science first, it's science first. You have to remember about that cake. The cake, why are you not eating and not bake cake? Because it's not finished yet. And we don't have enough data to be finished, to make a good, in my opinion and a lot of other doctors and scientists too, to make a good judgment.

26:51 TD: That is a great way to just kinda sum up everything that you said. So let's close here. I do want to ask you, is there a resource that you would like to recommend to all of our listeners and our members? So it could be a book or a podcast or anything? What would you recommend?

27:10 ML: Well, I think, if you... Go to the science-based sites, CDC, NIH, National Institute of Health, any of your major universities like, Johns Hopkins, or Columbia or Harvard or any... University of Pennsylvania, any of those, I'm just naming East Coast but, I mean, there's certainly more than that.

[laughter]

27:35 ML: UCLA has one too I'm sure, but they're... Mostly university sites or university hospital sites will have... And their data is good. In general, I don't know of anybody having bad data, or skewed data, or somebody's political crap going on in those sites. And that's what we wanna avoid right now. We don't need the politics. This is not a time to do politics. And you're gonna get the better data from there. And that's what I would base my decision on, even if my state was open. Like this girl last night that was on Anderson Cooper, who said, "They're opening on Friday in Georgia, I'm not opening, okay, 'cause I don't think we're ready yet. I'm watching Dr. Fauci, I'm watching the CDC and their recommendations, I'm watching Governor Cuomo and his people, and we're not ready yet, we're just not ready," you know? So yeah, so...

28:27 TD: Well, how about if there was... That's a COVID-19 resource. How about a resource that's maybe just provides them a little bit of marketing expertise or inspiration to get through these tough times?

28:44 ML: Well, any book and my Beyond the Basics book has a lot of stuff on sanitation and sterilization.

28:50 TD: Oh, I love that.

28:50 ML: A lot of stuff on communicable disease and things like that. So even though it's not COVID, we didn't have COVID around the last time I rewrote the book. The book's been out since 1994. But it was rewritten in the last... It's been just a few years since it was rewritten but that was not... And this wasn't around. But unlike the virus stuff and everything that's in that book, it's still good. Any other book that talks about... That's produced by a legitimate source, you know?

29:19 TD: Okay.

29:20 ML: That talks about... Even some of the more basic texts that are being used now, I think, cover basic sanitation stuff in a good way.

29:30 TD: That's a great idea. Just to refresh, right? Just...

29:33 ML: Just reread it. Just reread it. Now my book also has a really good chapter on the immune system. And so you might wanna read that, it's written in really easy language and it's very user-friendly, and you might wanna read that 'cause if you understand how the immune system works, you'll understand the antibody systems and stuff like that, that they're trying to test for now. But I think that's our best bet, if we could get the antibody tests and we could all take it, and that we know that we already have the antibodies, the virus has already gone through with us, okay? So we're not going to be dumping it on other people. We're not gonna be susceptible to it. I'm kinda hoping I've already had it. [chuckle]

30:12 TD: I know, me too.

30:13 ML: Because... But then you're off... I did have a really bad flu some time, a few weeks ago, and I'm much... I'm fine now. That may have been it. It was right around the same time. So, but we get those testing, testing, testing. I know that's boring to people who are not into science and into medicine. But that's really the crux of what we need. We need testing to have enough data to make good predictions. And that's what Dr. Fauci is saying. So, oh, one more thing, I'm gonna give Skin Deep a plug. So I think it is the July/August issue, my column is about this in Skin Deep my [30:54] ____.

30:54 TD: I think it's the May/June issue, I think it's May/June. Because we held the issue back, because we wanted to... We sent it late to the printer because we wanted to make sure we're getting some good stuff in there, but...

31:06 ML: Okay, so I don't know what they did with that particular column but that was and it says... The article's on when you can't touch your client.

31:15 TD: Okay, well one last thing tell all of our listeners and our viewers where they can find you if they have questions? Do you have... Can they check out your website? Give a shoutout through your website...

31:27 ML: The best one for the aestheticians and professional people, licensed people is markleespro.com. And there's a place there that you can leave messages and you can also look at our products, and our books are there and stuff like that. And then I have two different fan pages on Facebook. One of them is Mark Lees Skincare, which is general information. And the other one is Dr. Mark Lees. And then the Dr. Mark Lees page on Facebook is more science oriented. And it's... I will a lot of times find something in the literature that I want to post up there for people to see. So that one's really designed more for the aesthetician, where the Mark Lees Skincare one is really designed for anybody, you know, whatever I put up there, sometimes it's just a joke, sometimes it's, you know me, and sometimes it's something silly, but also that's where we keep in touch with all of our clients, whether they be consumers or professionals. And feel free to leave me a message on markleespro.com and I promise I will get back to you. Sometimes it takes me a little while 'cause I get a lot of messages, so. But that's the easiest way and read my column in Skin Deep.

32:45 TD: Yeah, read his column in Skin Deep, you'll love it, you'll never be disappointed.

[laughter]

32:48 TD: So thank you so much Mark, I'm sure we're gonna be talking to you again very soon and there will be a whole new set of questions, so.

32:57 ML: Okay, I can't wait, and thank you for having me, I appreciate it.

33:00 TD: You're so welcome.

33:00 ML: And stay healthy everyone and use your brain. And science is... It's science before emotion and science before business right now.

33:10 TD: Okay, you heard it right here. Don't forget what Mark said. Alright, thanks guys.

33:15 ML: Bye bye, have a good day.

[music]

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