Is Virtual the Future of Treating Acne? With Ella from Ell Skinn

The Skindustry

In this episode of The Skindustry, Ella from Ell Skinn shares her professional journey from a career in recruitment to becoming a specialize

Key takeaways

• Ella rebranded from L-Aesthetics to Ell Skinn to focus exclusively on corrective skin treatments rather than general aesthetics.
• The 12-week virtual acne program utilizes functional blood analysis to identify physiological drivers of acne such as hormone regulation and nutrition.

Main topics

• Transition from aesthetics to acne specialization
• Mechanics of virtual acne coaching programs

Notable quotes

Your business should work for you. You shouldn't work for it.

Conclusion

The episode provides actionable advice for beauty professionals lookin

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hi guys and welcome back to the Skinnedustry. This week we have a really exciting episode. We have Ella from Elle Skin on with us today. So we're going to be delving into all things acne programs, how Ella started, what she is up to, what she's doing at the minute and... any sort of information and questions that you guys have asked as well. So I'm going to throw it straight over to Ella and get her to just give us a quick introduction. Speaker 1 (0:28) Thank you. I'm really excited, but I'm Ella. I am the founder of Elle Skin and I've been practicing for about three years now and I niche more into acne and corrective skin and yeah. Business has grown a lot this year. We've got many different arms of the business, which is exciting. Yeah, you've Speaker 2 (0:50) really been smashing it. I've been seeing it all over your socials. It's amazing. Thank Speaker 1 (0:55) you. Yeah, it's been a crazy year this year, definitely. But I still love doing my in-clinic treatments and we'll just see where the rest of the year takes us. Yeah, for Speaker 2 (1:07) sure. So take us back to the start. How did you actually get into skin and what eventually led you to specialize specifically Speaker 1 (1:17) in acne? So it's not really a... Speaker 1 (1:22) motivational story and I find this makes a lot of people laugh when I tell them this because being in the skin industry was never a dream of mine. I never had a dream job, I never thought about owning a business, I never really just, I never knew what I wanted to do and I was in recruitment for a good few years which I absolutely loved. And a lot of the skills that I learned in recruitment definitely helped me in building my business. But it got to a few years in and I just fell out of love with it. I knew that I wanted a career that meant something more than just making money. So I wanted to look into like a medical field, but I wasn't a medic. And I actually got my lips done. And I went to a practitioner who had so many certificates. And I was thinking that that to me is where I want to be. I want to have that many certificates. And about a few weeks later. An Instagram post came up with the academy that I then trained at saying we're doing pathway to aesthetics. You don't need to be a medic. And I was thinking this is fate. I need to do it now. I've got no body depending on me. I've got no mortgage. This is the time to do it. So I went into aesthetics and my qualification came with a very basic qualification in skin, how to do dermaplaning, chemical peels, microneedling. So it's funny actually at the time when I was training with a couple of girls. Everyone was saying, yeah, we're not going to do the skin part. No one wants skin. Everyone wants fillers. But I thought, well, I've trained in it. I'm going to offer it and hated aesthetics. It was just the health anxiety around it. And I just didn't have that love for it that I thought I would. But I had the love for skin and around my area, corrective treatments weren't a big thing at that time. So I was lucky to get quite a lot of clients with. issues with acne and I just became obsessed with understanding the deeper meaning of why things happened and why if you applied that peel did it work for that skin type and about six months in just decided why am I doing aesthetics if I don't enjoy it let's devote my time to being a master of skin so that's when I rebranded from L-Aesthetics to L-Skin and I've been practicing skin ever since. Speaker 2 (3:50) Never looked back. Never looked back. No, I totally get it with the whole aesthetic side. I nearly sort of like branched into that as well, but for the exact same reason of... they're just I couldn't deal with the stress if anything went wrong and I think I'd do somebody's lips and then I'd just panic and think they're going to message me and with an occlusion their lips are going to fall off and I'm it's going to be my fault and oh my god and I just thought no I actually can't do this like I did book a lip filler course maybe two years ago now I'd booked it I'd paid a deposit everything I'd started doing like the online learning for it like the anatomy and physiology and I just thought I can't do this. Like, I actually can't do this. I'm never going to sleep again. I'm never going to have a moment of peace if Speaker 1 (4:35) I do this. That's exactly how I was. And I've always had that interest in that medical side and injectables. I love doing blood testing now for skin, but I was the exact same. And I think as well, it was a very saturated market. And a lot of my friends and family, when I thought about rebranding and just doing purely skin they advised against it but I went with my gut and I thought no there's definitely a market for this and it's blown up in this past few years so yeah it's it was definitely the best decision I ever made yeah Speaker 2 (5:09) for sure and I think you do have to just follow your gut sometimes like if you know something's off or you're not in love with something that you're doing I think why like why are we bothering like just cut it off and focus on the thing that you do love and you do get the like the passion from and throw everything into that and it'll Speaker 1 (5:30) work. A great piece of advice that I got given that I live by every day is your business should work for you. You shouldn't work for it. Every decision I make is about where do I want my business to be and if it doesn't fit that vision I don't do it or I remove it or I add a particular thing in that fits that vision. Because we create a business to work for us, to have that flexibility, to be able to maneuver at the pace we want. So why are we doing things that we don't enjoy? Literally. Speaker 2 (6:04) have been doing this I've been self-employed for about 12 years and it's only really towards the end of last year but definitely from the beginning of this year that I have been thinking like that and in that mind frame of why am I doing all of this I don't enjoy half of it I'm cutting it off like I'm just focusing on what one I enjoy and two is going to mean that I can Speaker 1 (6:27) do what I want with my life yeah and I think That's something that I've definitely done from the beginning. And I've always had a tunnel vision. I don't really know what's going on around me. And that's the ignorance and bliss part that I think has worked so well. Like you said, you have to trust your gut with everything. And that's what I've always done. And I think that's how I've had the confidence to start doing certain things that people aren't doing at the minute or... doing things against the grain maybe and having opinions that may be against the grain so I think for anyone starting a business or being in any sort of industry and wanting the business to work for them it's trusting your gut and not really caring what other people are doing around you yeah Speaker 2 (7:14) for sure I think I'm kind of the opposite I've always been I want to do everything all of the time constantly so like obviously when I first started I started out doing makeup that was my thing but then I took on a salon so then I started doing I did nails I did spray tans I did lashes I did skin I did wax it I did everything that you could possibly do and I've always done that up until was it three Speaker 1 (7:42) years ago Speaker 2 (7:43) I think it was about three years ago I started to drop treatments. So the first ones to go were the ones that I didn't like, the ones I didn't enjoy doing. I thought, why am I doing them if I don't enjoy them? Get rid. And then I slowly and slowly and slowly just dropped everything else until now I'm where I am. Like I still do do brows and lash lifts. But I don't hate doing them. I don't take new clients for them. I just do my regulars. And I just think, while I'm not hating it, I'm going to carry on. If you love it. Speaker 1 (8:11) breaks up Speaker 2 (8:12) the day a little bit sometimes yeah I don't have to use my brain with it as well like obviously when you're doing skin not like especially if you treat an acne which obviously is what I do the majority of you really have to use your brain for every client every client is different there's a million and one things that it could be you're always trying to do like your problem solving my regular comes in for a browse we've done the exact same thing that we've done to her brows for the last three four years I don't have to use my brain, then I can just switch off and we can have a nice little chat about whatever. Speaker 1 (8:42) Completely agree. And although I do niche a lot into acne and complex concerns, I very much have regulars that come in for their maintenance microneedling or their maintenance chemical peel. And I live for those clinic days. because Speaker 2 (8:59) you Speaker 1 (8:59) have a nice chit chat I know them and it breaks it up and I think that's the beauty about having a business is you can do whatever you want with it there's so many beauty therapists that love doing different treatments there's some people who are specialists and there's not a right or wrong thing to do it is what you enjoy doing because you are the face of your business so if you don't love it it will show yeah the business will kind of dwindle and you really need to keep sight of where you want to be in the next six months, where you want to be in the next year. And every decision that I've made, I remember a good example is when I was thinking about bringing in a skincare brand and a lot of people had circadia or at the time it was Medicaid and I just didn't feel like I wanted to do it. And it was just because I didn't want. the admin time of ordering products and my vision was I want work-life balance that's the whole point I created the business so why would I want to spend my days off ordering this skincare and that's when I then chose Get Harley which I still speak to practitioners now asking the question of what do you do and what products do you use and I use a range I use drugstore if I think that it's a good product And every decision I made from early on has been, what do you actually want from this? Even if it's not what the general consensus say to do. Speaker 2 (10:28) Yeah. Speaker 1 (10:28) Yeah, no, I totally Speaker 2 (10:29) get that. Again, I'm the complete opposite. I get shiny object syndrome with everything. If I see someone has something, I think, I want that. And I now cannot rest until I have it. So I really had to retrain my brain in that sense because I was the same. specifically with circadia I was obsessed with it I was like I need it I have to have it everybody else has it looks amazing on socials like it's amazing and then this year when I really started to strip everything back and really question why I'm doing things and what I'm doing I thought well why would I get circadia it's not acne focused yes they have some really nice products and they look really good and there probably are products in there that can be used for acne prone clients but then if I was gonna get a new brand in what would make sense more and then I started to look more towards Wish because I was like they are acne focused that is their thing so if I was going to get a new brand in Speaker 1 (11:25) that's the one I would choose yeah it's always I was always that annoying kid that was like why why and I suppose it's actually worked Speaker 2 (11:34) out well yeah oh I've wasted thousands over the years on getting things in and then after a couple of months I think why have I done that I really wanted it at the time Speaker 1 (11:45) I think it's just being confident in what you know because I had a sense of delusion when I first started. I look back and I've enjoyed every part of the process, but you do look back and you think, why did I recommend that? Or why did I do that? But I always had a sense of delusion that I was the expert. And I think that came from recruitment because I had to be put in front of directors and CEOs at such a young age and be a specialist in the brand that I worked in. So I always had this sense of being delusional of, you know, you know everything. And that's when I would make those decisions of, well, why am I doing that? Why am I bringing this in? Is it going to work with what I want to do? And I think that's the best piece of advice I could give anyone, whether you're thinking of starting a business in skin or you're 10 years in and you're wanting to change your structure. You just ask why for every decision you're making, every product recommendation you give, every treatment. that you're choosing or if you're wanting to bring in you know training or an academy or a different arm to your business why why am I doing it and is it going to benefit me with what I want to do long term with the business yeah Speaker 2 (13:00) for sure I think for people that sort of like function more like me specifically and you do get that shiny object syndrome or you do think well she's doing it I need to do it or well that's the next step I have to open a salon if I want to be successful like take it from me I have done all of these things and I'm now going what would be deemed as backwards like I got rid of my big salon with all of the staff to work in a room by myself my next thing is I want to work from home I want a home clinic I don't want to have to have a clinic where I'm paying loads of rent and bills every month like why would I want that when I could work in my garden for free do you know what I mean taking on loads of different products or machines and all of this and then having them just sat there because it's not actually what you want to do like I have a hydrafacial machine I pay I think it's 450 pound a month for I'm locked into that for another year couldn't tell you the last time I used it It makes me zero money. But at the time, hydro Speaker 1 (13:59) facials were the big thing. I remember I was having this conversation because I had this little moment of, I had a list of all these machines that I needed to buy and all these brands I needed to bring in. And that was my goal. But I didn't have a reason for doing it other than that's what I saw on social media. That's what I saw all the practitioners that I looked up to doing. And I remember us having that conversation. You'd said, I've just bought the hydrafacial machine. And I bought a different one that collects dust. I have a microdermabrasion machine that collects dust. And I think with the clinic, it's never been my dream. And my clients come to me and they say, so are you ever thinking about getting a clinic? And it's just a firm no. It doesn't work with what I do right now because I am Speaker 2 (14:46) probably Speaker 1 (14:47) 90 % virtual. So I don't want to be driving to work every day. And it's always just having that tunnel vision of it doesn't matter what anyone else around you is doing. Skin is so subjective. So use that to your advantage and kind of create the clinic and the brand that you want to create rather than what Speaker 2 (15:08) everyone else Speaker 1 (15:08) is doing. Speaker 2 (15:09) And focus on your end goal and what, like you say, what you want from the business. Like that's the entire point. If none of us had to work, what are we doing? Like we wouldn't bother. Exactly. Because obviously the whole point of doing this is ultimately to make money. Helping people and working alongside people and all of this along the way is really nice and lovely. But at the end of the day, the bottom line is how much money we're making. I think that's where a lot of people really struggle because obviously in this industry a massive thing is undercharging because people feel like they can't charge anymore because so and so down the road doesn't charge that much or their area isn't like an affluent area so they have to charge under a certain amount or people won't pay it etc etc and this is something that I have conversations with about people about all the time is like you're not earning any money so what why are you doing it? Like, what's the Speaker 1 (16:09) point? And I think it was February this year. As I said, the business has changed so much this year because I put my business hat on and not my charity hat. And I looked at everything that I was paying for and who I was paying and if they were bringing in the value. And I completely changed my mindset on I am operating a business here, not just a little skin facialist. kind of hobby. And when I'm teaching practitioners now and we do the business audit and we look at knowing your numbers and again, why are we doing certain things? Is it making us profit? You know, the difference between gross and net profit, because all of that actually matters when you're making those. strategic decisions with your next move once you start thinking like a business and operating like a business and actually looking at the services you provide and the value that you're giving with your knowledge and the amount of training you've done to get to that point you will start enjoying it much more because you're actually seeing the benefits of what you've actually put into the business yeah Speaker 2 (17:13) for sure I think it is a big sort of like misconception in this industry that we can't charge more because People won't pay it and obviously cost of living and stuff. But what I always come back to and what I always tell people is what we do is a luxury. You are correct. People aren't going to die if they don't have a skin treatment. But the hair and beauty industry is one of the biggest industries financially. And in the last recession was one of the only industries that actually grew substantially. And the reason for that is, is when it comes