Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:11 Welcome to the NSYNC Insurance podcast. I'm your host, Dawn Cross, and today we'll be covering the new proposed industry legislation effects on the practitioner here today we have returning guest, Karen, Pete, to discuss this and provide insights from a practitioner's perspective. So, um, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for coming back on for us.
Speaker 2 00:00:36 Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 00:00:38 And lovely. So our topic today is talking about the possible new legislation that's gonna come in over the next five to 10 years. Nothing set. Just to, um, put as a preamble before we get into it, nothing is set currently, but there's, um, the beginnings of governmental bodies having a look at it. So I wanted to chat to you, Karen, as on the view of the practitioner. Obviously you are in the industry currently and you may or may not be affected by this new stuff. Um, so I, I guess my first question is, although it may be kind of moot really, is, um, how do you reckon the new legislation could affect you and your business? If it comes to pass
Speaker 2 00:01:23 For me, as someone who has, um, invested long term in what I do, um, I've been going eight years. I've continuously trained in most times. Um, again, there's no legislation to say you have to do that, it's just how I want to work. Um, my clients know that I continuously train, therefore they keep reinvesting in me to do their treatments. So to me, my way of giving back to my clients is to continue to train, continues to train, continues to train. That's within me to do so. I do know that other people aren't that way inclined and they will do one course since see it as their investment in their career. Um, it's not something I agree with. Um, so for me, I feel it if in any way the legislation affects me as far as I need to get further qualifications, that would be something I would do anyway, because that's what I do year to year annually.
Speaker 2 00:02:16 I, I'm continuously updating, um, what I know I have the funds there if I need to, if I need to do a big investment, which I feel is what's gonna happen. Um, obviously no one knows anything yet, but you certainly have hearsay along along the lines of what will happen imminently. Um, I think following lockdown, et cetera, it needs to happen as well. So, um, I think it's gonna affect everyone in different ways. I think for myself, because I've continuously invested, I don't think it's gonna be a massive hit for me. Massive. If I do need to reinvest and, you know, level up so to speak, or do some continuous, um, education, that's not a problem for me. Um, I think for many it will be. And that's what we're talking about today. <laugh>. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:03:04 <laugh>, that's fair enough. And I think it's always reassuring to know that you're always trying to make sure you're on top of your training and making sure that you are at that, at the top on top Yeah. Of like everything. Which is really lovely to hear 'cause I know. Yeah. Um, like you were saying, like there is some people unfortunately out there that think that's just one course is enough. Um, and then they're set completely when, you know, it's really not the, the idea. And I think with any profession as well, you're, you need to be constantly learning and training and doing little courses here and there to re renew your knowledge, but also new stuff coming up. <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:03:43 Yeah, of course. Knew the doorbell or golf. Um, so yeah, I mean with regards, with regards to that, that's, this is the thing. Whenever I've heard of any negative, um, between, you know, controversy, again, medic non-med, I work with medics and non-med, so it's neither hit nor there. For me, I work with doctors, I work with nurses, so there's never been that divide, but I believe it's because of the amount of knowledge they know I have. So, for example, um, you know, they remain unnamed, but there are doctors that have done masterclasses for the aesthetic that I can achieve with my results. Um, and that's a, that's a huge, um, you know, sort of, i, I don't even know what the word is. That's a, that's a huge accolade for me when there's a medic coming to me to, to achieve the looks that I can achieve.
Speaker 2 00:04:33 Um, but then on the flip side, you know, all I've ever heard expressed from that side is everyone needs to be educated to a certain level. And I a hundred percent agree with that. Um, and I think that, you know, you think nurses have to put in so many hours to continue what they do. So do doctors, they have to put in so many hours to continue what they do to cont to keep updating their knowledge, to update their knowledge on anatomy, to, to learn more and more about different things. So for me, that's what it's always been about, is to be educated to one level, not have so, so many people that do continually invest and know what they're doing and have this sea an absolute body and sea of humans that don't have a clue. And sadly there is that at the moment and that's why the regulation needs to come in.
Speaker 1 00:05:26 That's fair enough. So, um, you completely nailed my qu next question, which was <laugh>, what do you think of, sorry, being introduced? No, you're you're absolutely fab. Um, and straight to the point. It's really great to <laugh> you, you know what you're talking about, which is fab, you know, <laugh>, it's all good, good,
Speaker 2 00:05:42 Passionate about it, let's just say that. Um, no,
Speaker 1 00:05:45 That's fair enough. And it's your career as well and it's your industry that you are in as well. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:05:51 I mean obviously what all I can tell you from someone who's got, um, a lot of experience in the industry, in the market trends in that sort of thing, obviously ring doorbell, sorry, <laugh>, obviously you need to go everyone. No, no, no, it's fine. Um, okay. It's just, it's motion monitoring. So, um, ah, probably my dog's smooching around <laugh>. That's all right. Um, so yeah, let carry on. Um, completely lost my train of thought. Oh God. Hang on. Oh yeah. So to go on with market trends and stuff, with my experience, I feel, I know when peaks and troughs are gonna happen. Um, and I know to what level as well. So for example, um, you know, for date reasons we're, we're doing this in February. Um, I always know that January and certainly the first weeks of February are certainly quieter following the Christmas rush.
Speaker 2 00:06:45 I also know that actually compared to normal years, what's happening right now is not normal. I can, I can tell you that hands down 'cause I've been doing it for eight years. <laugh> so quieter. Yes, to this extent, a hundred percent no. Now what this is forcing in the market, which you will see a lot of, I see a lot of, and it literally makes me cringe, is, you know, oh, we're doing this package for 200 pounds, we're doing a mill. And I had a massive rant on one of my lives the other day. I dunno whether you saw it or not, but I had to get out there. We're doing a mill for like 50 pounds. It's like, what are you buying and putting in for that amount? And, and this is what, when I say we, I like to separate myself off from these people that don't really know a hundred percent what they're doing.
Speaker 2 00:07:37 This is what separates that off. So for me, it's now no longer medic non-med. It's educated, uneducated, um, from my size. We, um, work with Dr. Radford who's an incredible doctor. Um, and he comes and he hosts, um, we host him for his complications course. 'cause we are huge advocates of safe practice. Um, and basically what we're seeing is these people that are coming in, obviously if they're attending and wanting to upskill on their complications knowledge, that's one side of it. We are never gonna say no to that. But what we are seeing is a vast sea of people, sadly, that don't know what they're doing. And that's across the board that's not medics non-med. Because what we have out there is we have all of these acade academies. I'm gonna say that loosely because they're banging out courses for hundreds of pounds rather than thousands of pounds.
Speaker 2 00:08:39 Um, and they're probably not the right qualification. They're probably not even insurable, but 'cause people think they're getting a bargain, they'll go on these courses and sadly invest their money. And we're, we're getting it all the time. I can't even get hold of my trainer. I hear that so much. I can't get a hold of my trainer to ask that question. You know, they've literally taken the money and run and that's medics and non-med being hit with that. 'cause they think they've seen someone with incredible social media who've done amazing training, you know, and they've got a celeb on there saying the training was amazing. Doesn't mean anything. It, it doesn't mean anything. Sadly in this day and age, social media and the push to teach, teach, teach and to gain these skills, you see, you see it now they're breaking down what you can earn in a day.
Speaker 2 00:09:29 Now, I'm sorry, but it takes a lot of time. I e and experience and, and what you have under your belt i e time and experience, in order to earn that sort of money, you're not gonna come into the industry and pack out a 12 hour day like I do. You are not, it's a fact. And I'm very honest with people who approached me to ask about training. Now, on reflection of that, obviously training was a big part of what I offer in my academy. I have completely stopped any foundation training. Now that's a massive statement to make from someone who put years into qualifying as a teacher. I have stopped that type of training because the market to me is laughable at the moment. It's not, it's frustrating and it's disgusting and it's literally bringing the, bringing the industry to its knees. But I will not teach because people are wanting to come into the industry.
Speaker 2 00:10:26 I dunno how many times I read a week. I'll go into aesthetics, you know, it is definitely what you should be doing. It's easy money. No, it's not. And it shouldn't be. And the course shouldn't be easy. And neither should the qualification. You shouldn't be attending, you know, a day course or a two day course and come out qualified and be given your certificate. You know, when I trained I had to send in my case studies and if the, some of them weren't good enough, they got sent back, you know, and, and have re have a look at this, maybe try injecting from this angle. And that is learning and that is learning along the way. And you know, certainly when I, when I was in my course, I, yes, alright, I was, I was lucky. I was lucky as far as I had loads of models, but I also invested in one-to-one, which is something I'm a massive advocate for with my master classes.
Speaker 2 00:11:15 Um, I had 22 models when I did my filler course. Now we are getting ladies on the complication course with our doctor saying they've done a quarter of a lip, a quarter of a lip, and they're injecting faces like it worries me. And, and they're not the people that they haven't, they haven't tried to cut corners, but sadly because of the poor training, it starts from there, doesn't it? Yeah. So, so they've poorly been trained by someone they saw and respected as actually you could get some good training here, start a career and they've been let down and now the support network isn't there. And that's where this massive sea of uneducated people come from, I guess <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:12:02 Yeah, it is really sad to hear that some, I think it's almost like false promises from um, like yeah, those kind of academies. I mean obviously you, just to clarify, not, not all academies are like this. There's actually some really good ones out there. Definitely not.
Speaker 2 00:12:17 Um,
Speaker 1 00:12:17 But um, but
Speaker 2 00:12:18 You certainly hear the good ones are
Speaker 1 00:12:20 Yeah. And you know, the, I know good
Speaker 2 00:12:22 Ones are, and I know bad ones are
Speaker 1 00:12:24 <laugh> and you know, so, and unfortunately with like social media as long as like too good to be true and you get a bit hoodwinked and, um, so I think I, the main takeaway from that I think is just advice to any listeners is to definitely do a lot of research into any, um, any academy before you kind of invest into that investment into yourself in your career. 'cause you know, if unfortunately if you pick the wrong one, you could lose relatively a lot of money or just get off on the wrong foot. Like you were saying, you know, at the very beginning it could kind of go awry and that's it. You're not, it's, it just keeps on going wrong from now. You, you're not gonna,
Speaker 2 00:13:03 You literally haven't had, um, you know, on, on-hand training with a model. You're not going to go into your clinic and be confident you're not, you know, uh, there's always that element of, um, respect for what you do in the needle. I still have that today. And I think as soon as you lose that level of respect for what you are actually doing or you don't have the knowledge to have that respect, we have ladies that are like, I didn't even know I could cause a complication.
Speaker 1 00:13:33 Oh my word. Sorry. Sorry,
Speaker 2 00:13:35 <laugh>. Yeah. That's worrying. Yeah. It was like, you know, um, it was very much, it course was very much like, oh yeah, go on and go on and babe try this da da dah. And I'm the worst one. Everyone's hun in my clinic. Like I can't help that. Oh, hi hun. Yeah. Da da. Yeah. And it's just how I am. But actually in a, in an education point, you know, oh yeah. If you just nip off 'cause you've just done your, your two injections in that lip, like, oh, don't, don't do it and don't get hoodwinked by them. Yeah. Because there's got to me, all I can see coming when this legislation does roll out is an uber amount of court cases for people who have been badly trained. People who have, you know, these, these these academies knows they know, knows <laugh>, they know this is coming, but they're still pushing the education.
Speaker 2 00:14:26 They're still pushing these courses that probably aren't insurable or won't be insurable for much longer. And that's what these people need to be looking at. And I think the C of trainees is also sadly 'cause of the bounce back loans people have never had access to money as easily as they have now. Fact because otherwise where has this money come from to train in aesthetics? It takes thousands and thousands and thousands. And I think I've mentioned before, you know, my, my training myself is now tipping, tipping the, the scale if you like, at 98,000 pounds, not, not a thousand or you know, three grand bounce back loan. Yeah, you can start there but you need to continuously upgrade your knowledge. Um, so, you know, bounce back loans and covid, yes, it hit us hard as as companies, but the sea of rubbish out there now is horrendous and it's reflective in the market. Yeah. Because I think people are starting to sit back and go, hang on a minute, what? No, no, maybe I shouldn't use that practitioner. Why are they so cheap? Who knows?
Speaker 1 00:15:40 <laugh>, definitely. Um, I guess my next question for you Karen, is um, obviously, uh, we spoke a bit about kind of your advice people getting in the industry, um, in our last episode together, but I was just thinking in terms of looking at these changes gonna come in the future, what advice do you have for those, um, looking to get into it and obviously probably wanna start off on the right foot <laugh>?
Speaker 2 00:16:08 Yeah, that's a very good question. Um, I would say, and I've actually said this 'cause people are like, Karen, I can't think of anyone else to ask better is gonna be bluntly honest. And if that's what I'm known for, honestly that's great. I'll take that. Um, I would say be very, very wary because I feel with the sea of practitioners that have flooded the market thanks to the bounce back loans, I feel very shortly that's gonna be the cutoff point start of covid. Anyone who started in that time is gonna be looking at further education or not practicing until they've had that to that level. That's my thought. I haven't seen it anywhere. I just know the legislation is being pushed through right now for stuff, for all of this madness to be stopped. So I would say before investing your money, if I hadn't trained up until now personally, would I be investing money in this industry? No, no. I have seen 10 plus practitioners leave go back to their day jobs or whatever they were doing pre injecting because they've had one lip cline in three months.
Speaker 2 00:17:24 That's the honest reality of what we're looking at at the moment in this industry for practitioners who haven't been going very long. So I would really be looking at actually, do I have the client base already? Are they then going to trust me to go from whatever they're going from into injectables? Ask you if you can seriously tick off all of these boxes and think, yeah, do you know what? I'm gonna make a really good business for this, then do so. If you've got one doubt about any one of those tick boxes, don't do it. Because I tell you now, it will not work. It is hard. It is a hard market and the industry itself is very, very hard at the moment. I think it's gonna turn around when obviously when this legislation comes in, for me it's amazing because the people that shouldn't be doing it won't be, and then the practitioners can get back to doing what they're meant to be doing. So for me it's all positive, but if I was investing now, would I probably not.
Speaker 1 00:18:22 Fair enough. And it's good to have an honest answer, especially with what's going on currently. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> I think as well. Would you recommend, you know, if, if someone's looking to get into beauty as a whole, maybe to almost have like a fallback, um, kind of skill or trade? Uh, so for example, you know, if you are, um, looking to go into aesthetics and, but you are currently maybe doing hairdressing or something, or maybe you're just doing basic makeup, would you recommend just having like another skill in the bag or just stick to that skill before you go off to aesthetics? If that makes sense? It's,
Speaker 2 00:19:04 I know so many business men and women Mm. Um, that are incredible at what they do. Makeup artists, hair artists, and these people are charging serious money, rightly so, for their amazing skill. Yeah. The blindness at the moment to the only place you're gonna make money is aesthetics is insane to me. But again, it's coming from social media, it's coming from the celebs doing it, dah, dah, dah, dah. So just have a bit of a thought process. You know, if I specialize in what I love doing, say it is hair, can I parallel? You know, that sort of salary for myself. If you specialize in anything enough, you can make a living and make an incredible career from it. That's a fact. So what I would be saying is don't necessarily look into needle yet. Would I have a backup plan? I don't have a backup plan.
Speaker 2 00:20:02 I'm always plan A and that's how I run my business, that I'm focused. When stuff is harder, it's harder at the moment. I change the game and I have, I changed the way that I'm running my business at the moment and it's working really well for me. So would I have a backup plan? No. Should other people have a backup plan? Know where you are heading with it? I'd say it's more about having a focus than a backup plan. If this doesn't go to plan and you get one lid in three months, what are you gonna do? You've still got overheads, you've still got, you know, well hopefully you haven't got overheads. I didn't have overheads when I started. Everyone seems to be jumping in and buying clinics with no clue behind it. Mm. That to me is insane. I had a client base before I had it, before I had overhead to the clinic and that was three years deep.
Speaker 2 00:20:48 Mm. And this is the madness is people see people who've been going for years and they're like, oh, I want a clinic. That'd be easy. That won't, and we'll, we'll see. You come and you'll go. Yeah. Like it's, it's, it's just facts. And I, I love giving advice when people come and they ask me about different things. I love being honest and giving advice because it's something that a lot of people they just don't see sometimes. Mm-hmm. And it's just having that open opinion. I don't mind whether you're going into aesthetics or not. I don't mind if you're going to hairdressing or not. It doesn't affect me or my career or my life. So me being honest is just exactly that. It's me being honest. So, you know, for me, don't have a backup plan. Always go plan a, stay focused and change the game. If you're doing it wrong, change the game. Yeah. Yeah. That would be my,
Speaker 1 00:21:35 No, that that's completely fair. Um, yeah. Is, have you got any other bits you wanna add? 'cause I think we've ran through my questions very, very quickly and
Speaker 2 00:21:47 Smash through those <inaudible>. Not really. I mean, I just can't get across enough how passionate I am about this whole thing changing. I am buzzing for it. And the reason I'm not scared is 'cause I've continuously invested and I'm happy to do so more so basically. Um, and what I can see is this huge sea of mess that's going on at the moment. It's very quickly gonna dissipate and the specialists are gonna be left to do what we do. So to me it's a massive positive <laugh>. Um, not that really <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:22:18 Obviously
Speaker 2 00:22:19 If you like specialize, you're more than welcome to have a chat with me about my master classes. But again, I've dropped that. I do that minimally. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Now that may sound insane, but literally when people inquire about a masterclass with me, I interview them, I want to know what they've done. I want to know how good they're already. 'cause a masterclass that is tweaking fine, tweaking a skill, it's not starting from basics because you've done a quarter of a lip. So yeah, that's all I have to say really. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:22:49 That's fair. And it's been really refreshing and interesting to hear it from a practitioner's, uh, perspective as well. I know there's, um, you see there's a lot going on and a lot of thinking, umm in and eye. So it's kind of, it's kind of nice just to hear it and also hopefully it can help listeners either make a decision or, or even just that they're a bit more aware about it because maybe some people don't know too much about it if they haven't been told by their trainers or, you know, any work colleagues so to speak mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So hopefully we'll this episode be really useful to them. <laugh>,
Speaker 2 00:23:23 Hold onto your seats for the court cases, guys. <laugh> is all I'm saying. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:23:27 Yeah, I can, I agree that Yeah, I, I agree. I think definitely there'll be some court cases against, um, uh, the, unfortunately the not so great academies and stuff like that. So it'll be kind of interesting to see what happens. All ac
Speaker 2 00:23:43 All academies right now know what's going on. Mm. That's a fact. What they're doing about it. That's the difference between a good academy and a bad one.
Speaker 1 00:23:52 Yeah, that's fair enough. <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:23:56 Yeah. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:23:59 Well thank you so much for coming on again for us. It has been really interesting to No, I can probably to speak a bit more about the, the nitty gritty stuff,
Speaker 2 00:24:09 Honest as always. <laugh>
Speaker 1 00:24:15 Thank you to my guest today, Karen, for sharing her insight on the new proposed industry legislation effects on the practitioner. Don't forget you can visit her website at www.karenpeakpmu.co.uk to learn more about her business and her treatments she has to offer. I have been your host, Dawn Cross and tune in next week for another episode in sync as one of the UK's fastest growing insurance providers offering comprehensive cover for SMEs and the self-employed across the uk. Our expert team can tailor your insurance to meet your individual business needs and compare prices from Lloyds of London approved partners.
